Medieval 03 - Enchanted

will lend you money to set up Carlysle Keep, my
father will bring down Blackthorne Keep, and your brother with
it.”
    “The king has many demands on his
resources,” Simon said. “In too much of England the
harvest was poor.”
    “What of Erik’s father?”
    “Robert the Whisperer hates all Learned, even
his own son.”
    Ariane shook her head in silent despair.
    “Then we are lost,” she said in a low
voice.
    The motion of Ariane’s head sent locks of her
hair over Simon’s hand. Something that was almost pain
pierced him at the cool, silken touch.
    “Are you so angry with me that you
can’t even bear to look at my face?” Simon asked
softly.
    Ariane’s head jerked upright. Simon was
standing very close to her. His expression was grim. His clothing
was half-undone, as though he were so weary he had begun pulling at
laces while he climbed the stairs to his wife’s room.
    “I? Angry with you?” Ariane asked,
surprise clear both in her voice and her extraordinary amethyst
eyes.
    “Angry that I betrayed your truth by not
defending it sooner,” Simon said bleakly. “Angry that
the truth made no difference. Angry that I
can’t…love.”
    Ariane’s heart turned over at the pain in
Simon’s eyes.
    “Not even you,” he said roughly,
“my valiant nightingale. You, who have suffered so much at
the hands of men. You, who saved my life. You, who taught me to fly
as the phoenix flies, death and rebirth in ecstasy. You
deserve…more than I can give you.”
    The pain in Simon’s voice made Ariane ache.
Tears shimmered against her black eyelashes.
    “You have never betrayed me. Never ,” Ariane said. “You would have
died to save my life when I was naught but a burden to you, a woman
you married out of loyalty to your brother.”
    “You were never a burden to me. I wanted you
the first time I saw you. I have never hungered for a woman like
that, a fire hotter than any awaiting me in hell.”
    Ariane’s smile was as sad as the tears she
wept for Simon, and as beautiful.
    Wanting. Burning.
Desire .
    Not love .
    “I know now how much you wanted me,”
Ariane said, shivering with memories of Simon’s intense,
unbounded sensuality.
    Simon saw Ariane’s telltale response and felt
his own blood ignite in answer, consuming the pain of a past that
could not be changed, only accepted.
    “You wanted me until you trembled with your
wanting,” Ariane whispered, “yet you never forced me.
You have been gentle where other men have been cruel, passionate
where other men have been calculating, generous where other men
have been selfish. Angry with you? Nay, Simon. I am blessed in
you.”
    “Ariane…”
    Simon’s throat closed. He could not have
known Ariane’s truth more clearly if he had lived inside her
soul.
    Slowly he lifted his hands and eased his fingers
into the midnight beauty of Ariane’s hair. As he tilted her
face up, his lips whispered over her eyelashes, stealing the silver
tears she had wept for him.
    “When I think what was done to you by that
swine…” Simon said hoarsely.
    As he spoke, Simon’s lips moved over
Ariane’s forehead, her cheekbones, her nose, her cheeks, her
eyelids, her lips, worshiping her with kisses as soft as firelight.
She trembled at the light touches and wept at the bleakness she saw
in her husband’s eyes.
    “Don’t think of it,” Ariane said
urgently. “I don’t. Not anymore. Not even in my
dreams.”
    “You were cruelly used, a betrayal so deep it
all but killed your soul. Yet—”
    “You healed me,” she interrupted.
    “—you came to me on the battlements and
taught me what true passion is.”
    Ariane tried to speak, but the intensity in
Simon’s expression stole her voice.
    “I took you,” he said, “standing
upright with my back to the freezing wind and
your—”
    A shudder of memory and desire and something more
went through Simon, breaking his voice.
    “—and your honeyed warmth sheathed me
completely,” he said after a moment, his voice husky.
“Yet you were all but a virgin when you came to
me.”
    “I loved sheathing you.”
    The words were whispered against Simon’s
lips, feather touches that matched the delicacy of his own
kisses.
    “I know how well you loved it,” he said
huskily. “Your pleasure drenched me.”
    Simon felt the flush that stole up Ariane’s
body.
    “I didn’t mean to,” Ariane said.

“I couldn’t…stop.”
    “I know,” Simon breathed, biting her
lips with exquisite tenderness. “I didn’t want