Medieval 03 - Enchanted

over Ariane
like a basin of water fresh from the well. She drew another ragged
breath and focused on her husband instead of her dream.
    “If you will take your fingernails out of my
wrist,” Simon said, “I will resume dressing you. Or is
it that you like having me snugged up close to your warm
nest?”
    As he spoke, Simon deliberately flexed his hand,
pressing his fingers against Ariane, caressing the soft petals
whose every contour he had learned with lips and teeth and
tongue.
    Did I dream that ?
    Could I have ?
    Ariane’s breath came in with a gasp as
conflicting feelings shuddered through her. The first was frank
fear. The second was an equally frank pleasure.
    And the second was even more frightening than the
first.
    “Please,” she whispered brokenly.
“Don’t. I can’t—I can’t bear
it.”
    Disgust with himself rose like bile in
Simon’s throat. He jerked his hand free of its soft
confinement.
    “Then kindly retrieve your own lace,
madam,” he said through his teeth.
    Ariane gave him a bewildered look.
    “Your silver lace,” he said curtly.
“I was fastening your dress when the cursed thing slipped
free.”
    Ariane looked down. The front of her dress was
undone all the way to her thighs. Except for folds of amethyst
cloth that revealed more than they concealed, she was quite
naked.
    “My undergarments…”
Ariane’s voice dried up.
    Simon waited for her to finish.
    Licking her dry lips, Ariane tried again.
    “I have nothing on but my dress,” she
said huskily.
    “I am well aware of that.”
    And of much more besides.
God’s wounds, how can a girl whose body is so plainly made
for passion draw back in disgust from it ?
    Or perhaps, despite her
protests, it is I who disgust her, not passion .
    Aye. That must be the truth.
No girl who was repelled by passion itself could have responded as
she did last night .
    A dream .
    Just a dream .
    Ariane flushed from her breasts to her forehead as
she looked down at her own near nudity.
    “I usually wear…”
    Her voice frayed. She licked her dry lips
again.
    The sight of Ariane’s elegant pink tongue
could not have been more arousing to Simon if it had been his own
aching flesh that was being licked.
    “God blind me!” Simon said
savagely.
    He surged to his feet, poured a cup of water from
the ewer on the chest, and stalked back to the bed.
    “Drink this,” Simon said. “If you
lick your lips any more you’ll make them raw.”
    Ariane lifted trembling fingers to the mug. Simon
took one look and waved her hands aside.
    “You have less strength than a kitten,”
he muttered. “Here.”
    Simon held the mug against Ariane’s lips and
tilted it. Very quickly she choked and water spilled in cool silver
streams down her chin.
    “By the Cross,” cursed Simon, lowering
the cup. “It was easier when you were senseless.”
    “What—” Ariane coughed and
cleared her throat. “What do you mean?”
    “When you were senseless, I fed you from my
own lips.”
    Ariane’s mouth dropped open. “I beg
your pardon?”
    Simon drank from the cup, bent to Ariane, and fed
her the water as he had so many times when she lay in thrall to
Learned healing.
    The giving of water was so swiftly done that Ariane
had no time to object. And even if she wanted to object, she had to
swallow before she spoke.
    “More?” Simon asked, holding the mug to
his lips.
    Again Ariane’s mouth opened in amazement as
she understood just how Simon had cared for her.
    Again he sipped and again leaned down to her
mouth.
    She watched him with dazed amethyst eyes. The sight
of him bending down to her sent odd sensations cascading through
her body.
    She swallowed convulsively.
    “You do that so…casually,” Ariane
said.
    “I have had near ten days to become adept at
nursing you,” Simon said.
    Ariane’s mouth opened again. She closed it
hastily when Simon raised the mug once more.
    “You?” she whispered. “You tended
me?”
    He nodded.
    “Why?” she asked.
    “Cassandra required it.”
    Ariane blinked.
    “Cassandra,” Ariane repeated slowly, as
though she had never heard the name. “Why in the name of all
that is holy did she require that?”
    “Why does a Learned one do anything?”
Simon retorted. “And while we’re asking questions, why
in the name of God didn’t you gallop for the keep when you
had a chance?”
    “The keep?”
    “When the renegade knights
attacked.”
    Suddenly it all came back to Ariane—the shout
from Simon, the attacking knights, and