Medieval 03 - Enchanted

urgently against her palms.
    Fear rushed through her, a harsh warning of a
lesson that had been learned at great cost. A man in the throes of
lust was a beast.
    “Simon?” she whispered.
    “Again, nightingale. Or do I…disgust
you?”
    Ariane drew a broken breath and then another,
nightmare and dream warring within her. Simon didn’t sound
mindless or brutal. But neither had Geoffrey the Fair, until that
final night when he had raped and ruined her in the eyes of Church
and family.
    Dear God, what am I to do?
Despite all common sense, despite all past pain, I yearn to become
Simon’s true wife .
    And the moment I do, he will
hate me as my father did. Whore. Wanton. Witch .
    “Ariane?”
    “You don’t disgust me. But I
am…frightened.”
    “Of what?”
    The seething thoughts within Ariane’s mind
were too complex to sort out. So she chose the most simple, potent
truth.
    “I am afraid of this,” she said,
running her fingers over Simon’s aroused flesh.
“’Tis made to tear a woman apart.”
    “Not so. It is made to pleasure a
woman.”
    “I’ve heard no woman describe it
thus,” Ariane said bleakly.
    Simon would have argued if her touch hadn’t
drawn his whole body upon a rack of passion so intense it was
painful.
    “Smooth balm into me,” he said in a
low, hoarse voice. “It will help me and it will be a way for
you to learn that not all men are vicious beasts.”
    He took Ariane’s lower lip between his teeth,
bit gently, and flicked his tongue over her lip. She made a small
sound and trembled.
    But she leaned toward rather than away from
him.
    “Touch me,” Simon whispered.

“Learn me. It is your hands upon the rein, not mine. This
time.”
    Even Ariane couldn’t say if it was fear or
excitement that made her hands tremble as she lowered them to his
body once more. After a few hesitant strokes, she pressed more
firmly.
    Then she lingered, curious about the contours of
Simon’s surprising masculinity. She stroked the length of him
several times before returning to explore the inch of hot flesh
that had pushed above the waist of his breeches.
    “So smooth,” Ariane murmured, circling
Simon with curious fingertips. “I hadn’t expected that
of something so hard. Are you sensitive here?”
    “Dear Christ,” Simon hissed. “I
ache.”
    Ariane froze. “I didn’t mean to wound
you. Truly. I—”
    “You can heal me,” he said across her
quick apology.
    “How?”
    “My breeches are too tight. Pick apart the
laces.”
    For the space of several ragged breaths, Ariane
looked into Simon’s smoldering eyes.
    Touch me. Learn me. It is your
hands upon the rein, not mine. This time .
    With trembling fingers, Ariane did as Simon asked,
loosening the laces until the length of him lay hot and hard
between her palms. She stroked with gentle care.
    “Is this better?” she asked
anxiously.
    Simon groaned and bit back a searing curse. Sweat
broke over his whole body.
    In the firelight, his face seemed drawn by
pain.
    “Do you truly hurt so much?” Ariane
whispered, shaken.
    “God’s teeth,” he said
hoarsely.
    “Would balm help?”
    A shudder went through Simon.
    “Yes. Oh God, yes,” he said through his
teeth. “Heal me, nightingale.”
    The fragrance of balm rose from Simon’s
heated flesh as Ariane caressed him within the concealing warmth of
his fur-lined mantle.
    “Some day I will caress you like this,”
Simon said huskily.
    “I am not shaped as you.”
    “Aye. You are softer than any petal ever made
by God.”
    Ariane’s fingertips found the single,
unseeing eye and explored it delicately while Simon’s
passionate words sent streamers of heat through her.
    “The flower of your womanhood is a softness
beyond imagining,” he whispered. “I yearn to caress
that softness, taste it, bathe in the sultry fountains of your
desire and bathe you in turn with my own passion.”
    Simon’s words flicked Ariane like a whip of
fire, flushing her skin, making her breath shorten. Her hands
slipped lower as unfamiliar sensations made her whole body tremble.
Her fingertips found the taut, aching spheres that held generations
yet unborn. Curiously, caressingly, Ariane explored his very
different flesh.
    Simon watched her face through slitted eyes. Her
expression was shuttered by a veil of midnight hair. Flames from
the brazier sent more shadows than illumination over Ariane’s
expression. He could not decide whether her response to the
intimacy was hot or cold or