Page 58 of My Warrior
“Did he touch you like this?”
“Damn you to hell!” she groaned.
“Did he touch you like this?”
Cambria wanted to hurt him. “Nay!” she shouted. “His touch was much more pleasing.”
He seemed unaffected by the lie. “Thank God I don’t please you so well, or I might find a dagger buried inmychest.”
Then he began moving his fingers, sliding across the moist folds of her skin. She thought she’d die of mortification, yet didn’t want him to stop. Surely he possessed some secret power, the ability to leave her helpless with the gentle touch of a single fingertip.
“Did you kill Roger because he…raped you?” he murmured.
“He didn’t rape me,” she breathed, surrendering at last, adrift on an erotic sea beneath his touch. “He tried, but he was too besotted for it.” She sighed, her voice gone soft and womanly. “And I swear on the grave of my father, I didn’t kill your knight.”
Holden closed his eyes and nodded slowly in the darkness, relieved. She was telling the truth. He could hear the resignation in her voice.
“Do you believe Owen killed his brother?”
“Aye,” she said thickly.
“And that he intends to kill me?”
“Aye.” She sucked in a breath as Holden’s thumb moved over her in lazy circles. Dear God, it felt as if her mind was not her own. She wanted him to cease, yet she wanted something more. “Please,” she sighed.
“Please?” Holden’s breath caught in his throat. He halted his movements. Surely his stubborn Cambria wasn’t ready to surrender…everything. “Please stop or please go on?”
Her long moment of indecision evoked a chuckle or irony from him that ended in a frustrated groan. “Oh, wife, there is nothing I’d like better than to take you here and now.”
A surge of desire swept through his loins as if to lend credence to his words. It took every bit of his willpower not to tear his trews away and drive that aching part of him deep into her soft, wet sheath.
“But I’m a man of my word. I must hear assent from your own lips.”
Please, God,he silently begged,deliver me from this torment.But God paid no heed, and the silence dragged on as Cambria battled her own desires. It wasn’t to be, he decided, not tonight. He drew his hand from her and released her wrists.
“I regret I must leave you so unsatisfied,” he said tautly, “but it’s an oath you yourself have bound me to.”
He wondered if she ached half as much as he did. He swore he was throbbing from his waist to his knees. Never had a woman aroused him so completely nor left him so shaken. He let out a ragged breath, his body exhausted from long denial, and cursed the wretched honor that kept him from swiving his own wife.
Cambria buried her face in the crook of her arm. Never had she known such torment, such confusion. Her body was suffused with a nameless longing, every fiber of her being stretched taut as a bowstring. The Wolf had brought her to the border of an undiscovered country, and now he was abandoning her there. He’d humiliated her, conquered her, disgraced her. He’d beaten her soundly in this battle, as he’d promised he would.
But she’d be damned if she’d admit it. Better that she endure the fires of unrequited passion than surrender to her foe in a moment of weakness.
Clenching her teeth, she turned to her side and curled up into a ball. It would be a long, sleepless night.
Somehow Cambria managed to get some little rest, but it was far from peaceful. A moment past sunrise, she awoke with a gasp. The same terrible, dark dream of suffering and death had invaded her slumber. She felt like she was choking on the stench of the grave. Her heart pounded as if it longed to escape her breast.
Then the nightmare that had been so real fled like an insubstantial puff of smoke. For a moment, she couldn’t recall where she was. She shook her head, and then her memory came flooding back in an overwhelming rush as she gathered the rags of her torn kirtle about her.
She was alone in his bed, left there by her brute of a husband. He had tortured her—there was no other word for it. He’d used her own passions against her, seduced her mercilessly, and then deserted her, left her alone to face the scorn of everyone in the camp. She was surprised he hadn’t just claimed her virginity and been done with it. But then he’d said it himself. As much as she despised him at this moment, he was a man of his word. He wouldn’t bed her without her consent.
She pushed the hair back from her face and looked hopelessly at her ruined clothing. Damn the knave, he’d hardly left her a scrap to wear. Well, she decided, compressing her lips and pulling the coverlet from the bed, she’d show him a thing or two about Scots pride. She’d wrap furs about her as her ancestors had and walk out of the pavilion with her head held high.
Suddenly, the tent flap snapped open, and Holden was there at the entry, haloed by morning sunlight. She averted her eyes. The last thing she wanted to see was the Wolf gloating over his easy victory of the night before. She supposed she’d never hear the end of it. He’d won. He’d taken her will from her, fairly and without a struggle.
Eventually, curiosity got the best of her, and she scowled up at him. She was startled by his expression. No smugness molded his features, only something akin to regret. In fact, he looked rather like a wayward child come to ask forgiveness as he offered her a bundle of new clothing.
“I’d prefer to keep your identity secret,” he ventured, tossing the garments to the pallet when she didn’t reach for them, “for your safety.”
