“Lyonene! What has made you as this? I am tired. I have ridden all night and all this day without stop to come to you, and now you greet me coldly.”
“ ’Tis not I who is cold.”
He pulled the mail coif from over his head and bent to douse his face and hair in the little stream. “I understand naught of this. Have my letters displeased you? I am not used to writing such letters. Geoffrey says I am clumsy with a pen, though my studies have pleased my teachers.” He leaned back against a tree, the heavy armor dragging at him. “I did not mean to give offense, however I did so.”
Lyonene could not hold her tears. Ranulf was usually so sure of himself. She remembered the last time they had been together in this glade, how he had boasted, how pleased he was at his child.
“The babe does not trouble you?”
She kept her head lowered so he could not see her tears and shook her head.
“Has my blackness grown uglier while I was away that you can bear me no longer?”
She again only shook her head.
“By all that’s holy, Lyonene, look at me!” he shouted. “I leave a wife who laughs, one who kisses me, and in a month I return to one who hates me afresh.”
Tears blurred her vision, choked her words. “I do not hate you.”
“Then why do you send me flowers and a few days later naught but a few short words delivered by a nervous boy?”
“You came just to see why I did such? Just for those few short words?”
The pain she saw in his eyes made her heart tighten as if steel bands bound it. “Nay,” he said, seriously, “it was but an excuse. I came because I thought my Lioness awaited me with kisses and open arms. I tire of angry words and battle.” He held out his hand to her, palm upward, and before she thought, she was in his arms, the iron mail cutting into her soft flesh.
She cried against him, tears running along his neck.
“You rust my mail,” he teased. “Had I known I got but tears for my journey, I would have stayed with Maularde. Can you not spare me one kiss?”
She put one hand on each side of his face and kissed him with a violence she had not known she possessed. He pulled her closer to him, deepening the kiss, lips crushed in one another, their stored desires released in a passion of liquid fire.
He pulled back from her. “You do indeed remember me?”
“Nay, I know you not. You are a great black beast of a man come to make love to me.”
He ran his lips along her neck. “You would have me as I am, for I fear that even I quell at the stench I have worked up?”
“Aye, I will have you no matter your smell or your treachery.”
“What is this you speak of?”
“Do you mean to waste so much time in talk?” She began unbuckling the heavy sword belt.
“Nay,” he chuckled. “I need no more words.”
A month apart had raised their desires for one another to fever pitch. They were frantic, clumsy, as they tore their clothes from their bodies. Ranulf, dressed for war, was slower, the iron mail difficult to remove. When Lyonene stood nude before him, the filtered sunlight showing golden on her skin, he paused, and she ran to him. The cold, iron mail bit into her flesh, pinching, nipping, but the slight pain only increased her need for him.
“Nay, do not remove it, come to me.”
She pulled him to her on the velvety ground, relishing in the contrast of his warm, sweet-dampened skin against her legs and the massive hardness, coldness, the total maleness of the iron against her soft breasts.
They came together almost violently, Lyonene crying out at the first moments of painful pleasure. Her hips rose to meet his need of her and they soared together to new heights of fury, of storm-tossed seas and a bursting of lights of fulfillment.
They lay together, locked tightly to one another, their hearts thundering, complete in the dewy aftermoments of their love. Ranulf rolled from her, but kept her to him with one leg over her thighs, his hand caressing her cheek, his eyes soft and happy.
“I think you please me more than I remember.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she smiled up at him. “I would but please a man as powerful as the Black Lion is at this moment.”