“I hope to God you do not expect me to be strong and send you back to your room, because I can’t do it. I do not have that much strength.”
She drifted closer, the candle flame spluttering, and he became aware of her womanly scent. Instantly his body went rigid, his head spun, his mouth went dry. “Jenova…” he groaned. “Please.”
“I do not want you to be strong,” she said matter-of-factly, as if she had no idea what she was doing to him, how dangerously close he was to grabbing her and throwing her upon the bed. “You have started a fire in me. I thought I could deny it, but…” She took a trembling breath. “I see now it will not be easily put out, and I see now that to deny these feelings would be foolish as well as cruel. We should allow them free rein, indulge ourselves. Only then will we be rid of the fire, only then can we go back to being as we were.”
What she said made sense, but Henry suspected some other matter lurked behind her green eyes, something she wasn’t telling him. He tried to think clearly, but he was dizzy with the knowledge that Jenova was giving him leave to sate himself upon her body. Quickly, before she changed her mind, he held out his arms to her. She smiled and blew out the candle, and then she was moving into his embrace, soft and warm and perfect. Jenova was his, and this time Henry did not mean to make any foolish vows denying himself the pleasure of her.
Chapter 6
No turning back now, Jenova thought. Even had she wanted to, she doubted Henry would let her. His erection butted against her belly, urgent, eager, and she reached down to stroke him. With a soft moan, Jenova raised her mouth to his, and he plundered it, kissing her with wild passion. Sucking on her lips and her tongue, his hands tangling in her long hair.
It wasn’t enough, she thought feverishly. She wanted more, and more, and more….
How can Henry, my familiar Henry, stir such wild wantonness in me?
Even after her decision in the great hall, Jenova had lain in her bed, fighting the need to go to him. Wait until the morning, the voice in her head had ordered her, that proper Lady of Gunlinghorn voice. Tell him of your decision in the morning…if you must!
But somewhere between the tossing and turning, between pacing her floor and wrestling with her feelings, she had come to the conclusion that there was no need to wait. What had happened between them in Uther’s Tower had changed her, and she no longer had the willpower to resist. She wanted him now, she needed him now, and for once in her life she would live for the moment.
Henry’s hands slid down her back, cupping her curves through the thin shawl, holding her hips against his, lifting her a little so that his manhood could slide between her thighs and rest against her. She moved against him, pleasure spiraling through her at the friction this caused.
With a groan, he eased back, trying to slow their passion. He brought his hands up to cup her breasts, gently molding the soft flesh into his palms. Jenova arched into his touch, gasping when his thumbs brushed across her sensitive nipples, her hands twining in his hair and drawing him closer. Henry paused, resting his scratchy cheek against her breasts, his breath a warm, reverent murmur against her skin.
“You are so beautiful. Why did I never realize you are so beautiful?”
His words surprised her. “You are very hand
some,” she said at last, “but I always noticed that.”
He laughed a little harshly and rubbed his cheek against her, abrading her soft breast as if to punish her. “But you were never overwhelmed by it,” he replied with a hint of mockery. “Were you, sweeting?”
“If you mean did I ever feel like swooning at your feet, then nay, Henry, I did not. I am not the swooning type.”
“Not even when I do this?” he teased, and in the darkness his blue eyes fixed on hers as he eased slightly away from her body. And then she felt his fingers, his clever fingers, caressing her, sliding down over the swell of her belly to the downy curls, slipping through them to find the warm opening between her thighs.
“Not even then,” Jenova managed, but her voice had grown husky and less certain.
He smiled, his fingers moving, stroking. “You are very hot, lady,” he whispered softly. “You are right, there is a fire in you that has been lit. I fear…I fear it will take a strong and lusty man to put it out.”
“And that is you?” Jenova retorted, but already her head was spinning, her legs trembling so badly that she did not know how much longer they would hold her. He bent to nuzzle against her neck, nipping her flesh with his teeth, not hard enough to hurt but enough to send tingles of excitement skipping across her skin. She rested her hands about his hips, her fingers moving against the firm, hard flesh that covered him, finding the curve of his buttocks. A soldier’s body. He may dress as a smiling courtier, he may pretend to be a gentleman, but in essence Henry was a warrior.
“Ah, here ’tis, the heart of the fire,” he was saying in that rough-tender voice. He cupped her, his forefinger slipping inside while his thumb brushed against the aching nub. She moved against his hand, her breath sighing between her lips, turning to a gasp when he bent his head to take her nipple in his mouth.
“Henry,” she managed, reaching to clasp his head, her fingers tangling in his hair, holding him closer. His mouth was a torment, but it was a torment Jenova knew she could not do without, and she pulled him closer still.
“Come, lady, and lie down upon my bed. There is much, much more.” He was easing her back onto the bed, using his strength, kneeling over her. Her shawl fell open, and her skin glowed like pearl.
Should I be letting him do this? Jenova asked herself feverishly. Should I be allowing him to enslave me like this? But he was already rearing over her, his hands sliding up her thighs and curling over them, to open them to his perusal.
And then he leaned forward and took her in his mouth, and Jenova lost all awareness of herself as her senses mastered her entirely. All she yearned for now was to find release from this aching pleasure. His tongue flicked against her, and she arched up like a bow, gasping and crying out, beyond caring who heard her. And then, before she could begin to gather and put back together the scattered pieces that were Jenova, he entered her with one deep thrust, his mouth and hands scattering her once more.
Jenova found herself climbing that pleasure staircase again, moving with him, driving all doubts before them. There was nothing but the awareness of his skin, his body, his mouth. There was something magic in him, something pagan, that spoke to a part of her she had not known was there. She was simply a woman named Jenova.
And Henry took her to a place she had never known existed.
When at last she lay quiet in his arms, she tried to make sense of it. “I think,” she said, “that because I have never found pleasure like this before, now I cannot stop. Oh, I have had my joys and my sorrows, ’tis true, but not pleasure like this, Henry. Not even with Mortred. You have secrets that no other man knows. You can cast spells. That is why I cannot resist you.”
Henry laughed softly, his body hot as a furnace against hers. “If that is what you want to believe, sweet Jenova, then so ’tis. I am a sorcerer.”