“I never want to forget what you look like at this moment.” Then he clasped her hand and gently guided it down his belly. When her fingers closed over him, he smiled. “I want you, badly—you know that.”
She still held him, her fingers clutching at him now, and it was almost pain, but not enough for him to stop her. Finally he pulled her hand away. “No more, or I will spill my seed and you will want to take your sword to me.”
“No,” she said into his mouth, “no.” She felt his fingers pressed against her, feeling her, stroking, and she quite simply wanted to die from the frenzy of it, the immense wildness.
“Move against my fingers,” he said, nuzzling her throat.
When her eyes went blank and wild, he reared over her and came inside her. He thought he would die at the feel of her, of them together.
She yelled, holding him tightly against her, feeling him inside her, so deep, part of her, and she wanted him, wanted, and when his fingers found her, she yelled again.
She was whispering love words to him and clutching his back, holding him down on top of her. For many moments, his mind was a vague blur, raw sensation warring with thought. He could feel her pounding heart against his chest, the giving softness of her breasts and belly. He shook his head, clearing away his passion, and balanced himself over her on his elbows to stare down into her face.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked.
She smiled, replete and satisfied. “Nay, but I am filled with you,” she said in wonder. “Filled, and it is very good.”
“Aye,” he said, “but not quite so much now.” He lowered his head and rubbed his chin against her neck.
She said against his temple, “So many things have happened, things I never expected. I thought I would die when you were wounded at Nazareth.”
“And I must always try to protect you. There will be some things I cannot change, Chandra, some things that you will have to accept.”
“Because you are a man.”
“Aye, because I am a man, and because life, even at Camberley, is so damned uncertain.”
“But I was not useless during the Saracen attack. I did save Graelam and help Payn.”
“That is true. I suppose I sound like a fool, and if Payn heard me, he’d likely call me an ungrateful dog, but perhaps the next time it would be your life to be forfeit. Never could I bear that cost, never.”
“So it must always be I who waits in fear?”
He rolled to his side and laid the flat of his hand in the hollow of her smooth belly. “When you carry my child, it is his safety that must be your only concern.”
“I am to be the giver of life, and you its protector.”
“Those sound like some philosopher’s words.”
“It is what you want.”
“Mayhap, some of it. We are back to obedience, are we? We will have great fights, Chandra, and we will tug apart and then pull back together. The servants will cower in fright, and my parents will believe us mad. But there will be love between us, and respect. If you will agree to that, then all else will work itself out.”
She snuggled her face into the hollow of his throat and smiled. “You won’t ever leave me?” she asked him, her arms tightening about his back.
“I doubt if I could leave you even if the damned Saracens besieged Acre.”
“I love you, Jerval.” He was silent. For an instant, she tasted the fear of vulnerability.
“It took you long enough to realize it. You will not now forget, will you? Ever?”
“Nay, never.”
“I have loved you since I saw you standing in the Great Hall of Croyland.” He paused a moment as his fingers lightly probed the raised scar on her arm. “There has been too much between us—and not enough.”
“I don’t want us to be what we were in England, ever again.”
“No, we have both changed.”