The Warrior

“Perhaps you will find this more to your liking.”

He was holding a gold necklace of some sort, Ariane realized with a warm jolt of surprise. A collar torque whose ornamented ends bore Norse figures of dragons with jeweled eyes. The length of heavy gold tubing twisted on and off and opened in front.

Slipping his hand beneath her neck, Ranulf carefully wound it around her throat, while Ariane stared at him in shock.

“F-For me, my lord?”

“It was meant to be my wedding gift to you,” he murmured, “but although there is to be no marriage, I see no reason you may not have it. Consider it payment for the gift you gave me last night.”

Her maidenhead, Ariane thought with a savage pang of dismay, feeling the cool metal press against her skin like ice. She could have loved Ranulf, but she meant no more to him than any of the castle strumpets; he slaked his lust on her and paid for the pleasure with pretty baubles, and considered it a fair exchange.

“Forgive me if I fail to express proper gratitude, my lord,” she declared with asperity.

Her stinging reply took Ranulf aback, as did the sudden flash of hurt in her eyes. He had never bestowed such an expensive gift on a wench, but he had thought she would be pleased by his costly gesture. The ladies he knew at court all craved expensive presents, but Ariane’s eyes had first lit with suspicion rather than greed, and now she was staring at him with haughty disdain, as if he had committed a grave offense.

“I had thought it might serve to sweeten your temper,” he said uncertainly.

“There is naught wrong with my temper, save perhaps a surfeit of your lascivious attention.”

Not understanding, Ranulf chose to fight her incomprehensible anger with persuasion. Lazily he drew down the covers to expose a rosy-nippled breast, then dismayed her further by reaching his hand up to cup the pale globe. Despite her sudden squirming, he bent and pressed his lips against her abraded collarbone. “You may have your own garments back as well, sweeting. I will not have those rough peasant gowns marring your tender skin.”

Trying to repress the surge of tension and excitement his mere touch awakened in her, Ariane raised a scornful eyebrow. “Do I detect a pang of guilt, my lord, for your despicable treatment of me?”

He grinned. “Guilt is not what I feel for you, wench. As for treatment . . .” Some of his amusement faded. “After your deception, you deserve much worse than a simple rash.”

“I do not call it deception to claim what is my legal due.”

Ranulf shook his head, refusing to be drawn into an argument. “I will not debate the point with you again, my sweet.” His hand slowly, deliberately, swept down her body to delve beneath the covers.

Ariane drew a sharp breath when his fingers tangled in the warm thatch between her thighs. “Nay . . . do not! ’Tis indecent!”

“Is it?”

“You know it is,” she gasped as she tried to evade his probing fingers, though knowing she would use almost any excuse that might keep her from repeating last night’s wanton surrender. “The Church has proscribed such heathen acts.”

Ranulf grunted, although he removed his hand from her thigh and let it rest possessively on her stomach. “I doubt one more sin will render my soul any blacker. I have it on good authority that I am possessed by demons.”

Ariane was too genuinely shocked by his blasphemy to probe the bitterness that edged his tone. “Your soul may be beyond redemption, but what of mine?”

His gaze searched her face intently. “A

re you so pure and innocent then, demoiselle?” When she had no answer for that, Ranulf shrugged. “The debauchery of the Church is well known. Half the clergy break their own laws regularly, holding orgies that make our revelry in the hall last night seem tame.”

“Even so . . . I do not wish you to . . . touch me like that . . .”

“You mean to pretend I do not arouse you?” he asked with a smile of amusement.

It vexed Ariane sorely that he should comprehend the real source of her discomfiture: his ability to stir her passions so effortlessly and turn her into a wanton. “You do not arouse me half so much as your impossible conceit would lead you to believe,” she retorted.

“Conceit?”His eyebrow shot up. “No wench has yet had cause to complain of my prowess.”

Ariane raised her eyes to the beamed ceiling, praying for patience. Ranulf de Vernay was an arrogant, coddled male, so secure in his practiced power with women that she yearned to box his ears. “Mayhap you never heard a complaint because you neverwished to hear one.”

His teeth flashed in a slow grin that was both intimate and sexual—and totally infuriating in its brazen disregard for her calculated insult. In lazy response, his hand swept slowly up her body to her breast again. With thumb and forefinger, he gently pinched the sensitive nipple, making it tighten instantly, and causing Ariane to draw another sharp breath. “Mayhap you protest because you fear what I make you feel.”

“I donot fear you,” Ariane gritted, wishing she could wipe that superior grin off his handsome face. “I simply have no desire to listen to you boast of your conquests.”

Before she could say anything further, though, Ranulf suddenly suspended his teasing and rose to dress. Unconcerned by his nudity, he strode across the chamber and bent to retrieve his clothing from a leather-covered coffer, giving her a view of his taut buttocks and long bare flanks, sleek and thickly muscled.