Ariane watched Ranulf with sorrow and helpless despair, knowing that with every word he bound himself more firmly in her heart. She could only imagine what he had endured, the terrible guilt he had been made to feel for his mother’s sins, the desperate loneliness of his life as a despised outcast. Yet he had no need to tell her of the pain inside him, the helplessness, the fear; she felt them.
She was filled suddenly with such tenderness for him that she ached with it. She buried her face in his neck, her arms holding him tightly because she thought she might weep. He was a man in pain, and she only wanted to help him heal.
“You were not to blame for your mother’s sins,” she whispered hoarsely, “or your father’s madness.”
Extricating himself from her embrace, Ranulf sat up abruptly, turning his back to her. His chest felt tight and full, welling with too much emotion.
Why had he confessed his most private anguish?
Because you wanted her to understand,a mocking voice whispered in his mind.You wanted her to know the demons that shaped you and made you into the man you are now, hard, ruthless, devoid of softness.
He felt her slim arms encircle him, felt her cheek press softly against the naked scars of his back. He hated being touched there. He would have cast off the embrace, but he could not bring himself to refuse her warmth, her tenderness, the comfort she offered. His body rigid, he held his breath, feeling as if he might break if he moved a single muscle.
“You are not to blame!” Ariane repeated fiercely, her voice catching on a sob.
He felt the tender brush of her lips against his bare back, felt the dampness, the trickle of moisture from her eyes.Tears. His chest tightened unbearably. She was weeping . . . weeping for him.
He turned in her arms.
“Ariane . . .” he whispered, revealing for one unguarded moment the yearning in his soul.I need you.
In poignant response, her lips raised to meet his, offering solace, the same exquisite tenderness he had showered on her a short while earlier, the same hunger.
Ranulf groaned, a sound of passion and surrender, an acknowledgment of his own loneliness. He felt a desperate need to accept her comfort, to bury himself in this woman and forget, just forget everything, save her. Urgently he pressed her down, fitting his naked body to hers.
With a soft gasp at his penetrating thrust, Ariane opened to him, wrapping her legs around his thighs, taking him into her body, drawing him close. He gripped her buttocks fiercely, violent in his need, yet she welcomed his frenzy. She could feel the surging power in his thrusting body, his straining muscles, feel the vulnerability and pain inside him. She held him with a fierce and primitive protectiveness, letting him use her body as a vessel for his release, while his own arched and convulsed around her, within her.
His shudders took a long time calming afterward. Ranulf buried his mouth in her hair, unwilling to face what he had done.
He felt too vulnerable, too raw, to speak. Unaccountably, he had laid his soul bare to this woman who should be his enemy. It disquieted him, the weakness he had shown.
He had meant only to comfort her, not to rail against his fate, not to let her probe his past and the darkness that had claimed his soul. He had not meant to give her such an advantage over him.
And yet, she was stroking his hair now, caressing his nape gently, as if he were a mere babe. As if she knew the devastation within him, understood what drove him.
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Still, his weakness dismayed him, as did his lapse of control. Ariane had felt no pleasure in their fierce coupling, he knew. He had used her hard, as if she were no more than his possession.
“We had best return,” he muttered tersely, his voice yet hoarse from the wrenching climax he had endured.
At his abrupt change of mood, Ariane’s hand stilled in his hair.
Ranulf raised his head, gazing around him, looking anywhere but into her eyes. “I will accompany you here on the morrow, on the pretense of a lover’s tryst. Our dalliance will provide a pretext for your venturing here, to visit your lady mother. No one will question it.”
Ariane sighed inwardly. Ranulf was once again the cool, remote stranger, a stalwart warrior who had no room for softness. He regretted his gentleness, regretted opening himself to her, she knew.
And yet she took heart, if faintly. He had begun to soften toward her. He was wary of giving his love or trust to any woman, especially to her, but she had made a beginning.
Ariane rubbed the chilled skin of her arms as Ranulf rose to his feet, watching his hard, beautiful, scarred body. He was wrong, she reflected. He did possess a heart, buried somewhere beneath a terrible burden of rage and hatred.
The Black Dragon of Vernay might be a mighty warrior, but he was a lonely and vulnerable man as well . . . a man who needed her, though he did not yet know it.
21
The interlude in the meadow affected Ranulf more than he cared to admit, for it was then that his doubts began to haunt him: He began to question seriously his belief that Ariane was no better than the faithless, highborn damsels he had always known.
He strove to remain on his guard. His relief that Ariane had not betrayed him was profound, but not so overwhelming that he would forswear his defenses.