A Kiss in the Night Read online

  The girl's very same madness filled him; the madness brought by having faced the certainty of death a dozen times, only to find now, quite unexpectedly, he was suddenly very much alive. And the need to celebrate this miracle came in an explosion of desire.

  The explosion caught his breath and nearly knocked him over. Hot blood engorged his groin and tightened each second he watched this strange and magical wood creature fly across the forest floor. With her arms spread wide, her head tilted, her mysterious cloudy eyes filled with the joy of the living.

  The girl’s loosened hair, singed at the ends, fell in a stream of dark ringlets down her back. Ash smudged the comely, flushed face, her eyes lit with madness and joy. She wore only the odd tunic of a condemned woman and the cloth hung about her small waist, down to her bare knees. Her legs were long, slim, and pale. Her bare breasts, dear Lord, were full and ripe, more tempting than heaven, brushed by the streams of her dark hair.

  He removed first his blood-soaked gloves, before unlacing his heavy leather jerkin and the heavier haubert underneath. For the first time in his life he wished to God for a page or squire. He could not get his clothes off fast enough. She looked wild and mad and more beautiful than any maid he had ever seen. His hands trembled with his need to touch her, to cup the softness of her breast, to lay her down to the soft moss of the bank and part her thighs.

  Linness felt Mary's blessing cascading over her like a stream of warm tingling caresses. She closed her eyes and held perfectly still, wiping at her wet cheeks, overwhelmed with gratitude. She was alive…

  The strange stillness and whispers of the forest came to her in a sudden heightening of senses. She heard the running stream, the slow plod of the warhorse moving to it, the rustle of the leaves overhead. A merlin called out in flight above. She listened to the little noises of footsteps, soft fringed wing beats, her own pounding heart and deep breaths. Then she perceived his labored breaths.

  She opened her eyes as her arms came over herself to protect her modesty. The knight stood a dozen paces away. The orange sun was setting behind him, casting him in a majestic glow. He stood unusually tall for a man, taller than any man she had seen before. Like all warriors, tightly corded muscles encased his towering frame and his bronze skin displayed more battle scars than stars set in the distant Milky Way. Red cuts and bruises were laid over these. His hair was light brown, streaked by the sun, and the only soft thing about him. His was not a handsome face, but she was struck by the compelling lure of its unnatural strength: his square-cut, too large chin, his hawkish nose and wide lips, thick brows that darted like wings over his black, widely spaced eyes. Absolutely black eyes. His bare chest had a mat of curly dark hair. His heavy clothes lay in a pile behind him: the leather metal-plated jerkin and chain mail, boots, helmet, and gloves. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered but the idea that presented itself to her.

  In a whisper of wonder, she said, "Mary sent you."

  The words were tossed up in the still air. She was unsure if he heard her. She was unsure if he was real…

  The idea disappeared as her gaze riveted to the mound of his raised manhood beneath his breeches. He was enormous; he would kill her. She started to shake her head in protest that rose from her virgin's fear.

  "Aye," was all he said. All he had to say.

  She froze, watching with widening eyes as he stepped towards her. Mary sent him, Mary sent him, she told herself to keep herself still and give herself courage as he came to stand in front of her. He towered above her, a good foot taller, maybe more—and she was considered tall for a woman. She stared into his eyes, dark blue eyes, but appearing as black orbs reflecting her own pale and frightened face. Her senses filled with his scent made of fire and blood.

  Her sight did not often come so forcefully.

  It was like an opening into a kaleidoscope made of images drawn from his memories. First she saw him practicing the warring arts as a boy, then mounting his warhorse as a man. She saw the mangled bodies of his slain—and they were many. He was discussing wine vats with an old man he loved, a man with blue eyes that had lost their shine, but none of their wisdom. She saw him staring in wonder at fields of vines. He was studying books and paper by candlelight. Now, kneeling at the altar as he married a lady clad in yellow velvet. She saw the woman's death and felt his grief. There came to her mind a beautiful castle surrounded by farmland and vineyards, and she felt his love for this place. He was nursing a sick hound that he loved, then helping children climb a ladder to the hayloft where they swung from a rope he had made. He joked and teased his peasant cottars and made them laugh. He was singing as he bathed.

  The string of images lasted a minute, no more, and yet she now saw the shadow of a man who loomed large over his life. A darkness that always hung around him. This shadow became a cold, bitter wind he had to fight constantly against. This shadow was his brother.

  He felt the intimate probe of her eyes. Silvery, catlike, startling eyes. Beauty was considered blond, blue-eyed, dainty like a wildflower. She was the opposite. A steamy-eyed witch-child, sculpted with flesh and bone, made of earth and wind and fire.

  He felt a stab of raw desire as he stood there staring down. "Will you fight me, witch-child?"

  The question was asked with incongruent gentleness. For a moment she lost herself to the compelling lilt of his voice, French, aristocratic, deep, as his callused hands came to her slender shoulders. The touch of the large hands went through her like a shock. She drew a sharp breath, her eyes darting over his face with confusion. She closed her eyes a moment, and struggled to find her courage.

  She shook her head. Yet she asked, "Would it matter?"

  A serious question. She saw him search his conscience, and what he said next made her know he was heaven-sent. "Aye, it would matter." His hands caressed the sculpted muscle of her slim back, and he leaned over to breathe deeply. The scent of lilacs and smoke was in the dark hair. "I would not want to hurt you. I don't think I could, and yet, my sweet temptress, and yet..."

  He never finished. He swung her up in the air as if she were made of straw, and carried her to a mossy bank near the stream. Bracing her back with his arm, he lowered her against the green backdrop and came partially over her.

  The press of their bodies brought on a jolt that left them both speechless. He closed his eyes, struggling up through the sweet assault on his senses. Raw, hot sensations washed over them, so many millennia removed from the Abbey of Sauvage, the ravages of the flames, or the bloodied battle fought and won there. So many millennia removed from anything on earth.

  She stared up in astonishment, waiting for him to explain this magic. Excitement rushed through her veins like a potent fuel, pumped by her pounding heart and quick breaths. He brought her hands above her head and held them there with one of his own. She struggled to get enough air, and each intake of breath riveted her consciousness to the naked muscle and heat against her, the press of her breasts against his bare chest, his hard shaft against her side, his thigh pressed between hers.

  His breath came hard and fast, too. His hair fell in a riot of curls around his handsome face. For a moment she thought he struggled with the same astonishment, but no, his pause was a desperate measure to catch the wild race of his desire. His struggle only grew as he drank the sight of her dark hair spread over the moss, studied the bewitching eyes and the beckoning of her parted lips, and felt the thrust of her breasts against his chest, a sudden flood of heat as she shifted beneath his weight.

  She felt a tingling rush along the nerves of her arms and a tightening in the tips of her breasts, a hot swelling deep inside. She went very still as he watched her. Her shock was so virginal, he asked huskily as his lips grazed hers, "You handle like a virgin, my witch-child. Tell me you're not."

  The question made her panic. She closed her eyes and tried to shake her head.

  "Are you?" he asked again as he let his lips graze her mouth, gently biting her lower lip. Their breath mingled, and he closed his eyes, lost in the incredible sweetness of her scent. "Or were you sent by the heavens as an undeserved reward for my questionable service?"

  She gasped with the shivers this caused. "Aye," she said in a whisper, "I was sent to you just as you were to me. You saved my life and I owe it to you now." She intended no melodrama; she meant every word. "I surrender my will; this humble gift is yours."

  He ignored the questions posed by the girl's perfect courtly French. He did not want to know who she was or how she came to be condemned by the church. He didn't want to know anything, not the alchemy that changed brass to gold, nor the rhyme or reason of the rotations of the heavenly bodies. He wanted only to sink his flesh in the sweet mercy of hers...

  Desire had changed her features; her pale skin colored with heated anticipation, and he knew her pulse raced as fast as his. He forgot the question, forgot everything but the demanding immediacy of their joining. He brought his mouth down hard.

  All panic exploded in a fiery burst as the kiss molded his lips to hers with a barely restrained force. Yet the lingering trace of his violence melted the instant he felt the exquisite softness of her mouth. One taste and it changed. He groaned deep in his throat as he brought her head back farther to drink deeper.

  The hunger of his passion swept into her body and through her veins, more real, more urgent, than the blood flowing there. She felt the intrusion of his tongue and suffered the briefest moment of confusion and fear, until his tongue slid with tantalizing slowness over hers. She couldn't think or breathe or know anything past the enticing tease of his kiss, a feeling of melting into a shimmering pool of heat and need.

  His warm, callused hand swept over her shoulder and pulled off the remaining strap of her tunic as he breathed deeply of her scent. "My God, you are soft…" C
ool air grazed her skin before his hand slid with unconcealed impatience over her shoulder and side to cup the high, full breast. She gasped as his large, warm palm soothed and stroked, massaging erotically, while catching her tiny gasps in his lips as he kissed her again. The slow thud of her heart dropped to her loins and made her arch her back as she tore her mouth from his with an anguished cry.

  He caught the sound in his mouth, "You taste like the heavens, sweeter than life itself. I am lost. Lost…"

  She opened her eyes with a question, only to find his attention driven by a force far beyond words or vision. His touch felt like warm licks of fire, feeding trembling shivers through her, soothing them, yet only to spark them anew. 'Twas a madness she could never have imagined before and she closed her eyes, dazed by the serums heating up in her body that made her want to writhe and squirm and cling to him. His warm lips began teasing her, beneath her ear and along her neck. Chills rushed from the spot, gathering below in a hot knot of sensation.

  His firm lips came to her bare breasts. The shock of it went through her like a lightning bolt and she tensed with the unexpectedness of this action. He laved the swell until he reached the tip, circling it with a building swirl of wetness. He drew softly, then more swiftly, before moving on to the next waiting orb. Shivers exploded in rushes between her legs and she gasped for air as though her lungs were starving. She instinctively arched her back and her breasts rose to fit tighter against his lips.

  A millennium had passed before he could think of anything but the ferocious need to bury his sex in this bewitching wild creature. His flesh trembled with the feel of her small body yielding, then tensing, then yielding again as he answered her cries and brought his mouth back to hers with a kiss that brushed his soul.

  He lifted her thin skirt. He twisted, then turned her undergarments until he finally ripped them from her. His hand fitted over her flat stomach, then lower…

  The hot, tight ball in her loins seemed to leap at his touch, and without realizing it, her thighs parted as his warm fingers slipped over her sex. Bursts of pleasure answered the stroke of his hand. She felt her sex swell until she became wild and supple beneath him. She could tell that he could not wait. His hands slid under her buttocks, lifting her. Tingling anticipation rose in quivers, falling, then rising again as his smooth sex slid over hers again. She didn't know she was moaning, until the sound abruptly stopped as she felt a stab of pain.

  He stopped instantly and closed his eyes as an unknown pleasure washed over him in hot waves. She was so small and hot and tight. "No, don't move," he said in answer to her fear, opening his eyes to peer into her closed ones. "Look at me, love." She did. "Look at the face of the man you will remember forever. Aye, forever, love. We are joined forever." His warm hand smoothed the hair from her forehead, his touch gentle, atoning. "I have not yet spoken your name, nor you, mine, and yet you will belong to me forever.”

  Those words echoed in her mind. Forever. She understood the magnitude of them only partially, though she knew it was as certain and unalterable as the sun rising tomorrow. For Mary had sent him. And for a long moment as he held still and unmoving inside her, their gazes locked with a mystical understanding that bound each to the other forever.

  Strange dreams visited her as she slept nestled against his huge, warm body on the forest floor. His male hips fitted tightly against her buttocks, his arm wrapped protectively around her form. She dreamt of those heated tremors, his lips on her neck, gently sucking teasing. His hand slipped along the dramatic curve of her waist, over her hips and back again before cupping her breasts. She sighed, languidly arching her back to push her breasts into his warm palm. Her nipples grew hard and tight as he gently massaged them, over and over before his hand slipped over her flat stomach to nestle between her legs.

  She came full awake. Her nerves went wild. Small pants and gasps escaped her lips as the hot, tight ball grew between her legs. Hotter as she felt the smooth stroke of his sex, the tingling warmth of his breath on her neck as he slipped inside of her. The erotic movement of their entwined bodies grew faster and faster until hot spasms of pleasure washed through her and she felt his huge body stiffen dramatically, and she was sinking, sinking into the darkness of sleep.

  At first she only dipped below the surface of sleep, skimming along there like a fish in shallow water. She dreamt of the stars above, edged by the uppermost spikes of trees and suspended within the reach of her hand. A breeze rustled through the nightscape, carrying a winged version of Mary smiling down at her sleeping form. Mary was trying to convey mat this man was not sent to her, but that she had been sent to him. She could not reason why this mattered, but then nothing mattered, not heaven nor earth as she swam down deeper and deeper, nuzzling her nose to the sweet-scented earth and into the unending waters.

  Lips brushed hers. Heated whispers rose in the night. "The night has bound us forever. Just as you shall never forget me, I fear that I, too, shall never forget you." More whispered words, a warm caress. She nuzzled closer to the earth as the warmth left her, "Good-bye, my sweet virgin witch."

  A woman dressed in black appeared before her then. Linness stared in surprise. The woman sat stiffly on a wooden chair surrounded by darkness. Her small, olive-colored hands sat on her lap, and that was all Linness could see of her. She wore a black dress. Black Italian lace covered her dark hair A veil covered her face.

  Time seemed to stop as Linness stared at the mysterious creature dressed in black. She knew without understanding that this mysterious woman was the most important person in her life. She did not know how or why. She struggled to make sense of the strange vision, but it was fading. Gray edged the perimeters of her vision until it strained the center. Then she was gone...

  The sun rose and she turned in protest, but the warm pulse of its heat finally roused her from the peaceful slumber. She opened her eyes, staring up into a piece of the blue sky above the treetops. Hunger gnawed at her and yet she felt so warm and blissful, as if she had slept a fortnight.

  Dreamily she sat up and looked around her unfamiliar surroundings. The previous day's events came to her in a rush. Her gray eyes flew about the quiet forest floor. He was gone as if he never existed.

  As they had lain in each other's arms after the first time he washed her soul with that dark and deep and sweet pleasure, she had asked, "Tell me your name?"

  “Paxton. . ."

  Paxton. Paxton. Paxton. She sang his name like a spell or incantation—the man who had taught her love on one magical night, who had washed her body in pleasure and carried her soaring through the heavens. Paxton…

  Gone as if he never was, like a cherished memory or a vivid dream, he would live only in her heart and mind now. She tried to tell herself it was enough, one night was enough, but she understood the one night would cost a lifetime of longing. A lifetime…

  She rose shakily to her feet and she saw her tunic laid across a stone. She moved to it, her silver eyes darting around the forest as if he might reemerge. She bent down and retrieved it, lifting it over her head and straightening it to cover her nakedness. She spent several anxious minutes righting the ripped strap before she saw it.

  It was carved on the tree trunk behind the place where she had slept. She slowly approached the spot. A trembling hand reached to follow the lines he had carved.

  A single star placed over a heart

  Star-crossed lovers, never to see each other again and yet never to be forgotten. As long as she lived, his would be the face she saw each night as she lav down to sleep, and the face swimming through consciousness in the mystical hours of morning that were neither sleep nor wakefulness.

  A small notch had been carved in the tree. A gold necklace hung from it. She slowly picked it up. On the chain hung a ring. A bright emerald stone surrounded by diamonds on a thick gold band. She stared at the gift, more precious than the king's treasure box. It was all she had left of him, all she would ever have of him. The father of her child.