Gwenhwyfar_ The White Spirit - Mercedes Lackey [154]
Something that she had never, ever expected to see, flared in his face. “Then the gods be thanked!” he cried, and clasped his hands about her face, and kissed her.
A fire leaped up between them, a fire that began at their lips and swiftly raced to her groin. She moaned and opened her mouth to his even as her own hands drew him to her. His mouth was that of a starving man, it devoured her, as hers devoured his. A hunger she had not known was inside her obliterated all other thoughts except of him. Her hands, with a life of their own, unbuckled his armor; he cast it aside. His hands caressed her breasts, thumbs rubbing her sensitive nipples through the thick cloth, and the fire leaped from her groin to her breasts. She moaned into his mouth and pushed him away just long enough to pull the remains of the gown over her head, discarding it into the darkness. His shirt followed it, and they fell back together onto the canvas pallet, touching, tasting, hands and mouths exploring one another.
His fingers traced the line of her side, and she ached, arching her back as his lips and tongue played with her nipples. Impatient, more than impatient, she pulled down his breeches; hers were already around her knees, and she kicked them off. She parted her legs for him, and he knelt between them, staring down at her, his face alight, his eyes shining.
“I love you, Gwenhwyfar,” was all he said. Then he was on her, inside her, and the two of them moved to a rhythm all their own, until the fire became a conflagration, and devoured them both.
With their discarded clothing for a pillow, they lay in each other’s arms and fed each other bits of hare—which, by some miracle, had not been burned to blackness in the bottom of the pot. She listened to his heart pound and traced her fingers over his chin. He held her as if he would never let her go.
“I think I began to love you when you spoke to me after the battle in the winter,” he said, quietly. “But I thought—I thought you were spoken for, maybe. And if you were not, well, you were a warrior, your father’s eyes and soon to be his right hand. You were the White Phantom, the legend the Saxons had learned to fear. What could I offer you? I have no land, let alone a kingdom. I have only my status as a Companion. Not even my horse is my own.”
Cataruna’s husband came to us with less, she wanted to say, but how could she? That was the past, and words would not change it. “So I put you from my mind, and when I thought of you, I told myself to think of you as another warrior. And so I did. Until I saw you as Arthur’s bride, so beautiful, so regal, and—” His voice choked a little. “—and I knew what a fool I had been, and you were going to Arthur, and if you did not love him then, you would love him soon.”
As you love him? She did not say that either. “He did not want another wife, much less one with my name,” she said quietly. “And he especially does not want one like me. He kept me as much a captive as Medraut, even if that captivity was in a cage of gold rather than stone.”
There was more, much, much more, that she wanted to say. But these were not things that you said to a lover. When we lay together, the only thing that kept it from being rape was my consent. And I cannot, and never will, welcome him into my bed. He may come there, but I cannot welcome him, for it is not me he wants—any empty vessel would do.
Or he thought I was breeding. He stayed only long enough to put a child in me and then could not leave me fast enough.
“I love you,” she said, knowing it to