Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [69]
“Don’t move,” he said, and wrapped the wet cloth more securely around his finger and eased it again into her to see if he’d rent her. “No, keep still, don’t tighten your body so. Try to let yourself ease. I’ll be through soon.”
She was silent, stiff, and he knew he was hurting her, but he tried, by all the gods, he tried to be gentle. He wished his damned finger were smaller, but it wasn’t.
He eased his finger out of her, relieved that the flow of blood was nearly stopped, then rinsed out the cloth. He sat beside her on the bed, folded the cloth, then pressed it against her and held it there. He looked up at her face. She was pale, her eyes swollen from crying, her hair tangled about her face.
She’d wanted him; she’d offered herself to him.
And he’d done his best, surely he had, but still, he’d come into her before he’d brought her to a woman’s pleasure. He remembered her scream when he’d closed his mouth over her. By all the gods, to make a woman feel like this. He shuddered with the power that memory brought him. He said, “You will be all right. I do not think I would come inside you again this night. But again, Laren, perhaps tomorrow or the next day when you’re healed again.”
She opened her eyes, and looked at him, never once letting her eyes fall below his face.
He said again, “I’m sorry.”
“Why would you be sorry? I was the one who demanded that you do those things to me. You have been naught but honorable and kind to me. You did nothing that any other man does not do. It is my fault. I have nothing to cover me and I feel ashamed, for I am ugly and bony and I know it and I don’t wish to have you staring at me. Could you cover me, Merrik?”
He covered her and his hand as well, for he still kept the cloth pressed firmly against her.
“You’re not ugly,” he said. “Stop saying that you are.”
She smiled at him. She raised her hand to touch his face, then dropped it.
He wished she had touched him, was still touching him. “There,” he said, looking away, “the bleeding has stopped. Do you still hurt?”
She nodded, not looking at him.
“You will be fine tomorrow,” he said and rose. He stretched, then tossed the blood-dampened cloth into the soapstone bowl of water. When he came into the bed again, he said nothing more, merely drew her to him, and pressed her face down upon his shoulder. “No,” he said, “don’t move. I like you there.”
“I do too,” she said, unable at that moment not to speak the truth. His arm tightened around her back, then immediately loosened and she knew he was thinking about her back and the still tender welts. She wanted to tell him that she would rather have him hold her tightly, regardless of any pain, but she didn’t. She burrowed her face against his chest, drawing in the scent of him, feeling his hair against her cheek, her nose, wanting to taste him.
She knew in that moment that her life had changed irrevocably. To have him inside her body, to have him hold her against him, had changed everything. What she’d been destined for meant nothing now. Only he was important now.
And Taby. What of her little brother? She had to try to set things aright for him. She closed her eyes, willing blankness to come but she couldn’t close out the enormity of what lay just beyond the sleeping chamber. Her fingers clenched, and he grunted when she pulled the hair on his chest.
Forty silver pieces and two silver armlets. By all the gods, she’d much rather know that she could trust him. With her. With Taby.
The night was chill, the stars brilliant overhead. There was a half moon. Laren slowly turned back to the longhouse. She’d felt a very strong urge to simply walk through those palisade gates and keep walking, forever, for there were no solutions for her here, none.
She winced, remembering how Erik had stopped her early that afternoon, in plain sight of his wife and many of his men. He’d forced her face upward, cupping her chin in his palm, his touch hard, hurting her. He’d said, “Megot told me there was blood on the blanket in Merrik’s sleeping chamber. And blood