Saving his place with a piece of straw—a habit acquired during his university days—he donned a shirt over his chausses and opened the door.
He forgot to breathe when he saw her standing there in a silken shift and wrapper, her sleep-tousled hair curling around her face—the very picture of seductive innocence. She had her lower lip caught between those perfect white teeth; when she released it, the lip was reddened and swollen. He did breathe then, a sharp inhalation that filled his senses with that exotic, maddening perfume of hers.
A jolt of sexual longing shook him, and he turned away abruptly, wondering what she was doing here in his chamber in the middle of the night. To cover his awkwardness, he sat back down and picked up his book. “Couldn’t you sleep?” he said, his voice rougher than he would have liked.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you about.”
He hesitated, uncomfortably aware of her breasts and hips beneath the thin silk.
She took a step back. “I suppose this isn’t a good—”
“Nay. Come in.” He laid the book aside. “Have a seat.”
He followed her gaze as she looked around the chamber, realizing belatedly that his bed was the only place left to sit, since he’d taken the one chair. “You can sit here,” he offered, rising.
“That’s all right.” She drew aside the curtain and sat on the edge of the big bed. “I’m comfortable here.”
He had often—too often—envisioned her on his bed in her nightclothes... or less. During the past fortnight he had struggled to keep from entertaining such thoughts, immersing himself in monastic life and exhausting himself with endless nights of reading while the rest of the household lay sleeping. He’d been successful, for the most part—at least during his waking hours. At night, she still came to him in his dreams... dreams in which they surrendered to each other, heart and soul and flesh... dreams from which he awoke shaking and sweating and moaning her name.
It was getting harder and harder to keep his desire for her in perspective. When she’d first come to Oxford, it had been easier; he’d been long used to self-denial.
You were proud of it, you sanctimonious bastard. Proud and complacent and self-righteous. Better than everyone else because you could resist the human needs that held them captive.
When had it started to change?
When
you
started to change... When Corliss changed you. When she made you smile. When she made you want. When she made you care.
Whatever it was she’d wanted to ask him was evidently difficult for her. She fingered her wrapper nervously as though working up her courage. In the uneasy silence, he found himself reflecting, as he often did lately, on how much simpler his life would be if he’d never met her. As it was, all he wanted anymore was to be with her. To talk to her. To touch her. God help him, to make love to her. The need for restraint, although he hated it more than ever, hadn’t changed; he still wanted the chancellorship, didn’t he? But the effort it took to exercise that restraint had increased a hundredfold.
He watched her run her hand over the quilt. She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment and then looked at the carpeted floor. “What I wanted to ask you is a little embarrassing.”
“You needn’t be embarrassed with me.”
She took a deep breath. “It has to do with the story Thorne told when we first arrived. The story about the Rhineland widow. What was her name...?”
“Sigfreda.” He wasn’t sure he liked where this might lead.
“That’s right. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and there’s a part of it that I just don’t understand. The part where she... screamed.”
No, he was definitely sure he didn’t like where this was going. “What don’t you understand about it?” he asked carefully.
She met his gaze for a moment and then looked away again. “Why she did it. Why she screamed.”
“You don’t know?” She shook her head. He wished he had a brandy. “‘Twas exactly as Thorne said. She was... enjoying herself.”
Very much
.
“Enjoying herself.”
Rainulf nodded.
“I still don’t understand.”
Oh, for pity’s sake
. “Climaxing,” he said shortly.
Her eyes grew wide as wagon wheels, then narrowed. “Women don’t...” Her expression became indignant. “You’re teasing me. I trusted you to tell me the truth.”
“
Teasing
you! Have you never—” He bit back the question, since it was evident that she never had. “Don’t you know that women can... achieve that kind of pleasure, too?”
She cast him a skeptical look. “Nay. I’ve never heard of such a thing. And I’ve certainly never...” A hot blush spread upward along her throat, staining her face pink.
This revelation surprised Rainulf. After all, she was so earthy, so comfortable with herself. And she was hardly inexperienced. She’d been married at sixteen.
To an old man
, he reminded himself. The mistress to another old man. Men who clearly had never bothered to satisfy her. What fools they had been, to have such a woman in their beds—so young and beautiful and passionate—and use her so uncaringly. How often had he imagined Corliss writhing in ecstasy beneath him, crying out as she dug her fingers into his back... He adjusted his long shirt to hide his sudden, fierce erection.
Her eyes searched his. “You’re telling me the truth, aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
“What does it feel like?”
He licked his dry lips. “Corliss, I’m sorry. I can’t discuss this with you.
“But—”
“Ask Martine about it. She’s a woman. And you two seem to get along so well.”
“Aye, but I’ve only known her a short time, and... I’ve always been able to ask you everything.”
“Ask Martine,” he repeated.
“I’m asking you. Tell me what it feels like. I just want to know. I feel so ignorant, so foolish, not having even known such a thing was possible.”
“Corliss... Nay. I can’t. Besides, I really don’t think it can be described. Perhaps someday you’ll remarry and have a husband who cares enough to show you—”
“I’ll never remarry! I’ll never know what other women know, I’ll never feel what they feel.” Her voice quavered; her eyes glistened.
“God, Corliss, don’t cry...”
“I never cry!” She raised her chin defiantly. That was true, Rainulf realized. Although generally free with her emotions, he’d never seen her shed a tear—evidently a point of pride with her. “And I certainly wouldn’t cry over this. I just want to know what it’s like for other women, women who live normal lives and have husbands who love them. I just want you to tell me what it is they feel—”
“I don’t know what it feels like for a woman.”
“What does it feel like for a man?”
“I told you. It can’t be described. I can’t help you.”
She studied him in silence for a moment. “I think you can,” she said quietly. “You just won’t. You’re afraid.”
He bolted up out of his seat and strode to her chamber door. “I can’t and I won’t.” He held the door open. “I think you should go back to bed, Corliss.”
She stood, but made no move to leave. “Are you—” she took a deep breath. “Are you sorry you have to put up with my ceaseless questions and my...” She met his gaze squarely. “Do you wish I’d never come to Oxford?”
He looked away, rubbing his eyes, trying to obliterate a torrent of images—her breasts through sheer linen, her hips encased in snug chausses, a thin ribbon of steaming flesh viewed through a doorway. They were images that tormented him, stirring up unwanted feelings, complicating his well-ordered life.
Did he wish she’d never come to Oxford? “Sometimes, yes. Frequently.”
He heard her rapid footsteps, felt the door yanked out of his hand, flinched at the reverberation as she slammed it closed. He opened his eyes on the empty chamber, feeling a sudden, ungovernable sense of loss.
Without thinking, he wheeled on the door and slammed his fist into it, hard. Pain sucked the breath from his lungs. “
Damn!
”
Lurching to the washstand, he plunged his hand into the ewer, letting the cold water numb it. “Damn.” He closed his eyes and filled his lungs with air, letting it out slowly. Then again, and again.
He remembered the things she’d done and said in the stairwell after Wulfric’s birth, recalled the cool pressure of her palm against his cheek, and her artless wisdom:
Just be in your skin... feel what you feel... Don’t fight it.
Withdrawing his hand from the water, he dried it off, then flexed his fingers thoughtfully.
He returned to the door and hesitated, questioning the wisdom of this.
You scrutinize everything... question everything. Just listen to your instinct.
His instinct told him to turn the handle of the door, and he did.
Corliss heard the door open and turned toward the sound. The bed curtains enclosed her. A brief shaft of lamplight glowed through the filmy linen, then winked out as the door closed, plunging the chamber once more into absolute darkness.
She held her breath, but heard nothing for several long moments. Presently there came a soft footfall, and another. She turned to face the wall, pulling the quilt up around her as he approached the bed.
Go away. Just go away
. If he spoke one more word to her, she feared she would burst into tears, and she didn’t want to cry. She hated to cry.
There came a whispery rustle as the curtains parted. For a breathless interval nothing happened, and then she felt the quilt shift behind her as he turned it down. She sensed his weight on the mattress, and thought insanely that he was going to get under the covers with her, but of course, he didn’t. He sat, then waited, as if letting her get used to his being there.
Presently she felt the first soft suggestion of his fingers on her hair. He tucked the unruly waves behind her exposed ear; then lightly touched her face, as if searching for something.
Tears
, she realized. He wanted to know whether she’d been crying, despite her proud insistence that she never did. She was glad she’d managed to keep the tears at bay.
His hand slipped under the quilt to caress her shoulder, and then her back, massaging her slowly through the sleek silk in an obvious effort to comfort her. It was comforting, she realized. His touch told her, more effectively than words, that nothing all that dreadful had happened between them, that he still cared for her, that he had always cared for her. What surprised her was that he chose this way to reveal his feelings, rather than the tiresome and endless
words
on which he relied overly much. Was it possible that he’d taken to heart her admonition to save his complicated analyses for the lecture hall?
He closed his hand over her shoulder and urged her onto her back. She looked up at him, but all she could make out was an indistinct form that might have been slightly darker than the blackness surrounding it. His hand glided lower beneath the quilt, along her bare arm, leaving a hot trail of sensation in its wake.
Her heart accelerated as his fingertips moved from her wrist to her hip. He paused, resting his hand on her thigh, its warmth nearly scorching her through the silken shift. His fingers tightened, gathering the silk and pulling it up. He slowly raised her shift until her legs were bare beneath the quilt.
She swallowed hard, but her voice emerged as an unsteady whisper. “Rainulf?”
“Shh.”
When she felt his light touch on her bare thigh, she bit her lip so hard it hurt. He smoothed his hand upward, over the ridge of hipbone and then, slowly, across her lower belly until it brushed the patch of hair there.
She clutched the linen sheeting, her heart hammering, her mind a storm of emotions. What was he doing, touching her like this? What was he—
He was
showing her
, she realized as he softly caressed her, his touch so feathery, so insubstantial, that she might have been imagining it. He was showing her that which she’d begged him to tell her about, but which he’d said could not be described.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God
. He burrowed a finger through the hair and gently stroked the tight cleft of her sex. No one had ever touched her there, and at first she was too astounded by the raw intimacy of it to feel much. At first. Gradually, as she relaxed, she found her senses focused exclusively on his mesmerizing touch and her body’s strange reaction to it.
His fingertip barely grazed her, yet suffused her with a thrilling heat, a delicious buzz of sensation. The feeling grew and grew as he stroked her, very slowly, very patiently. Presently he brought his other fingers into play, caressing her until her heart pounded painfully in her chest and her breathing accelerated.
She closed her eyes and pictured a tightly closed flower bud slowly swelling, opening...That’s what she felt like, that’s what his touch did to her. When he slipped a finger between the petals, she gasped at the sudden charge of pleasure. This soft, hidden part of her had become so sensitized that every delicate touch made her quiver.
He moved a finger lower, to the mouth of her sex, drawing its moisture up...