Her hand lightly stroking his furrowed brow drew him out of his dark ruminations. “You mustn’t be sad,” she gently scolded.
He expelled a long, troubled sigh, and rested his forehead against hers. “But what are we—”
“Shh.” She caressed his hair, his neck and shoulders. “We’re going to love each other. For as long as it lasts.”
“But I want it to last forever.”
“So do I. I wish it could.” She did, desperately. But the unalterable truth was that it couldn’t. It was a painful truth, unbearably painful, and one that she couldn’t bear to contemplate right now, with his arms around her, his body inside hers. “Promise me,” she said, “that you won’t think of these things while we’re together. We only have until the
end of the summer, when the chancellorship is decided. Let’s spend that time making each other happy.” Smiling, she wrapped her legs around his waist. “Let’s spend it making love.”
He smiled, too. “Vixen. You’ve always been adept at changing the subject.” Slipping an arm beneath her, he scooped her up—still intimately connected to him, with her legs encircling him—and sat back on his heels. She laughed delightedly, never having conceived that a man and a woman could be joined in such a position.
Gripping her hips, he drove into her, quick and fierce. “I want to feel you come again,” he whispered gruffly. His erection had waned, of course, but he was still mostly hard, and the friction of his thrusts against her slippery-wet sex was incredibly stimulating. Closing her eyes, she held on to his shoulders and arched her back, matching his vigorous strokes with her own.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he rasped. “So beautiful.”
They connected with increasing urgency, the bed ropes creaking in time to their ragged gasps. He moaned, and she realized he’d grown fully erect again. His shoulders felt slippery beneath her hands, like rain-slicked rocks. Opening her eyes, she saw that he was wet with perspiration. So was she; he could barely keep a grip on her hips. He had his head thrown back, his expression one of excruciating pleasure, the cords on his neck standing out in sharp relief.
“Oh... oh, God...” With a guttural growl, he shuddered, his fingers digging into her hips. He rammed her down hard on his pulsing organ. She felt the hot jetting of his seed inside her, and then her own climax was upon her, exploding from their joined flesh and rolling throughout her, shaking her senseless.
Oh, yes
, she thought as the tremors diminished and he eased her down to lie next to him, their bodies, breathless and soaking wet, still joined, his arms gathering her to him, his kisses all over her face hot and sweet and a little rough, a little unbearably, heartbreakingly scratchy...
I want him to stay inside me forever. Forever and ever...
* * *
Rainulf awoke, blinking at the brilliant sunrise that glowed through the closed, saffron bed curtains. After being awake most of the night, he wanted nothing more than to roll over and go back to sleep, but it was far too bright.
He turned his head and smiled. Corliss lay on her back beneath the sheet, her face and arms golden in the diffuse yellow light. Like a child, she slept in awkward elegance, one arm thrown over her head, her legs at impossible angles. Her breathing was slow and steady, lips slightly parted, showing the edges of her perfect teeth. Across her forehead lay a wriggly lock of hair, enhancing the image of sensual dishevelment. She smelled warm and sleepy and deliciously sexual.
Last night had been a feast of passion after eleven years of famine. Rainulf had been as indefatigable as a randy youth, eager to do everything he’d denied himself for so long. He’d taken her from behind; he’d taken her against the wall. The variety of positions had amazed Corliss, but she’d been eager to learn, eager to please. She
had
pleased him, profoundly. There was no pretense about her, no pointless effort to act the blushing lady even in the throes of passion, as had been the case with too many of his youthful conquests. He’d come to think of them as willing vessels, whereas Corliss was much more an eager participant—wonderfully uninhibited, not bothering to temper her reactions or stifle her cries of pleasure.
The only thing he’d done last night that had shocked her—truly shocked her—was when he lowered his mouth to the damp, intoxicating nest of curls between her thighs. Speechless at first, she shoved him away. He went slowly then, persuading her with gentle entreaties and the skillful coaxing of his lips and tongue (funny the things one never forgets how to do!) into giving this strange new pleasure a chance. Gradually her murmurs of distaste were replaced by sighs of gratification; her resistance mellowed, her legs opened, her fingers clutched his hair... Her ecstasy became his ecstasy, his satisfaction. Afterward, she turned the tables on him, stunning him by pleasuring him with her mouth as he had pleasured her. He’d roused to her for the fifth time, but finished inside her, making slow, dreamy love, as if they had all the time in the world, as if they truly could be united in sensual bliss forever.
Remembering last night made the blood rush fast and hot to his groin. Reaching beneath the sheet, he touched his distended flesh gingerly. After last night’s excesses, it felt as raw as if it had been sanded, yet still it throbbed with the need to reclaim its territory, to penetrate, to possess.
Reclining next to the sleeping Corliss, he reached out and gradually lowered his hand over the sheet covering her chest. He barely grazed the finely woven linen, which tickled his palm and fingertips. Slowly—so slowly—he smoothed his hand over the subtle rise of one breast and then the other, feeling their warmth and softness through the sheet. It was strangely mesmerizing to touch her this way, while she slept unaware. As he softly stroked her, her nipples began to stiffen.
He trailed his hand down over the gentle slope of her belly, feeling the drum-tight flesh and the tiny, oddly seductive indentation of her navel. From there, he let his hand drift down between her parted legs, caressing her with aching gentleness until she grew hot and damp through the thin sheet. His touch was airy as a feather, and she slept through this as well, although her breathing quickened.
She moved slightly, snuggling into the feather mattress and arching her hips, just once. With careful movements he rolled on top of her, entering her in one long, smooth stroke. Her only acknowledgment of this was a contented exhalation. She was still asleep! Holding himself stiff-armed above her, he thrust very slowly, too sore in any case to do otherwise.
Her eyelids fluttered. “Rainulf...” He liked the way she said his name, all sleepy-gruff, like the growl of a kitten. Her eyes crinkled with pleasure when she realized he was inside her. She bent her knees and raised her hips, meeting his languid strokes.
He touched her where they were joined, and she writhed, transported. “Yes...” she breathed. “Yes... yes...”
He teased her sensitive flesh, backing off occasionally to add an element of frustration to her escalating arousal, wanting to drive her half-mad with desire before granting her release. It worked; she thrashed beneath him, fairly whimpering with her need.
A door opened. Footsteps thudded on the stairs.
They froze.
“Luella!” Corliss whispered.
Rainulf groaned deep in his throat. God, he was on the verge of climax! So was Corliss. He tried to lie still, but his body betrayed him, the muscles of his buttocks tensing and releasing and tensing again.
“Father Rainulf!” the housekeeper hollered from the main hall. “Are you home, Father?”
He couldn’t stop, not now. Cupping Corliss’s small bottom, he thrust again, and again—slowly, so as not to make the bed ropes complain—as he forced his groans back down into his chest. The woman in his arms trembled violently. She stilled, her body taut and shivering, her nails sinking into his back.
“Corliss?” Luella called. Rainulf heard the leather curtain being swept aside, heard the old woman’s heavy footsteps as she entered the chamber. She was in the room with them, separated only by the bed curtains!
Corliss opened her mouth in a wordless scream. She felt her internal contractions squeeze him, and then his own body convulsed suddenly, fiercely, discharging a torrent of seed deep into her heat.
As his orgasm waned, he slumped down, taking his weight on his elbows, and drew in a long, calming breath. Shuddering, they held each other as Luella slowly shuffled out of the chamber and reclosed the curtain.
“Do you think she heard us?” Corliss whispered.
“I don’t know.”
She frowned.
He recalled what she’d told him last night, about leaving here if anyone else discovered her true sex, and quickly amended his answer: “Nay. She didn’t hear. These curtains are heavy.”
Corliss glanced at the curtains, as if to verify that assessment. He held his breath until she nodded, her lower lip between her teeth.
Luella’s footsteps slowly descended the stairs. The door opened and closed. Her voice rose from the street as she greeted a neighbor, telling him she was going marketing.
Rainulf drew himself slowly out of Corliss, and she flinched. “You’re sore, too,” he said, sitting up.
She sat facing him. “A little. ‘Twas worth it.” She smiled, but her eyes were sad.
He lightly stroked her face with his fingertips. “What is it?”
“I should leave now, you know. I should move out of here and get my own—”
“Nay! Luella doesn’t know, she doesn’t! And if we’re discreet, she needn’t—”
“I know that.”
“Then why leave? You said you’d stay until people started suspecting—”
“That was before. Before we...” She looked around at the mammoth bed, with its rumpled sheets and scattered pillows. “Before this.” She shook her head miserably. “It was dangerous enough before, but now...”
“How can you speak of the danger to me, when Pigot is still lurking out there, searching for you? You need my protection.”
“My male disguise is my protection.”
“You still believe that after last night?” He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. “You have a bad habit of believing what you want to believe, Corliss. You’re in grave danger. You must stay here until I can find safe accommodations for you elsewhere.” He took her face in his hands and forced her to look at him. “You said we had until the end of the summer. I’m holding you to that. I’ll be damned if I’ll give you up yet.”
He started to say more, but she cut him off. “I’ll stay until you’re formally appointed chancellor, as long as no one finds out about me before then. But after that, I—” Her voice quavered. “I’ll have to cut myself off from you entirely. No horrid little secret meetings—I’d hate that, and there’d be the risk of discovery. A clean break. It’s the only way.”
He squeezed his eyes closed against the grim immutability of her words. Drawing her into his arms, he rasped, “We aren’t supposed to be talking about this, remember? We’re just going to love each other. That’s all. No talking.”
* * *
An hour later, as Corliss sat down to share a breakfast of bread and watered ale with Rainulf, there came a furious pounding on the door. She flinched.
What now?
“Master Fairfax! Master Fairfax! Come quickly!”
“That’s Thomas.” Rainulf sprinted down the stairs, and Corliss followed, her heart rattling in her chest. Downstairs they found Thomas and Brad, breathless and overwrought.
“It’s Victor!”
“The townsmen came and dragged him out of bed! They’ve beaten him half to death!”
“Damn.”
Corliss ran as fast as she could to keep up with Rainulf and the two scholars as they raced down St. John Street and up Grope Lane. A group of townsmen, their voices raised in fury, stood in a loose circle around something on the ground. Corliss smelled death.
“What goes here?” Rainulf demanded loudly.
The circle parted, revealing, beneath a swarm of flies, Burnell’s rank, gray-faced corpse supine in a pool of dried blood. Two men held Victor by the arms—held him up, for he was bloodied and battered, and doubtless couldn’t have stood on his own. Corliss recognized him only from his long, dark hair and the green tunic beneath his torn cappa, which she knew to be his. His striking features were obscured by cuts and bruises. Around his neck he wore a noose at the end of a rope, which a third man held wound around his fist.
To Corliss’s amazement, Victor half bowed when he saw Rainulf, and even managed a grim smile. “Good morning, Magister. Care to get in a few licks before they stretch my neck?”
One of the men holding him rammed a fist into his lower back. He doubled over, grunting.
Rainulf shouldered the men aside and stepped into the circle. “Where’s the sheriff?”
The man holding the rope—massive, red faced, and slightly familiar looking—jabbed a finger toward Rainulf, growling in Anglicized French, “Piss on the sheriff! Piss on Victor of Aeskirche! And piss on you! Piss on all of you!” He screamed at the handful of black-robed scholars gathering at a distance, who responded with obscene gestures and a few choice epithets.
Rainulf nodded toward the noose around Victor’s neck. “You’re going to hang him just like that?”
The man with the rope pointed to the corpse. Corliss felt a tickle of wrongness in the back of her mind. Something was different about Burnell—out of place—although she couldn’t put her finger on it. “He killed my brother—
just like that!
” the big man spat out.