Teresa Medeiros (22 page)

She had not forgotten that she was in the thirteenth century and wearing no underwear. A less honorable man in this century or any other would have shoved up her gown and dragged her astride him then and there. There were no witnesses and he had only to burn the evidence of his hypocrisy.

But Colin was, above all else, an honorable man.

Tabitha sagged against the stake as he stumbled away from her, his golden eyes reflecting the fierce war being waged within him. “Truly, my lady, you have bewitched me! Damn you!”

Tabitha might have laughed if his expression hadn’t been so desperate. He hadn’t even looked at the Big Macs with such unabashed yearning. “According to you, I’m already damned, aren’t I? But that doesn’t stop you from wanting me, does it?”

“And why should it? You’ve used your dark arts to enchant me from the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

She had to laugh at this absurd accusation. “Which of my charms couldn’t you resist, Colin? Was it the way my flannel pajamas bunched between my thighs when I walked or the fact that my breath smelled like spearmint toothpaste?”

“ ’Twas the way the sunlight shimmered in your hair, the way you smelled so fresh and clean—like soap and woman mingled into some intoxicating perfume no mortal man could resist.”

Tabitha thought the blush she felt crawling up her body might ignite the kindling and incinerate her. Colin stood like a sorcerer in the moonlight, weaving his own incantation. She was mesmerized nearly as much by the movement of his lips as his husky words.

“ ’Twas the way you smiled so boldly to hide your fear of me, the grace with which you shoved my sword away from your heart, though your hand trembled with terror. ’Twas your foolhardy courage when you defied Brisbane on my behalf without a care for your own life.”

“I thought you hated me for that,” she whispered.

“I did. Nearly as much as I wanted you.”

Tabitha Lennox, who had always thought of herself as plain and clumsy and cowardly, was horrified to feel a tear tumble from her lashes. Colin’s blunt confession had robbed her of her sarcasm—the only weapon she had left in her pitiful arsenal. She began to struggle against the ropes in earnest, desperate to swipe away the tear before he saw it. But another followed it, then another, until they were trickling down her cheeks in a steady stream. She hung her head and sniffled in shame.

Colin tipped her chin up and peered into her face.
“What manner of trickery is this? ’Tis common knowledge witches cannot weep.”

Tabitha gave him a watery glare, but her voice still broke on a strangled sob. “They can if you’re breaking their heart.”

Both bewildered and beguiled, he touched her cheek with shattering gentleness, smearing a salty teardrop with his thumb before bringing it to his lips. As he tasted her tears, an expression of helpless wonder surged across his face.

“Oh, Tabitha,” he whispered. “My brave, sweet, beautiful witch …”

His kiss was different from any that had come before it. Losing none of its eloquence, his tongue swirled over her lips, begging her pardon, coaxing her to part them and let him taste the balm of her forgiveness. When she did, he deepened his kiss, drawing her lower lip into his mouth and tenderly suckling.

All the while he was kissing her, his hands were working at the knots of her bonds until all she had to do when they fell away was melt into his arms.

CHAPTER
18

C
olin scooped her up as if she weighed no more than Jenny and carried her toward the cottage.

Tabitha buried her tear-streaked face against his throat, inhaling the leathery spice of his skin. He kicked the cottage door open and laid her down on the threadbare mattress as if it were a bed of roses. She supposed it should have bothered her that Colin and Regan had once shared that same mattress, but the present was too precious to allow it to be overshadowed by the past or the future.

As he stood over her, unbuckling his belt of braided silver, his eyes smoldered with a hunger that took her breath away. “There’s no help for it, my lady. If you’re to burn, then we shall burn together.”

He drew his tunic over his head, rumpling his dark hair. The sight of his bare chest made Tabitha’s mouth go dry with want. He’d been a stranger to her less than a week ago, but now she ached to know his body the same way she knew her own. Every crisp, curling hair, every pale scar, every delectable inch of it.

Embracing the role of wanton enchantress, she seized his hand and pulled him down on top of her. He succumbed to her bidding without a struggle, sinking into a
wet, openmouthed kiss that should have qualified as a sex act all by itself. Then, as if to atone for that bit of naughtiness, he tenderly sipped the last traces of tears from her cheeks. As his lips nuzzled her cheeks, her eyelids, the sensitive cleft above her upper lip, Tabitha sighed, adrift on a sea of bliss.

When her eyes fluttered open, Colin was gazing down at her, his face somber in the moonlight streaming through the open door. “Would you lay with me, my lady?”

She had expected a mandate, not an invitation. The humble entreaty of this powerful man touched a chord deep in her soul. Threading her fingers through his hair, she whispered, “I would be honored, sir.”

She expected him to kiss her again, but he surprised her by drawing her up and gently wrestling Magwyn’s gown over her head. Before Tabitha could prepare herself for the shock, she was in his arms wearing nothing but the amulet. Her palms darted from her breasts to the toffee-colored curls at the juncture of her thighs, then back again. Knowing she must look utterly ridiculous, she finally contented herself with fluffing up her hair.

Colin studied her with blatant fascination before offering her a crooked grin that made her heart thud dully in her ears. “I’ve never seen a woman blush all over. ’Tis a most enchanting trait.”

“Why, thank you,” she replied breathlessly.

He drew her close for a kiss, but she pushed at his muscled shoulders. “Not so fast. I’m afraid my advanced state of nudity puts me at a distinct disadvantage.”

He arched one eyebrow at her. “And what would you suggest we do about that?”

She gave his hose a nervous nod, utterly captivated by
this wickedly playful Colin. “You might dispose of those.”

“Very well, my lady. Your wish is my com—”

Tabitha clapped a hand over his mouth, shaking her head in warning. He simply kissed her palm and nodded, reassuring her that the time to discuss that particular quandary would come later. Much later.

As Colin drew off his boots, then untied the points of his hose and peeled them off, Tabitha’s facade of sophistication shattered. Her first instinct was to recoil and protest that he was crazy if he thought he was going to put that thing anywhere in her. But her bout of maidenly horror was overwhelmed by a compulsion to touch him, to run her trembling fingertips along the velvety shaft springing so boldly from its nest of dark curls. So she did. And although she would have sworn it was impossible, she felt him lengthen and thicken even more beneath her touch.

With a heartrending groan, he tore himself away from her. He sat on the edge of the mattress and buried his head in his hands, breathing as if he’d been wrestling a dragon.

Tabitha gazed helplessly at the moon-gilded curve of his back, fighting the urge to weep with frustration. Had she, in her ignorance, done something unacceptable? Had she feinted left when she should have dodged right?

Practically forgetting that she was naked, she crept up beside him and gently touched his shoulder. “Was it something I said?”

He lifted his head, his expression haunted enough to frighten her anew. “Tis not you, Tabitha. ’Tis me.”

Without even thinking about it, Tabitha blurted out the worst fear of any single woman living alone in New York City. “Oh, God, you’re not gay, are you?”

He slanted her a strange look. “No, I’m rather morose at the moment.”

Tabitha might have laughed with relief if his expression hadn’t been so glum. She waited for him to elaborate.

“If I had been able to resist Regan when she offered herself to me, she might not have died. ’Twas my own voracious carnal appetites that cost an innocent girl her life.”

A shiver of mingled apprehension and delight danced down Tabitha’s spine. Would she be woman enough to satisfy those appetites?

“Despite those appetites”—he shook his head as if to clear it—“no,
because
of them, I swore an oath of celibacy before I took up the cross. I vowed to keep myself chaste as long as I was marching beneath the banner of the Lord. So while others sought out whores to relieve their baser needs, I was on my knees. Praying for fortitude,” he added wryly.

She frowned, touched and confused by his confession. “I don’t understand. If you’ve been celibate for the last six years, what were you doing in all those Egyptian brothels?”

He rolled his eyes heavenward. “Waiting for Arjon.”

Tabitha didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She couldn’t help but appreciate the irony of a virgin trying to seduce a celibate.

She patted his shoulder. “Don’t be afraid. It’s probably just like riding a”—she rejected “bicycle” and “camel,” then fumbled for a more appropriate reference—“horse. It’ll all come back to you once you begin.”

His eyes sparkled with amusement as he cupped her cheek in his hand. “I haven’t forgotten what to do, my
lady. ’Tis simply that I want you so desperately I fear ’twill be over before it’s begun.”

Tabitha sighed, her heart melting along with various other nether regions of her body. “Oh, Colin. I don’t mind a little urgency. There’ll be plenty of time for the rest later.”

But would there be? She tried to ignore a pang of doubt. If the amulet had taught her anything, it was just how capricious time could be.

Determined to set both her mind and his own at ease, she smiled brightly. “Let’s just get on with it, shall we?”

She lay back on the mattress and squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself for the medieval version of “wham-bam-thank-you-wench.”

“What in the holy name of St. Andrew are you doing?”

She opened one eye to find Colin scowling down at her. “Waiting for you to make love to me.”

“You look more like you’re waiting for the blacksmith to pull a tooth.”

Sighing, she opened both eyes. Shouldn’t he look more pleased that she’d decided to suffer his lusty mauling with such good grace? “I haven’t forgotten that you’re a semibarbarian, you know. You’ve never had the chance to read
Cosmo
so it wouldn’t be fair of me to expect you to label all my erogenous zones or know precisely which button to push to drive me wild with desire.”

She’d never seen that one expressive eyebrow of his shoot quite so high. “No, I don’t suppose it would.” He leaned over her, the thoughtful gleam in his eyes making her quiver with alarm. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you should just close your eyes and suffer my brutish attentions without complaint.”

Tabitha obeyed, if somewhat suspiciously.

“And don’t open them,” he whispered, brushing his warm lips down the side of her throat. “No matter what I do to you.”

His husky voice ignited a dark shiver of anticipation. As he nuzzled the sensitive hollow at the base of her throat, a dreamy languor melted through her limbs.

“The women at the brothel always considered my celibacy something of a challenge,” he murmured between slow, luscious tastes of her skin. “While Arjon was upstairs taking his pleasure, they would wager among themselves who would be the first to coax me into breaking my vow. They amused each other by gathering around me and describing in delicious detail all the sinfully wicked things they yearned to do to me and those they wanted me to do to them.”

“Oh,” Tabitha breathed as his mouth wandered lower, grazing the swell of each breast with exquisite tenderness.

“I’ve never seen this
Cosmo
of yours, but they did show me ancient illustrated manuscripts that depicted acts of love certain to test both the agility and the imagination of the lovers. I found them to be very instructive.”

“Oh!” This time her voice came out somewhere between a squeak and a sob. The sob deepened to a moan as he lapped at one distended nipple, his tongue rough as a cat’s, yet smooth as silk. Her illusions that foreplay had been invented in the twenty-first century crumbled like sugar candy beneath his erotic kiss.

As he drew her nipple into his mouth and suckled her, stirring a kindred tug deep within her womb, she tangled her hands in his hair. “Oh, Colin, I thought you couldn’t wait.”

He dipped his tongue into her navel, eliciting an even more primal shiver. “Ah, but those cunning women also
taught me ’twas possible for a man to delay his own pleasure in order to prolong his lady’s.”

“But you’ve already delayed yours for six years and if you prolong mine anymore, I think I’m going to die,” she wailed.

“Then you shall suffer the sweetest death a woman can know.”

Her eyes flew open, but he warned, “No peeking. Barbarians haven’t any patience for peeking.”

Even with her eyes closed, Tabitha could feel his gaze burn her naked skin, more tangible than a touch. Or at least she thought so until his fingers grazed the soft curls between her legs. Whimpering in latent shyness, she turned her face toward the mattress while Colin petted and stroked her. When she was nearly purring with pleasure, his fingers delved deeper, breaching her damp curls.