The Maiden Read online

  “As pretty as your Englishwomen?” she whispered, watching him. “As pretty as the woman you should have married?”

  He laughed deep in his throat. “There is no Englishwoman to compare with you.” He put her arm down in her lap and looked at her. “If you are to rub my shoulders, perhaps you should remove some of your own clothing.”

  Jura could feel the blood rushing to her face. She had undressed before him repeatedly, but somehow, now, in the soft candlelight, it seemed different. And, too, she knew that if she undressed now it would lead to another painful episode like the last time. But, somehow, she wasn’t afraid. There was just that feeling of excitement that she always felt before a battle.

  Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she slipped the outer layer of velvet over her head and she was left wearing only the very tight silk garment. Years of exercise had given her layers of muscle that molded her hips and made her waist tiny and her breasts high and proud.

  Rowan, looking up at her, gave a groan that was so heartfelt that Jura smiled. It was frivolous the way this Englishman valued physical beauty but it did feel good to have him look at her so. It was almost as if her skill with a lance didn’t matter.

  “Jura,” he whispered, and held out his arms to her.

  It was the most natural thing in the world for her to go to him. To deny him would have been to deny a drink to a man dying of thirst.

  He kissed her lips tenderly, not hard or fiercely, but as if he had all the time there was. He played with her lips and touched them with the tip of his tongue. By the time he finished, Jura’s body was so fluid he could have tied her in knots. She lounged against his arms, her entire weight supported by him, her eyes closed.

  Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked at him. His lids were lowered slightly and his lips were softened from their kiss. She had never seen a man look like this before and certainly not this Englishman who usually frowned in displeasure. But now there was desire in his eyes but gentleness too, and a kind of contentment, as if he wanted to be nowhere else on the earth but here with her. Jura’s heart began to beat a little faster. This Englishman said he loved her. Could that be true? Could this expression on his face be love?

  He caressed her face with his fingertips, then with his whole hand, his palm against her cheek, his fingers entwined in her hair, then kissed the corner of her mouth, then her eyelids. Jura lay still in his arms, accepting his gentle caresses, but her heart was beginning to beat faster with each second. Who would have thought that this big man who cursed and fought and raged could touch a woman so softly?

  He kissed her lips again but this time she kissed him back. She put her arms about his neck and pressed her silk-clad breasts tight against the warm, bare skin of his chest.

  “Jura, my love,” he whispered against her neck, his lips hot against her skin.

  Her pounding heart was beginning to rise in her chest, making its way toward her throat until she wondered if she might suffocate. His fingers touched the laces at the side of her gown, and as skillfully as he might play a stringed instrument, he untied the knots and loosened their hold.

  She gasped when his big, warm, callused hands slipped inside the silk and clutched her bare waist. He squeezed her as a playful boy would, and to Jura’s disbelief, she laughed in delight like one of the empty-headed girls who aspired to be a guardswoman—one of the girls who was always turned down. But Rowan wasn’t disgusted by Jura’s giggle as a Lanconian warrior most assuredly would be. Instead, he grinned, his blue eyes twinkling with merriment. “Jura ticklish?” he said. “The great warrior Jura ticklish?”

  She tried to get away from him, but she couldn’t move from his hands that held her so firmly about the waist. His fingers began to move, and try as she would, Jura could not control her laughter. She pushed at him but she may as well have tried to push an oak tree down. Torturously, his fingers began to move inside her dress and Jura kept laughing. Helplessly, she fell backward onto the carpet.

  When she heard the dress tear, she cried out in protest, but it didn’t sound like a serious protest and Rowan’s hands kept making her laugh.

  Suddenly, he stopped tickling her and looked down at her. Somehow, Jura was nude, or at least nearly so, for the gown was split from neck to knees. Her breasts, even as she lay on her back, stood up high in excitement and pleasure as Rowan, on his knees, straddled her thighs.

  His face changed from teasing to serious as he looked at her, his blue eyes almost black, a vein at his temple extended and pounding, the muscles of his chest rigid and pronounced. His nostrils flared slightly as he looked down at her. Then, smoothly, he picked her up into his arms, tearing the last of her dress and hose away, and carried her to the bed.

  Jura’s body felt alive as it never had before, but she was also a little afraid. “Your sister will not like her gown being torn,” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer as he put her on the bed, then stood over her and stared down at her body. His eyes traveled slowly from her bare toes, up her legs, to her breasts, and at last to her face. By the time he finished his long perusal of her, Jura’s heart was pounding in her ears.

  He sat beside her, his broad, gleaming, muscular back to her, and began to remove his clothing. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry, but more as if he had waited all his life for this moment and planned to enjoy it to its fullest.

  He turned back to her, his big body completely nude and stretched out beside her, his heavy, hairy legs against hers, his powerful arms around her, pulling her to him, stroking her back, his hands sliding down to her buttocks. “I mismanaged the first time, but I will do better this time,” he whispered before kissing her lips again.

  This kiss was different, not so gentle but with more yearning and longing in it—and more heat. Jura’s skin was so hot she felt as if she had a fever. She did not want him to leave her, but he did as his head began to move downward, down her neck, across her shoulders, down her arm, where he nipped inside her elbow, then he raked her palm across his teeth and Jura’s body contracted with pleasure. He brought his head to the center of her throat, his tongue licking at the hollow there. His hands caught both of hers and held them at her side, pinned to the bed as he began to make love to her breasts. Jura began to moan, her head turning from one side to the other. She could feel sweat forming on her body as she tried to release herself from some of the intolerable heat building in her body.

  His head moved downward, his wet tongue touching her stomach, running along the taut muscles, licking at her hipbones.

  He released his hold on her hands and slid his hands under her buttocks to lift her as his tongue slid into her womanhood. Jura gasped, her eyes flying open. “Rowan,” she moaned.

  “Yes, my love,” he said, and moved upward to her lips.

  Her legs opened to receive him and he slid inside her easily, with no pain, only the most divine pleasure. Jura arched her body, her head rolling back at the sheer ecstasy of this new sensation. Slowly, he pulled himself almost out of her, and Jura dug her fingers into the skin of his arms in fear that he might leave her, but he just slid back into her again in that exquisite, torturously slow way.

  She opened her eyes to look at him, and the expression on his face made her skin tighten. It was a look of such supreme, all-consuming pleasure that Jura’s heart beat faster.

  It did not take her long to catch on to the rhythm of this new sensation of lovemaking. She lifted her knees to better accommodate his deep, slow thrusts. In and out. Again and again. Slowly, gently, smoothly.

  It was just moments or perhaps it was days, but Jura began to crave something else or perhaps it was just more that she wanted. She did not know what it was. “Rowan?” she whispered in question.

  He opened his eyes to look at her and the fire there made her heart pound.

  He changed. Instantly, he changed from gentleness to a wild animal as he roughly grabbed her leg and shoved it around his waist. Jura wrapped her other leg about his waist and lifted her hips as he beg