By Honor Bound Part 37

"Patric," she whispered softly.

"Yes, my darling." He lifted his head. She scratched at his eyes. With the instantaneous reflexes of a veteran fighting man, he caught her wrists, forcing her hands down to her sides.

"I grow tired of this battle," he growled. "You belong to me, and I am going to make you enjoy it."

"I won't. I won't."

"Oh, yes you will. You've slept alone too long, and you are hungry for love. You won't admit it, but you are."

She closed her eyes. She could not stop him, but she need not look at him. It seemed to her that he had a dozen hands. He held her wrists tightly so she could not strike at him again, and yet his hands were all over her body.

He teased at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s until she gasped in tormented pleasure in spite of her determination to feel nothing. His fingertips stroked and pulled until her nipples were hard and aching and then his mouth fastened on her and she gritted her teeth to hold back the excited cries that rose to her throat and threatened to burst from her, giving him encouragement.

Now he was doing things to her legs, his hands sliding down their slender length. She bit her lips and clenched her eyelids tightly closed as he placed moist, lingering kisses on her calves and the backs of both knees. She felt him s.h.i.+fting his position, but still she could not move, nor would she open her eyes to see what he was doing. She kept her body stiff, her arms rigid at her sides.

His mouth, that d.a.m.ned, tormenting mouth, was now scorching across her belly and he was caressing he hips and her upper thighs. His mouth was moving lower. He parted her thighs. She could not move her hands to fight this delicious torture. She had no idea how he was holding her.

She dared not lift her lids. She knew if she met his eyes she would have to admit the unbearable truth, that she longed for him, ached for him, hungered to feel him inside her, thrusting, heaving, forcing her to say the unthinkable words, the words she had vowed never to utter again.

She felt his hand move between her thighs, felt his fingers probing, touching her. In spite of her determination not to react, her body, just for an instant, betrayed her. She pushed against him and his fingers slid into her. She could endure it no longer. A wild, reckless need shook her. Her self-imposed restraint dissolved. She broke her grim, painful silence.

"Patric. Oh, Patric, please." She moved on his hand again, her frenzied body demanding more.

"Open your eyes, Elen. Look at me."

She felt his warm breath. His mouth was almost on hers. His fingers continued their maddening motions.

"I can't. Please, please," she moaned.

He withdrew his hand. She screamed at the loss, and her eyes flew open. She saw his face next to hers, his blue eyes blazing with the intensity of his own barely restrained pa.s.sion.

She felt his hardness pressing against her. Forgetting everything but the desire that now enveloped her, she surged upward to meet him, opening her body to receive his. He plunged down, down into the warmth, and she closed about him and held him in that sweet captivity.

"Elen, my love." His lips skimmed over hers and she gave her lips to him as she had given the rest of her body, feeling more intensely the thrust of his tongue and the hot sweetness of his mouth because of her previous denial of her own deep longing.

He began to move slowly, trying to delay the ending, savoring the long-dreamed-of pleasures of her body. Caught in the excitement he had engendered in her, Elen moved with him, lifting ' her hips to meet each thrust. Her hands, at last released from their mysterious confinement, fluttered lightly along his spine, sending ripples of delicate sensation throughout his body.

Elen sank into the honeyed heat of his love-making, giving herself with open pleasure now, forgetting hatred and pain and loss while Patric conjured up a storm of emotion that built like thunderclouds in August, higher and higher, until at last, as though with a great bolt of lightning, the storm broke, and Elen was whirled away in thunder and lightning to some elemental place where nothing mattered but feeling, sensation, the touch and taste and heat of Patric's body in her and on her, possessing her totally. She heard her own voice, though she did not will herself to speak.

"I love you," she moaned. "Patric, I love you."

Her body vibrating with the most exquisite tremors that went on and on and seemed as if they would never stop, the thunder roaring in her ears, from far away she heard his joyful response.

"And I love you, my sweet, sweet Elen."

The storm quieted at last. He held her more loosely, their limbs still entwined, his breath warm on her cheek. He planted soft kisses all around her mouth, then fixed his lips on hers, glorying in his victory.

"I knew you loved me," he whispered.

"I do not love you." She pushed at his shoulders, and tried to wriggle out from under him.

"You said you do," he reminded her, kissing her throat and shoulders. "I heard you, mydarling."He was still on top of her, and try as shemight, she could not get him off her body."I do not love you. I hate you!" she said angrily, still trying to push him away. "You made me say that,you did things to me. You held my hands so I couldn't protect myself."

"I did not hold your hands, not after the first few moments. If you had opened yours eyes, you could have seen that you were free. You imprisoned yourself, my love."

He kissed her again, his mouth smothering and finally quelling the outburst of rage that followed this revelation. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were crushed against the soft hair that grew on his wide chest. Each time he moved, whether to kiss her in some new place, or simply to take a breath, his hair tickled at her nipples until they were hard. He

noticed."You want me again," he said with absolutecertainty."No, no," she moaned. She tried to move her hips and legs. She had to separate herself from him beforethe threatening storm inside her broke a second time. Her efforts did not free her, and they only arousedhim. She felt him growing, and he held her with a determined strength that increased her inner turmoil.

"You made me say it," she accused him again, her breath ragged with rising desire.

"Then I'll make you say it once more," he promised.

And he did.

Afterward, she lay glaring at him. He owned her body, but that was all he would get, and after tomorrow he would not even have that any more.

The realization gave her a sense of power.

"I didn't mean it," she told him coldly. "I lied I hate you, Patric mac Keith. I will hate you until the day I die."

September 9, 1057.

From the safety of his bed, Patric surveyed the wreckage of his bedchamber, hiding his amus.e.m.e.nt at the expression on Briga's face.

"You had better clear this away before your mistress gets up. I don't want her to cut her feet. Will youwant a bath this morning, my darling?" he asked the woman beside him."I certainly do," she responded. "I want to wash away any sign that you ever touched me.""Why bother, since I'm only going to touch you again?"

"How can you want a woman who feels about you the way I do?"

Elen flounced out of his reach. Picking a clean patch of floor to place her feet on, she rose from the bed.

Patric looked at the slim line of her back and felt himself grow warm.

"It's because I know how you feel about me, really feel about me, that I do want you No matter whatyou say afterward, Elen, when we make love, your body is honest with me." Patric stretched out on thebed, his long legs crossed. "I think I'll stay here and watch while you bathe."

"Then I'll stay dirty." She bent to pick up her silk robe from the floor, revealing the full, creamy-skinned

curves of her hips and b.u.t.tocks.

Patric seriously considered sending Briga out of the room. He wondered if there would be time enough to do battle again with his pa.s.sionate, defiant wife before he must dress and join the king for that morning's hunt. The swing of her long hair as she threw it carelessly back from her face, the glimpse of a rounded breast just before she covered it with her silk robe had almost decided him in favor of the idea, when Resad and a second manservant appeared with bread and cheese and ale, a joint of cold beef and a basket of apples, so they could break their fast.

"Oh, good," Elen said. "I'm ravenously hungry. I'll wash and dress later, Briga, after our master leaves."

She put a piece of cheese on a wedge of brown bread and began to eat, sitting on the end of the bed.

Patric sat up, and, pulling aside her hair, placed a kiss on the nape of her neck. His right hand crept around to cup her breast.

"Leave me alone," she said, getting up and moving to the opposite side of the room.

Patric shrugged. He would wait until tonight. When they were alone together once more he would make her say again what he wanted to hear. He believed that sooner or later she would admit in a calmer moment the truth of the words that had been torn out of her as she lay writhing in ecstasy in his arms the night before.

He got to his feet and stretched, chuckling to himself at Briga's gasp. Elen stared at him, then quickly averted her eyes. Patric picked up his blue cloak, wrapped it about his waist, and left the women to themselves.

Ava came to Elen at midmorning."Drust says the journey to Scone has beendelayed again," she repeated. "There has been some fighting on the road south of here. Drust expectsKing Malcolm to take a band of men into the area tomorrow to pacify it."

"Patric will surely be among those men," Elen said. "If I leave our bed in the middle of the night, andPatric rises early to go with Malcolm, he'll see that I'm gone."

"That will ruin our plan, mistress."

"Patric mac Keith is not going to stop me." Elen thought a while. "I know what to do. Tell Drust to be ready just after sun-up tomorrow. We will leave after Malcolm has ridden south. This is better than our first plan. We can travel faster in daylight, and we can be gone an entire day before anyone notices we are missing."

Malcolm, Patric, and Conal returned early from the hunt. Elen met Patric in the great hall.

"I've heard the news," she said. "Do you ride with Malcolm?"

"Yes, at dawn. We'll be gone for several days. Is there any food?"

Elen brought him a platter of cold meat and bread and cheese, and a pitcher of ale.

"Sit with me," he said, pulling her down beside him on the bench. "Did you miss me this morning?"

"Not at all," she replied.

He laughed softly, his left hand stroking her thigh.

"I should remedy that, so you long for me in the next few days and greet me eagerly when I return."

Elen's mind was working rapidly. She could throw him off her trail if she were clever, giving herself and Drust and Ava even more time to reach Lulach.

"I am sorry you must leave, Patric. I am and Pat

anxious to return to Laggan. It is harvest season, the busiest time of year. I should be there. So, should the new master," she added.

"I understand," he said. "I promise it will be only a few days' delay, and then we will travel to Laggan as fast as we can. I want to see to it that the damage Malcolm's men did is repaired before winter comes. There will be much work to do to ease the hards.h.i.+p of your-our-people. I will need your help, my love. You are more experienced in such matters than I am. We'll do it together, shall we?"

Patric's hand covered Elen's where it rested on the trestle table. He gave it a squeeze, smiling at her. Elen, surprised and a little shaken by the genuine concern Patric had expressed for Laggan and its people, smiled back at him.

He lifted her hand to his lips, kissing it, then turning it over to run his tongue across her palm. She trembled, feeling the melting warmth begin deep within her. She let her hand remain in his until he let it go to cut himself another slice of bread.

"Will you spend the rest of the day with Malcolm?" she asked as they rose from the table.