Fire Song

After first taking another glass of the cool wine for courage, Meredyth lay back in the depths of the huge dark-stained bed. She had pulled the bed curtains all around so that anyone coming into the room would not be able to see her. She did not trust the maid to stay away. There had been too much concern in the older woman’s voice when she repeatedly asked after her charge’s well-being.

But it was not to Meredyth’s liking to lie there all alone in the darkness. As time passed she only seemed to become more and more apprehensive and confused about what she might say to the baron. She now realized she should not have drank the wine, for it had only eased her for a time. She felt more than slightly befuddled.

What was she going to say to St. Sebastian when he came to this room expecting to find Celeste? She could only pray that the words would come, that he would not become completely enraged before she could make him understand.

The fire died down, but Meredyth had neither the heart nor the energy to rise and tend it. All her being was centered on clearing her mind and finding the words to make Roland St. Sebastian understand that she had not meant to do anything against him, that she was simply trying to help her sister.

Meredyth tried to imagine what he might say, how she might answer him. The thoughts swirled in her mind until they became less and less coherent, until nothing remained but a circle of confusion.

To her utter surprise Meredyth felt tears sting her eyes. She was not one to cry, did not feel that there was any honor in tears. Yet the day’s events had taken their toll and she was crying. Meredyth could not seem to stop, once begun.

She curled around the aching ball of loneliness in her chest and buried her face in the pillow. How had this happened? Why had she allow Celeste to convince her to do this mad thing?

Because she was Celeste.

All her life Meredyth had been accustomed to thinking her sister needed more looking after, even though she was the elder by a year. When Meredyth was six and Celeste seven they had been playing in the clearing near the castle. Celeste had been picking flowers and had begun to wander further into the wood. Meredyth had told her she should not, that Agnes had said they must stay within sight of the walls. Celeste had replied by taunting her to come along. Meredyth had remained where she was, and when Agnes had come to fetch them she had been horrified at realizing that her elder charge was indeed gone. Celeste had not been found for hours, as she had tripped, hurting her ankle in the dense forest, and been unable to walk back.

The thing that Meredyth would never forget was her father’s surprising anger toward herself. He had said that Meredyth should not have allowed Celeste to go off alone, that she was never to abandon her sister again. Did Meredyth not realize her sister was of a delicate, fanciful nature and therefore must be cared for?

There had been no words of comfort for Meredyth, who had feared for her sister. No words of praise for having obeyed Agnes’s instructions. From that day Meredyth had understood that to keep her father’s love she must protect Celeste, who was dearest to him of all things.

It had been a hard lesson to bear, but bear it she had, and without tears, until now.

How long she cried, Meredyth did not know; only when she was physically exhausted did the sobbing cease. She lay there drained, her lids heavy over swollen and gritty eyes. She closed them, needing to rest, to regain her courage, to ready herself…

Roland followed the directions that had been given to him by the serving woman. This was the most peculiar marriage he had ever heard of, to say the least—the groom expected simply to present himself to his bride with none of the accustomed preliminaries.

Yet the closer Roland got to his destination, which purportedly lay at the top of the tower steps, the less concern it gave him. He could think only of the beautiful woman who awaited him. He knew she was frightened and inexperienced, as was evidenced by her fearful manner toward him. Yet he recalled again the trembling of her body when he had touched her hand. Surely his instincts did not play him false and there was passion in his bride.

He was not a selfish bedmate and even took pleasure from giving satisfaction to the women he bedded. He had noted that doing so made a woman much more malleable and eager to please him, not just in bed, but in other ways as well.

He told himself that to begin thus with his wife would only be wise.

Roland reached the top step, and opened the door, surprised to be greeted by a darkness that was only slightly alleviated by the bed of glowing coals in the hearth. Quietly Roland stepped inside, his warrior’s reflexes always at the ready for danger. This was, after all, the home of the Chalmerses, enemies to his family for several generations. He stood still, giving his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim interior. But he soon realized there was no threat here. There were no skulking shadows, no unusual sounds. Most telling of all, there was no lurking heaviness, the kind that always accompanied danger.

He allowed himself to relax somewhat. Eagerly now, Roland looked about the chamber, but was unable to locate his bride.

He was just beginning to believe the room might not be occupied at all when he heard the sound of a soft breath. Gauging the direction immediately, he moved to the bed. He was surprised, having thought her fear too great for her to await him there. He was also pleased. Perhaps the maid was not as frightened as he had thought.

He made his way to the huge shadow of the bed. Quickly Roland removed his garments. He then drew open the heavy hangings and climbed inside.

Roland reached out a seeking hand and came into contact with the delicate curve of a hip. His bride. His loins tightened at the memory of her beauty. Though his desire stirred he knew he must go slowly to bring her a pleasure to match his own. But he had no wish to speak with anything but his body. That they were strangers could not truly be changed in moments. Yet tonight they would form a bond of pleasure taken and given. This bond Roland trusted more than any ones of an emotional nature.

Sensing rather than seeing the shape of her form beneath him, Roland moved up to lean over her. Her breath was sweet and warm on his face and he felt that stirring again. Slowly he bent over and placed his lips to his bride’s.

She gave a slight start and reared up beneath him. He continued to press his mouth gently to hers and in a moment felt a stab of satisfaction as her small hand came up to curl in the dark patch of hair on his chest. He continued to ply her mouth with his own, nipping and sucking at hers and soon she reached up with the other to hold the back of his head.

Roland laughed deep in his throat, pleased with her reaction to his kiss. He felt a rising satisfaction and growing ardor of his own as he realized he had not been wrong in thinking she would respond. His ardent mouth moved from hers to trail over her soft cheeks and then down the delicate line of her throat.

Meredyth had been dreaming of lying upon an enormous soft bed. It was so soft that she had the sensation of floating in a peaceful sea of white linens and light. Nothing could trouble her here, where she was safe and warm and content.

Slowly she became aware of the lips that touched hers, and it seemed at first as if they too belonged to the dream. They were firm yet gentle, and oh so very certain. It seemed they heightened that sense of floating in warmth and light.

Then as she drifted more fully into semiwakefulness she felt another odd sort of tingling in her belly that also seemed brought by the confident and knowing urgency of the lips on hers. Her hands acted of their own accord as they searched instinctively for the source of that sweetly rousing pressure.

She came into contact with smooth bare flesh over hard muscle. Meredyth moaned at the immediate quickening of her pulse as the lips left hers to press hot gentle kisses to her face and neck. Meredyth had dreamed of such things before, had woken feeling guilty at her own responses and unaccountably sad that it was not real. Yet her dreams of being kissed, touched, of touching in return, had never gone so far. She could not find the strength to pull herself away. She was too lost in her own responses. By whatever means this specter had entered her slumber, it had come to banish some of the aching loneliness she felt.

Her heart thudded in her breast as the warm sensations turned liquid and seemed to find their way to her lower belly. Meredyth had never felt so…so very…Her hips arched as if her body understood far more of what was happening than did she. Her hands seemed to grasp the source of her pleasure to her with a will all their own.

Roland felt himself harden even more at her touch, at her nearness. There was something about this woman, her delicate warm woman scent, the velvet of her skin. He had not thought to respond so fully, so quickly.

He rose up above her, his hands unexpectedly unsteady as he gently drew her slender legs apart. His fingers found her. He swallowed hard at finding her already damp, and an irrefutably fierce driving need such as he had never experienced coursed through him. “So beautiful, Celeste,” he whispered, even as he knew he could wait no more.

Meredyth felt the hands on her body, heard her sister’s name with a shock of horrid realization. Dear heaven, this was not a dream. It was none other than Roland St. Sebastian whose smooth skin lay beneath her eager fingers, whose mouth teased her to such a fierce response. Even through the fog of her awakening desire she knew that this was wrong. This man was not meant for her.

The woman beneath him gave a start and reared up beneath him. Her voice emerged in a husky whisper. “My lord, I am not…” His mouth found hers, stilling the words. He did not wish to debate or argue. He had meant this time to be more, and was in no small measure surprised with himself for not having more control. Yet he could not wait. Her obvious response to him made it impossible.

Without breaking the contact of their mouths, he knelt between those silken thighs and found the moistness of her immediately. With only the briefest of hesitations her maidenhood was breached. She gasped, as he did, when his mouth left hers.

Convulsively her body tightened on him. Calling on all the will he possessed, Roland lay still, allowing her to become accustomed to him as he rested there in the velvety warmth of her body. He might not have been able to restrain himself enough to pleasure her first as he wished to, but he would not cause her hurt.

As Meredyth felt Roland St. Sebastian enter the private depths of her being, she realized it was too late now. There was no going back. Roland St. Sebastian had made her his woman, though she had tried to tell him the truth that she was not Celeste. Yet as he lay above her, his manhood filling the deepest core of herself, Meredyth felt an unexpected yearning ache stir again in her own body. When he began to move inside her, her breath quickened as that ache began to grow more pronounced.

Only when Roland felt a slight restless stirring of her own slender form beneath him did he go on. Only then did Roland give in to the passion that made him feel as if he would surely burst, the passion that quickly grew to a fierce white point of unutterable pleasure.

When he stiffened and arched against her, Meredyth felt her own body press against him. She somehow knew that he had gone to some place that she could only begin to imagine, and that she had been the one to take him there. It was awesome, that this strong commanding man had been moved beyond himself because of her—Meredyth.

Yet uppermost in her thoughts was the knowledge that what they had just done had awakened some slumbering force inside herself. She could even now feel the way her body held him to her as if it had some instinctive claim to the feel of his flesh, his touch, to him. Even the ragged sound of his hot breath against her ear was strangely thrilling.

Her own hands lay along the hard curves of his shoulders. Unable to stop herself, Meredyth slipped one hand to his chest and over that tantalizing firm flesh, across a corded neck. She tangled her fingers in thick coarse hair. A low sensuous chuckle was her reward, for it did feel like such when the sound made every fine hair on her body stand up as if in reply.

Roland knew he had not fulfilled her, but he was now more than ready to rectify that. He rolled to his side, his mouth finding hers to cover a sigh of what sounded to his ears like disappointment. Deliberately he smoothed a hand from her hip up across delicate fabric, tracing pleasingly rounded curves and valleys. The thin cloth of her night rail did nothing to disguise the firmness of the flesh beneath, and Roland was well pleased. He went on, encouraged by the fluttering of her belly against his palm, finally closing his fingers with firm but gentle pressure over one rounded breast.

Meredyth’s mind swirled anew as that touch sent a shaft of heat directly to that most intimate place betwixt her thighs. Her head fell backward, breaking the contact of those supple lips and she gasped aloud.

She gasped again as his mouth began to mark a trail over her chin, then down the tender exposed flesh of her throat.

When his mouth closed over the bare tip of her other breast, Meredyth was lost in the surging sensations that made her limbs tremble, her breath come more quickly.

As those lips tugged at her nipple, she reached out to hold him near with both hands, arching her back as another shaft of sweet hot longing raced through her core. As the thumb of the other hand began to circle the other nub, Meredyth arched again, her knees clamping tightly to try to relieve the pressure building inside her.

She found no relief, knowing instinctively that the release she so blindly sought was to be found in the body of this night warrior. He had drawn her to this state of heady frustration. Only he could soothe it.

His manhood reared in response to her reaction to his caresses. Roland reached down. With a skill born of instinct and experience, he gently but firmly cupped his palm against the gentle mound of her womanhood. She clamped her thighs around him, her breathing ragged.

He traced his other hand back down those pleasing curves until he reached the hem of her nightdress. He leaned back slightly to remove it and she came after him. Her sweet mouth moved over his bare flesh, making him close his eyes at the throb of heat it brought about. The heavy tangle of her hair seemed to cling to his sweat-dampened flesh, seemed to bind him wantonly in the intimate darkness.

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Roland told himself he would not be unmanned again. Gently he held her away from him, determined to see her brought to her own pleasure no matter what it cost him in self-control.