The Captive - By Joanne Rock Page 0,19

position clear so there were no misunderstandings.

“I will never be ready for—” she struggled for words “—what you want from me. I realize the kiss might have been misleading, but it only happened because…” She did not want to have this discussion, but in light of their situation and because Wulf did not strike her as an entirely unreasonable man, she told him the truth. “I had never kissed a man.”

The revelation did not appear to surprise him.

“Your husband did not consummate your marriage?” He fed her more fish as he asked the question and she appreciated the small distraction from the embarrassing discussion.

“He consummated it.” The morsel soured in her mouth. Her wedding night had been a nightmare she would never forget and she’d been very aware of the moment in which her virginity had been torn from her. “But he never kissed me as you did. In fact, he never gave me anything resembling a kiss, so I was caught off guard earlier by…what we did.”

She had been overwhelmed by Wulf, actually. The sweetness of it had been such a surprise, she’d felt immobilized, unable to pull away from an experience that should have been hers as a married woman. Indeed, she’d wondered if Margery’s husbands had used their mouths so sweetly and if that accounted for the widow’s haste to return to the altar. Of course, Gwen could not see how even the sweetest of kisses would make up for the pain of the marriage act.

“Your husband was unkind.” Wulf stated it as if he knew it as truth, though Gwen had told him no such thing.

“I was to be a peace-weaver between warring clans, but I and my husband never saw eye-to-eye despite my efforts.” And they had been numerous. “Instead of weaving peace, I served as a reminder of how much my husband despised my overlord.”

As she took the last bite of fish to tide her over for the night, she hoped that now Wulf would understand her reluctance to engage in the bedroom games other widows apparently found enjoyable.

She watched as he washed his hands and scrubbed a damp linen over his face now that her meal was finished and his had been consumed long ago. If she had not known the brutish acts men were capable of, she might have been swayed by Wulf’s harsh masculine appeal. The firelight played over his bare upper arms, glinting off the silver arm torque and exaggerating the dark shadows in the hollows beneath his muscles.

And, as he stood to make room for his bedroll in the small space, she remembered how large he was. He’d sprawled beside her pallet for much of the evening, his size masked by the lounging.

Besides that, he did not use his size to frighten her. She understood this well after being wed to a man who did just that. Wulf would have dwarfed her husband, and yet he did not lord his strength over her.

“Gwendolyn.” He knelt on his bedroll now, his tunic loosened but not off. “You did not mention your mother. Did she not tell you how it should be between a man and a woman?”

There it was again—that warm glow deep in the pit of her belly, a sensation different from anything she’d felt before save with her captor. Neither fear nor pleasure, the tingling awareness felt more like anticipation or perhaps wariness.

“My parents died on the road to Rome the summer I turned thirteen.” She had not been such a restless soul before their deaths, but afterward, she found herself wondering about the lives they’d led and adventures they’d had. “They were well-read and well traveled. They invited scholars to our home to read my father’s books and study with him. My mother was more inclined to speak to me about the culture of the Greeks than my future marriage. Of course, I was still a girl when she left.”

As Gwendolyn laid her head upon a pile of fresh straw, it occurred to her that her mother would have never spent a moment of her time stitching rose petals on bridal garb. The thought made her smile as she remembered how she’d been all but imprisoned with the other widows this morn. Despite her fears and discomforts today, at least she was not stuck indoors, ducking verbal barbs from women who did not like or understand her.

“If your mother had lived until your wedding day, she would have told you that coupling should never be painful.” Wulf’s