his own side and turned discreetly away to remove his clothing. He had broad shoulders and the relaxed loose muscles of a quiescent lion. Nothing like Henry, who had been stocky with a hard paunch and age-crêped flesh. This was a young man, virile and eager. He turned towards her, and she almost gasped at the sight of his broad chest and the stripe of hair feathering down his body and curling at his groin. Very virile and eager indeed. She did not know whether to avert her eyes, or stare in wonderment. And then the sheets fell across and she was rescued from her dilemma.
“I have a sin to confess, if sin it be,” he said as he leaned towards her.
“Then you should see a priest,” Adeliza whispered. Fascinated by the sight of his smooth, bare skin, she reached out to touch his shoulder and arm. His muscles had the gleam and definition of youth. Her fingertips encountered the glossy dark coils at his nape and her senses began to swim.
“A priest could not help me,” he said. “I want you to be my confessor and listen to what I have to say.” 250
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“What if I cannot grant you absolution?” She wound her index finger round a cluster of his curls.
“Then I will be lost.” He set his palm at her waist. “I confess I have loved you and desired you for a long time. You are so beautiful. I confess to envy of the king your husband even while I knew you were as far beyond me as the stars. And now I have you, I cannot believe my good fortune. How many men wish for the stars and have their wish granted? You shine, and I am dazzled.”
She traced the outline of his lips with her fingertips. Such words were gems. Henry had never spoken thus to her. The times they had bedded had been a matter of business. Henry’s preference was for buxom, big-breasted women who looked fecund and ripe.
“You are so slender and small,” he said, his eyes following the path of his hand up and down her flank. “I fear that if I breathe out too hard, I will blow you away.”
“I am strong enough to bear your weight,” she said, feeling as if she would dissolve within the intensity of his stare. “I absolve you.” She rolled into his arms and set her lips against his collar bone and hid her face. Above her, she heard him hiss through his teeth.
With Henry the act of procreation had often been uncomfortable. His needs had been bullish and practical. He expected her to please him and for her the experience had been a duty—
one that she had performed gladly because it was God’s will and her responsibility as a wife, but she had never understood why it should put a sparkle in people’s eyes and lead them into sin. Indeed, sometimes it had been so painful, she had wept into the pillow afterwards, knowing it was all her fault. Men of science said that for a woman to conceive, she must release her seed, and the outward sign that such a release had happened was that she would shudder in a crisis of pleasure. Adeliza had 251
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never experienced such a thing with Henry, but now, tasting Will’s skin, feeling it so supple and warm under her fingers, hearing his soft groan, she began to shiver with feelings that were utterly delicious.
She wanted to explore his body, and he was equally keen to investigate hers. “Mine,” he whispered as he cupped her breasts and thumbed her nipples, then bent his head to stroke them with his tongue. “My queen now.” She arched towards him and gasped. She had never imagined that a man’s mouth and hands could work such alchemy on her body. It was like a poem; it was like the Song of Songs. The sensuality, the beautiful tension. And the act itself, for which she had learned to hold herself rigid against the pain, was a fluid thing of give and take, although she had never felt so full in her life. He took his weight on his arms so that he would not crush her and he did not lunge with the full force of his body but treated her with delicacy, and he called her his queen again, and his light and his joy.
She cried out beneath him and shuddered in his