the sun and the wind and the savage primitiveness of the moor he called home. The touch … the lightest touch from the veriest tip of a long, blunted finger set rivers of heat raging through her loins, rivers that swelled and burst into torrents from the instant his flesh plunged into hers, to the moment of blinding madness that welcomed the last hot spurt of his fountaining seed.
Even now, standing as he was in the shadows of the window embrasure, his back turned to the room, Nicolaa had difficulty keeping the tremors out of her voice. Moving, let alone walking, was a trial of balance and control. The slightest friction of her tunic against breast or thigh drenched her in such heady waves of erotic anticipation, she was growing concerned the eager dampness would begin to puddle at her feet.
“Lucien?” she murmured petulantly. “Have you heard a word I have said?”
“I have heard you, Nicolaa, my love. How could I not?”
“Then it must be I am disturbing you, and you would prefer your own company tonight.”
The low purr of sarcasm broke his concentration and he turned slowly from the window. The cloud of distraction lingered a moment longer, dulling the incredible azure blue of his eyes, but in the next instant it was gone, brushed away by the thick sweep of lashes.
“Nicolaa,” he said with a soft laugh, “any man who admitted such a sight disturbed him”—he paused and lowered his gaze to where the flimsy silk of her tunic was molded around the generous swell of her breasts—“is not much of a man.”
The wife of the sheriff of Lincoln returned his smile. “A certain Lionheart might argue the sentiment.”
Wardieu shrugged and drank from the goblet of mead he was holding. “Richard has his preferences, I have mine.”
“I am relieved to hear it. How the women of Lincoln would flock in droves to hurl themselves off the nearest cliff, should the news reach them that the mighty warlord, the Dragon de Gournay, has taken to heaving himself at the buttocks of young boys.”
“Tastefully put,” he remarked dryly.
“Tis a distasteful image one conjurs at the thought,” she countered evenly, then sighed. “Especially when one considers the waste of such a splendidly virile specimen as Richard, Coeur de Lion. In truth, I did not believe it for the longest of time.”
“And no doubt attempted to disprove the rumours yourself?”
“Well …” The tip of her tongue slid along her full lower lip to moisten it. “I did have an opportunity to seek a private audience with the king when Onfroi was vested as sheriff.”
“I would have given a thousand crowns to witness the exchange,” the baron said, his eyes glinting with humour.
“No doubt you would, you beast. I felt quite sorry for him, myself—and even sorrier now for the innocent little Berengaria, his intended bride.”
“You? Feel sympathy for another woman?”
The dark eyes narrowed. “It has been known to happen a time or two.”
“Usually only after you have crippled, maimed, or blinded one of them. Come now, Nicolaa, false sentiment does not become you. Turn soft and sincere and there truly would be a mass plummeting of mankind over the cliffs—out of fear.”
“Melancholy. It happens whenever I am feeling neglected.”
“Neglected? How so?”
Nicolaa sighed with mock frustration. “It has been over a month, my bold lusty lord. Four weeks. Thirty-two days and a good deal too many hours since these poor thighs have held a real man between them.”
The azure gaze strayed downward, following the deliberately laid trail of a meandering finger as it flowed from throat to breast to waist to thigh. She wore nothing beneath the pale yellow tunic. Her nipples were clear, dark circles straining against the fabric, and where her thighs met, the nest of down bushed against the cloth like a mossy hillock.
It was rumoured she bathed in blood to keep her skin so supple and startlingly white. For a certainty, she employed the skills of several herb-women who fed her insatiable vanity by supplying creams to prevent wrinkling, powders to keep her teeth white and her lips red, possets to leave her hair smelling always like wild musk on a spring breeze. She had once ordered a clumsy dressmaker boiled in oil for scratching her flesh with a needle. Another waiting-woman had found herself impaled on a stake for daring to whisper, within Nicolaa’s hearing, that her mistress made love as often to a mirror as to a man.