In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,146

fiery hot that sucked the breath from her lungs and set her body moving in a blur beneath him.

Eduard threw his head back and gave one last mighty thrust into the convulsing softness. His eyes squeezed shut and his lips drew back over the slash of his teeth, but there was no withholding, no controlling the passion that erupted within him. He plunged himself into her, poured himself into her, trembling, quaking in the grips of a pulsating white heat that left him with nothing in reserve, not even his pride.

Ariel shivered.

It was only once and only the tiniest of gestures, but Eduard noticed and was quick to crouch before the fire and add another log to the iron crib. His hair was still wet, smooth and inky, pushed back from his brow by an impatient hand. As she watched, a sparkling bead of water gathered at the tip of a curl and was shaken free with the movement of his arm, hissing when it splashed on the hot stones.

He had just finished helping Ariel towel the excess moisture from her own hair and it was spread around her shoulders, little better than a wild froth of curls for all the vigorous rubbing. He had insisted she strip out of the remnants of her wet clothes and he had bundled her into a warm, dry blanket before seating her in front of the fire. He had not, as yet, spared a thought to his own comfort. His shirt still clung in wet patches to his shoulders; his hose were stained dark from the soaking. He had retrieved his surcoat and her cloak from the rooftop and both garments were hung over a chair, steaming and dripping into the silence.

Ariel studied his broad back, wondering what was going through his mind. He had not spoken more than a word or two since carrying her down out of the rain and she knew she was partly if not wholly to blame for his closed expression. She had caused him to break an oath of honour—no trifling matter to a knight at the best of times. This, however, must surely have been one of the worst, what with the shock of discovering Princess Eleanor’s blindness already playing havoc with his emotions.

Ariel was not entirely guiltless herself, now that the heat of passion had cooled somewhat. She had behaved like a wild woman, clawing and spitting one minute, tearing at his clothes and keening like a hoyden the next. So much for nobility and breeding. So much for ever thinking she could hold herself aloof, unaffected by something so coarse and debasing as the physical act of coupling.

The experience had left her feeling anything but aloof and unaffected. She felt warm and slippery inside, acutely aware of a new tenderness between her thighs that throbbed and ached as if he was still there, strong and vital. Her skin tingled and her body hummed with a shameful restlessness. In spite of the rain, in spite of their haste and surroundings … in spite of everything, their joining had been a thing of immeasurable joy and beauty. Nothing quite so trivial as the word coupling could ever describe it, for far more than just their physical bodies had been joined. It was as if he had reached inside and touched her soul.

The new log had caught fire and Eduard ran out of excuscs to poke and prod and rearrange the bed of hot coals. There was nothing else to be gained—or lost—by continuing to avoid the haunting green sparkle of her eyes, and he turned to face her, not quite knowing what he would see … or what he wanted to see.

She was beautiful: that was his first thought. Lushly, erotically beautiful with the flush of newfound awareness glowing soft and pink in her cheeks. He had only caught a glimpse of slender white limbs and a shiveringly cool body when she rid herself of her sodden clothing, but what he remembered caused his throat to close and his eyes to slip down to the edge of the blanket where it had begun to droop over her shoulder.

The enormity of what he had done kept his jaw tensed and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He had ravished the intended bride of a prince of Gwynedd. He had ravished the niece of William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, the most feared and respected knight in all of England, Normandy, and Wales. To a