“Gaston…,” she murmured.
“What is it?” his hands were on her ankles, snaking under her dress.
Her breathing was coming fast and her stomach quivered as if she were ill. She found it difficult to hold a coherent thought. “Please.…”
“Please what?” His hands were gripping her knees, running down the length of her calves.
She couldn’t answer him for a moment as his hands whipped her into a panting frenzy. His touch was golden and she closed her eyes to better enjoy it when suddenly they drifted up her thighs and cupped her rounded bottom. At that precise moment, she snapped out of her passion-hazed trance.
“Gaston!” she gasped, jumping away.
His brow furrowed and he could see he had startled her with his bold touch. He dropped his hands from her bottom. “I am sorry, angel,” he whispered. “I did not mean to frighten you.”
Relieved that he understood her hesitation, she found it easier to speak to him of her reasons. Her hands moved to cup his great face.
“When Guy took me, it was with brutality and force. Never a kind word or a gentle touch, and I grew to hate it.” Her voice was quivering. “I still…hate it.”
He caressed her calves gently, groping for words. “Then you and I have something in common. I have never made love to anyone I have remotely cared for. I have always looked at it as a necessary service,” he swallowed hard; words came difficult to him. “I do not do it now because I need to. I do it because Iwantto.”
She looked hard at him, her fingers tracing the strong lines of his face. He saw her eyes beginning to well. “I am afraid.”
“So am I.”
“And I am married,” she choked in a whisper.
“So am I.”
“What about your wife?” She was starting to cry softly.
“She means as much to me as Guy means to you,” he said gently. “’Tis only you I care for, Remi. Only you.”
“Forever?” she breathed, tears falling from her eyes onto his face.
“Until I die,” he answered without a doubt.
Black and white. He had always seen everything in black and white; black was Mari-Elle and their farce of a marriage. White was his growing feelings for Remington, overwhelming his senses.
She fell against him, kissing his forehead, the bridge of his nose. Hot tears from her frightened eyes fell on his face, bathing him and drilling deep into his heart.
“I shall be your mistress, Gaston,” she whispered, her lips on his forehead. “Just promise me that you will never leave me and I swear I shall be your whore.”
He knew how painful it was for her to say those words, and it was equally painful for him to hear them. She did not deserve the title, the connotation, and his heart was nearly bursting with anger and regret and happiness, everything he could possibly feel was a swirling mass in his chest.
His hands came out from under her surcoat and he clasped her face between his huge hands, still on his knees.
“I shall never leave you, angel, and you will not be my whore,” he murmured. “’Tis a title for a cheap woman with no meaning to a man other than to relieve his needs. You are my lover, my life that will never be, and the fantasy of my heart. I never want to hear the word ‘whore’ again.”
She sobbed louder and he kissed her to quiet her fears and her pain. All they knew was that they needed each other in the most powerful way possible.
He remained on his knees, unlatching his armor and casting it aside. Remington tried to calm her tears, releasing him long enough to allow him to remove his breastplate and short hauberk. She knew what was coming, having never experienced it on an affectionate level before, and she was torn between terror and eager anticipation.
He removed his shirt and Remington studied him; his chest was splendid, broad and beautifully muscled with a fine matting of crisp black hair. Never had she seen anything so exquisitely magnificent. Timidly, she reached out and brushed her fingers across his skin and he responded by kissing her fingers fervently. She was so curious about his chest that she had not realized that he had removed her cloak and spread it on the damp grass.
He grasped her arms and lay back on the cloak with incredible gentleness, his mouth kissing her passionately. Forgetting about his chest, she wound her arms around his neck and responded to his kisses with all of the nervous energy she was feeling. She could do nothing but trust him, and trust him she did.
He pushed her skirts up and undid the stays of her surcoat, pulling the bodice of it down far enough to allow his hands access to her rounded breasts. As she had remembered, his hot mouth on her taut nipple was the most wonderful of sensations, and she bit off her moans on her hand as he suckled her to the brink of delightful pain.
Their passion was gaining momentum by the moment. The more he suckled and probed her breasts, the more she writhed beneath him and the more aroused he became. Neither one of them had ever known such an abandoned response and it only served to excite them even more.
