Gritting his teeth for what seemed like the fiftieth time during the course of this unbearable day, he directed his focus to her back once more and attacked the laces, his fingers fumbling sometimes, both from lack of practice and from the edge of awareness that crept in, despite his best efforts, of just what exactly he was doing and with whom. He finished with the three delicate buttons, in his haste nearly popping them free of the threads that held them.
When at last he finished, he jerked back as if he’d been burned, muttering, “There. It is done.”
For a moment Alissende remained still. Then she tilted her face back toward him once more and murmured, “Thank you.”
Damien didn’t trust his voice and so he gave a sharp nod in answer, before turning on his heel and stalking toward the windows again. He kept his back to Alissende, trying not to pay attention to the faint rustling sounds she made as she disrobed. Trying not to think about what would be revealed with each layer of clothing she peeled away.
It was almost unbearable. Not unbearable enough, however, to keep him from obsessively watching the movements of her shadow again. He grimaced with self-loathing. He should want nothing to do with the woman. She had deceived him and nearly destroyed him, and now she was using him for her own selfish gain as protection against Hugh de Valles. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself from wanting her, damn it.
His gaze burned as that slender shadow raised its arms. She pulled up her smock—that final barrier between garment and skin—lifting it over her head to leave her as bare as Eve had been before the first taste of apple. When her shadow shifted, turning slightly sideways, he caught a glimpse of sweet curves, the delicious, tipped outline of her naked breasts, and his mouth went dry. Cursing silently, he forced himself to look away, back to the window.
What a fool he was not to have considered this prospect. Of course she would sleep naked. Everyone slept without clothing, especially in the warm summer months; it had been one of the freedoms he had come to miss when he’d served as a Templar, for the Brotherhood required garments to be worn at all times, even during bathing and sleep.
If only such precepts applied here and now, and with Alissende.
Though he refused to look directly at her shadow again, he saw from the side of his vision when she got into bed. She slipped wordlessly between the curtains that hung all around, suspended by golden hooks from the ceiling. He could turn around now without fear of seeing her, he knew, but he remained as he was. Otherwise, with the dangerous mix of lust and anger pounding through him, he didn’t know what he might do, all vows and bargains be damned.
Stifling another groan, Damien leaned his forehead against the smooth wood of the window ledge, praying that night would pass more swiftly than it ever had—but knowing that the opposite was far more likely, and that he was doomed to wait like this, unsettled and unsatisfied, until the light of dawn.
Alissende lay very still in the bed, on her side, facing away from the place across the chamber where Damien sat at the window. Her heart pounded, but for the first time in the many months since Michael had come to her with his outrageous proposition of the proxy, it seemed to beat in a different cadence. With a kind of awareness that had been absent before.
The embers of something hot and dangerous still burned between her and Damien.
She had sensed it in his kiss and his touch, and she had seen it in his eyes when she’d used his pride against him in forcing him to help her disrobe. Oh, he’d resisted it mightily, aye, but it was there nonetheless. The possibility of it had at first bewildered her, sending a burning ache through her as he’d carried her to their bedchamber. But that had been replaced soon enough by vexation, an emotion far more welcome after he’d set her on her feet and run to the other side of the chamber as if he’d been on fire.
He had been on fire, she had realized with stunning clarity…on fire forher. He would not admit it, of course—perhaps he could not—and as she’d understood that truth, it had granted her a sense of control she had not known for a very long time.
What she would do with this newfound power, she did not yet know. She did not know, even, howshefelt about it. Part of her still longed for the peace of the abbey, away from all men and their moods, intrigues, and desires…but another part of her yearned to tease and provoke—to stoke the flames between them until they were both consumed in a passion Damien could not deny.
It was too soon for such musings, though. The realization that she held some kind of sway over him, should she wish to wield it, was enough.
Aye, it was enough for now.
With that steadying thought, Alissende closed her eyes. This night was certain to be a long one, so she tried to relax as much as she could under the circumstances, doing her best to drift into peaceful, dreamless slumber.
Sometime between the dark of true night and the gray of early morn, Alissende stirred to a strange noise in the chamber. Still half-asleep, she struggled to open her eyes, noticing that the single candle she had left burning on the table when she’d crawled into bed had gone out. She sat up, trying to peer through the bed curtains. She could see nothing, but she heard the sound again—a strange, guttural noise, almost like a growl. She had never heard anything like it before, and it sent a chill up her spine.
Though the bed curtains were not sheer, they were of thin enough material that she could tell the chamber seemed brighter on one side. Tamping down her fear, she rolled in that direction and parted the fabric just slightly, to see what might be visible. The unshuttered window where Damien had been sitting at bedtime was still open, and the source of light she had noticed had come from that. It was apparently the waning moon, its milky glow spilling across the edge of the window and washing in muted tones what part of the chamber its weak force could reach.
And then she saw him. Damien was curled on the floor beneath the window, lying on his side with his knees drawn up and his fists clenched. Another growling noise came from him, then, and in concert with it he seemed to be tensing, restless in his sleep. Suddenly one arm flailed out, his fist slamming into the wooden floor with a crack that might have woken the dead.
But he did not rouse. He only continued to twist about restlessly, the growls interspersed with moans, now—the sounds he was making causing the hair on the back of Alissende’s neck to prickle and making her throat tighten.
What in heaven’s name was wrong with him—was he ill?
She paused for only a moment before worry outweighed reticence, and she slipped out of bed, pulling the sheet with her and wrapping it around herself to cover her nakedness. In a few steps, she reached Damien, her sheet making a faint whispering sound as the tail of it dragged along the floor in her wake, and she squinted as she neared him, trying to make out the details of his form and face in the dim light.
Though his eyes were closed, he shifted violently again just as she readied to kneel next to him, and she jerked back at the unexpected movement.
“Don’t!”
The word burst from him in a fierce, sharp growl, though it was clear that he was still tangled in the depths of some terrible dream; his eyes remained closed and he was obviously unaware of her presence next to him.
Perhaps he had taken ill on his journey to Glenheim. Travelers often fell sick thanks to the rigors of the road, and those illnesses could turn deadly, especially if they were accompanied by fever that was not treated with the proper herbs and remedies.
There was only one way to find out if Damien was suffering in that way.
Taking a step closer again, Alissende dropped to her knees beside him; she kept one arm tight across her breasts to hold the sheet in place as she reached her other hand toward his brow. He had rolled onto his back, now, arms rigidly at his sides, so it shouldn’t have been too difficult to accomplish—but he was clearly still gripped by distress, twisting and shifting in sleep, and his breath came in panting gasps.
