Free Through a Dark Mist by Marsha Canham Page A

using her breasts, hips, and hands in communicating with a man in ways unknown by the spoken word. Her hair was black as coal, parted in the middle, and streamed in an ebony cascade halfway to the floor. Her eyes were so dark a green as to be almost black, heavy-lidded to suggest she was constantly on the verge of arousal—which she usually was. Her lips were full and sensuous, naturally tinted a deep shade of vermeil that teased a receptive eye into speculating where, other than on another mouth, they could bestow the most pleasure.
    At the moment, most of her considerable prowess and charm was indeed being wasted. Her husband, Onfroi de la Haye—a wretched, sullen pustule of a man—was somewhere in Lincolnwoods awaiting the arrival of the widow De Briscourt. Nicolaa had hastened ahead to Bloodmoor Keep, ostensibly to help oversee the preparations for the upcoming nuptials—oh, how her teeth ground together each time she heard that word—but in reality, she had wanted this time alone with the most magnificent of her lovers, the Dragon himself, Lucien Wardieu.
    Had there ever been a man created to see so perfectly to a woman’s every need? The mere sight of him was enough to take anyone’s breath away: a tall blond giant of a man with herculean shoulders and eyes more dangerous than the thrust of a lance. The sound of his voice triggered liquid shivers along her spine. The scent of him encapsulated 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