Free Rexanne Becnel by The Mistress of Rosecliffe Page B

and every bit of her flesh tightened in response. Her skin prickled. Her insides melted, and her heretofore dormant nipples pebbled into taut nubs.
    Her entire body seemed to strain toward him. And when his tongue moved in a small wet circle against her sensitive palm, she gasped, for every one of those sensations trebled.
    What was happening to her? What was he doing?
    Then he moved his clever mouth to her tender fingertips, and Isolde let out a little moan. He kissed each digit at the very end, one by one, a form of caress completely beyond her ken.
    Lovers kissed, and they lay together, much as animals did, in order to procreate. That much she understood. But this … this unimaginable excitement … This fire in her belly caused merely by his lips upon her hand …
    “Reevius.” She breathed his name and he lifted his head.
    “What would you have of me, lady. Music? Or something more?”
    Isolde could hardly think, her mind was so completely muddled. He still held her hand. He still stared at her with eyes so dark she felt they might swallow her up. The very idea sent a new shiver of longing through her. What indeed did she want from him? Music lessons, or something more?
    Both, she admitted to herself in a moment of total honesty. But she could not have both, not here. Not now.

    Not ever, the voice of logic belatedly piped in.
    She curled her hand into a fist, then slid it free of his strong, heated grasp, and looked away.
    “I want …” She swallowed hard. “I want only a music lesson. That is all.” She tilted her head and looked sidelong at him. She ought to rebuke him for the impertinence he had just displayed. But she could not. She swallowed again. “Perhaps we should return to the castle after all.”
    “As you wish.” He rose easily to his feet then extended his hand.
    Beset alternately by disappointment that he’d so swiftly agreed, relief that he would not press the issue with her, and a perverse longing for the same sort of kiss on her mouth that he’d given to her palm, Isolde stared up at him. Did she dare take his hand again?
    She could not resist. She grasped his callused hand and felt at once the power he held in check. It thrilled her and alarmed her and convinced her more than ever that there was some connection between them, something meant to be. He lifted her to her feet as if her weight were nothing, but did not immediately release his grip. Instead he tugged her nearer, his eyes voracious. Intense.
    “I want to kiss more than your hand, Isolde. Should you desire that also, you have but to ask it of me.”
    Then, on that utterly devastating note, he let her go.
    Isolde stumbled back, reeling. Every step of the way—around the boulder, across the beach, up the steep stone steps, with him just behind her, she reeled from the impact of those few bold words. She slipped and he steadied her—no more than any gentleman would do. His hand caught her arm and curved around her elbow, courteous and impersonal. Yet she burned from the contact.
    By the time they gained the narrow ledge at the base of the castle wall, her legs were putty, her face was flushed, and her conflicting emotions had her utterly confused. She was not one prone to such emotional upheavals, yet she seemed unable to pull herself together.
    “Are you a’right, milady?” one of the guards called down, frowning when he spied her alone with Reevius.
    “Yes. Yes,” she repeated in a more carrying tone. The
guards would report this to Osborn, she realized. If she did not wish Reevius cast out of the castle, she must allay their suspicions.
    She took the gittern from Reevius and raised it high for the guards to see. “I shall soon serenade the hall myself,” she called up to them. Then, not able to meet Reevius’s unsettling stare, she thrust the instrument at him, turned and fled through the narrow postern passageway to the safety of the bailey and the myriad people of Rosecliffe.
    As the afternoon progressed Isolde made