"Slightly reddened now," he went on cruelly, now studying his handiwork.
Emma told herself it was pointless to wonder why it was she loved him spanking her. She now resolved it was because she loved all of him and everything he did to her.
"And I could make it glowing red," he added in full mischief, burying his fingers into the fair hair he'd unplaited.
With bated breath, Emma waited for him to do just what he professed, but instead of punishing her, his hand cupped her buttocks as he turned her to face him, drawing her closer. They were now both lying on their side, their gazes locked, the heat of their breath on each other's cheeks.
"Why don't you?" Emma found herself muttering, as she pressed herself tight against his arousal.
"Perhaps I should," he whispered back, but kissed her sweetly instead, and Emma began to debate within herself whether she loved his sweet kisses even better than his stinging spankings.
He was still fully dressed, and Emma felt the sudden urge of touching and caressing his body just as he'd done to her. Like other times before, she started marvelling in the lithe beauty of his body as she got him naked, apart from the leather bracers which he wore for his target practice. To Emma, it seemed sinfully wicked that he now lay before her wearing only these arm guards. Her archer didn't protest when her caresses became almost as teasing as his had been, and he only watched her through hooded eyes with his clever hands tucked under his head. The posture appeared innocent, but Emma found herself smiling because Arthen Archer was a man who couldn't quite ever disguise the feral glint in his brown gold-flecked eyes.
She caressed the side of his unhandsome face, which she'd come to love, tracing her fingers over the white scar that only seemingly marred it. He laughed, not pushing her hand away.
"Perhaps one day I should tell you how I got this," he muttered.
His words made Emma painfully recall how many still unshared things lay between them and she opened her mouth to speak. But he snared her with an ardent kiss, which took her breath away. From there, everything became a blur of hot breath and ardent caresses. And Arthen was true to his word. He wasembedded to the hilt inside her when she peaked, just at the same time as he cried his own rapture. And Emma understood then why she'd always hated other men's hands upon her and why they'd made her feel so confined. It was not only because Arthen was honourable and fair while they were cruel and petty. It was because she'd been born to love no man but Arthen.
CHAPTER 20
Arthen woke up at dawn and stared at the woman sleeping next to him. He thought upon their lovemaking. And he painfully realized what had been plain in front of him to see from the very beginning. This was not Rowena. This was not his wife.
“Good morrow,” she told him with a sated smile on her lips.
She was glowing this morning, made even lovelier than usual by the passionate lovemaking they’d shared. Her smile was, he understood now, different from Rowena’s, as so many other things about this woman were different from Rowena. In daylight, he was able to see it only too well. It had not been his fancy, her breasts were somewhat fuller than Rowena’s, and not slightly freckled as Rowena’s had been. And the way she'd loved him was nothing at all like Rowena.
“I…” She blushed fiercely, now perceiving his eyes upon her nakedness and pulling a sheet over her wondrous body.
Her modesty, Arthen realized, was not feigned. Still, just like Rowena, she was now deceiving him. He frowned. But then he recalled that, last night, she had spoken to him urgently, telling him she was other than he thought. And he also remembered what he’d angrily dismissed as her mad, wild talk when he’d seteyes on her in London. I’m not Rowena. Do I sound like Rowena to you?She’d tried to get away from him in the night, and he’d bound her to him. Bound her… In Wales and Scotland people did not set so much store on church blessings. They just bound hands in handfast to call themselves married. And Arthen was half Welsh after all.
He attempted to clear his head. At first she’d tried to get away from him, this woman who was not Rowena. But then… His glance fell upon her as she was trying to right her luscious hair, which he’d unplaited last night and which had become tangled during their lovemaking.
“I think I’d better get dressed and see to breakfast,” she now muttered in a shy voice, which Arthen now understood, did not sound quite like Rowena’s.
While the timbre of it was the same, there were times when it got lower and huskier. And the way she spoke the words… Fancy and clear, even fancier than Rowena had taught herself to speak. Yesterday she’d spoken Norman to the Sheriff of Nottingham, and her speech had sounded even nobler than the Sheriff’s. High-born? A true high-born lady?
He watched her get into her underdress and then into her gown. Commoners' garments did not have as many laces as noblewomen’s gowns and she was able to do these herself, with no help from him. And after he stepped into his own clothes, he went to the kitchen to watch her busy herself with their morning meal, taking in her movements and gestures.
He mused upon the way she’d been with Robin. And he understood that in this he had nothing to fear from her. She cared deeply for the child, in a way Rowena had never been able to.
“What will you do today?” he asked making his voice blank.
“I’ll go to Maggie’s to fetch Robin and also take Will off her hands for a while because it’s only fair. And then I need to see tosome washing and mending here,” she answered, but she caught his penetrating gaze upon her, and she blushed just as fiercely as before.
“Arthen, did you mean what you said last night?” she asked at last, straightening an errant tendril of the fair hair she’d hastily braided.
Arthen had the urge of going to her right there and then to unplait her hair and take her hard and fast against the kitchen table. And she was not his wife. This woman he knew nothing about. Although he’d been deep inside her last night. And in these past weeks they’d lived quite closely together.
“Did you mean for us to have a new beginning? A new marriage, just as if I were a different woman from the one you first wed?”
Arthen gave her a measuring glance. This woman was just as deceitful as Rowena, wasn’t she? Yet when she’d cried under him in full, shared rapture, it hadn’t seemed at all like deceit to him. Their lovemaking had seemed true. The truest thing he’d ever shared with a woman.
“Because… there’s something I wish to tell you. Something I wanted to tell you last night. Something portentous I’ve wanted to tell you ever since–”
John’s loud voice calling for him from outside cut off what she’d meant to say. At times, John walked to Arthen’s house because it was a short distance. And they went to the archery field together, to talk upon the things they had to do with their pupils during the day.
“Later,” Arthen found himself muttering, as he rose to his feet.