Page 98 of Come the Morning

“Hello?” she called softly. “Hello …”

Unease filtered down her spine. “Hello! Come out!” she whispered heatedly.

She’d heard a rustling from the stairs. But now, she thought that she heard something from behind her.

She spun around.

Waryk. Still in his fur-trimmed robe, arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed in the dim light.

“Waryk!” she cried nervously.

“Who are you meeting here?” he demanded.

“What?”

“Who are you supposed to meet here, who are you calling?”

She shook her head. “No one!”

His expletive cut the night like a blade, and despite herself, she winced, moving backwards, hands clenched into fists. He started down the aisle toward her, strides long, eyes sharp. “Then why are you here?”

“I just came to—to—”

“To what?”

“See my mother’s grave.”

He stopped, just six inches from her. She had to hold her ground or trip over the dais where the altar stood.

“In the middle of the night?” he challenged. “To commune with her? To ask her if your father hadn’t been a plundering, thieving, raping conqueror when he first came here?”

“Aye, maybe!”

“You’re a liar,” he told her.

She opened her mouth to protest, but his hand suddenly shot out. His fingers entwined in her hair and he dragged her toward him, tilting her head. He stared into her eyes, then lowered his mouth to hers, covering it, encompassing it. His tongue moved into her mouth with a coercive, invading force. His lips punished, and yet seduced with a strange, wild, fire. She struggled against him, unnerved by his mood, and his sudden actions. He had touched her before, and pushed her away. Time and again. Yet now it seemed that something exploded within her, liquid, like mercury, dancing in her blood. She wanted to free herself, she wanted to go back, she had taunted him too far, and she knew it, and she wanted the evening to start over, she didn’t want to feel this cataclysm of scalding heat sear through her with such wicked design …

“Stop, we’re in a chapel!” she whispered, breaking from him.

“So, confess your sins. Who were you meeting?” he demanded against her mouth.

“No one!”

“You’re a liar,” he said, and his fingers, threaded into her hair, tightened their hold so that she nearly cried out. She didn’t think that she’d ever seen him so incensed. “You were expecting someone to be here. You wretched little fool. You’ll bring about the deaths of a dozen men yet.”

“No!”

“You’re right. Because I won’t let you,” he said suddenly, and he ducked, picking her up, hiking her over his shoulders.

“Waryk, what are you doing. Waryk, let me go, I can walk, someone will see us—”

“Oh? Who?”

“Let me go, let me walk, let me stand on my own feet, I will go where you want me to go—”

“Aye, that you will.”

He was very angry, and she was flopping against his back as he moved with long, heedless strides. “Waryk, you’re tossing me about like a sack of flour—”