Adelais’s smile grew larger.“Then what?Then it must be a pagan abbey?This may be a strange place, but it’s not that strange.And I hardly think their saintly King Edward would have made so many pilgrimages if this were secretly a shrine to Diana or Bacchus.”
Ernouf shook his head.“You may be right about that, but there’s still something uncanny here.The men feel it.I think you’d feel it, too, if you let yourself.”
Adelais clapped his shoulder and turned back to the camp to check on the other men.Ernouf could keep his superstitions.The only thing she felt was a gnawing need to have her little abbess naked again.
Six
TATE
JUDITH AND LEOFGIFUhad the abbey well in hand, but Tate still hesitated as she climbed up the knotty path to the moors.Her duty was to the abbey and everyone in it, and now that duty called her to the Wolf’s tent.But it still felt wrong to go tonight.Not because she worried that God would judge her for the deal she’d struck with the Norman warrior, not that at all.
It felt wrong because itdidn’tfeel wrong.Because there was a twisting excitement in her stomach as she crested the lip of the valley and came out onto the moor.Because her cunt was already wet thinking of Adelais.
It didn’t feel like penance or payment for her crimes.It didn’t feel anything like what atonement should feel like.And for that…for that, she wasn’t sure if God would forgive her.To begrudgingly save her abbey was one thing.But to think about their invader finding her in the dark, tearing off her clothes, marking her with a wolf’s bite…
Towantthat…
This time, she was spotted almost as soon as she left the shadows clinging to the hillside.The same two guards from last night—with grim expressions that made Tate wonder if they’d been censured for their lack of awareness the night before—led Tate silently to the Wolf’s tent, and they lifted the flap for her.
Adelais was inside, sitting on her cot with an apple in one hand and a dagger with an unornamented metal hilt in the other.Tate stepped through the opening, wondering if she should take off her clothes right away or drop to her knees to signal her willingness.
Adelais sliced off a paper-thin round of apple and ate it, regarding Tate with eyes made bronze by the light of the brazier.“Let’s go for a walk,” she said abruptly, standing.
Tate stared.“A walk?But?—”
Adelais was already pushing past her, apple and dagger still in hand.“Come on, abbess.”
Adelais looked unfairly beautiful in the dusk light filtering in from the open flap of the tent, her red hair hued violet by the encroaching night, freckles like spatters of blood on her face, shadows clinging to the underside of her full mouth.She was tall and lean, and she wore nothing under her tunic, so Tate could easily make out the high, firm curves of her breasts.The stiff tips of her nipples.
Maybe Adelais would make her suck them tonight.
“Very well,” Tate heard herself say in a faint voice.Who was she kidding?With the fire burning in her belly and with her own nipples pebbled and eager, she would have followed Adelais anywhere.All the way to the sea if it meant touching her again.
Adelais nodded, holding the flap of the tent so that Tate could duck out, and then Adelais followed.Together they walked to the edge of the camp and to the road leading down to the rest of the valley.They passed soldiers sitting in circles around fires and chattering; they passed the horses grazing quietly near the water, and soon they were alone in the near darkness, with only the moon for company.
As the Wolf walked, she cut off pieces of apple, her knife bright in the dark, and popped the pieces in her mouth, crunching the fruit with jaunty aplomb.Twice she offered a bite to Tate, and the second time, Tate relented and murmured,Yes, that would be nice.
Adelais stopped and held the slice between her fingers.“Open,” she said to Tate, and Tate did, parting her lips obediently.
Adelais put the apple on Tate’s tongue, and then watched as Tate closed her mouth and ate.It was as thin as a communion wafer, as sweet and tart as Adelais had tasted last night.Tate swallowed.
Adelais wiped her blade on her tunic and sheathed it.She licked her fingers clean of any remaining apple juice, her eyes full of glimmers from the moon overhead as she watched Tate watching her.Her tongue was a pale pink in the moonlight as it slid against the pads of her fingers and over her knuckles.
Tate couldn’t think a single thought for a moment, she was so entranced by that tongue.And then she wanted to shake herself until her teeth rattled.What was wrong with her?Why was it this one person—thisNorman, murdering person—could make her feel like she was drowning?When even princesses and kings couldn’t do that?
She needed to get back to the way she’d been yesterday before she met Adelais—determined, emotionless.Penitential.
Because all of this, being the abbess and a nun in the first place, was supposed to be about penance.
She wouldn’t be unraveled by a horrible Norman, and she’d decided that she couldn’t allow herself to enjoy what was meant to be a duty.A sacrifice.
To do so meant?—
Well, she didn’t know what it meant exactly, but it still felt wrong.
“We should go back to your tent,” Tate said as Adelais started walking again.She had to take two strides for every one of the Wolf’s.“So we can honor our, um, arrangement.”
A smile flashed in the dark.“And we need a tent for that?”
