Tate didn’t know how Adelais had bequeathed it to her, how Adelais’s blunt non-judgment had done what Mother Ardith’s confidence and Edwin’s gentle reassurances hadn’t, but somehow, it had.Tate felt lighter, brighter, like maybe forgiveness could be hers.Like maybe it had been hers a long time ago, and God had to resort to sending a Norman invader to her door to tell her so.
A Norman invader who Tate couldn’t stop thinking about, couldn’t stop aching for.
Tonight, she told herself.Tonight.And maybe—well, the Normans were here to stay, weren’t they?Adelais had mentioned a son in Normandy, but perhaps it wasn’t so unreasonable that she would live in England, at least some of the time.William seemed to keep his favorite nobles close, rewarded them with stolen lands and titles.Tate had hated William for it before, but if it meant Adelais stayed in England, that she could see Adelais again after all this was over…
After their noontime prayers, Leofgifu ordered her to bed.Tate made sure the pilgrims were cared for, and then staggered to her cell, barely able to wash herself and change into a clean shift before she collapsed onto her bed and darkness took her.
Her dreams were all of Adelais.
They were very good ones.
But when she woke from her happy, wicked dreams, she woke not to late afternoon sunlight, but to complete darkness.Leofgifu must not have woken her up for their afternoon or evening prayers.
Tate had needed the sleep, but now she was going to be late to meet Adelais, and that had her tossing her blanket back to roll out of bed as quickly as she could.
Except her blanket didn’t flip over her legs.It barely fluttered at all.Tate blinked as the shadows at the edge of her bed began to move, resolve into a shape, tall and large, barely outlined by the faint moonlight coming in from a small, high window.A dagger hilt gleamed at the shadow’s waist.
Someone was in her cell.
Someone was in her cell watching hersleep.
Tate opened her mouth to scream, but a hand clapped over her mouth instead.“Shh,” said a musical voice in the dark.Tate smelled grass, metal, soap.“You don’t want to wake anyone up, do you?”
Tate tried to speak, but Adelais didn’t loosen her hand on Tate’s mouth.
“You know,” Adelais said conversationally, “when you didn’t show up tonight, I thought maybe you’d decided not to honor the arrangement after all.That a third Danegeld payment was one too many.”
Tate reached up to pull at Adelais’s wrist, but Adelais caught her hand with her free one, her eyes shining.
“No, no, abbess, I’m not angry.I came here to demand my payment, thinking I’d find you defiant, hiding yourself away from me, and instead I found my little mouse curled up asleep in her nest.I must have worn you out last night.”
It wasn’t that the fear was leaking out of Tate so much that it was joined by something just as hot, just as torturous, a brew of the same wicked, sizzling lust she felt last night.She should be wondering how Adelais made it inside the abbey, if any other Normans were inside the walls.
Adelais seemed to sense her questions, because she leaned close to Tate and murmured, “It’s only me, abbess.Now, about that payment…”
Tate squirmed as Adelais considered her.
“Whatever shall I do with this little nun I’ve caught unawares?”the Wolf mused.“Hmm.”
Tate moaned against her hand.
“Perhaps,” Adelais said slowly, “I will do whatever I want.”
She lifted her hand from Tate’s mouth, but only long enough to shove the blankets off and find the edge of Tate’s shift.It was a threadbare thing, since it would be a sin to waste Far Hope’s wealth on something as frivolous as luxurious clothes for the sisters.Adelais seemed almost offended by it as she looked at it in the moonlight; with a displeased noise, she easily ripped a long piece from the hem, leaning down and using her teeth to tear the whole strip free.
Tate was about to protest—this was one of only two shifts she owned, and she’d planned on wearing it until it literally fell apart—but then Adelais was wrapping the linen around Tate’s wrists and cinching them together.Tate was bound fast, like a captive for real, although strangely the insides of her feltunboundnow, like the knots around her wrists had unraveled something that had been choking and pinching the insides of her without her knowing it until this very moment.
Adelais sat up to admire her handiwork.“If you need to stop, say the word,” she said bluntly, warmly.Arestes.It sounded like a secret, sacred word when she uttered it in the dark.Tate nodded to show she understood Adelais’s instructions.
“Now,” Adelais went on, her voice tilting darker and colder, becoming the voice of an Adelais who crept into abbeys at night and sated her lusts on the innocent nuns she found there.“What will I do with you…”
Adelais moved so that her entire body was on the cot and then crawled down Tate’s body until she knelt between Tate’s legs.She pushed the now-tattered hem of Tate’s shift up to her hips.
“What a pretty pussy,” said the Wolf.“A shame it’s locked away in a convent for no one else to enjoy, hmm?”
She ran idle fingers over the topography of Tate’s cunt, toying with the wet rim of Tate’s opening, with the sensitive berry of her clit.
“Please,” gasped Tate.“I’ll give you anything.”
