Crusader Captive by Merline Lovelace

passions. The one purpose, the sole purpose, of concourse between man and wife was to produce a quiverful of children. All else was sin in the eyes of the Lord.
    And yet… And yet…
    How could this be sin? How could she ache in every part of her as she did for this man? How could she bend to take him in her mouth, without so much as a fleeting care for her immortal soul?
    “Ahhhhh.”
    The groan ripped loose from deep inside Simon. His entire body rigid, he drew in a long, ragged breath before thrusting her away from him. He turned to his side, but not before she’d gotten her first taste of a man.
    When he turned back to her, his chest heaved and he glared at her almost angrily. “I’m sorry, Lady Jocelyn. I did not intend to spill myself like that.”
    “Did you not?” Surprised, she swiped her tongue along her lips. “That was my intention.”
    The frank admission took everything Simon thought he knew about women and turned it upside down. The well-born ladies of his acquaintance were wont to play the tease, promising with sideways glances and pretty pouts what they had no intention of delivering. Women of the lower orders tended to be more forthright in their sexual desires. But even with them a man must needs exert himself to understand their confusing and often contradictory signals.
    This one played no games at all. She spoke her mind and suited deed to thought. She was also brave and strong and true to her word. And well above the touch of a lowborn knight such as he.
    That thought sat heavy on Simon’s heart as he pushed himself to a sitting position. “You are a woman such as I’ve never known before.”
    Lips red and swollen from his kisses turned up at the corners. “Oh, so? And have you known many women?”
    His brains might still be addled from what she’d done to him, but he retained enough sense to sidestep that particular bear pit.
    “No more than my share, milady.”
    She gave a disbelieving huff and reached for her shift. When it fluttered down to settle around her hips, she cocked her head and regarded him with a curious look.
    “So tell me, Simon de Rhys. Why would one who rises so readily and takes such pleasure of a woman give himself to the Church?”
    His first thought was to shrug aside the question. But she’d shared her secrets with him. He could do no less with her. Still, he had to force himself to tell her what he’d told no other soul, save the saintly Bishop of Clairvaux.
    “I did not give myself.”
    The memory of his last meeting with his gaunt, wasted father rose in his mind. Gervase de Rhys’s lips had twisted when he’d laid eyes on the youngest of his sons who didn’t bear the label of bastard. There were plenty enough of those, Simon knew. More than his unrepentant sire could count.
    Unrepentant, that is, until sickness had laid him low. As his flesh had withered and death had drawn closer with each rattling breath, his sire had felt the weight of his many transgressions pressing on him like an anvil. He’d confessed those sins to a priest, or so he’d said. Done penance and been given absolution. That gave assurance he wouldn’t burn forever in the fires of hell, but so black was his past that he must needs take extraordinary measures to lessen his time in purgatory.
    He’d sought every indulgence, promised what little he still owned to the Church. He’d promised, as well, his fifth—and last surviving—legitimate son. Simon had ignored his earnest pleas to make good on that oath until the Bishop of Clairvaux had said gently, sorrowfully, that the oath bound him as much as his sire.
    The fact that the bishop was Europe’s most vocal and passionate advocate of the Second Crusade only added to his persuasiveness. It was Simon’s duty, he’d argued, as it was that of all men of true belief, to ensure the infidels didn’t recapture the most holy sites in Christendom.
    Simon couldn’t tell this woman of the agony of conscience the bishop’s words had roused