A Knight to Remember (12 page)

“Your fingers.”

It took her a moment to remember what he was talking about.

Then he took her hand and sucked on her fingers. “A different savor, perhaps, but definitely you. But could you tell me why I thought we were in a barn?”

Her trembling legs almost betrayed her, but she stiffened her knees. “A barn?”

“I was making love and looked up, and you were above me, giving me such delight…”

He looked up at her. She looked down at him. He’d confused the memories, but somehow he’d placed them in her head. She remembered now—the heat, the scents, the motion, the excitement. She remembered something that had never happened.

“You made me a happy man,” he said. “You gave me a taste of yourself, and with that taste, you told me what life could be. You saved my life, and I owe you for that.
And Lady Edlyn”—his hands had been resting on the back of her thighs, but no longer—“I always repay my debts.”

His finger entered her from behind. His tongue lashed her from the front. She didn’t want to be the first one to make a spectacle of herself as she climaxed, but his finger deliberately coasted in and out while his tongue, in a counterpoint of rhythm, touched and withdrew.

She couldn’t stand up. She had to tell him. But she bleated, “I can’t…”

“You can.” He widened her legs. His finger plunged in her.

Too intimate. Too shameful. Too
good
.

She spasmed and cried out, and he pressed her with his open mouth, using his lips and tongue to prolong the exquisite sensuality.

When he had extracted every shudder, every moan, he removed his finger. He kissed each of her thighs and held her up with one hand on either cheek. He nestled his face against her stomach and waited, patiently, for the shaking to stop. And when it had, he asked, “Can you stand alone now?”

She couldn’t. Right now, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to stand alone again. But pride stiffened her spine. She clenched her teeth and nodded.

“Good,” he whispered. “Good. I would hate to think I had wearied you before the night had truly begun.”

What should she say to that?

Briskly, he untied her garters. “I have been a fool for you, Lady Edlyn.” The wet hose clung to her legs, and he worked the material down each calf. “Step out,” he instructed.

She had to rest a hand on his shoulder to balance on one leg, but he didn’t seem to mind.

In contrast to the care with which the hose had
been chosen, Hugh tossed them aside. “You saved my life. I have paid you back and will continue to do so all our days. But no woman makes me a laughingstock before my men and gets away with it.”

“I don’t understand.”

Standing, he grabbed a folded square of cloth off the table, shook it out, then twisted it around her hair. “Dry it.”

A simple command, but she didn’t want to raise her arms before him.

“Dry it,” he said again, and shaking out another square, he went to work on her body. He rubbed it hard, without a shred of ardor, returning the circulation to her skin.

That commonsense approach freed her to tend to her hair, and when she had dried most of it, he handed her another towel.

“Now, dry me.”

Her body still rang with the results of his seduction, and if she touched him, it would all begin again. As he no doubt knew, the wretched knave. “You’re already dry.”

“Not all of me.”

She wouldn’t look.

“Dry me,” he said. “It will delay your fate a little longer.”

He had that note of warning in his voice again, and she placed the cloth on his pectorals. Only his pectorals, but if she dried lower, her towel would become entangled, she would be trapped by curiosity, and she’d see what she’d scarcely glanced at.

So she dried his chest, then his arms, with slow sweeps of the cloth. “I didn’t make a fool of you.”

“I went to rescue you from the knaves who had kidnapped you. I thought you were raped or worse.”

“So ’twas your imagination which played you false,” she said, triumphant about shifting the blame that he seemed intent on placing at her doorstep.

Taking her wrists, he directed her hands downward. “You know how when your sons run off to play and get involved and don’t come home?”

“Aye…” His lower belly demanded attention, and his hips. And she could stall by drying his upper thighs, although it was difficult to accomplish without looking. If only she could concentrate on the conversation.

“You’re worried, the sun is getting low, and you imagine all kinds of dreadful things that could have happened to them.”

“Aye.” She was beginning to get his drift, and as she comprehended his words, she also comprehended his intention.

“Then they run in, dirty, scratched, without a care, and you’re so happy they’re safe you want to hug them and slap them at the same time.”

She stuck out her lower lip. He didn’t want her to dry him. He wanted her to stroke him, and mayhap, as he watched her squirm, he would get a little of his revenge.

“I rushed out and ruined my best blade on a stone for you—and you’d vanquished your captors yourself.”

A bubble of indignation rose in her. He wanted her to caress him intimately, and he insulted her at the same time? Brusquely she circled him, moving with a speed he didn’t think to counter, and began to dry his back. “Would you rather I had done nothing?”

“Nay. Oh, nay, I’m proud of you for your quick thinking.”

He sounded sincere, and she relaxed enough to swipe at his rump. First one side, then the other, both covered with those fine blond hairs. He had a rather
attractive behind, with the sucked-in, muscled cheeks of a very active man.

“But while I’m proud of you, you scared me to death.”

He turned and faced her, and she once again got the shock of seeing him in all his glory. Funny how the back wasn’t nearly as threatening as the front.

“I’ll hear nothing but trouble from my men for this, and so you must pay now.”

“Pay?”

His hands closed on her shoulders, and he brought her body close against his. He was warm and yes, a little wet in spots, but his intention was quite clear.

Completely rattled, she blurted, “Are you going to hit me?”

He stared at her, and his perception went far beyond their limited acquaintance. “I don’t beat women. There are better ways to get their attention.”

She relaxed.

Then he smiled, a toothy, rapacious grin that would have been at home on a hungry predator, and she realized she had relaxed too soon.

“Aye, you’d better be worried.” He backed her over to the pallet of skins in the corner. “It could take me a very long time before I’m satisfied with my revenge.”

She was in trouble. She was in big trouble. Brightly, she asked, “Would you like to tell me the details of your last battle?”

He just kept smiling.

“
We have them
, master. Eight good-sized rogues, ripe fer hanging.”

Hugh took Wharton’s arm and moved him away from the tent and toward the fire. “Did you have any trouble?”

Wharton’s sharp cackle of mirth made the other men look as they prepared for bed. “Nay, yer lady fixed them up properly. The reavers could scarcely stand from th’ cramps in their guts.”

Looking up at the stars, Hugh decided the rewards of the marriage bed had eased his indignation, and he said proudly, “She’s a clever lass.”

“Aye, fer a lass.” Wharton dismissed her ingenuity with scorn. “It wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t gone haring off like that.”

A smidgen of worry nudged at Hugh’s mind. “How many women marry their last husband’s executioner?”

“Ye didn’t execute him. Not exactly. An’ anyway, he deserved it. I don’t suppose ye’ll be wanting my services this night?” Wharton shook out his bedroll.

“Nay. I have no need of your services tonight.” Hugh glanced back at his tent. He’d left Edlyn sleeping,
but he had the urge to wake her again. For some reason, he needed to imprint himself on her, and he needed to do it tonight. With only half a mind on his words, he said, “Have the sheriff hang the reavers as soon as we leave Eastbury.”

Wharton paused in the act of kicking the already sleeping squires. “Not first thing in th’ morning?”

“’Twill upset my lady. She developed a tender place for those reavers.”

“Move, ye varlets!” Wharton used his foot to clear a space for his bedroll. “’Tis odd. They seemed to know her more than simple reavers should know.”

Alarm jangled in Hugh’s mind. “Why do you say that?”

“When we said they’d hang fer trying t’ rape a lady, they groveled. They said they never would have touched her.”

“Flimsy prattle.” Hugh dismissed that.

“I thought they meant it.” Wharton scratched as he lowered himself to the ground. “They’d been watching her, I think. It sounded as if ’twas her they’d been planning t’ capture. Not just any woman, but Edlyn, countess of Jagger.”

The rumble of men’s voices woke Edlyn, but her eyelids were so weighted she thought it would take a mill wheel to lift them. She thought about prying them open with her fingers, but that would involve moving her hand from wherever it rested.

She wiggled her fingers.

Ah, her hand lay beneath her cheek. Close to her eyelids. Very close. As the abbess always said—

Without use of mill wheel or fingers, Edlyn’s eyes sprang open. Lady Corliss. The abbey. She observed
the dim sunlight that entered the open tent flap. Morning Mass. She’d missed them all!

The men’s babble died. A large shadowy shape stood up from the table where the voices had originated, moved across the tent floor, and knelt beside her. “You’re awake.” Hugh’s voice. Hugh’s now-familiar touch on her cheek. “I was getting worried.”

“How late…?” Her voice came out raspy.

Hugh snapped his fingers. “Mid-morning.” Another shadowed figure came to his side and gave him something, then withdrew. Hugh lifted her head and placed a goblet to her lips. She drank greedily, and when she had finished, he said, “You’re hoarse this morning. Too much moaning last night, I suppose.”

She planted her hand on his chest and pushed, and he sat down hard. The men at the table laughed, but Hugh laughed too. This morning, he no longer cared if his troop mocked him. He’d extracted his revenge last night.

If only she hadn’t enjoyed it quite so thoroughly.

“Go back to sleep,” he said. “It’s a misty morning, not good for anything but sleep.”

“I have to go back to the abbey.” Although how she was going to get dressed with all those men sitting around, she didn’t know.

“Why?”

He didn’t sound hostile, but that single brief word didn’t bode well for her plans. “If I am to leave this place with you, I need to pack my belongings.” Then it occurred to her she was assuming much. “That is…I am supposed to go with you?”

“You’ll go with me.” He gathered her hair in his hand and moved it off her shoulder, then covered her shoulder with his palm.

His silent gesture of possessiveness made her uneasy, and she asked pertly, “May one ask where?”

“To Roxford Castle. I am to take possession of Roxford’s lands as well as his title.”

“Roxford.” A face flashed before her. Long and thin, handsome, intelligent, and…cruel. Edmund Pembridge, now the former earl of Roxford.

Robin’s crony.

“Do you know him?”

“Nay.” She denied it, although she didn’t know why. It was, perhaps, the instinctive reaction of a woman made uncomfortable by the admiration of a man.

“I’m surprised. I thought you would have known such a leader in the rebellion.”

Had Hugh seen something in her face? Or was it simply logic?

She feigned irritation. “I didn’t know them all.” Twitching her shoulder away from his touch, she buried it beneath the furs and did her best to change the subject. “Is that why you married me? To manage your new possessions?”

In a flat tone, he answered, “It is a sound plan, is it not?”

It
was
a sound plan. He’d never owned property. She’d managed Robin’s, and successfully, too. And it certainly reduced the previous night to its rightful dimensions. “Then I must—”

“Wharton already gathered your belongings from your room at the abbey and brought them here in a sack.”

She withered at the thought of Wharton pawing through the few pathetic things she’d managed to amass since she’d come to the abbey. But some of the items were important, and she asked, “Did he bring everything?”

“All of it,” Hugh confirmed. “Although he might as well have burned it.”

Appalled, she sat up. “Nay. Say you will not!”

The men at the table cleared their throats as Hugh lunged to cover her. As if she would be so stupid to show herself to them! She held a thin blanket before her and glared at Hugh, and he glared back. Jerking his head, he commanded, “Out!”

She wondered briefly if he meant her, then stools tumbled and men fled the tent, shutting the flap behind them.

Enough light leaked through gaps in the tent pieces for her to see Hugh’s stern features. “Tell me why I shouldn’t burn that pathetic pile of drab clothing and worn blankets,” he demanded.

Tell him? Not likely. “Those are
my
possessions,” she said firmly.

“I’m your husband,” he answered. “They’re now my possessions.” He slipped his thumb along the ridge of her collarbone. “As are you, my lady Roxford.”

He had an expression on his face she recognized, for she’d seen it often last night before the candle burned down and left them in darkness. She caught his hand as it wandered down her chest. “I submit to your dictate obediently, as a wife should, and will discard most of my previous possessions, as my lord demands. I ask only that you allow me to pick out two things before you burn all else.”

His hand turned in hers, and his fingers tickled her palm. “Make me.”

“Make you?”

“Enthrall me. Enchant me. Make me do your bidding.”

She hated playing games like this. She’d done it before with the highest of hopes. She’d given everything, used every wile, and when she was done. Robin had praised her and promised to do as she begged, then
he had forgotten or given the favor to another, better lover. No, she wouldn’t give in to Hugh’s challenge. “I’m not an enchantress,” she said gruffly.

“Ah, but you are.” He leaned into her, crowding her back.

She refused to fall easily as she’d done last night. She’d made everything too easy last night, but he’d taken her by surprise. She’d been too long without a lover. Or was it that he was too good to resist?

Her reward for constraint was a kiss bestowed upon the shoulder he’d earlier caressed. “See how you enchant me?” he whispered. “Even after a night such as last night, the sight of you stirs me.”

She tried to inject a prosaic note into the rapidly heating atmosphere of the tent. “You’ll get used to me soon enough.”

“Will I?” He tried to twitch away the blanket, but she held on tight. “I have no experience with this. Do all men weary of their brides?”

“Sooner or later.” His hands crept around to her back. As his fingers slid into the hair at the base of her skull, she fought to keep her sense of reality. “Probably sooner.” But she said it with a sigh, and she let him ease her back on the pillow.

“Then they are bride and groom no longer.” He massaged her scalp. “But husband and wife.”

“And he’s unfaithful.”

“Not I, my lady.” He leaned over her, an elbow planted on each side of her head, and he pleasured her with the slow intoxication of relaxation. “I pledged my troth of you, and I always keep my vows.”

Eyes closed, she laughed weakly.

“Don’t you believe me?”

His hands slipped away from her—in punishment, she supposed—and she wished for the moment of
cherishing she’d lost. Then his hands were back, moving around her ears and among the roots of her hair. “You’ll apologize to me for that one day,” he pledged.

“By the saints, I hope so,” she muttered.

“I’m not Robin of Jagger.”

“I know that.”

“I will not betray you with another woman.”

She didn’t answer, for she didn’t believe him.

“I am nothing like him,” Hugh insisted.

Sitting up in a sudden blaze of fury, she tore herself away from his hands, jerking strands of her hair loose in the process. “Oh, aye, you are! You’re just like him. A warrior, going forth to right every wrong, to fight every foe.”
You get out of your clothes as quickly, too
, she wanted to say. That she kept to herself, but somehow, he’d stripped himself while he caressed her. “And you’ll end up just like him, too.”

“I will not hang!”

“Mayhap not, but you’ll be just as dead. Spitted on a sword, or bashed with a mace, or bludgeoned beneath the hooves of some other knight’s horse. They’ll bring you home to me on a slab, and I’ll cry until I’m hoarse, and I’ll be alone again.”

He laughed. Laughed! “I won’t be killed. Better me n have tried many a time and haven’t succeeded—why would they succeed now?”

The stupid oaf mocked her rage and her fear. She’d heard that braggadocio before, and once more, she tried to reason with something that couldn’t be reasoned with—a man’s brain. “As time goes on, the chance is ever greater that you will be killed.”

“As time goes on, my skill in battle grows ever greater.”

“Mere luck works against you.” He still smiled, that patronizing “I know best” smile. He tried to take
her hand, but she rapped his knuckles. She wanted to fight. He wanted to swive. He’d win, of course, but she’d challenge him anyway. “You want me. All right, you can have me. “I’ll warm your bed and keep your house and you’ll never know what you’re missing.”

That made him stop. Moving closer, he stared at her face as if she would tell him a secret. “What will I be missing?”

“I won’t give you any of my…my true affection.” There was no use talking about love. She didn’t still cherish him in her heart. She didn’t cherish any man in her heart. “I’m not going to grieve for a man who looks for a fight when peace can be made with a smile.”

He still didn’t understand, and she guessed why. All he wanted was her efficiency and her body, and he would be satisfied. Fine and good; she’d give him both in generous portions and keep the important parts for herself and her sons.

Then he grabbed her, his face alight with comprehension. “Are you saying you’ll not give to me what you gave to Robin?”

“Ah.” She spoke to the air. “He’s a clever lad, he is.”

“That’s what you think, my lady. That’s what you think.” He stripped the bedcovers away from her and pushed her down. He placed his hands one on each side of her hips and lowered himself to her, and his sword stood ready for combat.

She grabbed him by the back and put the mark of her fingernails along his spine. She was ready for him. Even the wildness of the night before couldn’t extinguish her excitement.

She might not love this man, but she wanted him, and that was enough. “You’ll not win this battle,” she vowed.

“I win every battle,” he answered, his hazel eyes flaming with conviction.

Wrapping her legs around his hips, she opened herself to him, determined to swallow him and leave him defenseless.

Without even directing himself, he thrust home.

She arched back, caught instantly in frenzied orgasm. He rose like a whale breaching in a wave. On his knees he caught her hips. He forced himself deeper. She couldn’t take more, but he made a place for himself deep within her. Her womb welcomed him with ripples of demand and pleasure.

No finesse. Nothing but instant desire, followed by instant release.

He muttered, “I don’t take you. You take me.”

He admitted that, so she was winning. Winning! Another orgasm caught her, and she screamed from the heat and the fierceness.

He besieged her, thrusting again and again. The castle gate had fallen, the enemy was within, but he hadn’t defeated her and he knew it. His hands moved over her; he pinched her nipples, then moved his hand down below her waist and slid his thumb between their bodies.

The result brought her right off the mat. She pushed with her hands under her until she, too, was sitting up. Until her bottom rested on his thighs and he caught her around the waist to raise her to his level. With her feet planted firmly on the floor, she used her legs to move, and this time he groaned, loud and deep, like a beast in its death throes. She set the rhythm, making him follow, and when he swore at her, she titled back her head and laughed.

He tumbled them over and tucked her beneath him. She couldn’t fight him. Her thighs trembled with the effort she had made…or was it the continuous, vibrant flow of life between them that weakened her?

“You’re mine.” He wrapped her legs high up on his back and began the final assault. “Mine. Mine.”

She heard it as a chant.

“Mine.”

As magic.

“Mine.”

She grabbed the length of hair that hung over his shoulders and jerked until he opened his eyes and fixed his attention on her face. Fiercely, caught up in his demands, in the demands of his body, she said, “Mine,” and dragged him down so she could seal his lips with hers.