Gayle Callen (9 page)

“I am happy to hear that.”

Katherine winced, wishing he wouldn’t have spoken so abruptly. The tension was palpable now, and the low, angry murmurs made her uneasy. She closed her eyes and prayed the rain would let up soon.

The clouds rolled back to reveal the half moon just after sunset. Katherine was so tense she thought she’d jump out of her skin at every cough
from their companions across the hut. The group watched in sullen silence as Reynold lit a fire from dry bits of wood.

When he sat down beside her, Katherine spoke in a whisper. “Reynold, I need to go outside. I will return in but a moment.”

He caught her arm as she rose. “I shall come with you.”

“No! No, please, I am nervous enough. Just stay and watch them. I do not wish to be surprised.”

“I can guard you best out there,” he insisted, getting to his knees.

Katherine pushed him back. “Give me this moment of privacy—please!”

He hesitated, then slowly sank back down. As Katherine straightened, the group along the far wall broke into noisy laughter.

“She don’t want ye, man, can’t ye see,” the woman said loudly.

They elbowed each other and guffawed. Katherine sent a worried gaze to Reynold and slipped quickly out the door.

After taking care of her needs, she leaned against a tree in the overgrown yard behind the hut, breathing in the moist, cool air, happy to be alone with her thoughts. She wished she could ask Reynold how far they still were from Nottingham, but their companions made speaking impossible. Katherine felt that her mind and heart were warring within her, one urging that she warn the king with all haste, the other wanting to linger on this
journey and savor these stirrings she’d never felt before.

Her peace was suddenly shattered by the sound of rustling grasses nearby. The yard was so overgrown that an animal—or a man—could easily surprise her.

Katherine silently ran the opposite way, around the sagging walls of the hut to the front entrance. As she slowed down to catch her breath, she heard the peasant woman’s unpleasant laugh.

“She’s not coming back, ye know,” the woman said.

Katherine heard a thud and a moan. She flattened herself against the wall, heart pounding.

“I sent Jack out to find her. He likes a good hump in the grass.”

Biting her lips against a moan of terror, she gazed wildly about the overgrown village, where the wind whistled and the leaves whispered their menace. Someone was looking for her.

T
he silence frightened Katherine more than anything. A man was looking for her, and Reynold was ominously quiet. What had they done to him? Holding her breath, she leaned over to take a quick peek inside and straightened with a smothered gasp. By the firelight she’d seen the villagers grouped around a body on the floor.

Her breath came in frightening pants that threatened her with dizziness. Reynold couldn’t be dead—they were speaking to him as if they expected an answer. But he wasn’t answering. Two tears slid down her cheeks before she remembered that there was a man out here somewhere. If she let herself be captured, she couldn’t help Reynold.

Katherine sunk down to her hands and knees, slowly crawling back the way she’d come. The man hunting her wouldn’t expect that, would he? The wet grass swished about her body, stinging her several times in the eyes and face, but she kept
moving, stopping every few minutes to listen. She hit her hand on a piece of firewood someone had abandoned long ago, then gripped it like a weapon and continued to crawl.

A moment later she heard a branch crack directly in front of her. She dropped onto her side and held the firewood against her chest, waiting. He loomed above her in the grass as he trudged by, his head swinging from right to left.

Katherine held her breath until he’d passed, then scrambled up and hit him as hard as she could in the head. The sound of the wood connecting with his skull made her gag, but there was nothing in her stomach to lose. He crumpled at her feet and Katherine didn’t check to see if he were alive or dead. Although it sickened her, she forced herself to search his body until she found a knife near his outstretched hand.

With a weapon, Katherine felt almost invincible. Yet she could hardly walk in the front door and confront two men and a woman by herself. She leaned against the wall in consternation and rising panic. She’d never had to defend someone else before. Did she have the strength to kill?

The wattle and daub wall seemed to give way beneath her weight and Katherine straightened rapidly. Frowning, she stared at it a moment, then dropped to her knees and began to scrape at the dried mud between the wood sticks in the wall. The mud crumbled to the ground and she dug faster, ignoring the slivers of wood that cut her hands. Soon she’d opened a small hole to which she
pressed her eye. Her sight blurred for a moment then adjusted to the flickering firelight and the bodies moving about Reynold. He came up on his elbows and a man kicked him for his effort.

The woman emptied Reynold’s sack onto the floor and dropped to her knees to root through his treasures. She gave a screech and flung the bag at her victim.

“Ye got nothin’ but two shillin’s? Ye’re ’olding out on us. Search ’is clothes!”

Katherine gasped as the two men rolled Reynold onto his back and began to tug and pull at his tunic. Reynold groaned. Outraged, Katherine jumped to her feet and ran towards the front of the hut. She stood next to the crooked door frame and began to shriek at the top of her lungs.

From inside she heard the woman curse.

“Go tell Jack to shut ’er up!”

One of the men came lumbering through the door and Katherine hit him hard with her piece of firewood. He dropped to his knees, but it took another swing to send him into the mud. She turned in time to see the two remaining peasants charging towards her.

Katherine stumbled back in shock and raised her knife and branch, wondering how she would fight either of them, let alone two. But the man went down on his stomach before he even reached the door. She glimpsed Reynold raising himself up from the man’s legs just as the woman launched herself into the air. Katherine fell backwards,
squashed into the dank mud by the woman’s solid body.

Katherine gasped and tried to bring the knife up, but the woman grappled for it. The mud made everything slippery, and the knife was caught at an awkward angle near Katherine’s hip. She could smell the woman’s foul breath, feel her own mind go foggy with lack of air. Just as the knife slipped from her fingers, the woman was yanked away. Reynold, angry and very intimidating, shook the peasant until she dropped the knife, then flung her to the ground.

“Go!” he shouted into the woman’s pale mud-spattered face. “Go now before I change my mind and punish you as you deserve!”

The woman crawled through the mud before stumbling to her feet, then pulled at two of her groggy friends until they stood and reeled. The third man tripped over Katherine in his haste to leave the hut. The four thieves propelled each other down the mud road.

Reynold could hear the woman’s cackling laugh. “I still got yer shillin’s, lad!”

He took one menacing step in their direction, and the woman shrieked and dragged her men into a run.

“Katherine, are you hurt?” he demanded, feeling as if his head and heart were on fire at the same time. If she were injured, it would be his fault. Once again he had not protected her. He fell to his knees beside her and she surprised him by
sitting up quickly and throwing her arms around his neck.

“Oh, Reynold, when I saw you just lying there, and I thought they had k-killed you—”

She made a funny, muffled sound and clung to him even tighter. Reynold picked her up and allowed himself the painful joy of just holding her, feeling her warmth and the weight of her against his chest. She shuddered and sighed in his arms, all the while dripping mud.

Reynold lifted his head from hers. “Did you see a well behind the hut?”

“Severely overgrown, I fear.”

“It will do.” He stomped through the high grass, feeling a sharp ache in his ribs with each step. He set Katherine down with great reluctance.

At the well, she removed her muddy gown and Reynold scrubbed it in a bucket of water, while she dabbed at the smock’s dirty sleeves. Once they returned to the hut, Reynold had Katherine lay her gown near the fire as he added wood. His head ached, his side felt tight and painful, and he staggered when he rose to his feet.

“Reynold, you’re hurt,” she cried, sliding an arm about his waist. “Lay back in the straw.”

He sat down heavily. She bent over him and he watched the flickering light through the strands of her hair. What had happened while she was alone with that cur?

“After they hit me, I thought I heard you scream,” he said. Images he didn’t want to imagine flickered through his mind. “Did he—”

“Oh, no, I had already seen to him.”

He smiled in relief. “‘Seen to him’?”

“I hit him over the head.” She blushed and lowered her face. “I screamed to lure one of them out. I hope I did not frighten you.”

Reynold watched the curve of her cheek, and the dipping of her lashes. “You did, but it seemed to work.”

“Show me where they hurt you,” she said, pushing his shoulders back into the straw.

“’Tis nothing but a bump on the head and some bruises. I do not remember much. I think I tried to get up.”

“I saw them kick you. Oh, Reynold, your ribs could be broken.”

Before he could stop her, she was pushing his tunic up over his stomach, ordering him to lift his hips when the garment caught. He couldn’t have resisted her command for all the gold in the royal treasury.

“Katherine,” he said, and his voice sounded ridiculously hoarse. He saw that she looked away from his hips. His genitals were only covered by his braies, a scant piece of linen. He was embarrassed by how obvious his desire was. “Katherine, do not—”

She hushed him and pressed along his chest. “Does anything I do hurt?”

He groaned and closed his eyes. Everything hurt. He was on fire for her, burning with his sin and his need, but the need was fast outpacing everything else. Her hands were cool on his flesh.
Her fingers brushed his nipple and his body betrayed him with a sudden shudder.

Katherine jerked her hands back, fearful that his injuries were worse than she had surmised. “Oh Reynold, I have hurt you. Show me where the pain is.”

His words were muffled, almost a moan.

“Please, do not suffer in silence. Mayhap I can help you.” She leaned forward over his chest, trying to keep her gaze on his face, but her hands shook and she couldn’t seem to breathe deeply enough. She kept remembering the lean strength of his hips as he lifted them, and the dark hair on his chest that had dwindled down to…there. Though his tunic was caught beneath his arms, enough of his chest was visible for her to see up close the hills and valleys of muscle, the scars that dotted it like rivers across the earth.

He caught her upper arms and she gasped.

“Katherine,” he whispered, then pulled her mouth down to his.

She quivered, off-balance and disoriented. She gasped air as his teeth and tongue devoured her mouth as if she were his first food after a long fast. She put her hands on his chest to push herself away, but one touch of his bare, hot flesh and she felt suddenly lost, drained of her will to resist. His kisses covered her cheeks and nose and eyelids and Katherine rubbed her skin against his stubbled cheeks. All her cares melted away in a haze of passion. Reynold wanted her, Reynold needed her. And she needed him, his strength, his devotion.
He moved his hands up her shoulders and over her back, pulling her down onto him, cupping her buttocks and grinding her hips into his.

Katherine cried out softly against his lips. When he hesitated, she slanted her open mouth, letting her tongue trace the lean curve of his lips. Her world reeled as Reynold rolled her onto her back and rose above her, shedding his tunic. She kneaded the hard muscles of his shoulders as she welcomed his weight. Her blood flowed quickly through her veins and a restless, aching yearning built inside her for Reynold’s touch. The rough skin of his palm slid up her inner thigh and Katherine gasped and arched her body against him wanting—wanting—

The air was suddenly cool against her stomach and Katherine realized that the folds of her smock were being dragged up her body. It was unbearably exciting to feel the scratch of linen across her breasts, to see the firelight flicker over their bare skin. She raised her arms when he pulled the gown over her head. As he paused to look at her body, blind panic and self-doubt warred with her passion. She wanted to cover herself in shame but he caught her hands and kissed each palm.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, spreading her arms wide as he leaned over her.

His mouth paused above one breast and she shivered at the warmth of his breath. His tongue darted out to lick her just once, and she felt as if her body were no longer her own as it shook beneath him.

“Reynold, please,” she said with a gasp, and he rewarded her by sucking her nipple deep within his mouth. He lavished each breast with kisses until Katherine was mindlessly rolling her head back and forth, eyes closed in ecstasy. She never dreamed a man’s touches could make her burn and writhe as if pleasure were a terrible torment.

His kisses seared her ribs, her navel, the upthrust bones of her hips. He gently spread her knees apart, and for a moment, Katherine was swept with such keen embarrassment she tried to force her legs closed.

Reynold held them apart, pressing kisses to the tender flesh of each thigh. Katherine shivered and shook, unable to stand more, but wishing it would never end. He pressed his mouth between her thighs and a bolt of the most delicious pleasure arched her back. She cried his name and he rose above her, lowering his weight between her legs. She should have been crushed; instead she felt fragile and feminine as he adjusted his body to hers. The firelight danced across the harsh lines of his face, the dominant brows, those magnificent eyes.

“Reynold,” she whispered again in wonder, unable to believe the joyous things he made her feel. She felt the hard length of him probing her, and she was suddenly shy again, awkward, an innocent. What was she supposed to do? She raised her knees. He groaned and eased slowly inside her until the pressure became stretching, and the stretching, pain. With one thrust he sheathed himself
fully, and Katherine bit back a cry of pain.

Reynold cradled her face between his hands, kissing her gently. “Sweet, sweet Katherine, it only hurts the first time.”

The thought that she was no longer a virgin almost chilled her passion, but he picked that moment to lift himself and then slide back inside again, even deeper. Katherine groaned as his body slid roughly against hers, making her skin tingle with awareness and life, feeling again the vibrations of desire that only moments before had consumed her. She writhed against him and heard his quick intake of breath. Boldly nibbling his collarbone and neck, she let her hands slide from his shoulders and trail over the muscles of his chest. She caressed his nipples as he had done to hers, and was rewarded when he slid in and out of her, quickening, thrusting deeper and deeper, until Katherine forgot all about her exploration and fell into the mindlessness of pleasure.

The world retreated until it was only the two of them in growing darkness, their bodies undulating together, their breaths mingled, his hands caressing her breasts. Her body seemed to tighten in around itself, the pressure mounted, and after one more thrust of his hips, she was rocked by wave upon wave of such pure bliss that she shuddered for endless moments. He drove into her again and again, then with a hoarse groan stiffened above her. Katherine held him as he shook, then with tender care guided his head down beside hers, and put her arms around his shoulders. She kissed his
warm chest, and the damp side of his neck. She felt fragile and protected by his body all around and inside her.

“I must be crushing you,” he murmured into her ear.

Katherine shook her head, then sighed in dismay when he lifted himself off her and to one side. She looked down at herself and saw with a bit of shock that she was totally and completely naked, except for red marks of passion across her breasts. While she gaped at her body, Reynold drew their discarded garments over them. He reached to pull her closer and left his arm resting across her chest, his head pillowed in the straw next to hers, his breath soft and warm against her ear.

Katherine felt the first strains of panic begin to tug at her mind. The straw itched her back and his breath tickled her ear and his arm hugged her breasts and she felt so…sticky. While she debated what she should say, Reynold snored once, softly.