He Calls Her Jasmine (10 page)
Strange. She recalled clearly that her sire had been no friend to Henry. Then she saw it. His putrefying body, hanging with a dozen others along the curtain wall.
Her bridegroom had left her to help slay her father and take his castle, but she wanted nothing more than to see Rolfe’s beloved face, to lie with him and once more feel his great cock filling and stretching her cunt despite her queasy stomach and swelling belly. She’d longed for him for many anxious weeks…and she feared she’d grieve ere all was said and done.
Then he was there, and she was in his arms, and her pussy wept for joy. “I remember it all now,” she murmured against the tanned, muscular column of his throat.
“Eleven knights have challenged you.” Giles wore a worried frown when he entered Rolfe’s tent on the tourney grounds a few minutes later. “The king has said he will allow no more.” He named Rolfe’s competitors one by one, and the two assessed strengths and weaknesses of each fighter while Jasmine—she could not yet think of herself as Joan—lay against Rolfe’s muscular chest and tried to hide her fear.
She recognized some of the names, marcher lords who’d been loyal to the king. Baron deWilde and her odious cousin, Harold of Wye. The other names meant naught to her, though she recognized some surnames.
“Fear not, sweeting. I will vanquish them all.”
Rolfe sounded confident, but she liked not the troubled look on his brother’s face. From their earlier discussion she surmised that at least a few of the competitors had demonstrated great skill at arms.
“You must rest, my love.” She stroked Rolfe’s chest after Giles had returned to his own tent, then lay beside him when he stretched out on the narrow cot. “I am so sorry my insistence that we wed has brought us to this.”
“I am not, for you are my destiny. I hope the journey did not overtire you.” With infinite tenderness Rolfe stroked her silky cunt. “Tomorrow at this time we will celebrate my victory. Now stay beside me, for we both must gain strength from rest.” After he extinguished the candle by their makeshift bed, he held her close.
He intended to sleep. But his cock did not. As
Rolfe
breathed in his Jasmine’s sweet, erotic scent, felt her heart beating against his own, he had to have her.
“Open to me, sweeting.” He slid his hands along her silky flesh, awakening her, torturing himself with the waiting…the need to claim his love once more. In answer to his whispered entreaty, she rolled over to face him and draped a firm thigh across his hip.
God’s blood, but she was hot. Her cunt welcomed him with its honey when he slid his cock inside. It gripped him, milked him, made him want to stay forever—and burst into a thousand flames. ‘Twas as if they were suspended in time, limited in motion on their narrow bed, locked together in lust and in love…
She drew his hand to her breast. “In a few months’ time, my love, I will bear you a son. Does this please you?”
If tomorrow he died, something of him would live. Unless…he could not bear to think he wouldn’t be there to hold his wife, protect the small life inside her. No, he had to survive, win the prize that would be his son’s birthright.
He slid his hand between them, caressed her belly he now realized had become slightly convex since last he’d felt it. “I am delighted. ‘Tis one more reason for me to defeat all challengers.”
“I’m afraid.”
“I will not lose. Cannot. Not when you give me so much to live for. Come now. Let me give you pleasure. Let me take my pleasure of my love. My only love.”
In the darkness, with a breeze gently rocking the walls of the tent, Rolfe loved his Jasmine. Breast to chest, belly to belly, they lay together, moving slowly to the rhythm of the wind. The delicious friction of her cunt on his cock as they converged and retreated drove away the pride. The fear. Everything but the feeling of oneness with his love…his lover…his wife.
‘Twas not too much later when he felt her clench his cock in uncontrolled spasms and caught her little cries between his lips. He came in long waves, gentle yet more intense than any he’d ever known. Waves that carried him over the edge and into a peaceful, strength-renewing slumber.
Sweat poured off Rolfe’s brow when he brought Lucifer to a halt before the stand erected for King Henry and other noble observers. ‘Twas hot, the sun beating down at
. For five hours now Rolfe had taken on challengers and vanquished all but two. ‘Twas as though love had made him invincible.
Smiling to hide her fear, Jasmine stood and draped another scarf over the end of his outstretched lance. “God go with you, my love.”
“He tires.”
Giles’s words were barely audible but Jasmine heard. His whitened knuckles and tightly knotted fists said more than the words she was certain he meant no one to hear.
“He will prevail.” God willing. Tense, she watched the next contender ride onto the field.
Giles took her hand. “Of course,” he said in an obvious attempt to bolster her spirits. “Look, Rolfe has unseated him.”
Jasmine’s relief was short-lived, because unlike the others, this knight did not go down to his knees in surrender. Instead he drew his sword and beckoned for Rolfe to dismount and join him in swordplay.
“‘Twill be all right, my lady,” Giles said. “Rolfe will make short work of Lord Tibbets.”
He did, but not until he’d taken what looked to be a painful cut through his chain mail chausses. Jasmine cried out when she saw he intended to remount and take on the last challenger, Baron deWilde.
Giles clamped a meaty hand over her mouth. “Do not. He needs not the distraction. DeWilde’s a worthy opponent. Sit still and watch, or I will take you to wait in his tent.”
Once, twice, three times the destriers charged. Three times lances hit shields, but neither knight fell. Lathered, sides heaving, the warhorses pawed at the chewed-up grass waiting for the signal to charge again.
DeWilde’s lance made a glancing blow off Rolfe’s shield. Jasmine screamed as he rocked in the saddle, his own lance dangling uselessly at his side. Oh, no. DeWilde turned his mount, rode at Rolfe again. This time when the lance rammed into his shield, Rolfe fell.
Jasmine’s breath caught when she saw blood flowing down Rolfe’s leg. Surely now he’d concede. She’d beg the king to spare his life, promise anything, even a lifetime of misery with the marcher lord who now stalked her love, his broadsword drawn.
“No. Do not die,” she sobbed as Giles restrained her from running onto the field of honor. “I can give you up if I must, but I cannot bear it if you die.”
“Rolfe will not die. He has too much to live for. Calm yourself. Look. Even now he rouses himself to fight.”
Slowly, before her eyes, Rolfe stood on shaky legs and drew his sword. DeWilde came near, his shield protecting him while he hacked at Rolfe with ferocious wide arcs of his heavy blade. Then, as Jasmine thought all was lost, Rolfe dipped under his opponent’s wild blows and slipped his sword between helmet and chain mail.
DeWilde went down, and Rolfe stumbled toward the dais, triumphant.
He sank to the bloody ground at the feet of Jasmine and his brother.
The fever lasted for days. The stench of rotting flesh made Jasmine gag, but she refused to leave Rolfe’s side. ‘Twas the evening of the third day since the tournament when he wakened and took her hand.
“You are mine,” he whispered through hot, cracked lips. “Always.”
“Yes.”
Marnie, the old woman she’d seen in her mind, handed Jasmine more cool wet cloths to lay over the herbs she’d packed into the gash in Rolfe’s upper thigh. “He will live,” she said as she swabbed away the sweat that had pooled on his brow. “‘Tis good the baron’s lance missed his rod, lady. A fine rod indeed,” she added, looking at the jewelry piercing it with a questioning gaze.
“Yes, it is.” Jasmine could hardly wait until her husband, newly made Earl of Summerfield, grew strong enough to impale her on his fine, jeweled cock. “Kindly send word to his lord brother that Lord Rolfe has wakened.”
“With pleasure, my lady Joan.”
Rolfe lifted his head from the down pillow. “She may be Joan, but I am earl here and I call her Jasmine. My beautiful, fragrant flower from the East. My love and my life. Leave us now, that I may demonstrate how an earl seduces his countess.”
Rolfe, Earl of Summerfield, lived a long and happy life with his countess—the lady he called Jasmine until his dying day. For another glimpse at the deVere family, be sure to look for “Gold,” the love story of Rolfe and Jasmine’s second son. “Gold” is due to be released by Ellora’s Cave in November—just in time for the holiday season.
Also at Ellora's Cave
In His Own Defense: Lawyers In Love
A Mutual Favor
Love Slave
Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.