Only For A Knight (11 page)

 

A tavern wench.

 

Or Sir Robert MacKenzie’s leman.

 

“A thousand deep plagues on her,” Euphemia sniffed, then pursed her thin lips all the harder.

 

Even the MacKenzie plaid swirled oh-so-loosely round the bawd’s shoulders couldn’t hide the magnificence of her breasts. Full, firm-looking, and most obviously hard-tipped, the oversized orbs threatened to spill from the linen shirt’s low-dipping neckline—a spectacle Euphemia suspected every gog-eyed MacKenzie male gawking about the hall prayed would happen any moment.

 

Equally vexing, the woman held a bundle of squirming brown and white fur in her arms—and despite the proximity of the wriggling, four-legged beastie, her nostrils did not appear to twitch at all.

 

The flame-haired bawd not only possessed more curves than a Highlander-in-rut’s dreams could hold, she did not suffer Euphemia’s need to sneeze and wheeze if a dog even glanced her way.

 

Indeed, the hall’s arched vestibule already reeked with the rank-biting smell of the mangy beasts romping round her betrothed and his whore. The dogs jumped on them both, wagging their scruffy tails and barking.

 

The sight made Euphemia’s skin crawl. She shuddered, her brows snapping together as her temper rose like a hot tide. Worse, her nose began to itch! And her eyes watered and . . . stung.

 

Dabbing at them with the edge of her sleeve, she leveled all her anger at a hapless MacKenzie pushing his way through the throng. His ale-bleared gaze fixed on the bawd’s welling bosom, the man’s tongue nigh lolled from his head.

 

To Euphemia’s annoyance, he paused just outside the stair tower, raised a booming voice. “Heigh-ho!” he roared, slapping a kinsman on the shoulder. “That one will go to his bed naked, eager, and purring her pleasure—unlike the dried-up stick of a shrew he is to wed.”

 

Purring her pleasure.

 

The words curled through Euphemia’s gut like soured milk. She stared after the man as he moved away, fury pulsing through her, seeping into blood and bone.

 

A dried-up stick of a shrew.

 

How little the man knew.

 

How little any of them knew.

 

But
she
knew, and her confidence in her special skills lessened some of the burning tightness in her chest and even helped ease the streaming of her eyes.

 

Only her hatred continued to burn, banking now to a white-hot smolder. Needing support, she leaned against the cold stone wall beneath a narrow window splay, risked a deep breath of the damp night air.

 

Even the loch’s dangerous vapors were preferable to the choking stench of the hall’s thick-drifting wood smoke . . . the sharp odor of the many dogs.

 

Purring her pleasure, indeed.

 

Euphemia scowled. The lout’s sarcastic witticisms cut deep, the slurs refusing to leave her ears. Closing her eyes, she forced her mind to dwell on other things.

 

Such as how she would have brought Sir Robert to his knees, had
him
purring in his ease and begging release—if only she’d had a chance to lure him to the bit!

 

An opportunity she doubted she’d have the chance to exploit with other, more lavish feasting hanging on his arm. Hot anger thrumming inside her, she pressed a hand to her roiling stomach and wished the fiery creature to the lowest pit of hell.

 

“So-o-o-o! I find you here, sweet lady,” a husky-deep voice penetrated her anger, its mellifluous familiarity both irritating and exciting her.

 

Big Red MacAlister.

 

Euphemia’s eyes snapped open . . . her woman’s parts flamed and began to moisten.

 

She wet her lips, tried to smooth her rumpled skirts. Then, willing herself not to wheeze, she tilted back her head to gaze up at her father’s most trusted guardsmen, a man prized for his skill and brawn.

 

A ruggedly handsome giant with a mane of thick, bronze-colored hair and twinkling blue eyes, Big Red MacAlister made a resplendent figure. And since the day he’d appeared at her father’s door some years before, he’d proven himself not just Hugh Out-with-the-Sword’s most stalwart man, but also her own most faithful and obedient . . . servant.

 

Every tall, golden inch of him.

 

Ignoring the chattering throng inside the hall, he looked down at her, his blue gaze almost a physical touch. “I rejoice to see you, lass,” he said, stepping closer.

 

Euphemia blinked.

 

Her heart thumped wildly against her ribs and heat suffused her cheeks.

 

“W-what are you doing here . . . now?” she got out, the hot pulsing between her thighs damping her more the nearer he came. “Shouldn’t you be with our other guardsmen? Out in the hall with all the rest—or in the stables with our horses?”

 

Big Red cocked an auburn brow, his light blue eyes filling with amusement and . . . need.

 

“Och, see you, lassie, I thought I’d be a-doing what I do nigh every e’en.” His voice dropped to an even silkier depth. “Aye, I was a-looking for you. Thought you’d wish to be attended. But you were not abed,” he added, adjusting his plaid to better display his rising
enthusiasm
.

 

“I was abed, but I did not sleep well. As you can see he is returned and . . . and not alone.” Her chest tightening again, Euphemia shot a quick glance at her betrothed and his whore.

 

They still stood near the keep doorway, with none of the MacKenzies paying heed to her or any other shadows-in-the-night who might be lurking in the blackness of the stair tower.

 

“A notable surprise, eh?” Big Red agreed, following her gaze. “But not a tangle that ought turn his head overlong once you’ve shown him your talents.” He lifted a finger to her lips, rubbed gently. “’Twas an ache for your
specialties
that sent me to your chamber.”

 

Taking her hand, he pressed her palm against the hard ridge of his manhood, curled her fingers around its thickness. “I missed you the last few nights. Stroke me, lassie. Long, slow strokes, through my plaid.”

 

Euphemia stared through the darkness at him. “This is crazy-mad. I cannot . . .
service
you here,” she whispered, her hand beginning to move up and down on him all the same. “We are in fullest view of the hall. If anyone—”

 

“If anyone looks this way, my sweet, they will see naught but darkness. Or the broad back of Big Red MacAlister as I peer out the window splay. Mayhap they will think I am relieving myself? That ought keep them away long enough for you to relieve me in truth.”

 

Fearing discovery, and chiding herself for it, Euphemia hesitated. She slid another glance at the noisy crowd in the vestibule, weighing the risk of getting caught against the urgent tingling between her thighs.

 

She glanced up the narrow turnpike stairs winding upward into the gloom behind Big Red’s wide-set shoulders. She alone occupied a chamber in the forgotten tower above them.

 

Nary a soul would saunter down the steps and stumble across her . . . pleasure.

 

E’er bolder than people credited her, she pulled another deep breath of the damp night air into her lungs, filling them as best she could, her ailments considered. She took great pride in her daring. Her ability to wrap the brawniest, most fearsome clansmen around her fingers.

 

Bend them to her will.

 

Or snatch their affections from lasses graced with more obvious charms.

 

Another furious look at the flame-haired
plentitude
hanging on her betrothed’s arm decided her. Turning back to Big Red, she resumed massaging his swollen tarse.

 

“Och, aye, that is what I was a-wanting.” He looked down at her, his smile broadening into a grin. “But with your mouth, sweetness,” he added, circling his fingers around her wrist, easing her hand away just long enough to toss aside his plaid and free himself. “Lick and suckle me as you e’er do—you promised you would when’er I have need.”

 

Euphemia almost refused, but the strong musk of his potent male scent rose up between them, its earthy headiness intoxicating her and weighting her most tender parts with a hot-throbbing need all her own. She stifled a groan, tiredness and resentment warring within her—but also giddy, carnal excitement.

 

“Come, lass, touch your tongue to me . . . give me ease.”

 

This time she did moan. No longer holding back, she met his gaze, wished the intensity of his deep-seeing blue eyes didn’t have such power to melt her. If he had needs . . . hers were surely greater.

 

And she
had
promised.

 

But her sundry ailings were plaguing her this night, making her chest so tight and achy each breath pained her. Especially the deep ones she’d needed to becalm herself.

 

“Lick me.”

 

Capitulating, she began to tremble, the two hungrily-spoken words and her own tingling lust pushing her over the precipice.

 

With a sobbing cry of want, she knelt before him, nuzzling her face against his groin, then pressing her nose deep into the springy cinnamon-colored curls that held his musky scent, but her joints cracked loudly as she positioned herself. The pitiable sound came overloud in the closeness of the stair tower, even echoing off the dank walls, damning her and calling attention to her lacking.

 

“I—I cannot . . . not this night,” she stammered, pushing awkwardly to her feet. “On the morrow, mayhap.”

 

“Then I shall lick you,” Big Red vowed, already dropping to his knees, shifting their positions before she could naysay him. “You should have told me you were feeling more poorly than usual,” he added, his deep voice going a shade lower, more intimate.

 

Too infinitely sweet for her to resist.

 

“As you wish,” she acquiesced with a sigh, her assent rippling through her as he raised her skirts and began stroking his fingers over the puffy flesh of her nigh hairless woman’s parts—a fault of her femininity she’d e’er detested but that he claimed to relish, insisting her scant covering of nether hair made her appear . . . virginal.

 

Feeling anything but, Euphemia opened her legs wider, giving him better access as he brought his auburn head closer to the exposed vee of her thighs. He blew gently on the sparse tufts of soft dark hair, tugged lightly on a few damp curls.

 

He looked up as he rubbed her, catching and holding her gaze. “I will lick you now, Phemie. ’Tis my wish to lap at you until you are better,” he promised, touching his tongue to the fleshiest part of her womanhood, swirling it again and again over her quivering heat, finding the hard little nub of her pleasure and—suckling.

 

Nibbling and drawing on her until her entire body went taut and her innermost heat clenched tight, then shattered. “
This
is what you need,” he murmured, rubbing his face back and fore against her hot pulsing flesh as her release washed over her and a low sob tore from her throat.

 

“You need me—not yon high-born spawn of the devil,” he vowed, his hot breath searing the words onto the naked skin of her exposed belly. “You are mine, Phemie. Do not say me otherwise.”

 

And she did not.

 

Not when he’d spent her so thoroughly she could scarce draw breath much less gainsay his illusions.

 

And illusions they were.

 

As he would know if he possessed wits to match his brawn, his incomparable skill at . . . pleasuring a woman.

 

Big Red MacAlister was sorely mistaken.

 

Lady Euphemia MacLeod belonged to no man.

 

Not her golden giant of a most-favored lover, nor her fool-preening rogue of a betrothed.

 

Neither man possessed her, but she needed them both.

 

Needed them badly.

 

And for her own good purposes.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Five

 

 

 

“W
HAT FOOL PURPOSE WOULD I HAVE
for lying to you?”

 

Duncan MacKenzie, the redoubtable Black Stag of Kintail, proud laird of the great Clan MacKenzie, and irrefutably one of the most feared and respected men in all the West Highlands, paced his well-appointed solar and, most uncharacteristically, appeared too edgy to meet his own son’s brooding eye.

 

And from where he stood in the deep alcove of a window embrasure, Robbie obliged his father’s apparent ill ease and continued to gaze out through the open shutters at the thin drizzle of rain and the silent waters of Loch Duich far below.

 

His hands clasped behind his back, he repeated the words he’d been saying ever since he’d entered his sire’s privy quarters.

 

“You did say you knew her—I heard you.”

 

“Saints preserve us—use your head, laddie!” The Black Stag was on him in a heartbeat, grabbing his arm to spin him around. “Look at me when we speak, not out the fool window! Think you I would ruin your homecoming by fouling it with untruths?” he demanded, eyes blazing. “I swear to you I have ne’er seen the lass before this night.”

 

Robbie shook himself free, readjusted the fall of his plaid. “Mayhap not, but you
thought
you knew her,” he pressed, not at all surprised when his father started pacing again. “I would know why.”

 

“A God’s name—why not?” Duncan huffed with suspicious vehemence. “The lass is a fetching piece, many were the maids I . . .
sampled
in the days before I married your stepmother. Like as not your sweet bloom brought one of them to mind.”

 

“The day I believe that is the day pigs will fly.” Robbie folded his arms. “I saw your face run white when you looked on her. I will not leave be until you tell me why.”

 

“Guidsakes—whene’er did you become so stubborn?” Duncan shook his head, ran a hand through his hair. “Forbye, I do not ken what devil-damned bog you visited to lay on such an annoying trait!”

 

“To be sure the devil had his wily finger in it,” a deep voice put in from the shadows. “Though I doubt the devil in question was a bog-dweller.”

 

“When did
you
find your way in here?” Duncan whirled on the tall, scar-faced figure lounging in a chair beside the well-doing log fire.