The Ever Knight (4 page)

He gazed down at her lips, while his fingers trailed across her pointy nipples, the familiar heaviness of want multiplying in his loins. “I told you I cannot take you with me. I ‘aven’t enough ‘orses.”

It was a poor excuse, because he certainly could have got more horses if he wanted. Truth was he didn’t attach himself to women. It was too distracting for a soldier. And women didn’t travel well. They were, in his experience, always too cold or too hungry and they couldn’t manage long distances without resting frequently.

He had looked away from her, but now his head snapped back, watching her warily. She was surprisingly perceptive for a woman. In his experience, women usually saw and heard what they wanted to see, not the way things truly were. “Bad be..have…yer?” He opened his eyes wide. “What means this?”

“Taking a woman for your own pleasure and then leaving her stranded.” She sighed. “You know very well, Norman Swine.”

He wanted to laugh, even as he tried to frown. She had a funny way about her. Surely she could nag like any other wench, but he would not mind it so much with her. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something about her pleased him beyond the basic attraction. Pity he couldn’t take her with him, but he had nowhere to keep her. A wayfarer by nature, Remy went wherever his king commanded. William had offered him land before, as reward for his service in battle, but Remy did not want those trappings and responsibilities, so he got out of it as politely as he could. Fortunately the king was amused by Remy and never offended when he turned the offer down. Like Remy, William was bastard born—his father a Duke, his mother a tanner’s daughter—it gave them a certain comradeship from the beginning and made the king far more tolerant and indulgent of Remy’s oddities than he should be. While Remy fought loyally for him and never lost a battle he could be forgiven his sins. As a consequence of this favor with the king, Remy was accustomed to getting away with things, taking what he wanted, while he wanted it. Seldom paying the price for it and leaving others to pick up the pieces.

He couldn’t remember the last time he felt guilt. But when he looked at this woman, sprawled in the hay at his side, an unfamiliar voice in his head chastised him for tricking her that way. Other women had passed easily in and out of his life. She, he sensed, would not.

Guilt? What is this
Guilt
? It sounded like something a woman made up—probably a Saxon. Probably a nun looking to blame soldiers like him for everything bad in the world. When everyone knew it was Eve who tempted Adam.

Moving between her legs, he held his erect prick to her moist entrance. She lifted her heels to his shoulders, apparently abandoning herself to his care. A sliver of moonlight glided over her face and a pair of wide open eyes, unblinking, fearless, steaming hot with desire, looked back at him. She pinched her nipples between thumb and forefinger, until they blushed crimson.

“Do you like what you see, Remy?”

He watched those nipples tighten and lengthen. His cream surged yet again. This woman was deliciously pink and plump in all those places where God had painted her to draw a man’s notice—mouth, nipples and pussy. Like the bright petals of opened flowers those parts of her beckoned and he went, purposeful as a bee rifling among pollen drenched stamens.

Drawing a deep breath he thrust, plowing his cock through that barrier in one stroke, knowing that the sooner she got over the pain, the sooner she could enjoy it as much as he did. She made no sound but her eyes narrowed. He paused inside her, fully sheathed. In heaven. In deep.

He moved his hips, working gently in and out. Her heat was furnace-like, melting his cock, molding it into something new. His rhythm changed, quickened. Remy stared down at his broad shaft fucking her tight cunny, his short dark hairs shining with her juice. Although a novice she knew instinctively how to move her body, sheathing him greedily, taking the savage unbridled thrusting and milking his length with all her might. Sweat dripped in his eyes. He blinked it away impatiently, wanting nothing to blur his eyesight. Reaching down, he clasped the root of his throbbing prick and pulled out just as a burst of seed shot in a high arc, spraying across her belly. He flung his head back and pumped his organ with one fist. Astonishingly the rush kept coming; then he felt her soft mouth close over the wet crest. He pulled back, but she clamped down on his rod and swallowed, swirling her tongue over the tender head as if it was a ripened, juicy peach.

She made a soft cooing sound of appreciation and it vibrated up her throat, stunning his cock into a frenzied jerk.

Remy cried out in sheer, bone-quaking pleasure. Suddenly he was shooting yet more cream, feeding the greedy wench with it, pouring it right down her throat.

Chapter Four

Scrambling up using handholds in the ivy and a ladder balanced rather precariously on the roof of the buttery, Jisella finally reached the window. She pushed her knuckles on the wooden shutters and they opened a crack, just enough to squeeze the specially bent prongs of a toasting fork into the gap and work the padlock open.

All was silent within, but for a few gentle snores. She crept in through the window—the only one without bars in their high tower—and grazed her knee on the ice cold stone.

Deorwynn sat up, hearing that familiar curse and having laid awake all night for her friend’s return.

“You were gone so long,” she exclaimed in a fraught whisper. “Three times Sister Adela’s been in to check the pallets and I had to keep her distracted from looking under your skins.”

Jisella unhooked the ladder, gave a shove and watched it slide down the thatch to the yard far below. The inevitable clatter would not be heard tonight with so much noise from the Normans keeping the nun’s shut away in their own quarters.

Deorwynn helped her boots find the floor. “I told her I had the stomach cramps again and begged for a potion. If I have to drink any more of that foul concoction while she stands over me watching, I’ll spew. Honestly! The things I do for you.”

She closed the shutters and replaced the padlock over the bolt. When Sister Adela came to unlock it in the morning there would be no sign of anyone escaping through that window.

Her friend touched her shoulder lightly. “What was it like?”

Jisella sighed, rubbing her arms to warm them up. “I cannot describe it.” In truth, she didn’t want to. She preferred to bask privately a while in the memories that were hers and his alone. She’d never expected it to feel quite like this. How could she have known? Nothing she learned in this place could possibly have prepared her for him.

“You’ll see. Hush or you’ll wake the others.” Keeping her cloak on for an added layer, Jisella climbed quickly onto her pallet, pulling the skins and furs up to her chin. Suddenly she was very tired, sapped of energy, her limbs heavy. She felt the chill more now that he was no longer with her.

After a while, a small voice came to her in the dark. “And is he your Ever Knight, Jisella?”

She knew the other girls made fun of her for believing in soul mates and everlasting love. But she had to believe in it. If it wasn’t true then her mother had died for nothing, because she would not be with her lover now in her next being; she would merely be worm food. Closing her eyes, she snuggled down, not answering, nursing her thoughts and her plans to herself.

What she had done tonight was enough to give her husband rights to cut her throat if he knew. Remy would have to take her with him. Surely he wouldn’t leave her to his brother’s mercy once he discovered her identity.

Or would he blame her and stand loyally at his brother’s side? A sneaky draft found her toes and she hastily wriggled them further under the covers.

She must be brave and face whatever tomorrow brought. She had done her best to make him remember her and if that failed, at least she had enjoyed this night of forbidden pleasures before she met her end—which would undoubtedly be gruesome and bloody. One thing was for sure, she would never have to spend another night in this place. It was Deorwynn and the others she felt sorry for now.

Suddenly reaching out from under the fur, she found Deorwynn’s fingers and squeezed them.

“It’ll be your turn to escape next,” she whispered. “I shall will it so.” But her friend was already fast asleep.

* * * *

The next morning the pack mules were ready early, the horses saddled, his men eager to move on after a night of rest. Remy on the other hand had been up all hours, not falling asleep until the first light of dawn, which is when she must have slipped away from his grasp. As a result he was in a fragile mood, his temper dark. He needed to find the wench and prove she was real, not some ghost or mischievous pixie.

When he first woke that morning, bleary-eyed and sour, it took several minutes to realize that his leg had stopped hurting completely. It was as if she’d drained him not just of his seed, but of his infection. The wound was not merely healed, but vanished entirely. In the straw by his hip there laid a broken arrowhead, rusted and coated with old, dried blood. But there was no sign of the hole it once made in his thigh. Just as there was no sign of the woman with whom he’d spent a night of lust.

He’d taken her maidenhead and she’d made him whole again.

Whoever she was. He didn’t even know her name.

So distracted by his thoughts, he was barely even aware of the soldier at his side, chattering about the journey ahead. He hadn’t listened to a word.

The sky was low and heavy, clouds brimming with rain, but when he looked upward, he saw her eyes shining there, that mystical silver color breaking through the drab grey.

“Are we ready to leave then?” the man beside him asked impatiently.

Bringing his hands up to his face, Remy could see her hair twisted around it. He could smell the powdery lavender and sweet rosemary of her scent. And the taste of her still warm and spicy on his tongue. He’d known and forgotten many women before, but this one would not be so easy to leave behind. Last night he’d suspected it; today he knew for sure.

“Remy?”

She had cured him. How? She must be a witch. He’d never believed in them until now. Unless drunk he was not the superstitious sort and scoffed at those who believed in women having any special powers. But she was beautiful, special. When he woke in the hayloft to find her gone, a keening disappointment rolled him over onto his back, unable to do anything but lay there and stare at the sky through that gap, until one of his men came to find him. Then he went about the motions of readying for the day’s journey, waiting for the panic to subside. It had not.

“Remy?”

He finished fastening his saddle, forcing himself back to the present. There was no point dwelling on these odd sensations, these desires to keep and protect her. He could not take this wench with him, could he? He had nothing to offer her, no home to put her in. So it was just as well if he did not see her again, he decided, patting his horse on the flanks. As soon as this rain let up, they’d be gone.

* * * *

Outside in the yard, Remy waited to escort his brother’s bride to her wedding. Soon he would know his mistake. Serve him right for thinking he could swive a woman without asking her name; then leave her behind with the scraps of his supper. Yesterday she thought he was her Ever Knight, come at last. Today she would know for sure. Would he hand her over to his brother? Or would he rescue her, ride off with her on his fine steed?