White Knight

by Annie Dyer

  “You should wear that more often,” Claire said as I approached her, dripping with sea water. My beard and hair were salty and my muscles already felt as if they were tightening. “Or at least let me take a photo.” The camera clicked and I pulled a face. Revenge came through me dripping onto her.

  “You’re freaking freezing!” she said, shifting away quickly. “Don’t even think of coming near me!”

  “That’s not what you were saying last night,” I said, shifting towards her. She started to run across the course sand so I followed, knowing I’d catch her easily when I chose to. I followed her into a cave, her laughter echoing around us and caught her in a darkened corner.

  Laughter turned into anticipation and had it not been the height of summer with the possibility of child explorers walking into the cave at any point, I’d have taken advantage of the desire I saw in her eyes. Instead I kissed her thoroughly and picked her up, causing her to yell as she was pressed against my cold wet body. Her legs flayed and kicked and she complained about the cold and the wet against her. I laughed, keeping hold of her till she stilled and then kissed her till she was quiet.

  “I’m soaked and cold,” she said. “How are you going to get me warm again?”

  “I can think of a few ways,” I said, placing her down on the blanket. “You ready to head back to the cottage?”

  Claire nodded, picking up her book. “I can’t believe it’s nearly five. I didn’t know time could go so quickly.

  “Missing London?”

  She laughed. “No. Maybe I need to get away more often.”

  We walked back to the cottage, Claire telling me about the photos she’d taken while I was in the sea and the few people she’d spoken to. She asked about my time in the Marines, something we’d not talked much about and then she was quiet.

  The unspoken event was still left between us.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Claire

  After about ten minutes I’d managed to calm myself, convinced that if Killian was going to fall off Edward’s roof, he’d have done it by now. Living mainly in London, watching someone I knew well and had a lot of feelings for participating in manual labour on a fairly high roof was up there with sky diving and swimming with sharks. I wasn’t used to it and I’d spent the first five minutes silently convinced that this was the moment where Killian would fall to his death and our second chance would be over, with me living like Miss Havisham for the next half century.

  “I think you’ve done it,” Edward said, chewing on a stick of liquorice. It was nine in the morning and we’d been here since seven-thirty, Edward having a list of jobs he wanted Killian to do. It hadn’t been a problem, most of the jobs were easy, just too high for Edward to reach or requiring too much strength and we didn’t have anywhere we needed to be. Marie was headed into court today on my behalf and from the text that had appeared on my phone when we got a wave of reception, she was beside herself with excitement. What surprised me most was how I wasn’t missing it. I didn’t feel the urge to be there, nor did I crave the adrenaline rush. Here in the sunshine, watching the man I spent last night in bed with, felt just right and I wondered if I had enough money saved up to retire already and simply be.

  “Can you see anything else while I’m up here?” Killian shouted down? “I don’t know when I’ll be back, so speak now or forever hold your peace – for the next few weeks anyhow.”

  “Think you’ve got everything,” Edward shouted back. “Now bugger off and leave an old man in peace for the rest of the day.”

  Killian scrambled down, a faint covering of sweat across his skin. He had a line of dirt across his face and his hair was sweaty. Since qualifying as a lawyer, I’d dated suits. Always businessmen, or business owners or other lawyers; men who paid someone else to get their hands dirty. Marie had suggested to me at one point that I go out with someone who was a bit more physical, who’s muscles came from something other than a personal trainer and the free weights in the gym, but I’d avoided them like the plague. I wondered if the reason why was currently lifting a metal table like it weighed as much as cotton wool.

  “I’ll come by before we go and jet wash your patio,” Killian said, the table now in a different position. “Leave that for me to do: I don’t want you slipping on something and ending up with a broken femur or something.”

  Edward shook his head. “I can manage to jet wash my own patio. Now scoot, the pair of you. You’ve better things to be doing that fussing after an old man.”

  Killian shot him a grin. “Damn right. I’m taking Claire to Boscastle. Too nice to not be next to the sea.”

  There was a brief nod, followed by a whack to the head from Edward’s rolled up newspaper. Killian barely flinched, just blinked his eyes at the old man and nodded. “I’ll get out of your way then.” He headed over to me and wrapped an arm around my waist, paying no heed to the fact that he was both sweaty and dirty. “Need anything from Boscastle?”

  Edward shook his head. “I have everything here. Now sod off and let me get some peace and quiet.”

  Boscastle was filled with holiday makers enjoying the best of British summer weather. The skies weren’t quite as brilliant blue as the day before and there was more of a breeze, but it was still warm and pleasant. I’d worn another pair of shorts and vest with tiny straps, hoping to get some more colour to my skin so I didn’t look as pasty pale. We strode around the streets and into shops, more mythical based ones to follow the witchery shops there had been in Tintagel and gift stores.

  A woman around the same age as Ava, my youngest sister, stood near the counter of a shop that sold everything from stuffed teddy bears to tarot cards. She wore jeans and an off-the-shoulder t-shirt, exposing an intricate pattern of flowers and butterflies tattooed on her skin. “You’re here to have your cards read?”

  I stared at her wide eyed. I hadn’t even thought about someone reading my tarot cards and I wasn’t sure about someone predicting my future, or if I really believed they could.

  She laughed and tossed her blonde hair back, again, so much like Ava. “It’s nothing to be scared of. They’re meant to give you advice and highlight the possible paths you can take rather than telling you what will happen in your future. Only you get to decide that.”

  “How much?” I asked, aware of scams and con-merchants.

  She laughed again. “Let me ready your cards and you can decide what it’s worth. It’s not my job and any donations go to the lifeboat fund.”

  I glanced behind me at Killian who was stood watching me in amusement. I sent him a quizzical look, trying to ask what he thought, but he only shrugged and then nodded.

  “If I’m not here when you’re done I’ll be at the coffee shop we passed before,” he said.

  “You’re not having yours read?”

  “I don’t need them read, Claire.”

  I shook my head at him, trying to disguise the nerves I suddenly felt at his refusal to join in the fun. He laughed at my obvious discomfort.

  “See you in an hour or so,” he said and headed out of the shop, leaving me with the blonde tarot reader who also looked way too amused.

  She led me into the back of the shop and to a small room that was more like a masseur’s than how I imagined a fortune teller’s place to look like. Everything was white, with just a few prints hung on the walls and a dreamcatcher at the window. A pile of cards was on the white desk, wrapped in what looked like a silk scarf.

  “Don’t be so nervous,” she said. “Consider it a bit of fun that you might form a different opinion from. Or some light might be shed.” She handed me the cards. “Give them as good a shuffle as you can.”

  I started to, slowly. They were bigger than the playing cards my brothers used for poker. “How did you start reading these?”

  She shrugged. “My gran taught me. I work for an estate agent during the week and help out in the shop on my days off. Apparently, I have ‘the gift’.” She rolled her eyes. “But I don’t make a living through it. T
here are plenty of people around here that do though.”

  I offered her the cards back but she shook her head. “Spread them out face down in front of you and chose me twenty-one. When you’re picking the first seven, think about your past; the second seven your present and the last seven your future. It’s an unconventional spread but I like it.”

  I started to choose, passing them to her as I picked each one. It was a harder task than I anticipated, even though I was selecting from cards that all looked the same from the back.

  “That’s it. You’ve chosen them all,” she said, starting to arrange them. “I’m sorry,” she said when they were all face up, the intricate pictures like mini works of art. “You lost someone you loved when you were very young.” She mused through the pictures, her hands clenching and unclenching. “But you’ve been happy. You’ve chosen a lot of face cards, kings and queens, so you’ve had guidance.”

  She carried on, mentioning education and brothers and sisters, referring to the cards with their names: the Sun and the Hermit. It was with the Hermit she stopped and looked at me, suddenly seeming a lot older.

  “You stopped. I want to use the word retreated and I think it was because of this.”

  She pointed to a card where a woman stood, her back to the viewer but clearly blindfolded. There were two paths, heading in two different directions through the forest in front. Clearly, she had a decision to make, but the blindfold made it different to see which was the right way.

  “A choice. You had a difficult choice.”

  “I did,” I said, giving nothing else away.

  Then she smiled at me. “But your choice led you to a successful place. There’s a wedding soon but it’s not yours yet? A brother maybe?”

  Jackson. He was getting married soon.

  “But there are issues with something to do with work. Someone is being a bully. You might have to encourage someone else to make the right call because that will be the only way it’s ended.”

  Her fingers trailed across the cards, telling me more about the present. Then she warned of an elder man’s health, a younger’s man’s wellbeing and then her face broke into a smile.

  “Babies,” she said. “There are babies, or a baby.”

  “My brother,” I half laughed. “Him and his wife to be – we predicted she’d be pregnant within a year of them getting married.”

  The girl shook her head. “Sooner than that.” She looked at me knowingly.

  “I think you must be confused.”

  “If I am, then my grandmother was wrong about me having inherited the gift. There’s one last thing and I don’t know what it means, I just have the words.”

  “What are they?”

  She looked at me, her expression serene and the youthfulness having resumed through her features.

  “Tell him.”

  I found Killian sitting outside, reading a second-hand book he’d picked up from a store nearby. He had a fresh coffee and looked more relaxed than I’d possibly ever seen him.

  My stomach churned with the things that she’d told me, although my brain kept on with its mantra of just a bit of fun over and over, hoping I’d believe it. But I knew I needed to tell him and sooner rather than later, before this became the monster that ate me up from the inside and I was the shadow of the woman I needed myself to be.

  “Has your path been illuminated?” His eyebrows raised as he saw me.

  “You could say that. She was vague, but quite accurate in her vagueness,” I said, sitting down next to him. “I’ll think about it some more later. But it was fun.”

  “Liar.” The word came out quietly and quickly. “The look on your face suggested in was more torture than fun, Claire.”

  “True,” I said. There was no point in lying. He knew I had something to explain and not once had he tried to rush me to do so, even knowing it would possibly rearrange his world. “She told me to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  I slapped him on the back. “Nice try. Not here. Not yet.”

  “Then when?” He turned to me. “Claire, whatever you say is not going to change what I want, which is you, in case you haven’t figured that out. I’ve been wanting you since I was twenty and quite clearly it hasn’t changed. I know your reason for breaking it off with me back then is huge; I get that, but it’s also in the past and the past has made us what we are. We wouldn’t be here now without it.”

  I leaned against him, feeling his strength and hating myself for needing it. “I know,” I started. “Things happen for reasons that we don’t know about at the time. But this is big. It isn’t something I’m ever going to get over.”

  He nodded. “I haven’t put any time pressures on you to tell me. Fuck knows it’s been less than a week since we started being civil to each other…”

  “That’s unfair, we managed many conversations beforehand.” We had. Yes, there had been the whole show of verbal sparring in front of my brothers especially, but there had been times late on at night when we’d just sat up and talked. There had been times too when he had carried me to bed because I had drunk too much or had been too tired, and on a couple of occasions I’d woken with him asleep in the same room.

  “You’re right. But even so, I think for us to properly look at where we’re going, you need to tell me why.” He spun round, straddling the bench where we were sitting so he could look at me. “Claire, I know what you’re going to tell me is going to hurt. But I can deal with it without hating you.”

  “How did you know that was what I was afraid of?”

  “Maybe I saw the tarot card reader as well once.”

  We headed back to the cottage, his arm around my waist as we walked back to the car and then the occasionally grip of my hand as we drove back. For the rest of the day he gave me space. I lounged on the patio reading a book while he went down to the cove to surf, returning just before Hollywood hour, when the light was at its glorious best, casting warm shadows across the scene.

  He stood in front of me, his wetsuit already half dry from the walk back and his hair damp and salty from the sea. Every muscle was visible through the wetsuit: hard, defined and sculpted. I knew how it felt beneath my hands, beneath my skin and I itched to touch now, to make his body respond in the way I knew I could.

  “Killian,” I said, licking my lips, my legs parting automatically.

  He glanced at me silently, unsmiling.

  “Killian.”

  This time his gaze was hard, possessive. I was a successful lawyer. I ate dickheads for breakfast and sometimes for supper. I was nobody’s bitch and usually made men mine but right now I had handed any power I wanted to give to the man in front of me. I trusted him. I trusted him with me and that was now the most powerful aphrodisiac I’d encountered.

  “Go get in bed for me.”

  I left my book on the lounger and went upstairs, hearing the sound of the shower as I stripped. Our bedroom was tidy, military style, the light from the dying sun peeking through the open windows, the sounds of the incoming waves crashing in the distance.

  I sat, propped up by the pillows, waiting for him to come to me.

  When he did, he was naked, still dripping from the shower. He didn’t speak, simply climbing over me on the bed, touching nowhere else except my lips with his. The kiss was soft to start with, then became more demanding, his tongue pillaging my mouth, claiming and I gave, my legs winding around his, pushing my breasts up to his chest but he arched away.

  The lack of touch except for our mouths made me wanton. I started to grasp his skin with my hands, pulling him closer as I needed the friction, touching his chest, his skin, biceps, shoulders and then he grabbed my hands and moved them away from me and him, pushing his weight on them and looking at me. Every inch was taken into consideration, his cock growing harder and I spread my legs further.

  My hips thrust into the air between us and I moaned, needing some form of release. Anticipation was a bitch with a nail gun and I was determined to break free. �
��Fuck me, Killian.”

  He paused, removing a hand from my wrist and dropping it to my centre, one finger grazing from my soaked pussy to my clit. And then his hand resumed its grip on my wrist and he sunk his cock inside me, filling me up hard and fast and claiming me, reclaiming me. I came on his second thrust, completely high off the sheer sensation of simply his cock inside me with no words to cushion the feeling.

  He ignored my orgasm and continued, his hips set so I was unable to move my legs around him and have control or suggestion over his movements. His own orgasm set me off again, warm wetness surrounding us both, leaving me needy and shaking, my vulnerability requiring a cloak only Killian could provide.

  “It’s okay,” he said, holding me into him. “Everything is going to be okay. What I feel is stronger than whatever you have to tell me.”

  I faced him. “I know. Maybe that’s what scares me.”

  “Nothing needs to scare you. I promise.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Killian

  I took her to Bodmin Moor. We’d had two days of mooching about Tintagel, walking around the castle ruins and looking at the trees libations in woodland nearby. We saw people dressed in clothing more suited to Woodstock and a group of pagans performing a ritual that Claire watched wide eyed. She was a true Londoner; unused to much other than the bustle and business of the City so the strangeness of ways more associated with the countryside was an anomaly for her. Even at her parents’ home in Oxford, which was in the countryside, there wasn’t the wildness like this.

  It had been two days since the card reader had spoken to her about whatever it was she had to tell. In that time, she’d shifted between being herself, the Claire I still knew, and a preoccupied woman who was at sea, as Edward’s wife, Elizabeth, would have put it.

  Forty-eight hours later, or nearing that, I’d had enough and I fixed us both in the car and took the roads to the wilds of Bodmin, home of the Beast and of ancient stones and henges, heather and bracken. It was a landscape as different from the city as the moon.