by Lois Bonde
The storm had moved in quickly and they were both thoroughly drenched by the time they reached the hunting lodge. There were only two horses present when they rode in the huge open door of the stable. Seconds later, an old white-haired man ran from the back of the lodge into the stable. He was breathing hard with the effort he had put into running. He bent over, his hands on his thighs, trying to catch his breath.
“Sorry, Sir,” he managed. “We had no idea ye would be coming here today.”
“We’ve stopped for a day or two before we go on, Matty. We’re soaking wet and hungry enough to eat one of these tired beasts.”
He bowed toward Catherine though Sean had not, could not introduce her. The only name he knew for her was the one he had given her, his Sweetling.
“I’ll take care o’ the horses. Ye go on in and me wife will fix ya right up. She’ll be so pleased ya stopped here, she will.”
“Thanks, Matty,” Sean said.
Catherine thought her Dream Knight seemed in a rush—almost to the point of being rude. He grabbed her pack along with his own and took Catherine’s elbow in his free hand. Together they ran to the lodge.
She was astounded that he let himself in and made himself at home. He led her straight upstairs where they found Matty’s wife Margaret in a huge bedroom making up the bed with fresh linens. She surprised Catherine by hugging Sean as if he were a relative—or at least a most welcome guest. Sean certainly had some nice friends.
He got the fire going and Catherine stood by it, rubbing her hands together as she looked around the room. The bed was so huge she was certain that not even her Dream Knight’s feet would hang over the end. She smiled at the heavenly thought of a bath in warm water and a night’s sleep in a real bed.
“What room would ye like me to make up for your lady?” Margaret asked.
“None other than this. I’ve no’ come here to give ya more work.” He grinned and added, “But we’re starving. Do ye think ye could put together a bite of supper for us?”
“To be sure, I could. Ye get yourselves into dry clothes and I’ll have it ready by then.
Margaret turned to leave and Sean called out her name. “One more thing, and it’s most important. When Matty comes in from the stables, I’d appreciate ye tellin’ him as well.”
“Aye, and what’s that?”
“We’re no’ here,” he said.
Margaret tipped her head and looked from him to Catherine and back, the frown never leaving her face. “You’re no’ here?”
“That’s right.” He winked and grinned more broadly. “If anyone should come by to ask, ye have no seen us.”
The housekeeper’s frown only lasted a second longer. She suddenly grinned just as broadly as he was. “Ach, I see it now. No one is to know the two of ya be here.”
“We’ll do our best to stay out of sight.”
She laughed and walked from the room. Her laughter could be heard from the hall and stairway as she closed the door and went back down to the kitchen.
Catherine hadn’t even thought about the fact that there would be people out searching for her. She was too entranced with meeting the knight of her dreams. But she knew all too well that the harsh realities of her sad lot in life would come as soon as she stopped dreaming.
* * * * *
Sean eyed his Sweetling, dry now, but dressed in as dull and dark a dress as she’d worn before she changed. He took her wrist and tugged at her to follow him through another door.
“Oh, this is the most beautiful room I’ve ever been in,” she said, in awe of the carved panels on the wall, the drapes of furs and velvets. “Won’t the owners get mad at ya for being here?”
He stared at her blankly for a moment and then realized she didn’t know this hunting lodge was his.
“No, they won’t mind…if we’re careful with the things here. This room used to be for the mother of the owner, but she died some years ago.”
He strode across the room and opened the huge trunk against the far wall. “I’m sure ye would be welcome to use a dress left here.”
She timidly walked up beside him and gasped at the beautiful and expensive garments he pulled from the trunk. “Ach, ye shouldn’t be touching those lovely garments. They’ll kick us out on our ears for sure, even if ye are good friends with the kind caretakers.”
Sean laughed despite himself. She was so sweet and naïve that she drew out a wide protective streak in him. For a moment he almost regretted taking her virginity, figuring it was the only gift she had left to bestow on some man who might be her husband someday.
As he searched through the trunk, he discovered an emerald-green velvet gown the color of her eyes. “Here, this is the one. It’s perfect for ya with your glorious red hair and green eyes.” He dropped the dress into her hands without ceremony and looked back in the trunk. A pale green scarf caught his eye and he pulled it out. “Here. Take this too…for your hair.”
He lifted out a petticoat and a delicate embroidered shift plus a pair of slippers and stockings before he closed the trunk and strode to the door. When he stopped there, he saw she hadn’t moved. She was staring at the garments in her arms. When she looked up, he saw tears welled in her eyes.
“I’ve never seen such a beautiful dress. And surely, this shift is the finest fabric ever made. “
He smiled and went to her, gently grasping her shoulders. “My Sweetling, ye should always have such beautiful dresses to wear.”
She smiled, but her lips trembled. “Ach, that will never be, but it will be fun for one evening, if you’re sure ya won’t get into trouble?”
“I’m sure.” He kissed her and put his arm around her for the walk back to their room. Feigning a maid’s curtsy with his kilt held out to the side with one hand, he said in a high voice, “Your maid, lass, at your service.”
She giggled at his impersonation and laid the dress and other garments on the bed as gently as if they were a newborn babe. “I will need help with the laces on the back. I just hope I can manage something with my hair. I don’t imagine ye can create the latest hair fashions?”
He smiled wickedly and winked. “I can take them down in a wink, but I’ve never been known to pin one up.” She laughed. “If ye can manage your hair while I get on dry clothes, I’ll help with the dress.”
When he led his Sweetling down to the dining room after dressing, Sean knew that there wasn’t a more handsome couple in all of Scotland. And, he was certain, not another couple as happy with each other when they didn’t even know their real names.
* * * * *
Catherine had never eaten a more delicious meal. Her Dream Knight had insisted she sit close beside him instead of at the opposite end of the table. She soon learned why.
As she sipped the last of her barley broth from her spoon and was raising her napkin to pat her moist lips, his hand stayed hers. He leaned forward and kissed the rich soup from her mouth. She cradled his freshly shaven cheek in her hand to hold him close and kissed him in return. She nipped at his full lower lip and drew it into her mouth and bit it playfully.
It was during that kiss that a smiling Margaret brought in the next course, a tray of delicate chops from a young lamb, dripping in plum sauce.
Catherine felt embarrassed and pulled back so quickly that she almost bit him too hard. Serves him right, she thought, for putting her in that position when the housekeeper was just as like to walk in as not.
“Set it close here and take your time with the next course. We want to enjoy your excellent cooking to the fullest,” he told Margaret. She set the platter between them and scurried back to the kitchen.
Catherine inhaled deeply. “It smells wonderful.”
“Aye. The plum trees are right behind the house. She makes a tasty plum jam and plum pudding, too.”
He picked up one of the small bones and held the meat end out toward her. Meeting his gaze with her own, she leaned forward and opened her mouth and extended her tongue over her lower lip. He laid the meat on he
r tongue and held onto the bone as she closed her lips around morsel and slowly pulled off a bite. When she’d chewed and swallowed the small portion, their gazes were still locked. Her tongue darted out as she licked a dab of plum sauce left on her lips.
He dropped the bone back onto the platter without moving his hand away. She licked the sweet sauce from his fingers and then lifted a chop to his lips. They took turns feeding each other, and when the platter was empty, she watched as he sucked the sauce from each of her fingers.
The freshly cooked green beans offered another game. Holding one between his teeth, he leaned over so she could take the other end in hers. They each nibbled toward the center until the vegetable disappeared with a kiss. While he fed her, Catherine slid her hand over his thigh and beyond, marveling at the power she had to get a certain part of his body to do what she wanted it to do. He picked up a green bean and drew a line along the edge of her dress, over the swells of her breasts.
“I think I’m jealous of this vegetable,” he teased. He ate it in two bites and continued the caress with his fingertips.
Curling his fingers under the edge of the scoop neck, he pressed downward until he had her nipples between his fingertips. He squeezed them, bending them one way and then the other until they were hard and standing erect. He teased them further by circling them but not touching them. When he removed his fingers some minutes later, her nipples were plainly evident through the fabric of the dress. He rubbed his knuckles over them and smiled.
When she took a swallow of her wine, he had to kiss her to taste it in the depths of her sweet mouth. Feeling lightheaded from the wine and from the sexual play, she leaned back in her chair and sighed.
“I’m so full I don’t think I could eat again for a week.”
“Ye can’t stop before dessert,” he insisted.
As he spoke Margaret appeared with a tray of assorted desserts and a sweet cherry sauce to put over the small cakes.
“Oh, they’re beautiful,” Catherine said softly, clasping her hands together in delightful anticipation.
Her Dream Knight suddenly rose. He picked up the tray in one hand and took Catherine’s hand in the other, pulling her to her feet.
“Thank you, Margaret. You’ve outdone yourself and on such short notice. I can’t thank ye enough. We’ll take this with us. Ye may clear the rest and retire. And don’t expect us for an early breakfast. We’ll let ye know when we get hungry.”
“Aye, sir.” Margaret blushed, curtseyed, and hurried from the room.
“Ye mean to take all those desserts with us?”
“Sweets for my Sweetling,” he said softly as they left the dining room.
In the bedroom he set the tray on the table that stood beside the thick fur rug in front of the fire. Deep in the woods the evenings were chilly, and the fire that Matty must have laid while they ate, felt wonderful.
Catherine pulled at the ties of the lovely velvet dress she wore. She’d been worried all through dinner that she might spill on it. She certainly didn’t want any sticky dessert to mar it now. “I’m going to take this off to keep it clean. I can’t bear the thought of ye getting in trouble for me ruining it.”
He smiled and helped with the laces down the back. “Good idea, Sweetling.” As he slipped the dress off her shoulders, he kissed each one, sending gooseflesh down her arms.
With her hands trembling in anticipation, she laid the dress on the trunk by the wall and the petticoat beside it. She turned back to get her gray dress and found him watching her. Self-conscious, she ran her palms down the delicate shift that he had loaned her to wear. She knew that the dusky shadow of the tips of her breasts and the dark triangle at the apex of her thighs was showing right through the thin fabric. She felt his eyes travel over her as surely as if he had caressed the path with his fingertips. “I don’t know why I could be dreaming that ye would want to see me nearly naked,” she said in a hoarse voice. “I never dreamed I would want that before.”
“I’m in this dream and my part now is to see and taste every inch of you, Sweetling.”
Her limbs felt heavy and she was unable to stop him as he slid his hands from her shoulders, over her breasts, in the curve of the side of her waist, and over her hips to the hem of the shift. He took hold of the fabric there and lifted it over her head. Tossing it on the floor, he hauled her into his arms to kiss her. On fire, she yanked the brooch holding his plaid on his shoulder. He broke the kiss momentarily to loosen the ties on his shirt and pull it off. While his hands were high over his head, she jerked the end of the belt through his buckle. His kilt pooled on the floor around his feet. His rod leapt toward her belly.
He laughed with delight and picked her up with a hand under each arm as if she weighed no more than a small child. Her borrowed shoes fell off as he set her on the edge of the bed and pressed her down onto her back with a lengthy kiss. Coming up for air, he paused only a second to take a deep breath, and then laid a line of kisses down her neck and across each breast. He paused to suckle each of the dusky pink tips and rub his shaven cheeks over their soft fullness. He nuzzled her flat belly and rubbed his chin in her soft furry triangle, teasing her with pressure on the hard nub hidden at the top of the folds.
“Ach, I almost forgot,” he muttered as he rose.
She voiced a complaint at his leaving with a little cry. He didn’t go far. He retrieved the tray of sweets and laid it on the flat top of the truck at the foot of the bed. She tried to scoot up onto the bed, but he kept her where she was with her legs hanging over the edge of the coverlet.
He reached for a slice of apple the size of his middle finger and dipped it in the thick cherry sauce. Carrying it quickly to Catherine, he didn’t feed it to her as she’d expected. Instead, pushing her knees aside with his elbows, he swabbed her deep-rose lips with the sweet red sauce. With no more than a smile to warn her, he gently jabbed the piece of apple into her warmth just far enough for it to stay in place.
She threw her head back and groaned as he licked the sweet sauce from every inch of her folds. When he had cleaned it away, he lifted out the stick of apple, holding it between his lips. Rising over her, he offered it to her. Sweetened with the cherry sauce and with her own honey, it melted in her mouth. Their halves swallowed, he returned to his spot between her thighs and inserted his tongue to lap up the last of the sweet cherry sauce.
“Hot and ready for me,” he whispered. “And so sweet.” He teased and tempted her hard nub with his tongue, sucking on it until she cried out.
She tossed her head from side to side. “Tease me no more, my Dream Knight.”
He pushed her knees up to gain deeper access and plunged his rod into her hot depths. She cried out and clutched the bed covering with both hands.
“I never dreamed it could be like this. You’re so big, but I love taking every inch of you inside me like this.”
He swiveled his hips to move his cock around inside her. “Ye like that? Ach, we’re just gettin’ started.” He lifted his hips and reached under her knees to raise her feet over his shoulders. Withdrawing and grasping his cock, he circled her lips, teasing and tickling. He spread her sweet honey with drops of his own.
“Please, please,” she pleaded. She raised her hips to get him inside her. She tugged on his shoulders to encourage him to lean closer and enter her.
“That what you want?”
“Oh, yes, and more. Much more,” she breathed as she squirmed under him.
“More and more and more,” he promised with each thrust.
Her thighs pressed against her breasts, she felt his cock press against her womb. Her body felt on fire. He filled her and yet she couldn’t get enough of him. His hips pounded against her thighs as they pumped themselves up to new heights together.
“Come for me,” he ordered. “Now!”
Catherine obeyed and found the greatest of pleasures as her body curved to meet his next thrust. He stilled when he felt her spasming around him and stroked even harder and faster. With a
frightening growl, he found his own release buried deep within her.
He pulled his arms from under her legs and kissed her with a fierceness that she loved. This was her strong Dream Knight. She was his and he was hers forever—if only in their dreams.
Spent, he fell onto the center of the bed and pulled her over beside him, his wet cock pressed against her belly. He kissed her gently then. The look on his face was of surprise and pleasure—the same had to be on her own.
“I dinna know it could feel so good,” she whispered breathlessly.
“Neither did I,” he admitted.
As her breathing returned to normal, Catherine licked the cherry sauce from her lips and glanced over at the tray. Two squares of light pastry with custard between the layers were close enough for her to reach without sitting up. She lifted off the top layer of each and scooped the custard into her palm. Closing her fingers over it so it didn’t fall from her grasp, she rolled over to face him.
Leaning on one elbow, she looked at him. His eyes were closed, but she didn’t think he slept. He was so handsome—and he was the perfect lover. He had given her exactly the sweet pleasure she’d sought to experience before she was tied to a monster for the rest of her life. And she loved him. At that moment she knew that she would always love him. She didn’t want their dream to end, but she knew it must, and soon.
But not just yet. Not before she had custard for dessert. She smiled and rose up over him to sit straddling his legs. He sighed and laid a big hand lovingly on her thigh. Evidence of a bit of remaining cherry sauce and her honey were smeared on his rod. It lay to one side as if resting. She smiled and dipped her finger into the warm creamy custard pooled in her palm.
Beginning at the tip that lurched when she touched it, she carefully and completely frosted his cock in custard. Each time it surged in her hands, she had to spread more to cover the new length. She had a little left when she’d covered the now fully erect object of her attention. Not wanting to be selfish, she quickly spread the remaining around her nipples. He could taste some there, but later. She smiled at him and licked the custard from her finger in long slow strokes while he watched. When it was clean, it was her turn to eat her sweet dessert. She began at the base and licked off the rich filling.