Falling

by Meredith Bond

  ###

  Erin had no idea what made her say that. Of course he had a bedroom. But did she really want to be there?

  Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel the blood rushing through her body, and a good bit of it was pulsing into her nether parts. She didn’t think she’d been this turned on in a good, long while. Hugh had certainly never done this to her.

  In fact, the last time she was this hot was when her former self had had sex with Daffid. But my God, she wanted him! Now.

  He placed her like a china doll onto his bed, as if she would break if he put her down too hard. But as he started to straighten, Erin reached up and pulled at the back of his shirt so that it came off as he stood up. It was a button-down, but neither one of them cared. He fumbled trying to unbutton the sleeves, pulled his arms out, and threw it behind him.

  As he did so, Erin reached for the fastening of his pants. She could see the huge bulge of his desire, and it only made her want to get them off faster. He helped, shucking them as quickly as he could, revealing blue and white striped boxer-briefs straining to contain his manhood. She pushed them down too, and then took his sweet cock into her mouth.

  He tasted so good. The way she felt just now was like night and day to the way she’d felt when she’d been forced to take Huw’s cock into her mouth. She couldn’t help but make the comparison in her mind.

  But David didn’t let her enjoy him for long. He pulled away to help relieve Erin of her clothes, and he was way more agile than she had been. She was naked; his lips and hands all over her in seconds.

  She couldn’t help but laugh at his enthusiasm.

  “Is this funny?” he asked in between kisses.

  “You’re funny,” she told him.

  “Oh, you won’t think so in a moment.” He lowered his head and did to her what she had just been doing to him—sucking and licking at her most sensitive parts. She nearly screamed in pleasure.

  The trembling built with every suck. Each lick brought another shudder. She couldn’t stay still with what he was doing to her. Too fast, she came with the strongest orgasm she’d had in a very, very long time.“ Oh God, your delicious!” he said, raising up over her. He positioned himself hovering so that just the head of his penis pressed against her opening ever so gently. And then he stopped.

  “No!” Erin cried. She put her hands on his buttocks, lifted her hips, and pushed so that he was forced to enter her.

  He laughed. “Eager, aren’t we?”

  “Yes! Don’t tease me, David, I can’t take it!”

  And he didn’t. He did just what she wanted, slowly filling her, moving deeper and deeper until she screamed again in pleasure.

  “That was a good sound, yes?” he asked, checking to make sure.

  “Yes! Oh, God, yes!”

  He laughed. “Okay.”

  And then he started to move. She came almost immediately, and then again, when he really turned on the speed and started coming himself. He groaned before half-collapsing on top of her.

  As the aftershocks of fantastic, mind-blowing sex shuddered through Erin, her damned brain started functioning again with a Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?

  She opened her eyes and stared up at the pale white ceiling. David’s weight felt so good. So comforting. But had she just made a huge mistake? Who was it she had wanted to have sex with? David? Or medieval Daffid?

  Had she wanted to do this because she felt something for the modern guy? Or because her medieval self was in love with the medieval man? Was she being ruled by some outside destiny? Or was this her own choice? Her own desire?

  She had absolutely no idea how she felt about the man lying on top of her. She liked him. She liked him a lot. And he was definitely hot. Definitely attractive enough for her to want to have sex with him. But was there anything more than that?

  “You are amazing,” he said, lifting himself up and caressing Erin’s face with the back of his fingers.

  “David…”

  He raised his eyebrows, his mouth still curved up in a satisfied, sexy-as-hell smile.

  She didn’t want to hurt him, but she felt he deserved the truth.

  He lost his smile. A wariness overcame him, and he rolled off of her. “What?”

  Erin swallowed. “That was…mind-blowing. Honestly, that was the best sex I’ve had in far too long,” she told him, avoiding the harsh thoughts rolling around in her brain.

  “But that’s not what you were thinking. I’ve stayed out of your mind, but even without magic, I could tell that that’s not what you were thinking.”

  “What do you mean you’ve stayed out of my mind?” she asked.

  “I can read minds. It’s one of my strongest abilities. But as I said, I’ve stayed out of yours.”

  “Oh. Um…thanks. I read emotions, but they just come at me in waves. There’s nothing I can do to not feel them,” she admitted.

  He nodded, understanding. “Then you know what I’m feeling.”

  “You’re preparing yourself for me to say something awful when just a moment ago you were feeling…” Loving. She didn’t want to say it out loud. But Erin knew now what that feeling was she was getting from him. It was love, and it broke her heart to tell him what she knew she needed to say. “I have to be honest with you, though,” she continued. “It wouldn’t be right for me not to be.”

  “Then be honest.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about you.” There. She’d said it.

  He narrowed his eyes as if he were trying to decipher that.

  “I don’t know if what I feel is about you, or what my previous self felt about your previous self, or what my current self feels about your previous self. Do you understand? I just don’t know. And I don’t want you to be a rebound.” She raised herself up on her elbow. “I just broke up with Hugh yesterday. It’s too soon to jump into another relationship, whether it’s destined or had been going on before. I don’t know. I don’t understand any of it, and I don’t understand what I’m feeling.” She stopped talking, sure that she had stopped making sense. “Do you get it?” she asked after he’d been silent for a minute.

  He’d been staring blindly down at the space between them while she’d been speaking, but now he just dropped onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “Maybe you should just go.”

  Erin opened her mouth to say something, but she didn’t know what to say. Should she apologize for being so confused? For not loving him as he loved her? She couldn’t do either one, so she got up. Erin dressed in silence and left without either one of them saying another word.

  Chapter Seventeen

  David didn’t sleep—or at least that’s the way he felt when he finally dragged himself out of bed at 7 o’clock the following morning. His eyes felt gritty and dry, his hair was standing at all angles, and he had no desire to drag a razor across his face.

  His shower did something for the hair and his eyes felt better. Now they only looked awful with dark circles outlining the enormous, sagging bags under them. It didn’t take more than a brief glance in the mirror to come to the conclusion that he had absolutely no desire to look at the man who stared soullessly back at him.

  Coffee didn’t seem to make anything better. All it did was enable him to remember much more clearly just what a naïve asshole he really was, and how right Ibrahim had been to warn him that his thinking was screwed up.

  But David hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t recognized the truth in his best friend’s words.

  Well, he did now.

  His second cup of coffee had him coming to the realization that neither in his past life nor his current one had he managed to actually settle anything. In his past life, he was living under his brother’s roof as one of his knights and had fallen madly in love with someone completely off limits. Had she fallen in love with him? He’d thought so but when the time came, she had married his brother willingly enough.

  And in their current life, there was nothi
ng settled between him and Erin. Yes, she’d dumped the modern incarnation of Hugh but wasn’t willing or able to say whether she had any deeper feelings for David, himself. She was confused, she’d said. What the hell was there to be confused about? Either she loved him or she didn’t. And if she didn’t, what the hell was she doing making love to him in the most amazing way and making him feel all sorts of things that would never be reciprocated?

  Even at work, he wasn’t able to complete his most important case. Shawn had been languishing in jail for over a week now, and Deon refused to take any responsibility for either himself or his little brother.

  Well, at least there was something David could do about that! He slammed his coffee cup down on the kitchen table and stormed out the door.

  Within half an hour, he was pounding on the Spencer’s door.

  “What the fuck!” Deon shouted, throwing open the door. This time he had a gun in his hand and looked ready to use it.

  David threw all of his magic into his voice. “Put the gun away.”

  Deon clicked the safety back on and shoved the gun into the back waistband of his boxer shorts, his pants hanging too loose and low to be of any use.

  David took a breath and renewed the force of the magic that had been zinging through his blood all morning, moving faster and faster as he became more frustrated with his own inability to see anything through. “You are going to go down to the police station this morning,” he told the man in front of him. “And you are going to tell them that you’ve thought it through, but you just can’t let your little brother take the rap for wearing your jacket. Admit that the jacket and its contents were yours. Tell them that Shawn knew nothing of what was in the jacket and didn’t even suspect that there might be anything illegal in the pockets. Do you understand?”

  Deon’s eyes looked empty as he nodded silently.

  Shit! Too strong. He should have known that someone who was probably high on… Whatever this guy was on, he would be easily susceptible to his magical suggestion. Oh well, it didn’t matter, so long as he looked natural when he went to the police station.

  “Good. Now go back to sleep and when you wake up, you’re going to look natural, act natural, and turn yourself in to the police just as I told you.” The door closed in David’s face once again, but this time gently as Deon blindly went to do his bidding.

  David took one step back away from the door and turned around to see if anyone had seen him speaking to Deon. The street was eerily empty.

  It was too late for kids to be going to school; they had to be there already. People going to work would be gone too. It was just those who had nowhere they needed to be who would be out, which meant that now was the best time for David to high-tail it out of here before anyone saw him.

  It wouldn’t do for anyone to know that he’d spoken to Deon again today. He didn’t want anyone thinking that he’d had any undue influence on Shawn’s brother. Although, how a mere lawyer could convince a gang member to turn himself in… David laughed. No, no one would think that Deon’s sudden urge to come clean had anything to do with him.

  There, at least now he’d done something. Even better, he suddenly realized, it was Sunday. No wonder there was no around, they were all either asleep or in church. And that meant that he could go back to sleep.

  ###

  “Thank you, my lady.” The words floated from the small salon as I walked past. I caught a glimpse of a maidservant curtseying before turning to leave the room. She turned the other way, not even noticing me hesitating nearby.

  The woman could only have been speaking to my mother or Erinne. As I wanted a word with both of them, I spun around on my heel and entered the door the maid had conveniently left open.

  Erinne was standing by the open door to the battlements, gazing out to the hills beyond the castle walls. She looked to be deep in thought. Her arms were crossed protectively over her chest; her face held no hint of the smile that normally graced her beautiful lips.

  I cleared my throat to make her aware of my presence. Indeed, it was a good thing I did as she gave a little jump when I did so.

  A smile flitted on and off her face as she spun around. Her eyes, normally so beautiful, light, and full of good cheer, took on a cold, hard aspect when they fell on me. It filled me to the core with sadness as I remembered them, not too long before, gazing at me half-lidded in passion.

  She lifted her chin and took in an audible breath. “Yes, my Lord Daffid. Is there something I can do for you?” Her cold voice sent a chill creeping through my blood.

  I reached behind me to close the door. “I wish for a word.” I saw her eyes go to the door as the latch caught with a click. “In private,” I added, perhaps unnecessarily.

  She just stared at me, waiting.

  I wasn’t exactly certain how to begin now that we were alone. My emotions warred with each other, a jumble of hurt, guilt, and passion for this woman, all trying to leap from my heart at once.

  She sighed and turned back to the window. “You should have told me who you were,” she said, beginning what I could not.

  “I should have,” I agreed.

  “Why did you not? Was it deliberate, your subterfuge, or just a mistake which you never corrected?”

  “You know it was the latter. I would have never lied to you on purpose. I didn’t know who you were when I first arrived home,” I said, coming forward a step.

  “So it was your mother who deliberately set us up?” she asked, turning around to show me the skeptical expression in her eyes.

  “I’m afraid it was. She admitted as much to both me and Huw.”

  Erinne’s eyes widened in surprise but then narrowed again in her anger. “But you still didn’t feel the need to correct my mistake. You took advantage of my goodwill. I thought I was giving myself to the man who would be my husband.”

  “And I thought you were getting and receiving pleasure from a man you cared for—dare I say loved?” I tried to hold on to the pain within my heart, but I could see that she felt it as she winced at my words.

  She turned away from me once again. “I was doing that as well,” she whispered.

  “Then why did you go through with the marriage?” I asked, willing my eyes to stay dry and my heart cold.

  She spun around at that. “How could I do otherwise? My father had signed the betrothal documents pledging me to Lord Weobley. I couldn’t go back on his word! There was a contract.”

  “How very honorable of you.” A touch of anger peaked inside my gut. But that wasn’t fair, I knew. It wasn’t her fault she’d been betrothed to the wrong man.

  “And I plan on remaining—”

  In two long steps, I was upon her. I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close. “Do not dare tell me you will be faithful to my brother. Do not!” I shook her in my anger, my passion.

  Her eyes widened in fear.

  “I love you,” I ground out. “We are meant to be together. Destined for each other. It was just a horrible twist of fate that you married the wrong brother. Do not twist it further, I beg of you.”

  She opened her mouth to say something then closed it again. Her eyes searched mine before softening. “I love you too, but…”

  The latch on the door clicked open. I quickly released Erinne and was taking a step away from her when my brother, her husband, walked into the room.

  “What is this?” he asked, his voice little more than a growl.

  “We were talking, that is all,” Erinne said quickly.

  I nodded. “Just talking.”

  Huw came further into the room, looking from one of us to the other as if trying to assess whether we were telling the truth. “That had better be all you were doing.”

  “I was just telling Lord Daffid that I was glad to have him as a brother, and nothing more,” Erinne said, her gaze lowered to the floor.

  Huw turned to me. “Perhaps it would be easier if you were to leave.”

  “There is no need for him to do that, my lord,” E
rinne said, quickly. “I tell you in truth, there will be nothing—“

  “No, there will not,” he agreed, cutting her off. “How could there be when my brother will be miles away? I believe it is time I paid my respects to our king—by proxy. You will carry to him my good wishes and fealty, brother,” he said, turning to me.

  I clenched my teeth together to keep the unwise words, which were running through my head, from slipping off my tongue.

  Erinne just looked from me to Huw. She seemed to come to some sort of conclusion for she pasted a false smile on to her lips and moved forward to take her husband’s arm. “This is a brilliant idea, my lord. He can carry our good news to the king and perhaps stop to visit my parents to share it with them as well.”

  Huw finally tore his gaze from me to look down at Erinne. “What good news is this, wife?”

  “That we will be expecting a happy occasion barely nine months from now. Oh, I know, it is rarely shared before the first three or four months have passed, but I feel sure that we will be graced with good luck in this instance.” She smiled up at him sweetly as my stomach clenched, and I fought a sudden anger that burned through me.

  “A child?” Huw asked in disbelief. “How could we…” He turned toward me in rage.

  “It is not his, I assure you, my lord,” Erinne said quickly. “It could not be his. I know we have been married only three short days, but indeed, it is enough to create a wee one.”

  Huw turned back to Erin. “You are certain…?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. Her whole face seemed open and radiating truth. I had to swallow my own disappointment and recognize that my anger had been unwarranted. He was her husband, not me.

  Still, I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear seeing her swell with child and know that it was Huw’s and not my own. “My hearty congratulations to you both. If you will excuse me, I believe I’ll begin preparations for my journey.”

  “Well, if this is indeed the truth,” Huw began, “then perhaps you needn’t go.”

  “And yet, I’m certain that Lady Erinne would want this news taken to her parents, as she said. I will be happy to make the journey for her.”