by Lois Greiman
“Damn my legs,” she said. “Kiss me there.”
There was a moment of reverent silence, then, “Sweet mother of God!”
“Kiss me.”
“Aye,” he said in a voice so guttural, it was barely heard.
The bed and the woman groaned in unison. “Aye. There.”
The ropes creaked again, beginning a rhythm.
“Take off your clothes. I want to feel you,” she rasped.
“Shameless Jezebel.”
“Aye,” she agreed.
Cloth rustled. Matthew groaned.
” ‘Tis nothing so wondrous as a shameless Jez—” His words stopped abruptly.
“Leona was right,” she sighed. “They hardly fit in my hands. Like a bullock, you are.”
“I am your beast of burden,” he rasped.
“Then take me like a beast.”
“Come here,” he growled.
“As you wish, beastie.”
Catriona scrunched backward toward the head of the bed.
“Turn around.”
“I want to feel them against me.”
“Hold on to the rail.”
The bed creaked in earnest as she did so.
Backed against the wall, Catriona waited in horror, but the woman’s eyes were closed in ecstasy. Her pale, plump breasts were bare, drooping forward as she leaned down to grab hold of the rail.
“Take me,” she moaned.
“Aye,” he grunted and thrust forward.
Fayette gasped. Her eyes snapped open. Her gaze struck Catriona.
She screamed, jerked away, and grappled with the bedsheets.
Cat leapt to her feet.
“What in the name of God?” Matthew rasped.
Momentarily paralyzed, Catriona stared. His hose were gone and his penis, long and narrow and pink, pointed directly at her from a mass of red hair.
Fayette shrieked again. The sound spurred Cat into motion, launching her from the floor and onto the bed. For a moment she floundered in the deep, straw tick, but she caught her balance and threw herself toward the door.
She scraped wildly at the handle. For one frantic instant it refused to open, and then, like a winged angel, it flew wide. She rushed into the hall and without thought galloped off to the right and careened wildly around the nearest corner.
“A sword swept past her face. She shrieked and jolted to a halt. A voice rasped an expletive, and then hands, steady as stone, grabbed her shoulders.
“Good saints, lass, what’s your—” The words stopped. Cat glanced up, still breathing hard as she stared wide-eyed into Sir Hawk’s scowling face. “Catriona? What the devil are you doing? I very nearly beheaded you.”
“I just…” She tried to calm her heart, but in her mind she imagined a naked man storming up behind her, and the only thing she’d be able to recognize was his wick. “I, um…”
Hawk continued to stare at her, his brows drawn low over silver blue eyes.
“Who is it?” he asked, his tone deep.
“What who?” In her scrambling mind, Fayette’s husky, pleasure-soaked voice still echoed in her memory. “Who what?”
“Who is it that be giving you trouble?”
“No one.” The words came out too fast and a bit high-pitched.
Hawk lowered his brows a bit more then strode past her to glance down the corridor.
Apparently no naked man was storming down on them, sword unsheathed, so to speak, for Hawk came back looking as perplexed as before. “Come along,” he said, his tone gruff as he put away his own weapon.
“I tell you, there’s been no trouble that—”
He interrupted her with a wave of one square hand.
“I beg to differ, lass. I always consider wounding the king’s friends a problem.”
“Wounding?” she asked, baffled.
“Your temple,” he said, and taking her hand in his, led her away.
“My…” She touched her hand to her hairline, and felt, to her utter surprise, a trickle of something warm and sticky. Bringing her fingers before her eyes, she saw that it was blood. “How—”
“I think I have never seen a woman run that fast,” he said, wending his way down one corridor and the next. “And I wonder why.”
There was little she could tell him. After all, there was no logical explanation for why she would be hiding in another’s private chambers. ” ‘Tis nothing,” she said, practicing a shrug. “I heard a noise and became spooked.”
“Spooked?” He turned to her, his expression quizzical. “Lady Catriona, I’ve seen you fight men trained to war and honed for battle. Even then you were not spooked. Here.” He opened a door and motioned her inside.
She glanced about as she stepped in. “What is this place?”
“The infirmary. Physic,” he called, glancing about. “Physic!” But the room was empty, except for baskets and bottles that cluttered the floor and table.
“You’ve no need to concern yourself,” Cat said, fingering the scratch that began at her hairline and skimmed backward for two fingers’ width. ” ‘Tis naught.”
“It may turn septic,” Hawk argued. “Sit.”
“Are you an expert then?” she asked, striving for levity—or at least normalcy.
“Of a sort.” He motioned her toward a nearby wooden stool.
She took a seat and watched him as he searched for and selected a bottle. Uncorking it, he smelled the contents.
“So you’ve spent some time here, Sir Hawk?” she asked. It wasn’t the first time she had noticed the scar beside his left eye. It was narrow, no more than a pale line that swept toward his cheekbone. It merely made him look a little more dangerous than before, but at one time he must have been in grave danger of losing his sight. “Was it your eye that brought you here?”
“Nay, it was not.”
“How did you come by that scar?”
“There was a disagreement,” he said simply. If he was trying to dissuade her interest he was doing a poor job of it. But if he hoped to intrigue her… “And what of you, lass? How did you acquire the mark on your throat?”
She touched a forefinger to the tiny blemish he’d mentioned. ” ‘Twas a mark from my birth, I think. I have not had so many disagreements as you.”
He raised a brow as if he doubted her words, but was too polite to say so. Dumping a bit of the chosen liquid onto a scrap of cloth he’d found in a leather basket, he towered over her. “What were you running from?”
“I told you,” she said, looking up at him from her defenseless position. He hovered over her, large as a destrier. “I had a fright, is all. I heard a noise and went to investigate.”
“And you found…”
She cleared her throat and blinked. “What?”
His scowl deepened. “What did you find?”
” ‘Twas nothing to concern yourself with.”
“I beg to differ,” he argued, steadying her chin with one square hand as he dabbed at her wound.
His fingers felt warm and strangely protective, for if he knew the truth of her mission…
She winced at the thought.
“My apologies.” He drew the cloth away, but his fingers remained on her jaw, cradling it as if she were a tiny lass. “I fear gentleness is not my greatest characteristic.”
He was wrong, she thought with surprise. Kindness seemed as much a part of him as the deep timbre of his voice, despite his intimidating scowl and size. His stature was emphasized by his native Highland garb: a green and blue plaid, high leather boots, and a simple saffron tunic tucked into his tartan with sleeves rolled high over the dark skin of his arms. His wrists were flat and broad. Sprinkled with sable hairs, they looked taut with sinew and bone. Higher up, his arms swelled with muscle that disappeared under the pale fabric. And higher still, his shoulders looked impossibly wide beneath the simple garment. There was nothing small about this man. Everything about him seemed larger than life. The width of his sun-browned throat, the bulge of his thigh as it shifted ina
dvertently against hers. If Matthew was hung like a bullock, Hawk would be…
Catriona stopped the thought with a flare of hot discomfort. Her harrowing experience in the unknown bedchamber had been frightening and nothing else. Certainly it was not stimulating. Still, she felt strangely breathless and sensitized as if Hawk’s every movement were some kind of primitive dance. The flex of his arm, the bend of his knee, how the cords in his neck sliced into a valley when he turned just so, and how that valley pointed toward the rising slope of his chest.
He drew his hand from her jaw and she shifted her gaze quickly to it.
A scar sliced between the two knuckles closest to his thumb.
She cleared her throat. “Another reason for your knowledge of the infirmary?” she asked, doing her best to wrest her overheated mind from places hidden beneath yards of tartan wool.
There was quiet for a moment. She could feel his gaze on her face, and finally, when the silence became breathless, she lifted her eyes to look at him. Still, she could not read his thoughts. She could not even tell if he were scowling at her.
“Sir Hawk?” She said his name softly.
“What?” He seemed startled by the sound of her voice, as if his thoughts had been far away.
She was here on a mission, she reminded herself. Nothing else. And regardless of the power in his arm or the gentleness in his hand, she did not know him well. Indeed, he might be Blackheart himself. Therefore she had best keep her head now or lose it forever. “I asked about the scar on your hand.”
He turned it distractedly upward to stare at it. ” ‘Tis naught. Lass—” He reached for her as if to draw her chin upward again, but at the last second, he drew back. “I would know what had you spooked.”
A thousand possible lies skimmed through her mind. But his gaze was as steady as the falcon for which he was named. And a lie did not seem wise.
The scar beside his eye dipped. “Is someone bothering you?”
She remembered Fayette’s moans, Matthew’s hoarse poetry. The memories were liable to bother her for some time—though perhaps inappropriately. For while she should have been repulsed, her skin still felt flushed, her senses overwrought from the sound of their husky voices.
“Surely you can see, Sir Hawk,” she began, trying to ignore the heavy feeling in the pit of her being, “this matter is something I’ve no wish to discuss.”
” ‘Tis my task to guard the king,” he said. “And I cannot do this if I am unaware of the goings-on of the castle.”
“Must you know everything that transpires at Blackburn?”
” ‘Tis my preference.”
“Every clandestine… joining?”
For a moment he seemed stunned to silence, then, “You witnessed—”
“Aye.” She interrupted him before he could voice the embarrassing truth.
“Oh.”
She cleared her throat and tried to think of somewhere to look, but there was nothing to see but him. “Oh, indeed.”
His presence seemed to fill the entire room, and she saw that he was as uncomfortable as she. Lifting a hand, he rubbed his chest as if easing some half-forgotten wound, and when her gaze fell there, she realized that she could indeed see the end of a whitish scar that pointed directly to his heart.
“Blackburn Castle is…” He paused. ” ‘Tis a far shot from a monastery. I try to keep young James isolated from such things, but ‘tis difficult.”
“Are you speaking of your own behavior or others’?”
The question fell into the heat of the room like tinder on flame.
“I am the captain of the king’s royal guard,” he said. “My post keeps me quite busy.”
‘The two I saw seemed quite busy.”
His eyes were deadly steady, his brows low, but his lips quirked slightly.
“Are you inquiring about my carnal experiences, lass?”
No. Maybe. Yes. Good Lord, what was wrong with her? The room seemed strangely airless, their gazes tied.
“Have a care who you hone your flirtations on, lass,” he said, his voice a midnight rumble in the dim room.
“Are you so dangerous then?”
“Nay. I am so old. My heart may be unable to bear the strain.”
He looked as tough as a scared oak, as intriguing as a winding trail. She almost laughed at his description of himself, but the sound would not quite leave her throat.
“Not so old, I think,” she murmured.
He reached out and ever so slowly, as if he tried to stop himself, stroked the backs of his fingers against her cheek. A dozen unwanted emotions swamped her—desire and hope and host of others she could not even name. She closed her eyes to the sweet brush of his caress, but in that second a rustle of sound came from the doorway.
Hawk yanked his hand away, then pivoted jerkily toward the noise. “Physic.” His tone seemed to carry an unwarranted relief. “The lass has been wounded. I leave her jn your care.” Without another word, he dropped the cloth on the table and strode from the room.
Chapter 5
Haydan paced the confines of his bedchamber. It was a small room, comfortable but humble. Long ago, he had been offered more elegant quarters, but he had found that he could not relax there—for the greater the distance from the king, the more his nervousness increased.
Now he resided less than fifty feet from James’s bedroom door, and yet he felt as high strung as a wild barb. But why? All was well. True, the king was planning to celebrate his twelfth birthday, and true, the castle and grounds beyond were becoming mired in guests. Still, there was no reason for any great worry—for although James was the sovereign monarch of Scotland, his was a title in name only. He had no true power. The French Duke of Albany governed Scotland, and although both his interest and his involvement in Scottish politics seemed to be waning, he still held the country’s reins. Therefore, ‘twas his life that was most in danger.
It was true that there would always be those who wished the throne harm, but Hawk’s men were ready for any eventuality. They were loyal, well trained, and well armed.
But that thought propelled an unwanted memory—the memory of a slim Gypsy lass fighting off the advances of a man Haydan had trusted to protect the fairer sex, not to compromise it. A man who had been Haydan’s own soldier.
Damn! He paced again. Although Brims had been new to Blackburn’s defenses, he had come highly recommended. Haydan had thought him above such deplorable actions. An image of Catriona wavered in his imagination. Any man might be made temporally insane by her nearness. It was not that she was beautiful; mayhap she was not even particularly bonny. She was simply… entrancing. And yet, what it was that made her so mesmerizing, he was unsure. Perhaps it was her eyes. Wide set and slightly slanted, they seemed to change hue with each mercurial mood. But nay, it was not simply her eyes. It was she. She was uncanny, unearthly. That had been evidenced that very evening in the great hall. For when she entered, all sense seemed to be driven from the mind of every man present. They were willing to make fools of themselves just to spend a moment by her side, to feel the light of her smile on their faces, to hear the sweet whisper of her voice.
And he? Haydan ground his teeth. He was just one among the crush. True, he had been able to keep himself from her, to keep his distance when others crowded close, but he could not help but be thrilled by every moment of her attention, or enraged by every inane compliment from the ever-present posturing swains.
He paced again. Why had she come here? To perform, she said. But there were things she wasn’t telling him. A man didn’t become the king’s captain of the guard without developing some kind of sixth sense.
But why was she holding back the truth? She was not a dishonest sort and he had never given her reason to distrust him. Indeed, since the first time he’d met her years before, they had gotten on well together. She had been a lass of only eight and ten years when she had first come to Blackburn Castle. Even then Haydan had felt an indefinable attraction to her, but years and his o
wn aversion to taking himself too seriously had warned him that he, like every other breathing man, had merely been enamored by her unearthly sensuality. Thus, he had been careful not to act the fool. Careful to pretend that he thought of her no differently than he thought of his own high-spirited niece—rather troublesome, but a decent sort.
Still, he could remember every moment he had spent with her. He had been a fool to take her to the infirmary, for now he had even more memories—the feel of her flesh beneath his fingers, the glimmer of her eyes—so vibrant, so alive. She was not like other lasses—neither coy nor silly, but—
But what? He paced again. She was a babe, little more than half his age. Just the thought of her miniscule years made his knee creak with the years he’d put behind him. He grimaced as he walked, reveling in the pain. For with pain came reality. And the reality was, he was an old man—and the king’s man, vowed to protect and serve, to put none above his sovereign lord.
And that was just what he would do. Turning toward the door, Haydan wrenched it open and stepped into the hall. In a dozen strides he had reached James’s room. A sconce burned beside each of the iron-bound double doors. And beneath each light, a soldier in dark hose and blue doublet stood with his back to the wall, ready and alert.
“Galloway,” Haydan said, nodding to the nearest guard. He was a young man of humble birth, too young for such a post, some would say. But it was he who had reported Catriona’s trouble with Brims, even though he had been unable to disguise his distrust of Gypsies. “All goes well here?”
“Aye!” Galloway snapped, with a stance so stiff and erect it might have been hammered out on an open forge. “All is quiet, Sir Hawk!”
Haydan gave him a wry look for his overly zealous attitude, but Galloway didn’t even turn his gaze sideways to note the expression.
“Nothing to report, Cockerel?” Hawk asked the other guard.
“Nay, sir,” he agreed, only raising a dark brow at the other’s wild enthusiasm. “You may rest assured that young Galloway here would have reported so much as a flea’s entrance to the room.”
Haydan stifled a grin. There was much to be said for young blood.