by Kris Kennedy
Her head rolled against the wall and her staccato gasps of pleasure became long, low moans, and his own head roared with passion. Then her body stiffened and whipped hard between him and the wall, her fingers tightening with little jerks in his hair as she climaxed, a hard, rolling surge all around his fingers and tongue, crying out his name, over and over.
And he, Tadhg the outlaw, the mercenary almost since birth, the man with a single mission, kept kissing her and holding her, inhaling her, devoting himself to her long past what was needed to simply finish the job.
Chapter Eleven
MAGDALENA FELT broken and rebuilt, a tower smashed apart and resurrected, higher than before.
She looked down at Tadhg, his forehead resting against her lower belly, his fingers still inside her, her body still throbbing. She smoothed her hand over the top of his head. His face, hewn and beautiful, turned up to hers.
“Aye?” His voice was thick.
Her cheeks flamed. “Oh, aye. I thought…I thought you were going to…take me,” she finished in a rush, flushing.
One dark brow arched in silent reply, then he nodded toward her body, in front of which he still knelt, her gown still bunched against her belly, one of her knees still hooked over his shoulder.
“I consider you taken,” he said, his voice roughened like a knot in silk.
She laughed with soft, giddy, almost drunken happiness, and ran her hand down the side of his head. One night, that was all she had, and she was overcome by the fierce, almost violent, desire to have absolutely all of it. All of him.
“I want more,” she whispered, feeling oddly, frighteningly, tearful.
He stilled. “I have more,” he said quietly, and unraveled to his feet, taking her hand. “Come, lass, let’s get you more.”
He backed them up to the bench beside the huge oak table in her kitchen. Swiftly then, still holding her gaze and one of her hands, he used his other hand to unbuckle his sword belt and toss it on the table with a soft clatter of steel and leather straps. He unlaced his hose and braies and, with the flat of his hand, pushed the soft linens down, just enough to expose his pale, muscled upper thighs and the thick, curving erection, thrusting up from a thatch of dark hair.
Her head dropped back, but she kept her gaze on him. Every edge of her, every inch of her skin, every cord of her muscles, felt golden and shimmering, like dew on a cobweb. Breathing through parted lips, she reached out and skimmed a fingertip up the length of him.
He hissed and sat on the bench, then tugged her forward, not gently, to stand between his knees. Her hair fell around her shoulders, past her exposed breasts, the ends trailing across his thighs. The room was cast in pockets of darkness and flickering light. It felt as if the room itself was undulating with shadow and firelight, Tadhg the outlaw the darkest shadow of all, as he curled a length of her hair around his palm and pulled her to him. Touching her thigh, he guided her to swing a leg over and straddle him.
She lowered herself until she felt the rounded head of him touch her slick folds. Already exquisitely sensitive and still pulsing with pleasure, she jerked, his thrusting male hardness both pain and promise. His hand circled her hip, urging her down, an irresistible force. Her tunic fell down, a tapestry of blue and yellow draped across his lap, and he pushed a hand beneath the fabric. She felt the roughened edge of a calloused hand brush her inner thighs as he curled his fist around his shaft and held it, as she bent her knees and lowered herself, slowly, so slowly, until the thick head of him breached her, pushed up inside, forced her open for him the barest, thickest inch.
She shook so hard she hardly realized he was too. The hand on her hip gripped harder, tightening to an almost painful pressure as he released a single, slow Irish word. It sounded like a curse. His head fell back.
He lifted it again at once, his eyes reflecting firelight, hard and dark with desire as he rested his elbows on the table behind him and slid his open hands up her ribs, to her armpits, where he cupped her.
“More, lass?” he said, his voice strained.
Her mouth opened, panting at him.
He took that as her reply, and guided her down, forcing his thick shaft deeper into her. Her flesh spread for him.
Snapping cords of heat lanced through her body, up her back, across her belly, down her legs. She felt whipped by pleasure. Her head fell back slowly as if dragged by an invisible force, a low, long, gasp torn from her body.
“Och, you are a beautiful one,” he rasped, and lifted his hips and surged up, seating himself fully inside her with a single, solid thrust.
Her head dropped to hang beside his. “Oh, please, Tadhg.” It came out as a whisper, a sob.
He lifted again, stroking into flesh so sensitive she felt enflamed. Her head flung, sending her hair flying, but a hard palm on her spine dragged her forward again, and he took her breast in his mouth, not even bothering to brush aside her hair.
They rocked together, Magdalena arching over him, her heavy breasts swinging for him, inviting more of his wicked, wonderful incursions. He took the invitation and gripped her more firmly, more fiercely, then leaned back against the table behind him and dragged her forward as he lifted his hips, changing their angle to penetrate deeper.
She was launched into a new realm, wracked by jolts of pleasure. Hot and cold cords of sensation wrapped around her. She felt trapped in a gold webbing. It snaked across her back and thighs, snapped down her breasts and belly. The room was silent but for her gasps of pleasure and his growls of approval, her body shuddering under the storm of pleasure. The pleasure grew and grew, threatened to overtake her. She felt she might explode. Or be subsumed. She tried to scramble away, put her hands on his chest and pushed up.
The hand on her waist tightened. “What—?”
“It’s too much,” she gasped, panting. “I cannot.”
“Aye, you can.” His voice was low and harsh. “You wanted more.” He lifted into her again, and the bands of pleasure tightened inside her. “This is more.”
She had no recourse, there was nothing she could do—nothing she wanted to do—but keep breathing and let him take her, hard. Surrendering, hot and weak, she leaned over him, pressed him back to the table and laid her palms on his shoulders and arched for him, letting him have everything he wanted, rocking to meet his every thrust, to take his every deeper plunge. Undulations of pleasure began thudding through her body. Her head fell forward with a broken, silvery gasp.
“It is too good,” she whispered.
“I know,” he rasped, and sucked her bottom lip into his mouth.
Tremors of pleasure grew and grew like a wave through her body until, with a crash, it fell. Smashing, rolling towers of shuddering pleasure tumbled through her.
Tadhg locked his mouth on hers as she quaked in rhythmic pulses, but still he did not stop, instead drove her onward more, until she cried from the tortured pleasure of it, surging into her again and again until, with a hoarse curse, he cupped the back of her head and held her mouth to his as he reached his completion, spilling himself inside her in hot pulses.
It seemed as though they clung to one another for hours afterward, sweaty and rampaged and stunned, incapable of doing more than breathing hard and resting their mouths against each other’s in a long, endless kiss.
Finally, though, he shifted. She felt it as if in a dream, him sliding out of her, wiping himself clean, then her, then taking her back on his lap, her skirts properly down around her ankles now, wordless through it all.
Then he held her, for how long she did not know. It could wait, everything could wait. The world, the worry, the problems, the unanswerable questions, everything could wait. She felt limpid, crystalline, transparent and lit up, as if she was a glass vessel filled with sparks, alive for the first time in too many years to count.
So all the rest could wait, for soon he would be gone, this criminal, and her world would return to the ashen reality where no one called her anything but Mistress Thread, proper merchant who paid all
her bills and extortions on time.
Church bells finally drove her from his arms.
If Tadhg had any chance at all, it was now. Now or never. And, shameful as it was, she did not think she could go on if it was a ‘never.’ If he was captured, her heart might break. If he was captured, he would be tortured, and—
She pushed off his lap shakily. “You must go. Now, before the gates open. Here.” She started to turn to get the coin he’d given her at the quay. “Take this, for Gustave.”
“Again with Gustave,” he muttered, getting to his feet.
“Go, now.”
He reached for his sword belt. “Not without you.”
Chapter Twelve
MAGDALENA LAUGHED. “Not without—? Are you asking me to come with you?”
“Aye, come with me,” he said, as casually as if he’d suggested they play a game of chess. As if, somewhere on him, invisible right now, he didn’t hold contraband that powerful forces were hunting for some dark purpose.
As if he weren’t shepherding it to some even darker purpose.
Come with me.
Her heart thrilled, became buoyant.
She dragged it back down. Come with him, indeed.
She frowned. “No.”
“Why not?”
She laughed again, with affection this time. His outrageousness was quite…outrageous. “Why not? I thank you, sir, but I choose not to be on the run with an outlaw.”
“I’m not an outlaw in France.” He paused. “Yet.”
“Indeed. Well, I have quite a nice life here—”
He was standing, covered in blades and mystery, his dark head bent as he buckled his sword on. At this, though, he looked up, dark hair spilling forward beside his face. “Do you?”
She flushed.
Pressing his point, he stepped forward, touched the curve of her hips. “Come with me,” he said, his voice a low coax.
“You are trying to tempt me with sin,” she accused, but even so, her body leaned to him.
“Absolutely,” he agreed with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes.
No matter. Her smiles had probably lost their reach as well. She was sadly, sinfully, shamefully attached to this criminal she’d known a few hours, attached with strings of affection and laughter and fiery, hot passion. But that did not mean she would leave her safe life behind. It was madness for him to suggest it.
Madness more, that her heart leapt when he did.
“You cannot be serious, Tadhg.”
He leaned his forehead to hers. “As sin, I am.”
“But that is not…possible.”
“Aye, it is.” He shrugged. “We walk away. Together.”
She burst out in laughter at his solution. “You make it sound easy.”
His smile faded. “It is uncomplicated, not easy.”
She stared into the dark eyes so close to hers, and in a flash of tenderness, skimmed her fingertips down his scruffy cheek to his mouth. He turned and caught one between his lips. A pain sliced through her heart, hard and fast, like a knife.
“Tadhg, I cannot simply walk out of my life.”
“Why not? You did not sound so pleased with its hardships earlier.”
He’d listened well. The realization made her skin prickle. “Yes, but that was…that was just talk.” Something about him almost frightened her now.
“I do not ‘just talk,’ Maggie.”
His use of the affectionate nickname now seemed weaponly. Hard and thrusting.
“One cannot simply go about doing whatever one wants in this world,” she retorted, and his eyes went stone-hard.
“Why not? I’m full weary of doing what everyone else wants. So are you. Come with me.”
Yes.
She heard the cry from deep inside: Yes, yes, yes. Run away with him.
No.
Some things were possible and others were not, and this was not a possible thing. Successful merchants did not run away with criminals. Even if they had had carnal relations with said criminals only a few moments earlier.
Reckless fools did that. Magdalena was not reckless. She could not afford to be, ever again. Look to what happened in the past…what had happened here, up against the wall, and on the bench…what was happening right now, in her heart, at the invitation of this outlaw to leave the brown drudgery of her life and leap off into the bright unknown.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I cannot.”
His face was flat, almost blank, but very, very hard.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”
Chapter Thirteen
TADHG WATCHED her face change, dissolve, flatten. What had been bright—eyes, smile—went dark, and what had been lithe and curving—lips, hips, her fingertips on his shoulders—stiffened and went rigid.
“You jest,” she suggested weakly.
He shook his head.
“What do you mean, insist?”
“I mean you’re coming with me. Willingly, or….” He let the sentence trail off.
She took a step backward. “I cannot.”
“You have no choice.”
Her jaw fell. The color drained from her face and she looked at him with wide, wounded eyes. She’d not believed him capable of this.
For some reason, this angered him wildly. It moved through him like a fist, smashing and shattering, blasting holes through his façade of calm. Why should she believe him incapable of such things, after all he’d shown her so far?
“You would not,” she whispered, her eyes searching his.
He pulled her close, captured her wrists into a bundle of clenching fingertips and pressed them tight against the V of her collarbone. “Whatever you doubt me capable of, Magdalena, now is the time to believe in the very worst of them. There is nothing I will not do to complete my mission.”
“But what matter I to your mission?” she cried.
“I will never get out of your town, not now, not alone. Nor will I make it through the gates of any other town along the French coast; Sherwood has them all watched. They are seeking a man on the run, alone. They care nothing for a man and a woman together. You shall get me through gates I could ne’er pass through alone.”
Her eyes searched his, shifting from amazement to fury. “Then you are no different,” she spat.
“From who?”
“From them all,” she said, almost a hiss, tugging on her wrists. He released her. “From the man I helped protect you from. From the man who raised me and the one who wed me and the ones who steal from me, every day. The men who rule the ports and castles and kingdoms. You take whatever you wish, whensoever you wish it, and care nothing for anything that stands in your way. You use us all.”
“We none of us are different, lass.” His voice was hollow. “We are all the same man, over and over again.”
She thrust up her chin, as she had with Sherwood. “And if I say no?”
His hand closed around her spine and yanked her to him, her breasts flattened against his chest. “I recommend against it, Maggie,” he murmured, his tone low, that of a lover, but his words were fierce, those of a warrior. “Heed me well: I will do anything necessary to get back to England. You do not want to stand in my way.”
She stared up at him in horror. “England? You are taking me to England?”
“You need go only as far as St. Malo, where I can get a ship.”
“But that leads through the heart of war,” she said in a low tone.
“I know.” He released her hands. “Pack light.”
He stood watch as he gave her time to dress warmly, trap her hair in a long silken case, and throw a few items in satchels—blankets, a few toiletries, food and clothes—then he wrapped a cloak around her shoulders and bundled her to the door.
“Where will she look?” he asked curtly as he kicked the fire apart.
Maggie blinked in confusion. “Who?”
“Your apprentice. Where will she look, in the morning, when she comes and finds
you gone?”
Forcing her mind to the mundane, she pointed at the mantle. “We occasionally leave one another brief messages there, when business calls me away.”
He looked at her sharply. “She can cipher?”
“Not well. Numbers better than words, but a few. She is to be a merchant,” she said almost defensively. “She is mine, my responsibility. I taught her.”
He pointed at the table. “Write her, tell her business called you away.”
She gave a helpless sort of laugh and gestured at the shambles of her shop. “She is not a fool. This was no matter of business.”
“Then tell her to hold her tongue, ere more danger comes down upon her, and you all.”
She drew back at his sharp tone and bent back to the page.
“Tell her you will return within the week.”
She looked up swiftly. “A week?”
His dark eyes glittered at her. “I vow it on my life.”
With a shaky hand, she scribbled a note. Tadhg took it, scanned its contents, then dropped it atop the mantle and laid a fat, lumpy pouch of coin atop. Then he hurried them out the door before the sun came up on the horizon.
Chapter Fourteen
THE WAGON ROLLED slowly toward the gates through a thick mist. Magdalena sat in the seat of her delivery wagon, Tadhg below her, piled under layers of thick canvas, beneath a board that had been laid end to end over the sides of the wagon box to make a bench.
The guardhouse appeared out of the fog.
“We’re nearing the gate,” she reported in an undertone.
“Good. No tricks, now, Maggie,” he said, his hand around her ankle.
“No tricks.” She had, in fact, briefly considered tricks, but as they would almost certainly put her in closer contact with the sinister Lord Sherwood, she was adamantly opposed to tricks. Tadhg may be a devil, but he was the devil she knew.
“Good,” he murmured. “Now hush, and be nice to Gustave.”