by Kris Kennedy
“Turn around, Maggie.”
If her legs had felt weak and trembly before, now they were shaking. Her body felt woven from the fat cords of desire and silvery threads of cold, shivering excitement as she followed the low command.
He stepped up behind her, hard and silent. His body exuded heat; she felt it before they even touched. “Let’s take this off,” he murmured by her ear. His fingers tugged on the chemise.
She dragged it over her head. He did not help, did not touch her. She stood for what felt like hours, naked before him. Then he touched.
He gathered her hair in one hand and laid it over her shoulder, so it fell down the front of her, over one breast, half her belly, a thigh. Then he skimmed his open hands lightly down the front of her, one skating under the heated fall of her hair, the other in the fire-touched air of the cottage, passing lightly over her bare skin. He was so gentle, barely brushing the curve of her breasts, the soft roundness of her belly, the tops of her thighs. The breath stopped in her lungs as he paused there, then rushed out again as he came back up her body.
He stroked down again, a little harder this time, a little closer, skidding over sweaty skin, skimming her pebble-hard nipples. As he passed them, he pinched them softly between his knuckles and squeezed. Hard.
She flung her head back and banged his collarbone.
He reached over her shoulder, curled his arm around her neck, and leaned to her ear. “Lean over.”
She did, tipping forward a little, so her bottom pushed against the front of him, and her throat gently pressed into the bend of his arm. He skimmed his other hand down the front of her body again, but this time slid one thick finger deep between her thighs, high at the apex of her. It was excruciating, perfect pressure into slippery-hot flesh already seared by desire. She gave a broken cry and her head dropped forward.
She tried to spread her legs, to give him more room, but he wouldn’t let her. He made her stand still, legs together, while he tortured her, tormented her, giving her just what she wanted but never enough. His finger pushed in, then slid out, long, hard strokes. Then he slid a second finger in, stroked them back and forth together, caught the hard nub at the apex of her between his knuckles and pulled it with him as he went, slippery and hard.
“Tadhg.” She flung her head, the breath stopped in her lungs. It burst out in a loud, guttural gasp around his name.
He did it again, and again, alternating between deep strokes, swift, rhythmic flutters, and hard, glancing touches, so fast they were almost snaps, spinning her into a state of mindless arousal.
“Is this what you wanted, Maggie?” he murmured against the side of her head.
“Yes,” she gasped, shaking her head. “No. Please.”
He shifted, and the muscles of his thighs flexed against the back of hers as he moved his arm to curl around her belly. Then he pushed the curving length of his erection forward, nudging it between the soft flesh of her upper thighs, slick with her desire.
Her breath was comprised of stuttered gasps. He gave a little pump and she looked down to watch the thick, engorged head of him emerge from between her thighs in front. She loosed another ragged sob, helpless, holding onto the powerful forearm wrapped around her belly for support, and squeezed her thighs around him, rocking back and forth.
He made some low male sound, like a curse, like approval. He began pumping, harder, and reached down to cup his shaft as it came out in front, guiding it and holding it tight up against her, so every stroke ran the length of her, parting the hot, slippery folds, forcing himself into the private space.
“Move on me,” he ordered, but she already was.
Her body was in constant motion, pushing for more. Her hips rocked, one hand still curled around his forearm, the other reaching behind her to cup his head, her body arched, her spine curved, her throat exposed, her bottom bumping his groin every time she rocked back to meet his thrust, her breasts thrust up, her nipples so hard they hurt. She felt strung up like a sacrifice. She could hardly breathe through the pleasure of it.
His accelerated breath, male and heavy, came beside her ear. “Now, spread your legs,” he ordered.
Broken by desire, she did.
“Bend over.”
The breath shot out of her as she did his bidding again, desperate for him to release her from this perfect torment. He laid a hand between her shoulder blades and bent her more, pushing her bottom up to him.
Her hair was a tangle, falling unbound down the curve of her back. He brushed it to the side and was still for a second, then, low and rough, he said, “Jésu, Maggie.”
That was all he said, but it made her tremble from the force of the rough, barely-restrained want.
His hands closed around her hips. She was breathing so fast her head spun. Positioning himself, he nudged the thick head of his shaft to her entry and without pause, thrust it up inside her.
Her head jerked back as if tugged on a string.
“Och.” It was a low, harsh male exhale. “Good.”
He rocked again, encroaching deeper, slowly more, filling her. Thick pleasure filled her from the inside out. Golden pleasure, hard pleasure, an undulation of pleasure.
He didn’t stop. His fingers pressed into her hips, trapping her and holding her up, and he did it again. Hard, silken and hot, it was a masterful thrust, spreading her wide. She sobbed as her body bucked and her inner muscles spasmed around him. His breath was harsh now, full male, mingling with her whispered gasps.
“Lass, you feel good,” he rasped in a dark whisper, right by her ear.
“Tadhg,” it was a broken gasp, nothing more.
“I’m not going to be kind.”
“Please.”
He put a hand on her hip and lowered her to their bed of hay.
Dizzy, she could do nothing but his bidding as he made her rise up on her hands and knees. Then, from behind, he entered her again, sank in with hard intent, a deep, penetration that yanked her head back with a sobbed, incoherent scream of pleasure.
Just as he’d said.
He took her mercilessly, with hard, punishing thrusts, all semblance of restraint gone. It was unkind, vicious, perfect. She rocked back to take every one, pushing her bottom up to him, her knees sliding out, her breasts bouncing. The front of his thighs banged against the back of hers with every plunge, a reminder of his strength, that even now, he was likely restraining himself for her. His palm skidded up her sweaty back and rested between her shoulder blades and pushed down slightly, changing their angle. Rippling cords of pleasure coursed through her, rhythmic and deep.
“Is this good, Maggie?” he murmured, wicked and dark.
She made some inarticulate sound.
“Do you still want more?”
“Oh, aye.” She had no notion what she was saying; words were poring from her, sounds and gasps and helpless cries.
“Touch yourself.”
“Oh Tadhg,” she whispered helplessly, but dragged her heavy, waxen arm beneath her body and, pressing her cheek to the blanket, slid her fingertip into her own wetness.
Her entire body bucked, jerking against him.
“Aye.” The word was hard male pleasure.
Waves began moving through her, thudding deep pulses. Atop them rode another sensation, bright and trembly, skimming the deeper shudder, like flames flickering on oil. Silver thread atop an earthquake.
She became nothing but sound and passion, rocking hips and gasps of pleasure, crying out his name as the spiral of fiery pleasure built, until it crashed inside her in a wave, so that she felt as if her body came apart in hard, shuddering explosions of white-hot pleasure.
While she was still reverberating, he pulled out. She whimpered in dazed protest, but he flipped her onto her back as if she was a sheaf of parchment and pushed her legs apart. Her body was damp with passion-sweat, her hair tangled and spread across her body as he slid back inside her with a single push.
“Keep saying my name, love,” he said, his voice ragged
and hoarse for all his insouciance.
Love.
Tremors of pleasure still moved through her as she curled her hands around the hard definition of his upper arms and hung on. He held himself up on his palms, his head bent, hair falling forward, his gaze fierce, intent, their gazes locked, and she did indeed keep whispering his name, her eyes filling with tears as he moved in her. Then his body stiffened and his face contorted, a beautiful, hard, pained male shudder, and he spilled inside her with swift, savage thrusts.
She wrapped her knees around his hips and clung to him until he stopped thrusting, until the shudders of pleasure slowed. He finally lowered himself to his elbows, then brought his head down too, until his forehead rested on hers. They breathed together, their sweat and breath mingling. Magdalena lifted her hands—they were heavy, languid—and trailed her fingers along his jaw, tipped her face up to covered his in hot, little kisses, no aim, no precision. His body radiated heat into hers.
Finally, he tipped his head up an inch. He shifted onto one elbow and wiped the sweeps of tangled, sweaty hair away from her face to peer in at her.
“Well,” he mused, his voice rough. “I think that went well.”
She laughed. She was still laughing when he rolled them over, keeping himself inside her, so she was on top, straddling him, her knees pressing into the soft, crackling hay.
His eyes found hers in the firelit darkness, then, looking over her whole body as he did, he pushed the rest of the hair back from her face, brushed it slowly over her shoulders and down her belly, until it pooled on his chest and flat stomach. Then, strand by strand where necessary, he carefully, devotedly, silently combed it with his fingers, taking out all the knots.
Her heart felt so full it hurt. Such a complicated man. Such a dangerous—nay, perilous—man, capable of great ruthlessness, but also gentle and insightful and funny and kind. What forces had shaped him to be who he was? What mission could have sent him out into the world as he was now, cold, alone, outlawed and hunted, so far from the home he loved so well?
How had this intelligent, charming, powerful man come to this?
“Tadhg,” she whispered, “will you not tell me what happened?”
Chapter Thirty
TADHG GAVE A LOW LAUGH and ran the back of his knuckle across her lip, then looked away, over her shoulder, unable to look into the complicated reservoir of her eyes.
Maggie was the closest thing to his dreams, the ones he’d stopped dreaming a decade and more ago, and look what he’d done to her. Abducted her, took her from home and safety, flung her out into the cold, dangerous world. At the least, she deserved the truth. It was the only thing of value he possessed anymore: the awful truth.
“Do you want me to start at the beginning, Maggie? For that will take us back to Ireland, and thence the shores of England, and caves and outlaws and broken bonds, and we would still be here talking when Easter came for us.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I want to know all those things. But for now…start with your dagger.”
He smiled faintly, his fingers still in her hair. “Well then, I suppose I’d have to start with the ruby.”
She laughed softly. “Only you would, Tadhg.”
“Now this ruby, Maggie, ’tis a huge, beautiful thing, deep-red. Magnificent. Quite distinctive.”
“Much like the one in the hilt of your dagger.”
His gaze slid to hers. “Beautiful and smart. I’m a rare lucky man.”
She did not smile.
“How do you know ‘tis a ruby?”
“I saw its red gleam when you took it at my shop.” She gave a little shrug. “A red gleam, in a dagger…A gem of course. But what matters the gem, or the dagger?”
“Because war is good business,” he said in a quiet, toneless voice, and looked back up at the ceiling. “But an expensive one. And for all its power, an army is a terribly vulnerable thing. Too much rain, moldy bread, a supply train that stretches out too far…anything can upend it, wipe out months of planning, bankrupt a campaign. Or a kingdom. It would be far easier if a king did not have to fight at all. If the nobles serving his enemy simply renounced their fealty, and laid down their arms.”
“That would be quite a feat.”
“Quite.”
“An impossible one.”
“Almost,” he said softly.
Her gaze bored into him. “Are you saying you have such a means? The means to turn the French barons to the English king?”
He shook his head. “I’ve the means to turn the English ones to your French king.”
She sat up straighter. “Your dagger has this power?”
“It is not mine,” he said, his voice hard.
“How could a dagger turn the king’s nobles against him?
“When it implicates him in a royal murder.”
She inhaled sharply. “Show me.”
He hesitated, then reached to his side—the dagger was never far from him—and grabbed the sword belt, dragged it onto his chest, leather straps clicking softly as sheath and belt fell against each other. He unsheathed the beautiful, terrible dagger.
“’Tis a Nizari blade,” he told her as she reached for it. “The blade of an Assassin.”
“Assassins,” she whisper-echoed, her brow furrowed in delicate horror, then her fingertip touched the magnificent gem embedded in its hilt. “And this is the ruby?”
“Aye. Richard’s ruby.”
She looked up slowly. “Richard…?”
“The Lionheart. King of England.”
“I knew it,” she said on an exhale. “You were on crusade, with the king.” She looked at it, silent questions furrowing her brow. The one that finally emerged honed his respect for her mind to a sharper edge. “What is the gemstone of the king of England doing in an Assassin’s blade?”
“Well, now, Maggie, that is precisely what you’re supposed to ask. ‘How is the King of England bound up with the Assassins?’ They had it made special, using Richard’s own ruby, to mark it. To implicate him. ’Twas a warning, and a threat. More so the words inscribed on the blade.” He took it, twisted it toward the low firelight, and pointed at the shiny groove that ran down its center, giving the blade its perfect balance. “Here, etched along the blood gutter.”
He watched her slim finger trail over the delicate etchings inlaid in the steel and could not help but shudder.
“The writing is so small, it is like filigree,” she murmured, lifting the blade close up in front of her eyes to peer at it. “What does it say?”
“’Tis a rune.”
“A rune?”
“Of sorts. In Arabic.” He reached out and flipped the blade over, pointed to the other side. “And French. Can you read it?”
Aloud, softly, she recited the faint tracings. “True kings pay in money/ All others pay in blood/ Jerusalem was bought with Conrad's blood/ By England's Coeur de Lion.” Her gaze lifted slowly. “What does it mean?”
“What do you think it means?”
“That the throne of Jerusalem was ‘bought’ by the king of England. That Richard the Lionheart paid to have,” she swallowed, “Conrad murdered.”
“Do you know who Conrad was?”
She stared at the dagger. “One of the leaders of the crusades…married to the queen of Jerusalem. He was to be crowned king of the Holy City until…”
“Until?”
She looked up slowly. “He died.”
“Was murdered.”
“In the gardens,” her voice was a whisper now.
“Aye. Two days before he was supposed to be crowned king of Jerusalem.”
Her face was pale, her eyes pained. “That would be an awful thing for a king to have arranged.”
He gave a dark laugh. “Awful indeed. The cold-blooded murder of a fellow crusader prince, a nobleman elected by the other crusader kings to be King of Jerusalem. Regicide. Not even Richard could withstand the taint.”
“But of course, it is not true.”
His eyes d
rifted to the blade she still held in the air between them. He said nothing.
The silence stretched out, and her hand began trembling. She looked at the dagger, then her gaze tracked back down to his, filled with the dreadful question.
“How do you know all this, Tadhg?”
“I was there.” He closed his eyes. “I contracted for the kill.”
“Oh Tadhg.” Her whisper barely reached him.
“Myself and Sherwood.”
“Oh, Tadhg.”
He could hardly hear her as the memories rushed for him, swept him back in time, as if he was there again, out on the lonely desert, standing outside the tent of the Assassins.
Chapter Thirty-One
THE VOICES FROM INSIDE the tent were low and intent. Standing just outside the richly, well-appointed structure, Tadhg looked over at the Muslim guards who stood opposite him, staring. He stared back.
A low sun burned near the horizon and he was weary. He and Sherwood had ridden hours to get to this meeting, which had been going on for almost an hour now. They would need to ride hours again after, to return to the crusader fortress, and the king of England.
Tadhg stared at the cold-eyed fidā’i warrior across from him. The man didn’t look any happier now than he’d been when they’d ridden up. At least if all went well in the meeting, Tadhg and Sherwood would not have to worry about being stabbed in the back as they rode away across the wind-swept, moonlit lands.
Of course, if all didn’t go well….
The voices in the tent rose slightly in a tone of finale. A moment later, the flap lifted, tassels swinging, and Geoffrey d’Argent, Lord Sherwood, poked his head out. He saw Tadhg and gestured.
“We want the money,” he said quietly.
Tadhg ducked inside, stepping out of the heat and dry wind, carrying the small chest in his arms. Seated in the opulent tent were four men. One, clearly the leader, was garbed in colorful flowing robes and sat in the center, armed, watchful, and serene. The other three stood behind him, armed, watchful, and menacing. No one was smiling.
Quite the meeting.