by Kris Kennedy
“On occasion, aye?”
She tilted her chin up and drew in a breath.
“At night, when you are alone?”
He tread too close. In every way.
His fingertips touched down low on her back. “I would do my part to make it pleasing for you.”
Her breath stopped. His fingertips skimmed up her back. He might as well have raked a hot poker up her spine, dragging streams of fire behind. Her body remained frozen as his hand slipped under the weight of hair at the base of her neck and brushed it aside.
He lowered his mouth to hover just above the exposed skin.
“Breathe,” he said quietly.
Her breath rushed out.
He did not touch her, but his breath skimmed across her skin as he spoke. “You would not suffer for the union.”
He presented it as a choice, but all would bend to his will. She knew it, he knew it; his presence was a decree. But still, he stood, restrained, head bent, a hand brushing the hair off the nape of her neck, coaxing her.
Seducing her.
Inside, she felt like dying coals awakened, as when a door is opened and the wind sweeps in.
“Contrary to what you might think, Katarina…” Oh, he must stop saying her name in that dark, lilting Irish voice. It would make her do something mad. “I do not take my pleasure in unwilling women.”
“No?” she whispered.
“Nay.” He rested a hand on her waist. “I prefer to make them willing.”
Fire coursed through her body. “How?” She meant how on earth could you ever think to make me willing? It was a rhetorical device, a defiant query, a breathless taunt.
He took it as an invitation.
He pressed his knee to the back of hers and lowered his mouth to her neck, and if Katarina had thought him dangerous before, now she was educated on the true peril of Aodh Mac Con.
He was spark, and she was nothing but tinder.
Hot and confident, his mouth laid whisper-light kisses across the base of her neck, raining chills down her spine, then his wide palm came to rest flat against her stomach.
Shock reeled through her. She made the smallest push against his arm, and he dropped it at once. He did not move his mouth, though, and she did not move her body.
Wicked girl, she did not move anything at all.
He gathered her hand in his. Not hurrying in the least, he entwined their fingers and lifted them to his mouth, kissed each of her knuckles in turn. It was as if he’d laid tiny torches to the never-tended skin.
She was breathless and had to open her mouth to inhale. He touched each finger until he reached her orphaned thumb, then turned their hands over and pressed a kiss into the center of her palm, a slow, lingering kiss, his head to the side.
Her knees almost buckled.
The day’s growth of hair on his jaw scraped against her palm, and she curled her fingers into it for a brief, mad second. Her head was a whirling thing, a dervish mind.
Which had to explain what happened next. How she allowed him so much. How she took so much.
He shifted behind her, and she felt his hand slide up the mound of her breast. No, not his hand, hers, their fingers intertwined, sliding over her breast, making her stroke herself, brushing her knuckles over her nipple, coaxing it to a hard nub.
He was making her caress herself.
Their breaths were loud in the room. She felt as if she’d drunk a dozen cups of wine. She should have shouted no, stopped this reckless thing, but she said nothing, for she knew if she so much as whispered no, Aodh would stop.
And if he stopped, she would die.
Passion had never, ever served her. But oh, how it pleased.
What Aodh was doing, how it pleased.
He curled a finger around the collar of her gown and tugged it to the side and skimmed his tongue over the new territory.
Her head jerked back in shock and then she, wanton she, bent to the side to allow him in.
He took what she offered, went up the length of her neck, with no hesitation, his mouth a weapon of sin and desire, marking her cool skin with hot, lingering, open-mouthed kisses, feasting on her neck and shoulders. His body took the final step in, so that he was pressed up full against the back of her. She felt the hard curve of his maleness.
The thread binding her to sense quite snapped, and she arched her spine, pressing her breasts into the hard cupping heat of their intertwined hands, which pushed her hips back into his.
“Aye, like that,” he said hoarsely against her neck. He bent them forward, and guided their cupped hands down to the seam of her legs, until the silk was bunched high between her thighs, then he had them push in, hard and slow.
She flung her head with a gasp.
“Do you see how we shall do it?” he asked in a dark murmur, and moved their hands again.
She was that close to lost, that close to taking everything Aodh was offering, when a shout from outside the room broke through the miasma of their passion like shattering glass.
Her body gave a single, sinful shudder, then she wrenched free. For a half second, his arm tightened, then he released her, and she backed up a step, then another, and another, until she bumped into the table.
He watched like some otherworldly being, cast in shadow and flickering light, his head lowered slightly, the dark painted lines inked across the hand fisted at his side, breathing as hard as she.
Another tentative call came from the antechamber. “Sir? You’re wanted belowstairs.”
“Leave,” she whispered.
His gaze darkened. “Katarina.” It almost sounded like…a question.
Oh, that would never do.
She pointed at the door. “Get out.”
Something shifted in the eyes holding hers, a hardening, like black ice forming, and he laughed, once.
“If you wish to order me from my bedchamber, Katarina, you must first share it with me.”
The breath strangled in her throat. He was right. This was not her room anymore. Nothing was hers anymore. He’d taken it all.
He turned for the door without another word.
“You think I have no choice,” she said to his back.
He turned, his painted hand curled around the edge of the door. “If I wanted what came from a woman with no choice, Katarina, we would not be having this conversation.”
Whoosh.
“Come to me willing, or do not come at all.”
Chapter Eleven
AODH BARRELED out of the bedchamber, gripped in a vortex of lust.
It had consumed him, turned him into a churning, roaring thing of want he’d never known before. His body, his mind, his intentions, everything that beat or pulsed in him had been consumed, overtaken, wrested from his control, under the all-consuming power of wanting her.
If someone hadn’t called, if he hadn’t reached for self-control like a drowning man and let her go by an act of sheer will, he’d have had her up against the wall like some rutting beast, the very thing he’d spent his life proving he was not, all intentions of wooing and bending her will scorched away by the conflagration of his desire.
The conflagration of Katarina.
From the moment he’d touched her, he’d known.
He charged out the door and was halfway across the antechamber before he slammed to a halt to avoid tumbling over a youth, perhaps nine or ten years old, milling nervously about.
The boy froze like a hare at the sight of him. Aodh’s seventeen-year-old squire, Bran, snapped to attention too, then, as he looked at Aodh, Bran’s hand moved slowly to the hilt of his sword.
“What?” Aodh demanded.
“You…your…” Bran’s hand made a circling move to indicate Aodh’s face.
Aodh was breathing as hard as if he’d run a footrace—and lost. No doubt his face was flushed too, and was that sweat on his brow?
“Stay your sword, Bran, there is no danger.” He glanced at the boy. Bran shrugged as his hand fell away.
The b
oy, small but seemingly determined, circled the landing like a wild creature about to bolt, then, face pale, he cleared his throat and stepped forward.
“I had a question, sir. My lord,” he revised abruptly, then immediately retreated from it. “Sir. Milordsir,” he settled on the mongrel word, and Aodh couldn’t fault him for it.
“A question?” Aodh repeated in the same solemn tones.
“Is my lady…in need of anything?”
That was a loaded question.
The boy plunged on. “I’m to bring her things, you see, milordsir. ’Tis my duty, and I don’t know if she”—he met Aodh’s eye with a sudden spurt of reckless bravery—“if she needs anything.”
A list of things Katarina needed entered his mind.
“’Tis my duty, sir,” the boy repeated stoutly.
“If that is your duty, lad, then you should get to it.”
The page’s body slumped with relief.
“Never let someone stop you from doing what you know must be done, not even a big ugly Irishman.”
The boy drew himself up straight, reinvigorated by this camaraderie and renewed sense of purpose. “Aye, sir! My lord! Sir! And you are not ugly, sir!”
At a gesture from Aodh, Bran searched the boy then allowed him inside. When the door was shut, Aodh called him over.
“Allow the boy out when he is done, but search him first. If the lady wishes to speak with any other members of her household, allow it, but search them fore and aft. Her ladyship is to remain inside, under lock and key, unless and until she wishes to see me. Then she is to be brought directly, and only, to me.”
His squire drew up straight as an arrow. “Aye, sir. Do you want her…bound?”
Yes, bind her, bring her to me like a feast. He forced in another deep breath. “She is a lady, Bran. We do not bind ladies. But we do escort them, everywhere.” He paused. “Even the privy.”
Bran gave a clipped nod, absorbing the new rule. “Do I search her as well?”
Aodh paused to imagine his squire trying to search Katarina. “No, but clear the room of weapons. And, in the event we did not find them all, should you hear anything that sounds like a wheel-lock being loaded,” he added grimly, “investigate.”
Bran’s face paled. “As you say, sir. Should I locate her maidservant?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not yet you don’t.”
Bran looked unhappy about this. “What if she…needs anything?”
“Bring it to her. Or bring her to me. Those are her only options now.”
Aodh clapped him on the shoulder, feeling oddly…buoyant. It was there, under everything else, deep inside him, a sense of being lifted. As if he were back at sea. Despite the fact that he had not succeeded.
Mayhap because of it.
“We wanted Ireland, Bran,” he said. “This is it.”
He took the stairs to the hall two at a time, hurtling down them.
“Good Christ, Aodh, where have you been?” called Cormac, crossing the hall, his broad, bearded face split by a huge grin.
“Busy.”
“Are you mad? When the celebration is down here?”
People roamed everywhere. As Aodh had instructed, fires roared in every trough and hearth, tapestries were being hung, servants bustled to and fro, and the scent of duck and mutton wafted in from the stone kitchens. There was an air of jubilation, even from the conquered. And why not? No one had been killed, food had been brought in plenty, and the isolation of early spring had been lessened by the influx of new people, new stories, new blood. And notwithstanding the fact that the Rardove garrison was at present being held at blade point, what could have been a night of bandages and mourning had turned into almost riotous celebration.
Rardove’s legacy—legend—was the mollusks that populated the beaches at the base of its sea cliffs, rumored to have made the finest dyes far back into antiquity. But dyes were not necessary here. Rardove had a sheepfold that produced a wool that could be found nowhere else on earth. It also had thousands of acres of land, a seafront, and a stony castle fortress that could hold off an army for years.
Years.
Rardove was a gem in the Irish mists. Cold, diamond-hard opportunity. And it moved him not at all.
“Build the fires higher,” he ordered a passing servant, and the man scurried off.
Cormac stood at his side and surveyed the bustle of the great hall. “Well, we did it.” He flung out a beefy arm, indicating the hall, then turned and yanked Aodh into a heartfelt bear hug.
Aodh grunted as he was pulled into the Scot’s chest. Eight years of service, eight years of battles and near escapes, and it still surprised the hell out of him when Cormac did these sorts of things. “Christ’s mercy,” the gravelly, emotional, muffled voice came up. “We took accursed Rardove Keep.”
Aodh submitted to the embrace—it was easier than trying to wrestle free—and Cormac’s burly arms sprang open and he stepped away, beaming. “I’m no’ ashamed to admit it, Aodh, I was skeptical about your god-awful plan at first, aye, but…” He swung his hand toward the hall, a silent, compelling conclusion.
“You’re always skeptical of my plans,” Aodh reminded him.
Cormac nodded happily. “That’s because they’re always so god-awful. Reckless and foolish with ne’er a chance of succeeding.”
“Recall to me why you join me?” Aodh moved toward on of the tables.
Cormac grinned. “Because you’re effective as hell.”
“That would be the reason.” He yanked out the bench and sat.
Cormac dropped down beside him, elbow sprawled across the table, then tipped forward and stopped a maidservant in her trembling tracks with a menacing, friendly roar. “Ale, comely lass, and in great measure!”
She stared, wide-eyed, then turned and hurried off.
Aodh sighed. “We’re to coax the people of Rardove, not terrify them.”
Cormac’s bearded face compressed in indignation. “What did I do? I coaxed. Called her comely, I did. You heard me. An’ she is.”
“You frightened her.”
Cormac swiveled to watch the girl, then shook his head. “No’ a chance. She’s been lurking around the edges for hours now.”
“The edges of what?”
He grinned. “Me.”
Aodh smiled faintly but said only, “Leave her be.”
Cormac threw up his hands. “When do I ever do a thing I’m no’ explicitly invited to?” he demanded. “Explicitly.” He settled back with an indignant shuffle of his shoulders. “And frequently.”
“I do not think she is a common serving wench. She looks finer than that.”
“Aye, that she does,” Cormac agreed, and folded his arms across the bulk of him, which was significant, and not an inch of it fat. He was hard, burly, Scottish muscle from chin to shin, and he was one of Aodh’s most trusted councilors and captains. He also had what some might call rustic manners. Others might call them loutish.
Aodh resigned himself to not receiving any ale until a less comely lass passed by.
Cormac yanked forward one of the low benches and threw his boots up on it. “Word came in not an hour past, while you were ‘busy’.”
Aodh’s clerk came up, pen in hand, with questions about the trunks in the office chamber. After he hurried off, Cormac went on.
“Lucius arrived.”
Aodh felt a little quickening. “How did he get here so swiftly?”
“Chartered a boat, a cricky old thing, almost sunk him. We’ll be hearing his complaints on that score until Michaelmas.”
“And? Did he find Bertrand?”
Cormac’s grin grew. “That he did. Found the fool sitting on the coast,” he said, then added in a tone of gleeful derision, “waiting for the storm to pass.”
They grinned at each other.
“Anyhow, Bertrand took the bait. Got your message, hightailed it out of there almost before he finished reading it, as if the hounds of hell were on his tail.” He angled Aodh a sideway
s glance. “What did your message say, anyhow?”
Aodh shrugged. “That the queen was going to put the hounds of hell on his tail if he didn’t find his way back to her right quick. In York.”
Cormac roared in laughter at the idea of one of the queen’s favorite interrogators being sent on a wild-goose chase to the north of England.
To Aodh, satisfaction was a pale but welcome sensation.
Putting his elbows on the table, Cormac gazed across the bustling hall with satisfaction. “Aye, well, good. He’s taken care of for the time being, seeing as the queen is in Windsor. Elizabeth, o’ course, now she’s a different matter,” Cormac went on with almost ghoulish glee. “She’ll be deep in her royal passion by now. Send an army, she will.”
“This pleases you.”
Cormac shrugged. “’Twas inevitable. ’Twas the point, Aodh. She wouldn’t give you what you rightfully earned, so you took it. And in fine fashion too. If she wants it now, she comes for it. With an army.”
He shrugged again, pounding the subtle intricacies of political maneuvering on the anvil of his simple logic. He rubbed his chin with the side of his hand, reflecting. “A massive large one, if I’m any judge.”
Shockingly, the comely maid reappeared, mugs of ale on a tray. She set the tray down with a curtsey, her pretty face tipped to the floor, but not far enough to hide the swift, appraising glance she took of Cormac before hurrying away.
Cormac grinned his thanks, handed a mug to Aodh, then sat back, his comfortable and dire predictions carrying on apace.
“The queen’s going to want your pretty head, Aodh, and a few other body parts as well.” Cormac eyed him appraisingly. “Your frightfully big bollocks, to start with. Dangle ’em right off the Tower if she gets a chance.”
Aodh nodded. “Your insights are fascinating. Recall to me why I bring you with me?”
“Because I tell you what you need to hear, no’ what you want to hear, like those English boys do.” He sniffed. “In any event, you’ve naught to worry on. We shan’t let her have your bollocks, nor your sorry arse, nor any other part of your sorry self, so don’t get all worrisome now, Aodh.” Cormac eyed him with a mixture of compassion and pity. “You worry too much.”