A Knight and White Satin

by Jackie Ivie

  “Oh, aye,” she replied, twirling a bit to let her hair swirl about her. “You do.”

  “Damn it, Dallis!”

  She put her hand up, when it looked like he was poised for an approach. “Show me more.”

  “More?” he replied.

  “Aye. I have a full hankering to see this champion that the lasses so lust over. Or so he says. I need to see more. To evaluate. Fully.” And then she licked her lips.

  The response was immediate as his frame wavered and then firmed again, looking almost like she’d weakened him at the knees, just as he did her. Which was only fair.

  “Not unless you give me something in exchange,” he replied.

  She pushed her lower lip out as if his request warranted consideration.

  “What do you want?” she finally asked, lifting her brow. And then, she ran her hands down both sides of her frame, emphasizing the way her waist tucked in, and her hips did the opposite.

  She didn’t dare look in his direction. The growling noise he made was too illicit, tantalizing, and sexual. He almost frightened her.

  “The slippers, and any socks they gave you.”

  “They dinna’ give me any.”

  “Then add…any underthings.”

  “You wish me to take…from beneath?”

  “’Twill save time later,” he replied.

  “You seem to believe I want this champion that is you. Hmm….”

  “You do want me. And it is a vicious want. Consuming. Heating. Overwhelming.”

  He was naming the emotions he was causing, exactly as he was causing them, and that just wasn’t fair! He had too great a grasp of this lust thing. She was a novice. Dallis looked away for a moment. Swallowed. And then, turned back.

  She shrugged. “Mayhap,” she replied.

  His reply was narrowed eyes, a slitted mouth, and a hugely indrawn breath, if what she was observing was any indication.

  “All of your underthings. All of them. Now.”

  “What will I get?” she asked.

  He started pulling at the lacing of his weskit, and when he got it loosened, he was pulling it apart with a vicious movement that had nothing graceful about it. The leather they’d laced it with wasn’t giving, and he had to settle for yanking it over his head, and then he was throwing it to the floor beside him with an emotion that looked like one he needed for his fights. The firelight was doing the caressing she longed to as it flickered about the shine of his arms and what chest she could see through the opening in his shirt.

  “Satisfied?” he asked.

  Dallis’s hands were shaking as she lifted her skirts fractionally, and then kicked first one slipper, and then the other in his direction. Then she smoothed the skirts back down.

  “Where is your shift? Your chemise?”

  “I’m na’ wearing any,” she replied.

  That appeared to anger him more. Dallis watched as he straightened to his full height, put his hands on his hips and glared across at her. It didn’t gain him much, except hardened nipples and rivers of shivers, but she wasn’t telling him of them.

  “Cheat.” He launched the word at her.

  “Liar,” she replied.

  “I have na’ lied,” he argued.

  “You claim to be the King’s Champion. The man all women lust over. Well! I’ve yet to see why. And that makes you a liar.” She stuck her chin out at the same time, and ignored the trembling that overtook her, all of her.

  “The bliant.” He pointed to it as if she didn’t know what he referred to.

  “Too much,” she replied.

  “Too much?”

  “What…do you claim that has as much value?”

  He lowered his chin and glared at her. From the width of the chamber she could see how his nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed. Everything on her responded as it pulsed toward what he was revealing. Promising. Threatening. Tormenting her with.

  “My belt. All my weaponry. My feile-breacan.”

  “Is that all?” she asked, putting a sweet tone on the words that had him yelling something at her, but through his closed teeth, so she couldn’t make it out.

  “What more do you want?” he asked, finally, when he seemed to have his breathing back under control.

  “What more do I want? Oh, please. You’re the champion. The great warrior. Surely you ken what a woman wants.”

  “Dallis, I swear to you that I’ll—”

  “Agreed.”

  She interrupted his threat and started working at the fastening of her strips of plaid. The one that was knotted at the back of her waist.

  “To…what?” he asked, and he actually sounded confused.

  “I accept your sett, your belt and your weapons. For this dress. And I’d na’ appreciate the wait.”

  The belt fell, making a thud on the floor.

  She had to ignore it in order to work at the bow-tie of strings she’d made earlier. When the knot gave, so did the tension on her skirt as it fell forward, pulling from her with the weight of the strips she’d used. Dallis didn’t dare to look anywhere near him as thud after thud peppered the floor at his feet. Then there was the sound of metal striking against metal, as if the floor didn’t have enough room to hold all the dirks and skeans he carried.

  She pulled the lacing apart on her upper body, yanking the strands of wool when they wouldn’t give quickly enough, and then she had the bliant open and wide, and was lifting it over her head. And that’s when she looked again at him.

  Payton was standing clothed only in the long shirt that grazed his upper thigh. It did nothing to hide him, since his manhood was stretching the broadcloth in a distorted angle, and making the material hold him in. He was also filmed with moisture, making every muscle gleam in highlight or shadow, as it was graced with the firelight.

  Dallis could very easily see what the lasses lusted over. She had her lips open to make certain of breath over the seeing.

  “Your underdress?” he asked, in a raw, low tone.

  “Come and get it,” she replied, and tossed her head.

  She shouldn’t have called him on. She realized it as he launched across the space as if it wasn’t at least two body lengths and had her pulled against him, and lifted up and onto him, and placed so he could shove the male part of himself onto her linen covered loins. That just added to the moisture-imbued sensation of him to her own liquids.

  “Dallis. Dallis. Love.”

  He was murmuring the words against her chin, and then he was sliding his tongue along her jaw, against her neck, and then onto her shoulder, where the underdress straps stopped him.

  “I…doona’ see…what all the…fuss is about.”

  She panted the words into the cavern of space above her, since that was all he gave her. And then he was lifting her farther, his hands gripping almost painfully into her buttocks in order to bring her breast within reach of his mouth. Then he was ignoring the linen covering her in order to suckle at her. And Dallis was screaming.

  The linen got wet, and then it got clingy, and then he was moving to her other breast tip, shoving his face between her breasts to do so, and making her scream again once he got there.

  “You doona’ see?” he asked her, when he’d finished turning her into a wavering liquid ephemeral being, and just stood there, looking up at her as if she could find her tongue, let alone make it say words.

  Dallis looked down at him, watched how the blue of his eyes looked dark and deep, and endless, and then she smiled. And shook her head.

  “Jesu’! Mary! And Joseph!”

  He cursed it while opening his arms slightly, turning her existence into a slide of motion as she lowered farther, arching herself into and against him when her groin reached his. And then he just stood there, holding her in place, and twinging against her, and making the strangest grunting noises each time.

  “I’m a-feared…you’ll have…to show me,” Dallis whispered, blowing slightly at the end of her words onto his lips, and totally enjoying the lurc
h of his frame as he felt it.

  “You are a stubborn woman, My Lady,” he finally replied.

  “I know.”

  “I doona’ ken what it will take to make you—”

  “The shirt,” she interrupted him, and felt the same tremor score through her that started with him.

  “The…shirt?” he repeated, cocking one eyebrow as he assimilated it.

  “Aye,” she replied. “The shirt. Now.”

  Now?” He was trembling worse, if the shake of him was true. And he was going to drop her, if it worsened.

  “Aye…. now.”

  Her command had a gap in the center because he’d set her down roughly, onto feet that weren’t ready to feel anything like the stability or inflexibility of a chilled wooden floor. He backed from her. Two full steps, then three. And then he pulled the shirt over his head, heaving when it seemed stuck to the moisture on his skin, and then it was done. He tossed it to one side, put his hands into fists at his waist, and shoved the full engorged man-part of him toward her with his stance.

  Dallis’s entire being answered, as it pulsed toward him, reaching without conscious thought to what he possessed, offered, and expected to be received.

  “There!”

  He growled it, but she didn’t hear. She was too busy, caught up with an approach, silently skimming the wood floor while the linen of her underdress did the same to her limbs, and reaching toward the jagged, purple scar in his abdomen that nearly halved him, and stopped before she got there, as he grabbed both of her upper arms in his hands and lifted her well above him.

  “Oh, nae. Na’ yet.”

  He bared his teeth at her as he said it, making a wellspring erupt within her at the sight. Dallis reached for his hairline with hands that trembled, and then she pulled some of the black tresses free of the band, to end with both palms caressing his face. She smiled. Slowly. And watched his eyes narrow.

  “I still do na’ see what all these lasses lust over,” she whispered.

  “Well, by God you will!”

  He was walking with her, making the linen clinging and hot and sweaty where it was melded between them, and then he was at the enclosure that was his bed. There was nothing gentle about the look he gave her, or the motion he made that set her down onto the mattress, either.

  Dallis squealed her surprise at him, but that didn’t seem to affect him. Nor did her frightened breathing dent much as he started pulling her shift over her curves, rolling it as he went, yanking it when it clung to her thighs, and shoving when it reached her hips, and then he was putting his mouth to the exposed skin the moment it was revealed and licking everywhere.

  Dallis went wild with it. She couldn’t contain the ecstasy when he reached her nipples, plying each with a motion that had her crying and shaking and sobbing, and then grabbing his head and screaming at him.

  Then he was alongside her, before putting his entire body atop hers, lifting himself with his arms, and hissing commands in her ear as if she could comprehend and obey them. He fitted himself into the space she created when she split her legs for him, and she lifted herself to him and tensed for the pain she knew would come.

  But it wasn’t pain. Payton slid himself into place, filling her so completely that Dallis slammed her eyes shut, grabbed at the sensation he was giving her, and then was grasping for it back when he moved away. Before returning. Again. Filling her, making her lust for it, and then making her beg.

  “Oh, please. Payton. Please. Payton? Please?”

  She crooned it to him when his mouth wasn’t attempting to suck hers dry with the strength of his kisses. And that was adding to the power of his movements, and the force of each driving thrust into her body, that just made it impossible for anything to make sense other than her cries for more.

  “Oh, Dallis. Oh, Jesus. Dallis. Love. Oh, Jesu’. Oh, Dallis.”

  The cadence of his words deepened, hoarsened, got broader, thicker, harder, stronger, gaining in volume and intensity and strength, until the bed was groaning in time with his words. Through it Dallis clung to him, pushing herself into him again and again, creating and existing and striving and fulfilling, and then spinning into a spiral of pure bliss that had no boundaries she could sense.

  And then he was doing it again.

  It was as if he was existing in a realm of his own making and taking her with him. Her eyes opened so she could watch him, feast her vision on the shine of skin, rippling with his movements and rosy with his flush. It was then he moved, bending forward to angle his head into the mattress beside her head, while his hands grabbed her hips, moving her, and holding her, and lifting her, and then making certain she couldn’t move more than a hairsbreadth as all of him went taut, stiff and unbending, while the longest groan came from his mouth. It was only halted and interrupted by small gasps that matched the pulsing his loins were making against hers.

  And then he collapsed, fully, shoving all the available air from her body before he rolled toward the enclosed side. He took her with him, by the pressure of both hands still exactly where he’d left them. He was still shuddering, too, in smaller motions that matched the vibrations that were existing and tempering all along her. Dallis watched him, adoring every bit of watching him, and didn’t even care that he caught her at it, when his eyes slit open finally, and he ran his tongue over his lower lip.

  “Jesu’, Mary, and Joseph,” he said.

  “I know,” she answered. “Where did I learn to tupp like that?”

  He grinned, but it was a shaky-looking affair. Then, he raised his brows twice in rapid succession.

  “Do you have an answer yet?” he asked.

  “To what?”

  “What the lasses lust over?”

  Dallis reached the slight span they were separated and traced one of the large humps of muscle in his chest. Then, she moved her eyes directly back to his.

  “I may need more testing a-fore I’m certain,” she replied and then blew a kiss at him.

  Chapter 16

  “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Hmm?”

  Dallis shifted her head sleepily on what she was using for a pillow. She hadn’t really heard him, since she’d been close enough to slumber to claim it. The rumble of his words came again, echoing through the chest at her ear.

  “I have. Changed my mind, I mean.”

  “About…what?”

  “Well…na’ about this bed.”

  She lifted her head, put a hand atop his chest to support her chin and peered up at him from that position.

  “’Tis too soft,” he continued.

  As he was starting a movement with one hand along the back of her thigh and onto her buttocks, Dallis wasn’t thinking clearly. Or doing much of anything save arching slightly.

  “You doona’ like…soft?” she asked.

  “Na’ in my mattress,” he returned.

  Dallis stretched. “Nae,” she dissented. “’Tis wondrous hard. And warm.”

  He growled slightly. “That is me. You have the advantage in an over-soft bed such as this one. I sink. You doona’.”

  Dallis giggled. “Is that what you call it…sinking?”

  “’Tis too late for that. I’m a-feared I’m already sunk. Full ended.”

  Dallis lifted her head, narrowed her eyes, and felt the familiar push-beat to her heart as it stumbled before recovering. “What are we speaking of?” she whispered.

  “Well…I am referring to this mattress. I doona’ ken what you are speaking on.”

  “Oh.” She kept the disappointment from her voice with an act of will, and was very proud that it worked.

  “That woman seems to think a man wishes a bed that swallows him. All I can say is she hasn’t a real grasp of men.”

  “You…would na’ know?” She asked it and held her breath.

  Payton lifted his head from where he had it atop his other arm, crooked at the elbow to make it comfortable. “Do I look that dense?” he asked.

  He had lifted one eyebrow wit
h the question to make it more difficult to answer him. She had to settle with smiling and tilting her head.

  “That looks like an answer I doona’ wish to hear,” he replied.

  “Uh…” Dallis’s voice trailed off as his fingers started a roving caress all about her lower extremities, defining and trailing, and starting shivers.

  “Are you saying I look dense enough to have graced that woman’s bed? Or…I look dense enough to admit such with my wife?”

  “I dinna’ say anything,” Dallis replied.

  “Well, the answer is neither. And this is worse than an inquisition. I swear, you best my sire at it.”

  “That poor woman,” Dallis answered and smiled slightly.

  “Are you admitting the lasses have a reason to lust for me? Finally?” He was lifting more than his head with those words, and the muscles at her side pulled and tightened as he made the half-sit and stayed in that raised position.

  “I’ve said naught. Of any kind. You fill in blanks. This is what happens.”

  “So…they doona’ have a reason?”

  Dallis was trilling along the bumps and knots in his belly that he’d put into play, as if for her fingertips to follow. That was causing tingles to move clear to her elbows. It was a nice sensation, and she was highly attuned to it, even as he moved to suck air in and out.

  “Well…I admit that the Widow Meryck definitely lusts for you.”

  She answered him finally, after pulling her lower lip into her mouth and chewing on it. And then releasing it to gain gasps of air as she moved her eyes to his. The muscles beneath her fingers bunched tighter still as he lifted up, taking her with him to a full sit, before settling her into a well of space between his crossed legs. The underdress slid down, partially covering but mainly defining. She watched him look at it, although he didn’t change it.

  The mattress was definitely too soft for a man of his weight. She knew that as her flesh met the unforgiving surface of wood through the mattress. That position put her far enough below him, she could press her cheek against the hard mounds of his chest, and still meander about his belly with her fingers.

  “The widow does na’ lust for me,” he told her.