Agnes Moor's Wild Knight

by Alyssa Cole

  “I haven’t been able to stop thinking of you, Agnes.” He said her name reverently. “When faced with matters of import, I wondered what your quick mind what make of them. When I ate sugared berries, I wondered if they were as sweet as your lips. I conjured what your laugh would sound like as you lay stretched across my bed, sated. And I couldn’t stop imagining how warm and tight you would be when I was sheathed inside of you.”

  Agnes knew that such boldness was uncouth, but Gareth’s confession thrilled her. From the first moment she’d seen him, she’d craved his touch, and when she’d spoken to him his candor and humor had intrigued her. His words now, the honesty of them and the import, nestled around the dream of her heart like the rich soil in the castle gardens.

  She could feel his cock throbbing through the layers of her gown, each pulse receiving an answering flutter from her sex. She was wet for him, and her slick pearl ached for his caress. She’d only had a few sips of the strong wine, but she felt drunk on the possibility that lay before her.

  “Gareth,” she said, reaching her arm behind her to stroke his hair, arching her body in the process. “Please touch me.”

  He shuddered, exhaling forcefully as he stroked his hands over her torso. He slid them up under her breasts, and she wished heavy fabric wasn’t shielding her from his caresses. Her fingers sank into his hair and he rubbed his stubbled cheek against the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. She gasped at the sensation that bolted through her. How would that stubble feel elsewhere?

  “Are you sure, lass?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, rocking impatiently in his.

  “You should know that your bedding me comes with certain responsibilities,” he said, his fingers sliding up and rolling her stiffened nipples between his fingers. Even through her dress, it felt exquisite.

  “Such as?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm as erotic bliss thrummed in her body. She arched her back to press her breasts into his calloused hands, and he rumbled a laugh from behind her.

  One hand left her breast to begin tugging up her skirts. “Such as your agreeing to be my wife,” he said.

  Agnes froze just before a cry of pleasure escaped her lips. The rigid thrust of her breast up into his palm eased, and she sank back against him.

  “I beg your pardon, Your Lordship?” she said. She knew some men would say anything in the heat of passion, and she accredited his words to that. “’Tis a very extreme price for a tumble. Is marriage required of every woman you bed?”

  “Nay, just you, Agnes.” His words were thick with some kind of emotion, and she regretted that she couldn’t see his face.

  “Gareth, I don’t understand.” For a moment she felt as she was still suspended in the air, but without the safety of Gareth’s arms around her.

  “You of all people know that I’m wanting for a wife. I hadn’t been overeager to make that reality, but when I met you, everything fell into place. Over the past few months, I’ve endeavored to make myself a better man,” he said as his hand finally reached beneath the raised hem of her skirt, brushing the soft skin of her thighs before cupping her mound. He didn’t move, but the warm heft of his hand against her slit was enough to make her squirm. “For my people, and for you. The improvements to my keep, the truces with neighboring clans, this bloody earlship—all done in the hopes that they’d be enough to compel you to come home with me. To share my life.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes. She felt completely unstrung: the only man who had ever truly moved her was bringing her pleasure at his hand while asking her to be his wife. “You know nothing about me except for rumor and innuendo,” she countered. “How can you want a life with someone you do not know?”

  “Do not feign ignorance, Agnes,” he said, unconsciously echoing Margaret’s words. His hands on her were gentle, although his voice was strained. “Most men know nothing of their wife on their wedding day beyond the fact that she can sew and play a pretty tune. When we danced was the first time I ever felt a true connection with a woman. I knew then I wanted you in my bed; ’twas after you left, after I wanted to tear down the stone walls with frustration, that I knew I wanted you for a wife. I was coming for you, Agnes, tournament or no. It doesn’t hurt that I got to display my skills for you, though. James isn’t the only showman.”

  His warm breath tickled her neck, but she was still too shocked to register it. Her heart had been as desolate as the bogs surrounding the castle for so long that she couldn’t imagine it ever being otherwise. Now, here was a man she had dreamt of asking for her hand. “It wouldn’t be prudent to believe a word you say,” she whispered. “It’s not done, such a marriage. What if I say no?”

  “I willna lie: I was hoping that would be the case,” Gareth said, and Agnes’s stomach dropped with disappointment. She’d wanted his plea to be true more than she’d realized. More than anything.

  Gareth nipped at her neck, sending a surge of heat through her body, before continuing. “That means I’ll have to convince you.”

  The hand resting at her apex began to move, his thick fingers sliding to press against her with the perfect amount of pressure. He touched her like he had already traversed her body, had mapped out the most direct roads and hidden paths to her ecstasy. There was no tentativeness, no guessing, in his touch, and Agnes took her pleasure in his surety.

  His fingers drifted down to her opening and he worked one in slowly, knuckle by knuckle, the sensation so sharp that Agnes bucked in his lap. Another thick finger followed, and Agnes was lost to their shared desire as he stroked her from within, his fingers curling as if beckoning her. She squeezed him, clenching tightly around his digits as pleasure enveloped her like the mist on the moors. Her breath came faster as she moved on his hand. She was so close, the sensation threatening to overwhelm her—

  He pulled his hand away abruptly, her sudden emptiness a shock that verged on anger.

  Gareth’s hand cupped her face, turned it so that she was staring back at him. The intensity of his gaze was scouring, making her feel he had cut through all the layers and was looking at the real her: the scared girl who had cried for her parents as the cold waters of a strange continent flooded the hold of the slave ship, and the lonely woman that girl had become. It was freeing, to have a man gaze at her like he knew everything about her and also like he’d want her even if she never shared that ancient angst with him.

  “Still no?” he asked, challenge in his tone.

  “I believe I need further convincing,” she said. Her words rode a rough gasp. His hand left her face, but she continued to look back at him as he grabbed her at the waist and lifted her easily. She held his gaze as she pushed her bulky skirts out from between them, along with his plaid, and reached for his rigid member. She used her knees against his thighs to maneuver herself until the wide, flared tip of him nudged at her opening.

  Gareth bought his mouth to hers as he thrust up into her, slowly. His tongue slid over hers as the pressure of his girth spread her from within, his pace inexorable. His hips and his hands at her waist controlled the rhythm, lifting and raising her. His teeth nipped at her lips as his cock filled her completely, stretching her to the limit between pleasure and pain.

  Agnes rocked in his lap as she adjusted to him, returning his kisses as she swiveled her hips to match his pace. They were quiet now, but his words were transmuted into the most ancient code, shared by the press of lips and the clash of tongues. When he kissed her, he was revealing some secret part of himself, and that same message was encoded into the pumping of his hips and the way his cock throbbed when she kissed him without inhibition. He seemed to be seeking something from her even as he gave. Agnes couldn’t focus, couldn’t think, his hidden message lost as her release rushed at her from all angles, a merciless opponent ready to fell her.

  “My Agnes,” he groaned as he thrust up into her. “So perfect. Say yes.”

  A bliss bordering on agony enveloped Agnes, the delicious pleasure spreading from her sex to her curled toes a
nd crabbed fingers. But she would not yield so easily. “Not yet,” she moaned.

  “I’ll ask one more time, Agnes. Will ye be my wife?” He pumped into her with renewed vigor, his ass lifting them up off the chair with the force of his efforts. The friction was unbearable, and her inner walls clamped tightly around his cock.

  His hand slipped between her legs, moving over her slickness in a gentle way that was almost loving.

  Loving.

  That was the hidden message. It wasn’t lust or desire. It was love.

  “Will you?” he asked again. His voice was strained from withholding his release, and Agnes thought she sensed uncertainty there as well.

  “Yes!” Agnes cried out her acceptance as the orgasm crashed through her battlements, overwhelming her defenses with wave after wave of bliss. She gasped for air, head thrown back on his shoulder as her body clenched and trembled. Gareth pressed his mouth against her neck and groaned his release as he shuddered beneath her.

  They were quiet for a long moment, the sounds of the revelry below drowning out their heaving breaths.

  “And here I thought I knew all the best way to get an opponent to bend to your will,” she said. “I may have to incorporate this technique into my repertoire. There are a lot of savage Highlanders out there who need to be cajoled.”

  Gareth grunted before standing and cradling her in his arms. “I appreciate your acumen, but the only thing I ask of ye as a wife is that such cajoling be reserved for only one clansmen.”

  “The McPherson?” she asked, laughing as he scowled at the mention of a rival clansmen. He kissed her roughly as he carried her along the ramparts toward the door that would lead them to the guest wing of the castle. She knew she should be worried, but all she felt was safe.

  “I knew you were going to be a handful,” he said, and he seemed quite happy about it. “Now, let’s try that in a bed, wife.”

  Epilogue

  Four weeks had passed since the night when Gareth had claimed her on the ramparts. Because she was prudent, she reminded him that a vow made under duress, even exquisite duress, wasn’t the best foundation for a happy life together; she bade him woo her, and he did, showing that his renowned stubbornness could be applied to more than confounding his rivals.

  They had tried “that” in her bed, and in the great hall, and under a flowering pear tree in the palatial gardens, and each time had been better than the last. Gareth was a talented lover, to be sure, but more than that, he was a sensitive one. He cared for her, and to Agnes’s great relief it was not a joke. The love between them grew and grew, making her think of a theorem one of the mathematicians among the exotics had tried to explain to her once. The man had described numbers that multiplied exponentially without any possible end in sight. That was how her feelings for Gareth grew: exponentially.

  Sometimes she felt so full of happiness she worried that she might simply burst, like the monstrous haggis that had been presented to her that first night at the MacAllister’s keep; her new home.

  She shifted in the silken sheets of the huge bed she shared with her husband, grimacing at the memory. She liked offal as much as the next woman, but it had been quite too much. Her new subjects had looked on eagerly and she hadn’t wanted to disappoint, so she’d eaten the whole thing in one sitting. That feat had gained her a host of admirers—and an intimate relationship with the keep’s apothecary, who’d spent the next few days tending to her upset stomach.

  “What vexes you, wife?” a deep voice rumbled from across the room. She hadn't heard Gareth return from his morning duties. The room was a drafty stone square, but it was hung with tapestries that both kept it warm and dampened sound—something very useful to the newlyweds.

  Agnes placed her hands over her stomach as she remembered the horrid pain her desire to please her new people had caused her.

  Gareth was removing his boots, but he froze in place, a strange expression on his face as his eyes lingered on her stomach.

  “You're not…we're not…”

  She looked down at her hands; they mimicked that of an expectant mother. A peal of laughter escaped her and she dropped back onto the thick mattress. Not more than a few seconds passed before Gareth’s weight was upon her, pressing her further down into the bed.

  “Well?” he prodded. His gaze was intense and his body hard and hot beneath his plaid. His chest was bare and the coarse hair there scraped against her own exposed skin.

  “We’ve just married, Gareth,” she said. “I know you’re considered quite as virile as they come, but I think it’s a bit too soon for that.”

  His face relaxed in relief, and all of Agnes’s laughter died in her.

  “Do you not want bairns?” she asked carefully. She left out the portion of her question that had wedged a shard of fear in her heart. With me? She’d forgotten what it was to have a family linked by blood, but she wished to experience it again one day.

  Gareth’s hands cradled her face, gentle as always although she'd seen him toss a caber near to the moon.

  “I want you to have our children more than almost anything,” he said in a low burr. His lips brushed against hers softly. “I hope they have your eyes and your intelligence and your kindness. But more than that, I want more time…I’m not ready to share ye quite yet, Agnes MacAllister.”

  “Oh,” she said, again at a lack for words. She had once harbored fantasies about Gareth, but now that he was hers she realized her imagination could never capture all the wonderful facets of the real man.

  His lips brushed hers again, the grazing of tender skin spreading a familiar warmth through Agnes’s body.

  “That’s not to say we should stop practicing,” he said with a mischievous grin.

  Their lips met in a passionate kiss, and the evidence of his arousal pressed against her. Agnes tried to think of the court etiquette for dealing with a handsome husband who loved her dearly and was well on his way to giving her a thorough bedding, but instead did as her heart desired.

  “About that, we are in full agreement, husband,” she replied, grasping at his plaid.

  After that, there was only the delicious weight of him pressing her into the bed, and the love that thrummed in her veins and his.

  Author’s Note

  The setting of this story, The Tournament of the Black Lady, is based on The Tournament of the Wild Knight and the Black Lady, which took place in Edinburgh in 1507 and 1508.

  * * *

  The following texts were helpful in the writing of this story:

  Women and Race in Early Modern Texts, by Joyce Green MacDonald. (2002. Cambridge University Press.)

  (Blacks in) ‘Tudor Britain.’ In The Oxford Companion to Black British History. eds. D. Dabydeen, J. Gilmore and C. Jones. (2007. Oxford University Press.)

  Books by Alyssa Cole

  Historicals:

  Agnes Moor’s Wild Knight

  Be Not Afraid

  Let It Shine

  * * *

  Off the Grid series:

  Radio Silence

  Signal Boost

  Mixed Signals

  * * *

  Standalones:

  Eagle’s Heart

  Sweet to the Taste

  About the Author

  Alyssa Cole is a science editor, pop culture nerd, and romance junkie who lives in the Caribbean and occasionally returns to her fast-paced NYC life. When she’s not busy writing, traveling, and learning French, she can be found watching anime with her real-life romance hero or tending to her herd of animals.

  Contact her on

  @alyssacolelit

  AlyssaColeLit

  www.AlyssaCole.com

 

 

 
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