Knight Everlasting

by Jackie Ivie

  “Hurry, lass. Jesu’!”

  Juliana barely got her ankles hooked behind his back before everything in his buttocks and loins lowered, putting weight and rigidity and bulk with such emphasis against her it shoved her up to where the restriction of his propped hands had to stop her slide. And then he groaned, gritting his teeth, and tightening everything to the point his belly was a vista of ropelike tendons while those deep in his chest mounds made indentations in the flesh as they held him in place. Poised. Holding. Shaking.

  And then he moved, changing the movements, gaining volume to them, and strength and timing, putting them one after another in a tempo that just kept increasing. And increasing. Harder. Faster. Pummeling her body with a primordial rhythm only he heard. And then he went onto one arm, moving his right hand beneath her buttocks, grabbing and lifting in order to manipulate and move her exactly as he wished. Over and over and faster and faster until Juliana feared she’d melt. Sparks of sensation and fire started flitting everywhere, sparking from their loins and shooting throughout her body, outside of it, to the tent . . . and then beyond that.

  Flares of feeling careened clear up to the heavens above, and she followed. Juliana’s body went into a jolt of amazement, arching into a bow of such perfection and strength it moved him with it. She was exploding. Rising. Soaring. Even the heavens couldn’t contain such rapture. Her eyes scrunched shut on worlds of wonder, vistas of sky . . . endless blue sky. Her arms and legs locked about the mass of man creating it, causing it, propelling her into it.

  She was still flowing with the rapture when he changed everything. Stopping in a lurch of movement and holding it, while his frame went rigid with a rush of pulses that she could feel. Juliana opened her eyes slightly and watched as Aidan held himself rigid for an infinitesimal amazing moment as his eyes locked with hers. She was still watching as he shoved his head back, pulling his throat taut, while the deepest growl started in his throat, before surrounding her with a visceral throb of tone. Juliana kept her arms and legs locked to him as he became a thing of wild, primitive, raw, basic, sensitive, heavy lunges that propelled her shoulders into the arms he was using for a base, over and over again, looking like he was struggling and fighting a foe, while every bit of his nakedness was darkening with a flush.

  The ferocity of his movements slowed, turning into jerks of motion against her. The growl changed to a sob of sound through his gritted teeth, keeping rhythm with the quick little pulses that were emanating from deep within her. Every other part of him became a trembling, tautly pulled, sweating mass of man, before he lowered his head, met her eyes with a look so dark, Juliana’s eyes filled again. And then he heaved to one side, so the upper portion of him collapsed onto the mat beside her with enough force, air puffed out of the material weave. And then he just lay there, heaving great breaths while facing the other side, away from her.

  “Oh . . . Jesu’, lass. Oh . . . Lord. Oh . . . Damn.”

  He said more, whispering of wenches with spellbinding ways, and charms to keep a man safe, while the place they were joined jumped and twitched and started feeling moist and sore . . . and wicked.

  “Aidan?” she whispered.

  “Doona’—”

  He didn’t specify what he didn’t want her to do, but the raised hand at his far side did. He didn’t have to request it. She didn’t know what she was going to say anyway. Juliana pulled her lower lip into her mouth and started sucking on it, while she waited and breathed in soft little gasps that were all he left her with his weight atop her belly. And between her legs . . . where the flesh was cooling, getting sticky . . . feeling vulgar, unclean. Wrong.

  “I dinna’ . . . expect—”

  Juliana stopped breathing while her heart began a hammering that reminded her of its presence. And its power. And then it started hurting.

  “This.”

  He still wasn’t looking her way. Juliana winged the silent prayer to the heavens over it. She didn’t want him looking . . . until she had everything hidden. In one morning the man had shown her what heaven existed on earth for a man and woman . . . and now he was locking her out. She didn’t know what had changed, but everything about him projected it. She’d thought he wanted her. Exactly like this. And Juliana D’Aubenville would’ve shamed her ancestors and herself by accepting it. The moment he offered. Without thought.

  Exactly as she’d done.

  A flood of tears hit then, and she looked up at the tent roof to fight them. Wave after wave of them filled and flowed out the sides of her eyes and then refilled. She’d done something wrong. It hadn’t been what he wanted. Or expected. Or demanded. Something about the act with her was wrong. He shouldn’t have to say it in words. She wondered how to go about letting him know . . . and getting through the next few moments of her existence. Starting with how to get him to leave.

  “My . . . legs,” she started, the words sounding like a complete sob to her ears. She could only hope it wasn’t audible to him.

  The massive muscles in his back were undulating as he moved his arms to rise and then roll to face her. Juliana kept her vision on the bare weave above her and waited as he looked at her. At emotion she couldn’t hide just yet. Maybe later . . . after he’d gone, but not now.

  This time his curse was vicious, and punctuated with a move to his knees, sliding from the embrace of her body, before going to his feet. Juliana knew he was looking down at her and she avoided everything about it, watching the weave above her blur and clear and blur again with tears her body wouldn’t quit sending.

  He gave a heavy sigh, but didn’t say anything. Juliana was grateful. She didn’t want to hear any more. Not yet. Maybe never. She felt Aidan pulling at the blanket they’d given her what felt like years ago, rolling her slightly as he pulled it from beneath her. She heard the shift of fabric and knew if she looked he was tying and looping it about himself, covering over any signs of what they’d done.

  Then he moved to the bottom of the pallet, grabbed both sides of his sewn-together door flap, and ripped the tent fabric at one side open, proving it wasn’t an obstacle even without a blade.

  For him.

  Chapter 1 1

  Rash. Reckless. Thoughtless.

  Aidan walked into the mist-covered waves and added one more: cruel.

  And then she had to cry her woman-tears.

  He didn’t know what to do when he’d seen them. She cried? He’d done his best to be gentle. Stifled every massive urge for momentum and speed plaguing him and replaced them with self-discipline and endurance. Contained the building pressure of ecstasy as long as possible in order to bring her with him . . . and it hadn’t worked. He hadn’t pleasured her. He’d hurt her. It didn’t seem possible, but there it was. He’d been a thoughtless lover with her. Rash and reckless as well.

  And now he was cruel.

  Aidan rotated his shoulders and slowly moved with his legs, barely churning water. It was the best he could do with the way she’d depleted him. Drained him. Satisfied him. Fulfilled him. Everything about the love act with that woman had elevated him to another place, taking him so high his very soul received wings. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know why. The bliss had been unbelievably sweet and lush and wide, with a breadth Aidan couldn’t comprehend or contain. It had never been that way. He didn’t know how to explain it. And his attempt at words hadn’t done more than make her cry more of her woman-tears.

  He shouldn’t have just left her, though. He could have pulled her into his arms and told her such a thing was bound to happen. There was too much want and need and lust between them. He’d been conscious of it since they’d met, and had it barely constricted and caged before she’d had to go and stoke it with the caresses she’d done on his body. To him. Making this her fault.

  When the hum of sensation moving from her palm to his flesh had filtered through his wakeful stage, Aidan hadn’t possessed anything to fight such raging instantaneous desire. Nothing. He’d been primed and ready and hungering for days now, the n
eed in every thought and the want coloring every action. Until he’d worried that all she’d have had to do was look at him, and he’d have leapt.

  That made it his fault, too . . . but she shared the blame. She’d ignited the barely controlled flame and turned everything into sensation atop pleasure atop glory. It had been such huge glory that he still radiated it, feeling strength and power and joy flood every limb until it couldn’t be contained and had to be worked through. He’d suspected it would be good with her, but not this good. Not . . . incredibly good. Blissfully good. Rapturously good. In the span of one bit of loving, that woman had taken every prior experience and dimmed it, altered it . . . obliterated it.

  He’d never felt so good.

  Aidan stroked until his arms were too heavy for continuing, and then he flipped, floating on his back and looking up at cloud-strewn breaking day and grinning. And then he was laughing. His men would think he’d gone mad. The swimming wouldn’t spare a thought, but the slow languor of it this morning . . . that they might question. The waves had calmed to a lapping motion with the storm’s movement, and Aidan had always been a strong swimmer. He’d found it helped with working through the red times . . . the aggressions. It also increased agility and stamina and everything he needed on a battlefield.

  And in a woman’s bed . . . Juliana . . .

  He shouldn’t have just left her, but he didn’t know what else to do with a woman shedding tears over what had been the most amazing experience of his life. He hadn’t meant to cause pain, but he must have. Juliana hadn’t just been crying. She’d been sobbing. If he’d been blessed with a glib tongue at birth, he’d have been able to say something to the lass . . . perhaps ward off some of her tears.

  But his tongue hadn’t worked. He hadn’t said what needed saying, and now he was out here avoiding doing so.

  Aidan’s laughter died off and he lifted his head to look toward shore. It wasn’t far, although the mist hampered and altered distance. Loch Erind was but a third the size of Loch Buchyn, and Aidan had been crossing that one since his youth. He saw the four men standing at the shore, watching him. They probably waited to fish him out again, if needed.

  Aidan passed the thought by. They had more to do than worry over their laird’s wits. They should be taking apart his camp; preparing the ride to home; anything other than watching and worrying over him. Wondering why he’d take a swim without doffing his attire first. And he wasn’t telling. Nobody else needed to know how the freshwater swim was washing the leavings of what he’d done from the material weave.

  Aidan blew the sigh of thanks over that small blessing. Other than the underdress he’d pushed and crumpled to her breasts, and small specks of blood dappling what were creamy, perfectly curved, and molded woman thighs, there hadn’t been a sign of his perfidy anywhere on Juliana. Or the pallet, since they’d been atop this particular plaid the entire time.

  Aidan shut his eyes, felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the water’s chill, and reopened them on pink-andpurple-kissed clouds as the new day’s sun peeked through. If he had to take the lass’s maidenhood, it was better they didn’t know it. Or guess at it. Aside of which, they should know he didn’t swim naked all the time. He hadn’t taken anything off the prior eve before taking on storm-tossed waves and nearly perishing.

  Aidan’s eyes went wide and he lifted his head. He’d had his sporran with him as well.

  His charms!

  He’d lost his sporran . . . and it was a powerful long shoreline they now had to search. He flipped and started the swim back.

  Juliana rocked in place on her perch atop a flat stone, smiled occasionally at Arran, who was her guard as well as company, and watched the MacKetryck clansmen about their search. Aidan and his band of clansmen had walked every speck of shore on this lake more than three times throughout the day, calling whistles and making other noises that meant nothing to her.

  She had Arran to thank for everything. Almost. From his first visit once the sun had come up and they’d all stirred. If he wondered where Aidan was and why the tent had been ripped open, he hadn’t said. He’d looked at her sitting on the pallet with the other blanket about her and asked with only a slight stutter if she wanted a pail of water to wash.

  And that one request endeared him to her completely.

  That was followed by a repast of a porridge they’d fashioned with the boar meat and oats, and he’d given her some of the ale with the huge bite to it to wash everything down. That tankard made a delicious breakfast even better as it dulled the edge of what had every indicator of being a day she didn’t know how she’d live through.

  Arran had then asked if she needed to release herself. And he hadn’t said one word at how stiff and oddly she’d walked. Not one. He’d waited for her, though, his head above the shrubs, alerting her of his duty as guard. It hadn’t been onerous then, and it still wasn’t. He wasn’t thorough or vigilant. On several occasions, he’d even asked if she’d allow him a moment and promise not to move while he was gone. Of course she wasn’t moving. She was having difficulty doing anything with motion . . . because of his big brother, Aidan.

  That was the only thing she didn’t thank Arran for. He had nothing to do with her weakness . . . including the silly tremor of her knees, the continual and endless throb of soreness radiating from her core to crawl through her belly and down each thigh, nor each instance of gooseflesh that would run across her skin, making her catch her breath and making her relive it again. Soar with the memory. Lurch oddly with the reverie. And each time came without one hint of warning. If she closed her eyes, it was worse!

  That kept her awake and looking like she devoured every tidbit of information Arran gave her, despite the way her back started aching with prolonged sitting on the boulder and the drowsy effects of the ale. She wouldn’t change it. She’d been worried they’d be leaving on horseback. She hadn’t been certain she could manage it . . . and leery of telling their laird if it was too painful.

  She had Arran to thank for being out in the wind-f illed day, too. It was another gift to her. He’d given her the choice. Since they were staying until Aidan’s sporran was located, she could go back into the tent or stay out as long as the weather accommodated.

  Go back to the tent?

  Even if the day turned wretchedly cold, and the wind filled up with rain as it kept warning, she’d have chosen this . . . sitting atop a flat boulder, listening to Arran, sipping on another tankard of ale, and watching the MacKetryck clansmen about their errands. Anything involving that pallet and that tent, and that particular memory, would be more than she wanted to try and absorb and live through.

  All things considered, Arran was a wonderful jailor. If she didn’t already know what the heart-burnings of love felt like, she might have believed herself in that emotion with the young Arran, rather than the real object . . . Aidan Niall MacKetryck.

  Aidan was hard to spot, but she knew which dot he was as if by rote. He’d decided to go the farthest and stay out the longest each time, going to a small speck of man on the opposite shore at times. But he still loomed large in her emotions, stopping her breath, and making her quiver until she had to move her glance before Arran noticed.

  He brought her yet another tankard of that same ale with a hard biscuit thing as the day wore on, the wind started carrying droplets of moisture with it, and the MacKetryck clansmen didn’t look to be accomplishing much. Each time they returned to the camp for sustenance, they looked more downhearted, and needed more words of encouragement. Looking for the laird’s charm-filled sporran obviously wasn’t going well.

  Toward dusk, when the wind was near word-stealing strength, and the clansmen were coming in, weather-dogged and weary, Juliana began to wonder what was next. The laird had lost his sporran, and with it all his luck and amulets and potions. That was when she asked Arran what would happen and was told of replacement. More would be crafted specifically for Aidan . . . by a seer, using smoke-induced visions, and special oils and objects.
They’d most likely be set to the chore the moment the party returned to Castle Ketryck. In two days. That made the entire day even stranger.

  Aidan Niall had obviously never had his life upended and had to replace things . . . all his things. Juliana wondered at luxury and security that could provide such an upbringing, and then dismissed it. If he’d never had to start afresh, it was an excellent time to start that lesson. She took another sip of her tankard, giggled, and went back to listening.

  According to Arran, his big bad brother was bereft. The fates were against him. Aidan had been in a struggle against them forever . . . or at least ever since Arran could remember. Juliana would have laughed aloud if Arran hadn’t been so serious when he said it, or if the rain hadn’t decided to fall in earnest then, bringing side-falling moisture, or if the men weren’t returning, and with them . . . the large, exasperated, frustrated male that was Aidan.

  The man was suffering. Or something. Wind was whipping his hair all about his head, making it look alive, and flapping his feile breacan all about him, showing strength and sinew and rain-lashed limbs. Juliana flashed more than one glance at him before she was caught and just stared. He really shouldn’t wear his clothing so loose and improperly fastened. Or if he did, he shouldn’t have worked his entire frame into an eye-catching work of masculine beauty. Or if he had to do that, he should have the sense to stay out of her sight. Then he wouldn’t have to lower his chin and glare at her through dark strands of hair fingering about his face, while portraying anger at her open-jawed regard . . . because it was entirely his fault.

  He pointed at her and shoved it in the direction of his tent. Juliana didn’t need translation. She was scooting to the edge of her boulder and holding out the half-empty tankard before the youngest MacKetryck turned to request it of her. Then she was running, all soreness forgotten or ignored, to reach the tent before he did. And she didn’t even know why.