by Sue Wilson
Her heartbeat quickened with the same excitement that had left her restless the entire night.
Nottingham was there.
She felt his presence, as warm and radiant as the glow of the single lantern that lit the darkness.
Quietly she walked toward the light and paused at the doorway, peering into the stall. The Sheriff ran a comb through the stallion's raven mane, murmuring to the beast in his strange, Norman tongue.
For a few moments, she watched him in secret, entranced by his long, fluid motions and his softly slurred words that sounded like a foreign lullaby. Light danced off his silk-clad shoulders with every move, and Thea's gaze traveled down his arms where rolled-up sleeves bared his forearms, to the long, blunted fingers that caressed the mane after every stroke of the comb.
Such a simple thing, a horse's grooming, and yet the man made it eloquent.
A wistful, wordless longing swept over her, and she realized her return to Nottingham had nothing to do with its poor, neglected citizenry, nothing to do with herbs and simples, and everything to do with him.
She leaned against the doorjamb and sighed.
"So you could not sleep either." The Sheriff gave Chimera a hearty pat on the rump and turned toward her.
Thea gasped softly, discovery shattering her reverie. "I came to check on Simeon," she explained, a hot rush of color flooding her cheeks.
Nottingham's glance jagged along her body, reminding Thea of the untied ribbons of her shift fluttering about her wrists and the billowing skirts of her tunic dragging in the stable straw.
A sardonic rise lifted his brow. "Truth?"
Somehow she found her voice. "Truth is he's sleeping like an overfed pup."
The Sheriff reached out and lifted a heavy handful of unbound hair that fell to the middle of her thighs. "Truth?" he asked again, inclining his head toward her. Her hair slid like spiraled silk through his fingers.
Her breath caught in her throat, and honesty with it. How could she explain something that she did not even understand-that she had spent the better part of the night trying to outrun her thoughts of him, only to be led by fate to find him here?
"Well," she demurred, "truth is that I'm escaping, my lord, as you did yourself but a few days past."
"Ah," he said, nodding. "But a few hours here, and you long for freedom. I did try to warn you."
"Oh, no, I would not leave Nottingham Castle! It's Mildthryth's snores, my lord. I am trying to flee the good woman's timber-rattling sleep."
Not total candor, but an answer that brought a disarming grin to his face. His deep, resonant chuckle chased a shiver of delight through her.
"To be sure," she continued. "Mildthryth could wake the dead. But worse than that, Sheriff."
"Good heavens, what could possibly be worse?" He stepped toward her, took her hand in his, and kissed her bared wrist.
The thrill of his touch raced through her arm, stinging her to life with a host of memories, remembrances of every time his lips had pressed against her, of the excitement that flew through her veins every time he engaged her with his dangerous wit. Her desire for him never went away now, but lay beneath the surface of every other feeling, needing only his touch to bring it to life.
"Mildthryth has decided to plead your case," she said, trying to collect her thoughts.
"Oh?"
"The woman is convinced you're too cloddish to do it yourself."
"Cloddish? She said that?"
Thea tried to contain a smile. "I believe that was the word she used. Cloddish...doltish...
something. Although somehow she made it sound endearing. Your cloddishness, I mean...my lord."
"Meddling old fleabag," Nottingham said, drawing Thea into his arms.
She drew in a sharp, slicing breath as his body met hers, as he fitted himself to her every curve as if by instinct.
"The woman is filling your head with tripe, Thea. I should throw her to the streets. Cloddish indeed. I hope you set her straight."
He caught her mid-smile, his lips settling over hers for proof, snug and intimate like the close embrace of his body. Until he kissed her, she did not know how much she'd wanted this, how much she'd waited for the flood of feelings that poured through her.
Her eyes fluttered closed, and the sound of laughter trapped in her throat dissolved into a plaintive moan as threads of pleasure wove through her.
The heat from his body was a tangible thing, ripe with the scent of myrrh, the taste of his lips exotic and intoxicating. And his kiss, as bold and brash as she remembered. She clung to him, savoring the moist pressure of his mouth as his lips molded to hers, as their tongues met, and mated.
She had come here seeking escape, but it was not escape she needed, merely this. To find him again; to press into the lean-muscled substance of his body and hear his low, answering groan of pleasure; to feel him clutching her skirts, wrapping his hands in her hair, touching her everywhere at once, like a man hungry from denial.
With a soft sob, she stretched up against him, arching into his swollen hardness. The feelings rushed through her one upon the other, tumbling into an urgency that obliterated all else. Passion uncoiled within her, like a spring too tightly wound for far too long, and a small, smothered cry broke against his lips.
His breath pounded the small space of air between them. "Woman-Thea, you do not know what you're about."
"I know I want you," she cried. "I know I came back with you because I wanted you."
"Thea-"
"Is it not what you've waited to hear? And now, with no vow to bind you-"
He placed his hands firmly over her shoulders, pushed a painful distance between them. His face was haggard with desire, torn by need, by some kind of ambivalence she could not fathom. She had told him everything, confessed all, returned to Nottingham with him. What more could stand between them?
"What would you have me do, Thea? Lay you on the straw and take you here like a common wench?"
"Yes!" she urged. "And quickly, so that we might begin again, and again!"
The sound of her own heart drummed in her ears, beating faster, louder, mirroring back the throb deep inside her. Her breath kept frantic pace.
Nottingham let his mouth drift downward; she met it with a small, eager cry and felt the ragged restraint of his words against her parted lips. "Sherwood's fields? A stable floor? Christ, Thea, I have waited too long for this to take you in some heated rush I won't even remember. Come with me...to my chamber...."
She arched her head back, sighing as the Sheriff brushed his lips along the curve of her neck, a slow, maddening counterpoint to the fury she felt inside. She wanted to tell him she could not wait for some carefully thorough seduction, that she needed him now. Only a quivering moan escaped.
Somehow it was enough.
He lifted her in his arms, his long strides carrying them away from Chimera's stall. She tightened her hands in his tunic and buried her head against his chest, inhaling the musk-myrrh scent of him. Beyond that, she knew nothing, cared for nothing, save the promise of his nearness. She felt herself being lowered and the heat of his body following her down...down....
A meadowsweet fragrance enveloped them. Thea stretched into the cushions of new-mown hay and held out her arms to him.
~*~
Nottingham knew, if he lived forever, he would not forget the sight of her-the fiery fan of mahogany hair curling through the sprigs of hay; the froth of rose tunic and pristine white undershift crumpled about her hips; a slender expanse of leg bared from thigh to small, dusty bare foot. Until that instant, he had not realized how much he had hoped for this, prayed for it in an awkward, wordless way.
She had come to him freely, beckoned to him with each soft sigh, Blessed Mary, with her own words! His heart thudded deep in his chest-a rapid thrum that was part anticipation, part disbelief.
It was not as he had planned. No wine or troubadour's song. No silks or furs or muted candlelight. Not at all what he'd planned-to feel control spi
ral away, far out of reach, every time she looked at him. To feel robbed of command, of self-discipline, of breath.
Thea smoothed her hands beneath his open tunic and pushed the garment off his shoulders. It hung behind him, still fastened at his wrists like silken shackles and at the belt canted low over his hips.
Her cheek was warm against the bared skin of his chest, the hotter brand of her lips burning a path of kisses up the length of his breastbone. He sank to his knees amid the mounds of their crude straw-bed. Filling his hands with her hair, he twirled the gilded locks around his fingers, then let the loops loosen as he framed her face and touched the uptilted curve of her cheekbone.
"Thea," he murmured, trailing the tips of his fingers down to her kiss-swollen mouth.
She turned her head slightly, letting her lips drag down the length of his fingers, and back, the heat of her breath searing his skin. Her lips parted, the warm wetness of her tongue swirled over one fingertip. The sharpness of her teeth grazed suggestively against him.
Pleasure razored through his belly, and he forgot entirely what he planned to say, forgot to look arrogant and sure of himself, and sure of her. Every hope of restraint, of mastery, fled. With a muttered curse, he rolled to the hay beside her, pulling her half atop him.
"Go ahead and take me, witch. You've made pudding of my resolve."
Desire laced her laughter as she pushed herself up to kneel beside him, bits of straw clinging to her hair.
"Will you be the one to tell Mildthryth she was right?" she teased, an enigmatic smile playing about her lips.
Without waiting for a reply, she pulled the rose wool tunic overhead and tossed it aside. Her fingers moved to the ribbons of her shift. She glanced at the single bow gathering the bodice and wound the long white ties between her fingers, a last hesitation, quickly discarded.
Her breathless smile faded-in its place a quiet certainty, a readiness he had never seen on any other woman's face, a longing more poignant than any he could have dreamed in the endless fantasies he'd spun about her.
She tugged on the ribbon, and the shift loosened on her shoulders. Without looking away from him, she shrugged out of the gown and let it fall around her. It settled like snow in her lap.
She was more beautiful than he remembered, more ravishing than he could have imagined-a graceful, wood nymph that he'd breathed to life with his own passion. He could see the pulse beating in the slender hollow of her throat, the curve of her shoulders and breasts gleaming golden from the distant lantern light, and he wondered how such strength and boldness could come from this evanescent, fairy-sculpture of a woman.
Then deliberately, she took his hand and guided it to the swell of her breast, and the illusion of her as something gossamer and unreal melted at the touch. This he remembered-the warm weight of her flesh cupped in his hand, the scent of lavender rising from heated skin, the dusky pink nipple hardening against his palm.
Gisborne was right; she had bewitched him, and he did not care. The taste of her kisses had drugged his senses, an opiate of sweet shyness and brazen spice that drowned his cares and curled heat through his belly and loins. And now, this simple invitation, an innocent charm of a gesture, erotic, without artifice.
He swept his lips across hers, hungry for her, then his kiss sank to the tip of her shoulder, to the fullness of her breast. Thea released a long-held breath as he eased her to the hay beside him. He could feel her shivering in his arms, past wanting, past need, each moment he delayed more torment for her.
How much he wanted this-to spend the night discovering her, to draw out each caress with exquisite delay, to feel her body quicken beneath his and hear her soft murmured moans begging for more.
He gathered her close, starved for this long-withheld taste of her. His tongue teased over her nipple, then circled it slowly. One breast, the other, back again, hands kneading softly. He licked her gently, tugged her less gently, pulling, drawing her more fully into his mouth, drinking from her as a man parched for her flesh.
The tension in her body built beneath him as she pressed against him, then writhed back into the hay. He thrust his hands under her, fingers striping down her arched back as he brought her closer, sucking strongly in a rhythm that matched hers.
Her desperation seemed to mount, to seep into his skin, pour through his veins like a fevered delirium. The more he had of her, the more he wanted. He could not get enough.
He moved his hand to the rise of her ribcage, playing lightly over her belly, her hips. Lavender-oiled, her skin slid frictionless against his fingers, inviting him further. Resting his cheek in the fragrant hollow of her stomach, he let his hands glide over the cream-silk surface of her inner thighs.
He felt the small tremors in the tightened muscles beneath his fingers, knew he denied her release past the point of agony. She twisted restlessly beneath him, her knees opening, rising, breath-filled cries breaking the silence. He moved between her thighs and slipped his hand under the tangle of her shift to expose the soft, sable triangle between her legs. Lightly, he grazed the whorl of hair, then slid his fingers downward, parting her.
Thea stifled a gasp in her throat and rose into the pressure of his hand, moving against the length of his fingers.
He lifted his head, gazing down at her, and a furious blush of color spilled across her cheeks as he felt her response. She caught her lips between her teeth, trapping a cry in the back of her throat. Before she could look away, he touched her again, and again, building a sure and steady pattern that she matched with the movement of her hips.
"Please-"
Small cries mixed with her ragged breaths as he stroked her deeper, faster.
"Let me touch you," she pleaded unevenly, reaching for him, finding only the silk of his tunic to clutch.
He wanted that, and felt the answering throb lengthening, hardening his sex. But he had waited so long for her willingness, for his own freedom from the haunting visions of Locksley that once plagued him so. The completion he wanted most was to feel her tremble and cling to him, to know she had found release in his arms.
"Later," he breathed.
"Later, later, later...I cannot bear later! Do you dare torture your prisoners so?"
"Torture, my lady?"
He touched her, rubbed her, lazily circling the tender bud of pleasure with his fingertips.
"Sweet saints, yes!" she cried. "A year of torture, this-no, a century-"
Nottingham laughed shakily. "A century? You overestimate my self-restraint."
"Damn you, Sheriff. Damn you...damn you..." Her eyes drifted closed as his tongue replaced his fingers and his fingers delved into the tight, liquid heat of her.
He slid his tongue over her, then again, very slowly, breathing her name against the dampened inside of her thigh.
Her hands caressed his shoulders; her fingers, trembling, raked through his hair. He knew he could not finish with her, not like this. The control on which he'd prided himself shredded, and he ached with the effort of holding back.
She seemed to read his mind. "I don't want you to wait," she whispered, and pulled him above her.
Her skirts were in his way, his breeches, the damned corded ties-
He rose up on his knees, wrestling her shift higher, fumbling with the knotted laces at his waist.
"Sweet Christ," he groaned, "I cannot have you quickly enough!"
He heard it then, punctuating his words. The one sound that haunted him day and night. A single, unmistakable, horrible sound. The whistling hum of displaced air. Fear clutched his gut.
"God! Thea! No!" he cried, and slammed his body down on hers. He heard the arrow streak by them, heard the smack of its fiery tip plunging into the hay above their heads. He gulped in a futile breath, found only heat and vacuum pouring into his lungs.
His back exploded in pain.
Then blackness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"Guard!" Thea's voice. Frightened and, to his ears, far away.
The churning pi
t of unconsciousness closed, refusing to swallow him; blackness became gray, then a chaos of unfocused color. Her hand on his face, cold, yanked him back from oblivion.
"Oh, God!" she cried, as his eyes opened. "I thought-"
He shook his head, sent a weight of pain caroming from side to side in his skull. Nothing compared to the lance of fire in his back. His lips felt dead, his mouth packed with sand, and the damnable fog around him refused to lift. Fog-
The air beside them screeched apart with a blur of heat.
Not fog, but smoke!
He bolted upright. Fire ate at the top of the hay rick where they lay, sending fingers of flame groping in their direction. Without thinking, Nottingham clasped Thea against his body and rolled clear of the burning bed of straw.
Another arrow sizzled by. With a loud thump, the ash shaft plunged into the hay-strewn ground at their feet, its tip glowing with a glob of fiery resin.
The horror of the situation bloomed inside his head, bright like the firebursts that danced before his eyes as darkness grabbed at his senses. Somehow, this had all happened before. In Sherwood...
Fire shot through the frigid air, streaking a comet's tail of smoke. A swarm of arrows, humming. Surprise pierced like shards of ice in his gut. They came out of the mist...the fog...the smoke, swinging down from tree limbs, leaping out from behind bushes. Four...five...six of his party dead. Two wounded, lying at his feet, their moans echoing in the preternatural silence. He dropped the horse's reins, held his hands aloft-
"Guard! Someone help him!"
Thea's voice roused him again, and he groped instinctively at his flank where his sword should have hung. Nothing. He was unarmed save the small dagger tucked beneath his belt. Unarmed, and hunted. Again. Still.
Rage kicked at the trickle of fear coiling in his belly, replacing frozen paralysis with something as angry-hot and destructive as the flames around him. Panic and confusion melted away. The air was heavy with smoke, the scream of horses, and the arrows they had loosed to flush him out.
