by Lisa Hendrix
Then, abruptly, he slipped home, embraced by that welcoming heat he had needed for so very, very long, and the last scrap of reason slipped away. The urgency faded, replaced by the need, not simply to mate but to possess, to pleasure, until she forgot all others and became truly his. He moved over her, judging how she responded, how she shifted beneath him, instinctively adjusting until he found the rhythm that made her breath come in panting moans. Mine.
The need built, stronger. Matilda clung to him, fingers and heels hooked into his buttocks, pulling at him, wanting him deeper. She lifted to him, faster, harder, leading him and following him all at the same time as they searched together for the way to make her his. His. He rose up on his hands and looked down at her as he pressed into her, and suddenly she was there, the pleasure on her hard, harder than she’d ever felt by her own hand. She arched back, almost throwing him off as he bore down into her, and then all her defenses collapsed in the quaking wonder of it, and she felt his shock as he abruptly joined her, exploding into her with both body and mind.
And not just with pleasure. The wildness was there, too, animal and terrifying. So was hunger. Cold. Need, deeper than any she’d ever felt. The desolation of true loneliness. It all engulfed her, terrible and dark, mixed up with the golden light of release. A sob of despair welled up and she wasn’t sure whether that was hers or his either, but she wrapped her arms even tighter and held on, clinging to him for both their sakes as he poured himself into her.
“ ’Tis all right,” she murmured through tears. “’Tis all right. ’Tis all right.” Slowly, some of his agonized pleasure began to fade, and she could close her eyes and little by little begin to gather herself away from him.
It was a long time before Steinarr heard her, longer before his mind returned back from wherever it had been, the shattered pieces slowly coming together so her words made any kind of sense. It was all right. He buried his face in her shoulder, inhaling the scent of her. Their mating had been so frantic that the only bare skin that touched was where they joined. He wanted bare skin. He had to have it.
“I want you naked,” he growled into her hair. He began pressing kisses over her face, her neck, her ears, half-incoherent with need as he dragged her garments up. Bare belly. Yes. More. “I want you again and again. Your mouth. Your breasts.” He hadn’t even seen her breasts yet. He shoved at her clothes, willing them gone, frustrated that the yards of cloth didn’t simply vanish. “I want you on your knees, from behind, on my lap. I want you in every way, over and over.” Astride him, yes. That next. The thought throbbed through his crotch, and he rocked side to side, working to make himself hard again. He felt the stirring and pressed into her.
“Ow.” She shrank away from him, pulling back against the earth.
Have to have her. He thrust at her again.
She winced and shoved back. “That hurts. Don’t.”
“Hurts?” Another piece of his mind came back. He forced his eyes open enough to see the dampness on her cheeks. He tasted his lips, salty where he’d kissed her. Tears. “I hurt you.”
“No. I mean, yes, but … The first time is supposed to hurt, is it not?”
First time? No, surely she didn’t mean that. She’d been with at least one man. She knew too well how to move, how to touch him to drive him wild. She’d needed no coaxing, no teaching as a virgin would need; her desire had been every bit as sharp as his. She knew. She couldn’t be, and yet. Memory of that slight resistance and her cry as he broke through rushed back, slamming another piece of his mind into place.
He pulled away from her, and even that made her wince. With a sense of dread, he sat back on his knees and forced himself to look at the smear of pink that stained the white sheepskin beneath her hips. His head pounded as if Völund, the elf smith, were using his skull as an anvil. “You were virgin? ”
“Of course I was a virgin.” Blushing in shame, she pushed her gown down to cover herself. “Why would I not be?”
“I just thought …” Ah, pillocks. What had he done? He was supposed to stop. She was supposed to slap him, make him stop, run away, not wrap her legs around him and pull him in so deep he would drown in her. “I mean, he’s only a puppy, but I thought Robin would surely have bedded you by now.”
“Robin!” She scrabbled away from him. “You think Robin and I … ? My own brother? ”
Steinarr grabbed for her, but suddenly froze, hand out, gaping at her. “Brother?”
“Cousin. I mean cousin,” said Marian, her face going even brighter red. She scrambled to her feet. “You cannot think I would lie with my cousin.”
He shook off the shock, yanking his braies back into place and pulling the ties snug as he rose. “You said ‘brother.’”
“You thought I would lie with my cousin,” she accused as she backed away.
“’Twas clear he was not your cousin. I saw through that lie from the first. I thought you had run away with your lover. And—”
“Robin is not my lover.” She backed into the wall and slid sideways, but she was too close to the corner and far too slow, and Steinarr trapped her easily, one arm on either side of her.
“Then what is he to you? The truth this time.”
He could all but see her wracking her mind for a lie. “He is …”
Steinarr grabbed her shoulders and shook her, his fingers digging into her shoulders until she winced. “The truth, Marian. What is he to you? ”
“My father’s bastard by some peasant woman in Kent,” she snapped. “My half brother.”
The bastard was her father’s bastard? No. Surely not. “And you are not lovers.”
“Of course not! How could you even—” She gagged and clutched at her stomach.
Steinarr stepped back quickly, then glanced around, spotted the bag of oats, and dragged it over by the fire. “Come here. Sit down.”
She stumbled forward and sagged onto the rough cushion. Steinarr stood looking down at her for a moment, then picked up the ale skin and held it out. “Drink.”
“I cannot.” She wrapped her arms around herself.
Well, he could. As she sat trying to hold herself together, he pulled the stopper and drank deeply in an effort to wash away the confusion.
“You truly thought we were lovers?” she asked quietly when he lowered the skin.
He nodded slowly. “I did. He was clearly not your cousin. And you are very … tender with him.”
“Only as a sister to her brother.” She shuddered again. “Even if he were only my cousin … How could you imagine we would do anything so vile? ”
“I told you, I could tell you were lying about him being your cousin. As for the other …” The images tumbled through his mind: Marian leaning against Robin on the mare, murmuring something to make him laugh. Marian bending over Robin in his sick bed, kissing his forehead. A smile here; a gentle hand there. All the tiny things that had played into what Guy had told him. No, he had that backward. What Guy had told him had only played into what he’d decided on his own, ass that he was. He hammered his forehead with his fist. “I read things wrong between you from the start.”
“You must have. I never said …”
“You never said, but your lies did.” He squatted down before her. “And you did lie, didn’t you, Maud?”
She grimaced and twisted away, trying to avoid his eyes. “I did, my lord.”
“Who are you?”
“You already know. I am called Maud. Matilda.”
“And who is this bastard-siring father of yours?”
“A smith in—”
“No more lies!” The whipcrack of his voice made her jump. Glowering, he leaned in close, determined to have the truth. “A smith’s daughter would not refer to her father’s mistress as ‘some peasant woman in Kent.’ And your speech is too fine to have come out of a smithy. Who is your father? The truth.”
Matilda squeezed her eyes shut and sat there a moment. “My sire is—was David Fitzwalter, lord of Huntingdon. I am Matilda, his only da
ughter.”
“And Robin is his bastard?”
“His name is Robert. Robert le Chape.” She slowly unwound her arms and straightened. “I think I would like some of that ale after all.”
He watched through narrowed eyes as she gulped down the ale. “So. You are a noblewoman, traveling with a bastard brother, lying about who you are, and offering your body to an unknown knight in exchange for his aid. ’Tis a strange pilgrimage you make, Matilda Fitzwalter.”
The ale fortified Marian and washed away the bitter taste in her mouth. She squared her shoulders, ready to face him as she should have before it came to this. “I am no more pilgrim than you, my lord.”
“None at all, then.” He paced back and forth a few times, then stopped in front of her. “What are you? What journey do you make that you are willing to offer up yourself for my aid?”
“A sort of … quest. For Robert’s title.”
“Robert’s title? ” Steinarr frowned down at her. “How is it a bastard stands to gain a title by making a quest?”
“It is a very long tale, monsire.”
“I have time.” He dragged the furs closer to where she sat.
Matilda felt herself pale. “What are you doing? ”
“Calm yourself, woman. I only need a place to rest while you spin this very long tale. Unless you would rather have the floor while I sit there?” When she shook her head, he eased himself down on the furs at her feet, as though he were one of the young knights at Huntingdon paying court. “Go on. And you had better not brew up more of your lies.”
“No, my lord. I promise you only the truth.” Perhaps not all of it, but the truth. She chewed her lip as she tried to put her story in order.
“Marian …” His voice held warning.
“It is hard to know where to begin, my lord.”
“At the beginning,” he suggested curtly. “How did your father come to bring Robert to Huntingdon? ”
“My lady mother, God rest her, bore no more children after me. She tried, nearly a dozen times in as many years, but all were born too early and dead. When Father realized she would give him no son, he brought his bastard to live with us. He said he would see Robin trained as a gentleman and a knight and acknowledge him as heir.”
“Can he do that? ”
She looked to see if he was jesting—surely he must know that nearly every great house had at least one bastard in its line—but he seemed serious.
“He can, and he did—and the shame killed Mother, though it took some time,” she added bitterly. “Robin was not what Father expected. He is a gentle soul, more fond of carving animals in wood than of hunting them. He is barely fair with a sword, and for all his hours at the quintain, he has never won a single joust. The greater Robert’s failures, the harsher Father’s words and hand, and the more Robin tried to please him, the less he was able.”
“And you pitied him.”
“We pitied each other. Father was equally disappointed in me, and no kinder.”
“Why? ”
So many reasons. She shook her head. “That is not part of the tale, monsire. Leave it said that we each stood between the other and Father’s anger more than once. It endeared us to him not at all, but it bound us together as brother and sister.”
“Fathers can sometimes be hard out of their wish to make their children strong,” said Steinarr.
“It was not about making us strong, monsire. It was about breaking us. Especially Robin. He called him a coward and a fool.” She glared at him. “He called him askefise.”
He flushed. “Ah.”
“He said the common blood ran too thick in Robin’s veins and that he would never be fit to own the title. He vowed he would never acknowledge Robin after all, and said Huntingdon and its lordship would go to my cousin.”
“Another one? ” He sounded doubtful.
“My true cousin,” she said. “The only son of my father’s only brother, called Guy of Gisburne. An odious wretch, but by rights, the true heir—or so we thought. So Guy thought. But Father learned that Guy … was not the man he thought, either, noble-born or not. He approached the king with his concern, and Edward offered a solution. A test. One final chance for Robert to prove his worthiness to be lord.”
Steinarr frowned. “I have never heard of such a thing.”
“Nor I, ’til Father lay dying. He called Robert to him and told him of this test the king and he had devised. He said he had hidden away a certain small treasure and left a trail of riddles to find it. The first was handed to Robert by our steward in the very hour Father was buried. Robin must find the treasure and present it to the king. If he does it in time, he will be acknowledged heir and made lord by the king’s fiat.”
“And if he fails?”
“Guy becomes lord.” Matilda tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but even she could hear it. “The weakness in Father’s plan is that Guy does not have to produce the treasure. All he must do is—”
“Keep Robin from it,” said Steinarr along with her. He pushed to his feet to pace back and forth again, and a new, colder kind of anger pulsed at the edges of Matilda’s awareness.
“That is why we travel as peasant pilgrims, and under false names. I am sorry for our lies, monsire, but Guy covets Huntingdon beyond all reason. The steward sent word to him at the same time as he gave Robin the first riddle. I fear he is even now on our trail. If he catches us, he will surely kill Robin.”
“He does not have the courage for that,” growled Steinarr, and that wintry fury sent a frost through Matilda’s soul. “He has sent someone else to do it.”
The center of her went still and cold as the ice on a lake. Ah, God. She knew, but she had to ask anyway. “How is it you know what Guy has done? ”
“Because,” said Steinarr, “I am the man he sent.”
Marian shot off the bag like an arrow off a bow and was half out the door before Steinarr got to her. He caught her around the waist and spun her back into the cottage as he kicked the door shut. “Sit down.”
Instead, she scrambled back to put the fire between her and him and whipped out her knife. “Stay away from me.”
“Put that thing away before you hurt yourself. If I were going to kill you, you would already be dead. You are safe enough. And so is Robin. Especially now.”
“I do not believe you.”
“Nonetheless.” Steinarr contemplated her a moment, trying to decide how best to approach this. In his arrogance, he had fouled things so thoroughly he might never recover them. “I demanded the truth of you, and now you will have the same from me.”
“I have no interest in your version of the truth.”
“Interest or not, you will listen.” Folding his arms, he leaned back against the door, effectively locking her in. “After I left you in Maltby, I captured the outlaw I sought and took him to Nottingham City.” He went on, telling her of meeting Guy, and of what Gisburne had told him about the bastard thief and the maid he had lured away. As he spoke, she paced, agitated, on the far side of the fire.
“And so you agreed to kill Robin because of the word of that fils a putain? What did Guy pay you? What is the price of my brother’s life?”
Balls. She would ask. Steinarr forced himself to say it aloud. “Ten pounds.”
“Less than the price of a good horse,” she said bitterly.
“I never told Guy I would kill Robin.” Steinarr wanted her to understand. He needed her to understand, perhaps even more than he had needed her body. “I said only that I would see that Robin never troubled him again.”
“And I am to trust that? That friend of yours is with him.” Her voice cracked with a stifled sob. “Robin could be dead even now.”
“He is not,” Steinarr assured her. “Ari watches over him, to see he does not find more trees to fall out of, and he will stand between him and Guy. I will send a message to ensure it. Was Robin up that tree looking for one of your father’s riddles?”
“Why should I tell you anyth
ing?”
“You are going to need my aid.”
“Your aid? I drip with your aid,” she spat at him. “Did Guy pay you to debase me as well? ”
Her accusation flayed him like a knife. “Ah, pillocks. No, Marian. No. It was not like that. Guy charged me to bring you home to be married.”
“And so you decided to tup me along the way? ”
“Aye. But if you will recall, I asked you the first time before I met Guy, though I did it to chase you away rather than to bed you. Truly,” he said at her doubt-filled snort. “You would not hear me when I said no to helping you. I wished you to go away and so, yes, I was crude. It worked.” He held out his palms in surrender, but he couldn’t resist pointing out, “When I returned, you were the one who bargained to be in my bed.”
Her doubtfulness turned to pure poison. “I was desperate. And I did not know you were Guy’s man.”
He came to his feet, indignant. “I am not his man.”
“No, only his hireling,” she sneered. “God’s bones, I cannot believe I was such a fool!”
“No bigger fool than I. I ignored my sense of the man for the sake of a few pounds of silver.” Steinarr ventured away from the door a few steps, but let her keep the fire between them. “It may make little difference to you, but when I agreed to this duty, I did not realize that it was you and Robin I would be hunting.”
“But once you discovered it, you did not withdraw.”
“No. By then, I was convinced Robin was a true scoundrel. Gisburne gave me just enough of the truth that your lies and what I saw for myself only seemed to confirm his words. It seemed that Robin was both thief and seducer.”
She curled her lip in disgust. “And you wanted that duty for yourself.”
“As any man would.” He still wanted it. He craved her worse now than he had before. How had he ever imagined that driving her away would be a good thing? “I have been without a woman far too long to say no to one so fair, especially not when she all but insists I take her. And from what I saw and knew—thought I knew—you were already familiar with men and pleasure.”
