The Knight's Return

by Joanne Rock

  “Yes.” He held the wine aloft, letting the water roll off the jug for a moment before settling it on the turf between them. “More wine?”

  She knew strong drink should be consumed in moderation, but if she joined the local priory she would have the rest of her days to contemplate moderation. She nodded and held out her cup, a bone-and-jeweled receptacle that had belonged to her mother’s wealthy family before finding their way into her dowry.

  And all at once she understood her importance to Hugh.

  “What has my father promised you if I agree to marriage?” Just this morning her father had asked Hugh if he had made progress wooing her. No doubt her crafty sire had merely pretended not to endorse the Norman mercenary’s courtship.

  In truth, he would gladly hand her off to anyone who was not a common peasant for a hefty sum of gold. While she’d lost much value for many good political alliances, she might be worth enough coin for Hugh to reclaim a life as a knight, even if he never recalled his past.

  “We have not discussed marriage.” He drank directly from the jug since he had not been able to locate a second cup when he brought out their meal. “How could we when I do not know my own past? I could not even claim a keep to house you.”

  Sorcha sipped the cold wine, allowing the flavors to flood her tongue as she watched Hugh, more confused than ever. She thought about his resemblance to Edward and weighed the consequences of confiding that small piece of information. What if Hugh was related to the man she’d once called husband? Could Hugh have come to Connacht to reclaim Edward’s son for him? Perhaps that had been his mission and he simply did not remember it. If so, would he turn on her once she confided her fears?

  Or was there a chance—given how vehemently he’d pleaded her case in front of her father—that he would continue to protect her no matter what dark alliances his past might hold?

  “Tell me, Sorcha.” Hugh had set down the jug and he reached for her now, his hand settling on her arm with a gentle heat that muddled her thoughts on contact. “Do you wish to wed?”

  Chapter Twelve

  He hadn’t intended it as a proposal.

  Hugh could see that Sorcha had taken it that way at once, however. Her green eyes widened in surprise, her lips parting with a small gasp. Some vein close to the surface of her skin leaped in nervous protest at her throat.

  Or did her heart pound for other reasons altogether?

  Hugh had been fighting his attraction to her all day with little success and the sparks leaping between them now could hardly be denied.

  “My father wanted me to wed one of his allies once. A gouty old king in the south who used to visit our keep and pinch me through my surcoat long before I became a woman.” Sorcha told the story without prelude, the words tumbling from her lips faster than he could take them in. “I ran from the threat of that marriage into a false union that has caused my father grief and shame. I do not think I can trust his judgment or mine when it comes to nuptials.”

  “So you do not wish to wed anyone?” He found her response curious. Even if he hadn’t meant to propose a match between them, he was very intrigued about what she wanted. “Not even if it meant avoiding the convent and having a chance to raise your son?”

  His hand moved over her arm without his permission, indulging in her softness. He’d felt protective toward this woman from the moment they’d met and now, having seen her spar with her father and shower her son with love, his emotions for her were even more complex. All he understood for certain was that he admired her.

  And, yes, he wanted her.

  “I want to be with Conn.” She spoke softly, but he heard her conviction resonate through her voice. “But if I make a bad marriage, I will have the rest of my days to contemplate it and only a few years to enjoy the comfort of seeing my son grow. He will be taken away to be fostered and then I’ll be at the mercy of whatever man has settled for me. Do you think a fallen woman will be treated well by her new husband? For that matter, do you think my son will be treated well?”

  “Your father would never allow harm to come to—”

  “Will he not? He allowed me to birth my son in the middle of the woods with no company save a young, inexperienced nurse. I do not trust him to intercede for Conn against a stepfather, especially one who did him the favor of marrying his banished daughter.”

  The bitterness in her voice sliced through him and he wondered what it would have been like to meet this extraordinary woman before life had dealt her such blows. He fingered a tiny bow sewn on the shoulder of her surcoat, a silken extravagance grown limp with many washings.

  Exile might have left her old gowns faded, but it had not dimmed her spirit.

  “You should be ruling a kingdom instead of languishing in a remote cottage.”

  “Pretty words for a warrior.” She cocked her head sideways, as if seeing him anew. Only then did she seem to become aware of his hand upon her shoulder. Perhaps because his errant fingers had untied the ribbon there.

  Their gazes met. Held.

  The air in the garden grew thick and combustible.

  “I speak the truth.” He skimmed a finger along the ribbon that edged her bodice, following the binding down her collarbone to hover just above her breast. Only the soft creamy linen of her kirtle prevented his finger from brushing her bare skin.

  “Men do not speak the truth, but rather what is expedient.” She lifted her cup to her mouth and took another sip of wine before replacing the container nearby. “I believe you would tell me whatever might land you in my bed right now.”

  Surprise glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth. The cheek of her. But was she correct?

  His restless touches certainly supported the theory.

  “I do not seek to seduce you.” He pulled his hand back, relinquishing his hold on her with more than a little regret.

  “Perhaps you have forgotten the nature of seduction along with all hints of your past, because I assure you, those touches are hardly accidental.” Her surcoat slipped off her shoulder where he’d untied the ribbon, leaving a small patch of skin clad in no more than a kirtle so thin he could see her flesh beneath it.

  His mouth dried up at the sight. His whole body tensed as he realized she did nothing to replace the fallen garment. She merely gazed back at him with all-knowing green eyes that seemed to issue him a challenge.

  Or was she merely testing him?

  “I want you, Sorcha. But I have nothing to offer you until I recover my memories, and even then—” He might be promised to another. He could not forswear himself by making vows to one woman if he’d obligated himself to another.

  “You’re wrong.” She leaned back on her elbow, half reclining on their soft turf blanket while the brook babbled nearby. “You have something I want very much.”

  Everything inside him stilled. Waiting.

  He watched as she turned on her hip to face him, her long, siren’s hair cloaking her in fiery softness. She toyed with the ribbon he’d loosened, her fingers trembling ever so slightly as they plucked at the free end. Her eyes remained downcast, giving him no hint what she had in mind.

  “I would know all the mysteries of physical pleasure before I must leave the secular world forever.” When she met his gaze, it was through the veil of her long lashes. The glance seared him, her desire as plainly written as any missive.

  Words eluded him. Thought pretty much shut down too, leaving him burning up with the need to give her exactly what she’d asked for. Honor held him back. But he sensed those chains were more fragile than the delicate blooms that blossomed all around them.

  “Surely you have not forgotten how to please a woman?” she teased him, her tone sweetly chiding. Yet he sensed a new worry underneath it, an insecurity she would not want him to see.

  “I—” The sound came out with feral edge and he swallowed it. Tried again. “I think it’s like fighting. I have no specific memory of training or any battles. Yet I know well how to wield my sword.”

 
; Her grin fanned the flames inside him as a wicked glint lit her eyes.

  “I would like to be the beneficiary of your skill with a weapon, I think.” She leaned closer, her hand landing on his chest to graze the ties of his tunic.

  Heaven help him. If this was not a wise act, he required divine intervention. Quickly.

  His heart thudded beneath Sorcha’s hand, his whole body straining toward her. His fingers aching to tunnel through her hair and cup the back of her neck. He wanted to kiss his way down her bodice and peel away her garments to lay her bare on the grass for his pleasure. He wanted to spread her thighs and taste her desire until she bucked beneath him, shaking with need for him.

  Then he wanted to bury himself so deep inside her he’d replace every forgotten memory with the vivid image of Sorcha wrapped all around him, his name on her lips …

  And then he recalled her request and the careful wording of it.

  I would know all the mysteries of physical pleasure.

  “Did you not know pleasure in the past?” He restrained from touching her, unable to place his hands upon her until he was certain that touching her was the right thing to do.

  He guessed that the next time his hands strayed to Sorcha’s delectable body, he would not be able to remove them until he’d wrested heated sighs of completion from her full, pink mouth.

  Her hands were another matter.

  They traced intricate patterns on his chest, unfastening the laces of his tunic to brush teasing caresses along his bare flesh.

  “I do not think so.” She bit her lip and frowned. “Either that, or the joys of coupling were vastly overestimated in the stories I have heard.”

  Ah, Hugh did not think Hercules himself could have accomplished the feat of leaving now. Her son was safely asleep in the cottage with his nurse while Hugh watched over Sorcha in the enclosed garden. They were as safe from harm as possible and he fulfilled his duty. What man could leave an experienced, passionate woman questioning the enticements of sexual union?

  Sorcha did not seek to trap him into marriage. She knew of his circumstances and his lost memory. She only wanted a taste of pleasures her oafish first lover had not bothered to give her.

  Hugh could not begin to deny her.

  For the second time in her life, she was going to commit the rashest of acts.

  But it hardly seemed fair that she had taken such a chance last time and was still paying the consequences, yet she’d never been fully rewarded with the joys. If she was to be punished until the end of her days for letting her passions get the best of her, she would at least be able to say she’d wrested every drop of pleasure from the experience.

  Hugh covered her hand with his, pressing her fingers to his chest with firmer pressure. He held her there for a moment, allowing her to feel the fierceness of his heartbeat.

  She braved a glance up into his amber eyes and knew at once he would give her everything she wanted and more. He might not recall any lover before her, but he knew precisely what to do. And the knowledge set all her secret places to humming with anticipation.

  He could not have excited her more with a physical touch.

  “I will please you,” he vowed, releasing her hand to trace the binding along her bodice the way he’d done earlier.

  Only this time, he did not stop when his finger reached the curve of her breast. He gripped the heavy silk of her surcoat and tugged it down, exposing her breast cloaked in naught but the creamy linen of her kirtle.

  She gasped at the sensations. The rough and the gentle. The gallop of her heart and the shallow, tiny hitch of her breath. Her eyes drifted closed and her other senses sharpened. The scent of flowers and grass floated over her as Hugh’s mouth nipped the aching fullness of her breast through the kirtle.

  “Oh!” She clutched his shoulders, arching into him, but he would not be hurried.

  He nipped her again, always just missing the tight, beaded crest that rose up for his kiss.

  For a moment, she considered making her expectations for pleasure a bit more clear and precisely drawn out. But then his mouth clamped around her nipple, his tongue laving the taut point through the fabric and she nearly screamed with the lush pleasure of it. Her hands stroked his hair, her fingers winding through the silky dark mass to hold him where she wanted him.

  He groaned against her, his tongue vibrating with the sound in a way that sent sweet shivers to her feminine core. She wriggled closer, pressing her body against his chest as he tugged off more of her surcoat and unveiled her other breast.

  With a stretch and a roll of her shoulders, she edged the kirtle down to fall away from her chest and bare her completely. Her garments hung loose about her waist, twisting about her hips as she whimpered with the feel of his teeth gently scraping along her sensitive flesh.

  “Hugh.” She sighed his name with a throaty plea, infusing all her longing into that one word.

  Losing her virginity had been painful after a reasonably exciting build-up and she did not want to topple from this heady precipice when Hugh had built her anticipation so thoroughly.

  “I want to reach the same dizzying heights of pleasure that a man can,” she confided, her thoughts crystallizing in a way she hoped he would understand.

  He chuckled softly as he lifted his head and stared down at her, the sunlight playing beautiful shadows across the stark planes of his face.

  “You are still worried, Princess?” He reached to gather the hem of her skirts and slowly raised the fabric up.

  “You may remember the basics of—um—swordplay. But since you have no particular memories to go by, I do not want to risk being disappointed.” Her legs trembled as he released the hem of the surcoat to pool the fabric behind her.

  Next he tugged her kirtle up.

  She shifted her legs together, clamping her thighs tight to hold on to the pleasant tingles their play incited.

  “You are right. I have no woman but you to think about now. No woman but you to remember.” He rolled her onto her back so that her raised skirts made a bed against the grass for her bare skin. “Do you know how much a man wants to please the first woman he’s with?”

  His gaze lowered to take in her mostly naked body in the warm sunlight. With her gowns twisted about her waist, the lower half raised and the upper half lowered, she was thoroughly exposed.

  And desperately eager.

  “I have heard that a man is often overexcited with his first woman.” She had probably listened to far too many maids’ tales when it came to coupling, but she had wanted to be sure she pleased her husband. Those same maids had told her how to prevent pregnancy, but the instructions had come after she had been expecting Conn. She saw no cause to hide her knowledge with Hugh.

  And perhaps she took a little pleasure in surprising him.

  His gaze lifted to hers, his eyes narrowing as he raised himself over her and lowered his hips to graze lightly over hers.

  “Ah, but a man is also stiff as a scythe handle and strong as an ox with his first woman, so I still say, you will not be disappointed.”

  The long, hard length of him tantalized her right through his braies. She could not play at teasing him any longer. Her thighs were damp with moisture from between her legs and she could not hide how much she wanted this.

  Wanted him.

  Reaching between them, she stroked him through the heavy fabric, her palm massaging him from base to tip. The strings had come undone at some point, but whether she had untwined them or he had, she could not recall. Once she noticed the gap, she freed him, unleashing his shaft to rest on her thigh.

  She edged downward, more than ready to open herself to him. Already, her experience with Hugh was so much more intense than her first time. She knew the rest had to be better. More delicious. More decadent.

  “Just a moment,” he cautioned, holding her wriggling, panting, restless body in place with one broad hand planted on her belly. The heel of his hand grazed the curls between her legs, the warmth of the touch making h
er squirm.

  “Yes?” Her hips arched in spite of herself. But she would not let anything stop this sweet, swelling feeling inside her. And if Hugh needed a few reminders along the way about what a woman liked, she was more than prepared to give them for the sake of a memory that had to last her whole life.

  “I am fiercely thirsty.” His eyebrows scrunched as he wet his lips and, lifting up on his elbow, he peered around for the wine cup.

  She wanted to shriek with the frustration of waiting, but she felt around the grass until she found her cup and handed it to him with a wellspring of patience she did not know she possessed.

  He settled between her thighs in a way that struck her as more than a little unseemly, his chest level with the thatch of red-gold curls between her legs. He studied her for a moment, his face inscrutable.

  All the while, she willed him to lift the cursed cup to his lips.

  Instead, he positioned the cup just above her mound. Too late, she saw his intent. One strong arm pinned her hips to the ground as he lowered his mouth to her …

  Oh my.

  He tipped the cup to pour the liquid over her slick, secret places. With his tongue, he caught the wine in great, messy laps, stroking her sex.

  She squealed because it was unexpected. And then she squealed because it was the most exquisite bliss. Hugh set aside the cup at some point, but his bold kisses did not cease. He covered her mouth with his hand, perhaps to quiet her, but she could not help the urgent sounds she made.

  She turned her head from side to side on the grass, searching for some relief from the knot of sweet tension building inside her. She’d never known such delicious distress, but not for all the world did she want it to cease. Her nails grazed Hugh’s shoulders, her hips twisting against his chest to accommodate the breadth of him. Or, perhaps, to increase the pressure of his mouth as he lapped the most sensitive spot.

  All at once, the urgent build inside her paused. As if she ran toward some precipice and then hesitated at the last, everything within her stilled for a long moment. The day turned itself into her memory in that instant, and she knew she would never forget one detail of this decadent revelation.