The Conqueror

by Kris Kennedy

  “They didn’t exactly give me the horse.”

  “You took the horse.”

  She gave him an evil look. “Yes. I took the horse. I didn’t kill a man, so you need not look at me like that. I planned to ensure Old Barney was returned, but now, well.” She stopped.

  “Well, that’s that,” he muttered, stalking to Noir, whose seventeen-hand measurement at the withers made him stand taller than any other horse in the stables. He nickered at the sound of Griffyn’s voice.

  “What’s what?” She hurried after him, tugging hair away from her face.

  He led Noir out of his stall and grabbed the saddle. She came to the horse’s head and reached out to pet him.

  “I wouldn’t,” Griffyn said grimly. He threw the saddle blanket over Noir’s sloping back, then placed the saddle atop, just at the horse’s withers. He slid the saddle and blanket back an inch, smoothing the fur. “He doesn’t like…people.”

  “He seems to like you.”

  “Yes, well, I’m not a person. To him.” He flipped the cinch off the saddle and let it drop. Reaching under Noir’s belly, he grabbed the buckle and pulled.

  “Oh.”

  They didn’t say anything else. Griffyn dourly finished his saddling, then bid her to the huge oaken stable door.

  “I’ll open it, you hold it. Keep it from slamming.”

  She nodded. He nudged it slightly ajar. The winds flung it wide and smashed it gleefully against the wall. She almost fell down trying to hold it back.

  He glared at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered fiercely, wrestling with it. Griffyn reached over her shoulder and pushed it shut. “Think you I wish to be discovered any more than you?”

  “I have no idea what you wish for.” He threw her up in front of the saddle and climbed up himself. “I would have thought a warm, dry place, but apparently not. You prefer storms and abduction. Sit close as you can, no, lean back against me, and here, I’ll wrap my cloak around us both. No one will come out to examine us too closely, and the winds should make a mockery of any clear shape or form. I came, now I’m leaving, and let us hope they will see it like that. But if they do come out,” he added more slowly, looking down into her wide, bright green eyes, “don’t scream when I kill them.”

  She blinked. “Give me a blade. Truly,” she insisted when he just looked at her. “I am in earnest. You saw me with a rock. Imagine me with a blade.”

  “I’m terrified,” he muttered, but unsheathed the blade wrapped at his thigh and slipped it to her, then pulled his hood up. “Now slide down as far as you can, sit as close as you can, and silence, if ever you can.”

  “Pah,” she snorted from her dark, cloaked nest.

  Griffyn lifted his head and, pressing his heels against Noir’s flanks, rode slowly through the bailey and under the inner gates, which were still raised, a good omen. This porter had not been alerted he was staying the night. Perhaps the outer guards were as ignorant.

  No one even appeared to notice he was passing until he reached the guards at the outer bailey, and they waved him through with barely a glance.

  He rode under the straining portcullis gate, the wicked wooden talons hanging half a foot above his head, and like that, they were outside in the king’s woods, he with a mission to accomplish and a heady woman huddled beneath his cape.

  Chapter Eleven

  Noir barely made a sound on the soft dirt path. His hooves trod through the damp, flat leaves. Overhead, the moon slid back and forth behind ragged clouds and cast shadows between the branches. In the darkness of the forest, small rustlings disturbed the underbrush and in the distance a larger animal, to judge by the sound, exploded a few sticks under paw. Overhead an owl winged by, disturbed by their intrusion, his hooting a haunting sound in a darkened wood.

  Walking at the horse’s head, Griffyn was trying to understand the astonishing turn his night had taken, from unexpected battle to the unexpected cargo now riding his horse.

  He scowled at a low-lying tree limb and sidestepped the path into a puddle of mud that would have reached to his shins if he hadn’t leapt back in time.

  Said cargo, he admitted grudgingly, was an amiable enough companion. More so. Much more so. She was nothing he could have expected. Fleeing one of the most bloodthirsty barons in Stephen’s England, she had not cowered. She’d not fainted. She had not screamed or pitched or whined. She had stood at his side, fearless as any warrior, and smiled.

  Smiled, for God’s sake.

  Which is why he was doing it, he supposed.

  He scowled.

  The longer he walked, the colder he got, the more he ruminated on how this night had come to such an unforeseen conclusion, the more convinced he became of one fact. He tugged Noir to a halt and turned to confront his more-than-amiable, maddening cargo.

  “You had no intention of staying,” he announced grimly.

  Her heart-shaped face crumpled in confusion. “Staying where?”

  “They could have been monks chanting Paternosters and you would have left at the first chance.”

  Her face cleared. “Trust in this, Pagan, the men you left me with were not monks—”

  “You couldn’t stop talking, could you?”

  “What?”

  “What did you say to them?”

  She blushed. “I barely said a word about anything, but when they saw the coin—”

  “I knew it. But I don’t think you left because it was unsafe. I think you left because you didn’t want to be there. And you never do things you don’t wish to do.”

  Her jaw dropped. “That is simply not true!”

  “Tell me the last thing you did that you wished otherwise.”

  “I—I—I, why right now!” she sputtered, flinging her arm out. “Behold, here I sit on your beast of a horse and let you hold the reins, guiding me ever deeper into the king’s chase, with never a notion of whither I go, nor whence I might return. Might I prefer to be safely ensconced in a bed? Mayhap to sleep? Pah. Think you I chose this night, Pagan, I shall learn you a different tale.”

  He started walking again, grimly satisfied. “Of course you chose it.”

  He could feel her glare penetrating through the back of his head. “Then so did you.”

  He didn’t reply. She was silent, too, for perhaps a moment, then her voice chirped up again, light and airy in the deep, dark wood.

  “At least give me the reins.”

  He laughed. He didn’t mean to, or want to, but there it was.

  “Truly, Pagan. I have a way with horses.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “Aye. Losing them.”

  She smiled wanly.

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Are you planning on losing mine?”

  “Are you planning on dropping me off at another den of iniquity?” she retorted pleasantly.

  He laughed again and hopped over a log. “They weren’t so much iniquitous.”

  “True. They were vain, covetous, and self-serving. Let me think what that harkens to mind. Oh, aye: Men.”

  His smile faded. “I won’t begrudge you your opinion, Raven.” He ducked his head to avoid another tree limb, and they walked awhile in companionable silence. “I personally wasn’t speaking so much of your woman-ness, but your…” he waved his hand vaguely in the air.

  Gwyn’s eyes narrowed. “My what? What’s this?” She mimicked his hand wave.

  “Your…” He pursed his lips, thinking. “Fickleness.”

  “Fickleness? Fickleness? You think I’ve been fickle?”

  He looked wary. “I’m just saying someone should keep a better eye on you—”

  She slid off the horse and landed with a thud. “A better eye? On me?” She stalked forward, finger in the air. “Happens you might try being herded into marriage with someone whose very presence on the earth offends you, with warts and foul breath—”

  “Endshire doesn’t have warts.”

  “Oh, as if you’d know. He has them on his soul. Have you ever been cha
sed through the streets of London and up the king’s highway? Have you ever been told to ride in a litter ‘for your protection’ so you don’t have your own horse to escape upon?

  “Have you ever—” She was moving closer in a fury, every “you” punctuated by a jab toward his chest, until her fingertip hovered an inch away from his body. “—had your own inclinations but been thwarted by those who are simply stronger than you, and so they will always prevail. Because of these,” she said as she jabbed a furious finger toward his sword, “and those.” She reached out to pinch the muscles of his arm.

  It was a mistake. The moment her hand closed around the bunched strength of his upper arm, encased in steel and leather, she felt his heat and power throbbing onto her, and almost fainted.

  “Aye. I have,” he said in a deceptively quiet voice. “There is always someone stronger than thee. And what of me, mistress?” His gaze turned hard, his tone cold. “What of the things I have left behind tonight? How am I to figure in your mad accounting?”

  He wrenched his arm away, breaking her stunned grip, then it was she in his grip, she propelled backwards, she leaned up against Noir. And she remembered far too well what had happened last she’d stood near the horse.

  “Well,” she whispered. “Quite well, Pagan. You have been nothing but…my saviour.”

  He was still a moment, his face a taut mask of impassive regard, then he flung his fingers open.

  “Foolish,” he muttered. He raked his fingers through his hair, tousling the dark spikes. “And less patient than I ought. You’ve been through a lot tonight.”

  “Well,” she agreed with a shaky laugh. “I’ve certainly been through a lot of men.”

  He stared a moment, his hard face given the gift of surprise, then threw back his head and laughed so deeply the woods rang with it. He laughed so hard and so well she forgot all about being afraid, aware mostly that her arm felt cold without his fingers on it. She felt unruly and reckless and peculiar, washed out and energized all at the same time, as if she’d been breathing too fast.

  Emotional storms were like that, she supposed, although her recall was dim. It had been a long time since she’d given rein to her emotions, and her life the last twelve years had been much more tranquil as a result. Better. Truly. Who could say otherwise? Doing as she was told, stifling those pesky urges and intuitions that ruined everything, ’twas for the best. Truly. All was well.

  Except for the fact that no matter how well she behaved now, nothing could bring Mamma back. Or Roger. And now Papa was dead too.

  Willfulness had its price. But why did so many others have to pay?

  The familiar free-falling sensation began again, and she slipped down into the Ache, that yawning chasm of despair that had cracked open twelve years earlier on the day her brother, much-loved heir to the Everoot earldom, was killed. By Gwyn.

  Mamma died three months later, her heart broken in two. Papa kept on, of course. As a shell.

  Gwyn’s body started closing in on itself, as it always did when the memories came. Her shoulders crumpled, her throat tightened. Oh, Mamma. I miss you so. It was a terrible accident. I told Papa that ever so many times.

  “Here.”

  Pagan’s voice jerked her out of the awful reverie. She flung her head up to find him watching her, the flask extended. She shook her head, dispelling the dark thoughts, and reached out. “You feel blessedly uncomplicated.”

  “You mean the drink does.”

  She recoiled as the now-familiar fire threaded its way down her throat, then lifted the flask in mock toast. “Aye. To simple drinks.”

  “And complicated women.”

  “Oh, my,” she laughed softly. “I don’t know that they’re worth all that much, in the end.”

  The smokey greyness of his eyes was unreadable in the darkness. “And what would you know of it?”

  “Of complicated women?”

  “Of the men who toast them.”

  “Oh.” She blinked. “Nothing.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  There didn’t seem to be any more else to say on the subject, or else far too much, and she was feeling much too…unruly, to trust herself to do either. Instead, she took another long, scorching swallow. When it had settled into her belly in a nice, hot wash, she asked the question she’d been wanting to ask since they’d left Hippingthorpe Hall.

  “What were you doing there, Pagan?”

  “Where?”

  Unruly, indeed. Or drunk. The look on his face should have warned her off. “Hipping’s hunting lodge.”

  A slow smile curved up his mouth, but it was dark and dangerous. “You don’t want to ask me that.”

  “No,” she said, her voice dropping until it was barely a whisper. “It doesn’t seem particularly sensible, does it?”

  “I would advise against it.”

  “Sirrah,” she said weakly, “I would advise against nigh on everything we each of us have done tonight.”

  There was a long pause. “Ah, well, but you haven’t had it all yet, Raven.”

  The masculine rumble was all confident, sensual threat. Peering up into eyes that shifted from blue to grey to smokey black, Gwyn had the sense she was falling. Her head was spinning, her fingers cold, her face hot. She presumed it was fear. It ought to have been fear. It mimicked fear, teasing her skin into ripples and making her heart hammer.

  But it wasn’t fear at all.

  “Where are you taking me, Pagan?” she asked.

  He paused for the brieftest moment. “I know of an inn.”

  “And I know of an Abbey,” she said weakly. Did it sound as desperate as she felt? “An inn doesn’t seem particularly…sensible either, does it?”

  He dropped his gaze to the cleavage she’d been struggling to cover with the shreds of her tattered dress. As if physically pushed, her hand fell away. “I may be running a bit shy of sense at the moment,” he admitted in a low voice.

  Pause, a heartbeat, then she said, “I believe I am entirely bereft.”

  “Bien,” he murmured in the low kind of masculine rumble that could be threat or promise, but was definitely pulsing wetness between her thighs. Heat radiated off his body and whispered of wanting. It undulated in waves over the cape, through her dress, onto her skin. Pulse, heat, come closer, pulse.

  His shoulders stretched huge and blocked the moonlight washing through the woods. Dark hair, dark eyes. He stood with his legs slightly apart, his boots planted in the earth. Around his hips was strapped a belt hung with a sword and a veritable arsenal of blades. A faint, musky odour clung to him, of soft leather, of wood smoke and forest. Pewter-grey eyes steeped in mystery long-lived and danger about to burst, she stared into them and knew within the length of his rock-hewn body was a force she’d never reckoned with before.

  He was danger and she had most certainly, most tremendously, fallen.

  She lifted her fingers to trace his jaw, then rolled her hand over and brushed the knuckles of her fingers against his lips. He watched, motionless, then the hot stroke of his tongue slid between her fingers.

  “Oh,” she murmured on a hot exhale.

  He caught up her hand, eyes still locked on hers, and stroked his tongue over the centre of her palm. Her knees buckled.

  He caught her up and when Gwyn knew she should have been screaming and pushing him away, God save her if she wasn’t opening beneath him, letting his tongue spread possessively into her mouth, letting him suckle her lips, explore every inch of her, crash in on her with a wave of passion so intense she forgot she was standing, breathing, living, doing anything but being kissed. Engulfed. Possessed.

  She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hung on, her mouth open for him, meeting every passionate lash of his tongue with one of her own, until there was no difference between breathing and kissing, no space between them; they were all a single length of hot touching desire.

  It was an unyielding assault. Gwyn knew nothing but that her life was forever changed. The hard hea
t from his thighs burned against hers, loosing a firestorm of wet heat that slid down her belly and pooled between her legs. She entwined fingers in his hair, her mouth open, welcoming each lash of his wicked tongue. With breathtaking skill, he locked his hands around her hips and gently, inexorably, rocked her hips into his.

  Throbbing, perfect, painful wanting washed through her. “Oh, no, Pagan,” she whispered, not meaning the no, only meaning she hadn’t known. She’d never known there was anything like this man.

  Griffyn heard his name and didn’t heed the no. Her body was moving in a subtle, instinctive rhythm and told him which cue to attend. He plundered her willing depth, plunging his fingers deep into her hair and dragging her head back, lashing her harder and deeper, coaxing her body to bend back for him, which she did, trembling, ready, until their bodies touched from chest to knee, and it surged desire through him, hot and savage.

  Reckless with passion, he kissed down the side of her neck and as he did, he pushed his hand up under her skirts, sliding his calloused fingertips up the back of her silky warm thigh. Then, God save him, she bent her knee in response to his touch, and the move pressed the hot cradle of her into his erection.

  A tremor of bone-jarring desire crashed down on him, stunning him. He hadn’t expected this. She was nothing but an accident. A brief chivalrous impulse amid a lifetime of blood and swords and hatred. She was nothing.

  Nothing, mayhap, but he wanted her so badly it hurt. He felt like the unseen shelf his life had rested upon was being kicked out from under him. Silk and hot skin, feminine heat and panting desire, funny, intelligent, and brave beyond imagining, whispering his name, needing him.

  Why did that matter so much?

  The question cartwheeled so loudly through his mind, it bounded into the realm of consciousness and brought him to his senses. Using every shattered fragment of self-control he’d cultivated through years of long-checked vengeance and knocking knights off their horses, Griffyn loosed his hands from her hot body and took a step back.

  “I can’t seem to stop doing that,” he muttered.

  She swayed at the abrupt release and stumbled, righting herself by way of a desperate grab at a well-placed tree limb. He made a conciliatory move forward but the look of horror on her face brought him up short. Her hand grabbed the dark wood, clutching it as if she were on a sinking ship.