Knight Tenebrae

by Julianne Lee

  And, oh, her breasts. Oh, yes. Freed from their bondage, they were full and soft and round, and he ached to touch them. Then his eye was drawn to her sleek belly, and onward to the dark patch below. There it rested, for he was unable to move, or even think. His hand gripped hard the ends of the towel at his waist.

  Her glance went to him, and when she found him staring she took a step back toward the bedpost, where she laid a hand against the wood. But that was all. She seemed uncertain what to do next, but it was plain she didn’t mind him looking, and she watched him. His pulse surged, and he could barely find his voice and his gaze found her face again. “You can’t possibly not know what you’re doing to me.”

  She cleared her throat and said, “I might guess.”

  “On purpose?”

  “You make it sound like I’m being mean.”

  “Are you?

  “Not on purpose.”

  There was a silence while he considered his response to that. Then he said, “If I were to kiss you, would you hit me?”

  Now she smiled, as if he’d made a joke, but he hadn’t thought it funny at all. Her chin lifted. “Are you man enough to try it and see?”

  Uh-oh. One of his many buttons that sent blood rushing to his loins, and he stepped toward her. “How much danger am I in? Where’s your mace?”

  “With the horses and your swords. Colin has it.” She took a step toward him, and closed the distance. He could smell her now, beneath the earthy stone of the castle, a thread of feminine skin that was unlike anything else on earth.

  A smile twitched his mouth. He tucked the ends of his towel at his waist, then leaned in to kiss her. It was the sweetest moment in what seemed forever, her warm lips friendly and alarming all at once. He murmured in her ear, “How long have you had this change of heart?”

  A kiss on his cheek, and she whispered back, “Not a clue. I still don’t know whether this is at all a good idea. But somehow you’ve gotten under my skin.” She sounded breathless, and as surprised as he.

  “I haven’t been anywhere near your skin.” He touched a reverent finger to the fine silk covering her shoulder. Beautiful skin. “It’s my eyes, I know. You can’t resist my piercing green eyes that get to you behind your navel.”

  She leaned back to search his face, her own eyes wide with surprise. “What?”

  “You don’t remember saying that?”

  “No.” She shook her head slowly, as if struggling to recall. “I only remember thinking it. I dimly remember thinking it.”

  “Out loud.”

  “Oh, God.”

  He kissed her lips again, then brushed aside the silk and touched his mouth to her shoulder. “It’s all right. I’ve got other parts that can touch you there, too.”

  “I expect you do.” With a smile, she tugged his towel loose and let it fall to the floor, then ran both her hands over his flanks to the backs of his thighs. He slipped his arms around her and held her to him, suffused with joy and delighting in the feel of silk and skin, and the scent of her hair, and the feel of her hand on his—

  Oh...

  The caressing sent his brain tumbling. He found her mouth again and took it with his tongue, claiming every part he could reach. When she broke away and drew him toward the bed, that was all it took. He reached down to lift her in his arms, and carried her. The silk lay about and under her atop the coverlet as he parted the folds. They were deep in feathers and fur, and then he was deep inside her.

  The feel of her overwhelmed him so that he had to hold still a moment to let pass an intense urge to end this in a few quick, hard strokes. As much as he wanted her, even more he wanted this to last. She looked straight into his eyes, and he smiled as he began to move again. Slowly. He pressed hard, insistent and slow, and she responded in kind. Her hips met his; her eyes never left his face. He could see in them all she was feeling, everything he was doing to her, and it was more exciting to him than anything he’d ever felt. Each sound she made, each tilt of her hips, and each touch of her lips to his skin, surged through him. Her legs wrapped around his waist to bring him to her, and her ecstasy drew him in even more. Time lost meaning. Reality dwindled to only their bodies, and even in release Alex knew there could be no release. Ever.

  He didn’t stop, but slowed, not wanting to quit but unable to keep on. Breaths came hard, panting, and finally he collapsed to lie at her side, exhausted. Sleep. He needed to sleep. Lindsay was gasping also, and whimpering next to him. Shivering. He rolled toward her, a hand slipped over her belly to pull her close, and she came to his arms. There they held each other, and he kissed her forehead, and their legs entwined, and she kissed his chest before settling in under his arm with her head on his shoulder.

  When breathing slowed, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He murmured, “Why did you change your mind about me?”

  She twirled a bit of his chest hair around her finger, and he waited patiently for a reply. Finally, though, he had to nudge her to get her to speak.

  “You’ll laugh.”

  “I won’t laugh.”

  She leaned back to check the sincerity in his eyes, then said. “I feel safe when I’m around you.”

  A smile grew on his face, and though he’d promised not to laugh the grin widened and his amusement crept into his voice. “Safe, you say?”

  “Yes. Over the past weeks I’ve come to appreciate you.”

  A warmth filled him, a sense of rightness that made him feel whole in a way he’d only ever imagined. He pressed his lips to her forehead and his heart soared that she’d finally come to her senses.

  And he to his. This would never be over, he knew. For the first time in his life, he knew he was entirely lost to another and it was like freefall that would never end.

  Chapter Ten

  “Well, I can’t say as this isn’t something of a relief.”

  Alex snapped awake and rose to an elbow to look around, startled and confused to find Hector standing at the foot of the bed in a gap between the curtains, leaning on a post, his arms crossed over his chest. Alex sat up, blinking and struggling for something to say. Lindsay stirred, and groaned to be awakened so precipitously, but when she opened her eyes and saw Hector she reached for the edge of the fur coverlet and drew the far corner over them both. Alex’s voice went low and angry, trying to hide his embarrassment. “What are you doing here?”

  Hector laughed. “I thought something must be afoot, the way the two of you rarely ever speak to each other though you’re almost never out of each other’s sight. And the sidelong glances were plain enough.” The hilarity rose in his voice. “I confess, Ailig mór, I’d assumed you had a taste for the boys. Which, of course, would have meant you couldnae be a MacNeil after all, for the man who sired me was a hound for the women to such a degree as to make inclination to sodomy dead impossible in his sons. I might instead have assumed without question you were hiding a woman, and I beg your forgiveness for my error.”

  Alex was not amused and his face hushed hot. “Your error was in—”

  “But,” Hector raised a finger, “in my own defense, allow me to point out how extremely well she plays the role of young man. She’s a far better fighter than any woman I’ve ever known from the Continent; are you certain she’s not Scottish?”

  “She’s not.”

  “What would her real name be?”

  “Lindsay Pawlowski.”

  Hector’s eyes went wide with sudden realization. “Please tell me Kirkpatrick was mistaken about you, though your absence after the coronation could not have been to claim an inheritance for this woman.”

  Alex shook his head as his mind flew to reconstruct the blown story. His heart thudded in his chest. “Lindsay is her father’s only child. There was no inheritance, but we didn’t know that until we returned to Hungary. By the time we got there, the stepmother had allowed her own son to squander what there was, and she had arranged a marriage for Lindsay to an unsuitable candidate. It was a long, complicated chore to free her
, and the result is that she can never return to Hungary.” He thought for a moment, then added for the heck of it, “And neither can I.”

  “Och. there’s a story I’d love to hear in detail one night at céilidh.”

  Alex ignored the comment and continued. “We made our way hack to Scotland without funds to speak of. It was an extremely difficult journey, but I’d pledged myself to the king and couldn’t stay away. It’s only by bad luck we didn’t arrive sooner.”

  Hector’s genuine relief was evident. Alex took the upper hand now. “I asked you why you’re here.” Lindsay was sitting up, staring at an anonymous point on his chest, avoiding Hector’s gaze and saying nothing while waiting for this exchange to he finished. Alex took her hand beneath the coverlet and held it tight as he drew in his knees and draped his other arm over them as insouciantly as he could manage.

  The MacNeil laird shrugged. “I’ll nae lie. I came to learn the truth about the two of you. Also, I wished to deliver these clothes.” He indicated with his chin a stack on the trunk where Alex had set the platter of food. “And make certain ye both were settled in properly. I can see now you have no need of my presence or my opinion. So I’ll be wandering off, and a good night to the both of you.” He shoved off from the bedpost, but paused when Alex spoke.

  “And what will you be saying to the others?”

  Hector’s grin never faltered. “I’ll be saying naught but that my brother, Ailig Mac Diolain, is a great fighter.” He moved toward the door, strolling backward as he continued to address Alex. “Also that he’s taught his squire well, and that young man will be a fine knight one day, for he’s the toughest lad in twelve parishes.” He reached the door and laughter burbled into his voice so he could barely contain it. “But between us, and I say this from my heart, do take care you don’t make him a mother first.” With that, he succumbed to chuckling, left, and closed the door behind him.

  Lindsay was trembling. “Ballocks,” she said.

  “Yeah.” Then Alex said, “What did he call me? Mock jeelin?”

  She shrugged, then said, “He’s going to blurt everything.”

  “No, he won’t.” She looked him in the eye, and he nodded to affirm his statement. “He won’t. He’s not like that. If he says he won’t, then he won’t. If he was going to have an issue with this he would have said so just now, and more than likely would have thrown us out of the castle. He’s the laird, and the law around these parts. He won’t give us trouble if he hasn’t already.”

  “Why did he wake us up, then?”

  He cut her a sideways glance and grinned. “To bust our chops for fun, I expect.” Then his smile faded. “And to warn us. He’s not the only guy in Robert’s army who has eyes, and he knew what was happening even before we did. We need to be more careful.”

  She nodded, and threw off the cover to slip from the mattress. “Indeed. Perhaps I should sleep on the—”

  Alex kept his grip on her hand and tugged her back toward him. “No. You’ll sleep here.” He laid his palm aside her cheek. “I couldn’t stand to have you not here. Not after tonight.” He kissed her, then murmured with almost no voice, “Not ever again.”

  “Alex...”

  Decisive now, not taking any guff, he rose from the bed, pulled her toward him, and lifted her over his shoulder. Then he hauled back the heavy covers and dumped her hack down inside them before slipping in himself and taking her into his arms. “No,” he said. “I won’t let you go.’ He kissed her and brushed a wisp of hair away from her face. “And I’ll never let them hurt you. I swear it.”

  With a sigh, Lindsay kissed him back then settled in by his side, there to sleep. Alex lay awake for another hour, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing against his side, thinking, reviewing the events that had led him to this. It seemed they were adrift in a sea of time, out of control. Free fall. But at that moment he didn’t want to grasp too firmly what was happening, as if to trap and hold his heart would be to crush it.

  Finally he slept, and dreamed of ejecting from a fighter jet.

  When he awoke, he was alone. For one deeply disorienting moment the soft, lonely mattress made him think he was at home, in his own bed in Virginia. Then he drifted close enough to consciousness to smell peat smoke, stone walls, and the faint whiff of the garderobe beyond the door on the other side of the room. He groaned as awareness came but the horrible grogginess wouldn’t lift. He didn’t want to wake up; he wanted only to roll over and continue sleeping. Maybe he would have done that if Lindsay’s voice hadn’t come from across the room.

  “You’re awake.”

  He grunted. “A relative thing.” Sitting up seemed the thing to do, so he did, and was now able to see between the bed curtains Lindsay standing by the fire, feeding it.

  “I didn’t sleep long, and so have been maintaining the fire since nobody has been in here all day to do it. I imagine Sir Hector has told the castle staff to keep away. A mixed blessing in this place, for these fires don’t tend themselves and meals are served in the Great Hall, which is quite a walk from here.”

  Alex stared stupidly at the fire and struggled to make sense of what she’d said. Then he mumbled. “All day?” There were no windows in this room, and the arrow loops were covered by tapestry. It felt like night, and he was sleepy enough for it to still be.

  “It’s late afternoon. The sun’s about to set. You slept about twenty hours.”

  He grunted. “No wonder I feel like crap.” And no wonder he’d awakened thinking he was back home. The last time he’d slept like this was on return from his first deployment. Six months on combat duty, being shot at by day and sharing a stateroom with three other guys by night, and on his return to Virginia, when the noise and adrenaline quit, he’d crashed and burned like the Hindenburg.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and looked around. Lindsay was wearing clothing Hector had brought, looking very boyish in a tunic of black and green. He hated it. He wanted her to lose the clothes and look like a girl again. Her chest was bound, and he could see she’d solved the problem of having no bulge in her pants, which hadn’t been an issue when she’d worn the zoom bag. Now, wearing a dark-colored something or other that was sort of like tights but sort of not, a bulge in the front was making her tunic stick out. Whatever she had in there must be huge.

  His head tilted and he regarded her crotch. “Think it’s big enough?”

  She looked down, then at him. “I wanted it to be noticeable.”

  He chuckled, and coughed to clear phlegm from his throat. “Well, you’re thinking like a guy at least. We all wish they were noticeable, but they usually aren’t so much. Besides, the thing you’re after is to not stand out in a crowd. I’d lose at least one of those socks, or whatever you’ve got in there.”

  She reached under her tunic, fiddled some, then drew out a wad of cloth, tore it in half, and returned one of the pieces to her drawers. “Too bad codpieces haven’t been invented yet; that would have solved the problem quite neatly, to have a stuffed and decorated artificial penis strapped to my front.”

  “Oh, yeah. That would be just adorable.” He pointed with his chin. “What’re those, tights?”

  “They call them ‘trews.’ Precursor for ‘trousers,’ I suppose. Not nearly as tight as tights, but not near as baggy as pants. Your clothes are over there.” She gestured toward the trunk where Hector had left them. “Mine are rather plain, but your outfit is quite nice, I think.”

  “How did you know which was which?”

  “Well,” she faltered, as if hesitating to state the patently obvious, “You are, after all, the knight. I am but a squire, so your clothing would be the nicer set. Besides, yours are bigger.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’ve arranged to have our flight suits, underclothes, and armor cleaned. There was some commentary about the cotton-knit T-shirts, but I convinced Fiona it was the way they make cloth in Hungary. She seemed somewhat envious of the stitchery, and I pretended not to care.” There was a pause, then
she said, “Actually, I didn’t have to pretend, because I don’t care.”

  Alex stared at the clothing and knew he should get dressed, but couldn’t bring himself to move.

  “Get dressed, and perhaps there will be something to eat downstairs. Dinner is past, but I’ll lay odds they won’t let you starve. You’re the hot topic down there today: if you go down they’re not likely to let you alone at all.”

  “What are they saying about me?”

  “Oh, Hector is going on about your exploits, telling what a great warrior you are, how mightily you vanquished the sally from Stirling Castle, and how you stopped the supply train from England last month.”

  “I did all that?”

  “You led the company, and so the story is about you. Apparently he’s very impressed with your skill in strategy.”

  Alex grunted a wry laugh. “He clobbers me regularly in chess; it’s probably more like amazement I haven’t lost my entire company yet.” Some faces of the men who had died under his command rose to confront him, but he fought them back and tucked them away in the dark recesses of his mind for later, when he might feel strong enough to think of those things. Suddenly, getting dressed seemed like a welcome distraction, so he slipped from the bed and went to see what Hector had brought.

  A linen shirt, some linen drawers, a pair of those “trews” things, which turned out to have feet in them like kiddy pajamas, and a fairly fancy-looking tunic with elaborate embroidery in dark green and blue against wine red. The design was Celtic knot involving horses and stags. A pair of leather shoes had severely pointed toes that tipped up some, and Alex bypassed the munchkin shoes to wear his knee-length boots. Less fashionable, perhaps, but far more practical.

  Carefully, with his dagger, he shaved in the cold wash bowl, then he donned the borrowed clothing. There was a leather belt to hold up his drawers and trews, and the shirt and tunic fell almost to his knees. His dagger he hung at his waist by his sword belt, minus the sword and scabbard, which were with Colin. Now he felt well and comfortably dressed, more so than he’d felt since parachuting in. “How do I look?”