As she said this, Martigay elbowed the man who crowded her back and pushed herself forward to put some distance between herself and the man behind her. She made a face. “Who wants a guy like that in her bed?” she demanded as the large man behind her loomed over her. With an elbow, she nudged him back.
“I wouldn’t mind giving him a try,” a tall, blonde archer spoke up cheerfully. “Just once. Maybe twice,” she laughed. “You would too, Martigay! Don’t deny it!”
Martigay beat the suggestion off with an offended look.
“Yes, you would!”
Martigay just grinned.
Again, she was crowded from behind. Impatiently she crouched and threw her elbow back hard to clear the space behind her.
Dye’s hood flew back just before he doubled slightly. Stunned silence radiated outward from the king in an ever-widening ring of stillness. The tavern went dead quiet as the inn’s clientele realized that the king was in their midst…and exactly where Martigay had elbowed him.
Annoyed, Martigay turned to face the man at her back and locked eyes with the king, his blue eyes bright with pain.
“My Lord,” she gasped.
He raised a hand to stop her. “Please, Captain Martigay,” he choked out, still bending slightly at the waist. “I’m fine. Fortunately for me, I’m a cold bastard without feelings. Otherwise, the unfortunate placement of your elbow might have caused me some discomfort. I appreciate your commendation of my leadership capabilities,” he added, drawing his cloak around himself and moving toward the tavern’s door. When he reached it, he turned back. In all this time, he hadn’t smiled.
“And I’ll work on my sense of humor. Report to me early tomorrow. I’ll have some new orders for you that I, at least, will find amusing.”
Chapter Seven
Martigay reported to the king’s office early the next dawning. “My cook is ill,” he told her without looking at her, “you can take his place this evening.”
What! Martigay clamped down on her teeth to keep back the protest that leapt to her tongue. “Sir. Are you displeased with me?”
“I’m displeased with your attitude, soldier. As well as your salute.”
“My salute? I…I’m sorry, sir. The fist…it’s an old habit. I’ll work on it.”
“You can work on it in my kitchen.”
She stood before him like a piece of stone. “Is this because of what happened last night, in the tavern?”
Finally, he looked up at her. “You’re dismissed, Captain Martigay.”
“Captains…” she said, almost choking on the words, “don’t work in the kitchen…sir.”
“This one does.”
“Sir—”
Dye exploded out of his seat, almost tipping it behind him. “Captain Martigay, I have twelve thousand soldiers under my command and you are the only one who can’t follow orders! You’re right!” he said in a sudden fire of frustration. “Captains don’t work in the kitchen. Pawyns, however, do.”
Still she stood there.
“You’re dismissed, Pawyn Martigay. You can leave your ribbon on the table.”
Slowly, she nodded her head. “I’m sorry, sir, if I’m a bit slow. I was just thinking, sir. About your betrothed, Bruthinia.”
“What about Bruthinia?” he snapped.
“I was thinking, sir, that if you were my husband, I’d slit my wrists.”
“And if you were my wife,” he snarled back at her, “I’d sharpen your knife for you—every morning, first thing!”
Her eyes gleamed that strange metallic warning before she turned abruptly and headed through the arch toward his kitchen.
Jaw clamped with the bone-crushing force of a bear trap, Dye turned to drag both hands through his hair, tight against his skull.
Cold bastard—completely lacking anything that might be mistaken for passion!
Dye swallowed the roar of frustration that tried to surface. If she only knew! If she only knew the depth of savage emotion she evoked in him. Dye shook his head as he turned back to stare toward the kitchen.
He took a deep, steadying breath.
She was wrong, of course. She was wrong. And he wasn’t going to lie to himself about it. This had nothing to do with what had happened in the tavern the previous night. Though he had expected her to think so, the incident in the tavern was an excuse at best.
And not an excuse to punish her, either.
Mithra, no.
But it was an excuse, all right. An excuse to have her close by for most of a day.
He still wanted Warrik to meet her, and he still had an invitation to issue.
* * * * *
There was a clatter of metal and pottery as Martigay pushed through the cupboard, humming as she searched through the inn’s tableware. Finally finding what she wanted, she headed back to the fire with a large brass goblet in one hand and a jar of wine in the other.
She smiled to herself, well aware that the king was following her actions from the adjoining room. Although he scratched through his correspondence with his head lowered, the blaze of his blue gaze lifted to settle on her frequently. Each time it did, his expression was coldly appraising, as though he merely sought to assure himself that she was still there and still working.
But Martigay didn’t really care why he watched her. Andarta! The man was the most delicious thing she’d ever set eyes on. He made her burn. He made her damp from the knees on up! Damned if she wasn’t going to have him, one way or another. Martigay nodded to herself. She was going to get down and dirty with the king if it was the last thing she did—and she wasn’t beyond a dirty trick or two to get him exactly where she wanted him.
Between her legs.
Placing the jar and goblet on a table, she surveyed her hands thoughtfully as she considered the idea of dirty tricks. Quickly, she turned and crossed the kitchen to step outside. Grabbing up a bucket of water, she dashed it on the ground and stooped to rub her hands into the muddy puddle she’d created. Returning to the kitchen, she regarded her dirty fingernails with satisfaction as she picked up the wine and goblet again.
Dye started when she slammed the goblet down under his nose and slopped wine into it. It was the biggest damn goblet he’d ever seen in his life. With his forearm, he swept his correspondence aside before the wine could stain his work.
“That’s enough,” he tried to tell her, but she continued to splash out the wine, ignoring him. “What are you doing, soldier? I said that’s enough.”
Martigay hummed as she poured. “What am I doing? If you must know, sir, I’m going to get you drunk.”
“And why would you do that?”
“I have my reasons, sir.”
Dye opened his mouth then froze when he noticed her hands. “Didn’t you wash your hands?” he choked out.
“Sir?”
“Your hands! Did you not wash them before you prepared the meal?”
Martigay raised her hands slowly to her face, frowning at her filthy paws just before she shrugged. “I told you I wasn’t a cook,” she said carelessly. With a flippant twist of her hips, she turned back into the small kitchen. “Your meal will be out in an instant, sir.”
Dye watched her hips swing toward the kitchen. Her doeskin leggings stretched tight across her shapely bottom and her grimy hands were all but forgotten as her tiny waist and round derriere seemed somehow far more important to him at that particular moment in time. As she’d promised, she was back in an instant, carrying a pottery plate in one dirty mitt.
“What is it?” Dye stared at the plate she’d dropped in front of him. It appeared to be a stew of some sort though he couldn’t remember ever eating anything quite that shade of yellow before.
“I’m not sure, sir. I don’t think it tastes as bad as it smells.”
“Well, I hope it tastes better than it looks.” He slanted a suspicious glance in her direction. “Perhaps you should taste it for me.”
“Sir!” The girl regarded him with alarm.
“Better
still,” he growled, “why don’t you join me, Martigay?” He pushed the plate toward her as she backed away. “What did you do,” he asked her tightly, “poison my food?”
Her chin came up. “You’d deserve it, if I had.”
“Well, as long as it’s not poisoned, you can join me. No reason I should suffer alone,” he muttered, pulling the plate back toward him and stirring his spoon into the unappetizing mess.
“I’d rather not, sir. I have…other duties.”
“Sit down,” he growled, and she lowered herself, reluctantly, onto the stool beside him. Digging his spoon into the yellow muck, Dye pointed the wooden utensil at her mouth. “Open up,” he ordered, dragging her stool closer to his chair.
She opened her mouth a fraction and he slipped the spoon between her lips. Making a face, she swallowed the stuff down.
Eyes keenly lit, he watched her face. “How is it?”
“Try it yourself.”
“If you’re still alive in five minutes, I will.” Again, he dug some of the stew from the plate and forced it between her lips. This time she swallowed more willingly and, with this encouragement, Dye carefully licked the back of the spoon. His eyebrows shot upward. “It’s good!”
“It ought to be,” she muttered. He looked at her questioningly. “I found your cook’s bottle of saffron.”
“How much did you use?”
“A year’s supply would be my guess,” she muttered.
“What?”
“The whole bottle, sir.”
“A whole bottle! Saffron costs…a fortune, Martigay.”
“Better eat it, then. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for wasting the king’s money.”
As Dye cleared his plate, Martigay was fidgeting in her seat. When he offered her the last spoonful, she shook her head, but his threatening glare convinced her to open her mouth. Her eyes closed as her luscious lips went around the spoon. Slowly, she opened sultry eyes to his and his cock stretched inside his leggings.
All at once, a hard cramp of immediate need hit him forcefully below the belt as his cock thickened with an urgency that was nothing short of painful. Drawing in a harsh gasp, his hand clutched the nearest available surface and tightened on…Martigay’s knee. Staring into her eyes, he found them filled with the same smoldering lust that possessed him.
“What—” he choked out, “what did you do, Martigay?” Her eyes lowered slowly to the hand clamped on her knee and she moaned. “What else went into the stew, besides saffron?” His eyes widened. “Cadaridaes,” he whispered. “You put cadaridaes in the stew? You put an eroticant in the stew?” he shouted. “How much?”
“How much does two silver buy?”
“I’ll kill you,” he hissed and made a grab for her. Getting to her feet in a great hurry, Martigay pushed away from him, stumbling backward. “Oh no you don’t,” he gasped, catching her before she could fall. “If I’m going to suffer, you’ll suffer with me, girl.”
His blunt fingers bit into her arms and her eyes grew wide as she gazed up at him…without a trace of alarm. Instead her eyes were filled with warm anticipation, shaded with sultry undertones. Her voice was breathy when she said, “If you say so, sir. Only, I doubt I’ll suffer much.”
In one sharp instant, Dye registered understanding and he almost screamed in frustration. “You fed me cadaridaes so you could…take advantage of me?”
She nodded. “And don’t forget the wine, sir. There was all that wine as well.” Slowly, her lips gravitated toward his.
Dye jerked his face away from her. “Well,” he hissed, “you’re not getting any, Martigay. You’re never getting any! You little imp of a whore! How could you—” He halted, staring at her luscious wet lips shining inches from his own, and he groaned. “Do you want to know what you’re not getting? Do you, Martigay? Shall I show you?”
As he dragged her across the room, she stumbled to her knees and he jerked her back to her feet, turning her to face the wall and pinning her there with his body. He shuddered as his body absorbed the touch of the woman curving beneath him, and squeezed into her more tightly. The anxious length of steel that was his erection found its way between the cheeks of her bottom and he moved against her, mindless with need, his cock almost bursting with agonizing pressure, his testes as tight and solid as two iron balls. A little friction on the taut, stretched skin of his shaft and he began to come in a series of blindingly hot, scalding surges. Opening his mouth, he buried it in the tender stretch of her neck as he strangled the roar of pure, perfect agony that exploded up the column of his throat.
Martigay felt Dye’s damp lips on her neck, his teeth just short of breaking her skin as his groin pounded her lower body into the wall. The rhythmic contact of her mons with the wall’s smooth wood drove her inflamed pussy to within a fraction of orgasm. When Dye stopped moving, frozen in his own arrival, she rubbed her rise against the wall as she tried to take herself that last fraction down the road to orgasm. Desperately close to climax, she moaned against the wall.
At that wanton sound, Dye’s semi-rigid cock surged back to aching attention and renewed need. Turning her in a flash of unthinking passion, he pinned her wrists beside her face and smashed his body against hers. He could smell the lust-drug on her breath as the thick ridge of his cock dragged over her rise, digging into her belly as she rose to her toes, trying to align her cleft with his dick.
Slowly, desperately, Martigay inched her foot up his calf, past his knee, trying to open her legs enough to catch some of him along her slot. Then his hard hand was on her bottom, lifting her, spreading her as his lower body hammered her into the wall at her back. She grunted and gasped as his erection made several scraping passes over her sensitive labia, knowing she was about two scrapes away from orgasm, struggling in his grasp, wanting to reach down with her hands and spread her labia to get the last piece of him she’d need to achieve orgasm.
He stopped suddenly, gasping roughly for breath. “You’re not getting it, Martigay. You’re not getting any, damn you. Don’t even try.” The girl whimpered as she tried to rock her body on his. “Do you want to feel what you’re not getting? Do you want to see it? Taste it?”
“Dye,” she moaned.
His name in her mouth, an uttered plea for help wrapped in the ragged whimper of a woman’s need, drove him toward madness. Inching his body away from hers, he pulled his laces to free his angry cock. The hot, damp curve of flesh forced its way out of his leggings, the wide, plum-shaped head dark as a storm. Taking one of her hands, Dye wrapped it around the curving bow of his cock, groaning at the welcome contact of her cool palm on the burning flesh of his aching shaft.
Hooking a nearby stool with his foot, he dragged it to the wall and pushed her down to sit on it. Immediately, he straddled her legs, putting his flushed cock inches from her face.
“Here’s a taste of it,” he told her harshly. “A taste of what you’ll never have.” With his hand still wrapping hers around his dick, he nudged his cock head against her lips. A thick, pearly drop of his issue seeped from his slit and he ran the crown around the lush line of her lips, painting her pouting mouth slick with his glistening pre-cum.
This action was a mistake, he realized almost immediately, as his next impulse was to get his lips against hers. To taste his silver on her mouth, run his tongue around those glistening lips and then force it down her throat.
Before he had a chance to act on this impulse, the tip of her tongue flicked out to lick her upper lip. Her eyes closed an instant as she took his release into her mouth and her cheeks hollowed as she appeared to savor his taste. When she opened her eyes, her gaze focused on his cock with avaricious interest, and he groaned—knowing damn well what her next act would be. Swiftly unwinding her hand from around his shaft, he pulled out of her tight grip and backed away before she could get his cock into her mouth. Her eyes were lit with a desperate, hot fire as he backed away from her, her gaze fixed on his hand as his fist moved slowly at the base of his cock, two fingers re
sting low on his testes.
“Dye.” The word was a low, breathy cry for help. Her hands were at her breasts, fumbling with the ties and he watched, mesmerized, as the jerkin opened in fits and bursts and she shrugged it off her shoulders. Stroking his dick out long and hard, he stared at her beautiful breasts straining beneath the thin fabric of her cotton chemise. He watched as she loosened the ties of her chemise, leaving the undergarment to hang open. The resulting view was a provoking one. The luscious inner curves of her breasts were boldly exposed in the narrow opening while her blushing areolas put in a shy appearance at the edges of the thin fabric.
Dye tilted his head, an unconscious attempt to see the rest of the way into her chemise, at the same time she was reaching for the ties on her leggings. Her hungry eyes were locked on his cock as she fought to get out of her doeskins.
“You’re not getting it,” he warned her as he pulled on the length of rigid, veined flesh in his fist.
As she lifted her bottom, struggling to get her leggings and shorts out of the way, he took a step toward her, spread his legs to straddle her again and bent his knees to put his cock between her breasts. His hard belly pushed her head into the wall as he rubbed his cock into the valley between her breasts a few times before he surged and spilled onto the naked skin of her chest.
Panting against her, he stood with his forehead against the wall.
“You’re not getting it, Martigay,” he moaned against the wall, feeling spent, hoping he was spent, knowing he wasn’t when her lips brushed the taut skin stretching across his stomach. In a violent fit of frustration, he gathered himself enough to get his legs between hers and tried to spread them. Her leggings still pinned her feet and he dropped to his knees as he dragged them away, bringing him face to face with the wet line of her pussy.
He halted as his eyes slowly traveled up her beautifully nude body. Carefully, he reached out one hand to draw the veil of her chemise aside and expose her dainty peach nipples. His eyes lingered there for several moments—on her nipples—before returning his gaze to the dark hair between her legs. Her warm, inviting thatch was deep red, violet red, almost purple.
Dye's Kingdom: Wanting It Forever Page 5
