Once Upon a Knight

by Jackie Ivie

  “Ugh.”

  Vincent grunted as he went to his haunches, feeling the slick wetness of water as it siphoned from his kilt onto his legs, thighs, and even his buttocks from beneath his belt. Memories were senseless, as was his vow to stay away from the woman who had caused all of this, the woman now bearing his name.

  She was probably even wearing one of her little pink chemises.

  Vincent bent his head and peered out, watching the raindrops continue to hit at the ground beside the wagon, making great splashes with the force of their landing, while Waif snuggled into a small ball of wet fur beside one of the wood chunks Vincent had used to brace the wheels against movement. By every indication of the wagon he was directly beneath, she still slept, too.

  After putting him into a state of frustration—she slept? He didn’t know how she did it. It couldn’t just be her expertise about a cook fire, although she had that. She’d roasted them a sup of perfectly done pheasant that had his mouth watering with the flavorings she’d used. She’d halved the bird before skewering it, halving the roasting time and showing her ingenuity at doing so. It definitely wasn’t her musical talent. Throughout the preparation time and the mixing and basting of their sup, she’d been humming. She’d been right about one thing. She couldn’t sing, if her tuneless humming was any indication.

  He didn’t know what it was about this particular woman that made everything in him desire her and only her. The harder he tried to put the woman from his thoughts, the greater the longing grew to press his frame onto hers and make her mouth cry aloud for his caress—and his only. He didn’t know why. All he could do was ponder on it.

  Nearly the entire time she’d thought him engrossed with his bath at the burn he’d been watching and hovering and wondering over his own cravings. It was true that he’d dipped himself into the stream, washing the leavings from the bird off him, but he hadn’t tarried. He’d come right back to her the moment he could. It was if she had an invisible circlet about her, and he was damned to stay within its confines. That was why he hadn’t a skean handy to kill the bird in the first place. He hadn’t been hunting; he’d been watching her. Surreptitiously. Keeping his distance and wondering at his sanity and the extent of a lust he couldn’t kill. He couldn’t even mute it. The pheasant had simply been unlucky enough to move through the space between Vincent and his bride.

  His bride.

  Vincent licked at his lips, wiped his hands along his wet, plaid-covered thighs, and ignored the tremble deep in his loins at the continued thought of her…and what he’d seen of her just this past eve. After she’d finished putting as much of her sauce on the bird as it would hold without dripping in the fire, she’d gone to the burn. She’d been slipping her laces from their holes and peeling the shift from her frame and making the tremble start within him just with the watching of it. She’d even undone her hair, uncoiling each braid and finger-combing it into a dark mass that slipped over her hips and grazed the backs of her knees. She was bending and swaying throughout the combing ritual, too, as if to a silent tune. Each movement had swept that curtain of hair across her body, touching it, caressing it…. Vincent had leaned back against a tree then, feeling the hard throb of his arousal scraping against the damp wool of his kilt as he watched her, desired her, panted for her, and silently begged her to continue.

  And then she’d disappointed him and slipped beneath the water…fully clothed! Fanning her hair out as she did so. He was beginning to think she did this to him on purpose. He just didn’t know why.

  He’d watched her the entire time. He’d tried to convince himself it was for her safety. That was a lie. They could have been attacked by hordes of stunted little dark men named Sir Ian, and Vincent would have been unable to take his eyes from her. He’d had them affixed to her the entire time.

  Vincent had barely kept the low, hoarse groan to himself. His entire frame felt primed and ready to pounce and demand and respond to and pleasure that woman. If he let it. But he wasn’t going to allow it. Not when she’d used her potions on him like she had! And not when she’d forced his hand to the altar.

  Everything about her methods was totally unfair.

  He’d vowed to ignore her. No matter how difficult it would be. No matter how much he pondered the course of events. He had to be near her. So be it. He didn’t have to like it. Neither did she. He’d added to his vow. He was going to make her regret wedding with him. Forcing his hand like she had.

  He hadn’t known how bothersome such a plan was going to be. Nor how hard. Senseless. Useless. Forcing an argument with her had failed. Ignoring her was failing. Everything he’d tried was failing. She even denied him the act of watching her at her bath? Vincent was grinding his jaw at how unfair all of it was, and that was when she’d walked out of the water and changed everything. The opacity of her gown as it clung to every portion of her had cursed him then with such raging desire, there wasn’t anything shy of an ice storm that could temper it.

  Vincent didn’t know what was wrong with him. It had taken every bit of his strength to reach the fire before she did and to squat nonchalantly beside the roasting bird on its spit. And keep the puddle of excess tartan in his lap while he did so. He didn’t dare look toward her. Not then.

  It was useless. He’d done everything to keep his desire from taking over his life, allowing her the win again. And here it was, not yet day. He should have been slumbering still rather then living through all of it again. He was turning into a slave of his own body.

  Vincent made up his mind. He was finished with ignoring her and his own pinings. It wasn’t working. Perhaps he’d been going about it wrong. He should have been sating himself. Over and over and again and again, and as many times as it took…for as long as it took. Such a thing should prove boring after a time. It always had before. And then she’d lose her power over him.

  Vincent crawled out from beneath the wagon and stood, working at his belt with fingers that were clumsy. It wasn’t with the cold and wet. It was with the anticipation. The downpour made it hard to draw breath, but it was excellent for sluicing away the muck from lying in a quagmire beneath the wagon. Vincent unwound the soaked plaid from his body, wrung out the worst of the wet from it, and then slapped it into a fold of material that he looped over the bench railing at the front of her wagon.

  He felt each drop hitting him with force, pelting him in the head, over the back and shoulders, down his legs. Vincent didn’t allow the rain to bruise any of his front side. He kept to a slant as he made his way to the opening in the back of her tent and climbed in. Then he was lifting the bottoms of the cover from the perfection of her legs.

  Darkness filled her dream, a cold darkness that spiraled until it was its own being, stirring mist and clouds at the passing of it. There was a mountain peak, just glimpsed. And then there was the stunted fellow at the core of it. The one with dark, smoldering eyes. Penetrating eyes that were watching her…memorizing her. Sybil narrowed her eyes on him until her eyelashes shadowed the figure into obscurity. It didn’t look to be the dwarf, Sir Ian. But…who then could it be?

  The fascination with the figure still startled her, as much as did the fingers that were reaching out to her, blessing the dark, dank mist with a hint of light and hope and desire. She stirred, tensed…arched.

  Fingers touched her at the ankles, both ankles, wrapping the flesh there with frosty cold strangely tempered by such heat that the frost turned to wetness that dripped with little effect. Unless she concentrated. Sybil tensed slightly as the wet-covered fingers filtered through the edge of her dream, feeling exactly like clouds were supposed to feel. Sybil made a low murmuring sound in her throat, demonstrating how pleasurable such things felt, and her appreciation at receiving them. Then the fingers became full hands…hands that were sliding up her lower legs…to her knees…and then farther, plying their way to her apex with a skill that existed only in the realm of dreams.

  She tossed her head to the other side, letting low sighs escape as the
hands were followed by what felt like a tongue slipping about the tender flesh behind one knee, and farther up her thigh, putting massive heat in place. And then blowing on the spot until it chilled. Doing it again. Higher.

  Sybil’s hips began rotating, doing gyrations of motion as the hands and mouth explored farther up her legs, nearing her core and making everything taut and readied, and yet soft and aching at the same time. And pulsing with need that every moment prolonged, while every movement of his made everything more excruciating. He wasn’t moving closer. He was using the torment of his tongue on the front of a thigh, his fingers raking her sides in order to pin her in place as massive weight moved into place amidst her parted thighs. And he was chuckling. He found it amusing? The dark man she’d so feared and worried over was denying what she wanted? What fairness was there in that? She’d been cursed with finding an unsuitable love…one that she couldn’t have. This wasn’t what it meant. It couldn’t be. That would be too cruel.

  Sybil became a creature of want and passion and fury. She was lunging and squirming, doing anything to get his attention back to the area he’d brought to such a state of lust that her shift was stuck to her entire body with moisture. Nothing was working. Then she was reaching, unclenching her fingers from the hem of the short shift and filling them with solid handfuls of thick hair. She was close to begging him.

  “Na’ so fast, Wife,” came a growl of voice near her belly, and Sybil’s eyes flew open.

  “Vincent?” The name was whispered, and her fingers slackened and lost grip.

  “You expected another?” he asked, his breath heating the flesh he hovered over.

  Sybil absorbed the shock of it. It couldn’t be. Vincent Erick Danzel wasn’t ugly. He wasn’t dark. He wasn’t small in stature, and he certainly wasn’t insubstantial and vague. He was all-over handsome, and he was all male. There wasn’t a bit of him that was weak. He was rock and sinew and muscle and strength. All of which was getting defined and learned and caressed once Sybil’s fingers gained flexibility and dexterity back to them as the shock curbed and became certainty. She skimmed her hands over him, every stroke making the satinlike skin–covered muscle vibrate to every touch.

  She’d never before questioned her intuition and dreams. She didn’t now. It was just such a shock. Vincent Erick Danzel wasn’t dwarfed, waifish, or dark—except perhaps with regard to his character. Sybil nearly cooed with the realization of what this meant—and her luck. This handsome blond Viking fellow was the unsuitable man she was destined to fall in love with. She didn’t question it. She knew it. She’d been blessed beyond the bounds of any curse.

  “You like that?” he murmured against her flesh as he misinterpreted her pleasure.

  “Aye. Oh, Vincent.” Sybil stumbled over the words, because at last he’d decided to bless her with the feel of his mouth latched onto where he suckled, igniting fires throughout her frame and making everything even more heated and pliable and female.

  Heated. Pliable. Fire. Female.

  He slid his mouth to her other breast, his hands making certain of her positioning by holding her body to the bedding with the pressure of his fingers about her waist. He had to. Sybil was slithering and sliding and moving the bedding awry with each lapping motion of his tongue.

  “You ken who it is now?” he asked in a rough voice.

  Her cry was his answer, as the cool touch of his breath iced the flesh he’d just suckled to an exquisite pulse, reminding her that there was more…much more.

  “Aye. Vincent,” she replied, lowering her voice and using his name as a caress. “Vincent. Vincent.”

  She said it until her breath ran out, while he tongued his way to her throat, kissing flesh as he went, his entire frame thick with need and hard with desire. The hardest, most taut portion of him was probing, slipping between the folds of her flesh and being pulled back out, over and over, until Sybil thought she’d go mad.

  “Vin…cent!”

  The last part came with a keening sigh as his lips reached hers, his breath mingled with hers, and, at the same moment, he lifted her hips with one hand in order to fill her completely, totally, perfectly.

  “You…certain?” The words were guttural and low, ground out with lips still attached to hers.

  Sybil arched her back, helping more of him fit. Then she was sucking her way across his jaw to his ear, finding an ear, and mouthing his name against it with a rhythm that matched every lunge and push he made. “Vincent. Vincent. Vincent, Vincent…” She crooned his name so many times, she lost count.

  Then he was replying, calling her winsome, and lass, and wench, and enchantress, and witch, and so many other titles she couldn’t hear them all. Throes of ecstasy blended with the words, making a perfect musical symphony, with a massive man at its core. Over. Again. Continually.

  Until she was nearly afraid of the intensity behind each of his heaving breaths. Then he was raising his head, crying in a deep growl that sounded triumphant, and Sybil held to him, through every lurch of his frame. And when he fell atop her, and then rolled, she went, too, staying melded to this massive, handsome Highlander…that had been wished into being.

  Just for her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The wagon was stuck. No matter how many times he tried to rock it, or work with it, or curse at it, and then at her. Nor how many words they exchanged. The wagon was still stuck.

  Sybil spun after the fourth time of trying to speak with him this time and nearly joined Waif where he was sitting atop a rock, watching the proceedings without any indication of how entertaining it most likely was. The rain hadn’t let up. Sybil was soaked and covered with mud from trying to direct the horses, but that was far shy of Vincent. That man looked like a creature birthed from the muck, and about as intelligent.

  She tried telling him again before he got the wheel buried in mud beyond the hubs, but the rained sucked up her voice, or she was starting to lose it—and he turned away anyway. He had to use something aside from the power of man. He had to use leverage or the wagon wasn’t going to move. She knew that much. He’d be best served using his rope around a tree and having an animal pull from there, using the beast’s strength to best advantage. She told him of it. But he wasn’t listening to her.

  He hadn’t been since she’d made mention that if he hadn’t spent nearly the entire day pleasuring her, it wouldn’t have come to this event. Perhaps if he hadn’t spent so much time in the same pursuit of pleasure, he wouldn’t have found the wheels mired so deep, they were going to need more manpower than just him and the two horses. All of those words had made him scowl, showing that even with such a look on his face, he was positively stunning, stirring, immensely masculine and virile, and then he’d turned away from her.

  Sybil sighed. Reminisced, and sighed again. She took longer the second time. It was due to the contentment. That’s what came of spending the morning in that man’s arms. Sybil’s features softened as she lifted her face again to the rain, letting the free-falling drops coat everything. That wasn’t the lone reason, however. She was hoping some of the rain would wash away some of the satisfaction he’d accused her of having on her face the last time he’d looked. Back when he’d had her pulling on his draft horse; before he’d hitched his destrier to the wagon as well.

  Sybil considered that. A war-horse such as he owned should be particular about being hitched to a wagon and forced to labor in that fashion. The horse Vincent referred to as Gleason didn’t appear to find it laborious at all. He was far removed from his master. Vincent had struggled with a long pole as he strained to get it beneath the most stuck wheel, while he sank lower and lower and got covered with mud until he looked like a massive man-shaped mountain.

  That’s when he’d yelled at her for enthralling him to the point he hadn’t even given a thought to what was happening outside their wagon tent. And that’s when he’d told her she could just wipe the look off her features at hearing that, as well.

  Sybil laughed aloud, licking at th
e drops that just wouldn’t cease, and when she lowered her head the world had warped. Scores of men had appeared through the mist-imbued trees, looking harsh and weathered and stout. And dangerous. Sybil’s heart was involved with stopping, and then it decided to start up again, clogging her throat.

  Then Vincent saw them. Aside from a moment of stiffness, which could have been surprise, he didn’t look threatened at all. He didn’t act threatened. He didn’t do anything other than jump off the high end of a log he was trying to maneuver under the wheel and approach them. To all intents, he looked then to be arguing with them, gesturing and doing a large amount of shouting and replying. Then they began acting like men, clasping hands and slapping each other on the back, and then they went back to arguing, but with softer words. Lots of words, followed by Vincent pointing in her direction. Everyone looked. And then they were back to clapping themselves on the backs and speaking loudly again.

  Sybil decided it was safer and more prudent to sit beside Waif on the bare boulder beneath a bough. And that’s where she went.

  The only thing that worked to temper his own reactions and stupidity was work, hard work. Hard enough to feel the pump of blood through his body and his heart hammering until it blocked out the sound of her voice. He just wished it worked at muting the song that filled his soul. That was almost as bad as the sight of her. She was lovelier than she had any right to be, possessed softness in all the right places, just as the rain was showing with every movement she made as she alternated between trying to help him and railing at him when he didn’t do as she requested. Nothing tempered it like hard physical labor. And then, even that wasn’t working. He still lusted for her. Again. Incessantly. His plan of plying her sweet body with his in order to get her from his system hadn’t worked, either. If anything, the lust was hotter and more vibrant than before. Vincent didn’t know what was wrong with him. Again. Still.