Defiant (26 page)

“I want more.” Dark and full of promise and threat, he spoke against her lips.

She didn’t even realize that he’d sat back, bringing her forward with him, until he sat on the ground and she knelt over him.

“Lean into me,” he coaxed in his low warrior voice, his hand still doing wicked, wonderful things, and she was unable to do anything but his bidding. She put her palms on his shoulders and leaned forward, her mouth by his ear. His arm stretched out under her belly as he slid his fingers in deeper, pressing for more.

“Will you lift your skirts for me now?” he asked in his sinfulness.

“Dear God, Jamie,” she gasped, shocked and so fiercely aroused her body was humming.

“Rise up on your knees,” he ordered, and when she did, when she was up on her knees for him, shivering with desire, he tore
her skirts up and forced her to hold them, and he watched her as he plunged his fingers into her deep and slow, over and over.

“Jésu, you are beautiful,” he rasped, and leaned to kiss her belly.

She hung on to his shoulders as his sinfully capable hand worked her, rocking two fingers inside her, and his thumb wicked in its slippery little strokes, his tongue hot, lapping, moving lower, his teeth making little shivery nips down her belly and abdomen, going lower, so that her thighs shuddered as she leaned on his shoulders, and her head dropped back so she was looking up at the blowing tree limbs, sobbing his name.

“Come for me,” he ordered ruthlessly, his voice a harsh rasp. “I want to watch.”

A stick cracked in the woods.

They flung themselves apart. Danger had been too long a part of their lives for anything, even mad passion, to curb its bite.

Eva practically bounded to the opposite end of the clearing. Jamie got to his feet and stared into the fire, trying to calm his breathing, just as Ry’s armored body appeared at the edge of the clearing, Roger beside him.

Ry stopped short. He looked at Jamie, then at Eva, then back to Jaime. Roger did the exact opposite: looked at Eva, then Jamie, then strode to Eva’s side. She stood with her back to the clearing, to the fire. To Jamie. Gog stepped close, murmured something to her.

“What happened?” Ry asked, drawing near.

“I got in,” Jamie replied in a low voice.

Ry examined him closely. “Aye? And?”

“Roger is the d’Endshire heir.”

Ry let out a low whistle. “Jamie, you could smash open a rock. Why on earth did she tell you that?”

Jamie shook his head at the glowing bed of orange coals in the fire pit. Why had she told him that? Because he’d practically manhandled it out of her. Pushed on her when she was already tipping. Stomped on her where she showed the slightest weakness. Waded in where she was most transparent and dragged her through the shallows.

This was not generally the sort of behavior that elicited reflection, and certainly not remorse.

“That is what I do,” he said flatly.

Ry eyed him. “Now what?”

Jamie finally looked up. “Your query means what?”

Ry swept his arm in a semicircle, to indicate . . . whatever had happened here. As if whatever happened here would change his plans. Affection never changed his plans.

“Now we find the priest,” Jamie said.

Ry glanced at Roger and Eva, a few paces off. “When we have one of the heirs right here?”

“We have not made it this far, you and I, my friend, by relying on the king for our intelligence. I do not see why we would start now.”

Ry glanced across the clearing. “And Roger? Do we tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“That a barony is waiting for him, I suppose.”

“Ah.” Jamie gave a small, humorless smile. “Not that I am Satan’s minion, come to take him to hell.”

“I do not think that.”

“You are alone in your good opinion of me.”

“I did not say I have a good opinion of you,” Ry retorted. They looked at Eva and Roger, murmuring together. Roger had his hand on her shoulder and his head was tipped down, nodding, as if confirming something. Or encouraging her.

Eva’s hair tumbled over her shoulders. Her bodice was laced, but barely. She was speaking in low tones, her face pale, her
hands animated, moving in the air between her and Roger’s bent head. The light cast by the glowing embers brightened the front of her slim, tousled silhouette. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and bent her head.

“If I have the stick to measure Eva by,” Jamie said slowly. “Roger knows very well who he is and exactly what awaits.” He turned away. “I have the watch till morn.”

He climbed the hill and stood peering into the valley below. The narrow dirt road was visible crossing a distant hill, looking like a skinny belt on a fat man. Moonlight shone, making it shimmer here and there in puddles. The wind whispered through the trees, shivering the leaves. It was crisp from trees and salty from the far-off sea. Chilly.

Then, far in the distance, he heard a wolf loose a great, howling cry. They were not all dead, then, not yet. He closed his hand into a fist, clenching it around the strange, fierce . . . joy that moved through him.

He waited, but no answering cry came.

He slowly unclenched his hand and raked his fingers through his hair. She was strength and courage, an erotic nymph with a glowing vulnerability at her core, and Jamie could carry no one’s vulnerabilities. Not his own, not anyone else’s. No vulnerable things in his life. Not anymore.

Hopefully he’d proven his worth tonight, which was naught. For his sake and hers, he hoped he’d warned her off.

He had a mission, and it did not involve butterflies or smart, sultry women who could be hurt by a look and wanted much more than whatever he had inside.

Enough of women. It was time for war.

E
VA
felt him leave the clearing, felt his absence the whole time he was gone in an ambient, echoing way, as you might know you were in a room without any furniture, even in the dark.

Everything had come true, just as she’d foreseen. She’d given Jamie everything, her body, her secrets, her heart.

All he’d had to do was look at her with those dangerous eyes, kiss her with his scarred mouth, show her a piece of his shredded heart, and she’d given him all. She’d unleashed the river and told him everything.

Almost.

H
er shame knew no bounds.

She washed briefly, but no amount of scrubbing could remove the evidence of last night. Her debauchery. It throbbed between her legs. Pounding, scorching memories of Jamie and his body. His confident, sensual assault of her body. His hands, his powerful legs, his lips on her—

Worst, he was ignoring her. He had reverted to some cold, gruff, efficient being, with a demeanor more steely than the sword hanging at his side. There were no little half smiles that made her heart sway, no dry rejoinders that made her want to keep talking because he so clearly wanted to listen. No making her feel
seen.

They rode swiftly through yet another bright spring day, slowing only to rest the horses.

“I hear you tried to wrestle six men to the ground when they rode off with the
curé,
” Jamie said to Roger as they went. Jamie’s arms hung deceptively easy and loose, one bent to lightly hold the reins, the other to rest his gloved hand on his thigh. High boots and his cloak covered but did not conceal the truth of his muscular body, nor did the linked mail of his armor.

Gog beamed at him. “Aye, sir.”

Jamie smiled faintly. “Did you not consider you might have been killed?”

“No, sir!”

Eva sniffed. Jamie glanced over briefly. “If you had been hurt, Roger, what would your lady have done?”

Roger looked confused. He followed Jamie’s glance. “Eva?” Roger laughed. “Why, she’d have hunted them down until they were hanging from gibbets she hammered herself.”

Ry joined in Roger’s laughter, and even Jamie smiled. Eva lifted her eyebrows. “You all think this is so funny? Your chivalry, Roger, it is blinding.”

He turned to her, baffled. “I wasn’t being chivalrous, Eva-Weave.”

“This I know.”

Jamie ignored her and said to Roger, “And you are certain the six who attacked us were the same men who took Father Peter?”

“Most assuredly. I know, because one of them said, ‘Oh, Christ’s mercy, he’s only a boy. Can’t a couple of us knock him down?’” Roger grinned. “Then they did.”

Eva shook her head. “This helps not even a little bit, such foolishness.”

“Bravery.” Jamie said it quietly, but Roger seemed to sit straighter in the saddle. He did not, though, openly counter Eva.

“Yes, yes, this matters so much to you men, I know. You all must be so wonderfully brave, in the foolish things you do.”

“Better than not being brave,” Gog said, his smile undampened. “Eva, truth, you are sorely mad to complain suchly. What are we doing in England in the first place?”

She pushed back a few sprays of hair that had pulled free and were tickling around her face. “To secure Father Peter before evil men like Jamie do.”

Jamie showed no response to this impolite observation.

“Just so,” Roger agreed. “We are in England, running dangerous men to ground to rescue the
curé.
We chase him.
You
chase him, Eva. What do you call that?”

“Foolish?” she suggested, to please him.

He smiled. “And brave. Sooth, Eva, if I learned it, I learned it from you.”

She sniffed. “You are foolish to say that.”

“And you are brave.”

“We are a lot of fools.”

“Better than being a lot of cowards” was all Gog said, still grinning.

Eva stared at his familiar profile. He was moving away from her, like a ship from a dock. It was visible in everything, his actions, the way he disagreed so impolitely with her sensible thoughts, and . . . in the bright sunlight . . . was that, was that . . . blond stubble on his face?

She felt shocked. He was becoming a man, and Jamie . . .
Jamie was his teacher.

Anger built to unsustainable degrees. She turned to the object of her enmity with a most noxious glare. “Certainly
you
know a great deal about such things, and yet you do not tire of them.” Her voice was so low-pitched it was almost a hiss.

Jamie’s head inched around. “Of what?”

“Foolishness.”

He reined abruptly to a halt. “Ry, ride on ahead with Roger, would you?”

The two took measure of the look Eva was giving Jamie, and the look Jamie was decidedly not giving Eva, and happily cantered off. When they were a dozen yards away, Jamie turned.

“Now, Eva, what were you saying?”

The mocking politeness of his tone was almost more infuriating than that Gog admired him. Than that she had bent for him. That his hand had been...

Her glare turned glowerlike. Her entire face, in fact, heated up. “Would you not say
you
occasionally indulge in foolishness, Jamie?”

“Let me consider a moment . . . Aye. When I first laid eyes on you and did not bind you hand
and
foot. And tie you to that tree.”

She nodded coldly. “And I ought to have stuck you with my little blade when I first had a chance.”

His eyes went hard. “Aye, Eva, if you could have, you should have.”

“You,”
she snapped, “who would kidnap a priest.
You,
who are in league with the devil,
you
should beware.” She was close to snarling, she was so incensed. It was impotence, she realized with a sinking heart. She could not make him care the way she knew she cared. “For if I ever find less than a yard separating us and have a blade in my hand—”

“Consider very carefully what you say next, Eva.” His voice was lethally quiet. “For if I do not like it, you will be sorry.”

“You have been threatening me since the moment I met you,” she snapped.

“And delivered on them last night.”

There it was, out in the open, like a dead bird fallen onto the path between them. She practically reeled backward, stricken speechless.

His eyes were merciless. “And I shall deliver again and again, if you give me cause.”

Oh, dear Lord, she deserved to die, the way her body turned wanton at the mere suggestion he might touch her again. Again and again.

He reined his horse around in a spirited pirouette. “You’ve had my mark from the start, Eva: I am no good. Believe it. Do not tempt me again.”

Her jaw dropped. She yanked it shut.
“Tempt you?”

He skimmed her body with a level glance before returning to her eyes. Level, yes, and worst of all, dispassionate, neutral. Untouched.

“Aye. For I will take you, Eva; then I will toss you aside. I vow it. That is all I am made of.”

R
agged lines of people and merchants and carts were pushing up to the gates of Gracious Hill, an ambitious little village that had sprawled into a fair town.

The spring fair began on the morrow, and the town bustled. It was filled to overflowing, and the meadows outside its walls were filled with tents and cook fires, a camping arena for merchants and shoppers from miles around.

Despite the general atmosphere of celebration, though, something dark and watchful was in the air as they rode through the tents. In these restless times, butting up against civil war, trouble came in many forms. Freebooters and bandits haunted the dark woods, because outlawry was a much safer bet than trusting your fate to a hot iron in hand or the ability to float in cold water, but there were other threats as well. Trouble came more often from renegade lords who preyed upon their own subjects. And now, armies were on the move.