Heart of a Knight (27 page)

And forgot everything. He wore the velvet tunic she'd given him, and it never failed to make her think of opening her palms on the fabric, to smooth the great rounds of his broad shoulders and the breadth of his chest. His hair, perhaps softened by the water from the well, showed a glossing of light from the lowering sun, and it lay on his shoulders in invitation. Touch hair, touch shoulders.
Touch me
.

In his hand was an apple, scrounged from who knew what winter stores, for it was small and hard and could not possibly taste good. But with a wicked gleam in those midnight-colored eyes, he lifted the fruit to his sensual mouth, and bit into it with obvious relish, leaving a little of the mean juice on his lip.

Transfixed, Lyssa watched his tongue slide out and capture the juice and carry it back into that heat and warmth and moistness—

To her astonishment, Lyssa felt a ripple of response spread through her body, starting just below her ribs, rolling down over her belly and into her thighs, and upward over her breasts, which pearled as it brushed them, and into her face. A place on the back of her neck felt strange until she imagined his teeth there, biting as he bit the apple, and she near shuddered.

To cover her response, she countered with a bold question. "Found you no cherries to suck?"

It surprised him, but to Lyssa's dismay, he also laughed heartily before he leaned over the broad tabletop. "Aye, but their owner is unwilling to let me sample them." His eyes bored into her. "Unless…" he lifted the apple to his lips and took another bite. "She has changed her mind."

Lyssa could not bear it. "You are in danger of
death
and you play with me thus?"

"Ah, so that is the way we play tonight? With threats, my lady?"

"Nay," she cried in frustration. "Only a warning. Your mortal enemy there would stop at nothing to see you swing, and he knows naught of you."

Apparently unconcerned, he only took another bite of apple and gazed at her levelly.

"Do you not care?"

He lowered the apple and eyed her slowly, head to toe. "Soon or late, a man meets his end. Some things are worth dying for."

"Bedsport is not one of them," she hissed.

Thomas smiled lazily. "Then you've not known what it should be."

"Nor will I ever, sir," she said furiously. "Not at your hands."

His laughter followed her as she tried to make a dignified escape, ducking into the shadows of the buttery where she could compose herself once again. She ran headlong into Mary, coming out from the hall, and both of them grunted and nearly fell.

"Ho, Lyssa!" Mary said, putting out a hand to steady them. "Where're you running off to?"

"No one," she said, glancing darkly over her shoulder. Then realized her mistake as Mary chuckled. "That is… nowhere."

"No use, my lady. 'Tis plain to us all ye melt like butter when he smiles at you."

Lyssa made a frustrated noise. "God's teeth! I'm weary of that man and his arrogance. I'm not one of his wenches, to fall in writhing pleasure at his every glance."

"Are you not?" Mary asked quietly.

Too late Lyssa realized how her words would sound. "Ah, Mary." She reached for the girl's sleeve, but Mary pulled easily out of reach. "Twas not meant that way. Not you."

"Oh, but I was one who writhed for him," she said. "And Gwen and Mary Gillian and only the saints know who all.
I'll
wager he's slept in ev'ry bed from here to Scotland." She tossed her head, her eyes glittering. "All but for the proud Lady Elizabeth, who is too fine for such a brute, and will not take him no matter how he loves her."

The restless heat in Lyssa's chest rose to a bright flame, making her throat hot. "You dare judge me? There are things you cannot know, and ways I am bound that you are not. Think you I do not wish to let him give me what he's given all of you? Think you I wanted to lie with my old and cranky husband? Think you my lot is so much better than yours, Mary?"

Abruptly, Mary grabbed her close. "Nay, nay. My tongue flew away with me!" She pressed her head against Lyssa's neck, and Lyssa felt a deep ache at the feeling of her friend giving comfort. "Forgive me, Lyssa. I do love him, and it wounds me to see him love you."

That was the second time Mary said "love," and Lyssa snorted. "'Tis lust, not love, Tall Mary."

"Is it?" She lifted her head. "I think you are to him a queen, my Lyssa. The finest creature he's e'er known."

Lyssa thought of him, biting into that apple with such teasing relish. She thought of his bold hands this afternoon, and the liquid heat that filled her limbs when he touched her, and she ached,
ached
to take what he offered.

But his crime was deep enough in what he'd done already, a peasant playing knight, his punishment death if he were found out. If he lay with her, simple death might not satisfy. She could not bear to think of him being tortured.

Lyssa could not risk it.

In a day or a month or a year, there would come a missive from her king, and Lyssa would be wed to another, and Thomas would be gone to his life, whatever he made of it. 'Twas best they did not long for what they could not have.

"I wish he'd never come to Woodell," she whispered, suddenly fierce.

Mary said nothing, only held her for a time, then let her go.

 15

Lyssa found she could
not bear, after all, to sit in the company with the rest, and let Thomas tease her. But neither could she settle anywhere, not with the restlessness in her limbs. She went first to her solar, but found she had no patience for the work. The hall was too hot, the orchard filled with peaches, which made her think of apples. Finally, she made her way to the battlements of the castle roof. In times of war, the place was manned with armed guards, but for now she had it to herself.

As a child, it had been her favorite place, for ever was it deserted, reached only by a twisting set of stairs rising above two of the tower rooms. It gave a view of the whole shire, the forest and the hills, the village and the road, the river winding silver on its path toward the sea. All was gilded now by the late gold sun, casting long fingers through breaks in the trees. Neat squares of ripening crops spread out in a quilt from the village. Over all flew a pair of ravens, arched wings black against the hazy sky.

Looking at it, Lyssa let go of a breath, thinking of her return home and the first night she had come here. Thomas had joined her then, but she thought she could make out his black-headed figure among the tables in the bailey far below.

She was mistaken.

"I sought you in the solar," he said. "And your chamber and the hall, and then remembered me that you liked this roof and the quiet."

She closed her eyes in defeat. "Go away, Thomas. 'Tis from you I flee."

"Nay," he said, and she felt him behind her, close but not touching. His voice quieted. "'Tis yourself you flee."

She bowed her head. "I wish to be alone, sir."

"And I," he stepped closer, "wish to be with you." His hand brushed the back of her neck, and a shiver of reaction moved on her spine. Before she knew what he was about, he bent and put his mouth on that very place on the back of her neck that had felt so odd.

Her reaction was almost violent. Hard ripples of desire rocked her from shoulder to knee, and a sound—half moan, half cry—escaped her throat. The sensation was excruciating and exquisite and painful and she stood frozen as stone as he moved and lightly bit her, round the side of her neck, to her ear. She only stood, eyes closed, trembling in resistance and reaction.

"Thomas," she said in a whisper. "This is madness."

But even as she said it, his hands slid up her sides to cover her aching breasts, gathering her flesh into the cup of his palms as if to gauge the weight. A bolt of fierce need rocked her. She held herself rigid, her hands on the walls.

"Nay, Lyssa," he said, "'tis fate." His fingers brushed the aroused peaks of her nipples below the silk, and his mouth suckled at the place on her nape, and Lyssa found she trembled. "You ache for me, as I ache for you, Lyssa. Tell me you do not." His mouth moved to her ear, and he tugged the lobe into his hot mouth, and at the same instant, plucked at her nipples with a firm but gentle squeeze.

She cried out, and covered his hands with her own, flinging her head back against his chest, helpless because she could not say a word to halt him when this was what she had dreamed of. He bent close and touched his mouth to her temple, sliding his hands downward, over her waist, her hipbones, her thighs, and back up, so close, so close, to that heat that ached for him. "Tell me you do not want me to touch you like this," he said in a ragged whisper, and bit again her neck. With excruciating slowness, he edged her gown upward, until the fabric bunched around his wrist and his fingers stroked her bare thigh.

Lyssa sucked in her breath at the brush of air and hand against that delicately sensitive flesh, and when he moved again, sliding those long fingers against the center of her longings, she could not stop the faint cry it culled from her.

"Oh, God," he groaned against her ear, and turned her almost violently in his arms.

For one moment, he halted, bent over her mouth, their bodies arched close. "I would halt, even now, if you said it, Lyssa."

In answer, she reached for him, pulling his great head down so she could kiss his beautiful mouth. She did not care if it was right, or what consequences they would pay. For once, duty did not drive her, but passion, the long-denied yearning she had felt for him. And all of that yearning she put into her kiss, opening to him, giving to him, arching upward.

With a growl, he hauled her into his arms, lifting her against him until Lyssa, understanding, wrapped her legs around his waist. He braced her against the stone tower, where they would be hidden from any who chanced to look upward, and moved his hands over her body, exploring her breasts and waist and buttocks, even as he kissed her and plucked at her lips with his teeth and sucked her tongue deeply into his own mouth. There was roughness and violent need, and Lyssa felt the brutal need rise in her with a wild fierceness she had not known she was capable of feeling.