Blood raced wild circles through Will’s body and hardened his shaft. He wanted inside this strange woman—either that or oblivion. That he might find such oblivion between her thighs taunted him and kindled a swift need. His shoulder blazed like dancing in a bonfire, but the rest of his body hummed, aching with anticipation. Waking to such confusion mashed his brain.
Illuminated by pale remains of the fire, Meg sat and straddled him like a wanton goddess. Dark curls splayed over her shoulders, her bold hands still moving, still scraping his skin. Panting breaths puffed into the frigid night air.
He tightened his grip on her thighs, enjoying the firm female flesh yielding to his touch. She gasped and arched, but he wanted more. He wanted to climb into her mind and keep searching until he learned her secrets. He wanted to intimidate her, to dominate the implacable girl, but he could not find a chink in her armor. Greedy, mindless, he settled for her body.
He stroked a finger along her jaw and gratified in her sharp gasp. She leaned into his hand, her eyes closed. An unknowable expression replaced her smirk, enshrouding her pale features in an arousing mystery.
“Kiss me,” he said, hearing a plea buried in his command.
“Where?”
“By the saints.”
He closed his eyes, hammered by the thrill of her question. A shuddering breath did not douse his ardor. Pain and pleasure blurred the boundary between waking and dreaming, but the idea of Meg’s teasing, smiling mouth on his shaft cut through the confusion.
“I was right, girl,” he said. “You are mad.”
She flinched. “I am
not
mad.”
Good sense said she would pull away. She had taken offense before, and the tight, bunching tension in her body revealed as much again. But she did not retreat. Her fingertips curled into the muscles of his chest and scored him with blunt fingernails. Tipping up her chin, she brought her mouth closer. Their breath mingled, the only heat in the forest, until she claimed him with a brutal kiss.
He intended to absorb the drunken sensation of her mouth on his, slowly, but a rush of need urged complete surrender. His and hers. Will abandoned his useless qualms and gave himself to the surprise of their joined lips. She opened her mouth and invited him deeper. Tongues touched in an exploratory dance. She tugged his lower lip with her teeth, soothing the sharp sting of her bite with another sweep of her tongue.
Power surged through him. He used his good arm to pull her into a full embrace. Belly to belly, legs layered over legs, she nestled her pelvis into the valley of his hips. She rocked against his straining erection. Their groans vibrated together. He returned her thrusts, demanding the release she promised.
When Meg threaded slender arms around him, grasping his arse, he could take no more. He grabbed at the fabric of her skirts. She lifted her hips and took hold of his hard rod, guiding him inside without hesitation. The swift shock of their joining ripped a cry from them both.
He sank his head into the loamy earth, thrusting his hips. Pleasure tensed his muscles but melted his bones. He gloried in the slippery heat of her sex. Every sliding plunge jammed bright sensation into his brain, setting his skin alight. He found no breath, only a choking hunger for more.
More.
Opening his eyes—when had he closed them?—Will clasped the back of her neck and dragged her down for another stinging kiss. She tasted of salt and sugar, both. Her tongue swirled over his, fighting for control. Unappeased passion made him rough, and he indulged in his dark violence. He pushed his mouth against her neck and kissed, bit, sucked. He tightened restless fingers into her hair and tugged. She hissed, arching, crushing ripe breasts to his chest.
The fabric of her bodice frustrated him. He groaned, wanting her breasts stripped bare, her stiff nipples pushed against his skin. The thought rocked his tenuous self-control. He wanted her naked, but the fervor of their coupling demanded release, not delays.
She grabbed his hips and urged him to take more, give more. Her rasping moans patterned the air with a cadence to match their slapping bodies. She cried out and threw her head back. Eyes clenched, her face melted into a picture of happy agony. The muscles of her sex clamped around his aching flesh. Her slick sheath became tighter still.
Doubling the speed of his hips, Will pumped into her hot softness. He dug his fingers into her backside. Pain ricocheted from his wounded shoulder, but he gripped harder still. His mind spun. And his release, when it came, hit him with the force of a blow.
She shifted her hips and he slid free. A whimper climbed from her mouth. His withdrawal and her gradual, reluctant return to Earth seemed a reality too terrible to endure.
I’m not ready. Not yet.
She curled around him, resting on his good shoulder. The autumn evening chill was a distant memory. Fires could not match the warmth he stoked in her blood.
“What were you doing to me?” Scarlet’s gravel voice rumbled against her cheek.
“I wanted to know how you look.”
“Why? You’re blind.”
“And?”
“Why would a blind woman need to know a man’s appearance?”
His condescending tone froze her from the inside out. She straightened and put a sliver of distance between them, shivering. “I didn’t say I needed to. I wanted to.”
“And what if your search revealed that I have pox scars, no hair, and a single tooth?”
“I wouldn’t have kissed you.”
“You find me attractive.”
The base truth of her actions left her vulnerable and stripped. He could have been anyone—any man with half an interest in her body, any man with a body she found exciting. The extent of her eager desperation made her nauseous. But she could not bear his conceit.
“You portray my curiosity like an absurdity, but you lie there and watch me.”
“But why do it in my sleep? Without my permission?”
“Because taking is more enjoyable than asking.”
Scarlet tensed, his breath rasping. “I’m certain those men on the road thought the same of your struggles.”
She licked her lips. “Hardly the same instance.”
“You touched me for your pleasure, without my consent. Explain the difference.”
Meg bumbled and bumped against her growing aggravation. They had both enjoyed the unexpected tryst, yet he insisted on reminding her of her sordid behavior. She needed no reminders, but neither would she offer apologies.
“You were asleep.”
He laughed, a warm and throaty chuckle that dove into her blood. “A clever excuse. You implicate me, an injured man at rest. Part of the blame is mine, then?”
“Nonsense.”
He sat up. The full brunt of his spicy masculine scent assaulted her. Memories of his kiss and his groaning release would not let her think. “Do you hear me, Meg?”
“Of course, you dullard.”
“No, listen to me.” He gripped her chin, his thumb swiping across her lower lip. “If you could see, I’d ask you to look in my eyes. I want you to know the truth of what I say.”
“I hear you.”
“Had I been dead and cold, your lips on my chest would have brought me back to life.”
Heat shot from her lips to the apex of her thighs. He brushed his mouth against hers, peppering her with the softest kisses. Another. And another. He released her chin and cupped the base of her head, weaving agile fingers through her hair, holding her fast.
The man made her senseless. She hated him for that.
And no matter her determination to keep shame at bay, the slinking, slimy touch of regret crept up to her. She was lost in the woods, in pursuit of her missing sister—all because of him. She had no right to find pleasure in his arms, no right to want him still. Her wanton behavior was as selfish as Ada’s betrayal, maybe more so, and her disloyalty twisted beneath her skin.
A burgeoning hate for Will Scarlet joined forces with self-loathing. He made her vulnerable, made her weak, and she resented nothing more than her galling weakness.
To regain the upper hand, Meg kissed him more deeply. She distanced her mind from the physical act of kissing, as she had when kissing Hendon. And like that man, Scarlet yielded to her summons. He leaned into her body, relaxing. His tongue played tempting games, but she remained resolute, denying her body and her lonely heart the enjoyment they craved.
She broke the kiss and smoothed a palm over his cheek, ignoring how she trembled. “I want to check your shoulder,” she said. “You’ve probably undone all that we accomplished with the lye. Can you see how it looks?”
He sighed heavily. “Let me aid this fire.”
When the comforting crackle of flames filled their tiny shelter, Scarlet reclined. He winced as she unwound his bandage.
“How does it appear?”
“Raw, rather jagged,” he said. Despite his cold assessment, he sounded unsteady. “But there is no new blood.”
“Good. What color is it?”
“You know colors?”
She stilled, her pulse hammering. Surely, so close to her body, he could hear the pounding like hooves against stone. “I have known color, just as I know its absence. The color scarlet, for instance.”
“The wound is red,” he said after a pause. “No shade of bile or sickness.” He pushed a strand of hair away from her cheek. She flinched from that gentleness. “You are a strange one.”
“And you have no call to be particular.” She wrapped the deep cut with another strip of her kirtle. Sinuous muscles jumped and flexed beneath hands she fought to keep steady. “But by all means, if you have another physic ready to tend you…”
He closed his good hand over hers, gave a little squeeze. “I thank you for this, Meg.”
Stop it!
Upon urging her patient to lie back, she petted the sharp lines of his face. The hideous trek back to Broughton loomed like a nightmare. And then Ada? The idea of beginning her search anew, this time without the earl, sunk her spirits.
No matter the future, the sooner she was free of Will Scarlet’s maddening influence, the better. But for the moments remaining between them, she permitted herself the tiny luxury of memorizing his features. Isolation stretched ahead of her, longer and colder than the years since her illness. The greedy part of her that had taken Scarlet as her lover demanded a few more forbidden memories, hoarding them against a dark future.
His wicked, teasing eyebrows arched over closed eyes. Rasping breaths evened and slowed. His full lips grew slack. Meg touched her mouth to his, lingering over a final kiss.
Then she set about mixing the wolfsbane.
His senses felt submerged in water or stuffed with flax. Soft and hazy. And his head—his head pounded with an unnatural lightheadedness and pain. A thousand grinning witches danced a wild pattern in his skull, but he blamed a particular witch.
Meg.
Flashing memories of the previous night piled one over the other, dreamlike: Meg straddling his eager body, illuminated by deep amber flames and haloed by rivers of dark hair. She had behaved like the lowest strumpet. He had pricked her like a rutting animal. But the wonder of their encounter retained power enough to light his body anew. Pure fire. They had produced heat enough to scorch the leaves from every branch in the forest.
But where was she?
He looked around and groaned, a clench of nausea swirling through his gut. His head swam in thick mists. He felt no particular signs of fever, not as he had suffered the day before. Pain like gripping talons lodged in his shoulder, but the injury lay modestly beneath its linen dressing, a strip from Meg’s kirtle. No blood stained the saffron-colored fabric.
But something was amiss. His mind and body were in dispute, neither willing to cooperate. A worrying numbness crept down his injured arm. He clenched his fingers and urged them to function. The best he managed was a halfhearted fist. Had the lye treatment done an even greater damage?
Dread burst to life. The lye had been excruciating, a pain greater than any wound he ever suffered. Only stubborn pride kept him from crying and begging like a child for mercy.
He exhaled slowly, quelling the nausea and focusing on the cold emptiness of the shelter. The scattered patches of loam and rock beneath the outcropping revealed no other human presence. Meg was gone, as were her alms-bag and walking stick. Birds and chipper forest pests split the air with their morning songs, but Will was on his own.
Shrugging into his banded mail proved both difficult and tedious, arms shaking from the cold and the residual shock of his injury. The numbness did not relent. No number of deep breaths assuaged the pulse of anxiety.
And Meg of Keyworth did little to make the fundamental task of breathing any easier. Memory of her little cries of pleasure taunted him. Signs of her bewildering arrogance had disappeared as their passion intensified. Her mysterious smile slipped away, leaving behind a woman in the throes of bliss. He enjoyed knowing he could affect her that way, even if her depravity suggested he was not alone in having pleasured her.
Perhaps the earl’s son, as she had implied to Hendon? No, he refused to pay her any more mind than was necessary.
But maybe “refused” was unrealistic. He endeavored. Hoped. Yes, he hoped to pay her no more mind. The encounter had been too memorable and the woman too strange to ignore completely. She was fickle, unstable, and certainly no ideal of decent womanhood, certainly nothing like Marian.
That name lanced through his foggy thoughts.
Marian was in danger. And no matter how much he wanted to forget about Meg, their tryst, and everything about the day before, he remained a wanted man. Sheriff Finch and his thug Carlisle would not relent in whatever scheme they planned. The roadside ambush was no mishap, nor was it likely to stand as the last of their violence. The haze of his bizarre awakening had briefly erased Will’s resolve: He would take Meg to Nottingham.
He just had to find her. Again.
Overcast and gray, the sky provided no relief to his sunken mood. He trudged through the forest with the finesse of an ox. Every step, every motion belonged to some other body. His mind wavered above the cracking branches and stumbling footfalls, a helpless observer. Knees like water warped under his weight. He fell to the forest floor, needing sleep more than he needed air.
Yes, sleep. He had slept beside Meg. She had taken care of him in the moments after their joining, changing his bandages and soothing his brow. He could still taste a bitter twinge on his tongue, the remedy she provided to ease the pain.
His eyes opened, working independently of his drowsy thoughts. Realization pounced on him. He struggled to pull upright. He had been wrong to blame the lye treatment for his muddled thoughts and rebelliously inept body. The lye did its job, despite the freakish pain he endured.
No, Meg had waited until he was relatively whole. She stopped the bleeding, cured him, bandaged his wound. Then she took her pleasure. Only when she was well and truly through with him did she flee, ensuring her escape by poisoning him.