Authors: Titania Ladley
She had a dagger inside! Hope flourished behind her breastbone. Maybe if she could distract the intruder, or play dead or…
With quick decisiveness, Salena relaxed and ceased her thrashing, feigning a swoon. The interloper sighed and loosened his grip. Waiting for the perfect moment to escape, she shivered inwardly when one large hand petted her hair. Salena could swear she heard the erratic thud of the man’s heart, as well as that of her own. Shimmers of something altogether strange and yet pleasant rippled through her blood and settled between her legs. Shocked at her body’s traitorous reaction, Salena focused instead on the crackle of the fire, the shift of a burning log, the sound of the autumn night wind howling about the outer walls of the keep. She forced herself to ignore the woodsy aroma and heat of the man now holding her tenderly in his arms.
And with quick, nimble precision, she darted from the circle of his arms and scrambled from the bed.
She was across the room with the knife in her hand in a flash. The bulk of her nightrail spun around with her in a flurry of silk and lace. She faced the intruder headlong, her gaze riveting to him where he remained kneeling on the opposite side of her bed.
“Don’t you come near me!” Above the glint of the fire off the sterling silver blade, she got her first full perusal of him. Wide and thick of shoulder, his frame seemed to dwarf her massive bed. As she studied him, he came off the mattress and stood to his full height. Her eyes widened.
The man was a bloody giant!
“Hello, Lady Salena. How are you this lovely autumn eve?”
With that deep English woodsman’s dialect that seemed to caress her ears, he crossed to her, his thick arms folded mockingly over his chest. That scent of wild outdoors filled her nostrils once again and did strange things to her insides. She took in the mannish sway of the Lincoln-green cloak, the tautness of the dark brown, leather jerkin over a wide torso. And beneath the bulky garment, she caught a glimpse of a white linen shirt in stark contrast to the bronzed skin of his neck. Nervously, her gaze sank lower to that narrow pelvis and shocking…
area
of his anatomy. The codpiece he wore over his crotch was attached in the manner of the less fortunate, by leather strappings and cords. His braies, she noted with a hot flush to her cheeks, were snug over finely muscled thighs and calves, and disappeared into shin-high, leather riding buskins.
“H-how do you know my name?”
He lifted one long, bronzed finger to his pursed lips and simply said “Shh…” as he moved nearer.
Those full lips stunned her and she gasped at the erotic turn of her thoughts, the fantasy of her mouth melded with his. In shocking response, hot dampness flooded her inner thighs. But she ignored it, her heart pounding as she forced herself to remain brave, to study the intruder who caged her inside her own chambers like an untamed beast of Sherwood Forest.
She couldn’t see his entire face due to the black mask he wore. It covered him from mid-forehead, down over the bridge of the straight nose, across the upper half of his cheeks. Just looking at such a clandestine man made her heart race with some sort of odd excitement blended with trepidation. And to think he stood in her chamber…and she was alone with him!
Forcing her gaze to study him further, she noted the thick length of arrow-straight, white-gold hair streaming from the side confines of the mask’s ties. It fell down and behind the beefy shoulders eliciting from her a strange curiosity at what it might be like to comb her hands through the long strands. On his head he wore a feathered woodsman’s hat to match the very shade of his cloak. And sticking up behind the broad shoulders and curtain of hair rested the unmistakable jut of a longbow, iron-tipped arrows and the bulk of a worn, bulging gunnysack.
But it was the slits in the mask her gaze kept flitting back to. Through the openings, Salena finally spied the eyes. Her breath caught in her chest. Somehow familiar to her, she furrowed her brow, struggling to place the undeniable deep green, almond-shaped orbs. They sparkled with an almost magical sheen, holding her captive, rendering her spellbound against her will.
“Who…who are you?” Damning her trembling hand, she waved the blade in his face.
He lifted one corner of those thick lips and stared into her eyes with unwavering intent. “You should bloody well know that already, milady.” He took one more step until she had to tilt her head back to see through the slashes and into the emerald eyes.
“I swear I’m going to scream if you venture one more step nearer.” And to emphasize her bravado, she held the knife up to his neck, the blunt tip pressing into the tanned flesh. She watched, suddenly fearless and empowered, when his pulse leapt next to the blade’s edge, dancing in rhythm to the flames in the hearth that shone upon his masked face.
“I’ll ask you again, beautiful maiden…” He ignored the weapon and lifted a lock of her hair, rubbing it between his fingers. Salena fought the heaviness of her eyelids, the fire that seemed to scorch her from the surface of her scalp to her womb. Confusion gripped her, for this fire had nothing to do with the one in the hearth so near her side. No, this flame was one altogether different, altogether unfamiliar. Yet maddeningly, it tempted her, made her long to draw closer to the source.
“Do you want to die?”
That oddly pleasant blaze was instantly doused with the coldness of his recurring question. Fear reared up to scorch her with ruthlessness, like that of a fire-breathing, lethal dragon.
“What a ridiculous question.” She slapped his hand away and freed her hair from his grip, attempting to emit composure. “I vow with all my strength to fight you,” she hissed. “For I wish to live, just as anyone else does.” And she raised her chin and narrowed her eyes to further emphasize her conviction.
He chuckled, a reverent song that seeped into the back portal of her soul. Catching her off-guard with the laxness of his mood, his hand was suddenly around her wrist, squeezing the very blood from her veins. The knife fell to the carpet, tumbled end over end and clattered against the stones of the hearth.
“And I vow with all my strength to keep you alive.” He yanked her into his arms. Salena’s breath whooshed from her lungs when he slammed her against the rock-hard wall of his chest. Heat and all-male power engulfed her. The wet spot between her thighs throbbed with a sudden vengeance. Her system pulsed, choking her voice box so that she couldn’t so much as squeak out a protest. As he spoke low and soft, his breath fanned her cheek. The tone and rhythm of it reminded her of the pants and gasps of a couple’s passionate embrace, like that that she’d spied at a recent ball when she’d happened upon lovers in the gardens.
What ailed her? she wondered, panicked. This intruder clearly threatened her, yet her traitorous mind and body kept twisting everything into dangerous, irresistible lasciviousness, making her think of things she normally kept at bay.
“So you declare to keep me alive yet you stealthily enter my home like a common thief. Next, you awaken me from a deep sleep, threaten me and accost and terrorize me in my own private chambers.” She twisted within the circle of his arms, gasping when her nipples abraded over the rough leather of the jerkin he wore. The areolas hardened into painful, aching pebbles, protruding shockingly against the silk and lace of her nightgown’s bodice. “If you do so speak the truth, sir, then…
let. Me. Loose
!”
Her fists pounded against that chest in a flurry. But he didn’t so much as flinch. He merely tightened his grip on her, thereby omitting the meager space she’d had available for her attack.
“I say, keep quiet, woman! If you value your life, do not make another sound.” He growled it out, his wet mouth plastered against her right ear. Lord help her, but a trail of heavy desire plunged from her ear into her breast, and suffused straight down into her mons. Slowly, as if she’d consumed a potent poison, it moved into her legs and left them trembling in weakness. As she panted shamefully like a mutt in heat, his sharp intuition sensed her dilemma and he hauled her up against him so that her feet dangled off the floor.
Which brought her engorged clitoris up firmly against his codpiece…and no doubt the thickness that hid beneath it. It was a sensation she’d only dreamed about before now. Even her own inexperienced, fumbling masturbation late at night in her bed had always been unfulfilling and anti-climactic. Not even her one secret mating encounter with Thane Mathews—rest her former fiancé’s caddish soul—two years ago had produced even a smidgen of what she felt right now with this stranger.
Oh, and God forbid, if anyone should discover she’d lost her maidenhead before marriage! She’d been a fool to fall for Thane’s charms, to fancy herself in love and to allow her curiosity to win out. A wanton need she hadn’t been able to name had driven her to such irreversible, unbearable shame. Salena didn’t know what she would do on her upcoming wedding night to her newest betrothed, Edward Devonshire. She hadn’t the faintest idea how to disguise her physical state of disgrace. Scorn and embarrassment were sure to play a role once her new husband took her to his bed. She could only hope punishment wouldn’t be included—or would be mild enough to withstand. But nonetheless, she would have it coming to her. That one encounter with Thane had been a huge, disappointing mess in which she’d sacrificed her virginity for nothing. She’d turned him away after that and had vowed to never let it happen again until after marriage.
The reality of the stark contrast between then with Thane and now with this stranger hit her headlong, and an involuntary whimper escaped from between her parted lips. Time wavered into nothingness; the fire crackled in the quiet of the room. She clutched the rocky bulges of his shoulders and her eyes slowly rose to meet his. The twinkle of two gems stared back at her through the mask. Something about it, about the clandestine, mysterious look of him, made her think of a wily fox on the hunt for his mate. And the thrill of being that hunted she-fox stole through her in one perilous lash of reality.
“In answer to your previous inquiry, the name’s Falcon Montague,” he whispered hoarsely, his mouth but a breeze’s space from hers.
She’d forgotten that she’d even asked the question. “Falcon Montague.” Salena whispered it back, astounded, the name sliding over her tongue sensuously. “The poor loser of King Henry’s jousting tournament? The knight who paid no mind to his opponent and openly ogled me as I watched from the stands?”
He barely pressed his lips to hers, the softness of them making her eyelids flutter shut and that spot at her juncture ache to be stroked. Against her mouth he rasped, “Loser, aye, due to a most lovely lady of…distraction. Ah, and ogled would only be for starters.” His lips dragged back and forth over hers as he spoke, slow and hot, the sweet flavor of cider filling her mouth.
“I made love to you with my eyes,” he went on, “through the confines of my helmet’s slits. Aye, I had better things to do than protect myself against your brother’s incompetent, haphazard lance.”
At mention of her brother, something snapped within her. She pushed against him and stumbled back against one of the high-backed chairs set before the hearth. “Nay. You speak falsehoods.”
“That I made love to you with my eyes?”
The visions his words conjured up made her flesh warm with mortification and a yearning she had no right entertaining. But she stayed the course, hoping to distract this intruder—who seemed intent on stealing nothing but her breath from her lungs—until her maid Edwina returned from her sudden calling.
“Nay, that my brother Sheldon is not a skilled and careful noble jouster.”
“Well,” he sniffed, glancing about the suite for what, Salena knew not. “We will have to wait until a later time to debate that argument. Now—”
“We? Later?” She backed away fumbling her way around the seat until she had herself positioned at its backside. Ominous bells reverberated in her head, as if she’d been forced up into the dome of a cathedral. “Sir, I demand that you leave my chamber at once or I shall scream a bloodcurdling cry that will rouse the entire keep. And you, then, will be as good as dead.”
He sighed—just simply sighed as if she bored him to utter tears and felt not an inkling of a threat. “Very well. Then you leave me no choice, milady.”
So be it, she thought, fully prepared to end this bizarre yet intriguing meeting with the unusual fool intent on his own hanging death. She drew in a lungful of chilly air to ready for the scream. But her voice suddenly became clogged in her throat. Falcon’s eyes, those jewels of the very devil, sparked at that precise moment, and the fire in the hearth whooshed upward. Entranced against her will, Salena stared as he neared, slowly rounding the chair until he was at her side. With a hot, firm hand, he turned her so that she was forced to face him squarely and look up into his narrowed gaze. Twin, arrowed beams of green emerged from his liquid eyes enthralling her, completely holding her captive against her will. She could not speak, she could not move, she could not so much as breathe.
“You will not speak. And you will now sit.”
No, no!
Her mind screamed but her voice would not cooperate. Fear raced through her system, every pulse point in her body pounding hard and loud like that of a musician’s drum at court. She swallowed the lump that had lodged in her windpipe and gasped when her legs began to move without her ordering them to do so. With purpose and subservient strides, she brushed past him, ignoring the magical power that seemed to glow about him. Her body obeyed and she sat in the chair, mute. Panic began to churn into something altogether different. Unable to move or speak, she kept her gaze fixed on the dancing inferno within the stone hearth. Anger simmered inside her, rolling to a full boil.