The Conquest (11 page)

Would the fucking bird land already?

“Come to the meadow with me, Adelstan,” she said, seconds before the falcon landed on her delicate, gloved hand. “Come to me. I beg of ye.”

“I cannot, Rhiannon.”

“Why?”

“How would we explain our absence?”

“If not today, then what of tomorrow? Elspeth and I can set out and ye can be our escort.”

“This is a dangerous game, Rhiannon.”

She stepped away, turned to face him. “It is not a game to me.” Though the falcon had to be heavy, she did not struggle with its weight at all. She lifted her chin slightly, reminding him she was a nobleman’s daughter, used to getting her way, no doubt.

“But it is a game, whether you want to admit it or not. We cannot do this, Rhiannon. It would be the biggest mistake of our lives. You do not understand what is at risk.”

“I would risk
everything
,” she said without blinking.

If only the blood didn’t burn in his veins, or the ache in his groin would just cease. “You do not understand, nor will you ever.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then frowned. “Ye do not desire me, do ye?”

She took a step from him, and he should have let her go, but he reached out, grabbed her wrist. “One day maybe you’ll understand.”

As though he’d said too much, he released her hand. She sent the falcon flying and took a step closer, pressed a hand to his cheek. “I do not want ye to leave me, Adelstan. Ever. I could not bear leaving my people, moving to a new country, and having you leave me at Almeron, before or after the wedding.”

More than anything, he wished to tell her he would never leave her, but he could never make that pledge. He knew only one certainty—that she would marry Lord Malgor within weeks, if not days, of her arrival at Almeron.

“This is madness, Rhiannon.”

“Nay, it is not.”

“It is. It’s an impossible situation and one we must remedy now. We can be friends, but only friends.”

“I must forever be your friend and nothing more?”

“Aye.”

“Or at least until de Cion is dead?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “Do not say that.”

“Why? I wish he were dead. I hate him with everything that I am.”

He opened his eyes. She did not jest. She meant what she said. “How can it be that ye wish the man dead and yet ye have never met him?”

“Because he is keeping me from what I want most, and that is ye.”

Adelstan ran a trembling hand through his hair. “We must return to the castle before someone sees us.”

Her grip only tightened. He could see the curve of her breasts from his vantage point and yearned to touch them, to take a nipple into his mouth, suck and lave it.

“I see desire in your eyes when ye look at me. Lie to yourself all you want, Adelstan, but one day, the inevitable will happen. We
will
be together. The need will consume you, just as it consumes me.”

God help him, but her words sent a shiver of awareness shooting through him.

She went up on her toes, whispered in his ear, “When I touch myself at night while I’m alone in my chamber, it is your hands I feel on my body.”

Her declaration shocked him, and effectively spiked his need to a fever pitch. He’d had a hard enough time sleeping since meeting her, and now, it would be damn near impossible.

She dropped his hand and started walking toward the castle. Rhiannon whistled loudly, and the falcon followed overhead.

With a steadying breath, Adelstan walked behind her, watching the long strides, the way the tunic barely covered her heart-shaped buttocks.

When I touch myself…it is your hands I feel on my body.

That statement alone made him want to touch himself. Or perhaps he would find Machara again and finish what they had started. Perhaps then he would finally get Rhiannon MacKay out of his blood once and for all.

Antony could never be considered lazy, for the loft had been stacked full of hay. In fact, Rhiannon had to push a few large bushels aside in order to make a good hiding space for herself.

Thankfully, the gaps in the loft floor were just wide enough to see the stable below.

As she awaited Antony and Elspeth’s arrival, her thoughts turned to the exchange between herself and Adelstan this afternoon. Had she succeeded in drawing him in with her flirtatious manner? She had been more than blunt. At first she had been disappointed when he told her they could never be, but then when he’d told her he desired her, too, she’d been excited. She had her work cut out for her, just as Elspeth had said, but she didn’t care. She wanted Adelstan and she would stop at nothing to get him.

Honor and duty would always come first to Adelstan, but perhaps if he allowed himself the opportunity, he could love her.

The stable door opened, and Elspeth and Antony entered. With heart racing, Rhiannon shifted the slightest bit in order to get comfortable, and something moved near her foot.

A mouse?

She bit her lip to keep from crying out, and shook her foot, hoping to scare the pest away. It seemed to do the trick.

Antony pushed Elspeth gently against a stable door, his hands cupping her face as he ground his lower body into her.

“Ye lusty boy,” she said with a giggle, and Rhiannon saw her gaze shift once more to the loft.

“Ye think me a boy, do ye?”

“Nay, not that part of ye at least,” she said, her hand moving between them, where she cupped his manhood. He responded with a throaty laugh before moving from her, just long enough to drop the latch over the door.

“No one should bother us for a while,” he said, bending to kiss her. Elspeth’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, and Antony’s hands settled at her waist, while he rocked his hips against her.

They kissed for long, heated minutes, their mouths mating with a fevered intensity that reminded Rhiannon of their previous mating by the loch.

Perhaps it was the continual time restraints that caused the rush and intensity?

Elspeth dropped to her knees and fumbled with the tie on Antony’s braies. She bit into her lip, looking quite determined.

“Ye’re trembling, lass,” Antony said, his hands resting on her shoulders, reminding Rhiannon of Adelstan when Machara had been sucking his long, thick cock.

Antony’s braies fell to his knees and Elspeth glanced up at her lover with a knowing smile before taking his length into her mouth.

Rhiannon’s heart picked up speed. Aye, this was exactly what had happened between Adelstan and Machara. The only difference being that Adelstan’s head had been resting back on his shoulders, where as Antony stared down at Elspeth, his fingers curling around her slim shoulders as he murmured heated words. Adelstan’s hand had also been fisting the whore’s dark hair.

Trying to forget about Adelstan for the moment, Rhiannon focused on Elspeth’s movements, how she held her head, how wide her mouth was. With one hand Elspeth held the base of his cock, while another hand splayed against his stomach.

She laved the cockhead, her tongue swirling around the ridge before taking him all the way inside her mouth. Rhiannon wondered how she could do so without choking. Adelstan was much larger than Antony, so perhaps it was easier for Elspeth because of the size difference?

“I will come if ye don’t stop, Elspeth.”

Hearing the warning, Elspeth stopped and looked up at Antony with a coy smile. With his cock jutting out from his body, he helped her to her feet and turned her around. He lifted her skirts, but she swatted his hand away and shook her head as she walked toward the back of the stable, to the stall beneath the loft where Rhiannon hid.

With a wicked smile Antony kicked his shoes and braies off, and reached behind his head to rip off the tunic and drape it over a stall door.

Elspeth removed her clothing, taking great care to hang the kirtle over the stall that had been cleaned and had fresh hay and a candle burning in the corner. “Looks like ye were expectin’ someone.”

He reached for her, pulled her into his arms. “Only ye, lass. Only ye.” His fingers slid through her hair as he cradled her face and looked into her eyes. “Ye make me crazy with need, woman. I’m so hard for ye.”

“We will get to that, but perhaps ye could pleasure me as I have pleasured ye?” Elspeth lay on the bed of hay, her legs parted slightly, her brow lifted as she waited for him.

A second later he was covering her, and kissing a trail from her lips, down her throat, to her breasts.

Rhiannon’s nipples hardened as she watched, growing sensitive against the linen of her chemise and gown. She cupped the firm mound, felt the bud stab her palm, and wished more than anything that it was she and Adelstan down in that stall making love.

Antony moved lower, down Elspeth’s belly.

Stomach tightening, Rhiannon chewed her bottom lip. He wasn’t going to…

Oh yes, he was.

Rhiannon’s pulse skittered as Antony pushed Elspeth’s thighs farther apart, before parting her nether lips—and kissing her slit, focusing his attention on the tiny button there.

Elspeth’s mouth opened, and she closed her eyes, her fingers weaving through Antony’s hair. Her hips arched against his face as he licked her.

Rhiannon could see her friend’s reaction to what Antony was doing, and by her heated moans, she apparently liked it—nay—she loved it.

A cry escaped Elspeth’s mouth and her eyes opened as she looked straight up at the loft. Although she had no way of knowing for sure, Rhiannon had a feeling Elspeth didn’t see anything or feel anything besides white-hot pleasure.

Elspeth groaned loudly, which in turn extracted a deep, mutual moan from Antony that made Rhiannon smile. The maid’s chest rose and fell heavily as she fought for breath, and she reached for her lover, pulling at his arms. With a wicked laugh, he climbed up her body.

Elspeth’s hands moved up and down his back, her nails scraping a path from his shoulders to his waist and even lower, to his buttocks.

Antony reached between them, and though Rhiannon could not see what he was doing exactly, she assumed he was guiding his cock into Elspeth’s body.

He began to move his lower body.

Rhiannon’s heart raced and her stomach coiled as a strange fluttering began deep in her groin, between her thighs, making her women’s flesh hot and wet.

The hay beside her foot moved again, and she felt fur brush up against her ankle. She kicked at it, and a shriek came from the critter.

Certain the two below had heard, Rhiannon chanced a glance down and saw they had not paid any attention. Indeed, they were in a different world.

A world I want to experience.

Hoping her furry friend would go to the other side of the loft once and for all, Rhiannon wondered where Adelstan was at that very moment.

The candle fluttered when Antony flipped so that Elspeth was now on top, astride him, her hands resting on his chest, her long blonde hair brushing his thighs and belly as she rode him.

As Elspeth began to move Rhiannon couldn’t help being reminded of how she felt whenever riding a horse astride.

Antony sat up a little and kissed Elspeth’s breasts. Elspeth rode him harder and faster, the sound of skin slapping against skin vibrating throughout the stables.

The horses seemed not to take notice of the lovers, aside from the annoying Nessa, who watched with interest.

Elspeth moved faster and faster before crying out with pleasure. Antony’s hands slid to her waist, holding her steady as he lifted his hips against her, groaning as he found his release.

Rhiannon eased onto her back and folded her hands beneath her head, letting the lovers have a quiet moment to themselves. She was thankful and grateful to Elspeth for letting her watch such a private experience.

* * *

Adelstan stood up on the ramparts, looking out to the southeast, wondering what was happening at Castle Braemere, his family’s fief in the north of England.

If only he had his twin to talk to now, he would ask Aleysia what to do and how he should handle the strong-willed Rhiannon MacKay.

No doubt Aleysia would smile, perhaps laugh, and tell him to follow his heart…just as he had told her to do thirteen years ago when Renaud de Wulf had stormed into Braemere Castle and made a bargain that had sealed both their fates.

Thirteen years.

Had it really been that long?

He had watched his sister and brother-in-law throughout the years. Their happiness and obvious love for each other had always warmed him, and yet now that same devotion also reminded him of what he was missing and might never have.

No woman had ever come along to make him consider settling into a fief and spending the rest of his life defending his castle and lands while raising a family.

Until now.

Rhiannon MacKay tempted him to throw away everything he had worked so hard for, for so many years.

What did he really know about her, besides the fact she had lost her mother, whom she obviously had loved and adored. Also, her relationship with her stepmother and father was volatile, and with her half brother, nonexistent.

He had seen it happen before in families, especially when an older man took a younger wife. The old wife and children were oftentimes tossed aside, forgotten.

Adelstan felt, rather than heard, someone behind him and turned to find Jorden stepping from the shadows. “I hope I didn’t startle you,” he said with a warm smile. “You seemed a million miles away.”

The concern in Jorden’s face warmed Adelstan. “I was.”

“You missed both dinner and supper. The men wondered if you had taken ill after the hunt.”

Down in the bailey a guard set torch to lamps placed every ten yards. “No, I am well. Just weary.”

Jorden rested against the rampart wall, his silver eyes assessing. “You are too young to have your body ache after a hunt. Perhaps you need to increase our drills.”

His soldiers were the finest in England, pushed to impeccable condition in order to protect Braemere at all costs. “Perhaps I shall.”

“Or mayhap your weariness stems from another matter altogether.”