Chapter Nine #3
one of the white Shah knights to block a black bishop. She glanced
at the captain, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and
rhythmic.
“Sweet Mary, Mother of
Jesus,” she cursed softly, used to having the chamber to herself
well into the night. “How am I going to sleep with him here early
tonight?” Wolf ambled over and nosed the closed drapes to the
little bathing antechamber and then looked up at Lara, wagging his
tail. Lara pushed the drapes back and swirled a hand through the
still-warm tub water. Between treating the captain in the stables
and his showing up at her and Sophie’s house that afternoon, she
hadn’t bathed in the river today. A warm bath sounded enticing.
“Good idea, Wolf.”
She gathered her nightshift, closed
the drapes, and sat on the edge of the tub, untying her braid and
drumming up enough courage to get naked with the captain in the
chamber, even if he was sound asleep and she was enclosed, out of
sight. After stripping quickly, she stepped into the tub and
lowered herself chin deep into the water, which smelled of
sandalwood soap. Of the captain.
Sophie had been right about him
figuring out Lara had been listening to their conversation, her ear
pressed up against the cellar door. She hadn’t been able to hear or
understand most of what was said between them, but she’d heard him
mention his wildcat, and she’d understood the melancholy timbre of
his voice when he’d called himself cursed and damned. Again,
Ravenna’s pretty, pouty face came to her unbidden, and the hairs on
the back of her neck stood straight up. Ravenna had bought three
more vials of love potion from Sophie only a few days ago and had
let it be known that all three were meant for the captain. Was that
why he’d asked Sophie about the potion’s ingredients? Had he drunk
Ravenna’s offerings? Knowingly? Willingly?
Lara took several deep breaths in and
out, in and out, trying to clear her mind of Ravenna and potions
and the captain and his curse, but her mind kept returning to a
pair of brooding gray eyes, one bruised and swollen, staring at her
and telling her it hurt more.
“More.” She sighed,
letting the look in his eyes wash over her. Why would it hurt him
to look at her? Did he blame her for his falling off the Black? All
she’d done was sit in the window and watch him on the stallion,
admiring the way horse and rider moved as one, churning up earth
and sailing over logs with a power and grace she hadn’t witnessed
since watching another horse and rider win a tournament in Neustria
fourteen summers ago. The same summer she’d told the captain about
in the stables, where he’d looked at her so that her breath caught
and her insides stirred just thinking about it now, about more.
“Arrgghh.”
Lara kicked the tub and slapped the
water. She didn’t understand it, any of it, any of him. She sat up,
slapped the water again with a wordless curse, then splashed down
and submerged her entire body under the water. Maybe she could
drown the man from her mind.
She’d only released one bubble from
her nose when she was yanked up to her knees and then her feet,
gasping for air and spitting mad. She tried to push away, but the
captain’s arms were like iron bands holding her tight, her bare
breasts pressed against his chest.
“You bastard.” She swung
her head up, slamming into the captain’s jaw. He let out a grunt of
pain but didn’t loosen his hold on her.
“I thought you were
drowning.” His ragged voice sounded as if he’d swum a league
through a storm-tossed sea to get to her. He ran a hand through her
wet hair and pulled her head back until her gaze met his. “God’s
blood, Lara, I thought you were drowning.”
She was drowning. She was standing in
a tub of water drowning in the wet heat she felt everywhere her
bare skin touched him, from her breasts plastered to his soaked
tunic to her belly, which met his with every gasping breath. His
body was hard against hers, giving off a heat that Lara’s craved.
She leaned into it, into him, and the shock of it shot through her
and stood him straight up. He dropped his hold and stepped back,
away from her. He set his jaw, and the scar on his cheek blazed
white as he raked her from head to toe with his steely
gaze.
Lara covered herself with her hands.
“You’re bleeding.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper as she
shivered.
He touched a finger to his bloodied
lip and glared at it, at her. “Don’t I always?” He turned on his
heel and was gone.
Gone from the bath chamber where Lara
stood dripping wet and naked, not knowing whether to laugh or cry
or curse or scream. Gone from the bedchamber by the thud of the
door slamming shut and a loud shouting of men’s voices from the
hall below.
Her mind numb, her senses scattered,
she forced herself to think, to move, to dry herself and don her
nightshift before stepping out into the empty bedchamber. The
captain’s tunic was wadded up on his bed, the entire front of it
soaked from where her wet, naked body had pressed up against it.
Lara picked it up and held it to her nose, breathing in the damp
scent of sandalwood and man, of him. She threw it back down on the
bed.
“Don’t be a fool, Lara,”
she chastised herself. “You were a naked woman in a man’s arms, was
all.” A big, strong, upright
man. “Don’t make more of it than it was.
Don’t end up as Sophie warned, with a belly full of his child.
Leave that to his wildcat.”
***
Warmth swamped Lara’s arms and legs,
and she leaned into it, seeking a hardness her body craved, sighing
with disappointment as she sunk into softness instead. She burrowed
her nose deeper into the softness, catching soap, leather, and
musky male scents. Talon. Rolling onto her back, she opened her
eyes to a drape-less bedframe.
She shot up. What was she doing in
Talon’s bed, with his tunic in her hand and the sun’s rays shining
in on her through the open window? And when had he become Talon
instead of Captain? Wolf lay beside her, thumping his tail, and she
buried a hand into his fur, into something familiar as she glanced
around the chamber, empty but for them. The open drapes to the
bathing chamber caught her eye, and it all came back. She
remembered Talon yanking her up out of the tub water, soaking wet
and naked. She remembered the hard breadth of his chest pressed
against hers, the rawness of his voice in her ear, the feel of his
hand in her hair. She remembered the searing heat of his gaze, his
loins. She remembered when he’d become Talon.
She threw his tunic down onto the
pillow where she could still see the dent from her head and jumped
from the bed as if singed.
“Sweet Mary, Mother of
Jesus.” The way she’d leaned in to him…. The way he’d stiffened and
stepped away from her…. “What have I done? He thinks me a wanton
woman. A woman he doesn’t want.”
She started to pace, trying to calm
herself, to keep from bursting into tears of confusion and
frustration. Why had she leaned in to him? Why did she want to do
it again? To feel his hardness against her and drown in eyes that
filled her with her own strange heat? Why, if he didn’t want her,
was want all she felt when he looked at her the way he had last
night? The way he’d looked at her in the stables and told her it
hurt him more. More than what? She stopped pacing and stood at the
open window, staring out into the sky as if it could give her
answers. The only answer it gave her was that she’d slept late into
the morning.
“Come on, boy,” she told
Wolf as he pushed his nose into her hand. “We’d better get moving.
Berta will be furious with me for missing breakfast.”
Yet when Lara walked into the kitchen
where Berta was kneading and flouring loaves of rye, the cook only
gave her a cheery smile.
“Did you have a good
sleep, dearie?”
Lara nodded sheepishly and poured
herself a cup of cider from the pitcher.
“Good, good,” Berta said.
“The captain’ll be pleased to hear it when he returns.”
“Returns?”
“Oh, aye, he’s gone
hunting. Anglbert’s to be in charge while he’s away, and we were to
let you sleep in. That’s what the captain told us when he came down
this morning.”
“This morning?” That meant
he’d gone back up to his chamber at some point, that he’d seen her
sleeping in his bed with his tunic pressed to her nose.
Berta handed Lara a slice of bread.
“Came down at the break of dawn, ate a bowl of porridge, and had me
pack him three days’ worth of food.”
Lara let out the breath she’d been
holding, grateful for the time and the distance and more than a
little worried he’d left so disgusted with her. “I’m off, then,
Berta.” She took the bread with her to eat on the way home, where
she would have to try to hide her flustered thoughts from
Sophie.
“Let Phillipe
know.”
“Phillipe?
Why?”
“Captain said
to.”