Chapter Fourteen #2
his men lined their warhorses up behind him and double checked
their weapons. Lara slid the roan in alongside Tree’s bay
gelding.
“Stay with the king,”
Talon told her.
“But the cook’s wagon is
back there. Plutarch is there.”
“What of your dream?” A
shiver ran down his spine.
“If it comes to pass,
there will be many in need of a healer.”
***
Lara
They weren’t the first to reach the
pass. As they sat their horses and stared out at the field littered
with the bodies of men and horses felled by Basque arrows, it was
impossible to distinguish the cries and moans of the dying from
those who found them. The horrible tableau of Lara’s nightmare
spread out before her, and she fixed her gaze on the overturned
cook’s wagon. She sent the roan flying down the hill, dodging the
bodies of soldiers and horses and camp followers bristling with the
arrows that had killed them. They’d been ambushed, and the rest of
the army had been too far ahead and too late to help them. Talon
had been right. The Basques had claimed their revenge.
She pulled the roan up at the cook’s
wagon and leapt out of the saddle, kneeling down beside Plutarch,
who clung to his rapidly fading life with an arrow sticking into
his chest and another in his belly. His face was ashen, his lips
already turning blue as she cradled his head in her lap.
“Hamm, me boy.” He fought
for breath. “Salt the stew, will you?”
“I will, sir.” Tears
streamed down Lara’s cheeks. “Just a pinch, just like you taught
me.”
“Ahh,” he gurgled. “You’re
a good lad.” His body gripped and his face contorted, and he went
into a coughing fit and heaved up bloody spittle. All Lara could do
was hold him and watch his life drain away. He reached a shaking
hand to her wet cheek. “Why do you cry, my lady Isabeau?” he
whispered, then his hand dropped, and he was gone.
Lara swaddled Plutarch’s body with his
longsword at his right hand and his ladle at his left, then slid
his short sword into her waist belt. She kissed his cold, weathered
cheek, pulled his death shroud over his head, and walked away as
others picked him up and carried him to the mound of dead. Numb and
mute, she made her way to the line of wounded, where she was unable
to do anything more than comfort them as they rattled their last
breaths.
When the last of the wounded had
passed and the king’s soldiers were preparing the funeral pyres,
the captain appeared at Lara’s side. Neither of them speaking, he
took her by the hand and led her to their horses, where he lifted
her up onto the Black’s saddle and swung up behind her, gathered
the roan’s reins, and turned the horse’s heads east. Lara
considered protesting his coddling, but his chest was so warm and
comforting against her back and his arms so strong and capable
around her that she had neither the will nor the desire to do
anything but lean back into him, her head tucked safely under his
chin.
They made camp at dusk, but instead of
helping her dismount, he told her to stay astride the Black, gave
orders for his tent to be pitched, and pulled a blanket out of the
sorrel’s pack. After slinging the bundled blanket up to Lara, he
swung back up onto the Black, and they rode downriver for half a
league, stopping when they came upon a small pool formed by rocks
and protected by head-high bushes along the shore.
Once she’d slid down off the Black,
Lara dropped the blanket on the grassy shore and walked straight
into the pool until she stood hip deep in the water, oblivious to
the cold. She looked down at her hands, stained with the blood of
the dead and the dying, and plunged them into the water, scrubbing
at them, one against the other. Another larger, calloused pair of
hands covered hers and stilled them, then lifted them out of the
water and placed a bar of soap into her palms.
Lara turned into the big, solid chest
she knew would be there. What she didn’t know was that it’d be
bare, or so warm, or that the smell of a man’s sweat could be so
enticing. Nuzzling a light furring of black chest hair, she
breathed in the scent of leather and sandalwood, of Talon. She
pressed her lips to his skin and tasted the salty sweetness. His
hands stroked her hair, pulling her head back until her gaze met
his, shining silver in the moonlight, then his mouth was on hers,
slaking and demanding.
She thrilled to his kiss, the feel of
his muscled back beneath her fingers, his skin warm, responsive,
alive. He plundered her mouth with his lips, his tongue, and Lara
surrendered to him, to his touch drifting up and down her back,
pressing her so close her heart beat against his ribs. She broke
away for air, for sanity. The heat of his gaze mesmerized her,
drawing her back to him like a healer to nature’s cures. She
sighed, letting out the breath she’d been holding her entire life,
and he kissed her again, his lips stealing her breath and giving
his heat until the ache between her legs began to grow and throb.
Talon growled low in his throat, and it rumbled down to her core.
He scooped her up into his arms, and she buried her nose into his
nape, breathing him in as he carried her to the blanket on the
shore.
Lara eased down until they stood
breath to breath, chest to chest. Her heart hammered against his,
and her breathing grew ragged as he trailed kisses from her jaw to
her throat, one big, strong hand running up and down the length of
her back as his other cupped her backside and pressed her belly to
the growing bulge in his breeches.
Panting, Lara almost fell into him as
he stepped back, leaving a chasm between them that Lara’s body
instinctively leaned in to close. He cocked a slow smile, then
grabbed her tunic by the hems and lifted the tunic off her before
tossing it onto the blanket. Then he pulled her in to his chest,
and Lara half sighed, half moaned at the warm, living, tactile feel
of his bare skin on hers. He rumbled low and deep and kissed her
mouth, her jaw, her throat, her shoulder, a visceral groan escaping
Lara’s throat as he cupped her breast in his hand. He took her
nipple in his mouth, and Lara gasped and moaned as he suckled first
one, then the other, his tongue drawing tantalizing circles around
her nipples.
She arched her back to give him more,
to give him all, and mewled like an orphaned kitten when he pulled
his mouth from her breast, then purred as he deftly untied the
stays to her breeches and breechcloth. They dropped to the ground,
leaving her naked and exposed to the night air, to him. She
shivered, though the heat of his gaze warmed her from the inside
out, then he shucked his own breeches and breechcloth and Lara
forgot to breathe.
As a healer, she’d seen naked men
before—she’d even seen him stripped down to his breechcloth many
times, an impressive sight to be sure—but she’d never seen him
naked and fully aroused. Her breath left her in a rush, and she
sucked in another at the raw masculine beauty of a man carved from
bone, muscle, and sinew.
His grin was all male as he took her
hand and pulled her down onto the blanket beside him. They were on
their knees, chest to chest, his erect cock pressed against her
belly, his breath as ragged as hers as his hands roamed over every
inch of her, his tongue tasting and teasing her until she slid her
tongue into his mouth, shy, tentative. His groan resounded from her
mouth to her toes. Emboldened, Lara kissed him, explored his mouth
with her tongue as she ran her hands over the breadth of his
shoulders and down the muscled length of his back to his buttocks,
marveling at their taut roundness. He took her hand and laid it
over his cock, which stood proud and hard and pulsing with a heat
Lara felt throbbing deep inside her. All she knew, all she wanted,
was that living heat.
He moved his touch over the thick
thatch of curls between her legs and cupped her mound. Lara moaned
and pressed harder into his hand, then gasped as he pushed a finger
through her curls, gently rubbing and slowly stroking her flesh
until she was moving in his hand.
“Are you ready for
me?”
Talon’s low rumble broke through
Lara’s haze, and she licked her lips and focused her gaze on his.
“Hmmm?”
He grinned, slow, sure, and so damned
male that Lara melted in his hand. He pressed against her shoulder
with his other hand until she lay back on the blanket, then he
covered her body with his, keeping his weight on his elbows, his
thick erection nestled in her bed of curls.
“Open for me, my beautiful
rose,” he rasped.
Lara spread her legs to the warm,
blunt tip of Talon’s probing cock and moaned as his flesh touched
hers. He kissed her eyes, her mouth, her neck as he began to move
against her, slowly pushing his cock just inside her and then out,
tentatively repeating and testing her will to take him fully, then
pushing a little deeper, a little harder each time, until she was
moving with him, desperate for the feel of him, all of him. She
grasped his buttocks, and he thrust himself inside her. Lara gave a
little yelp at the quick, sharp tear of pain, and Talon stopped
moving.
His gray eyes pierced hers. “Did I
hurt you? Do you want me to stop?”
“No.” She clung to him,
craving him, craving more. “Don’t you dare stop now.”
She moved beneath him, and he moved
with her, sheathing himself deeper inside, filling her with a need
she never knew she had until him. She gave herself to his pace
until all she knew, all she felt was him: his hands, his mouth, his
taste, his scent—the friction of his skin against hers, his hard
heat plunging and pulsing deep inside her, all feeling and
sensation pooling at her core until she cried out with a
bone-melting release.
***
Talon
Talon sat gazing down at
Lara as she slept with her head in his naked lap, her slightly
parted lips red and swollen from his bruising kisses, her warm
breath tickling his sated cock. He pushed a damp curl from her
forehead and kissed her brow, inhaling her musky sweet scent. She
shivered, and he pulled the corner of the blanket up over her
shoulders, sorry to cover her glorious nakedness. And she
was glorious, from her