Hard Day's Knight (20 page)

I stared into those beautiful silver eyes, feeling as if I were standing on the edge of a cliff, about to fall into something I wasn’t sure I would be able to escape. “What? Oh. That. No!” I stopped him as he was about to kiss me again. Pain darkened his eyes as he started to pull away. I wrapped my arms around his back and refused to let him move. “No, I didn’t mean no, I don’t want you to kiss me, I meant no, I can’t think when you do that, and what I have to say is important.”

The muscles in his back stiffened beneath my hands. “What is it? You’re married?”

Now, that annoyed me. “Do you really think I would be here now if I were? Is that what you think, Walker? That I’m the sort of girl who would seduce you if she was married? It’s because we’ve only known each other a couple of days, isn’t it? You think I’m Pepper the Wonder Slut because I think you’re sexy as hell and my breasts love you and all that, right?”

His eyes widened. “No, I don’t think you’re any sort of a slut, and I’m just as attracted to you as you are to me, but you said it was important—”

“It’s the jousting thing,” I interrupted. “Your team asked me to persuade you to joust, and I didn’t want us to get all hot and sweaty together, and later have you accuse me of trying to bribe you sexually.”

He was silent for a minute, the hairs on his chest tickling my breasts as he claimed my mouth for another one of his mind-drugging kisses. “Thank you for your honesty, but your worry is unwarranted.”

“Does that mean you’re going to joust?” I asked when we came up for air.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he mumbled against my collarbone, his lips doing marvelous, amazing things as they kissed a hot, wet path between my breasts.

“But they asked me to convince you—”

“We’ll talk about it later, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart! He called me sweetheart! I shivered as he rubbed his stubbly cheek against my right breast. “I’m responsible for making sure you agree—”

He lifted his head, his eyes shuttered, hiding his feelings from me. “Pepper, jousting has nothing to do with you, with us. Can’t we just enjoy each other without worrying about anyone else?”

My heart fractured just a little at the way he shut me out, but I realized then that he was
it,
he was the man I was meant to spend my life with. He wasn’t just a romantic figure, a handsome Englishman, an exotic jewel in a world of baser mortals; he was the man who had been born just for me. He was mine, and I wasn’t going to let him suffer by himself anymore. I smiled up at him, my heart swelling with burgeoning love as I acknowledged to myself that he might make me insane with frustration at times, but he really was perfect for me. “Yes, we can talk about it later. We can enjoy each other tonight, now, right now—”

Moth strolled over to where we were lying.

“—for several long, endless hours filled with nothing but sensual delights—”

He squinted at Walker, then looked at me.

“—as we learn each other’s intimate secrets, and wildest, most romantic—”

Huurack! Plaaaaaaaagh!
Moth vomited a hair ball right next to my head.

“—fantasies.” I sighed.

“Now, where were we?”

“You were about to tell me your wildest, most romantic fantasy,” Walker answered, his voice rumbling deep in his chest.

“Oh, the one about the three cabana boys and a key lime pie?”

Walker grinned and leaned down to kiss me, his lips doing the sorts of things that I was willing to bet were illegal in many countries. “No, the one about the brave knight who single-handedly rescues his lady from a dastardly blond villain from California.”

“Oh,
that
fantasy,” I cooed, arching my back so I could rub myself up against him. The satin-and-chiffon negligee was gone, tossed into the corner. I was thankful, the hair ball was also gone. Walker removed it just before he dumped out a box bearing leather gloves and gauntlets, throwing one of his tunics inside and plopping Moth in on top of it.

“Sit, stay!” I ordered Moth from where I had been lying seductively on Walker’s mattress. Moth’s orange whiskers twitched, but evidently the smell of Walker on the tunic was enough for the cat, because he curled up and went to sleep while Walker crawled back to me, stretching himself out alongside my waiting body.

“That is a very good fantasy, one of my favorites. I especially like it when the bold knight shows me why they call him Lance-a-lot.”

Those adorable manly lips of his curled into a smile as I spread my fingers through his silky black hair, tugging his head down so I could kiss the breath right out of him. His mouth started a now-familiar excitement deep in my belly. I moved my legs against him, savoring the feeling of his body against mine, wondering at the way his hardness fit into my softness.

“Why wouldn’t you let me kiss you before?” I asked, pulling my knee up along side of his, reveling the feeling of his burning flesh scorching mine.

“Butcher interrupted us,” he mumbled, nipping my earlobe as his hand swept up from my hip to where my breast was aching for his touch.

“Before that,” I breathed, gasping a delighted gasp as his tongue licked my pulse point just as his fingers brushed against my nipple. “You said—oh, my god, that’s so good—you said—”

“I told you”—he lifted his head, his eyes burning into mine—“I’m not good with words. Women like poetry and things. Compliments. I’m not good at any of that. I’m just a farrier, Pepper. Good with horses, but not with women.”

“Would it make you more comfortable if I asked you to shoe me?” I teased, my heart warmed by his confidence. Silly man, didn’t he know that actions spoke louder than words? Didn’t he know how women fell for the strong-but-silent types? Didn’t he realize that one look from those brilliant eyes had me melting into a great big puddle?

One of his eyebrows rose with wicked intent. “As a matter of fact, it would.”

Before I could even think of blinking in stupefaction, he was gone, having slid down my body to kneel between my feet.

“Walker? Uh . . . what are you doing? You’re not some sort of weirdo foot fetishist, are you? I mean, I know you work around horses’ feet all the time, but you’re not going to—Oh, my god!”

I thanked God I had the foresight to take advantage of one of the communal showers before I had tucked Moth and myself into bed for the night, because he didn’t give my foot a quick smooch, as I half expected; he kissed my ankle, running his tongue around my anklebones. He nibbled a path down to the tip of my foot, his tongue flickering between two of my toes. I just about came up off the mattress as he sucked one of my toes into his mouth. His mouth was hot and wet, his tongue tickling me in a way I’d never felt. It was the single most erotic thing anyone had ever done to a very unerotic spot, and I lasted of all of three seconds before I was writhing, clutching great big handfuls of bedding in order to keep from throwing him to the ground and ravishing him the way he deserved. “Oh, my god, Walker!”

He grinned, kissing his way up the arch of my foot. “Like that, do you?”

“I don’t know; does the fact that I’m humming like a harp tell you anything?”

His grin turned very male and very smug. “Then you’re going to love this.”

My entire body spasmed as his head dipped again, and I groaned when his tongue snaked out to trace the valley behind my knee. “Oh, yes!”

A deep, sexy chuckle rolled over me as he spread my legs apart, licking a spiral path up one thigh before stopping to give the other the same treatment. I lay before him, twitching with anticipation, my body burning for his touch, feeling exposed, aroused, and so fragile I was sure I was going to fracture into a million pieces if he touched me just one more time with that amazing tongue. . . .

I arched off the ground when he nuzzled the magic spot on my body, the one place that made me see stars, and see them I did when his mouth found me. His tongue swirled, and I clutched his hair, my body exploding into a series of waves that rippled through me until I was left weak and trembling with the intensity of the orgasm, my mind strangely at peace.

“You are the most responsive woman I’ve ever seen,” Walker said as he pressed a gentle kiss on my still-trembling belly. “Do you have any idea what you do to me? How the scent of you fills my head? Do you know how much I want to thrust myself into you until you scream with pleasure? Do you know . . .” He moved upward, his hands skimming my hips as he took one taut peak disguised as a breast into his mouth, sucking hard, his teeth gently scraping along my nipple before releasing it. The silver of his eyes scorched my flesh as he lifted his head. “. . . how much I want to mark you so every man out there will know you’re mine?”

For the life of me, I couldn’t seem to manage a complete sentence. I ended up pleading. “Marking is good. Thrusting is better. Much, much better. If you have any mercy, you’ll thrust. Now would be good!”

His eyes glittered brightly out of the dark shadows of his face, the line of his jaw tense and tight with desire as he rose up on his elbows, the hard, hot length of him nudging against my very own gates of paradise. I reached between us to position him, and he shuddered, his eyes closing for a moment as I stroked the soft velvet over steel.

“Do you have any condoms?”

He snarled softly and rolled off me, rustling around for a moment while I admired the line of his back. With a guttural noise deep in his chest, he was suddenly back on top of me.

He took my hands in his, linking his fingers through mine as he slowly slid into my body. Muscles I didn’t know I had rippled around him as I tipped my hips upward, allowing him to fill me, stretch me, join his heartbeat with mine until the two rhythms were indistinguishable.

“Thrust?” I managed to ask, which was a minor miracle considering that my brain had completely shut down with the sheer, utter magnificence of the feeling of his heat inside me, but it turned out to be a good choice of words.

“Thrust,” he agreed, and suited action to word. He pulled out of me, but before my body could do more than weep tears of ecstasy, he was back, claiming me, binding us together, joining with me not just in body, but in my heart as well. His body moved against me faster, more aggressively, thrusting hard and deep into me, his tongue wild in my mouth. I moaned my exaltation, the burn inside of me roaring into another inferno as his strokes shortened, his body pounding down as mine rose up to meet him. I slid my hands from his, tracing the damp planes of his back, delighting in the play of muscles as he pushed us toward the moment of completion I knew would change my world. Beneath my fingertips his muscles tightened, a low, primal groan coming from deep in his chest.

I tore my mouth from the heat of his, wanting to watch as pleasure overtook him, wanting to share my bliss with him. The inferno inside me exploded, sending heat to every point on my body. My orgasm triggered his, my ears ringing as he arched upward, shouting a wordless acknowledgment of what we shared.

Eons passed. The ages of man came and went. Dinosaurs could have risen from extinction, walked the earth for millennia, and disappeared into the long, dark oblivion that ultimately claimed everything, and I wouldn’t have noticed them. Making love with Walker had been the single most profound experience of my life, and I lay struggling to regain my breath beneath his damp body, his breath rough and hot on my ear as he, too, struggled for air.

After a while my legs, wrapped around his hips, began to cramp. His heavy weight pushed me down into the air mattress until I was aware of every rock and stone in the ground beneath me. Our bodies were glued together with perspiration. My breasts were smashed up against him, each inhalation forcing his chest hair across my sensitive nipples. I had to pee. And yet, despite all that, I cherished every discomfort, because the man lying gasping for air in my arms was the man I’d been searching for the whole of my adult life.

“You truly are my knight in shining armor,” I whispered, kissing the curve of his ear. He mumbled sleepily into my shoulder before rolling us over so I was draped on top of him. I smiled as he fumbled for the camp light, the soft blackness of the night closing around us.

I had found my knight, and life, from here on out, was going to be absolutely perfect.

 

“You are the single most obstinate man I have ever met.”

“And you’re the most irritating woman
I’ve
ever met. Now get off me, I have work to do.”

I looked down from where I was straddling Walker, having fulfilled my promise of four hours before to ride him like a stallion. After a lengthy recuperative period from a second mind-numbingly wonderful lovemaking session, I could once again summon words and speak them in a manner that made sense.

To me, at least. Walker didn’t seem to be any too willing to admit anything of the kind.

I wiggled, my hands on his chest made damp with the sweat of our joint exertions. He was still inside me, and by concentrating very hard, I managed to tighten an array of inner muscles in a manner that had his fingers digging into my hips. “You don’t just tell a woman who you’ve pleasured to the moon and back to get off you, you big oaf. Especially when you don’t really mean it.”

His eyes narrowed, but his fingers were now edging upward toward my breasts as they bobbed above his chest. “How do you know I don’t mean it, wench?”

I wiggled again. “That’s Harlot to you, and the proof, Sir Studmuffin, is growing within me—so to speak.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “I’m not as young as I used to be, sweetheart, but I’m willing to sacrifice myself to your lustful desires.”

“Why do I have the feeling you’re trying to distract me with your extremely scrumdillyicious body, and why do I know it will work if I don’t stop you right now?” I leaned down to kiss the manly, chiseled lips that I knew could melt me with just one touch, sliding off him with squelchy proof of the previous half hour’s activity. I curled up next to him, one hand resting on his damp chest as I propped up my head on my hand. “Now we’re going to talk.”