Stay the Night (32 page)

Nottingham opened the cell door. Robin stepped out and hit him in the face, knocking him onto his back.

His cousin grabbed his jaw. “That is your idea of a truce?”

“That was for putting your hands on my woman.” Robin bent and lifted Chris into his arms. “There are two guards above.”

Nottingham rose to his feet and took down one of the torches. “I shall deal with them.” He stopped by Robin and looked at him. “If you attack me again, truce or not, I shall gut you.”

Robin grabbed another torch as he carried Chris up out of the dungeon and to the first room with a fireplace he could find. He pulled a rug over by the hearth and placed her on it, and then began breaking up furniture to burn. As he did, he heard screams that stopped almost as soon as they started. Neither of them had the gravelly rasp of his cousin's voice.

He had no love for Nottingham, but it seemed that Guy could hold his own in a fight.

Once Robin had the flames blazing well, he tore down an old brocade curtain, ripped away the rotted half, and wrapped Chris in the rest. He had no body heat of his own to use to warm her, but lay with her and held her close anyway, rubbing his hands over her still, cold body and murmuring to her.

“You will be warmer soon, love, and then you may slap me around as much as you like.” He pressed his cheek against the top of her head. “I shall even let you arrest me and put your handcuffs on me again. Think of how much you will enjoy reading me my rights and having a barrister appointed to represent me. Then you may interrogate me as much as you wish.”

She did not wake, but he thought the blue color was beginning to fade from her lips. He knew her temperature could not rise too fast, or the swift change might stop her heart, but it seemed to be taking far too long.

How useless his talent was now. He could persuade a fortune out of a skinflint, but he could not do anything to help the woman he loved.

“I do love you,” he whispered to her. “I shall tell you again as soon as you wake.”

Nottingham came in a few minutes later, his face and hands wet with Kyn blood. “Does she improve?”

“She is not as blue around the mouth, but I cannot get her warm enough.”

Nottingham came over and knelt on the other side of Chris. When Robin saw what he was about, he shoved him away.

“You mean to freeze her again?”

“I fed on the second guard before I ripped out his spine. My body is warmer than yours, and I shall not use my talent.” His cousin lay behind Chris, pressing her into Robin. When Robin didn't move, he added, “Do you wish her to live or not?”

Robin set his jaw and moved closer to Chris. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Feeding had made Nottingham's body as warm as a mortal's, and with Robin containing the heat with his body, Chris's body slowly began to warm. He watched her lips and cheeks pinken, and then flush. He only wanted her to open her eyes again, and speak to him, and remove the invisible copper fist that had seized his heart.

“She is young and strong,” Nottingham said unexpectedly. “She will recover.”

“No thanks to you.” Robin regretted the words as soon as they left his tongue, but the answering sneer on his cousin's face kept him from taking them back. “We will have to travel quickly to intercept Salva before she reaches Richard and the others in London. I have a jet at the airport in Rome.”

“What plans did you have for Beatrice's tears?” his cousin asked.

Robin frowned. “I plan to toss them into the nearest furnace. If I'd known they were concealed in the manuscript, I'd have not rested until it was in my possession.”

“You did not know they were hidden in the book.” Nottingham made a contemptuous sound. “Of course you did not.”

“No one knew but the contessa.” Robin uttered a curt laugh. “My God, Guy, I may be a thief, but I am not a half-witted monster.” He narrowed his eyes. “Did you know?”

“No.” Nottingham stared past him at the flames. “I only wanted revenge. For Marian. For Sherwood.”

Robin felt an ugly surge of fury rise inside him. “Now you may very well get it, you stupid bastard. Perhaps you will live long enough to bury the rest of us. All for your precious betrothal.”

Nottingham's lips peeled back from his fangs. “She was mine. As was Sherwood.”

“Yet you never pursued us. You gave your name and Sherwood to your bloody half brother, and cowered in hiding.”

“As soon as you took Marian, my mother seized control of the keep and my men,” Guy snarled back. “I had spent my boyhood fostering in France; no one had laid eyes on me since I was a child. She had intended to kill me on my wedding day and marry her bastard son to Marian. When she discovered Marian gone, she had me thrown in the dungeon and sent my half brother after you. I spent ten years in that hole while he played lord above.”

Robin didn't want to believe him, but what he'd claimed had happened at last explained the events that had led to the fall of Sherwood. “Why did she keep you alive?”

“She didn't. She sent a wench sick with plague down to me and locked her in my cell so that my death could never be called a murder. She left us down there for a week, and then came to drag out the bodies.” His mouth twisted. “Only I had come back from the dead. She thought it some form of black magic, and decided to keep me alive. For the next ten years she fed her peasants and her enemies to me while trying to learn the secret of my resurrection.”

Robin almost felt sorry for him. “Viviana helped you to escape.”

Nottingham nodded. “By the time she came to me, I had learned that I could turn humans to Kyn. I first tried it with that great hulk of a fool, Rainer, but he was too much of a simpleton to carry out my will.” He rolled away from Chris and got to his feet. “She is warm now.”

Robin would never fully trust him, but the rage he had carried inside him for six hundred years slowly died. “I left a boat docked outside the palazzo. There is a phone on the console. Use it to call London and warn them.”

Nottingham nodded and rose.

Robin watched his cousin stalk out of the room before he looked down into Chris's eyes, which were slightly too alert for someone who had just woken from a cold sleep. “How long have you been awake?”

“I came to when he asked you what you had planned for Beatrice's tears.” She shivered and nestled closer to him. “I thought it would be better if I didn't jump in the middle of that. Last time I nearly froze to death.”

“Very wise of you.” Robin bent his head to set his mouth against hers.

He intended the kiss to be a comfort, but the events of the night and the taste of her mouth made him greedy for more. Chris gasped as he tugged aside the silk to get at her breast, and put her hands in his hair as he suckled, working the soft areola into a tight, pointed peak. Beneath him her hips arched into him, her thighs parting to cradle his hips. He reached down to free himself and pull her makeshift skirt out of the way, and felt her melting against his fingers as he fitted the aching head of his cock to the flowering heart of her sex.

“I cannot get enough of you,” he said, tightening his buttocks as he squeezed into her. As soon as she enveloped him, he held himself there. Feeling her body grip him made him swell even harder.

“I can't believe I'm saying this, but we have to stop,” she said, looking up into his face. “We have to get out of here.”

“We do.” He stroked into her.

She groaned. “Your cousin is coming back.”

“It will take him some time to find the boat.” Robin buried himself inside her one more time, and then withdrew from her body to slide down it. “Stay,” he said when she tried to sit up. “This will take only a moment.”

Under her red curls, Chris had a small, pretty mound, and the strokes of his cock had left her labia wet and rosy. He put his tongue there first, so he could taste her silky heat.

She flowed under him, the muscles of her body as fluid as the moisture seeping from her sweet sheath. The sugary sharpness of her scent intensified as he parted her with his fingers to lick a path up to her small, tight bud.

He rolled her like a pearl over his tongue, and he sucked at her like a thirsty boy. His fingers pushed into her, fucking her slow and hard as his mouth drove her from pleasure to madness.

He felt the brush of her foot against his weeping cock, and shuddered as she rubbed her instep along his shaft. He had only wanted to bring her over, but the heavy fullness in his balls made him work himself against that delicate curve.

Her body changed under him, pulling tight, her thighs taut and her fingers twisting against his scalp. Robin felt the hum of her insides as she fought and then surrendered to it, her limbs shaking, her toes curling. When he moved up to kiss her, his mouth still wet from her climax, her hand found him and gave him two long, tight strokes. He pushed his tongue into her as he pumped his jetting semen over her palm.

Robin could have kept his mouth on hers for the rest of eternity, but there was a promise he had to keep. He lifted his head and looked into the golden brandy of her eyes. “I love you.”

Something struck his shoulder, stinging like an angry insect. He reached back and pulled the dart out of his shoulder, and saw Chris's eyes go wide as his vision blurred.

A long shadow stretched across the floor, and Robin reached for Chris before it took him.

Chapter 17

A
fter talking with Nick, and feeling as if she'd whored herself for Richard, Alex decided to take back some control over the situation. Part of that required her to face the one person she had been avoiding since arriving in London, but she thought that would be good for her, too.

The Kyn and their bullshit weren't going to turn her into a spineless bowl of Jell-O. She'd eat a pound of pennies first.

She knew where his room was—she'd asked Braxtyn the first day—and when Michael fell asleep, she slipped out of their chamber and went directly there. She knocked on the door, squaring her shoulders and ignoring the goose bumps racing up and down her arms.

Korvel, Richard's seneschal and captain of his guards, opened the door. He wore only a pair of trousers that he had obviously just pulled on, and his thick fair hair hung over his shoulders like tangled flax.

Alex stared at a point just past one of his broad shoulders. “We need to talk.”

He opened the door wider and stepped to one side, and Alex walked in.

Once inside, she began wondering what the hell she was doing there. She didn't like smelling his scent, which filled the room as if it were packed with larkspur, or the quiet way he closed the door. Looking straight at him was going to be a real problem, too.

“How may I be of service, my lady?”

She gave him an ironic look. “We almost had sex about two dozen times, Korvel. Granted, it was only in shared dreams, but I think at this point you can call me Alex.”

“As you wish.” He blocked her only exit by leaning back against the door. “How may I be of service, Alexandra?”

He said her name as if it were a synonym for heaven. Either he was still in love with her, or he wanted to get under her skin by acting as if he were. Alex finally looked at his face, but she couldn't tell which it was.

Who cares how he feels?
“Nick has agreed to find and rescue the Kyn the Brethren have taken from the burned strongholds. Gabriel will go with her. I assume his high lordness has filled you in about the whole situation.” When he inclined his head, she continued. “Nick wants you to go with them.”

He frowned, genuinely puzzled. “I hardly know the lady. Why did she ask for me?”

“She knows you'll do whatever Richard orders you to,” Alex said. “Such as kill her and Gabriel if it looks like they're about to be captured by the Brethren.”

“
Kill
them.”

“Yep.” Alex took a deep breath, and immediately regretted it. To her nose Korvel smelled exactly like vanilla pound cake: warm and delicious and something she wanted to sink her teeth into. “Gabriel spent years being tortured by the order, and she doesn't want to see him hurt again. She also knows they could use her talent for homing in on Kyn as a weapon against us.”

“She is as intelligent as she is brave.” Korvel looked thoughtful. “Gabriel is not aware of this request, I take it.”

“I seriously doubt it,” Alex said. “Just a thought—if you do have to kill them, you'd better take him out first. You do remember what he did to the last guy who attacked Nick.”

Korvel nodded, his expression grim. “I shall speak to the high lord. I cannot say whether he will release me from my duties.”

“I think someone else can clean out his litter box for a few months,” Alex snapped.

“Under the circumstances, I do not think I can refuse Nicola's request,” another voice said. “Even if it means dirty litter boxes.”

Alex jumped as Richard stepped out of the shadows by the fireplace. “I am getting so tired of you doing that.”

“Allow me my personal amusements, Alexandra. I have so few these days.” He turned to Korvel. “I believe my captain would like to say something to you about the unfortunate level to which he allowed his infatuation with you to grow.”

“It's over,” she said. “Forget about it.”

“No, Alexandra, he is right,” Korvel said. “I took advantage of the temporary bond that formed between us when you were held at Dundellan. When Cyprien took you away, I knew you would bond again with him. Yet I deliberately drew you into the dreamlands so that I could seduce you into returning to me.” As he spoke, he moved toward her, stopping a few inches away. He held out his hand. “Please forgive me.”