A Perfect Knight (Knights of Passion Series 2) (5 page)

The sun was burning hot as the ship reached the island of Cyprus. Simon trudged about the streets, weak from sea sickness and the illness that had overcome him on the road in France and lingered ever since. He had met many pilgrims heading toward Jerusalem, but few knights. The Crusade had ended in a truce with Saladin, and as for Cyprus itself, King Richard had given it to the Knights Templar who had promptly lost it to the Lisignan family from France.

Some of the Knights Templar had stayed on, but the fortress outside which Simon stood had been ruined when the Cypriot people took up arms against their rule.
The church which sat at a distance from the crumbling fortress was intact at least, and with its thick stone walls and squat square shape it looked as if it had also been built to withstand a siege.

Standing before it, Simon could hardly believe this was
the place he’d travelled so long to find. But all the surviving knights who remembered Sir Edward, had assured him that this was where the man’s mortal remains lay.

I
nside the dim interior, where the air was blessedly cool, he could see the murals on the walls and the dark shape of the bell hanging in the circular belltower above him. There was a small chapel in the aisle, just as he’d been told, and when he stepped inside he could see, by the wooden carvings reminiscent of English churches, that someone of importance lay here.

There was a
stone effigy upon the lid of the tomb and his name was written at the base, and another line in Latin, which he more or less interpreted.

Sir Edward Arbuthnot.

Brave Crusader.

The effigy was wearing full Crusader’s armour and holding a sword. Simon thought his face looked smug, as if he knew what he’d done to his wife and it pleased him to think of her, his captive until her own death. He probably thought he’d take her soul as well, but Simon was determined more than ever not to let him.

A priest was hovering in the background. “You knew the man?” he said
, his eyes curious.

“Yes. I
have come to pay my respects.”

The priest nodded, hesitated, and then walked away.

Simon knelt before the tomb. The hard tiles hurt his knees and the cold seeping into his bones made them ache, but every time he looked up and saw the smirk on Sir Edward’s mouth, he promised himself he would defeat him. When it came night time, he pretended to leave but ducked into a small area set aside for private prayer and hid behind a decorated stone wall until the church was empty.

Outside he could hear
voices, but here in the Templar’s church there was only silence and the smell of incense. Eventually he took a candle from inside his jacket and lit it from one of those burning in the church. The wavering flame showed him the way back to Sir Edward’s chapel. He drew the small pick from the waistband of his breeches, and then the chisel from his sleeve.

Smiling, Simon set to work.

The effigy that sat upon the slab that closed the tomb was very heavy, but gradually he chipped away at it, pushing, heaving, until he had opened it enough to see the withered face of Sir Edward Arbuthnot. He was not a pretty sight, and it looked as if a blow from a sword had taken away half his head. Simon swallowed and held his breath and reached in.

His fingers found the chain about the man’s neck after a brief, gory search
. It wouldn’t come free when he tugged it, and for one awful moment he thought Sir Edward was clinging to it with his bony fingers. Desperately he swung the pick, using it to chop through the bones of the neck of his enemy. And then at last he stumbled backwards and sank down onto the floor, holding the chain before him in the candlelight and the key that dangled from the end of it.

It was a key like no other he had ever seen. Ulfred had been right.
This was a special imprisonment that Sir Edward had planned for his wife.

“Yolanda,” Simon murmured, and the name echoed about him.
“I am coming home to you.”

***

Yolanda was weary. It seemed as if the weight of the chastity belt was growing heavier, or perhaps she was growing weaker. It pulled her down, anchoring her to the ground. Even her thoughts had grown lower over the past months.

She missed her troubadour.

Her ladies had found her another to sing her songs of love and romance, but he wasn’t Simon and she soon sent him away.

She had bathed, and was in her bed trying to sleep, when she heard the voices outside and the gate being opened. Travellers, she supposed. The winter was upon them again and it had been a bitter time for those without work or homes. She had given shelter to several.

Yolanda closed her eyes.

“My lady? My love?”

She was dreaming, she must be, because it sounded like Simon. And when she opened her eyes she
knew
she must be dreaming, because it was Simon’s face she saw. He was smiling, his blue eyes were creased with lines at their corners, and his skin was darkened by the sun, which made those eyes even brighter. His hair too was fairer, as if it had been bleached by the same foreign sun.

“I have it, my love. I have the key.”

“Have you?” she said softly, so as not to frighten her dream away. “How did you find it?”

“I knew he would have it on him,” Simon said
with a grin. He lay down on the bed beside her, on his back, his handsome profile to her as he looked up at the canopy. “Sir Edward. He would take it to the grave with him, and that was where it was. So I went to Cyprus and opened his tomb and took it off him.”

Yolanda blinked. And suddenly she
recognised that this
was
Simon, the real Simon, and it wasn’t a dream. He was really here.

With a gasp she threw her arms about him, and he laughed and hugged her back, pressing his cheek against her tear
-wet one. “Do you want me to unlock you?” he whispered in her ear.

When she saw the key she put a trembling hand to her mouth, and then he drew up her robe and
disclosed the chastity belt. For a moment they both stared at it, the smooth hard metal, and the strange markings carved into it. Then, very gently, he slid the key into the lock.

T
hey both held their breaths.

T
here was a distinctive click and suddenly the device opened.

Simon stared at her in wonder, and then he slipped it from her, easing it down over her thighs, down over her feet, and off. Then he flung it violently across the chamber.

Yolanda stared at herself, her skin pale, the red marks from the rubbing of the metal, and then she laughed. Simon began to laugh too, and they laughed until they were too weak to move, lying together on the bed, hands clasped.

And then they slept.

When they woke it was still dark, the fire was dying and the air was chill. He reached to stroke her hip, and then spanned his hand across her belly, and then he cupped her mound. “My dearest love,” he said.

She opened her legs, and then laughed when he stroked her outer lips gently. “You can touch me,” she said in wonder.

He slid his fingers inside her, pressing deep, and she groaned. Her hand pressed to the bulge in his breeches, and he made his own groan.

“Should we wait?” he asked tentatively. “Let you grow used to your freedom again? I do not mind waiting, Yolanda. I have waited so long already.”

She kissed his lips. “I do not want to wait.”

Hastily he pulled off his clothes and she ran her hands over his body, her lips following, but it was her body that he wanted touched, and before too long he was kneeling between her thighs, gazing upon her as if he had never seen anything so marvellous.

A stroke of his fingertip between her lips, slippery now with her juices, and she arched toward him, seeking pleasure. She was on the verge of climax already and he understood just how much she had suffered from neglect. He circled the hard bead and she whimpered, so he did so again, and then he bent over her and took it in his mouth, sucking hard.

Her body went rigid and then limp, as the climax
washed over her. He gave her a moment, and then began to touch her again, using his tongue as well as his fingers. Yolanda let the pleasure take her again and again, until she felt as if every bone in her body had melted.

“You are like the hero in one of your songs,” she said, her voice husky and low. “The perfect knight who goes on a quest for his lady and saves her.”

“I am no perfect knight.”

Her dark eyes opened, staring into his. “Oh but you are, Simon. You are my perfect knight.” She reached for his cock, stroking him, knowing he must be in
discomfort from refusing to take his own pleasure while he dealt with hers. “Now you must make love to me. I want to feel our skins together, I want to feel our sweat mingle, and then I want to feel your seed inside me.”

Simon didn’t need to be asked again. He rolled her onto her side, facing him, and she lifted her thigh over his, and like that he eased his cock into her soft, wet depths. The hard length of it rubbed against her aching bead, and she cried out instantly, part pain and mostly pleasure.

“Perhaps I should stop,” he said, watching her, so close she could see the flecks of gold in his blue eyes.

“No, never stop,” she moaned. “
You are my one, my only perfect knight, Simon.”

He moved again, pushing deeper inside her, feeling the walls of her inner chamber rippling against him. He gritted his teeth to try to hold on, but it was no use, she was already crying out, gripping him with her inner muscles, and he let himself spill inside her at last.

His Yolanda was truly his. He had won her in a quest just like the romantic tales he sang, and he knew she was his forever.

Their love had conquered all.