Hard Day's Knight (32 page)

She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Pepper. I’m not going to badger you about joining our team.”

“You’re not? Oh! That’s good. I mean, it’s not that I’m not horribly flattered and all, but—”

“I know, you’re not interested in anything I have to offer, not even if it means fame and glory.” Her head tipped a little to the side again. “Tell me—would you be quite so uninterested if it was Walker we were discussing, not you?”

Apparent stupidity had its charms, one of which was to get you out of answering tricky questions. “Walker? What do you mean? He’s already on a team.”

“Yes, but will he win?”

I opened my mouth to tell her of course he would, but closed it up again. Walker had jousted moderately well today, but not with what Bliss called any of his usual brilliance. Even to my inexperienced eyes he had looked uncomfortable and stiff in the saddle. It was entirely possible that if he continued as he started, he’d finish way out of the money, ruining the rest of the team’s chances.

Veronica nodded, patting my shoulder as she turned to leave. “I thought not. You have the look of a woman who would do anything for her man, no matter what the cost. Will we see you later at the Swashbucklers Ball?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. It depends . . .”

She paused, giving me an odd look before she said, “Keep me in mind if you find yourself in trouble and need a friend. Unlike others, I am not afraid to do what needs to be done.”

She left before I could ask her just what sort of trouble she envisioned me being in, not to mention what the cryptic “doing what needs to be done” part of her message entailed, or question her regarding Marley, and Bos’s lance.

“Well, she’s up for suspect number one based on that conversation,” I told Moth. His face donned its martyred look as I slung him up onto my hip, heading for the stable. The two teens who were watching the shop told me everyone had gone off for dinner.

“Ah,” I said as I ran my hands over Cassie, checking for any signs of injury, not that I expected to find any. “I’m just going to take Cassie out for a little exercise. No one’s been messing around with the horses, have they?”

“No one’s been in the stable at all except the Three Doggers and the Jousting Jesters,” Tim answered. He was the oldest of the two hired to watch over the horses, and looked like a reliable kid.

I nodded at the mention of the other team who shared the stable and settled the saddle blanket over Cassie’s back. “Good enough. Make sure you watch anyone who comes near. The competition is only just starting.”

It wasn’t easy to get Moth, the lances, and Cassie to the distant field where the shock quintain had been set up, but in the end I managed it by plopping Moth onto Cassie’s deep Calvary saddle. I spent the long walk out to the field figuring out how I’d brace the lances up on their butt end so I could grab one without having to dismount, but in the end it was all moot.

“Well, I’ll be a milk-livered gudgeon,” I told Moth as we rounded the corner of the outbuilding next to the field. “Lookie what we found. Sir Hottie himself. Holy cow!”

Walker and Marley went thundering down the field, Walker in full armor with a shield on his left arm as he lowered the lance, couching it just before it slammed into the shield bolted onto the quintain. I knew from experience just how heavy the shock quintain was (about two hundred pounds, according to Bliss), but Walker didn’t just tip it over; he blasted into it with such force that it flew backward about six feet before crashing onto its back.

“My God, that must have hurt.” I gasped, noting how Walker’s body recoiled backward against the high back of his Paso saddle. It was then that I saw that he was riding without touching the reins that hung loosely around Marley’s neck, using instead leg and voice cues to direct the big gelding. “Now
that’s
impressive training in just one week.”

Walker didn’t spy us coming toward him until he dismounted in order to pull the quintain back onto its legs.

“What are you doing here?” he asked with a familiar scowl. I tamped down ruthlessly on the various parts of my body that woke up and started cheering at the sound of his voice. I hadn’t forgotten how mean he had been to me earlier.

The truth can be painful when you refuse to admit it,
a traitorous voice in my head said softly. I squashed it down, too.

“Looks like the same thing you’re doing—practicing, although if that’s how you normally hit, it’s pretty obvious you don’t need much practice.”

“Everyone needs practice, even experienced jousters,” he said dismissively, grunting a little as he hauled the quintain onto its wooden platform. I watched him rub his neck where the metal plate had rubbed a raw spot on the flesh just above his collarbone.

“That looks nasty. Aren’t you supposed to be wearing something underneath the armor to protect your skin?”

“The problem isn’t with the gambeson; it’s this armor. It wasn’t made for me. I’ll fix it tomorrow, between matches. Where’s Bliss?”

“Come on, your highness, you get the seat of honor,” I told Moth, setting him down on the metal barrel, having first placed one of my towels down. “Bliss is probably partying with everyone else. We had a Promenade and everyone went crazy afterward. What do you mean, you’ll fix the armor? Won’t that require something like an anvil? Blacksmith stuff?”

“Yes. The metalsmith said I could use the forge he has set up to demonstrate smithing.”

“Isn’t that kind of dangerous?” I asked, visions of hot blobs of molten steel flying onto Walker’s adorable face. He might be the most irritating man in existence, but he was
my
irritating man, and I didn’t want him hurt.

“I’m a farrier, Pepper. I know how to use a forge,” he said, giving me a hot glance before striding over to where Marley was dozing in the early evening sun. “Were you planning to practice by yourself?”

“Yup. Now you can watch and tell me what I’m doing wrong, and I’ll do the same for you.” I didn’t see it, but I just
knew
he rolled his eyes at that suggestion. “Then maybe after we’ve practiced for a while we can joust together? Mano a . . . uh . . . femo?”

“No,” he snapped, sliding smoothly into the saddle.

“Oh, come on—dammit, Cassie, stand still!—don’t be such a poop. I hit Bliss’s shield almost every time yesterday when we jousted.”

“That wasn’t jousting; that was training. You’d be dead in a real joust,” he said dismissively, and watched with one eyebrow cocked as I hopped up and down a half dozen times before managing to hoist myself into the saddle. I adjusted the girth, fiddled with the stirrup length, and rearranged my mail until it was to my liking, all forms of procrastination. The truth was that part of me really didn’t want Walker around to watch me hit the dirt again, but the other part, the girlie part, went all giggly around him and wanted to patch things up and live happily ever after.

Instead of giving in to that desire, I straightened my shoulders and told myself that I’d brazen it out. “Yeah, well, I might just surprise you. So, you going to stand there all day, or are you going to nail the quintain?”

He gestured a graceful hand and moved Marley to the side. “Ladies first.”

“That’s Sir Lady to you, buster,” I said haughtily, taking one of the lances to which he’d already fixed the breakable balsa tips. As I turned Cassie toward the other end of the field, I called back to him, “We brave knights of yore demand respect from common folk. We’re virtual gods upon the earth, just you remember that.”

Walker said nothing, but sat easily on a bored Marley, both of them watching as I lined Cassie up with the dreaded shock quintain.

“All right, old girl, let’s refrain from snacking until Pepper is steady in the saddle, hmm?” I took a deep breath, got a good grip on the lance, and dug my heels in, gripping Cassie firmly with my knees.

“What was that you were saying about being a god?” Walker asked twenty seconds later while I spit out grass and dirt, groaning just a little as I got up on one elbow to glare when he dismounted and started toward me.

“I mentioned earth,” I grumbled. “This is a form of worship.”

“Ah, is that it? I could have sworn it was a form of inexperience.”

I let him help me to my feet, taking the opportunity to throw a clump of grass at Cassie as she grazed. “You great big four-hoofed traitor! I said
no
snacking!”

“The sign of an inexperienced knight is one who blames the horse rather than himself,” Walker said, his hands still on my arms.

I threw grass at him, too. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes impossible to read in the creeping evening shadows, but his jaw was tense and tight as he ground out the word. “Everyone knows that. Give it up, Pepper. You can’t do this.”

“Never!” I swore, glaring at him, alternating between the desire to strangle him, and throw him to the ground and have my way with him. “Bliss says I can do this, and do it I shall.”

“Bliss is wrong,” he said roughly, moving closer to me. “She’s never trained anyone before. I have. You don’t have what it takes to be a jouster.”

“Says you.” I snorted, my body taking a step forward until my mail brushed with a metal whisper over the surface of his plate armor. “I say I can.”

“You can’t,” he hissed, his breath hot on my face, his eyes glowing with a molten light.

“Are you as aroused as I am?” I asked, unable to resist the offer his body was making me.

“More,” he growled, jerking me forward, his mouth claiming mine to the sound of chain mail scraping across steel armor.

“This is ridiculous,” I complained, my fingers working desperately on the buckles holding Walker’s armor on. “We’ll hurt ourselves. Or someone will see us. Or the horses will run off. Or Moth will eat my gambeson. Stupid buckle!”

Walker snarled something as he ripped at the leather buckle on the shoulder of his breastplate. Truly, what we were considering doing was idiotic in the extreme. Voyeuristic aspects aside, it was ridiculous to think we could possibly make love while one or both of us was covered in protective armor.

That didn’t stop me from ripping my mail hauberk off, though. I had it, my gambeson, and my tights off before Walker had the first buckle of his pauldron—the shoulder armor—off. I stood in nothing but my tunic fighting with his buckle until I realized just how foolish we were being to give in to our passion this way. There were better, more comfortable, sensible ways to do this. “Stop! This is silly! You’ll hurt yourself, and you’re breaking the armor!”

Walker was panting with frustration as he ripped the second pauldron off. His eyes met mine, and any further protestations dried up as his mouth descended on mine again, the heat and taste of him enough to drive me wild with need.

“Screw sensibility,” I muttered into his mouth.

“I second the suggestion,” he answered, his tongue swirling over mine. While I kissed him with everything I was worth, he managed to get the breastplate and armpieces off without once taking a lip off me.

“Mail,” he murmured against my mouth as I writhed against him.

“Yes, you are
very
male,” I cooed, reaching for the proof of just that.

“No, chain mail. Let me get it off—”

“No time!” I shrieked, grabbing his shoulders tight and jumping up, wrapping my legs around his hips, using one hand to jerk his mail and arming tunic out of the way. Walker lurched a few steps to a small stand of fir trees that would give us a modicum of privacy, not that I really feared anyone would discover our illicit activities. Everyone was too busy toasting the Wenches’ breasts to wander out in a distant, seldom-used field.

“Pepper—oh, god, sweetheart, this is going to be fast. . . . Can you reach my hose?”

“My darling, I will always be able to reach your hose,” I said in between scattered kisses to his lovely mouth.

“Not that hose, love.” He groaned as pressed me up against one of the tree trunks. “Lord, the way you taste—can you reach me? I’m going to burst if you don’t—”

“Just a sec. Ow!” I dug a branch out of my back before reaching down between us, jerking at his tights. “Good god, were you this big last night? You haven’t been taking Viagra or something, have you? Because I don’t remember you being so . . .
gigantic
!”

I couldn’t see that particular part of him, but the way he pressed up against me was a bit intimidating.

“I’m just the same as I was before,” he groaned, shifting me a bit against the tree. I wrapped both arms around his neck, kissing his neck and jaw. “Christ, I’d like to do this slowly—”

“Never mind,” I said, squirming around as the tip of him teased all my squishy parts, my legs tightening around his hips. “Boy, these last few days of horseback riding have done a lot to increase my thigh muscles. Up just a bit, my darling. Now to the left. No, no, not your left, my left. Your right. No, Walker, that’s my leg; you’re not going to get anywhere if you start thrusting away there—”

“For Christ’s sake, woman, help me!” Walker all but sobbed as he lunged upward.

“I’m trying to help you, but you’re not listening! Left! I mean, right, right! Go right!”

He leaned his forehead against mine, his breath as rough and ragged as my own. “Pepper, love, would you please use your hand to help me? Not that I don’t appreciate your directions, but if I have to rely upon your navigation to do this, we’ll be at it all night.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound too awful,” I said, giving his lower lip a quick suck, just so he’d know how much I adored it. I reached between us again, grabbing his now seemingly humongous penis and directing it to where it was sure of a hearty welcome. He surged into me, filling me, nudging himself into areas that were all but quivering with anticipation of his arrival, and I almost let go of his neck, the feeling was so overwhelming. It was good, it was right, and when he started to move within me, it was the most beautiful thing in the whole world.