WinterofThorns (13 page)

“You lived at Wicklow?”

“Aye. My father and King Nolan were first
cousins. Their mothers were sisters. My grandmother was fifteen years older
than Vindan’s grandmother. It was the king—then a prince—who introduced my
parents. He was best man at their Joining. When my father died a few years
after I was born, Prince Nolan insisted my mother go to live at Wicklow.” He
plucked a damp tress of hair from her shoulder. “That was back when the border
wars were at their worst and he feared for our safety at Lavenfeld.”

“That was a bad time,” she said.

“Aye, it was and families with any kind of
royal connection—even as slight as ours was—were at risk of being kidnapped for
ransom.”

“Your father was much older than your
mother, then.”

“He was but he adored her and she cared deeply
for him.”

“Cared deeply,” she repeated. “Not loved?”

“I always felt there was another man who
owned my mother’s heart but I’ve never asked.”

“She never remarried.”

“She’s never expressed an interest in doing
so,” he told her. “She’s a very independent lady.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“Sit up,” he said and as she did, he
gathered the length of her hair between his hands to gently wring the water
from it. He haphazardly braided it then hung it over her shoulder. He took up
the cloth, lathered it then began to run it over the curve of her shoulders and
down her back.

“I’m curious about something,” she said as
she tugged on her braid as it hung over her breast. “Is Prince Vindan afraid of
your mother?”

“What man in his right mind would not be?”
he countered with a laugh. “She’s formidable when she’s angry.” He worked the
cloth down her right arm. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t think the prince had any intention
of allowing me to come to you as soon as he did. I believe the decision was
taken out of his hands by your mother’s intervention.”

“He deeply respects her.” He switched the
cloth to her other arm. “Always has but—more importantly—he loves her. She is
the mother he never had. His own refused to nurse him, to even hold him. There
were wet nurses and nannies instead. The queen left him at the dowager keep at
Wicklow then promptly went on to have other children. How cruel is that?”

“No wonder he is so starved for affection,”
she mumbled.

He stopped bathing her left arm. “You think
that?”

She nodded. “The prince is a very needy
man. I feel sorry for him.”

“Huh,” he said then finished with her arm,
dismissing the bastard from his mind, disliking him even more in that moment
because she felt pity for the prick. He hesitated for only a second or two.
“Lean back.”

She wriggled her sweet little ass until she
was wedged between his legs, her rump pressed to his hard erection, her back to
his chest. He extended his arm around her and the cloth dragged slowly across
her flat stomach. Her indrawn breath told him what he was doing was making her
insides quiver. Smiling to himself, he knew he was about to make her entire
body shiver as soon as he raised the cloth to her breast.

She did, indeed, tremble as he closed the
cloth over her breast and gently circled the firm flesh. There was no doubt in
his mind that despite the softness of the material, the contact it made with
her nipple was sending chills down her side. Her fidgeting told him as much.

Sliding the cloth to the other breast, he
lowered his head to plant a kiss on her shoulder when it met her neck.

“Milord,” she sighed.

“Milady,” he whispered against her flesh
and kissed his way up to her ear. She accommodated him by turning her face
slightly to the right. He lightly clinched her earlobe between his teeth. All
the while, he circled her breast with the cloth—pressing lightly with each
circuit. He glanced down for she clamped her legs tightly together. Looking up
through his eyelashes, he saw her knuckles were white where they gripped the
rim of the tub.

“I want you,” he whispered into her ear,
his lips grazing the soft folds.

“Aye,” she answered on a long exhale of
breath.

He let the cloth drop from his hand, moved
it so he was cupping her right breast. Brought his other hand up to cup her
left.

She sagged against him, her head lolling to
the side for he was probing her ear with his tongue, his hot breath—his teeth
nipping deliciously at her lobe.

“You do things to my body that are illegal
on many worlds,” she told him.

“Enjoyable things, I hope,” he whispered
back then moved his head so he could give her other ear the attention it
deserved—kissing his way from her shoulder, up her neck to press his tongue
into her ear.

“Wickedly enjoyable things, milord,” she
responded and he saw her thighs clench even tighter.

He drew his fingers together until he could
mold his thumb, index and middle fingers around her nipples.

“Seyzon,” she groaned.

“Aye, my love?” he asked.

“I need you.”

“And you shall have me,” he returned.

“Now,” she said, her voice filled with what
sounded to him like desperation.

He plucked hard at her nipples and she
ground her ass against him.

“I’ll not have our first time be in a tub,”
he stated.

“I would prefer that it was,” she said
quietly.

And in that moment he knew. Vindan had
taken her in a bed and she did not want to be reminded of it. Their first time
together needed to be as different from what had happened at Riverglade as he
could make it.

“All right,” he said. “But first…”

He slid his hands down her body until he
could rest his right hand against the spiky nest at the apex of her legs.

“Relax,” he said and put his other hand
down so he could pry her legs apart. “Let me have you, dearling.”

He felt rather than heard her swallow and
then she eased her legs open. Using the backs of his hands, he pushed them as
far apart as the tub would allow. With slow, measured rhythm, he began running
his hands lightly along the insides of her thighs. His thumbs flexed against
her nest with each upward pass but never quite touched that part of her he knew
would cause a shivering reaction when grazed.

“Can you feel me hard against you?”

“Aye,” she said—the word low and drawn out.

“When I take you to the bed, you are going
to feel that hardness deep inside you.”

“But you were going to—”

He stopped both the words and the breath in
her throat when he ran his right hand to her center to cup her firmly. He
pressed his middle finger inside her warm slit.

“Seyzon!” she gasped and a shudder ran
through her.

“Jana,” he replied and started another
rhythm withdrawing and entering her as he fanned his thumb over her clit.

She squirmed and would have closed her legs
but he kept them apart by clamping down on her thigh to hold it in place.

“No, milady,” he said sternly.

Her hands were gripping the tub’s rim.

“Lift your knees,” he said.

There was a moment’s hesitation then she
complied. When her knees were raised, he slid a second finger into her and
increased the speed of his thrusts.

Her breathing became more rapid, shallower.
The back of her head pressed hard against his shoulder and her heels were
jammed against the bottom of the tub. By all rights, her grip on the tub should
have dented the copper, it was so taut.

“Dearling,” he said softly. “Relax. I
cannot pleasure you when you are so tense.” He kissed her ear, his next word a
mere breath. “Relax.”

In slow increments, her body lost some of
its tension though her breasts were rising and falling rapidly as he gently
plied her body.

“So hot,” he whispered. “So slick.”

A third finger entered her then he crooked
his fingers upward until he found the rough little mound.

“Oh!” she said, jerking against him.

From that point on he did not let up on the
slow, measured thrusting or the deep penetration until he felt the first spasm
grip her. At that point, he increased the speed and drove his fingers deeper
inside her—no longer able to keep contact with her clit but he had that other
wondrous spot under his tight control and led her into a violent series of
pulses that tightly gripped his fingers.

“Come for me,” he said and her hands shot
from the tub to the hand between her legs and took hold of his wrist. “Come,
little one.”

Her body was quickening rapidly against his
invasion and when the last, strong quiver faded away, she sagged against him
though she still kept a death grip on his wrist. A shudder undulated through
her and she lay still with her thighs splayed far apart.

“Something tells me you liked that.”

“Evil, evil man,” she said in a throaty
voice.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet, dearling,” he
cooed.

Lavenfeld, nearly three months later

Jana fanned her hand through his chest
hair. She liked the way his pectoral muscles jumped now and again when she
touched his hard little nipples, the way his belly clenched when she dipped her
fingernail into his navel.

“What do you do to keep yourself so hard,
milord?” she asked.

“I think of being inside you.”

She lifted her head from his shoulder to
give him an exasperated look. “’Tis not what I meant and well you know it,” she
grumbled.

He lay on his back with his hands under his
head. One of her legs lay across his while his opposite leg crooked outward.
“Oh, you mean exercise-wise?” he inquired.

“Aye.” She wound a lock of the hair in the
center of his chest around her index finger.

“I do sit-ups, pull-ups, work the salmon
ladder, bench press…”

“Salmon ladder?” she questioned, her hand
stilling.

“It’s a free-standing apparatus which has
two parallel walls with a series of seven notches on each wall. The notches
begin well above your head so you must jump to reach them. In your hands is a
bar. The object is to jump up and snag the bar into the notches, snatch it out,
propel yourself upward without touching the floor then slam the bar into the
notches above where you are hanging. The gap between each rung of the notches
gets larger as you go up the ladder. It builds upper strength.”

Her fingers trailed down to his thighs.
“And what do you do to make your legs so muscular?”

He chuckled. “To tone and increase my lower
body strength, I run. I do squats with weights, lunges, kickbacks. It helps that
I had a rather solid body structure to begin with.”

“I like your body.” She curled her hand
over his thigh to run it along the inside.

“My body likes that you like it,” he told
her as his cock leapt against the back of her hand.

“It does seem to,” she said before gliding
her hand to his shaft and circling it.

He looked down into her beautiful face—his
eyebrows going up as she slid down in the bed. “I’ve created a monster,” he
stated as she positioned herself between his legs with his cock gripped firmly
in her hand.

She’s taken to oral sex like a pro,
he thought as he stared down at the top of her head as she took him
into her mouth. He sucked in a slow, satisfied breath as she began to lave his
head with her very skillful tongue.

“Did he teach you that?”
he had demanded the first time she asked if she could taste him.

The look on her face had cut him to the
core.

“No,”
she had
said, those well-defined brows clashing.
“You have done it to me and I
wanted to…”

“I’m sorry,”
he’d said, cutting her off. His jealousy, his hatred of that night
three months earlier when what was rightfully his had been usurped by a man he
thought his friend, riding him like a cruel master.

“He is not in this bed with us, Seyzon,”
she’d stated.
“I will not
have
him in
this bed with us!”

It was difficult for him not to think of
Vindan when he and Jana made love. The bastard’s presence between them was a
palpable entity that robbed him of some of the pleasure of his wife’s lush
body. The knowledge that Vindan had known her first would always rankle.

“What are you thinking
now
, Zonny?” she
demanded.

He glanced down at her. She was licking her
lips as she stared up at him.

“Nothing.”

“Liar,” she snapped. “
Stop
thinking.
Concentrate on what I am doing!”

When they made love—which was every chance
they got—she required all of him. If his mind wandered, she would pull it back
on course. She
knew
what bothered him. She also knew there was nothing
she could do about it. What she
could
do was distract him.

As she was doing now by licking his shaft
from stem to stern then puckering her lips over the head to suck hard. She had
his balls cupped in her hands and was tugging them gently away from his body.

His knees flopped open wider.

“Gods, woman,” he breathed, reaching up to
grab the brass headboard rungs behind his pillow.

“Umm,” she said around his cock and the
vibration was as effective as a finger in his ass. His body jerked.

As though he were a lollipop, she gave his
head quick little forays with her tongue then lapped the pre-cum from his slit
like cream. All the while her eyes were locked on his—holding him captive—and
her hand was tight around his scrotum.

His cock throbbed with every swipe of her
tongue and when he pulled against the brass rungs, she smiled around his tip.
With practiced ease, she raised up, jerked the nightgown from her body then
straddled his thighs, reaching for his cock to place it at her folds.

“Do you want me, husband?”

“Always,” he replied.

She slid down on his cock until he was
seated tightly within her. He watched in awe as she lifted her arms to thread
her fingers through her hair, push it behind her. Reaching around, she placed
her palms on his thighs, arched her back then began to ride him—swiveling her
hips upon his, lifting her body then settling it down upon him again.

As he knew she wanted him to, he reached
for her breasts to mold them in his palms. His thumbs played over her nipples
as her long hair tickled his thighs with each movement of her lower body. He
jacked his hips up to meet her downward plunge, staring hungrily at her breasts
as they bounced.

By the gods I love her,
he thought as she took possession, control of him. Her body was his
master. He would do anything for her. She was everything to him.

The blood in his veins.

The air in his lungs.

Everything that made him what he was.

He held back—clenching his jaw
tightly—until her inner muscles started to milk him and her orgasm sent spirals
of spasms through her. Her fingernails dug into his thighs and she pushed down
hard on his cock, her thighs tightening against his.

Just as he climaxed—hard and long inside
her glorious body—a knock came at the door.

“Ignore it,” he said through gritted teeth
as wave after wave of cum shot from him. The pleasure was so intense he would
have thrown back his head and shouted had not there not been a visitor at their
bedchamber door.

His lady turned her head to look at the
door as though she expected it to open. She crossed her arms over her naked
chest then looked down at him with concern.

“
Go away!
” he yelled. He slid his
hands to her hips and jerked his body to hers one last time.

But the knocking only grew louder and more
insistent.

Then Arbra’s stern voice intruded like a pail
of cold water thrown over him.

“Milord, you are needed posthaste.”

“Go. Away!”

“Milord, there are riders coming.”

“Tell
them
to go away!” he shouted.

“They bear Prince Vindan’s personal
standard.”

Those words were another pail of icy liquid
tossed upon his body. His eyes met his wife’s.

“What could they want?” she asked, worry
forming in her eyes.

He said nothing for a moment then shook his
head. “I don’t know.”

She moved off him to sit beside him on the
mattress. Her arms were still locked over her bare chest.

He sat up, swung his legs off the bed. “Get
dressed.” He reached for his pants that were crumpled on the floor.

“Seyzon…” she said and he could hear the
fear registering in her voice.

“It’ll be all right.” He thrust his legs
into the pants and stood. He bent over to retrieve his white shirt from where
it lay.

“What if they’ve come for me?” she asked,
her lips trembling.

“That’s not why they’re here.” He stuffed
the shirt into his pants then zipped his fly.

“But what if…?”

“I won’t let them take you, Jana. Have no
fear on that account.”

“Then why are they here?” she asked and he
looked over to see tears gathering in her eyes. He went back to the bed, dipped
a knee to the mattress and pulled her into his arms. He cupped the back of her
head against his shoulder.

“I am on the king’s counsel, his adjutant
general,” he said, soothing her back with his other hand. “The king has
probably bid all the lords to Blackhall Castle.”

“Milord?” Arbra insisted from beyond the
door.

“I’m coming!” Seyzon snarled. He kissed his
lady on her forehead then got up from the bed. He snatched up his boots and
headed for the door.

“I love you!” his wife called out.

He turned with his hand on the doorknob. “I
love you more,” he replied.

“Not possible,” she countered with a
tremulous smile.

He blew her a kiss then opened the door.
“This had better be a matter of life or death,” he told Arbra as he closed the
portal. He glanced at the man as they fell into step beside each other. “How
many?”

“Nine,” his mother’s Master-at-Arms
informed him. “I don’t like the looks of it, son.”

“You think they are here to fetch my woman back
to him?”

“I pray not,” the older man said.

“If that is the case, I want you to get her
to safety,” Seyzon said. They had reached the stairs. “Take her down through
the tunnels to Caldwell. Guard her with your life, Sir Frederick.”

Arbra nodded. “I will see to it.” He put
out a hand, stopped Seyzon from going down the stairs. “Be careful, milord.”

“As careful as they will allow me to be,”
Seyzon said grimly. “If they are here for my woman, I’ll not roll over and show
them my belly this time. They’ll get a taste of steel.”

* * * * *

Sir Gilbert Tohre entered Lavenfeld Keep
for the second time in thirty-odd years. He was as uncomfortable this time
around as he had been the last. When Lady Millicent excused herself and closed
the study door behind her departure—leaving him alone with her son—he hooked a
finger under his collar.

“You are sweating, Gilly,” Seyzon told him.

“It is hot in here,” the other man said.

“I’ve a feeling it will get hotter before
all is said and done,” Seyzon quipped. “Why have you come?”

“The prince bids you come to Wicklow.”

Seyzon folded his arms over his chest and
stood with his legs braced a hip’s width apart. “For what purpose?”

Tohre’s eyes shifted nervously from the
hearth to the windows to the floor then back to his host. “You know the Selwyn
Reivers overran Frostgate and are now using it as their headquarters in
Ventura?”

“Aye, I heard,” Seyzon said then tilted his
head to one side. “But that isn’t why you are here. What does he want with me?”

“I’m not privy to the why, milord. I was
given orders and…”

“Am I to go alone to Wicklow or
accompanied?”

The Primary Elite Guard’s brow furrowed.
“Who do you wish to bring with you, milord?”

Seyzon raised a brow. “Did he not bid my
wife journey with me?”

“Nay, but if you wish to bring her…”

“No, I do not,” Seyzon said sternly. “How
long will my presence be required?”

“I do not know the answer to that, either,
milord,” Tohre admitted.

“And the other council members? Will they
be attending this meeting?”

Once more the Elite Guard’s eyes wandered
away. It was obvious he knew more than he was either willing or able to admit.

“Well, let me ask you this then,” Seyzon
said. “Were you told to bring me to Wicklow even should I refuse to come?”

Tohre squared his shoulders, took a deep
breath then released it loudly. “Aye, milord. I was told to bring you back
without fail and to use force if necessary.”

“But no mention was made of my lady-wife.”

The other man shook his head. “No, milord.
None whatsoever. The lady’s name did not come up.”

Seyzon looked to the windows where the
morning light came through the panes in a shaft of golden color. “Did you bring
shackles?” When Tohre didn’t reply, he turned back to the man. “Did you bring
shackles, Gilly?”

“Aye, milord,” Tohre said softly, “but I
was told not to use them unless you got violent and tried to escape.”

“Violent,” Seyzon echoed. He snorted then
shook his head. “All right. Give me ten minutes to say goodbye to my wife.”

“I will need to go with you, milord.”

“Well, of course you will,” Seyzon groused.
He started toward the door. “Can’t have the rebel climbing out the window,
scaling the walls and hot-footing it across the battlements now, can we?”

“I’m sorry, milord.”

“Aye, well, not as sorry as I am,” Seyzon
snapped.

* * * * *

“Why does he want you to come to Wicklow?”
Jana asked. She was standing beside the closet as he took his saddlebags down
from the shelf.

“I don’t know,” he said, not wanting to lie
to her.

Her attention flicked to Tohre who was
hovering in the doorway. She lowered her voice. “Why is he here?”

“Gilly and I have known one another for
years.” He took the bags over to the armoire.

She looked around at Tohre whose smile
didn’t seem to reassure her. She moved closer to her husband. “That didn’t
answer my question, Seyzon. I don’t like the looks of him.”

“He can’t help the way he looks, sweeting.”
Seyzon turned his head toward Tohre. “Just try not to make eye contact with him
and you’ll be okay.”

Tohre pursed his lips as though trying not
to snicker at the comment. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

“He isn’t going to snap chains on you the
instant you are out of my sight, is he?”

“Why would I do that, milady?” Tohre asked.
“Has his lordship done something he shouldn’t have?”

“That’s not funny, Gilly,” Seyzon muttered.

“I don’t like this, Seyzon. Not one bit.”
Jana took his arm. “When will you be back?”