“Did you like it? When you were growing up, I mean.”
I thought about it for a moment, remembering when times were much more simple in our little village. My mother and father would always close down the shop in order to help prepare the grand feast that everyone came together to eat and then they would dance together late into the night around the huge bonfire that was set in the middle of the village.
It had made me happy to watch back then before life grew increasingly complicated with every passing year. I had wanted what they had—a romance to speak of fondly to my own children one day.
But that village no longer existed and our Imbolc celebrations were much larger than that modest affair had been.
Truthfully, I stayed in on those nights when the rest of Camelot celebrated raucously. It did not seem right to go out and celebrate when many still looked at me with pitying eyes.
“Bedivere?” Guinevere prodded, giving my arm a little squeeze.
I jerked out of my thoughts of the past, shaking them away as if they were lingering cobwebs. “I enjoyed the celebrations very much.”
“And did you dance?” Guinevere asked, setting down the door handle.
“At times,” I said, suddenly nervous. It had been many years since I had danced to anything. “I fear it is not one of my talents.”
Dainty, dark brows lifted as a slow, mischievous smile spread across Guinevere’s features. “So you’re saying you wouldn’t dance with me if I asked?”
My mouth felt dry as I answered her. “I would do anything you asked of me, Guinevere.”
Her smile slackened to shock as we stared at one another, the truth of my words hanging in between us.
I cupped her face in my hand, feeling the way her heartbeat thrummed under my fingertips, and pulled her up for a kiss.
Her lips opened in a gasp, her tongue sliding along mine as she stumbled back a bit into the table, sending several of the pieces clattering to the ground.
“Oh shit!” she squeaked, pulling away for a moment to look at the damage. “I’m sorry!”
I ignored her apologies and instead pulled her with me up the two steps that led to my bed.
“Are you trying to make sure I don’t break anything else?” Guinevere asked pertly, her brown eyes dancing as she reached forward and gave my chest a small shove, her request for me clear.
I plopped down onto the edge of the bed, suddenly glad I had resisted the urge to be slovenly this morning and had made it up neatly. Somehow, in the back of my mind, I had known this night would end as such. It was as if I had been waiting for this moment ever since she had fallen into Arthur’s arms.
“You could melt down every one of my pieces and pour them over my head and I would thank you gladly,” I told her, the words tumbling off of my lips faster than my mind could catch up with them.
“Bedivere!” Guinevere gasped with a shocked laugh. “What has gotten into you? My solemn knight is suddenly very talkative.”
I shrugged, inhaling her honeysuckle scent—sweetened with her arousal—deep into my body. “I have never had much to say before.”
Guinevere pushed in between my legs, spreading them around her thighs as she toyed with the knots that made up the leather doublet I was wearing. “I’m afraid that if you keep talking like this, I’m going to have to beat the other ladies off with a stick.”
I shot her a startled look and the omega threw her head back and laughed. “I wasn’t being serious, Bedivere, I was only—”
“Joking,” we said in unison. It was a phrase I had heard often from her mouth when she was teasing one of the other people in the castle. Most had moved on from her odd way of speaking, chalking it up to her less-than-typical upbringing in King Leodegrance’s court. But I loved to listen to all of the strange words she would throw out at random, weaving a colorful tapestry with her words and her incredibly dry sense of humor.
“Please do not hit the other ladies of the court, Guinevere,” I told her softly as I used my hand to tug at the stays of her green riding dress, loosening it until it began to slip down around her shoulders. “I fear they may accuse you of becoming a tyrant.”
Guinevere allowed her dress to slide down her body until she stood in front of me in her linen shift, the fire from the forge behind her showing the outline of her curves in a way that nearly made me spend myself before we even began.
As I watched, my cock was rock hard in my trousers, I ached to feel her soft skin against mine as soon as I could.
It had been years since I had welcomed a woman into my bed and never before had I felt quite the level of anticipation as I was feeling now.
She was a picture—a goddess brought to life in front of me. Her creamy skin seemed to glow in the firelight, making her seem even more ethereal as she made short work of my doublet, shoving the leather down my shoulders before tugging at the linen shirt beneath.
“You are beautiful,” I murmured, every detailed compliment I had flying clear out of my head as I seemed to revert back to my old ways.
