Creston’s thrusts grew harder, firmer, and he ground his pelvis against her every time he plunged deep. He suckled her neck as he thrust, listening to her groan with pleasure. It was moving and beautiful and overwhelming, and after one particularly deep thrust, he felt her release around him. Her entire body bucked with convulsions and that threw him over the edge. He released himself into her sweet body, feeling such a climax that stars danced before his eyes. Still, he continued to make love to her, moving within her, feeling her head mingling with his. Everything was wet and sloppy, but he didn’t care.
He loved it.
With his body still joined to hers, Creston finally opened his eyes to look down at her. Her robe had fallen off, onto the table, and her shift was bunched up around her midsection, but he could see her legs open wide to receive him. He could also see the sheen of his seed glistening on the fluff of dark curls between her legs, as well as on the inside of her thighs. The mere sight of it was enough to cause him to heat up again. Gently, he bent over, kissing her shoulder, the tops of her breasts, before taking a nipple in his mouth again and suckling tenderly.
In his arms, he could feel Ophelia shudder. She was leaning back on the table, arms braced, so her breasts were defenseless against his onslaught. She watched him as he suckled her, studying his long blond lashes and the curve of his face. He had such a gorgeous face. Slowly, she lay back on the table, and he followed her, his mouth never leaving her breasts, and she lay there as he nursed against her. When he shifted, slightly withdrawing from her body, she brought her legs up and trapped him against her.
“Nay,” she whispered. “You’re not going anywhere. Stay where you belong.”
He grinned, a nipple between his teeth, and thrust into her deliberately with his semi-erection. “Like this?” he muttered.
“Like that,” she responded. “Do it again.”
He did, only harder, causing her to yelp with pleasure. Then he did it again and again until he had a steady rhythm going. He wasn’t as hard as he had been, but the woman had him so wildly aroused that his body was ready to go again anyway. It was probably the wine because whenever he had too much wine, he could go all night. At least, he’d been able to when he was younger, but that hadn’t happened in years.
Until now.
They made love twice more on that table before Creston finally carried Ophelia up to their bed, laughing with her because that was where they should have been in the first place. Naked, they crawled into bed together, but before he could take her again, she promptly fell asleep on him. Stress, travel, fear, and the overwhelming nature of the change her life had just undergone had pushed her into sheer exhaustion. Now that she was safe and warm, her body had reacted in kind.
No more flight or fight.
Ophelia was home.
And so was Creston.
PART TWO
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Pox tavern
London
Three Months Later
It was thekind of place one’s mother warned against.
Situated in the Ropery district near the River Thames, the dangerous establishment known as The Pox was legendary. It had excellent food, excellent wine, and beautiful women who smelled like flowers. Those were the positive aspects. The negative aspects involved the fact that at The Pox, one could wager on anything.Anything. There were the usual games of chance, but a man could also wager on things like how far blood would spurt if a man was stabbed in a certain place. Or how much a man could drink and then how far the same man could vomit. There were no rules on wagering at The Pox, and things had been known to get out of hand too many times to count.
It was a paradoxical place—fine food, beautiful women, and then dangerous or immoral surroundings. Great lords would speak disparagingly about the place, yet they would secretly go, not telling their wives, and then sit in a corner and enjoy the best wine from France. Elite knights and drunkards, lowly villeinswould sit alongside one another. As long as a man had coin, The Pox wasn’t particular. But it could be quite lively.
As it was today.
Two of those elite knights were in The Pox when the smoke and fog hung around London, so thick that it was as if some great, unseen hand had knitted a blanket and decided to throw it over the whole of the city. Sometimes the smoke from all of the fires around London could be choking, sitting heavy, especially in the summer when there were no breezes to blow it away, and today happened to be one of those days even though it wasn’t the season for it. The Pox was full of men and women trying to escape the choking air today, and the knights sat in a corner, backs to the wall and facing the door, as they shared a beef knuckle and fine wine between them.
“Where do you go now, Myles?” a man with somewhat dirty, shoulder-length hair said. He was young and handsome, but he had the look of exhaustion about him. “It seems like we have been on this mission so long that I almost don’t know what to do with myself now that it’s over.”
Sir Myles de Lohr, son of the legendary Christopher de Lohr, Earl of Hereford and Worcester, smiled weakly at his companion’s assertion.
“It’s like this every time we finish with a task,” he said. “You feel lost somehow. You’ve been going at full pace for months on end in a life-or-death situation and, suddenly, it is over. Every Executioner Knight feels like that after a mission. You’ve been doing this long enough to know that, Brenton.”
Sir Brenton de Royans nodded in resignation. “Almost two years,” he said. “Ever since your brother came to Bowes Castle and practically forced me into service.”
Myles snorted. “Your father had nothing to say about it.”
“My father was helping your brother,” Brenton said with some animation. “The two of them, taking turns bending myarm behind my back until I cried for mercy and agreed to join the Executioner Knights. You should have seen it!”
Myles was laughing quietly. He wasn’t normally the laughing type, but a rather serious personality, but young Brenton’s description of Peter de Lohr, Christopher’s eldest son and the head of the Executioner Knights network, physically forcing a big, healthy knight into submission was indeed a humorous visual picture.
