Crusader Captive

“Are you Templar or Hospitaller or parish priest come on pilgrimage?”

Simon couldn’t lie, but the truth tasted like gall on his lips. “I am none of those. Yet.”

Her head came up. “How say you?”

“I am pledged to the Knights of the Temple, but there wasn’t time for my induction before I took ship.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So you’re still an aspirant? Not bound by the rules of the order?”

“I’ve chosen to live by those rules until such time as I wear the cross.”

“But you’re not bound?” She gathered her skirts in both hands and pushed to her feet. “Say me no lie, Simon de Rhys. Are you bound or not?”

“No.”

Her head went back. Her nostrils flared. Determination and what looked like desperation darkened her cinnamon-colored eyes.

“Then you need me now even more than before. To be accepted as a Knight of the Temple, you must supply your own armor, warhorse and riding mount along with a squire to see to your needs and mules to transport your equipment.”

“I’m well aware of the requirements,” he replied, his jaw tight.

He’d brought all that and more aboard the ship transporting him to Outremer. But his squire had been swept overboard during the fierce storm that had claimed more than a dozen other desperate pilgrims. Then, just days later, the accursed corsairs had attacked. Simon had battled ferociously until their sheer numbers had overwhelmed him and he’d gone down, struck from behind by a mace. When he’d awoken, he’d been in chains. His sword and the mail surcoat he’d had forged to fit him were gone, of course. And God alone knew who now rode the magnificent warhorse he’d won in the lists.

The loss of his squire and mount had eaten at him almost as much as the loss of his freedom. Yet none of those disasters could presage the devil’s choice this slender, pale-haired siren now offered him.

“The decision is yours,” she said stonily. “Lie with me this night and I will supply all you need to join the ranks of the Templars. Or you may serve me here at Fortemur until you’ve repaid the cost of your purchase.”

As he had but hours ago at the swaying rope bridge, he faced a choice between two rocky, untried paths. He could take this woman, as he now wanted most fiercely to do so and leave on the morrow to fulfill his father’s vow. Or he could serve her for a year or more, let his father rot away and put his own soul at risk.

His eyes cold and his heart like flint, Simon made his choice. “Remove your robes.”

Chapter Three

Jocelyn’s throat went as dry as the deserts crossed by the endless caravans bringing silks and spices from Eastern lands. This cold edict had formed no part of her careful plan.

She’d thought…Assumed…

What? That he would drag open the heavy bed curtains, tumble her to the silken coverlet and lift her skirts? That it would be quickly done, and quickly put behind her?

She had not reasoned this enforced mating through, she now realized. Obviously, it would require some effort on her part that she had not anticipated.

Frowning, she cast back through her mind. She might be a virgin, but many of her ladies were wedded. She’d also overheard more than one giggling maid whispering to another. Such frank and often ribald talk of what one must sometimes do to bring a bedmate to hardness now burned in Jocelyn’s mind.

Apparently this one needed to see her naked to stiffen his lance. So be it. Naked she would get. Yet as she unwound the linen band that framed her face, her nerves were all ajangle and she could scarce draw breath.

One night, she reminded herself fiercely. One night with this man was a hundred times, nay, ten thousand times better than a lifetime walled up with bored, idle women. Women who, if the rumors were true, must needs pleasure themselves since they so rarely went to their lord’s bed. Still, her hand trembled as she laid the linen headband atop the chest that held her folded gowns.

He watched her. Eyes hard, arms crossed against his chest, he followed her every move. As though she were on the auction block this time, to be stripped and displayed for his approval.

“Continue.”

She would not flush or cower like a timid maid. She would not!

Gritting her teeth, Jocelyn removed the girdle belted low across her hips. Her keys and the various accoutrements attached to the belt clinked against each other, the only sounds in the taut silence other than the crackle of the fire.

Her heart hammered as she reached for the ties that held her bliaut at the sides. Her ladies usually disrobed her. She wasn’t used to contorting like a traveling juggler to reach the laces. Thankfully, the first set gave easily enough. Her rose-hued outer robe gaped on that side, displaying the fine linen tunic she wore beneath. But her fumbling fingers couldn’t work the ribbons on the other side. They knotted and drew tighter rather than looser. Lifting her arm, she thrust aside her long sleeve for a better view and pulled on the stubborn strings. They would not give.

Sweet mother of…!

Frustrated and filled with a growing trepidation she refused to acknowledge, Jocelyn was forced to raise her head and meet de Rhys’s unyielding stare.

“The strings are knotted. I cannot loose them.”

He closed the distance between them. His eyes never left her face as he hooked two fingers in the finely woven ribbons. One hard tug ripped them apart. And ripped, as well, the costly fabric they secured.

Jocelyn’s nervousness fled, and years of absolute authority as the chatelaine of Fortemur rushed to the fore. “This gown is made of pail loomed in Alexandria,” she cried angrily. “It’s worth more than a warhorse, or sword of the finest Toledo steel. You will treat it, and me, with respect or I will—”

“You will what?” he cut in with a swift, tight smile she did not like in the least. “Shout out to Sir Hugh? Have me stretched on the rack? Broken on the wheel? How then will you forfeit your maiden’s shield?”

His disrespect fired her fury. Were she not in such desperate straits she would most definitely see him racked. She’d gone this far, however, and by the bones of Saint Catherine, she would have done with this deed and with this man!

With fire in her heart, Jocelyn stepped back, tugged the torn bliaut over her head, and threw it to the floor. Her under-tunic fastened at the neck with buttons of shimmering pearl. They came free of their loops without resistance, and the soft pleats fell to her feet. Shoulders back, head high, she stood before him clad only in her thin linen bellyband, silk-stockings gartered just below her knees and the curved-toe slippers so in fashion at the moment.

Jocelyn was not vain. She knew her breasts were smaller and her hips less rounded when measured against some of her ladies. Nor did she possess the pale, almost bloodless complexion so prized by the women who journeyed to Outremer from the West. Despite potions, gloves and veils, the East’s blazing sun had tinted her face and hands to warmest ivory.

Yet troubadours had composed songs to the luster of her pale tresses and more than one knight had compared her lips to the ripest cherries. Many more had begged to carry her token in the lists, although she knew well their ardor was more for her inheritance than her person.

Still, she was not without wit and a modicum of female attributes. So never, ever had she imagined that a man seeing her disrobed would stand like a stone obelisk and regard her with such seeming disinterest!

“Your shoes and stockings,” he said in a voice as hard as flint. “Remove them, too.”

She did, so furious with him now that she was able to ignore the stinging embarrassment of being forced to bend and display her bottom cheeks.

Heat seared her face when she straightened. It flamed even hotter when he looked her up and down again, as if appraising a mare led into the stable yard for a stallion to mount.

And like a skittish mare, she quivered under his unrelenting gaze. Despite the warmth from the fire, enough drafts slipped past the tapestries covering the walls to cause shivers to ripple across her skin and her nipples to pucker. She could feel them growing tight, see how they drew—and held—his gaze. When those piercing blue eyes met hers again, they were no longer so cold and flat.

“Now me.”

The abrupt command made her blink. “What say you?”

“Remove my clothing.”

Her jaw dropped, then snapped shut again. Enough of this! She was no serf, no scullery maid, to be treated so.

“Remove it yourself.”

He shrugged aside her flash of temper. “You wish me to service you, lady? Then you must use your hands on me. And your mouth. And whatever else I so desire.”

“It takes all that to make you stiffen?”

Something sparked in his blue eyes. Surprise? Derision? Or was it some jest only he understood?

“Fear not, lady,” he drawled. “I am as stiff as a lance even now. But if we’re to do this, I would have some pleasure of it…and of you.”

“Pleasure was not part of our bargain.”

“Not part of yours, mayhap. It figures large in mine.” He beckoned her forward. “You may begin.”

For the life of her, Jocelyn couldn’t understand how he’d turned the tables on her. He was the bound servant, she the mistress. Yet now, apparently, she must needs strip the dolt to his skin if he was to perform as she needed him to.

With a thunderous scowl, she stepped forward and reached for the unadorned leather belt Sir Hugh had obtained for him. It came off easily, but she had to work to remove the coarse wool tunic.

Heavens but he was tall! Nor would he bend to make her task easier. To drag the tunic over his head, she had to go up on her toes and press close to his chest.

So close the tips of her breasts brushed against him. The springy gold hair that arrowed from his chest to the drawstring of his breeks made her nipples tighten even more. Jocelyn near gasped at the sensation that streaked from her breasts to her belly.

She clenched her teeth, refusing to let him see how he’d affected her, and stared at an array of old scars standing white against his tanned skin. One angled across his left shoulder, another circled his lower ribs. Battle scars, or gained in tourney. Her grandfather had collected as many or more.

“Continue,” he instructed, jerking her from contemplation of his chest.

She had to go down on her knees to remove his borrowed felt shoes and woolen stockings. That put her at eye level with his hips, and the bulge in his breeks gave her ample evidence of the truth of his assertion. He was indeed as hard and stiff as a lance.

Jocelyn’s throat went tight. Her stomach tied in knots, and a sudden damp heat swirled between her thighs. Breathing through flared nostrils, she forced herself to rise and stand before him.

“You are not finished, lady.”

She could not mistake the glint in his eyes this time. It was indeed derision, with more than a hint of mockery.

Her temper rising, she tugged the strings of his breeks so hard they broke. The loose-fitting drawers gave way, baring lean flanks and thighs corded with muscle.

And his shaft. God help her, his shaft! It was of a size to match the rest of him. Thick and long and blue-veined, it jutted from a nest of dark gold hair.

“You’re too big,” she gasped, backing away. “You’ll…You’ll split me asunder.”

Simon’s breath hissed out. The unmistakable fright in her voice pierced through the lust her rosy nipples and sleek flanks stirred in him.

She was a maid, he reminded himself savagely. She couldn’t know how a woman stretched and grew moist to ease a man’s passage. Nor how to angle her hips to take his full length. Now he would have to teach her.

With an effort of will, he fought the urge to drag her down to the thick carpet and take her without regard to her fear or comfort. The fierce struggle locked his jaw and put a harsh rasp in his voice.

“You will not split, although you will feel some pain when I pierce your shield. Surely the other women here at Fortemur have spoken to you of that.”

“Yes, but…” Her horrified gaze remained fixed on his shaft. “But they can’t have been pierced by one such as you!”

Despite the dizzying combination of pain and lust that held him in its maw, Simon had to smile. “When you are more well used, lady, you will know such a remark strokes a man’s pride most mightily.”

Her gaze whipped to his face. “I give not a brass penny for your pride! All I want—” She stopped. Drawing in a shuddering breath she squared her shoulders. “All I want is to finish this damnable business.”

She looked so much like a sacrificial victim about to go to the stake that Simon couldn’t help himself. His smile widened into a wicked grin. Bowing as low as his as yet-unhealed wounds would allow, he swung an arm toward the carved wooden bed.

“Then get you between the sheets, lady, and we will see it done.”

He followed her across the solar. Pleasure warred with pain as his hungry gaze roamed from her unbound hair to her swaying hips to her trim calves and shapely ankles. When he made the return trip, his eyes fixed on the linen band swathing her hips.

Did she have her monthly courses? Is that why she bound herself? It wouldn’t matter to Simon if that were the case, although he knew most women shied away from intimacy at such a time. But he saw no thickened cloth within the band that would indicate such was the case with the Lady Jocelyn.

Mayhap this was some new fashion. Some trick learned from Eastern women to entice their men. If so, it most certainly worked. The promise of the shadowed cleft between her rear cheeks put him in a sweat.

Stiff-spined, she drew back the heavy bed curtains. They rattled on their iron rings like the chains he’d worn but a short time ago. The sound was loud in his ears as she dragged down an exquisitely embroidered coverlet. When she slid onto the linen sheets, the down-filled mattress rustled beneath her and gave off the sweet scent of rosemary and lavender. She lay there, rigid and unmoving, while Simon looked his fill. Her breasts were high and proud and pink tipped, her waist narrow, and her mound…

His groin tightened, so hard and fast he near doubled over. He hadn’t thought the woman could make him hurt more than he already did, but the pale gold curls at the apex of her thighs had him gritting his teeth.

“Move to the side and give me room.”

She paled at his gruff tone, and Simon swallowed a curse. Oaf that he was, he’d only added to the woman’s fear. He would have to work now to make sure she could indeed take him. Pray God and all the saints he didn’t spill himself in the process.

He managed to hold back, but the urge to thrust into her was like a knife in his belly. Each stroke of his hand, every brush of his mouth on her heated skin drove the blade deeper. And when he suckled first one breast, then the other, her gasp of surprised pleasure came within a hairbreadth of shattering his iron control.

Her scent filled him. Musk from the golden pomander she’d worn on her girdle. Costly scented oil brushed into her silken tresses. Rosemary and lavender from her bed. And female. Hot, sensual female.

He was afire front and back when he kneed her legs apart. Taut as a bowstring when he slid his palm down the quivering curve of her stomach to cup her mound. Levering onto his elbow, he watched her face as he spread her slick folds and thumbed the nub at her center.

The eyes she’d squeezed shut flew open. A flush spread across her cheeks. When he pressed the nub, she bit down on her lower lip but couldn’t hold back the small, breathless pants that escaped her. Nor the wet heat that dampened Simon’s hand. But when he slid a finger inside her, she bucked and tried to scuttle away.

He restrained her easily. “Let me pleasure you. It will ease our joining.”

His words came low and gruff and hoarse. He felt as though he were on the rack. His back flamed, and his groin ached with such savagery he could scarce draw breath. It took all he had to contain his own vicious need and slide his finger in, out, and in again.

When he judged her ready, he kneed her legs farther apart and positioned himself between her thighs. He rested his weight on a bent arm. With his free hand, he guided his shaft to her hot, slick flesh.

The tip probed, pushed, entered. She gasped again and wiggled frantically.

“Wait, de Rhys! Wait! It’s too monstrous! You cannot…I cannot…”

“Aye, sweeting, we can.”

He canted his hips until the tip was well and truly lodged, then bent again to suckle. His teeth rasped the tight, hard nipple. His tongue soothed it. When she gave a hoarse moan and thrashed her head back and forth on the bolster, Simon knew she could take his full length. Straightening, he flexed his thighs and thrust home.

Jocelyn gave a mewling cry and arched under him. The pain she’d been warned to expect came sharp and fast, but lasted only a few moments. With his second and third thrust, she began to feel something almost pleasurable.

As the feeling gathered intensity, her breath grew short and hot. Her senses whirled. Blind instinct led her to hook her calves around his and lift her hips to meet his. But just when she thought the sensations gathering low in her belly would lead to something more, something that beckoned tantalizingly just beyond her reach, he lunged a final time.

Grunting, he collapsed atop her and buried his face in her neck. She waited, scarce daring to breathe. Her heart hammered in her chest. Her nerves sizzled and spit like hot coals.

Yet he made no further move. None at all. Except for the rise and fall of the chest mashing hers and a raspy rustle of his breath in her ear, she might have thought him dead.

Slowly, so slowly, the fire in her blood subsided. Pressed into the mattress by de Rhys’s slack body, she became all too aware of his weight. The man was as heavy as an ox. Her nose wrinkled as she breathed in his sweat-drenched scent. And the odor of the sticky wetness that now trickled between her legs.

So much for the sly grins and titillated laughter of her ladies, she thought in chagrin. This business of mating was all well and good enough in its way, but…

Somehow Jocelyn had expected more. Oh, her body had heated everywhere de Rhys had stroked it. And she’d near come out of her skin when he’d tormented her breasts. Yet all this fuss and bother had left her wanting. Not to mention smelly and sweaty and thoroughly disgruntled.

And now the dolt came close to smothering her. Scowling, she pushed at his shoulder. “De Rhys. You’re too heavy by half. Move yourself.”

He made an inarticulate sound and rolled onto his back. “Sorry, sweeting.”

That was another matter, she thought in mounting frustration. That casual endearment, as if she was some slattern he’d just taken out behind the stables. Who was he to address her with such familiarity?

The irony of that thought didn’t strike her until she’d drawn the coverlet up to her chin. She’d yielded her maidenhead to this man, had committed the sin of fornication with him, yet she hadn’t so much as given him leave to address her by name.

Ah, well. It was done. Now all she had to do was send him on his way. Clutching the coverlet, Jocelyn propped herself up on one elbow. He lay sprawled on his back beside her with his eyes closed and one knee bent. The gold hair dusting his chest glinted in the firelight.

And, she saw with a gulp, the shaft that had so unnerved her with its jutting size now lay limp against his thigh.

“De Rhys,” she said again, dragging her gaze from his nether parts. “Gather your garments and dress. You must leave my chamber.”

He answered with a low grunt.

“Heed me,” she commanded. “You’ve fulfilled your part of our bargain. Sir Hugh will see you outfitted as I promised. You are free to leave Fortemur on the morrow.”

His chest rose and fell in a slow, soughing breath.

“De Rhys! Do you hear me?”

His eyes opened. They lacked their previous intensity, Jocelyn saw with some surprise. Dull, almost lackluster, they fixed on her face.

“I hear you,” he muttered.

Was this what coupling did to a man? Drain him of all strength and vitality? If so, it was no wonder knights refrained from lying with a woman before tourneys.

“Then get you gone from my bed,” Jocelyn ordered. “And remember your pledge to say nothing of what happened here tonight.”

“Why are you so worried that I will speak of what happened between us?” he asked as he slowly pushed himself up. “Do you fear no man will take you to wife if he knows you won’t bring him the gift of your maidenhead?”

“I’ll bring him Fortemur,” she answered, shrugging. “With such a rich dowry, there will be men aplenty who’ll take me to wife.”

Just not the man the king wanted to give her to. Or so Jocelyn prayed.

“You must go,” she insisted. “I would not have my ladies find you in my chamber come morning.”

His movements slow and lethargic, he threw aside the sheet. Jocelyn’s gaze went instantly to the red splotches on the linen. The stains brought home the full enormity of what she’d done.

“By all the saints…” she murmured.

Then she looked up and another, far more emphatic exclamation threatened to burst from her.

“Holy Mother! What did they do to you?”

The cuts crisscrossed his entire back, deeper and more vicious than any she’d ever seen. Unlike the scars on his chest, these were fresh. Some had scabbed over, some were barely crusted. Others oozed beneath the unguent she belatedly remembered Sir Hugh saying he’d had smeared on them.

Jocelyn had put men to the whip before. Women, too, when their crime warranted. Not very often, thank the Lord, but enough times to know no ordinary leather thong would score the flesh like this.

She scrambled up on her knees, still clutching the coverlet in tight fists. “What manner of lash did they use on you?”

His shoulders rose in a shrug. “One barbed with lead tips.”

“But why? And why so many strokes?”

A dry note crept into his voice. “I’ve been told I have a somewhat stubborn nature.”

Like hers, she acknowledged silently while he pushed off the bed with obvious effort. When he crossed to the clothing they’d left in a heap, Jocelyn couldn’t take her eyes from the horrific cuts. Thus she saw him stagger as he bent to pick up his breeks. He threw out a hand to steady himself, but found nothing to grasp.

She leaped out of bed to rush to his aid. Before she could reach him, he toppled like a felled oak.

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