Crusader Captive (3 page)

“I’ll explain in a moment. But first I must have your oath that you will never speak of what happens here tonight.”

“You would trust the oath of a man you bought for a few pieces of gold?”

“Yes.” Only because she had no choice. “Do you so swear?”

His answer came slowly and with great reluctance, but it came. “I do.”

A great weight seemed to press on Jocelyn’s chest. Her glance shifted to Sir Hugh. He pleaded with her.

“You need not do this,” he growled.

“I have no choice.” She gathered her courage and her dignity. “Leave us, please.”

“My lady…”

“Leave us.”

For a moment she thought he would refuse. But he’d served both her and her grandfather for so many years that he finally acquiesced. Not without a final word of warning for the captive, however.

“I’ll wait in the guardroom below. One scream, one shout from Lady Jocelyn will signal your death.”

She stood silent until the thud of his footsteps on the stairs faded before she closed the tower door. Sir Hugh would see none came up to disturb them, so she didn’t turn the key in the lock. When she faced the captive again, she had to struggle to keep the nervousness from her voice.

“How are you called?”

“Simon de Rhys.”

“Are you knight or mercenary?”

“Knight. What do you want of me?”

Jocelyn took both her temper and her decisiveness from the grandsire who’d raised her. She’d ordered women flogged and men branded for a variety of crimes without hesitation. Thus she bristled at his tone, yet found herself dancing around his brusque question.

A small, mocking corner of her mind called her a coward. She’d planned this night down to the veriest detail. Had risked her life and those of her escort to set her plan in motion. Yet now that she’d reached the crucial point in her scheme, she found herself hesitating.

“Would you have wine?” she asked, gesturing to the table set close to the stone hearth. “Or dates?”

“No. What do you want of me?”

Very well. He wished it without bard or barding. So be it.

“I want you to lie with me.”

He reared back. “What say you?”

“I want you in my bed this night, and this night only. Then you will leave Fortemur with all I promised you.”

Brows bleached by the sun to the color of sanded oak snapped together. Suspicion warred with incredulity in his face. “Why?”

“The reason is not your concern,” she said haughtily. “Only that I wish to be rid of my maidenhead.”

He looked her up and down with an insolence that brought the blood rushing to her cheeks.

“You don’t need to purchase a stud for that. One of your men-at-arms could do the deed for you. Or any crone with a broomstick, for that matter.”

The crude suggestion brought her chin up. Crows would peck out her eyes before she would admit she’d considered both such desperate courses! But if asked—when asked by the king—she must be able to swear by all she held holy that she’d lain with a man and was no longer virgin.

When that happened, she fully expected Baldwin to unleash the full fury of his wrath. Although he was but a few years older than Jocelyn herself, the king clung as tenaciously to his birthright as she did to hers. Whoever thwarted his plans for an alliance with the emir by taking his ward’s maidenhead would suffer mightily for it. She would not allow any of the men who served her so loyally to take the blame. That would be hers and hers alone to bear.

“The why and how of this are not your concern, de Rhys. Only the deed itself.”

His lip curled. “So you would barter a man’s freedom for a rut?”

“You’ll have your freedom, whether we rut or not,” Jocelyn returned stiffly. “But it will take you at least a year to earn back the price I paid for you. So the choice is yours, de Rhys. One night in my bed, or twelve months as my vassal?”

Twelve months! Simon’s gut twisted. Twelve months, and his father would most like be dead of the wasting sickness that had laid him low.

If Gervase de Rhys went to his Maker, would Simon then be free of the pledge binding him to the Knights Templar? Free to win lands of his own? Free to wed, or at least bed for more than a single night, a female such as this one?

It had been months since he’d had a woman. Although he hadn’t yet been formally inducted into the ranks of the Knights Templar, he’d prepared himself both mentally and physically for the demands so unique to their order.

The great keeps that the Templars held here and in the West served as both monasteries and cavalry barracks. Within them, the members of the order lived as pious monks shed of all but the humblest robes and sandals. When called to war, however, they took up sword and shield and faced death with indifference. They were the first to attack, the last to retreat. And whether at prayer or at war, they sought at all times to rise above the sins of the flesh.

Simon knew he would have to struggle mightily with that. He was a man, after all. One with strong appetites.

And the lady of Fortemur was much a woman, he acknowledged. That silken hair. Those ripe lips. The strong, firm chin now raised to such a stubborn angle.

Lust for her rose in him, so fast and fierce it seared his veins. Or mayhap it was pain that licked at his back like tongues of flame. The source of the heat didn’t matter. Whatever the reason for it, Simon wanted to give this pale-haired witch what she asked from him.

The man in him ached to tear her laces and strip away her gown. To bare her breasts and belly and flanks to the firelight. Drag her down to the carpet and thrust into her with all the fury that had built in him since his capture.

He wanted her, but he would not have her.

“I cannot bed you, lady, this night or any other. I am pledged to the Church.”

“The Church!”

The color bled from her cheeks. Dismay filled her eyes. Gasping, she dropped to her knees and made the sign of the cross. Once, twice, in quick succession.

“Forgive me, Father! I did not know… I could not know…”

Shame suffused her face and voice. Head bowed, she addressed him in a voice rife with mortification.

“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

J
ocelyn’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.