Hazel's Promise (The Fey Quartet Book 2) (6 page)

IT WAS DISCONCERTING
to be back at the creek again. Yesterday, he’d been about to bathe here when a stranger had passed by . . . and now here he was, back again, with that same stranger. Except she wasn’t a stranger any more. Was it
really
only yesterday? It felt as if time had distorted itself, cramming several days’ worth of experiences into only a few hours.

Hazel washed his face ruthlessly with a scrap of blanket, and then examined the cut. “It doesn’t need sewing up. In fact, I don’t think you’ll even get a black eye.”

“Good.” Tam flexed his right hand. The fingers no longer tingled. A bruised arm and a cut cheek . . . If those were the only mementos he carried away from the fight, he was astonishingly lucky.

“Two outlaws yesterday, and three today . . . Is the road normally so dangerous?”

“No,” Tam said. “There must be a gang of them. Happens from time to time.”

“Should we tell Dappleward? I know they can’t enter Glade Forest, bu
t—
”

“I will definitely tell Dappleward,” Tam said. “He’ll send some men to clear them out.”
Me among them, probably
.

He looked at Hazel. She was extraordinarily lovely—the elegant cheekbones and soft, full mouth, the lustrous brown eyes. “I’ve never seen anyone fight like you. You were . . .”
Terrifying
. “I think you’re a berserker.”

Hazel blinked and sat back on her heels. Her brow creased. “Me? A berserker?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

I do
. Tam climbed to his feet. “We’ve still got another hour or two of daylight. Let’s keep going.”

Hazel stood. “I slew your dragons for you.”

“Believe me, I know,” Tam said, reaching for Marigold’s rope. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“You owe me a kiss.”

Tam froze, and then turned his head to look at her. “What?”

“A kiss,” Hazel said again.

Tam tried to read her expression. “Um . . . it’s not necessary, you know.”

Hazel’s face tightened, as if he’d slapped her. “You don’t want to kiss me?”

“Well, yes, but
you
don’t want to kiss me.”

Hazel frowned, her dark eyebrows winging together. “Why don’t I want to?”

“Because you don’t fully trust me anymore. And you don’t much like me either.”

“I don’t? Why?”

“Because I told you why I kissed you last night.”

Her face cleared. “Oh, that.”

Yes, that
.

Hazel crossed her arms and studied him. “So you think I don’t trust you? Or like you overmuch?”

Tam nodded.

“Why?”

“You stopped talking, after I told you.”

“I stopped talking because we were walking too fast. My opinion of you didn’t change.”

“Oh.” Tam began to feel more cheerful.

Hazel examined his face, her eyes slightly narrowed, as if she wanted to see inside his skull. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t trust you?”

Tam shook his head. “No,” he said emphatically. “I’d never do anything to hurt you. Ever.”

A smile lit her face. “Then you owe me a kiss.”

“Now?” Tam said hopefully.

Hazel grinned, and turned towards the road. “I’ll let you know when.”

Tam grabbed Marigold’s rope and followed her. There was a buoyant spring in his step.
Hazel wants to kiss me
. He felt like laughing out loud.

A BERSERKER, TAM
had said. Hazel turned the word over in her head and worried at it like a squirrel worrying a nut.
Me? A berserker?

Her memory of the fight was vague. She’d lost control,
that
she knew. Lost her temper, lost control. Maybe that was what it meant to be a berserker?

Yesterday, when she’d been attacked, it hadn’t been anger that had consumed her, but terror. The outlaws had overcome her easily. Today, rage had obliterated fear and she had seriously injured—perhaps even killed—two men. That was sobering.
Very
sobering. But she wasn’t sorry for it. Not if it meant that Tam was alive.

She glanced at Tam, sauntering alongside her, whistling under his breath. The cut made a thin, red slash along his cheekbone.

Tam caught her glance, and grinned. “I have time for that kiss now.”

To her annoyance, Hazel felt herself blush. “I don’t,” she said, and lengthened her stride.

Tam whistled a few bars of a song, and then said, “I have time now, too.”

Hazel cast him a stern glance. It bounced off Tam like an arrow bouncing off a breastplate. He gave her a wide, innocent smile.

They walked another hundred yards. “Still got time . . .” Tam said.

Hazel smacked him on the arm. “I get to choose when.”

“WE’LL NOT MAKE
it to Dapple Reach before dark,” Tam said. “May as well stop here.”

Hazel looked around. A creek ran alongside the cart track, and on the other side of the creek was one of Glade Forest’s dells, the grass studded with wildflowers. It looked a good place to spend the night.

She gathered firewood while Tam tended to Marigold. Now that they’d stopped, she realized how weary she was. And hungry. They’d not eaten anything since morning.

Hazel crouched and dumped an armful of twigs and branches on the ground and glanced across at Tam. He looked weary, too.

She watched as he tethered the donkey, as he scratched between her ears.

Tam had a very nice face, full of kindness and patience and laughter. The face of a man you could trust.

Hazel narrowed her eyes. There was something extremely familiar about the wide forehead, the high-bridged nose, the angular cheekbones.
Where have I seen that nose before? That forehead?

He said he had his father’s looks. Therefore, she must have seen his father somewhere.

When? Where?

Tam knelt at the creek and washed his hands, cupped them and drank, wiped his mouth—and looked up and caught her watching him.

He grinned, and the weariness vanished from his face. “I have time now.”

Hazel considered this statement for a moment, then came to a decision. “All right.”

She almost laughed at the astonishment on Tam’s face, and then the astonishment vanished and his expression changed, becoming intent, and she found herself suddenly nervous.

Tam climbed to his feet and crossed the grass.

Hazel’s heartbeat doubled, then tripled. She hastily stood.

Tam halted, close enough to touch her. “Are you certain, sweet Hazel?” His face was serious, but there was a smile in his eyes.

Hazel nodded, not trusting her voice.

Tam reached out and cupped the nape of her neck with one hand, drew her closer, and bent his head.

His kiss was gentle and sweet.

Hazel’s nervousness evaporated. She relaxed and let him slide one arm around her waist and gather her closer, let him coax open her lips with his tongue.

The kiss deepened, became less gentle. Hazel pressed herself even closer, reveling in the taste of Tam’s mouth, the strength of his arm around her waist, the heat of his long, lean body.

Tam broke the kiss, releasing her.

“What—?”

“Don’t worry,” Tam said. “Not finished yet. Not by a long shot.” He sat on the grass and reached up for her hand, tugging her off balance and onto his lap—laughed at her surprise—and put his arms around her and tipped himself backwards until he was lying down.

Hazel froze, startled by the intimacy of it. His chest was beneath her. Her legs straddled his hips.

Tam laughed up at her. “Come on,” he said. “Kiss me.”

He was giving control to her, she realized.
She
was on top.
She
had the power.

Hazel bent her head and pressed a light kiss to one corner of Tam’s mouth, then the other. Such a wonderful mouth. Perfect, in fact. She nipped Tam’s bottom lip gently, then licked where she’d nipped.

Tam’s arms came around her waist, gathering her closer.

Hazel nipped his lip again, and this time Tam opened his mouth, inviting her inside.

Hazel closed her eyes and sank into the kiss, losing herself in Tam’s taste, in the play of his tongue against hers.

The large, hard lump pressing against her belly, she abruptly realized, was Tam’s erection.

Alarm jolted through her. She broke the kiss.

“What?” Tam said.

Hazel stared down at him. He was flushed and breathless, his lips rosy from their kiss, his blue eyes dark and almost dazed.

I can trust this man
. Tam wasn’t going to fling her on her back and rape her.

“Nothing,” Hazel said. She bent her head again, kissed him again.

Now that she was aware of his erection, it made the kiss more exciting. Heat and tension built in her body. She rocked her hips, pressing closer to him.

Tam groaned. His whole body seemed to jerk.

Hazel laughed, husky, breathless. “Like that?” she whispered against his mouth, and rocked again.

Tam groaned again, and shuddered. “Yes.”

The kiss deepened, becoming almost frantic. Hazel rocked against Tam, kissed him, rocked, kissed. So much heat, so much pleasure, so much tension building inside her—

Tam tore his mouth free. “Stop, or I’ll spill in my braies.”

“It’s my kiss,” Hazel told him. “I get to say when we stop.” And she laughed into his mouth and rocked against him again.

Tam’s hips bucked helplessly. He uttered an inarticulate cry and rolled from under her, fumbling with his hose, scrambling to his knees. She caught a glimpse of his penis, ruddy and engorged, before his hand closed around it and he turned away from her. His seed spurted into the grass.

Hazel bit her lip. She’d taken her teasing too far.
I should have stopped when he asked
. She nervously watched Tam straighten his clothes. Would he be angry? Embarrassed?

Tam turned his head and looked at her. His lean cheeks were flushed, his eyes so dark they were almost black, and his stare . . .

Not angry or embarrassed.

Hazel’s heart began to thump loudly in her chest.

There was nothing mischievous, nothing teasing, in Tam’s eyes. His gaze was intent and hungry.
He wants to bed me
.

Muscles she didn’t even know she had clenched in her womb, in her belly.

She saw Tam draw in a deep breath, saw him struggle to master himself—and then he breathed out, a long exhalation, and he was the Tam she knew again. The alarming intensity was gone from his eyes.

He pushed to his feet and crossed to the creek, crouched, and washed his hands. Hazel watched, soberly. What Herculean effort had that taken him?

Tam stood, wiped his hands on his tunic, and turned back to her.

Hazel stood, too. “I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly.

“Don’t be.” Tam’s smile was easy, cheerful. He slung an arm around her shoulders, gave her a quick, friendly hug and a kiss on the brow, and released her. “Let’s get that fire going. I’m so hungry I could eat poor Marigold, and that would be distressing for both her and me.”

Hazel huffed a laugh. Her awkwardness vanished. It was one of the things she loved most about Tam: the way he made her laugh.

She turned to follow him—and came to a halt, rerunning her last thought in her head: One of the things she loved most about Tam.

One of the things she
loved
about him.

Hazel stared at Tam as he crouched at his packsaddle and rummaged for the tinderbox.

Do I love this man?

DARKNESS FELL. THEY
ate sitting on either side of the fire—half a loaf of bread and the last of the cold meat. Hazel tried to eat slowly, to not wolf her food down. She glanced at Tam. Firelight and shadows flickered over his face.

Have I fallen in love with you, Tam No-Name?

The emotion that she felt for Tam wasn’t infatuation, breathless and dizzying. It was deeper and more solid than that, a sense of
rightness,
deep in her bones.
This man is right for me. Being with him makes me happy
.

It didn’t matter that Tam was poor. She’d been poor all her life. She knew how to forage for food in the woods, how to stretch a meal from one night to three, knew how to patch and re-patch clothes, and re-patch them yet again.

It didn’t matter that she didn’t know his full name, or how he earned his keep. Thatcher, weaver, swineherd . . . it was unimportant. What mattered was Tam himself. And Tam himself was someone she had come to love, someone she wanted to be with, not just for two days, but for
ever
.

Hazel rested her gaze on him, on the bones and hollows of his face. A lively, merry, intelligent face. A face that was a pleasure to look at.

Except that Tam didn’t look merry, right now. He was chewing slowly, deep in thought, more serious than she’d yet seen him.

Recognition teased at her. The high-bridged nose, the serious frown . . . Where had she seen that before?

Tam looked up and caught her watching him. The impact of his gaze made Hazel slightly breathless. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

Tam’s frown didn’t ease. If anything, it deepened.

“What?”

Tam put down his slice of bread. His expression, the way he drew in his breath . . . He looked like a man preparing to jump off a cliff.

“What?” Hazel said again, alarmed.

“Hazel . . . will you marry me?”

HAZEL HAD BEEN
proposed to before, but never so unexpectedly. She gaped at Tam for a moment, her mouth open in shock. “You want to marry
me
?” Her voice rose on the last word.

“Yes.”

Her heart seemed to have climbed up her throat, where it sat beating rapidly. Hazel swallowed and managed to say, “Why?”

“Why?” Tam half-laughed, and shook his head. “Hazel, you’re unlike any woman I’ve ever met. You’re . . . You’re faithful and true-hearted and courageous. You’re not meek and timid, and you’re definitely not boring. You’re strong-minded. You take risks. You’ve got
spirit
. You’re stubborn and fierce and brave and determined and . . . and being with you makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt.”