“Should I have screamed for help to prove to you that I can resist your oafish charm?”
He laughed, looking stunned at her insult, and then he grew more serious, more sensual. “You cannot resist it. Oafish or not.”
She leaned into his chest and closed her eyes. “It’s you who can’t resist me,” she countered with playful sigh. “It was you who insisted I sing a song that was obviously making me sad. You knew it would make me cry and then you could have me where you wanted me.”
“Woman, I can toss you back into your saddle as quickly as I dragged you out of it.”
“No, you can’t,” she challenged. “I’m not moving.” She swung her leg over the saddle and sat sideways on him. She turned her body and wrapped her arms around his waist and chest. He was as hard as armor, but there was only flesh beneath his léine. She pressed her face close to his chest and held on.
Instead of acting out his threat and pushing her away, he slowed down the horse and leaned in, closing his arms around her and resting his face in her hair.
“Do not move from me, Kestrel,” he pleaded. “Stay just where you are. For you are mine. I will give you everything you have ever wanted if you will stay where you are.”
“I’ll stay,” she breathed against him. Where else would she go? What other man in the fifteenth century might have done the unthinkable to her, knowing she had no family, no one else here? What other man in any century was like her knight?
“I want to stay where you are, Nicholas.”
He loosened his hold and smoothed back her hair. “The last few days without you have been agonizing. I cannot remember what I did with my days before you.” He slipped his fingers beneath her chin to tilt her face to his. “I don’t know how I would live without you if you left. But I would figure out a way to live.” He kissed her mouth softly. “I will do everything I can to help you find a way home, until or unless this becomes home for you.”
She closed her eyes and parted her lips to receive him when his mouth covered hers. His tongue pushed through the barricade of her teeth and swept inside her, stroking and caressing, branding her like a hot iron.
She was his. Yes. This was what she wanted. To be swept off her feet by a knight. She wanted him and nothing else.
Chapter Seventeen
“Nicky!”
Nicholas smiled and stopped on the wall, overlooking the village and the water beyond to wait for Elizabeth. He was glad she was here at Scarborough Castle. He missed her. He missed her father, her family…her brothers.
“Nicky, are you off to think and brood, or would you mind some company while your lovely Miss Locksley helps Cook prepareberjes.”
“Burgers,” he corrected gently and held out his arm to her. Although she’d grown to a woman of nineteen years, he would always see her as a pudgy-faced little girl with golden hair and inquisitive dark green eyes. She’d always been out of breath from running here or there and her cheeks were always red against her alabaster skin. In that, she had not changed.
“Is something on your mind, Lizzie?” he asked her as she took his arm.
“I received a letter from mother last night. I thought you should know. Henry Tudor has landed in Wales. He is amassing forces.”
“How many men?” Nicholas asked. Heart pounding. Battle. It was what he lived to do and did well. His blood coursed quick through his veins.
“Mother says five thousand men.”
“With our reinforcements in Nottingham and Leicester we outnumber them.”
She quirked her perfectly shaped brow at him. “You will remain loyal to Richard then?”
“Of course.”
“He has lost many supporters.”
“I know,” Nicholas told her.
“He is fortunate to have you, Nicky.”
Nicholas didn’t want to tell her that Richard didn’thavehim. Let her think someone remained steadfast to the man she loved.
“Henry plans to hit hard and fast.”
“You would use your mother’s information against her?”