Page 16 of The Bodyguard Who Came in from the Cold (Secrets and Vows #4)

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M argery said, “My suitors have decided to return to London after the celebration.”

Gareth listened to her voice, husky, low, arousing. Never had he let a woman affect him so. Though she was only tending his wounds, a shudder moved through him as if she were making love to him.

He stared in surprised fascination at her hands. She took a fresh cloth and dipped one edge in wine. Her free hand rested on his shoulder as she dabbed the welt on his arm. He was light-headed from the smell of roses, and the danger of her secrets seemed far away.

“Why did the noblemen decide to leave?” he finally asked. He knew he had the upper hand, yet his voice sounded dazed.

“I think your battle this morning brought to light a division among themselves. They found it amusing to court me as a group, but never considered how competition could divide them.”

“They’ve been divided? It hasn’t seemed that way to me.”

Her eyes glistened with angry satisfaction as she dried him off with a towel. “Gareth, they’ve become so quarrelsome that some were backing you this morn.”

“Hard to believe,” he murmured. His gaze followed the tumble of her hair down to her breasts. If he reached out now, he knew she’d let him touch her. He could barely resist dragging her to the floor beneath him. He wanted to pull her clothes off and lick her body as if it were the sweetest marzipan candy.

“I’ve promised that I would see them all again at Avery Cabot’s annual tournament. Have you attended before?” She reached into a glass jar until her fingers were coated in something gray, like old grease.

“Until they refused to invite me. What is that?” he asked, grabbing her wrist before she could touch him.

“A salve to protect your wounds,” she said in a bewildered, dreamy voice.

He watched her eyes drop down his body. “I won’t need it,” he said. “Besides, it will get all over the bed.”

What would she do if he led her there now? Once again, they were alone in a bedchamber. Her blushes were lovely.

“I have bandages,” she said. “And why did the Cabots refuse to invite you?”

He took a cloth and began to wipe the salve off her hands. “I kept winning. Rather than treat me as a competitor, they were frightened of me.”

“Does this happen often?”

“It happens enough.” He tossed the towel on the tray and she pulled back her hand. He looked into her eyes. “It is difficult to earn money to eat when no one will let you do what you’re best at.”

Margery backed away from him. He gripped his hands together to keep from pulling her against his chest. He could almost taste victory and revenge—and he could almost taste the sweet saltiness of her skin against his tongue.

“I should go,” she said awkwardly, turning to straighten up the tray.

“But my legs are grievously wounded, mistress.”

She looked over her shoulder with skeptical amusement. “Then I shall leave the tray for you. Bring it down when you’re through.”

Gareth shook his head. “But I am not as skilled as you.”

“You’ll learn.” She opened the door, looked both ways, and disappeared into the corridor.

~oOo~

The next evening, Gareth blocked Wallace’s way out of the stables. “Margery’s birthday celebration is tomorrow. I need you to teach me how to dance.”

Wallace shot him a surprised look. “You know as much about dancing as I do.” He lit two small lanterns, throwing hazy shadows over the sleeping horses and mounds of straw.

“That cannot be true, for that means you know nothing. A baron’s son, not trained in dancing?”

“A knight, not trained in dancing? When you were fostered, did you not learn with your lord’s daughters?”

“No.” Everyone had been afraid to touch him, let alone dance.

Wallace swore softly and looked around. “What if the grooms come, or worse yet, a soldier?”

Gareth smiled. “Surely you are not worried about being seen dancing with me?”

“Is there not a place more…private?”

“Being discovered someplace private would be worse, do you not think?”

“Oh, very well,” Wallace said with a growl. “You know, I am already quite tired of your smile. Just a week ago, I would have sworn you were incapable of one.”

Gareth shrugged as he leaned back against a stall.

“Let us do this quickly. Really, ’tis nothing difficult—just occasional patterns of steps, and lots of dancing in big circles.”

“Show me.”

They were tromping about in the straw when they heard a woman’s giggle. Margery leaned in the doorway, holding back her laughter with a hand over her mouth.

“Sir Gareth, I grew worried when you disappeared from the hall,” she said. “I asked a squire where you’d gone, but…maybe…you didn’t want to be found.” She erupted into peals of laughter, letting the door post hold her up.

Wallace’s face was red. Gareth had a suspicion that so was his own.

“Then you teach him!” Wallace said, stomping out into the night.

Margery wiped tears from the corners of her eyes with her fingers. “Teach you what?”

Gareth linked his hands behind his back, and struggling with embarrassment. He hated feeling ridiculous. “How to dance.”

“The last place you fostered was negligent in your training,” she said, moving forward into the stables.

They were alone. His body forgot anger and remembered the smoky heat of desire, and her hands touching his bare skin. She was a dark, seductive shadow, illuminated with glimmers of lantern light. All he could think about was throwing a blanket over a pile of hay, pulling her down on top of him, and?—

“Gareth?” she said, coming close. “Did you hear me?”

He cleared his throat. “What?”

“Why did you never learn to dance?”

He shrugged. “You know of the curse. Not many wanted to touch me.”

“But surely the women—” She broke off, searching his face.

Margery wondered what woman could resist him. She would have given anything in her foolish youth to dance with him.

Well, she was a grown woman now, with a woman’s needs. Why shouldn’t she enjoy herself? She wanted to touch him, to surround herself with the danger he represented. This was Gareth, who from boyhood to manhood had always protected her—but could he protect himself against this wildness that rose up inside her?

She reached for his hand and saw his narrowed eyes focus on where they touched. His hand was warm, callused from hard work, and so much larger than her own. She wanted to feel it against her skin.

“Let me teach you to dance,” she said, pulling him away from the wall to where the lanterns spilled their meager light. “The dances we do in the country are much simpler than those at court.”

Gareth said nothing as she took his shoulders to position him opposite her. It was as if a fire raged between them, drawing them ever nearer to something forbidden.

“We step toward one another, then back,” she said.

He stared at her body, following her movements. Awareness of his smoldering gaze burst to life within her.

“Step forward again,” she whispered, and this time she let her body brush against his.

His eyes closed and she saw him shudder as he stepped away.

“Again.”

Before the dance even brought them together, Gareth pulled her hard against him, turning around to press her to the wall. Her body heated with new, dangerous sensations as they stared at each other, poised on the threshold of something so explosive, it would change their relationship forever.

She could stop this now.

Instead, she put her hands on either side of his face. His skin burned her palms, his rough whiskers scraped her. She wanted the passion of his mouth covering hers. She moistened her lips, puckered them, waiting?—

With a groan, Gareth lifted her clear off the floor and ground his body into hers. The hot onslaught of his lips slanted over hers. She gasped as a lightning burst of desire moved through her, chasing all thoughts from her mind. His tongue licked along her lips, then between them. She surrendered her mouth gladly, sucking his tongue, tasting his mouth in return.

The feel of his body completed her, made all her problems and worries disappear with the passion she finally released. She gripped his hair, holding him close.

“Margery,” he whispered hoarsely, his mouth trailing across her jaw and down her neck.

“Gareth.” His name was a groan of desire, of need. She parted her legs, wanting to feel all of him. He caught her knees up around his waist and rubbed his erection against her. He held her hard against the wall, his face buried between her neck and shoulder.

Every movement of his body against hers made Margery shudder. She linked her legs around his hips, swept beyond the shock of his aggressive passion into a world where there was only their ragged breathing, their barely suppressed groans. She had known another man and thought there was nothing that could surprise her. But her stark need of Gareth made her feel primitive, alive, as if there were no constraints, no civilization.

His hands slid beneath her thighs, working slow erotic circles on her bare flesh with the tips of his fingers, ever closer to where they strained to be joined.

He kissed her again, and she groaned as his hands left her thighs and caressed her waist. He lifted his head and watched her. His thumbs suddenly brushed her nipples and she gave a shocked gasp, staring into his eyes, begging him without words to continue.

Margery’s sanity returned when a horse neighed in a nearby stall—and regret swept through her. Anyone could find them. Her longing for danger and excitement didn’t mean she wanted to be discovered. She brought her legs down and slid along his body to stand shakily on the ground. Yet still she clutched his arms and held him close.

“Gareth.” She breathed his name.

He leaned down to kiss her.

She turned her head away. “Not here, not now.” She felt his lips nibbling her ear, and she moaned.

“Then let us go somewhere more private,” he whispered.

“No, I?—”

This was nothing she had planned, nothing she’d meant to happen. She wasn’t sure what should happen between them.

Her feelings suddenly overwhelmed and frightened her. She broke from his embrace and ran.

~oOo~

Gareth stood on the battlements overlooking the dark countryside. It was deep night, and except for the sounds of the patrols, everything was still. He had run the circle of the battlements until exhaustion cramped his legs and threatened to send him falling into the ward below. Yet nothing helped. What was wrong with him? Because of Margery’s family, he’d been forced as a boy to squire in a castle where their idea of protection against his “wizardry” was to lock him up each night, and release him to labor by day.

But when his eyes closed, Gareth didn’t remember the dark, bare rooms of his youth. Instead he saw Margery, head tilted back, lips parted in passion. Her response had been more than he’d ever imagined. With her in his arms, nothing else had existed but his need for her. He forgot her family, forgot everything she represented. He’d almost lost control—surely he hadn’t been himself.

But he had endangered his own plans. Though he longed to seduce Margery, he didn’t want the entire world to know and think her shameless. He didn’t want a marriage begun in anger.

She had more passion than he’d ever seen in a woman—but it only made him more suspicious. What had happened with Peter Fitzwilliam, and why did it haunt her so?

~oOo~

Margery couldn’t sleep. As she sat in a chair before the hearth, she clutched the crystal stone Gareth had given her. It was long past midnight. The only sounds she heard were the hourly marching of the guards past her door: the shuffle of their boots, the murmur of their voices.

She opened her palm and looked at the stone. It glittered like Gareth’s eyes, she thought, shivering. She’d squeezed it so hard she’d left indentations in her flesh. They would eventually go away, but her memories of him never would. Their lives were linked in so many ways. She felt bound to him, to this fascination and passion she felt for him.

Never in her life had she been kissed like that, like she was the only food for a starving man. She had reveled in the power of feeling desirable. He was a solitary, dangerous, fierce knight, and she’d held him in her arms and made him shudder.

For an insane moment, Margery wondered what it would be like to have a husband like Gareth, uncontrollable, mysterious. A man like him would do as he pleased, even if it meant breaking her heart.

She had vowed never again to put herself under the spell of a man who could hurt her—but damned if she wasn’t going to be as wild as a man while she still could. She deserved it.