“I told you”—he lifted his head, his eyes burning into mine—“I’m not good with words. Women like poetry and things. Compliments. I’m not good at any of that. I’m just a farrier, Pepper. Good with horses, but not with women.”
“Would it make you more comfortable if I asked you to shoe me?” I teased, my heart warmed by his confidence. Silly man, didn’t he know that actions spoke louder than words? Didn’t he know how women fell for the strong-but-silent types? Didn’t he realize that one look from those brilliant eyes had me melting into a great big puddle?
One of his eyebrows rose with wicked intent. “As a matter of fact, it would.”
Before I could even think of blinking in stupefaction, he was gone, having slid down my body to kneel between my feet.
“Walker? Uh . . . what are you doing? You’re not some sort of weirdo foot fetishist, are you? I mean, I know you work around horses’ feet all the time, but you’re not going to—Oh, my god!”
I thanked God I had the foresight to take advantage of one of the communal showers before I had tucked Moth and myself into bed for the night, because he didn’t give my foot a quick smooch, as I half expected; he kissed my ankle, running his tongue around my anklebones. He nibbled a path down to the tip of my foot, his tongue flickering between two of my toes. I just about came up off the mattress as he sucked one of my toes into his mouth. His mouth was hot and wet, his tongue tickling me in a way I’d never felt. It was the single most erotic thing anyone had ever done to a very unerotic spot, and I lasted of all of three seconds before I was writhing, clutching great big handfuls of bedding in order to keep from throwing him to the ground and ravishing him the way he deserved. “Oh, my god, Walker!”
He grinned, kissing his way up the arch of my foot. “Like that, do you?”
“I don’t know; does the fact that I’m humming like a harp tell you anything?”
His grin turned very male and very smug. “Then you’re going to love this.”
My entire body spasmed as his head dipped again, and I groaned when his tongue snaked out to trace the valley behind my knee. “Oh, yes!”
A deep, sexy chuckle rolled over me as he spread my legs apart, licking a spiral path up one thigh before stopping to give the other the same treatment. I lay before him, twitching with anticipation, my body burning for his touch, feeling exposed, aroused, and so fragile I was sure I was going to fracture into a million pieces if he touched me just one more time with that amazing tongue. . . .
I arched off the ground when he nuzzled the magic spot on my body, the one place that made me see stars, and see them I did when his mouth found me. His tongue swirled, and I clutched his hair, my body exploding into a series of waves that rippled through me until I was left weak and trembling with the intensity of the orgasm, my mind strangely at peace.
“You are the most responsive woman I’ve ever seen,” Walker said as he pressed a gentle kiss on my still-trembling belly. “Do you have any idea what you do to me? How the scent of you fills my head? Do you know how much I want to thrust myself into you until you scream with pleasure? Do you know . . .” He moved upward, his hands skimming my hips as he took one taut peak disguised as a breast into his mouth, sucking hard, his teeth gently scraping along my nipple before releasing it. The silver of his eyes scorched my flesh as he lifted his head. “. . . how much I want to mark you so every man out there will know you’re mine?”
For the life of me, I couldn’t seem to manage a complete sentence. I ended up pleading. “Marking is good. Thrusting is better. Much, much better. If you have any mercy, you’ll thrust. Now would be good!”
His eyes glittered brightly out of the dark shadows of his face, the line of his jaw tense and tight with desire as he rose up on his elbows, the hard, hot length of him nudging against my very own gates of paradise. I reached between us to position him, and he shuddered, his eyes closing for a moment as I stroked the soft velvet over steel.
“Do you have any condoms?”
He snarled softly and rolled off me, rustling around for a moment while I admired the line of his back. With a guttural noise deep in his chest, he was suddenly back on top of me.
He took my hands in his, linking his fingers through mine as he slowly slid into my body. Muscles I didn’t know I had rippled around him as I tipped my hips upward, allowing him to fill me, stretch me, join his heartbeat with mine until the two rhythms were indistinguishable.
“Thrust?” I managed to ask, which was a minor miracle considering that my brain had completely shut down with the sheer, utter magnificence of the feeling of his heat inside me, but it turned out to be a good choice of words.
“Thrust,” he agreed, and suited action to word. He pulled out of me, but before my body could do more than weep tears of ecstasy, he was back, claiming me, binding us together, joining with me not just in body, but in my heart as well. His body moved against me faster, more aggressively, thrusting hard and deep into me, his tongue wild in my mouth. I moaned my exaltation, the burn inside of me roaring into another inferno as his strokes shortened, his body pounding down as mine rose up to meet him. I slid my hands from his, tracing the damp planes of his back, delighting in the play of muscles as he pushed us toward the moment of completion I knew would change my world. Beneath my fingertips his muscles tightened, a low, primal groan coming from deep in his chest.
I tore my mouth from the heat of his, wanting to watch as pleasure overtook him, wanting to share my bliss with him. The inferno inside me exploded, sending heat to every point on my body. My orgasm triggered his, my ears ringing as he arched upward, shouting a wordless acknowledgment of what we shared.
Eons passed. The ages of man came and went. Dinosaurs could have risen from extinction, walked the earth for millennia, and disappeared into the long, dark oblivion that ultimately claimed everything, and I wouldn’t have noticed them. Making love with Walker had been the single most profound experience of my life, and I lay struggling to regain my breath beneath his damp body, his breath rough and hot on my ear as he, too, struggled for air.
After a while my legs, wrapped around his hips, began to cramp. His heavy weight pushed me down into the air mattress until I was aware of every rock and stone in the ground beneath me. Our bodies were glued together with perspiration. My breasts were smashed up against him, each inhalation forcing his chest hair across my sensitive nipples. I had to pee. And yet, despite all that, I cherished every discomfort, because the man lying gasping for air in my arms was the man I’d been searching for the whole of my adult life.
“You truly are my knight in shining armor,” I whispered, kissing the curve of his ear. He mumbled sleepily into my shoulder before rolling us over so I was draped on top of him. I smiled as he fumbled for the camp light, the soft blackness of the night closing around us.
I had found my knight, and life, from here on out, was going to be absolutely perfect.
“You are the single most obstinate man I have ever met.”
“And you’re the most irritating woman I’ve ever met. Now get off me, I have work to do.”
I looked down from where I was straddling Walker, having fulfilled my promise of four hours before to ride him like a stallion. After a lengthy recuperative period from a second mind-numbingly wonderful lovemaking session, I could once again summon words and speak them in a manner that made sense.
To me, at least. Walker didn’t seem to be any too willing to admit anything of the kind.
I wiggled, my hands on his chest made damp with the sweat of our joint exertions. He was still inside me, and by concentrating very hard, I managed to tighten an array of inner muscles in a manner that had his fingers digging into my hips. “You don’t just tell a woman who you’ve pleasured to the moon and back to get off you, you big oaf. Especially when you don’t really mean it.”
His eyes narrowed, but his fingers were now edging upward toward my breasts as they bobbed above his chest. “How do you know I don’t mean it, wench?”
&nbs
p; I wiggled again. “That’s Harlot to you, and the proof, Sir Studmuffin, is growing within me—so to speak.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up. “I’m not as young as I used to be, sweetheart, but I’m willing to sacrifice myself to your lustful desires.”
“Why do I have the feeling you’re trying to distract me with your extremely scrumdillyicious body, and why do I know it will work if I don’t stop you right now?” I leaned down to kiss the manly, chiseled lips that I knew could melt me with just one touch, sliding off him with squelchy proof of the previous half hour’s activity. I curled up next to him, one hand resting on his damp chest as I propped up my head on my hand. “Now we’re going to talk.”
Walker groaned, then started to get up. “I have work to do. The horses need feeding—”
“And someone else will do it.” I pushed him back down. “Walker, this is serious. We need to talk.”
His face darkened, his eyes mutinous. “I don’t see why.”
I drummed my fingernails on his chest. “Well, for one thing, if you refuse to joust, that means the Three Dog Knights are out of the competition, so it’ll be back to England for all of you. Without me.” I added the emphasis just in case he missed that pertinent bit of information.
He looked extremely discomfited. “Pepper, I—”
“No,” I said, putting a hand over his mouth. He kissed my palm. “I’m not ready to talk about that yet. Later, after the competition is over, then we can talk about what’s going to happen to us. But right now, you getting your extremely attractive butt onto a horse and jousting is what’s important.”
I removed my hand from his mouth, expecting him to refuse flat-out, but he didn’t. He just stared at me with those bright eyes of his, and looked a tiny bit confused. “Why does it matter so much to you that I joust?”
“Because I’ve got you figured out, McPhail. You’re a man with a very deep sense of responsibility, and when you hurt that other man, you swore to yourself never to put anyone else at risk again. Am I right?”
“Somewhat.” The fingers of his left hand were tangled in my hair, gently stroking my neck. “I was . . . reckless in those days, Pepper. Stupid. Foolish. I let pride rule me, driving me to take risks that I never should have taken. When my own stupidity ended up costing a man his life, I realized how arrogant I had become. I thought I was invincible . . . but I never once realized what the cost for my success would be.”
My hand covered his heart, where it was beating strong and true, my own aching for him, for the pain that was shadowed in his eyes. “This man, he died?”
“No.” Walker’s gaze flickered away to the wall of the tent, but I knew he wasn’t seeing it. He was looking inward, to the past, to the horrible guilt he carried with him still. “He didn’t die, but he might as well have for what I did to him. I broke his neck, Pepper. I did, not anyone else, not the horse, not the fall he took; I broke his neck and ruined his life the minute I decided to aim for his head. It’s the trickiest of all shots, and the one that scores the highest, but you have to be a master jouster, a true champion at arms to pull it off.” His chest rose and fell three times before he spoke the words that fairly dripped with anguish. “I didn’t.”
I’ve never been in a situation where I was responsible for evaluating someone’s psyche. My mother had always been a straightforward person, and my father had disappeared from my life by the time I was two. Friends and family mattered, of course, but no one had ever really needed me, not needed me in the way I sensed Walker needed me. CJ was wrong—the woman who was meant for him wasn’t someone who could comfort him and protect him from the world he had so successfully hidden from for three long years, flaying his soul with guilt for a tragic accident. No, what Walker needed was someone who wouldn’t allow him to wallow in martyrdom any longer, someone who made him confront his issues, work through them, and move on with life.
It wasn’t going to be easy, it wasn’t going to be fun, and I had a nasty, suspicious feeling that it would take a while before Walker realized just how good I was for him, but I have never been one to back away from a challenge.
Much. Well, okay, there was that whole vet thing, but that was a totally different situation.
I leveled Walker a steady look, and said simply, “Then I guess you’ve got a lot of practicing to do before you make your qualifying runs today, huh?”
His arm stiffened beneath my head. “I’ve just explained to you why I can’t—”
“No, you can, you just won’t.” I sat up, looking down at him. “But that’s a quitter’s attitude, Walker, and you’re not a quitter. Furthermore, this isn’t just about you. You have a responsibility to your team members.”
He frowned and sat up as well, reaching for the black tights he wore under his tunic. “They knew the odds were against them—”
“Yeah, and you’ve pretty much made it a sure thing, haven’t you?” I pulled my wrinkled negligee over my head, looking around for something else I could wear back to my tent. I hated to be so rough on him, but it was about time he stopped hiding from the truth.
“I don’t have a responsibility to them—”
I whirled around, at the end of my temper. “Yes, you do! Why don’t you see that? You’re their leader. You’re their teacher. I’m willing to bet you’re their idol, as well—at least you are for the men. And if you don’t do this, if you don’t get a grip on yourself and confront your fear, you will be responsible for the ruination of two more lives. Can you live with that, Walker? I sure couldn’t.”
He made an abrupt, frustrated gesture, throwing me a long white linen shirt before donning its twin. “Vandal made the choice to mortgage his house, not me—”
“And how likely is it that he would win the lottery just when you guys needed a couple thousand dollars? Come on, Walker, admit the truth, at least to yourself if not to anyone else—you had to know that there was something suspicious about his coming up with all the money needed for you guys to come to Canada, and yet you did nothing. You didn’t ask questions, you didn’t probe, you just accepted it because you wanted to come. You wanted to see your team compete, and probably, buried deep down inside, hidden behind the fear you hold so tightly to, you want your turn at glory again.”
He was truly angry now, his eyes spitting little silver sparks at me. “You don’t know anything about it.”
I pulled the shirt over my negligee, walking over to stand before him. I smiled and traced my finger along his jaw. “Your muscles are so tight, it’s a wonder you haven’t cracked a tooth.”
He stared down at me, silent, angry, and sexy as hell.
“The bottom line is that you have to do this not for Vandal, not for Fenice, not for Butcher or Bos or anyone else. You have to do this for you, because I truly do believe you’ve been living in a hell of your own making for the last three years, and it’s time to move on. What happened was an accident—a horrible, tragic accident—but unless you went into the ring with the intention of wounding that man, then it was just an accident. You are older and wiser now. You’ve learned.”
He stood stiff for a minute, and I was sure he was going to reject my comfort again, but a little tremor shook him as he bowed his head, his eyes closed. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him. After a moment, his arms tightened around me as well, his breath brushing my ear as he spoke. “I don’t want to hurt anyone again.”
“I know you don’t. But that’s part of the chance you take, isn’t it? It’s part and parcel of jousting. Would you love it so much if you jousted with foam-rubber lances?”
He rubbed his chin against my head, silent for a few minutes. “What if . . . what if I’m not good enough? What if it happens again? What if I didn’t learn?”
I kissed his jaw, my heart aching for him. “You’re unbeaten, Walker. You are the most skilled jouster in all of England. How many times were you world champion?”
“Eight.”
“Eight?” My mouth gaped a little before I realized what
it was doing. “Eight years? In a row?”
He nodded.
“Good God, you’re, like, the best jouster in the world!”
“The best jouster in the world doesn’t ruin other people’s lives.”
“Walker.” I cupped his jaw in my hands, putting every iota of emotion I possessed into my face. I wanted him to see the belief I had in him. “That man made the decision to get on his horse and joust with you. You didn’t make it for him. He must have known the chances that he took doing so, and he was willing to accept the possibility that something could go wrong. Didn’t you accept that every time you entered the list?”
“Yes.” His eyes were dark, fathomless pools of anger and frustration. “But it didn’t have to end that way.”
“But it did. And you’ve learned from the tragedy, and now the time has come for you to confront your fear. So the real question is, are you man enough to face that fear and beat it, or are you going to let it win and spend the rest of your life hiding?”
His gaze held mine for a minute; then it dropped away. I wanted to press him, to make him agree to what I wanted, but I knew that this was a decision he had to make on his own. He had to stop running away from himself, or there would be nothing left of him.
I kissed him on his lovely blunt chin, whispering, “I have faith in you, Walker McPhail. I believe in you.”
He stood silent, watching me as I gathered up Moth and his tin of cat snacks, but I didn’t look back as I shoved the heavy material of the tent flap aside. I had done all that I could; the rest was up to him.
Walker’s tent faced east, which explained why I was momentarily blinded as I left his tent. I put my hand up to shade my eyes, and found myself staring at five very shocked faces. Fenice and Gary, who had evidently been to a nearby Starbucks, were setting down several lattes on the table next to the lawn chairs. CJ, in a T-shirt that went to her knees, was yawning as Butcher handed her a pastry. Bliss was breaking up a large bunch of grapes. Vandal sat with his head in his hands.
I looked back at all of them, then down to where my sexy red negligee was clearly visible below the hem of Walker’s shirt. “Oh. Uh. Hi. Morning. Um. Moth ran into . . . uh . . . Walker’s tent, and I . . . uh . . . I went to get him. And . . . um . . . he barfed, and Walker gave me a shirt. Because he barfed. Moth did. A hairball. And I needed a shirt. Er . . . that’s all.”