Once Upon a Pillow Read online

  It was fabulous. It was magnificent. It was the most lavish thing she had ever seen, from its thick feather mattress to the fine, bleached linens stretched over it.

  “You made this?” she asked in amazement.

  “I am not a nobleman, Jocelyn, but I am a freeman as was my father before me. He passed his skills on to me though scant heed did I give them. In my youth, I was hot-tempered, bold and rash, all afire to seek glory and renown. So, I followed the path I thought most likely to lead me to them.”

  “Your father was a carpenter,” she murmured admiringly, “as are you.”

  “So, ‘twould seem, for I have never forgotten my father’s legacy. It pleases you?” There was eagerness in his voice.

  “Yes,” she breathed ecstatically. “Oh, yes.”

  “Then, lady, let us christen it.” He needed no word of assent. Her agreement was implicit in the kiss she settled on his lips as she twined her arms about his neck and pulled his dark, shaggy head down to meet her eager lips.

  Quickly, he moved to the side of the bed and lowered her gently upon the thick feather mattress. Silently, he stripped her tunic from her and peeled away the thin chemise beneath. She astonished herself, so little heed did she give the faint call of modesty. She bathed in his admiration, assured by the care he took with her, his assiduous restraint, his tender touch.

  And when she lay, naked and flushed and warmed by his ardent regard upon the linen coverlet, he stood up and stripped away the rest of his clothes, leaving her breathless with awe. He was as magnificent as the bed he’d made, just as bold and just as elegantly fashioned.

  The golden tanned skin stopped in a sharply delineated line at his waist, the skin of his legs pale below. But the dark fur that covered his chest and narrowed into a thick fine as it descended over the rippling belly spread out at the top of long, thickly muscled thighs. His sex jutted from that dark forest, thick and aggressive, and for a second her dreamy state dissolved as she realized the physical dimensions of this big man.

  He read her alarm and smiled crookedly. “I am a most patient man, Jocelyn. I will not hurt you.”

  He needed to say no more to still her fears. He said he would not hurt her; thus she would not be hurt. She lifted her arms in welcome and with a sound of gratitude and love, he came to her, covering her slight body with his own, blanketing her beneath his heat, his masculinity, his sheer size. And she gloried in it.

  He braced himself above her on his arms, and she speared her fingers through his cool, silky hair, pulling his head down. He trembled, holding himself just above her as his mouth descended on hers. His kiss was open-mouthed, his tongue ardent against her untutored lips, sliding luxuriantly along them.

  She clung to him, raising herself up to press her breast against his rock hard chest, wanting him closer, nearer, struggling with a sensation alien and yet essential. She desired to absorb and be absorbed, to cleave so tightly that their two bodies became one.

  His lower body sank against her. She felt the hard presence of his sex against her thigh, the warm weight of him between her legs. Her legs fell apart, her hips tilted instinctively and he lifted his head.

  “Lay upon me,” she whispered.

  “I am too big.”

  “No,” she argued, laughing. For her body conformed to his as if it was made for his weight and breadth, gladdened by his power and finding pleasure in his strength. “No.”

  She pulled at his broad shoulders and after a moment’s hesitation, he eased himself down and suddenly rolled over, so that she lay atop him. He reached down and clasped her thigh, pulling it wide, so that she straddled him. At once she felt his member at the entry to her most intimate place.

  His hand slipped between them, touching her deeply and intimately with a sure stroke that caused her breath to catch and her eyes to close. Again. Again… Her back bowed and her throat arched with each teasing promise of culmination. He slid his finger deep within her and her hips bucked in anticipation.

  It was too much, too intense. Pleasure danced along her veins, sensation rippled through her body and yet…and yet, there was more. She sobbed in frustration. She could almost reach it, the crescendo of this profound and ancient rhythm. If only she knew how. If only he would help her.

  “Please,” she gasped.

  He obliged. His hand withdrew, replaced by that thick masculine part of him she’d feared, but now seemed so essential a part of this. She pushed herself down on him, taking him into her body, filled with him, joining with him. She shuddered and the movement translated to him, breaking through the ungodly restraint he’d been exercising.

  With a low sound, he thrust slowly, deeply into her body. She gasped with the sensation, new, stinging, and beautiful. He seated himself all the way to his root within her and slowly, terribly, withdrew, the thickness of him grating with nerve-destroying deliberation across that most sensitive nub. Then back again, a reverse slide of fullness.

  Her head swam with need, her hips found the rhythm and next time he pushed into her, she met his thrust.

  “Jocelyn!” He clasped her hips and pulled her down to meet him, his mouth traveling hungrily along her face, throat, and breasts.

  She wanted. She needed. And he held the key, the answer, the promise. Deliberate, soul-eviscerating thrust, excruciating withdrawal, pure essence of pleasure tantalizing her, just beyond her reach, just…

  Then she understood. He was being cautious for her sake. She did not want his caution. She needed his passion.

  She planted her hands on his chest and sat up, seating him deliberately and forcefully deeper within. Beneath her palms, all the muscles in his belly clenched with the sudden unexpected movement. Once more he clasped her hips and rolled, this time pulling her beneath him, grabbing first one leg then the other, wrapping them about his hips.

  Then he began making love to her, roughly, urgently, his thrust deep and hard and fierce. She closed her eyes and just felt him, felt him take her, fill her, ride with her. And as he did, pleasure intensified into a hard, inward spiraling ball of sensation. He tensed, his head flung back and his teeth set in a grimace of unspeakable effort. With one final thrust, he ground against her, flinging his head back and at the same time…oh Lord!

  “Please!” she cried out.

  Her heels riding the hard buttocks, her mouth open in a soundless gasp of fulfillment, passion overtook her. Wave upon wave of physical ecstasy washed through her, sweeping her along in a sea of ecstasy, stroking each instant with physical rapture.

  And when it was over and at long last sentient thought returned, she found herself once more in the sunlit room, lying on a deep, feather-soft mattress, her husband’s warm body curved protectively against hers as his hands with the delicacy of an artist, traced a damp tendril on her temples.

  Only one thing could have made her more content and he, who’d given her so much, gave her this, too.

  “I love you, Jocelyn. God alone knows how very much I love you, but I intend to try to make you understand.”

  Chapter Seven

  One month later

  Father Eidart bent over the row of little cabbages, weeded out a spindly specimen, straightened, and pressed his hands to his lower back. “I miss Keveran,” he said glumly.

  “I, too,” said Father Timothy from across the garden. “Though I must admit, I thought we might have him back with us last week when Sir Nicholas declared his intention of making the lad his squire. Lady Jocelyn was fit to be tied.”

  “Aye,” Father Eidart said, dusting the dirt from his hands. “She puts no value on knightly skills and is right fond of the boy. I thought for sure that rather than let the boy be endangered by Nicholas’s plans for his future, she would—” He stopped suddenly and bent quickly to his weeding.

  But Father Timothy knew what Eidart had meant to say and being a man, if not close to holiness, at least farther from evil, he decided it was time they made a clean breast of this thing that had festered long enough.

  “I am
glad she hasn’t killed him,” he declared, drawing a surprised look from his fellow cleric. “It was wrong of us to even hint such. We shall tell her so at the first opportunity and then ask her pardon and then we shall confess to the bishop on our next pilgrimage.”

  With a sigh of intense relief, round little Father Eidart once more stood upright. His face was the picture of spiritual liberation.

  “Oh, good!” he exclaimed. “I have felt horrible for weeks now, watching and wondering when and if the poison we fed that poor girl would take effect. Thank the Good Lord she is made of finer stuff than us. In fact, I think…I think. No. Never mind.”

  “What do you think?” Father Timothy asked.

  Father Eidart squinted, unwilling to commit himself to making any declarations. “Well, she speaks quite freely to him and once I actually saw him pick her up whilst she was in the middle of some tirade and toss her over his shoulder and stalk off with her, but for all that, I think they are not unsuited.”

  Father Timothy, who had never had any experience with women, eyed Brother Eidart in amazement. “Really? Well, that would be nice but really? Jocelyn Cabot, a loving wife? Frankly, if I was Nicholas I would be here right now, begging us to say novenas for him in hopes of the Lord keeping him safe from her temper.”

  And with this both men fell into laughter. They were still laughing a minute later when they saw that very same Jocelyn stalking past the church on her way from town, a sharp razor in her hand and a thunderous look on her face.

  She ignored him. Indeed, it would be hard to say whether she even heard him, intent as she was on her mission. The razor glinted with evil purpose in her hand and she muttered as she walked, her voice carrying to the startled priests.

  “I can’t take any more. And why should I? The great, hairy barbarian. He hurts me with no thought to my pain. Thinks he can do as he likes and I will simply accept his edict? Ha! I swear, this will be the end of it.”

  And she was gone.

  For a long stunned moment, Father Eidart and Father Timothy stared at each other.

  “Dear God!” Father Eidart whispered.

  “Her immortal soul!” Father Timothy breathed.

  “Our immortal souls!” Father Eidart countered.

  “Ah!” both priests wailed and in a flurry of motion, exited through the small stone gate, pushing and shoving each other in their haste to avert a great and dire tragedy.

  They clambered up the rocky path to the manor, only to see Jocelyn disappear inside minutes before they arrived panting and gasping at the door. They tried the handle but the door was locked. Frantically, they pounded on it and still it took a good five minutes before a servant finally answered.

  They pushed their way in. “Your master!” Father Timothy demanded. “Where is he?”

  The young man, a half-peeled onion still in his hand, looked around, confused by the appearance of the two frantic priests. “Upstairs. In The Bed Room.”

  “The Bed Room?” Father Eidart echoed in confusion.

  The boy nodded. “The solar right at the top of the stairs. Where The Bed is.”

  Father Timothy ignored the lads odd references and hurried along the great hall, scrambling up the stairs, Father Eidart close behind him. Having just recently been delivered from certain damnation, they weren’t going to willingly let heaven slip from their grasp now.

  Without hesitation, Father Timothy burst through the door.

  “For the love of God, stop, my lady! Only think on your immortal so—” Father Timothy trailed off, as Father Eidart piled into him from behind.

  Jocelyn stood behind her husband, razor in hand, regarding them with an imperious crook of a brow. Her husband sat before her, his throat arched, half of his face shaved.

  “Why look, Nicholas, the holy fathers have finally deigned to come calling,” Jocelyn said dryly. “And what an odd manner they have chosen to announce themselves.”

  Father Eidart cringed guiltily. They hadn’t come to visit the new lord since their, er, suggestion to Lady Jocelyn. Apparently the omission had been a topic in the household.

  With a sardonic cock of his own dark brow, Nicholas took the linen towel from the table next to him and swiped at his face. He stood up. He really was enormous. And intimidating. Even with only half his beard on his face.

  “Ah. The holy brothers. How good of you to come. You will forgive our dishabille. My wife has taken a notion into her head and I am paying the penalty.”

  “Ah!’’ Jocelyn gasped, affronted. “Just as my skin has paid the penalty of that beard for the past four—” She broke off, realizing the intimacy of the details she’d been about to divulge, and blushed.

  Nicholas smiled calmly at Fathers Eidart and Timothy. “Now, what can I do for you, good brothers?”

  Eidart, seeing that there was no cause for alarm, would have willingly bowed his way out of this rather too private tableau but Timothy, bent on expiation, had bravely stepped forward. “We have come to see how it goes between you and this good lady,” he said. Eidart groaned.

  Nicholas regarded the cleric with the lazy, if suspect, goodwill of a well-fed cat watching a mouse. “Oh, it goes well.” He turned to Jocelyn. “Wouldn’t you say it goes well, sweetling?”

  Jocelyn nodded but her expression remained sardonic.

  “Come, Jocelyn,” Nicholas said in a cajoling tone. “We mustn’t bear grudges against God’s appointed ones.”

  “Humph.”

  “Yes,” Father Eidart agreed miserably. “You mustn’t.”

  “Humph.”

  “She’ll come ‘round eventually,” Nicholas assured them pleasantly. “She simply has a very protective streak and she,” he leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “rather takes it amiss that you seek my death.”

  “But we don’t!” Father Eidart blurted out. “Not anymore!”

  “Really!” Father Timothy added his voice. “We have considered the matter and are convinced we erred. In fact, we came here to avert a calamity we feared we had fomented.”

  “Ah!” Nicholas said, gesturing expansively. “That explains the bursting in here, then?”

  They nodded vigorously.

  He turned to Jocelyn who’d crossed her arms over her breasts and whose skepticism had turned into a sort of cool disapproval.

  “See, darling? No reason to be bitter.” He smiled magnanimously at the clerics. “And you won’t ever again try to convince my wife to kill me, will you?”

  They shook their heads, again, vigorously.

  “Good. Then perhaps we can discuss this toe and its box—”

  “Toe? Box?” Father Timothy murmured before enlightenment dawned on him. “You refer to Saint Neot’s toe and the reliquary? Yes, by all means, let us discuss—”

  “Not yet.” Jocelyn’s voice cut through Father Eidart’s enthusiastic agreement. She let her arms fall and stalked across the room. Sir Nicholas, seemingly content to let his wife have her head, settled back against the table, watching them with ill-concealed amusement. “We have to get some things clear between us first.”

  “Of course, my lady,” Father Timothy said, stuttering slightly and backing up. She stopped and eyed both clerics narrowly.

  “Henceforth, you will direct all your parishioners to bring their business to Sir Nicholas.”

  “Yes, yes,” both priests agreed, visions of a gem- encrusted reliquary and shriveled toe dancing in their imaginations.

  “Because Sir Nicholas is master here now.”

  “Yes.”

  She swept her arm out toward the window. “This is the master’s holding.”

  They nodded.

  “This is the master’s manor.”

  More nodding.

  “That,” she looked behind her, “is the master’s bed.” Both priests looked at the immense and disheveled bed behind the couple and quickly away.

  She smiled then, for the first time since they entered, and her smile was for the man who stood regarding her with open admiration, lov
e, and hunger on his dark—well, half dark—face. “And as Sir Nicholas is the master of my heart, I am certainly the master’s lady.”

  Nicholas stood up, drawn to her by ties the priests could not see but felt as clearly as if they were physical things. When he was a few paces away, the lady reached out and clasped his hand and drew it slowly to place upon her belly. Her smile filled with tenderness.

  “And this, my darling,” she said, “this is the master’s son.”

  The End of First Knight

  Kidnapped

  by

  Christina Dodd

  In which the Bed is unmade…

  Prologue

  Today in Trecombe, England

  On a tour of the famed Masterson Manor…

  “And that, my friends, is how the Masterson family got its name, and how this immense Masterson bed came into being.” Tourist guide and dedicated student of history, Laurel Whitney, was proud that with her recitation she’d kept the tourists enthralled.

  Two of the trio of American women, Miss Ferguson and Mrs. Stradling, stood with their hands clasped over their hearts. The other female, Mrs. Plante, was feverishly jotting down notes in her crumpled spiral notebook.

  The newlyweds, John and Meghan, eyed the bed with more than scholarly interest. Probably they were picturing all the marital jousts that had been fought between its tall wooden posts.

  But even Brian Plante, son of the note-jotter and every inch an American teenage boy, stood beside the Masterson bed, rubbing the polished walnut as if through his touch, he could feel the passage of time.

  Yes, Laurel had brought the manor and the bed to life to everyone…

  Everyone except the patently disinterested handyman, who knelt on the floor, placing his tools in his kit.

  That was the exact right place for Max Ashton to be. Kneeling. On the floor. Preferably far away from her.