Colette Gale - Bound by Honor

Alys felt a rush of power when she saw the desperation in his eyes, when she recognized how conflicted he was. Yet her knees trembled as she stood there; her palms grew damp.

Slowly, she moved, pulling free the string that tied her hair back and tossing it aside. Shaking her head, she combed her fingers through the long curling tresses, teasing them forward over her shoulders. “Then I shall wear my hair as a maid one last time.”

“Alys.” His voice was choked, yet he did not move except to look down. “I cannot. . . .”

But his voice trailed off when she took a deep breath and reached forward to touch the top of his head, weaving her fingers into the warmth of his thick hair, sliding them around to cup the bottom of his chin, feeling the prickle of growth there and the wild pulse thumping in his neck.

Then she released him and began to gather up the bulk of her gown, lifting it, raising it quickly before she changed her mind . . . before she realized the madness . . . and pulled it up and over her head.

Robin gasped audibly and kept his face turned away, his gaze trained on the floor. But she suspected that he must now see her slippered feet in their cotton hose in the stead of a muddied hem cascading over it. And if he looked up, he would see her simple sleeping kirtle that ended just above her ankles, and which she now removed in another flurry of cloth.

“Alys.” He said her name with reverence, and at last looked up. “Have you lost your senses?”

“Mayhap,” she replied, cradling his chin with her hands again, only a breath away from her bare belly. “But I swear I will become fully crazed if you do not smile at the woman who loves you.”

And that, it seemed, was the proper thing to say. For like the sun’s sudden rise over the horizon, spilling light as if a pair of shutters had been thrown wide, Robin’s face transformed. He smiled at her. The gleam she was used to seeing in his gaze had returned, and the roguish grin, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “I should be even more a fool than I already am to ignore such a threat.”

Then he looked away from her face and moved out of her grip, back onto his haunches, catching her hands in his. She felt the weight of his gaze over her naked torso, saw the flash of hunger in his expression and then the wicked glint of humor back in his eyes. He surged to his feet and scooped her up in his arms as if she were no more than a goose-feather pillow.

As he strode across the room to one of the pallets, he kissed her. Nay, ’twas not a kiss so much as a nibbling . . . a gentle taste of her upper lip, playing it tenderly between his teeth, slipping a sleek tongue up and under it and then fully into her mouth. “You have the most beautiful mouth,” he said against her. “ ’Tis like a juicy plum and I have dreamt on it for too many nights.”

She was lowered onto something soft, but she hardly noticed, for he stood before her and pulled his tunic off, then his shirt, and at last she saw the fine form of his lean, muscled legs . . . and the bulge between them . . . fully outlined by his braies.

Robin’s chest was fine, with wide shoulders that narrowed to a long, lean torso the color of sun-warmed honey. She’d seen bare male bodies many times as a healer, even some as well formed and muscular as this one . . . but none had made her catch her breath or wish to taste them until now. He recognized her expression, and for a moment, the cocky outlaw was back. He stilled and fisted his hands, flexing his arms in front of her so that his upper arms tightened into sleek ropes of muscle and his chest bulged.

Catching her eye, he smiled wickedly. “Aye, you like that, do you?” Then the brashness faded, replaced by something hot and liquid. “Not nearly as much as I do, Alys. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about you, my love.”

“I thought you were the one who was dying,” she said, reaching up to touch those sleek muscles. “Allan did not say who had been injured. He just told me ‘he’ needed me.”

“And so you worried that it was my deathbed you were to visit?” He moved his elegant hands to cover her uplifted breasts. “So beautiful.”

No man had touched her breasts before, and Alys was unprepared for the rush of pleasure and the instant tightening of her nipples. He sat before her, brushing the lightest of fingertips over their hard points, watching her, smiling at her shudders and the surprised gasps as her skin heated. Sharp little twinges zipped down into her belly and beyond, her body gathering up and her insides squirming in an unfamiliar way.

“Alys,” he breathed, then bent forward to cover her mouth again. She felt him smiling against her, his lips curved in pure delight and laughter. He pulled up a bit to whisper, “I cannot believe you are here. I have been miserable, thinking never to see you again. Or taste you.” Then he moved closer again, his tongue thrusting deeply into her mouth, tangling with hers for a long time.

She closed her eyes as the room began to tilt and shift, and flowed into him, into this slick world of tremors and heat and skin against skin. He lifted away after a long time. “I could kiss you all day,” he murmured, once again sliding his tongue over and around her upper lip. “But there are other things to do. And I find that I am hungry.”

Robin smiled down at her. His eyes were warm and delighted, and he moved away from her, down, down along her torso, his fingers at last settling over her bare thighs. She still wore her hose, but the cotton stockings ended near the tops of her legs . . . and left bare that full and hot place between her legs. “ ’ Tis long past time for me to break my fast.”

Alys didn’t know what he meant until he gently guided her knees apart. She gasped in surprise and at first resisted, but when he lifted his face and gave her that smile, she allowed him to part her legs.

“Ah,” he said . . . but it was more of a groan. A low, deep, back-of-the-throat groan. And then he lowered his face down to her quim, which had never been so . . . opened and exposed and . . . Oh.

Alys nearly came off the pallet when he kissed the inside of her thigh. Just a little brush of lips, but she was so sensitive that the prickles shot all up and down, and then there were more, from every direction, as he kissed his way along her thigh, along that sensitive, soft, virginal skin, toward the cluster of golden curls. . . . She held her breath when he reached them, but he skimmed over her full nether lips, merely brushing the edges of the hair, and then settled on the other thigh.

She relaxed, closed her eyes, opened them, and vaguely saw the timber-roofed ceiling. Then she closed them again as his tongue sleeked out and his lips bussed gently against her leg, along its innermost part. . . . She sighed, no longer needing to twitch and shift with every touch. . . . She felt herself grow and swell. . . .

He lifted his head and she saw the laughter in his eyes, and the heat, the determination . . . the pleasure. ’Twas the overt delight, the lust in his own expression, that undid her and when he touched her ever so lightly, with the tip of his tongue . . . right there on her tight little pearl, Alys gave a soft little cry and arched back onto the pallet.

“Aye,” he murmured in deep satisfaction, but his mouth moved against her and she felt the vibration against her pip, and she writhed more because it was so . . . hot, taut, needy. “Ah, Alys,” he sighed.

And then it began in earnest . . . first a little tickle with the point of his tongue, and then a long, slow swipe on either side of her swollen quim, down into the depths of its folds, then over and back and forth and around and inside and she could no longer follow the path, and she fell into the rhythm of it, let it suck her in . . . the pull and tug and rise and rise of warmth. . . . She felt it shiver up her legs where his fingers lightly moved, and from her belly, it coiled and spun down and around and before she knew it, she was crying out . . . for something. . . . She cried and begged and gasped and he slipped and slid faster and faster and finally she felt something give.

Just give . . . and then she cried out and her body was an uncontrollable mass of shiver and shudders and tears and long, great, rolling warmth.

Alys did not know how long it was before she opened her eyes, but when she did, there he was. Looking down at her with the most satisfied grin, the happiest eyes-as if he’d just brought down a boar single-handedly. Or fought off a band of raiders on his own. Or found heaven.

“Would it be fair to say you enjoyed helping me break my fast?” he murmured, trailing a sleek finger up from her still-pulsing core along the soft rise of her belly.

She could only nod, still trying to focus. “Robin. Is it always like that?” she whispered, reaching up to touch his face.

“Nay. Only if one is very fortunate.” His grin grew wider. “I consider us the most fortunate of all.”

“But you . . .” Her voice trailed off. There was no “us” about it. She might be a maid, but she knew enough to know that he’d not found the same pleasure as she.

He shook his head gently. “I’ll not take your maidenhead, Alys. It belongs to your husband, whenever you might take one.”

“What is this?” she asked, keeping her tone light. “Has the outlaw grown a conscience?”

“The outlaw . . .” His voice trailed off, then picked up more strongly. “The outlaw Robin of the Hood shall be no more.”

“What?”

He pulled away, ruffling his thick hair with an energetic hand, looking across the room. “It has weighed upon me as of late, this charade I play. And I’ve lost a great friend this day, and I do not wish to put any more of my comrades in danger. There are other ways to help the people of Nottinghamshire. And . . . I have fallen in love with a lady that I shall not endanger. ’Tis that, most of all, that has opened my eyes.”

“Endanger?”

“I’m wanted by the law-by the prince. Any liaison we have would implicate you as well.” He cupped her face in his hands, seriousness in his expression. “I cannot take you as my leman, much as I want to. If a miracle happens, when the king returns and if God wills it, you’ll be the wife of Robin of Locksley. But I will not despoil you before then. Much as I want to.”

“But, Robin,” she said, but he covered her lips with his, drowning her protests. The throb between her legs began anew along with the sleek swipe of his tongue, curling inside her. She felt his cock lift and shift against her thigh and without any further thought, Alys reached for it, slipping beneath his braies.

Soft as velvet, yet hard as iron, it grew and swelled in her hand. She almost forgot to kiss him, to taste him, as she was so enthralled by the sensation, and the burning between her legs began anew.

But he reached there, his clever fingers, and found that rising need, and he helped her slip her fingers around his cock, showed her how tightly to hold it . . . and with no further instruction, she knew. She found the rhythm, and he matched it with his fingers between her legs, and it was not long before they both cried out, their bodies sticky and slick and tangling together.

“Robin,” she gasped, her fingers still curled around the softening head of his cock. A thumb stroked gently over the soft, wet rounding, and she felt him twitch gently with every little movement. She could not keep a bit of a smile from her lips. “I am a ward of the queen,” she said. “Not the king.”

“There is that,” he said, his voice laced with satisfaction. “But she will not take my side over that of John. Until the king returns, and Nottingham tells him all, I am naught but an outlaw. My lands are gone, and I have naught to bring to you, Alys.”