Suzanne Robinson Read Online Free

rose, her legs came free, and she brought a knee up between his thighs, nearly ramming him in the groin. Hecried out as her knee drove into his inner thigh. To protect himself, he dropped his whole weight down on her, into the quagmire of water and mud. He fastened a hand around her neck and pushed her head underwater, then let her up. She spewed water at him.
    “Oh, plague-ridden sodding caitiff!”
    He shoved her underwater again with a chuckle. “Curb your impertinent tongue. I’ve never encountered so errant a maid.” She bobbed out of the water and writhed beneath him, nudging his sex. “Nor one who invited me to correct her so lewdly.”
    She went still at this last comment and gave him a look of such bewilderment that all his assumptions were overthrown. No woman of experience gaped at a man with such confusion. Suddenly, he was forced to look at the girl anew. Lustrous skin (beneath the mud), lips the color of wild roses, strong, strong arms and legs that could wrap around a man’s back—and that stare of complete incomprehension. He’d mistaken insolence for experience.
    “My error,” he murmured. “You’re untouched, or were until I touched you.”
    “What?”
    More confusion. He smiled as he hadn’t since Saladin had thrown him into a cell with three lusty female slaves.
    “Damascened eyes,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen the like.”
    She was still struggling with his meaning as he lowered his mouth to hers. Her lips were cold, but lush and pliant, and her mouth was hot. He felt rather than heard her cry. A shiver passed through her body and spoke to him of a virgin’s terror. He had known terror and helplessness; he couldn’t endure it in her. He lifted his mouth, and then his body.
    Shifting to the side, he allowed her to get to her knees.Whimpering, she struggled to rise, but he was sitting on her cloak and skirt. She tugged at them with both hands.
    “Thunder of God! Get off, you lewd devil, or I’ll put my boot in that licentious archangel’s face of yours.”
    “Ah, the quivering virgin has recovered herself,” he said as he lifted his hip to free her.
    She yanked her garments free, but with such force that she toppled into the mud again. He threw back his head and laughed a deep, full laugh such as he hadn’t uttered in years. Now she was so furious her curses had disintegrated into wordless sputters. She picked herself up, scrambled out of the puddle, and turned on him. Too late he saw the glob of mud in her hand. She threw it, and it hit him square on the nose.
    It was his turn to indulge in wordless imprecations, and by the time he’d wiped his face, she had put two fingers in her mouth and was whistling. He heard three sharp bursts as he stood. A mare appeared at her side, and she swung herself up into the saddle. Kicking the horse, the girl deliberately sent the animal into the puddle. Great splatters of water and mud hit him.
    He lunged at her. “Aaaahhrgh!”
    His hand grabbed a small, muscled leg, but slipped as the mare lunged past him. He tried to hang on too long, overbalanced, and plunged to the ground on his hands and knees. He glared after the girl, thwarted and furious about it. She looked back at him as she cantered down the track, laughing.
    Laughing! A woman with wild-rose lips and damascened eyes was laughing at him. He sprang to his feet and ran after her, but she vanished around a bend in the path before he could reach her. He stopped, chest heaving, fists clenched, and snarled. Then he looked down at himself.
    His surcoat, chain mail, boots, every bit of him wascovered with mud. He glanced at his destrier, Saracen. The animal was ignoring him, calmly munching on new grass at the side of the track. Saracen was half covered in mud and would have to be groomed.
    Just God. He’d ridden a little ahead of his men to put his thoughts in order before they got to Wellesbrooke, and now he’d be delayed even more. He was to meet his cousin Arthur and the rest of