Lord Of Danger by Stuart, Anne (free ebook reader for android txt) 📗

a bright, warm light throughout the room. “You’ll need to see what you’re doing.” He took only a small step back from her and stripped the heavy, embroidered robe over his head.

Beneath it he wore breeches and a loose white linen shirt that was already stained dark red with blood. He stripped that off as well, standing before her clad only in breeches, and waited for her reaction.

At first her attention was only for the gash in his side. He could tell that it was nothing of note—a mere slice that wouldn’t need stitching, for all the blood. “Sit down, for heaven’s sake,” she said, and when he did as she bid she knelt down in front of him without hesitation, pressing a cool wet cloth to the wound, turning it, soaking up the blood that had already begun to thicken and slow.

He looked down at her bowed head, momentarily bemused as she tended to him. It had been many years since he’d allowed anyone else to tend his body. Since he’d left the Saracens his own knowledge of healing had surpassed everyone else’s, and he was safer seeing to his own care.

But her touch was gentle, soothing, and he leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes, letting her touch him, simply breathing in the pleasure of it Her arms were resting on his thighs as she pressed the damp cloth against his side, and it was exquisite torment He wanted to pull her closer, so that her arms encircled his hips, her head resting against him. He wanted her to use her mouth on him, as he’d learned in France, he wanted that and more…

His eyes shot open, his erotic fantasies fading, when he realized she wasn’t moving. She knelt between his legs, looking up at him, wonder and curiosity in her eyes as she surveyed his scarred torso. Wonder, curiosity, but no disgust.

“What happened to you?” she said in a soft voice, and she let her small, soft hand reach up to touch the ancient mark of a sword cut across his left shoulder. Her fingertips traced the thick white line, coming to a knife wound that had grown infected before it had healed. “Who did this?” Her voice was filled with pain and anger, as if she could rage at an ancient enemy long dead.

“Saracens,” he said. “Knights. Gypsies. Robbers. I’ve traveled to many distant places in my life, and this world is a dangerous place.” He kept his voice even as her fingers brushed against the place where Raddulf the Red had speared him.

“Saracens and knights?” she murmured, seemingly intent on exploring his lean, scarred body. She looked up at him. “Were you on crusade?”

Of course he should deny it What would Simon of Navarre, the evil wizard of Richard the Fair, have been doing on a crusade to free the Holy Land?

Exactly what he had done. Slaughtering innocents in a quest based on greed. Not his own, but other men’s, making his guilt all the worse. Until he made a vow that he would kill for no man’s greed, no man’s dreams, but his own. And he’d kept that vow in the years since.

“Don’t answer,” she said, when he hesitated. “You’ll only lie to me. Your body speaks more truthfully than your words.”

Little did she know. If she moved closer between his legs she would discover exactly how truthful his body was, though in her convent-bred innocence she might not realize just how hard he was for her. The touch of her hands against his ancient wounds, the soft mercy of her voice, the scent of her, the feel of her pressing against his legs, combined to arouse him in ways he hadn’t thought possible.

Her delicate fingers led her to the worst of his wounds, where a battle axe had cloven deep into his side. A battle axe belonging to a fellow crusader, madly determined to protect his plunder from one who had no interest in it.

He’d left Simon for dead beneath the hot Constantinople sun. It was there El Adhir’s men had found him, and brought him to be healed. And begun to teach him the wisdom of the East.

Her hands traced the horrific wound almost reverently. “You must have been very close to death,” she said in barely a whisper.

“Yes.” His own voice was strained, but she didn’t seem to notice. Instead she bent her head and placed her lips against the wound that had brought him new life.

He caught her face, gently, in his hands and drew her away, unable to bear it. She simply turned her head and kissed the scarred right hand that had killed a man that night.

He would die at her hands. He knew it, with sudden lightning clarity. The man he had struggled so hard to become, the all-powerful, all-knowing Simon of Navarre, would be destroyed by a woman’s heart. If he had any sense at all he’d toss her out the window after Aidan of Montrose. He could find someone else to follow in his quest for wealth and power. Another country, another lord without Richard’s weaknesses for flesh and wine.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t killed women before. He’d followed orders and set fire to the building in Constantinople that had housed helpless women and children. It mattered not that he hadn’t known who or what was inside until he heard the helpless screams of the dying.

He could kill this tender young girl who was so very great a threat to him. It would be so simple to snap her neck.

She looked up at him then, with wise eyes. “What are you thinking, my lord?” she asked simply.

“That you’ll be the death of me. And that I should kill you before you destroy me.”

She didn’t blink. Reinforcing what a formidable opponent she was, to accept his honesty without flinching. Another woman would have run screaming from the room. Another woman wouldn’t have been there in the first place. Alys of Summersedge didn’t even draw