Chapter Thirteen

A lyce held onto the hope that Hawk would consider her words and give up in his pursuit to prove Cynwulf guilty, but in her heart, she knew it wouldn't happen. Hawk, like the predatory bird for which he was named, would be relentless in his pursuit, certain of his prey.

She must convince him he was coming to the wrong conclusions of Cynwulf.

"The only secret my brother is hiding is one from me. He should never have entered into betrothal negotiations with Montworth without my knowledge. He tried to put a stop to it after he realized his mistake, even sent a messenger to tell Montworth not to come here tonight."

She searched his face for any sign that he was considering her words, but he remained silent. A look of skepticism narrowed his eyes and a small crease appeared between his brows for only a moment, then it disappeared.

"And what of your secrets?" Hawk reached up to her face and wound a stray curl around his finger.

"I have no secrets." Alyce winced at the breathless sound of her words. "And now you know Cynwulf's only secret."

He arched a dark brow at her. "You have secrets."

She should get herself away from this man as quickly as possible instead of allowing him the liberty of holding her hand and toying with her hair. Hawk was nothing but danger. Danger to Cynwulf because he suspected the worst in him. Danger to her because she wanted him near, wanted him to keep talking to her, to keep brushing his hand against her cheek as he ran his fingers over the strands of hair around her face.

"When you are nervous," he said, stepping even closer to her as he held up her hand in his, "you reach for the end of your braid and wrap the curl there around your fingers."

Alyce looked down at her hand in Hawk's and at the tail of her braid. He rubbed his thumb gently over her fingers and the hair entwined in them, sending shivers through her entire being. She struggled to make sense of what he was telling her amid the distraction of how he was making her feel. How was it she had never realized she fidgeted with her hair when she was unsettled?

"You have another secret." His face was so close to hers now, she could feel his breath against her cheek. "Every time I am near, you reach for your braid." He lifted her hand to his lips, placing a light kiss on the strands of hair wound around her fingers. "Tell me to leave and I will stop," he said, slanting his eyes at her over the top of her knuckles.

Alyce's breath caught in her throat. It had been a long time since anyone had touched her so intimately. And even longer since her body had reacted to being near a man. What was the advice of old warriors? Know thy enemy. She may regret letting Hawk near, but it was time to change her tactic.

"Do not underestimate me," she said in her best imitation of a sultry voice, "I am no timid maiden."

"Thank God for that," he said softly, lifting her chin with a thumb and leaning his face close before pressing a kiss to the corner of her lips. He barely pulled his mouth away, his lips hovering so close as he skimmed them along hers. "A timid maiden would blush—" he kissed the other corner of her mouth—"at the thoughts I'm having about you." He tipped his head to the side then pressed his lips to a sensitive spot just below her ear.

How did he know kissing that particular spot would make her eyelids flutter?

"Tell me of these thoughts," she said with a satisfied sigh.

"Are you sure you won't blush?" He nipped her below her ear.

"Yes." She laughed softly as his tongue traced the lower lobe of her ear. She meant to sound confident, worldly, like a woman who was not woefully deprived of passion, but she was having a hard time concentrating while his lips and tongue played with her neck and ear.

He chuckled deeply. "I don't believe you." He sunk both of his hands into her hair and tipped her head back to trail kisses across her throat until he reached the other ear. "But I'm going to tell you anyway." He pulled this earlobe into his mouth, scraping it with his teeth. "I'm thinking about whether or not the freckles on your neck—" he released his hold on her hair to trace his fingers down her neck until he reached the neckline of her gown, looping a finger over the material—"are also sprinkled across the rest of you." His lips followed the path his fingers had taken as he spoke.

She was thankful when he pulled his other hand from her hair and wrapped it around her waist to hold her steady. Her knees were beginning to wobble, and she feared she would not be able to stand on her own two feet if he kept this up.

"I'm thinking they are." He pressed his lips to the exposed skin just above where he tugged at her neckline. "And I want to spend hours kissing every freckle on your body."

Alyce inhaled sharply and her head started to spin. She felt lightheaded as his arms wrapped around her, pulling her tightly against the length of his body. He released her just long enough to lift her arms to encircle his neck, then crushed her against him again.

Not able to wait another heartbeat for him to claim her mouth with his own, she pressed her lips to his and slid her tongue across his lower lip. She wanted to know the taste of him, the texture of his lips.

A low growl from the back of his throat reached her ears, and she felt a moment of satisfaction to know she could still stir desire in a man. His tongue swept against hers and she became lost in the heat of his mouth, melting her body into his, unable to get close enough to him.

Suddenly Alyce pulled back out of his arms, gasping. Her body tingled with the heat of his touch, but her head swirled with confusion.

"This is foolishness, Hawk." Alyce breathed deeply to settle her hammering heart.

Hawk cursed under his breath, but he did not stop her from stepping out of his arms.

"I can never be a temptress. My heart is not made for that." She had not meant to tell Hawk the truth, but the words came out of her mouth before she could stop them. She sighed, then continued, "As tempting as you are, I cannot play at being lovers. I thought I could do it, but I cannot deceive myself, and I won't lead you on." She folded her arms in front of her chest to shield herself and put more space between them.

Hawk was silent for a long moment, but then his lips twitched. "Your heart is too tender for us to be just lovers?"

"Laugh if you must, but it is who I am. I will do nearly anything to convince you my brother is not a bad person, but I cannot stoop to toying with your heart or mine. Sir Grogan. You will either believe us or you won't." She did not know what else to say.

He laughed then. "I know you are serious since you are calling me by my surname again."

"You do not appear to be taking me seriously. And now that I have made myself look foolish, I will take my leave. Let us forget this ever happened." Alyce dropped her arms to her sides to turn away from Hawk, but he stepped closer to her before she could move. He did not touch her, but he was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body and smell the faint scent of leather, hay, and forest that still clung to him.

"I am not worthy of a woman like you, but if you should change your mind, Lady Alyce, I am willing to risk my heart to show you what it means to be just lovers." He said the last two words in an exaggerated whisper. "All you need do is ask, and I will promise to bring you nothing but pleasure."

His seductive words made her skin shiver with gooseflesh. Alyce tried to shake her head in refusal, but she couldn't seem to move.

"Mind-numbing pleasures to make you forget everything but the way I'm touching you," he continued, his deep voice a soft rumble. He dropped his face until his lips hovered just above hers again. "I'd touch every part of you, every freckle, with my lips and tongue, from your tender earlobe down to the delicate arch of your foot and everything between. I'll caress your every curve until you can think of nothing but how your body feels."

Alyce swallowed hard before she managed to say in a hoarse whisper, "You shouldn't be speaking to me this way."

"You are right, I should not," he said, his voice a rough rasp.

Alyce shook her head feebly, but she couldn't take her eyes from his lips. Kissing each other did not mean they were lovers, and surely another would be harmless.

"I'm going to kiss you again, Alyce." He didn't wrap his arms around her or step any closer. No part of him touched her except for his lips, even as he deepened the kiss, sweeping his tongue inside her mouth. She closed her eyes and surrendered to his possessive exploration.

She tried to remember if Geoffrey had ever made her heart beat out of control while also taking her breath away. Her experiences with Geoffrey had been pleasurable…but never the mind-numbing pleasure Hawk described. Just when she was about to put her arms around Hawk's neck again and boldly suggest he prove his ability to provide such pleasure, his lips left hers.

She opened her eyes to see him staring at her, his eyes narrowed and his expression disgruntled. She stepped back and turned away from him. How dare he look at her as if she'd just forced herself on him when he was the one who kissed her again?

"Goodnight, Lady Alyce." His boots scuffed softly on the wood planking of the walkway as he retreated from her. The door to the stairwell opened then closed and Hawk was gone, leaving her with an emptiness in her chest that sucked the breath out of her.

"Damn you, Hawk," she gasped into the darkness.

*

Hawk stomped down the spiral staircase to the narrow hall that led to his chamber on the top floor of the keep. Red had been sleeping in the first chamber on the floor, but Hawk doubted the Viking had retired for the night. He shoved the door open to his own chamber then slammed it shut and locked it. He stood still in the middle of the room for a moment, then reached for his sword where it rested against a chest, dug out the whetstone from a satchel, and proceeded to sharpen the blade with fierce concentration.

"Hell," he muttered after he'd worked up a sweat that did little to soothe his sour mood.

Hawk didn't believe in love.

What he was feeling for Lady Alyce definitely was not love, but it was something. Otherwise, he wouldn't be feeling wracked with guilt and uncertainty—two emotions he knew little about.

He never should have said those words to Lady Alyce or kissed her that last time. True, he'd thought to seduce her. They were both adults, she was no longer a protected maiden, so why should they not find pleasure together?

But what he hadn't expected was the one word that had flitted through his mind, leaving him as dizzy as a blow to the head, all of his nerves on alert. It wasn't danger he sensed, but rather a sudden surge of possessiveness toward Alyce.

Mine.

But she wasn't his.

He didn't want her to be his.

At least not for longer than the mission required him to be at Hawkspur. Women were a distraction from the realities of his life. They were comfort, pleasure, challenge, and satisfaction…and then they were gone from his life. What they were not was constant, a priority, a commitment. And never were they kept.

Women were a liability to a warrior. Once a warrior's heart grew soft, he was worthless, easily distracted, thinking about what he left behind instead of the fight in front of him.

Mine.

No! Once he thought of any woman as his, that would be the end of him.

Even so, Red constantly pushed him to find a home and settle down. Hawk suspected it was his way of letting his commander know he was getting old. He might not be as quick as he'd once been, but he wasn't ready for a quieter life. The king had promised him a small manor house and a bride of means once this mission was complete; Hawk was sure it would be the death of him.

Who was he if he was not fighting? He tried to imagine himself growing fat, sitting by his hearth with a wife, no longer having to sleep on the ground or fear for his life. A shudder ran through him. The boredom would kill him, but it would be a long, slow, torturous death.

His arms tingled at the memory of holding Alyce's body against his own, and he wondered if he would ever tire of the taste of her lips. Why did she confess she could never take him as a lover without involving her heart? And why did he care if she risked her heart when there was pleasure to be had?

He'd treated her as he did the woman of King Edward's court, as just another conquest. He may be callous toward love, but he was never disrespectful of women. He chose the women he did for good reason– they had no expectations of him beyond pleasure. They were wealthy, also widows, with no desire to be constrained by a man, but a strong desire to be pleasured by one, and he was more than happy to oblige.

Hawk and his band of bastards were created to fight and kill, not to love and be loved.

His men preferred to bed down with the women who served in the great hall or local taverns. They wanted women willing to slack a man's lust with no expectations of anything more than the right amount of coin or the pleasures of an experienced man. Barmaids and serving women held no illusions that a tryst would last beyond a night or two and did not cry of broken hearts when he and his men moved on.

No matter who or what class the woman, though, Hawk always insisted his men treated her well and paid her well in return for her favors. His own mother had been a serving maid in the hall of a castle, but she had not been given a choice when it came to the lord's lustful desires. He'd forced himself on her, leaving a babe in her belly and giving her nothing in return. She'd been ruined and no man would have her once it was apparent she carried the lord's bastard child. telling his mother to leave serving in the hall when he thought her too fat and to not come back until her belly was flat.

His mother had to wash clothes in the river until after Hawk was born. It had been difficult work when not pregnant, and absolutely backbreaking when with child, with all of the hunching over while scrubbing clothes on rocks that ripped at already cracked hands. Eventually, of course, his mother did return to the hall to work again, but not out of a desire to subject herself to more humiliation and degradation, but out of desperation to feed herself and her child.

The lord of the castle never acknowledged her, or Hawk.

No woman deserved to be treated that way, left with a burden too great to bear alone. He could not bed a barmaid or a castle serving women without thinking of his mother; hence, the reason he preferred willing, wealthy widows from the king's court who willingly sought his favors, not for coin but to fulfill their own lustful desires. These women used him for the same reasons he used them.

Lady Nicola, his most recent mistress, liked to cause a stir when he was at court, by choosing him as her escort. He was the king's favored knight, a dangerous man from the court's viewpoint, which always caused a thrill for well-protected women of means. The arrangement suited him just fine, and when he wasn't at court he gave her as little thought as she gave him. He did not have the inclination to fall in love, nor would he be so selfish as to expect a woman to love him back when his first loyalty was to the king and his sword.

But damn it all, the kiss tonight with Alyce had stirred something unfamiliar inside him. When she'd wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him so boldly, he didn't expect to like it so much. There was a passion in her that he'd felt igniting with an intensity that seemed to unsettle her as much as it unsettled him. The lady claimed she had no desire to marry again, and that her heart was too tender for her to be a man's mistress, but did that mean she planned to stay chaste for the rest of her life?

He found that notion hard to believe. When they'd kissed, she had been as much on fire for him as he was for her; he could feel it. Could she really live the entirety of her life denying herself the pleasures to be had in a shared bed?

No. She would find a man to marry, someone with titles and wealth, and that man would get to ignite her passion and burn with her.

A vision of Montworth came unbidden to his mind. If Cynwulf had his way, his sister would marry the weak popinjay and be doomed to a life devoid of passion. The thought of a woman like Alyce saddled with a pompous bore for a husband who would never be enough to stir the passion he knew burned within her felt like a punch to his gut.

But soon it would be none of his concern who ignited her passion. When the mission was completed, he and his army would ride away from Hawkspur Castle to embark on the next assignment from the king.

Hawk would not take advantage of Lady Alyce and then leave. Nor could he, as a bastard son likely to die by the sword, offer her anything. He was a man whose only legacy would be the battles he fought for the king. Even the small manor promised by the monarch would never be enough to content a woman used to presiding as mistress over a fortress such as Hawkspur.