“You slept well, Juliet?”
His voice startled her and she jumped, swallowing the food painfully.
He was behind her, near the wall of the tent, and she hadn’t known he was there. Or perhaps she was so focussed on the food she hadn’t realised. Juliet turned, trying on a smile, feeling it waver when she set eyes on him.
He was stripped to the waist, and he was washing his chest with a cloth dripping with water from a bowl.
And he was a sight to behold.
The muscles on his chest and stomach made ridges under the skin, and there was a smattering of dark hairs that disappeared beneath the fastening of his breeches. As he wrung out the cloth, his biceps bulged. A tattoo like a Celtic cross wrapped around the right one, and there were scars here and there, the sort of marks a man of war might accumulate in his life. But they didn’t detract from his beauty; rather they enhanced it. Juliet found her gaze slipping lower, imagining her fingertips against his warm skin, running down to the tight breeches that clung to his hips and moulded his long legs.
Her gaze lingered on strong muscular thighs and the large bulge between them that she remembered only too well as it had filled her, making her strive to take him all before she cried out with pleasure. The memory brought a tremor to her belly and an ache to the sensitive tips of her breasts.
His silver eyes were fixed on her as he soaped his skin and then rinsed it, slowly, taking his time, his scarred face intent. She knew he was remembering it too. The food was forgotten. Almost against her will, watching the hypnotic movement of his hands over his body, she took a step, and then another, closing the distance between them.
Today she found the scar less shocking, as if she had already grown accustomed to it, or maybe it was just that it was as much a part of him as his warrior’s body and his silver eyes. She was close enough now to reach out and touch him, and she did so, letting her finger trail over the damp skin of his chest, pausing to tangle in his dark hairs, down to the place where his breeches clung to his hard flat belly.
“I thought you were hungry,” he said, his husky voice sending shivers up her back.
There was only one answer to that but even as she opened her mouth to give it, her hand brushing the growing swell inside his breeches, she remembered who he was and what he had done.
Her desire was still strong, but now it shamed her. She stumbled back a step, and then another. He was frowning, watchful, clearly aware that something was wrong.
“Are you well?” he growled, setting down the cloth and moving toward her.
Juliet told herself she didn’t want him to touch her. This was the man who had been at Kendall Castle when her friends vanished. She alone had been left, lying sick in a bed in the village inn, unable to perform. The next day her friends did not return as they’d promised, and when she went to the castle to find them no one would tell her where they had gone. Something was wrong. There had been a death there the night of the feast. Lord Edward of Kendall, who had held the castle and lands for Matilda for many years now, had died, and there was a new lord in his place, Lord Wulfrich. The servants were frightened.
“They’re gone, that’s all,” one of them shouted, waving a hand at her. “Go and ask the Wolf if you want to know what happened. Go on. I dare you.” And he’d chuckled nastily.
And now here she was, face to face with the Wolf, and asking was on the tip of her tongue.
He caught hold of her arm, pulling her in against his bare chest, and she felt as if she might faint. A combination of desire and fear and exhaustion whirled her around. “Juliet?” she could hear him saying her name, and then she was lying on the furs, breathing quickly, trying to steady her pounding heart.
“What is it?” he said sharply, and she looked up into his face. He was kneeling over her and his eyes were daring her to answer, to tell him the truth.
The words spilled out of her. “You killed my friends. Six months ago at Kendall Castle. They went to perform and then they were gone and I was all alone.”
He frowned at her. “Kendall Castle?” Something flickered in his eyes. “You’re one of the minstrels,” he sighed. “I should have known when you turned your somersaults. Now I think of it they spoke of a Juliet. They wanted me to fetch you.”
Listening to him, Juliet could only think that the rumours were true.
A tear ran down her cheek and she turned her face away, burying it against the furs of his bed.
She felt him leaning closer, the brush of his skin against hers, and then his warm tongue traced her tears, taking them into his mouth. She tried to pull away, pretending she was disgusted, but he held her, his lips brushing against her cheekbone, before finding her mouth. The kiss deepened and the taste of him, the touch of him, almost stripped her of the will to fight. It was only with an enormous effort that she pulled away.