Knight Nostalgia Read online

  Her breathing evened out. He liked that, too. When they first were sharing a bed, she didn’t go to sleep easily or stay under peacefully. Now, unlike most women who seemed infused with energy after sex, she rode the aftermath like a welcoming boat, sailing into dreamland.

  He wouldn’t be far behind her, but for now he held her while she slept, his own storytelling Scheherazade, and remembered that night she’d talked about.

  Though a serious gamble, it had brought the relationship simmering between them for years at last to volcanic life. Matt had picked up on Savannah’s submissive side, long before she had done so. That night he’d frankly exploited it, pulling it to the surface in a dramatic way to ensure she confronted her feelings for him and his for her. It had resulted in marriage, and a deeper connection with another person than either one of them had ever experienced.

  His gaze shifted to the scattered brochures and he smiled, shaking his head mentally. Yeah, he wasn’t into role play, but he was going to give her that damned fantasy. Because she might view him as a conqueror, but he was a conqueror whose only desire was ensuring his conquest had everything she could every possibly want.

  Being a thorough planner, Matt had sought out the man on his executive team most able to help him learn how to take a step away from his hardcore reality into fantasy play.

  Jon had suggested doing the role play scene last, after Matt had all the other Resort experiences to bolster him. He’d also recommended Matt come to his house to discuss the challenge face to face. Matt had half-expected—and feared—some crazy-assed visualization exercises. Well, no matter foolish he’d feel, if that was what was needed, he’d do it. He trusted his man to get him where he needed to be to achieve his objective.

  Instead, Jon had invited him to sit on his back porch and share a bottle of Jack. Rachel had a Saturday morning yoga class, so it was just the two of them, but Matt had noted the pleasing signs of her presence. Her scent, a new set of pillows on the couch with a bamboo tree print, a romance novel on the coffee table.

  But the most important sign of it was in Jon himself, the relaxed attitude of a male who had his forever mate, and was comfortable in the home they’d made together. Matt had no doubt, before she’d left that morning, Jon had enjoyed the many delights his sub had to offer. The contentment of a sated Master and male rested on Jon as obviously as the other clues to her presence.

  “You’re overthinking this,” Jon said, pouring Matt a drink and sitting back.

  “So says the man who doesn’t feel or look like an idiot standing on his head and saying ‘ohm.’”

  “Because it reflects who I am.” Jon gestured at him with his glass. “And therein lies my point. You don’t need to doubt yourself on this, Matt. It keys into the type of Master you’ve always been.” He tapped his temple. “Up here. When you tune in to what she needs, you’ll just open that door inside yourself, and it will be there.”

  “So your advice is not to prep at all?”

  “Not for that end of it. Get the staff on board with all the trappings, give them some leeway so you have the spontaneity angles, the unexpected variables that you relish when we’re tackling a new project. Beyond that, don’t even think about it until the time comes. And when it does, think about her, how you feel about her, deep down. It’s in you, Matt. The fantasy wouldn’t have persisted so strongly for her if she didn’t see elements of it in you every day. It was all there, out front, the night you made her yours. It all comes back to that.”

  A smile touched Jon’s lips. “If you’re going to meditate on anything, meditate on that. No ‘ohms’ required.”

  He had thought about it. As dramatic as it might sound, he had claimed her like a conqueror.

  He’d do it here.

  Giving himself another minute to figure out what to do about the naked women at his feet, Matt swept his gaze over the interior of the large tent, with its dark red curtained walls. Shields and swords were propped against a wooden frame, armor threaded onto the arms of it. A big table held a weathered map, pieces placed upon it the way they would be for a conqueror contemplating his army’s strategy.

  Yet there were things in the tent that a battle commander wouldn’t have—unless he was ensuring the comfort of his lady and maximizing the best ways to enjoy her. The large, luxurious bed, draped in gold velvet and piled with pillows, was a nod to that.

  Bidding the women to remain kneeling with a short gesture, Matt moved to the entrance of the pavilion tent. Two of his “soldiers,” muscular men clad in leather and armor, stood silently at either side of the entrance. They didn’t address him, but straightened their already military perfect stance.

  He was looking out at the incomparably romantic view of the Caribbean, only thirty feet away at high tide. Moonlight formed a lightning track straight down to the shoreline, but it felt like it stopped in the center of his heart.

  God, he loved her so. Maybe that was the hardest part of “role play” to him—having to act for even a minute like she wasn’t his reason for breathing.

  And yet…would a conquering warlord be nervous about the queen being brought to his bed? A queen whose castle he’d just conquered, whose father had been willing to sell her to save that castle. His fortification of stone was worth more to him than his daughter’s virtue…or her heart.

  “The best fantasy lies upon a foundation of truth.” Jon had also said that, and he was right. Truth was the key to getting into this. Matt turned and went back into the tent, to the women. “Prepare my bath,” he ordered them.

  As they rose, he had to give credit where credit was due. Their training made every movement a sexual invitation. Hellfire.

  Perhaps Savannah had known his innate pragmatism would come back to hinder him at the final pressure point. His wife loved him enough to help him get into character, in a way he was pretty damn sure no other wife would. Savannah trusted him.

  He was going to spank her irresistible bottom for teasing him like this. His lips quirked. He trusted her, too, but if a pair of straight, handsome men were preparing her the way these two women were offering to do for him, there’d be two dead males on this island.

  Hypocritical or not, there it was. But he wasn’t worried about that. There’d been a lot of hard-limit, soft-limit stuff he’d had to submit to The Resort staff about this fantasy, prior to arriving. Allowing another man to touch his wife sexually was in the titanium steel category of hard-limit.

  Unless it was one of his four-man executive team, and they were different. Lucas, Peter, Jon and Ben were his brothers, not by blood, but by everything that mattered. When a woman was chosen by one of them to be his forever, she was also all of theirs, in certain ways.

  As Savannah had realized that fateful night, when all four of them had helped Matt achieve his goal to claim her.

  The women had tied back the tent flaps near a clawfoot tub. Other slaves arrived and started pouring hot water into it for his bath. The redhead brought him ale as he settled onto a couch to watch the preparations. He stretched a long arm along the back, his legs in a casual sprawl before him. Tipping his head back, he let himself get lost in the memory of Savannah’s voice as she’d first told him her fantasy. The sensual tags and softening purr, as the vision aroused her.

  He could have involved the others in this fantasy. Lucas and Cass were here, as well as Dana and Peter. Jon and Rachel had been invited, but Jon had felt Rachel wasn’t quite ready emotionally for this much immersion. While a bone-deep submissive, Rachel had been badly damaged by her first husband, so Jon was taking slow steps with her, making sure her decisions as a submissive were based on the right feelings.

  Ben had decided to tag along, but hadn’t imposed on the pleasures of the three couples, instead availing himself of as many submissives as could handle him. Which, knowing the lawyer’s appetites, meant The Resort had probably had to import a few more.

  Matt could easily see Ben, Peter and Lucas as captains in his army. However, using the island staff, much m
ore skilled in the theatrics involving role play, was the better plan. Not because his men couldn’t pull it off, but because having his closest friends as part of it would have made him absurdly self-conscious. It was far easier to have strangers handle the support roles. Plus, this way, his men and their wives could enjoy their last night in the way they wished.

  Control was a funny thing. When he fell in love with Savannah, he’d learned even his formidable control had its limits. The night he’d made her his, he might not have been nervous, but he’d been strung taut as a wire, because the stakes were so high. Even the most controlling Master knew love was the best kind of surrender. If he had any sense at all.

  The bath was ready, and the redhead approached, a slight smile on her full mouth. “May I help you disrobe, my lord?”

  They gave him the most thorough bath of his life, followed by an equally intense massage, rubbing oil into his skin. At one point the golden-haired one knelt before him, her eyes trained on his erect cock—no help for it, since he wasn’t dead—her moist lips parted. God save him.

  “May I have the honor of bringing you release, my lord?”

  He was going to put his hands around Savannah’s throat and strangle her. Or demand a medal for his self-restraint. Or both. He declined the slave’s offer, as well as their help dressing. His skin felt heated and tight, and though the two women were beautiful, and their hands were what any man would want upon him, he desired the touch of only one woman. His muscles might be loose and relaxed, but he was aroused and impatient for his wife.

  He donned a linen shirt and a pair of laced fly trousers, apparently appropriate casual attire for a warlord. He decided to hold off on the boots for now, but as he put on each piece of clothing and threaded the belt into the loops of the pants, he found himself moving into those deeper levels Jon had described. Not away from his reality, but onto a whole different plain of it.

  The belt was heavy and thick, capable of bearing a sword or dagger. Or leaving red marks on pale globes of flesh. An interesting thought. His defiant queen over his lap, her tempting ass quivering as he held her down…

  Torchlight flickered outside the tent opening, drawing his attention back to the guards. They were men who’d fought with him, who watched his back in battle. As he watched theirs. They gave him loyalty, not only because he took them to victory, but because he fought with them.

  He was a warlord who’d won the right to take the daughter of a king as the spoils of war. But when he truly took her, she’d be willing.

  He had no interest in causing her fear or harm. He recalled how she’d sat her horse next to her father, a father who treated her as no more than a bargaining chip. He’d offered her to Matt as a bride, only to keep him away from the gate. Coward.

  Matt’s scoffing response to the pathetic monarch was that he would be given nothing. He would take the castle and then take the daughter.

  Because she deserved better. Her cool, remote gaze had never wavered, her body still as a statue. Yet he’d noted the subtle swallow that moved her throat when her father spoke his callous words. Her hands had tightened on the reins while her back, jaw and chin never yielded. She met Matt’s stare in a way her father had been unable to do.

  “You may be able to force yourself on my body,” that stare said. “But a thousand bloody battles will not win you what lies beneath the flesh.”

  He knew treasure when he saw it.

  He lazed back against the couch cushions once more, one knee drawn up to brace his arm as he sipped his refreshed ale. He heard other guards coming and a faint smile touched his lips. He was being fantastical if he thought he could smell her scent from here. But he could, couldn’t he?

  He picked a scarf up off the cushions. He’d brought it with him tonight, a scrap of sheer cloth Savannah had worn tied loosely around her throat and crisscrossed over her breasts at lunch, but as he lifted the scarf to his nose, inhaling, he imagined it had come into his keeping another way. When the now de facto queen had been brought before him after the battle, she’d been wearing it. He’d used the ends to pull her close to him, tightening it around her throat while inhaling her scent. She’d wrinkled her nose at his battle stench, a deliberate snub, while her eyes went a million miles away.

  He’d released her, but as the guards reached for her arms to secure her, he lifted a hand, stilling them.

  “Summon two female slaves,” he ordered. “You’ll guard her as they prepare her at the women’s tent, but you remain outside. No man but I will touch her, or look upon her bare flesh. Am I understood?”

  Her gaze had slid to his as they’d responded with a crisp and immediate, “Yes, my lord.”

  Then she’d been taken away.

  She hadn’t been captured as a ransom hostage or marriage prospect. No. She would be prepared and delivered to him as a pleasure slave, to do with as he desired. It underscored his dominion over a king who’d been willing to sell her under the guise of marriage. Even beyond the grave, he’d leave the man no pretense that he wasn’t a coward.

  Now he felt a twist of regret at the way he’d set those terms in front of her. He was a conqueror who spared no mercy toward his enemies on the battlefield, but it was her father who was his enemy, along with his soldiers and warlords. But this woman was not. He wondered if she was afraid beneath that cool exterior, and realized he didn’t like that thought.

  They were approaching. He forced himself to remain in his casual pose on the couch, quelling the desire to turn and watch her come through the tent opening. Instead, as the guards and female slaves entered with her, he took another swallow of his ale and studied the map which laid out his next attack plan.

  In his peripheral vision, he did note she was at the center of the women’s protective circle, to ensure there would be no incidental brush of contact from one of the men.

  “Guards, leave us,” he said. As the guards filed out, leaving only the women around the queen, he appeared to keep his attention on his battle plans an additional, unbearably long ten seconds. In reality, he closed his eyes, drew a deeper breath. Yes, he could smell her. He’d know her anywhere.

  Setting his goblet on the side table, he leaned back and gestured, so the women would bring her before him. He would look at his prize now. Assess his conquest.

  When they complied, and his eyes fell upon her, his brain simply stopped.

  She wore a dress that was a waterfall of slim golden chains, fixed to a gold collar like a cuff around her neck. Some of the chains were connected under her arms to give the “dress” a front and back, but there was nothing under that curtain of glittering strands. As the women made her turn to show him all sides, the chains split at the tips of her breasts, showed him glimpses of thigh, hip and sex. When she was brought to a halt, the chains settled, a shimmer of color and flesh.

  Her hair was down, a flow of silken gold, a lighter color than the jewelry.

  It was no wonder he’d had to lay siege upon, invade and take a whole castle to obtain her. In no universe could he look at the vision before him and think he would have won her with anything less than a full siege, an inarguable show of strength.

  He was ready for battle. A different, much more pleasurable kind of battle.

  He’d left most of her garb to the discretion of the slave girls, having no desire to interfere with their excitement about dressing their lord’s newest possession. There was only one item he’d specifically mandated, and seeing her wearing it made his heart hammer blood into his cock.

  She wore a falcon’s hood. Or rather, a head mask designed like a falcon’s hood, the supple material shaped over her delicate nose like a beak, the crown of the mask embellished with a plume of feathers. Jesses were wound around her wrists, the tiny bells making noise as she moved. Though she could see nothing, because the eye flaps of the hood were securely closed, the lower part of the mask was like an open skirt of more looped gold chains, separating at the bridge of her nose and accentuating the shape of her jaw, the fullness of h
er lips.

  Her fingers in the jesses were tight, though her shoulders were back, just as they’d been when she sat on the horse. The posture only directed his gaze to her exposed nipples, taut from either nerves or the friction of the tiny chains moving against them.

  He wanted to act like the barbarian she thought he was, toss her down and suckle those peaks, drive into her cunt and take her.

  Instead, he held his position and spoke. “Leave her. You did well.”

  The women dispersed, whispering and giggling. He noticed she showed no reaction, aloof. They’d been instructed not to speak to her, but he was sure she hadn’t stooped to begging them for answers to her questions. She was the real thing. A true royal, and she would adhere to every aspect of that to drive home what she considered him.

  A dirty, filthy barbarian.

  His lips curved in a wicked grin. She was about to get dirty. And he was going to make sure she liked it.

  He rose, circling her, letting his fingertips glide along her skin, capture and stroke the golden chains. He tugged on them, enough to put pressure against her slender throat from the attached collar. She quivered under his touch.

  “It’s difficult to conceal attraction, isn’t it? My slave.”

  She stiffened. “Revulsion can make the skin shudder as much as attraction.”

  “Is that so?” As he completed the circle around her, he passed his hands through the waterfall of chains so his palm brushed the curve of a buttock, her hip. He dropped his touch, easing his fingers between her legs. But before he could tease the truth from the treasure he sought, she shifted.

  She stomped her wooden-soled slipper on his insole, sending a bolt of pain through his foot. At his curse, she jerked away.

  Fuck, he really should have remembered that move. At least she hadn’t been wearing spike heels this time.

  Despite the mask blocking her sight, she made a dash for the open flap of the tent. He lunged after her and caught her around the waist. She’d given no thought to the risk of hurting herself from such an attempt. Brave, but foolish.