Read Online Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01] by Falcons Fire - Free Book Online Page B

“The falconer.” He liked her raspy voice. It reminded him of the cat’s tongue.
    He tied the ends of the cord and arranged the bow just so, then rested his fingertips on her breasts, gauging her reaction out of the corner of his eye. There was none except perhaps a lowering of her eyelids and a slight smile.
    He allowed his fingers to move slowly, tracing feathery patterns over the taut brown wool. He heard her sigh, felt the warmth of her breasts beneath his trailing fingertips. Soon his aching need would be satisfied. Lust was but a demand of the body, like thirst. He had a raw thirst that needed quenching, and it didn’t matter whose cup he drank from. Tonight it would be Zelma’s.
    He encircled her with his arms. “Come outside with me.”
    “I’m married,” she said.
    All the better. Married women tended to be realistic, not expecting his heart to worship them as his body did. “Where’s your husband?”
    “Hastings.”
    Thorne smiled, then leaned down and closed his mouth over hers. She yielded to the kiss, allowing him to explore the warmth of her lips and tongue with his own. He closed his eyes and Zelma’s face transformed into another, pale and mysterious, shrouded in saffron veils. The veils shifted, and he found himself gazing into the deep blue eyes of Martine of Rouen. His heart drummed in his chest; desire overwhelmed him. When he took her full lower lip between his teeth, a moan rose in her throat.
    Voices from below made him open his eyes. Three of the boys who had been playing dice were coming up the stairwell, each carrying two huge buckets of steaming water. Thorne broke the kiss, but they had seen and heard enough. They snickered as they passed, the first one mumbling, “Sir.”
    “Boys.”
    Zelma said, “You’re taking a chance, kissing me like that. My husband’s Ulf Stonecutter. Do you know him?”
    “Nay.”
    “Well, he’s quite a big man.”
    He lowered his hands to her hips and pulled her against him so she could feel his desire—desire for another, but desire nonetheless. “How do you know I’m not bigger?”
    She smiled, but not, he sensed, in amusement at his reply. She looked like someone who had an idea she wanted to test. Nodding toward her pitchers of spiced beer, she said, “Would you hold these for me?”
    He took one in each hand, finding them full and quite heavy. She must be a strong woman. Then, as casually as she might lift a tablecloth, she pulled up his tunics, loosened the waist-cord of his chausses, and reached into them with both hands. Thorne gasped as they closed around his erection, feeling him with liberal familiarity.
    “Bless me,” she said. “So you are.”
    “Zelma!” With the two heavy pitchers and no place to put them, he might as well have had his hands tied. His only option would be to drop them and let them crash on the stairs, spilling their contents in a waterfall all the way into the bailey. It did not seem like a good plan.
    Thorne heard voices on landing above—Peter and Guy. Zelma must have heard them as well, but made no move to let him go. Thorne shook his head, amused at her audacity despite his embarrassment.
    The men found his predicament hilarious, laughing as they squeezed past with their full tankards. Guy said, “Careful, now. A fall down these stairs would be a nasty thing.”
    Zelma stroked him with tantalizing expertise. “You’re a regular stallion, that’s what you are. I daresay you could do me some damage with this .”
    The serving girl named Carol came running down the stairs on her way to the cookhouse, calling out as she passed, “That one’s married, Sir Falconer. Her husband’s enormous!”
    “Your Ulf is quite a legend,” Thorne said.
    “He’s a wonderful man, and I love him very much. It’s just that I’ve got a real weakness for big, tall Saxons. ‘Tis quite a burden, really. I try to be strong.”
    “Of course you do.”
    More footsteps from above. With a sigh of irritation, Thorne looked