Once Upon a Knight. Jackie Ivie

required an orderly, structured life where she controlled every moment. That’s what she’d always had. This man was already getting past that.

      He’d given up the eyebrow-raised look and had pursed his lips again, narrowing his cheeks and making her heart stumble through two beats before she had it covered over. Her thoughts were scrambling, and her pulse was impossible to control, and she even had her hands fisted at her sides. This was horrid. The man was horrid.

      It was wondrous, too.

      “I dinna’ see that you have any option,” he finally replied.

      “To what?” she asked.

      “My continued presence in your rooms.”

      Sybil blinked several times. She was losing in this confrontation. That never happened. It was inconceivable, impossible…. But there it was.

      “Remember?” he said in the vast silence that had only the sound of her rapid breathing punctuating it.

      Sybil nodded. Better to retreat and regroup. And with his continued smile, she knew the wretch was following her train of thought.

      “You’re na’ to touch anything,” she said.

      “You intending to send the dragon after me again, are you?”

      “Nothing. I’ll na’ have my possessions touched and handled by a…”

      His grin widened as her voice stopped. “I’ve been called every name, my lady. You canna’ improve upon them, nor can you inflict harm. As I already mentioned, you are up against a master.”

      “I’ll ken if you touch anything.” Sybil scanned the room for the peg she always hung her cloak from. Which was odd. Of course it wouldn’t be anywhere else. The fact that she’d worried over it was another strange event in a short evening of them. She crossed the room to where he’d been standing and passed him as he made the exact same move to where she’d just been. Their eyes locked as they did so, but neither of them moved their heads to continue it. She was just reaching for her cloak when he spoke again.

      “Do you have a pallet I can stretch out upon?”

      Sybil forced the instant reaction away and turned, swirling the cloak about herself as she did so. Imagining him stretched out was going to be imprinted on her mind. She just wished she could overwrite her own imagination with a torture rack to stretch him out the proper amount. And then some.

      She had a slight smile on her face that froze when she saw him patting the white coverlet on her own bed. With his bare hands! Sybil sucked in the shock, and then had to deal with what had to be anger.

      “This might do…although ’tis short.” He said it as he stretched full-out on her bed—without even doffing his boots, which was a moot point since the bottom of him was hanging over the end of her mattress. Sybil watched as the slight, carved wood contended with his weight and used the time to wrap her cloak securely about her and tie it with a precision and tautness that was going to have to be loosened the moment she stepped from the chamber. She turned a deaf ear to his chuckle as he watched.

      “You’ll na’ leave me unattended long, will you? I’ve a horrid injury. I’ll need your touch. And I’d like a bit of your gravy, too, I’m thinking.”

      He was lifting his arms up, showing the tanned size of them as he looped them about pillows covered with white linen she’d embroidered with such care that it was impossible to spot the stitches. And then she had to deal with how that violation felt as well.

      “’Twas terribly difficult to recover from my injury in yon hall, Lady Sybil….”

      His voice had softened as if he were exhausted, and he’d even lowered it for her name. Sybil’s lips tightened as she held back what could be a shriek of rage. But that was impossible. She didn’t suffer emotions. She never had. She was an expert at wreaking havoc with others’ emotions. The man was up against more than he’d bargained for! And she didn’t know why. She wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t blessed with a bountiful shape. She wasn’t wealthy. She wasn’t even legitimate.

      The only thing she was, was confused.

      Sybil hurried to the main hall, barely glancing at Waif as he gnawed on his bone. She had to get back before that man ensconced himself in her rooms and couldn’t be ousted without emotion.

      She was still wondering what force was going to be most useful for that objective as she reached the loud gathering in the hall.

      Chapter Six

      Vincent made quick work of her lock, although the hasp was difficult. He was skilled at picking locks, though, and a perfect twist from the thinnest skean he’d located had the big cabinet of hers open, exposing her treasury of bottles filled with the most obnoxious-smelling potions and ugly colored liquids.

      He stoppered the fifth one after wrinkling his nose in distaste.

      This is what she treasured? That woman was the strangest creature. Something about her potions was also making his skin itch oddly and his nose twitch. Vincent put the fifth bottle back before being seized with a sneezing fit that had Waif pawing at the door and whining. Then the beast was howling, making a racket that could probably be heard well beyond the tower hall.

      The lass probably had arranged the locked cabinet for just such an effect. Vincent wiped at his eyes and strode to the door to let the wolf in before it alerted her to Vincent’s perfidy. He’d been told the wench needed a lesson taught to her, that she toyed with others’ emotions without end, causing heartburning and pain when it wasn’t needed. He’d been told she was smart as well, but he hadn’t been told the scope of her intelligence. He’d considered his cousin’s words of description of the lass as unlikely and exaggerated. There wasn’t a lass born that could outwit Vincent Danzel. At least, he hadn’t thought there was.

      Until now. Worse yet…was the effect her nearness was having on his body, and that was just wrong. Vincent was not attracted to smallish wenches. He was too large. He liked a lass with size and volume to her, so he could play at will and not worry over giving pain and torment instead of pleasure. He also wasn’t fond of dark women. He actually found dark women had more hair covering their pleasure sites…as well as more unsavory things—like a musk odor about them. All in all, there wasn’t any reason the little lass should have him facing a mixture of roaring lust and need. That gave him pause and made him think.

      Vincent wasn’t used to giving women much thought until now, actually. And that was even more wrong. Women didn’t have an effect like this on him. Women weren’t made for thinking on. They were made for pleasure, release, and play. This one, though…Damn! She was making him alert, taut, and readied with every word out of her mouth and every glint from her light silver eyes.

      He didn’t know what was the matter with him. His loins were still giving him an annoying throb of wasted preparation and readiness. It was a good thing she hadn’t looked at that particular area when he’d gotten close to her. She’d have known and then used his lust as a weapon.

      There was no reason for it, and that had even more wrongness about it. What was it about this lass that set his blood boiling and his heart to pounding and his mouth to saying things his mind hadn’t tested first? Worse was what she was doing to him—the fact that he was still so taut and readied for her that his loins were pushing against the wool of his kilt and making even his sporran feel erotic and hot and bothersome.

      Vincent rearranged himself and grimaced and watched the wolf prowl about before it pawed at the ground right beside him in a parody of male frustration and need.

      “Damn wench.” Vincent mouthed the words and headed for another of her cabinets.

      Sybil didn’t need to ask why she’d been summoned. The moment she reached the bottom step and looked toward the table, she knew. Every pore in her skin alerted her, and every bit of her blood singing through her body was readied and prepared and panicked.

      There was