Only For A Knight by Sue-Ellen Welfonder Page A

mane of thick, bronze-colored hair and twinkling blue eyes, Big Red MacAlister made a resplendent figure. And since the day he’d appeared at her father’s door some years before, he’d proven himself not just Hugh Out-with-the-Sword’s most stalwart man, but also her own most faithful and obedient . . . servant.
     
Every tall, golden inch of him.
     
Ignoring the chattering throng inside the hall, he looked down at her, his blue gaze almost a physical touch. “I rejoice to see you, lass,” he said, stepping closer.
     
Euphemia blinked.
     
Her heart thumped wildly against her ribs and heat suffused her cheeks.
     
“W-what are you doing here . . . now?” she got out, the hot pulsing between her thighs damping her more the nearer he came. “Shouldn’t you be with our other guardsmen? Out in the hall with all the rest—or in the stables with our horses?”
     
Big Red cocked an auburn brow, his light blue eyes filling with amusement and . . . need.
     
“Och, see you, lassie, I thought I’d be a-doing what I do nigh every e’en.” His voice dropped to an even silkier depth. “Aye, I was a-looking for you. Thought you’d wish to be attended. But you were not abed,” he added, adjusting his plaid to better display his rising enthusiasm .
     
“I was abed, but I did not sleep well. As you can see he is returned and . . . and not alone.” Her chest tightening again, Euphemia shot a quick glance at her betrothed and his whore.
     
They still stood near the keep doorway, with none of the MacKenzies paying heed to her or any other shadows-in-the-night who might be lurking in the blackness of the stair tower.
     
“A notable surprise, eh?” Big Red agreed, following her gaze. “But not a tangle that ought turn his head overlong once you’ve shown him your talents.” He lifted a finger to her lips, rubbed gently. “’Twas an ache for your specialties that sent me to your chamber.”
     
Taking her hand, he pressed her palm against the hard ridge of his manhood, curled her fingers around its thickness. “I missed you the last few nights. Stroke me, lassie. Long, slow strokes, through my plaid.”
     
Euphemia stared through the darkness at him. “This is crazy-mad. I cannot . . . service you here,” she whispered, her hand beginning to move up and down on him all the same. “We are in fullest view of the hall. If anyone—”
     
“If anyone looks this way, my sweet, they will see naught but darkness. Or the broad back of Big Red MacAlister as I peer out the window splay. Mayhap they will think I am relieving myself? That ought keep them away long enough for you to relieve me in truth.”
     
Fearing discovery, and chiding herself for it, Euphemia hesitated. She slid another glance at the noisy crowd in the vestibule, weighing the risk of getting caught against the urgent tingling between her thighs.
     
She glanced up the narrow turnpike stairs winding upward into the gloom behind Big Red’s wide-set shoulders. She alone occupied a chamber in the forgotten tower above them.
     
Nary a soul would saunter down the steps and stumble across her . . . pleasure.
     
E’er bolder than people credited her, she pulled another deep breath of the damp night air into her lungs, filling them as best she could, her ailments considered. She took great pride in her daring. Her ability to wrap the brawniest, most fearsome clansmen around her fingers.
     
Bend them to her will.
     
Or snatch their affections from lasses graced with more obvious charms.
     
Another furious look at the flame-haired plentitude hanging on her betrothed’s arm decided her. Turning back to Big Red, she resumed massaging his swollen tarse.
     
“Och, aye, that is what I was a-wanting.” He looked down at her, his smile broadening into a grin. “But with your mouth, sweetness,” he added, circling his fingers around her wrist, easing her hand away just long enough to toss aside his plaid and free himself. “Lick and suckle me as you e’er do—you promised you would when’er I have