The Falcon's Bride by Dawn Thompson

thrust his left boot between her legs, hiking her shift up to her knees in the process. “Pull!” he charged, planting his other foot squarely on her behind. “ Gently , mind,” he warned. “Disturb those stitches, and you’ll sew me up again.”
    Thea wiggled the boot, while he pushed with the foot he’d planted against her bottom, and she tumbled forward upon the floor when it gave.
    “Now the other,” he directed. “You shall have to be creative here. I cannot push off with my left, lest I stress the wound.”
    Thea dosed him with a withering stare. Creative, is it? she thought. I’ll give the great Gypsy lout “creative.” Bracing her bare feet against the forward crossed leg of the Glastonbury chair he occupied, she tugged with all her might on the heavy wide-top boot until it gave; then she scrambled to her feet and crowned him with it. It was a vicious unexpected blow over the head, delivered with all the strength she could muster. Caught off guard, the attack stunned him long enough for her to make a dash for the door. Tugging the gilded handle with all her might, she cast a backward glance toward Drumcondra, who was trying to rise. It was no use. The door was locked.
    “ Isor, hold her !” he thundered at the tail end of a string of expletives as he struggled to his feet.
    Thea screamed as the bird landed on her shoulder, its talons piercing the linen shift. Its wings were beating her about the head, its beak fastened in her hair. In terror, she fell to her knees and covered her eyes, her bent head to the floor in a vain attempt to escape the creature.
    “Get it off me!” she shrilled.
    Drumcondra reached her in two ragged strides. “Isor, enough!” he bellowed. He extended his arm, and the bird hopped onto the leather gauntlet on his wrist. HaulingThea to her feet with his free hand, the warlord jerked her to a standstill. “What? Did you think that piddling blow would be enough to s-subdue me ? Dream on, f-fair lady.” Giving the bird flight, he steered her to the bed and shoved her down upon it.
    He was slurring his words, and Thea pounced upon that. “You are foxed, sir!” she snapped at him. “Thoroughly castaway!”
    “ ‘Foxed’ . . . ‘castaway’ . . . ? What strange words are these? I do not know them.”
    “In your altitudes, bosky, half-sprung, in your cups— drunk , sir! You reek of strong drink.”
    Recognition struck. “Ah! Quite possible,” he said. “I tipped the jar before this here,” he explained, slapping his injured thigh and wincing. He fell into the bed beside her. “How else but drunk should a man go under the surgeon’s knife?”
    Thea scrambled away from him, but his quick hand clamped around her wrist dragged her back again. “I’m not that drunk, my lady,” he said in that seductive baritone voice of his. “It will take more than one piddling crock of whiskey to ‘fox’ me.” His fist relaxed, and he began to slide his hammish hand the length of her arm. “Mmm,” he hummed. “Soft as silk.”
    She swatted his hand, attracting the notice of the bird. It clucked, took flight from its shadowy retreat beside the dead hearth, and landed on the elaborately carved headboard of the bed. A quick peck on the top of her head sent her under the fur pelts with a shriek.
    “Keep that thing away from me, I said!” she cried. “It bit me!”
    A fiendish drunken laugh rumbled up from his throat, and he reached beneath the furs and pulled her hard against him.
    “It is not wise to menace me within the bird’s sight,” he agreed, “else you lose some vital portion of your anatomy. He is my creature after all . . . my familiar. You would do well to remember that.”
    “ Familiar is it? Balderdash! It is a vicious predator, and me you have made so! You think that I will just lie here and let you rape me because that bird is perched between us? I’ll see it in the stew pot first! I’ll wring its scrawny neck before I will succumb to rape. Why don’t you