The Conquest by Julia Templeton

his cock jerked against his belly. Thank goodness his tunic covered the evidence.
    She tilted her head and his gaze ripped back to her beautiful face.
    The face of an angel.
    An angel, who knew exactly what she was doing to him. Did she do this to torment him ? he wondered.
    Of course she did. This was the same woman who had kissed him earlier today. The woman sworn to one of his fellow officers—a man he had fought many a battle with.
    “Baron de Cion is well liked amongst his men.”
    She pressed her full lips together as she stared at him. “Ye said he was once married. What did his wife look like?”
    “I do not recall. It was many years ago.”
    “Was she also young?”
    “Younger than he, but not a great age difference.”
    “What color was her hair?”
    “I think it was dark.”
    “Like Machara’s?”
    The side of her mouth lifted in a smirk and he knew in that moment she had witnessed his tryst with the servant.
    “Do ye like dark-haired women, Adelstan?”
    “I like women.”
    She laughed a little, but he also sensed her frustration with him. “I’m a woman. Do ye like me?”
    “I think you already know the answer to that, Rhiannon.”
    Warning bells were going off in his head, especially when she walked toward him, her hips swaying in time to the pounding of his heart.
    She stopped just shy of him and looked up at him with those haunting violet eyes the color of Scottish heather. “Show me how much ye like me, Adelstan.”
    Conscious of the nearby open door, and the fact her father slept directly above her, Adelstan refrained from touching her. “My duty forbids me to act on my feelings.”
    “So ye do feel something for me, even if your duty keeps ye from doing anything about it?”
    His throat was suddenly so dry that he could only nod.
    She dragged her teeth along her lower lip, the action sensual without her meaning it to be.
    Or perhaps she had meant it to be and was not as innocent as she claimed.
    That would be the easiest explanation.
    But what if she was an innocent and she truly did desire him?  Never before had a woman gotten under his skin so quickly as Rhiannon. Was it the fact she was forbidden that made her so appealing to him?
    “I can keep a secret, Adelstan. I can and I shall.”
    He could hear his heart pounding in his ears, the sound so loud he barely heard footsteps just outside the door. Before he could react, the door pushed open and Elspeth appeared.
    The maid looked from Adelstan to Rhiannon, her mouth curving in a wide smile before she restrained it. “I did not mean to interrupt.”
    “I was just leaving,” he said, brushing past Rhiannon. To his dismay, his upper arm grazed her breast. He ground his back teeth together, his need for this woman so intense, it unnerved him.
    A hand enveloped his for a moment, and he turned to look down at her.
    He almost wished he hadn’t. Those violet eyes were so dark with unspent passion, he was half tempted to lock her maid out and take her right then and there.
    “Thank ye for walking me to my chamber, Adelstan. Perhaps we shall run into each other in the bakehouse again?”
    Was that an open invitation?
    While his body throbbed at the promise of such a request, his mind told him to run as far and as fast as he could from Rhiannon MacKay.
     

 

Chapter 8
     
    “Ye saw Adelstan and Machara together in the bakehouse?” Elspeth asked, pulling a chair before the fire.
    “Aye, and they were having sex.”
    “Oh, Rhiannon, I am sorry.”
    “I saw it all. The way he looked at her. The way his hands slid through her hair. I swear sometimes I wish I were a servant. At least then I could choose who I made love to.” Easing the ache from her shoulders with her hands, Rhiannon tried without success to get the image of Adelstan and Machara from her mind.
    “I might have the ability to pick my own lover and not worry I will be forced to marry, but otherwise, my life is not my own.”
    Rhiannon nodded. “I know that, Elspeth. I do,