The Reckless Oath We Made - Bryn Greenwood Page 0,68

knight, but I asked it of Lady Zhorzha again and again. Each time, she me granted mercy.

CHAPTER 26

Zee

I thought he was only going to kiss me, so when he touched my breasts, I was about as shocked as he must have been that day in the physical therapy clinic parking lot. There I was thinking we’d go slow and figure things out, but the time from kissing my mouth to kissing my breasts was a minute, tops.

As fast as we got started, it was over. He pushed himself back up on his knees, and I wondered if he was having another discussion with his voices. I sat up in front of him and said, “Can I touch you?”

I thought he was going to say no or where, but he said, “Yea, dear lady.”

I followed the same route he’d taken on me, running my hand up his thigh and over his belly. He was fully dressed, which didn’t seem fair, so I took ahold of the front of his blouse with both hands and untucked it. I leaned in and kissed him, while I ran my hands over his bare chest.

He turned his head to break the kiss and said, “Wait.”

Wait, which was not stop.

I’d promised that was all he had to say, so I took my hands out from under his shirt. For a few seconds he pressed his hands flat on his thighs, and then he put them up to his shoulders and started scratching.

I waited, calm at first and then, when I realized what was going to happen when he finished scratching, kind of excited. I pulled off my nightgown and laid back on the bed. He stopped scratching. He looked at me and squeezed his hand in a fist so tight his knuckles went white.

“Watching you do that gets me a little wet,” I said. I did not know what constituted medieval dirty talk, but that was true. He had great hands.

He leaned down and started kissing me again. It was this weirdly urgent kiss, considering I was lying there naked and he wasn’t even touching me. Part of what made it so good was that I knew it wouldn’t last. In another minute, he was going to pull away like my lips were burning him. Maybe they were. A virtuous Christian knight like him kissing an odious serpent like me.

I knew the clock was running down, so I went at him from two angles. One hand under his shirt, the other one into the gap at the top of his pants. I didn’t even touch bare skin there, because he was wearing boxer shorts. He made a sound that I assumed was wait. Then he was back on his knees next to me, like he was in time-out. His left hand on top of his head. His right hand hovering out in the air. Open, then clenched.

The situation was complicated and frustrating, but Gentry was hairy and sweaty and hard-dicked, and those are my three favorite things about men. Everything else is negotiable.

Once I thought of it as negotiating, it wasn’t complicated. It was really simple. We were on a swing going back and forth. Not enough. Too much. Not enough. Too much. In between: a minute of just right.

When we swung toward not enough, it was this insanely hot high school heavy petting. Like musical chair sex, and I didn’t know when the music would stop.

When we swung toward too much, I couldn’t even touch him.

But the in-between, the just right? Oh my god. An absolute free-for-all.

The next time he kissed me, he didn’t waste time petting my legs. He pushed his hand between my thighs and said, “Sooth, my lady, thy cunt is wet.”

That word coming out of his mouth made me laugh so hard I started crying a little. He took his hands off me and rocked back on his heels with a serious frown on his face.

“My lady. Art thou well? Have I wounded thee?”

“I’m fine, but I can’t believe you said cunt.”

I expected him to apologize, but he said, kind of defensively, “’Tis a good English word,” which made me start laughing again. I was definitely still buzzed.

I rolled onto my side to look at him. He was kneeling there, looking at me, and for once I knew exactly what he was thinking. He was taking inventory of what he wanted to do to me.

“I don’t mind if you say cunt,” I said. Honestly, I could respect a man who would