“I was a soldier once. And my current job requires violence on occasion.”
“I know.”
“But you’re here.”
She rinsed the blade in the bowl. “You’re different. You stuck up for that girl when you didn’t have to.”
“I just happened to be there. Any decent guy would have.”
“My point exactly. There aren’t many decent guys in armor. Some are better than others, of course. Bob Kay comes close. But even he wouldn’t take a swing at Dave Agravaine. And believe me, that guy’s needed his face smashed in for a long time.”
She began working around my mouth, so I stayed quiet. I felt the swell of her breasts against my arm as she leaned over me, and I smelled her light perfume. I resisted the urge to glance down when the neck of her dress gaped slightly. Well, I mostly resisted. I felt like a kid entranced by the thought of seeing his first naked female body.
Finally she finished, wiped my face with a towel, then nodded toward the mirror above the mantel. “Check yourself out.”
One glance at my unadorned features reminded me why I’d grown the beard in the first place. I had to admit, though, that I looked completely different. “You’ve successfully removed that ugly growth,” I said, “and revealed the uglier one beneath it.”
“So the patient will survive?”
I turned to her. “The patient will grow it back as soon as he can. But he appreciates the effort.”
She stepped forward, so close that I reflexively put my hands on her waist. She pressed her hips against me and let my arms take the weight of her upper body. Her hands lightly touched my bare cheeks. “Now that you won’t scratch me up if you kiss me,” she said in a husky, unmistakable voice, “let’s discuss my fee.”
“I thought you worked for the government.”
“I do. But you don’t. You’ve run up quite a tab, what with an office visit and two house calls.”
I felt her breath on my upper lip. Her hands moved down to my chest, and one fingertip ran along my scar. I said, “I certainly wouldn’t want to stiff you.”
She giggled. “Are you sure about that?”
She was so close I could hear her slightly ragged breathing. “ Now who’s a horny teenager?” I said.
The smile left her face, replaced by the kind of look men dream about inspiring in women like her. She said, “I’m no teenager, sword jockey.”
Then she proved it.
Later I looked up at Iris as she sat astride me in bed. The moon was now centered in the window, and its light cast her in pale blue, edged with orange from the dimmed but persistent lamp. Her skin glistened with sweat, and her lips had that delicious puffy quality some women get when they’re aroused. She rolled her hips slowly and bent over me; her breasts slid against my chest. With her eyes closed, I wondered for a moment if she pictured someone else beneath her. Then she smiled down at me and traced her fingers along my hairless cheek. “You clean up nicely.”
“And you dirty up well.”
She laughed and kissed me. I looked past her shoulder at the moon, did some quick calculations, and decided it would reach the pinnacle of the hill within the next half hour. “I have to go soon,” I said into the kiss, which showed no signs of stopping.
“I know,” she agreed, and pulled back enough to look into my eyes. She ran a hand through her sweaty hair. “I should probably mention that this is not characteristic of my normal behavior.”
“Or my normal luck.”
She laughed again and wiped the perspiration from her eyes. She had a slender, trim shape under her clothes that spoke of her active life, and a couple of scars of her own that I intended to ask about someday. “I’ve just never met anyone like you,” she continued. “And I knew I’d regret not doing this if I never saw you again.”
“Really.” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement of disbelief; I did not generally inspire unrestrained lust in intelligent, beautiful women.
She nodded. “I know myself, Eddie. I know what I respond to. It’s not the shallow surface, no matter how handsome or wealthy it is. You can believe me or not.”
I rose and put my arms around her waist, feeling the muscles of her back move beneath her skin. “I believe you.” I rolled her onto her back. She went willingly, opened herself to me, and together we pounded out the last of our lust with much noise and effort. We finished with barely enough time for me to dress, pack, and head downstairs. Getting out of that bed was one of the most heroic things I’ve ever done.
We made no awkward promises, except the unspoken one that was in our kiss as I slipped out the door. My last sight of her like that, naked in the moonlight, would stay with me for a long time.
FOURTEEN
Even indoors my newly bare cheeks felt the night’s chill, and my footsteps, despite my attempt at stealth, sounded loud against the stone.
The rush from the time spent with Iris, which left me feeling as if I could kick the whole world’s ass, had burned itself out by the time I reached the top of the staircase. I paused for a moment and listened for any movement or voices. Only silence reached me. I took the steps two at a time, knowing that I’d come out near the door to the great hall.
My typical luck held. At the bottom I ran smack into a trio of men starting upstairs.
They stared at me. I stared at them. Two of them were pudgy, dressed in expensive clothes a bit too small for their corpulence. The burgundy veins stood out on their noses and ears, marks of their long-term dissipation. I didn’t know them, but they seemed typical wealthy landowners and had no doubt been among the courtiers howling for my entrails for the past two days.
The third I recognized at once as my old pal Ken Spinkley, the Lord Astamore. But his face was as blank as the others.
A long moment passed when no one moved or spoke. “Well?” said the nearest man, who wore amber eye shadow. He humphed with impatience. All three were drunk, and one had to lean against the stairwell door for support.
“I think I’m going to be unwell,” the leaning man said, his voice thick from drink.
“Ladies are unwell,” Eye Shadow said. “Gentlemen vomit.”
“Would you kindly step aside?” Astamore snapped at me, making no effort to hide his annoyance. “We’ve been run out of the great hall.”
Suddenly I realized what was going on: they didn’t recognize me. I was clean-shaven and dressed differently, and they were pig-porking drunk.
The leaning man warned, “Watch your shoes, here it comes.”
“Oh, no, get out of the way!” Eye Shadow demanded, and pushed me aside. He grabbed leaning man under the arm and hauled him to his feet. They stumbled up the stairs toward the guest floor, but the retch-and-splash sounds that followed told vividly that they didn’t make it.
“Morons,” Astamore muttered. He looked at me again, and a glimmer of familiarity gleamed behind the drunkenness. “Say… I know you, don’t I?”
It was late, I was on the spot, and I pulled out the only name I could think of at that moment. With immense dignity I tucked my injured hand behind my back and looked imperiously down my nose at him. I let a bird twitter in my voice when I said, “I, sir, am Lord Huckleberry.”
Astamore blinked. “Oh. I’m sorry. Kenneth, Lord Astamore, at your service.”
I pursed my lips in annoyance. “If ‘my service’ includes roughing me up with your boorish gallivanting, then that is true indeed. Perhaps I should have a word with the king, whose company I have just left.”
“No, I assure you, we meant no harm,” Astamore quickly said. Nervous sweat popped out around his hairline. “We were simply looking for the way back to our rooms, there’s certainly no need to bother King Marcus about this.
