Free Keeper of the Dream by Penelope Williamson

for the tent flap.
    “Wait!” Taliesin lunged in front of him, spreading his arms across the entrance like a crucified martyr. “Wait. Don’t go in there … yet.”
    Raine lifted one brow in a mild inquiry.
    “It’s just … you could be in a better mood, sire. A
different
mood. If you don’t mind my saying it.”
    Raine wondered if a knight could be hanged for justifiably murdering his squire. “There’s nothing wrong with my mood that wine, a woman, and some sleep won’t cure.” He waited for the boy to move; the boy did not.
    Raine’s patience was formidable, cultivated after years of bitter experience. But his temper, when he lost it, was awesome. And he was about to lose it. His voice turned deceptively calm and his eyes took on a lazy, hooded look. “Now … you have precisely three seconds to get out of my way.”
    Taliesin jumped aside as if he’d just been prodded with a hot iron. But when the tent flap had closed behind Raine’s broad back, the squire’s teeth bit down hard on his lower lip and worry lines furrowed his high, pale brow.
    Raine blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light. He grasped the hilt of his sword, thinking to take it out of the scabbard to oil it down. It was still stained with blood and would rust if …
    His grip tightened suddenly at the rustling sound that came from his bed at the rear of the tent. He whipped the sword from the scabbard and lunged forward, to point the blade right between a pair of terrified green eyes.
    “You!” he said on a hiss of breath as the tension left him. “What in Christ’s name—” He spun around and in three strides was at the entrance. He jerked the flap aside. “Taliesin!” he bellowed. The boy, naturally, was nowhere in sight.
    He kept the sword in his hand as he walked back to the bed.
    She lay there, staring wide-eyed up at him, tied hand and foot, a gag disfiguring her mouth. A throbbing pulse beat in her throat. Her hair spread across his pillow like a mantle of sable. He had heard tales of wild women whodwelled within forgotten forests, all flowing hair and rent robes. The Welsh called them Furies, and if their eyes were like hers, so filled with damning anger, then they were aptly named.
    Her tunic wasn’t rent. But it was twisted and pulled tautly across her chest and stomach, outlining her breasts. They were small and uptilted, rising and falling with each labored breath. He caressed those breasts with his gaze and when a rosy flush spread across her high cheekbones, he bared his teeth in a wolfish smile. Her eyes widened further, her breasts rose and fell faster.
    Her tunic had also worked its way up above her knees. Her legs were long and bare, and folded up behind her where they were tied to the thongs that fastened her wrists. Very deliberately, with the tip of his sword, he worked her tunic and underlying chainse up until they were as high as the parting between her thighs. There was an intriguing shadow, the hint of dark hair. The inner skin of her thighs was white, like frothed cream, and it rippled beneath his gaze like a lake suddenly stirred by a gust of wind.
    He didn’t see any hidden daggers.
    He raised the sword until it pointed at her throat. Her throat constricted as she swallowed. He pressed the blade closer until it just nicked the skin. And kept it there until her eyes began to glaze and he saw one bead of sweat and then another trickle down from her brow.
    Only then did he lower the sword, tossing it behind him on top of his war chest. His eyes never left her face.
    Her lids closed and he saw the muscles of her mouth, stretched wide around the gag, sag with relief. Her nostrils flared and her breasts heaved once more, then stilled.
    “I’ll take that rag out your mouth if you promise not to shout curses at me,” he said in Welsh.
    She jerked her head up, and the fury was back in her eyes.
    “In that case …” Raine started to turn away. Shemade a strangled sound behind the gag. He looked