Knight Nostalgia: A Knights of the Board Room Anthology(5)

Matt could easily see Ben, Peter and Lucas as captains in his army. However, using the island staff, much more skilled in the theatrics involving role play, was the better plan. Not because his men couldn’t pull it off, but because having his closest friends as part of it would have made him absurdly self-conscious. It was far easier to have strangers handle the support roles. Plus, this way, his men and their wives could enjoy their last night in the way they wished.

Control was a funny thing. When he fell in love with Savannah, he’d learned even his formidable control had its limits. The night he’d made her his, he might not have been nervous, but he’d been strung taut as a wire, because the stakes were so high. Even the most controlling Master knew love was the best kind of surrender. If he had any sense at all.

The bath was ready, and the redhead approached, a slight smile on her full mouth. “May I help you disrobe, my lord?”



They gave him the most thorough bath of his life, followed by an equally intense massage, rubbing oil into his skin. At one point the golden-haired one knelt before him, her eyes trained on his erect cock—no help for it, since he wasn’t dead—her moist lips parted. God save him.

“May I have the honor of bringing you release, my lord?”

He was going to put his hands around Savannah’s throat and strangle her. Or demand a medal for his self-restraint. Or both. He declined the slave’s offer, as well as their help dressing. His skin felt heated and tight, and though the two women were beautiful, and their hands were what any man would want upon him, he desired the touch of only one woman. His muscles might be loose and relaxed, but he was aroused and impatient for his wife.

He donned a linen shirt and a pair of laced fly trousers, apparently appropriate casual attire for a warlord. He decided to hold off on the boots for now, but as he put on each piece of clothing and threaded the belt into the loops of the pants, he found himself moving into those deeper levels Jon had described. Not away from his reality, but onto a whole different plain of it.

The belt was heavy and thick, capable of bearing a sword or dagger. Or leaving red marks on pale globes of flesh. An interesting thought. His defiant queen over his lap, her tempting ass quivering as he held her down…

Torchlight flickered outside the tent opening, drawing his attention back to the guards. They were men who’d fought with him, who watched his back in battle. As he watched theirs. They gave him loyalty, not only because he took them to victory, but because he fought with them.

He was a warlord who’d won the right to take the daughter of a king as the spoils of war. But when he truly took her, she’d be willing.

He had no interest in causing her fear or harm. He recalled how she’d sat her horse next to her father, a father who treated her as no more than a bargaining chip. He’d offered her to Matt as a bride, only to keep him away from the gate. Coward.

Matt’s scoffing response to the pathetic monarch was that he would be given nothing. He would take the castle and then take the daughter.

Because she deserved better. Her cool, remote gaze had never wavered, her body still as a statue. Yet he’d noted the subtle swallow that moved her throat when her father spoke his callous words. Her hands had tightened on the reins while her back, jaw and chin never yielded. She met Matt’s stare in a way her father had been unable to do.

“You may be able to force yourself on my body,” that stare said. “But a thousand bloody battles will not win you what lies beneath the flesh.”

He knew treasure when he saw it.

He lazed back against the couch cushions once more, one knee drawn up to brace his arm as he sipped his refreshed ale. He heard other guards coming and a faint smile touched his lips. He was being fantastical if he thought he could smell her scent from here. But he could, couldn’t he?

He picked a scarf up off the cushions. He’d brought it with him tonight, a scrap of sheer cloth Savannah had worn tied loosely around her throat and crisscrossed over her breasts at lunch, but as he lifted the scarf to his nose, inhaling, he imagined it had come into his keeping another way. When the now de facto queen had been brought before him after the battle, she’d been wearing it. He’d used the ends to pull her close to him, tightening it around her throat while inhaling her scent. She’d wrinkled her nose at his battle stench, a deliberate snub, while her eyes went a million miles away.

He’d released her, but as the guards reached for her arms to secure her, he lifted a hand, stilling them.

“Summon two female slaves,” he ordered. “You’ll guard her as they prepare her at the women’s tent, but you remain outside. No man but I will touch her, or look upon her bare flesh. Am I understood?”

Her gaze had slid to his as they’d responded with a crisp and immediate, “Yes, my lord.”

Then she’d been taken away.

She hadn’t been captured as a ransom hostage or marriage prospect. No. She would be prepared and delivered to him as a pleasure slave, to do with as he desired. It underscored his dominion over a king who’d been willing to sell her under the guise of marriage. Even beyond the grave, he’d leave the man no pretense that he wasn’t a coward.

Now he felt a twist of regret at the way he’d set those terms in front of her. He was a conqueror who spared no mercy toward his enemies on the battlefield, but it was her father who was his enemy, along with his soldiers and warlords. But this woman was not. He wondered if she was afraid beneath that cool exterior, and realized he didn’t like that thought.