Forbidden Warrior (Midsummer Knights)

“You’ll want some different clothes,” he said gruffly.

“I haven’t any.”

“You can’t wear that.” He gestured at her, the gown held in front of a chemise that was no doubt still clinging to her lush body. He had a vision of stripping it off her.

He ripped his gaze away and turned to his pack. He yanked out an extra tunic and his cloak. It was fur-lined, but even in summer, the nights could get cold. He held them out.

She reached out with a hesitant hand.

He built up the fire and strung up a blanket between two trees, so that he could sit on one side with the fire and Cassia on the other. Then he turned to her.

She was rummaging through her hair for pins. Eventually she gave up and simply gripped her hair in fists, wrapping a length of

hair around her wrist in a tether. She squeezed out what water she could, then dropped it to hang down her back. Most if it still dangled, knotted, by her face.

Ablutions done, they looked at each other.

A lightning bolt of guilt seared through the center of his chest and left him almost breathless. Fortunately, it passed just as quickly.

Guilt did not serve an outlaw.

Cassia changed quickly behind the blanket, heated by the fire a few feet away and the shock of cold river water that was now turning her blood hot. Indeed, the shock of swimming in a river at all. At midnight. On midsummer. Frolicking in said river with a bandit.

Frolicking.

She turned, letting the fire warm and dry her back and buttocks. Her hair was steaming, almost dry now, albeit in fuzzy disarray. It would take weeks to comb it out when she got back hom—

She lifted her head, startled by the thought of “home.” It seemed so distant. Like a horse and rider galloping away, leaving the castle behind, off on adventures.

She slid Máel’s tunic over her chemise. It hung past her knees. She peeked around the edge of the blanket.

Máel was sitting against the log, one knee up, head bent, whittling. He did not look up.

It twisted something in her chest to see his dark head bent over something so small. The way he had bent over her ankle.

“I am sorry you lost all your little figures in the fire,” she said softly.

His head jerked up. “I will make more.”

And he would. She knew it. He was energy and vibrancy, and he had a thousand more things to do in his life. A thousand more adventures to come, and he would always be pushing hard for more.

This was her last one.

Moonlight leaked through the trees, an eerie light that seemed to mingle with the damp, rich, peaty odor rising from the disturbed earth underfoot. She was caught in between the strangeness, floating in a netherworld.

Hesitating, she nodded to the figurine in his hand. “Will you show me how?”

He stared, then dipped his head to the side, indicating she should come closer.

She knelt before him, very primly. If kneeling in a midnight forest could be said to be proper.

He eyed her a moment, sizing her up. “Easiest to make a walking stick.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed in disappointment. “I thought I could make a figure as you did. Perhaps a dog.”

He shook his head. “My father taught me how to carve wood when I was a boy, and even so, I’ve almost sliced my fingers and thumbs off too many times to count.”

“I would like to try,” she insisted. “If I take off a body part, well, it is mine to lose.”