Virginia Henley Read Online Free Page B

retrieved a small package from its inside pocket. He stripped off his clothes while she unwrapped a pair of beaten silver bangles.
    “They’re lovely, my lord. Allow me to thank you for them.”
    “Allow me.” He slipped a bracelet over each wrist, then laid her back against the pillows and raised her arms above her head, holding her captive in a blatantly submissive position. The fingers of his other hand trailed down the curve of her belly and began to toy with the curls between her legs.
    She arched against his powerful hand. “Now, Patrick, please!”
    “You don’t want to play? I have a new game,” he teased.
    She moaned. “I’m slick with need. Take me now.”
    His fingers told him that she was indeed wet and wanting. Her need was so great that she hadn’t even removed her robe. “I’m not cruel enough to make a lady beg.” He straddled her and plunged up inside her with a powerful thrust. Then he freed her wrists and cupped her breasts so that he could feel them bounce as he moved in and out with long, vigorous strokes.
    As her palms caressed the heavy musculature of his chest and shoulders, she tried to hold back the scream that was building in her throat. When his demanding mouth covered hers she could hold back no longer and climaxed with a convulsive shudder and a cry that he took into his own mouth.
    Though he had not spent, he paused for a moment so that she could enjoy the sensual ripples spreading inside her before he resumed the mating dance that would take her to new heights of arousal and satisfaction.
    Unbelievably, the door opened and someone entered the room. Margretha slid his hard cock from her sheath, and he sprang from the bed to confront the intruder.
    “Your Majesty,” Gretha said softly.
    As his bedmate covered her nakedness with her robe, Patrick suddenly realized why she had not removed it and why she had urged him to hurry. She had been expecting this visit from the queen.
    “Leave us.” Anne of Scotland waited quietly in the shadows until she and Patrick were alone. Her eyes frankly assessed his naked body bathed in candlelight. “You are the living, breathing image of Francis,” she murmured wistfully.
    In that moment he realized that his father had been the queen’s lover. It shocked him, yet he knew it should not, for it answered so many questions. As she stepped forward into the light he forgot his own natural state as his eyes examined and appraised her. At almost thirty, she maintained a statuesque figure and voluptuous breasts that made her still attractive, but at seventeen, when his father first laid eyes on her, the nubile young Dane must have proved irresistible.
    “Lord Stewart ... Patrick ... I need a favor.”
    “I am yours to command, Your Majesty.”
    “The king wishes to see you privately.”
    Christ, so much for discretion. Does the whole bloody Court know I’ve come to fuck Gretha? He remembered that he was naked and reached for his clothes.
    “James has been so dumpish and melancholy lately”—Anne hesitated—“ever since his last letter from Queen Elizabeth. She is such a cruel bitch! Please, Patrick, tell him what he wants to hear. ’Tis the only thing that will lift his spirits.”
    Patrick nodded his understanding as he dressed. “Lead on.”
    He followed the queen past the bedchambers of her ladies-in-waiting. He’d been entertained in some of them, but not all; his taste in women was discerning. She took him past her own suite of rooms and the audience chambers, stopping outside the private apartment of the king. She opened the anteroom door, spoke to the guard and quickly departed.
    The guard opened the inner door and announced, “Lord Patrick Stewart.”
    The king, who had been sitting at an oak table strewn with papers, stood up and came forward to greet his visitor. “See that we’re not disturbed,” he told the guard. James Stuart was not a fashionable man. He wore a shabby fur robe spotted with wine stains. His sparse auburn