Colette Gale
Bound by Honor
PROLOGUE
“Are you not the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire?” Prince John said in that lazy way of his.
It was not a question; he knew full well to whom he was speaking. His eyes were darker than ever in the dimness of his private chamber, but they were hooded with heavy satisfaction. “Methinks there’s none who knows the king’s Forest of Sherwood as well as you.” He stretched his broad shoulders, and gave a little, almost effeminate shudder.
“Indeed, my lord, I am quite familiar with the forest,” replied Sir William de Wendeval, keeping his voice even and his attention from the generous breasts of the serving wench who was. . serving. . the prince at the moment, and had no doubt caused his shiver of pleasure.
Her lips were red and swollen, her jaw stretched wide as she accommodated her liege’s well-used cock. Large breasts hung and swayed with each movement, her nipples threatening to brush the floor. She was breathing hard from exertion, her face red and glistening with sweat.
Prince John, who was lording his royal self about his brother Richard’s country while the king was off fighting Saladin in the Holy Lands, had taken over the ladies’ solar in Ludlow Keep for his own private chamber. His Court of Pleasure, as he called it.
Will was grateful for his choice of the room, for it was large and had two massive fireplaces and several narrow slits that allowed fresh air to come in-a welcome treat on nights like this, when the chamber was thick with the smell of sex and sweat and heat.
“Then. .” John gasped, stilled, then grabbed the head of the doxy going down on him and jammed his cock deep into the back of her throat. Pleasure narrowed his eyes and thinned his generous lips as the girl coughed and choked and struggled beneath his hands.
John released her suddenly and she fell back onto the floor. Her tangled hair caught under her hands as she collapsed, gasping for breath. From where he stood, Will eyed her critically. She’d live.
Unlike the girl last week, who’d been a casualty of one of John’s experiments that included bondage and a heavy hood.
Will transferred his attention back to the prince, keeping his face devoid of emotion. He enjoyed fucking as much as any man, and in many ways, and the more the merrier-but some of John’s proclivities weren’t to his taste. And, at the least, unlike this pitiful wench, he had some choice in the matter.
So far.
“. . ’tis inconceivable that you have not yet caught Robin of the Hood!” John continued his sentence as though he’d not stopped to spew his seed, wipe his cock, and then shove it back into his braies-all the while leaving Will, whom he’d summoned from his bed well past midnight, standing there. “He and his band of outlaws have poached from the king, stolen from the tax collector, and they continue to run rampant through the shire.”
Will’s face tightened. He bowed to his liege. “ ’ Tis a matter of great annoyance to me as well, my lord. Robin Hood has been able to remain a bare step ahead of my men thus far. . but ’twill not be long before we capture him. His luck cannot last forever.”
John shifted on his seat, which happened to be a massive wooden chair piled high with cushions and furs. He’d removed his jewel-encrusted tunic some time ago, and now wore only an undertunic, braies, and soft calf slippers. A goblet of wine sat next to him on a small table, and he lifted it to drink furiously as though he-not the serving wench-had labored for his pleasure.
Will cast a glance around the room. The window slits were uncovered by heavy tapestries this summer night, and a beam of moonlight shone in through the westward side.
The side that faced Sherwood Forest, where the outlaw Robin of the Hood had famously eluded the fearsome Sheriff of Nottinghamshire for nearly a year.
A miracle that the prince hadn’t come to investigate before now, since his pocket had become quite a bit lighter since Robin had taken to stealing from traveling lords and ladies.
John, of course, collected taxes from the English people in the name of his brother, Richard, called the Lionheart, who had left him as regent while on Crusade. Well, to be more precise. . he’d first left William Longchamp, that humpbacked dwarf, as England’s justiciar and chancellor-completely in charge of the treasury and in control of the country. That was until John, with the support of the powerful nobility, had removed the power-hungry man and sent him scuttling out of England.
Now, flush with the surge of power obtained by the overturning of Longchamp, John plotted to seize even more control. But in a much stealthier manner. Thus, while he acted in the name of the king, a goodly portion of the king’s tax money meant to fund Richard’s war had been lining John’s pockets, and anything that the outlaw Robin Hood made away with was a direct cut to the prince’s coffers.
“Robin Hood’s luck had best change sooner rather than the later,” John grumbled. He cast his attention around the luxurious chamber and his eyes fell on another of the wenches he had collected for this night’s entertainment.
Her eyes goggled and Will saw her breasts-barely covered by a thin shift-rise and fall as though she were running. But she dared not move from where she sat on her haunches, either to hide or attempt escape.
John, who was considered a rather handsome man, with his dark hair and well-trimmed beard and mustache, smacked his full lips and gulped again from his goblet, but did not call the girl to him. Perhaps he was sated for the time. Will hoped that was the case, for he had little interest in watching his liege, especially when his jaw was as lief to crack with a wide yawn. A long day it had been, patrolling the Forest of Sherwood, on the hunt for outlaws like Robin Hood.
“Bitches,” John said, slamming the heavy goblet down. He glowered at the frightened girl. “They stink and scuttle in fear the moment someone looks at them. ’Tis a blessing that Isabella will leave for Westminster in two days. Then we shall have a much more interesting variety to sample.”
Isobel of Gloucester was John’s wife, and it was well-known among the prince’s confidants that she demanded at least the pretense of fidelity while she was in residence with him. That simply meant that her husband refrained from tupping any of her ladies-in-waiting, or the wives and daughters of his vassals, while Isobel was about.
But upon her removal from the prince’s residence, the ladies became the same fair game as the does John hunted during the day. . whether they wished to be or not. And when John’s two other bosom companions, Sir Louis Krench and Lord Ralf Stannoch, were also in attendance. . well, Will thought ’twas rarely a pretty sight.
“Indeed, my lord.” Will bowed, then attempted to divert the king back to the reason he’d rousted him from bed so late at night. “Did you have some news for me, my lord?”
“Ah, yes. But of course.” John plucked a piece of cheese from his mother’s homeland of Aquitaine and slipped it into his mouth, brushing tiny crumbs of bread from his neat beard. “I received word earlier today that Lady Marian of Morlaix shall arrive here at Ludlow Keep sometime in the next sennight. As she’s returning from her dead husband’s lands as a ward of the king, it is expected that her baggage will be extensive. A perfect opportunity for Robin Hood to make an attempt to ambush her carriage. And of course, the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire shall be waiting to thwart such an attempt, and to save the fair maiden.”
“Indeed,” Will replied a trifle later than he should have. His brain had turned sluggish as soon as her name passed the prince’s lips.
Marian was returning.
Lady Marian, she was now. No longer the maiden he and Robin of Locksley had known during their childhood when they’d been fostered with Marian’s father. How wealthy she had become, and how far Robin had fallen-from the young landed lord to an anonymous outlaw resigned to hiding out in the forest. Yet, Will had recognized him the first time they’d come face-to-face during an aborted robbery.