At Her Service (Swords of Passion) by Cerise Deland Read Free Book Online

was crying? What outrage. She swiped her tears from her cheeks and pushed at him to leave.
    He held her fast. “Elise, I did not know about Alphonse. His failure to pleasure you.” Simon’s huge hand fell to cup one breast and lift it up to meet the homage of his mouth. She writhed as he sucked her to a ripe point. “Ah, my heart, I rejoice at how you respond to me. How you need my mouth and my fingers and my shaft. In truth, I have spent my years in exile from your sweetness imagining how often and in what ways your husband would have you in his bed.” He kissed her other nipple and titillated her with his hot, wet tongue. “With ripe jealousy, I have eaten my heart out and my guts. If I can now give you pleasure and my seed, I welcome the chance.”
    “Really?” She shrank from him and clawed her way beyond him on the mattress to stand and glare at him. “How kind of you.”
    “Elise, there is no need to insult me.”
    “ Me? Insult you? My lord, be not so bold.” She swept out a hand, seething fire at his affront to her . “What of how you gain from this?”
    His brows flew high in alarm.
    Would Simon believe her so naïve that she would fail to suspect some exchange for the favour he bestowed on the house of Atherton?
    She whirled away and clenched her hands. For all her prodding of her husband on this matter, Alphonse would not reveal the benefits he would give to Simon. She’d screamed at her husband, scolded him, but he refused to tell her any details. Yet, what else could lure a fabled knight to a rich woman’s dangerous bed, but one asset? “How much?”
    “One hundred silver talents to bed you.” Simon was quiet, lax in body. Was he therefore, wary at her new knowledge?
    He should be.
    Her eyes ran up to the roof beams. “How instructive to learn my true worth. I wonder what a harlot costs.”
    “Elise…” He rose up in an attempt to embrace her.
    But she was faster and escaped him to stand out of his grasp. “One hundred for the bedding?”
    He inhaled, resigned to her pursuit of the topic. “Aye.”
    Hands on her hips, she tapped her foot. To lie abed with him would not be the proof of the goods, however. So she asked, “And what for a baby in my belly? More?”
    “Aye.” He met her wrath with soft, silver-eyed empathy. “Two hundred more.”
    She blinked and licked her lips. “And for a birth?”
    “Double the total.”
    Her knees buckled. She could not look at him, but she rallied and asked, “A girl?”
    “Five hundred, should she live past five years.”
    “I see. And the son, the heir, the prize?”
    “Double again if he lives to fourteen.”
    If she could flee the room, the castle, her life, her doom, she would have torn herself free though her hands go raw. “And who pays you? Alphonse will be dead and buried. Who will he give the silver to that we may all agree is honest enough to part with it when the time comes? King John will not. He’ll steal the funds and call it his right. So who is the banker?”
    “John’s daughter.”
    “Joanna?” In a way, the knowledge that her dear young friend with whom she’d once lodged for a summer would offer to pay this wicked purse did not surprise Elise. “The one person in the world who loves John best.”
    “And you as well,” Simon added. “She will not have you suffer.”
    “Joanna has a noble husband in her Prince of Wales who lies in her bed and gives her a child every year.” And thus she understands my peril to produce no heirs.
    Elise cursed and strode to her trestle table and picked up her jug of wine. This mating was well planned. But the deal still stung. “A drink, my lord de la Poer? I fear I need a large draught.” She poured, sloshing the red liquid over the rims of two cups. She perceived his warmth behind her, and she spun against his chest, one cup in her hand. “Your drink. Take it. We shall both hail the child we shall make and the money you shall.”
    He replaced his cup on her table. His arms