Chapter One

 

"Ooo Jerud!" Fiona giggled as Jerud's hands went under her long brown skirt. She wiggled about, feeling his warm palm on her upper thigh. The more she squirmed, the higher his fingers went along the thin fabric of her underclothes. "You beast!" she blared, as she felt him at the top of the garment, about to pull at the drawstring.

"Unhand her!" A gravely voice bellowed from behind them both, and Fiona and Jerud turned their shocked faces toward a mountain of a man in a long black coat and shiny knee high boots, wearing a threatening scowl on his full bearded face. Tempestuous eyes stared out from a countenance that suggested a past filled with all manner of experience, from the blissful to the dangerous. He was an appalling sight.

Jerud's hand dropped from Fiona's waist, the sound of the man's voice, whether he had any real authority or not, sent a shock of fear through the younger man. Jerud, a bright blonde man of nearly twenty-five years was hardly cowed by anything; but this curious blackguard was something to behold.

Fiona rushed from Jerud's side.

"I'll be right back," she told him. And with an empty tray in hand, she returned to the bar for more ale. The bearded scowling man nodded at her as she passed. "I'll be serving you next, sir," she told him.

Returning to her finance and his friends with their refreshment, she tried to make a swift exit, though Jerud's hand was attempting to fondle her again.

"Stop that!" she whispered. "Behave yourself!"

"That man has no right to tell me what to do with my bride," he exclaimed.

"I'm not your bride, yet," she reminded him. "I have to go, I've work to do."

"You mind your manners, you hear?" Jerud warned. "Or I'll give you what for with my belt."

Fiona ignored Jerud's comment and returned to her would be rescuer, who was sitting in an out of the way corner of the Half Moon Tavern.

"May I help you, sir?" she asked him pleasantly.

"A lady should watch herself with a man," he told her, brusquely.

"He is my finance," she informed him.

He looked at her circumspect, then at the chuckling Jerud, then back at the robust Fiona McTavish. Her flaming red hair was piled atop her head in lose curls that framed an eager face. Her green eyes glittered like stars, her soft bosom expanded as she breathed; the sumptuous in and out made the flesh jiggle just slightly. She had a curvaceous youthful body with a small waist and generous hips, that he could well imagine without the pile of skirts that stopped at her tiny bootclad feet.

"Nonetheless, miss, you should watch yourself with any man who would take advantage of you like that in a public place."

"I assure you, sir, Jerud is harmless," she countered. She cast the man a flirtatious smile, even as she thought of Jerud and she in bed. "If he only knew."

"I thank you for your words of warning. Can I bring you anything?"

"Some ale," he said. "Some bread and stew."

"Right away, sir." She seemed to skip as she moved away. Hardly eighteen, he thought. She was the kind of lusty wench he loved to bed; but her youth and innocence suggested she needn't give herself away easily. She had a gracious charm that made her even more appealing to him than other young women of her station. It was as if she would somehow naturally rise above the mundane circumstances of her life. But why she was marrying the bawdy young man at the far side of the room, he could well understand; women of her standing had few choices in their lives. It was such a shame. She could make a remarkable companion, and likely an avid lover.

 

***

When they were in their private room that night, Jerud descended on Fiona, raising her skirt, his hand instantly swacking her fleshy ass with a sharp staccato of smacks.

"Ouch! What are you doing, you bloody bastard?" she roared, jerking away from him.

He hauled her back and sitting down on the bed this time, he flung her over his lap.

"Stop it!" she howled in protest, though a stronger Jerud spanked her anyway.

"This is what you get for flirting, my lusty wench!"

"Jerud stop!"

But he wasn't stopping, the longer he smacked her, the more enthused he was by the sight her bobbing red ass, the more he smacked her harder yet.

"I'll teach you to flaunt yourself at other men!"

"I was not!" she protested.

"Just to make sure," he advised her.

Flailing her arms and kicking her legs, she finally threw herself off Jerud's lap and landed on the floor with a rude jerk, her sore bottom hitting the wood hard.

"You have no right to do that," she scowled.

"Indeed I do," he said looking at her sternly, though his expression was quickly changing into an exuberant smile. "You look mighty sassy, my Fi, so flustered and all hot. Your cheeks are scarlet, as I suppose your fine arse is." He snickered.

"Don't you laugh at me!" she snapped.

"And why shouldn't I?" he joked. He pulled her eye to eye with him, his hands beginning another kind of journey over her tempting female treasures. She tried for a moment to push away, from him, but found the tantalizing rush that roared through her too much to resist.

"So, tell me, my love, what did the bastard say?" Jerud purred to her as he drew her back on the bed with him. He pulled his fiancee over his reclining body, his hands pulling at the strings of her blouse. He was looking for her breasts to swing loose out over him, so he could press his face against them.

"He thought I should act more like a lady," she told him with a twinkle in her eyes. "He was hardly a bastard, much more a gentleman."

"Gentleman, my ass!" Jerud exclaimed. "He's a bloody blacksmith!" He had Fiona's breasts free, his mouth bringing a pink nipple to his mouth. He sucked it hard.

"Ouch!" she cried. "You're hurting me." It wasn't much of a protest. She loved the way he turned her baby soft nipples into hard purple buds.