A Knight To Remember 1

Running. The air punctuated with the sound of tearing fabric as my bare feet tangled in the skirting of my dress. My panting, ragged breaths couldn't keep a rhythm while my arms and legs pumped, trying to propel me through the thick woods as twigs and branches slapped and cut at my feet, face, arms, skin...

I turned to look over my shoulder for just a moment, catching a sight of the men gaining ground on me, even as I ran for my life. It wasn't enough. Their dirty faces and ragged clothing only grew closer and closer. My frightened, pale, and sweat-glistened face turned forward again, my mind belatedly whispering warnings of 'don't look back.' Simultaneously a thick branch caught my foot as it was lifting in another long gait to continue my escape, tripping me forward into a thankfully soft forest floor of dying leaves.

As I lay in a heap of once-frilly skirts, tangled waist length hair, and dead leaves, I tried desperately to regain my footing and continue my plight. My desperation turning tenfold as I heard the thundering of the bandits' feet as they bore down on me.

Too late I got to me feet, lurching forward just as a thick and callused hand reached out to snatch my arm hauling me back. I caught in mid air, my free hand reaching out to the horizon of the seemingly-never-ending forest; the moment seemed to last a life time, but ended all to quickly as the hand pulled me back, the sudden halted momentum of my body causing me to crumple to my knees on the forest floor again.

Another hand grabbed my thick hair, ensnaring it with vice-like fingers as the bearer yanked back, forcing my neck to arch and my face to turn upwards to face him. The other man was content to twist my already-captured arm behind my back, while easily subduing my free one as it tried to scratch and flail my way to freedom, similarly twisting it behind my back as he moved to kneel behind me.

I kneeled, sandwiched between the man at my back and the man gripping my hair as he towered over me at my front, my dirty tear-streaked face turned up to him. He shook me by my hair, my scalp screaming in protest as he did, saying some no-doubt fierce words of recourse for all the trouble I was causing them and the payback they had in store for me. But I could not hear them. My thoughts and senses were lost to desperation and the adrenaline coursing through my body telling me to fight or run, fight or run...

I kept my eyes downturned, refusing to look at his gruesomely featured face, as one last act of defiance. I flinched my eyes to the side for only a moment, as I felt the bandit behind me begin to lick his slimy tongue over my shoulder where my dress had fallen away. With that quick dart of my sight, I caught out of the corner of my eye what I presumed to be another assailant in the distance. My eyes stayed glued to this new addition as he moved towards us, my current captors catching the direction of my stare and letting the object of my attention draw their attention as well. We all three paused, seemingly struck deaf and dumb by the vision of the man walking towards us, perhaps caught trying to make sense of what we saw.

He stood with silver and textured chain mail coating his arms and legs, a white tabard thrown over it; the chest of the tabard torn away where normally a symbol or coat of arms would draw the eye. Helmetless, I took in the image of his chestnut hair as it flew softly in the breeze; only long enough to fall into his eyes every so often and curl to the nape of his neck. The features of his face were obscured by the way the light of the sun silhouetted around him, making him seem almost divine in the halo of retreating sunlight.

As his hand rose to raked fingers through his hair, drawing it from his eyes, his palm shadowed the halo of light long enough to allow me a glimpse of his face. I gasped for the beauty of it. My gasp enough to shake my captors out of their mutual reverie, their holds turning firm and unforgiving again as they called out insults, gruff questions, and threats to the stranger as he continued to calmly approach without wavering.

The man that held my hair released it in a lightning fast move that was coupled with drawing a knife from a sheath at his hip. His back curled forward to prepare for a lunge and combat, as he held the knife up aggressively, moments before launching himself at the knight as he came closer and closer.

The knight drew his sword from his sheath so quickly it made a metallic singing noise ring through the air, my senses so overwhelmed that it seemed as though I lost a moment in time. For in the next moment the bandit was halted then falling to the forest floor as he clutch and arm to his belly, the leaves around him beginning to slowly soaked and color with blood.

I turned my face now to look over my shoulder at my other assailant, feeling a tremor from his hands that still held my wrists in the small of my back. His face was ashen, jaw dropped and eyes wide; my only guess was that he was mystified by the speed of the knight as well. He used his handle on me to throw me into the path of the white knight, an obstacle as the bandit clumsily got to his feet then and ran, with the sound of crunching leaves and confused noises of distress following him.

The knight didn't give chase, as he instead paused before me, where I lay- hands hastily thrown out to catch me and pressed into the rotting leaves. I turned my face up to him, again blinded by the light as it flooded around his form. But I thought I could make out the slightest smirk painting his lips, though darkened by the back lighting. He promptly bent at the waist, grabbing me about mine and lifting me easily. I squealed in one frightened and confused moment, as he lifted my into the air and then tossed me to spin me around, feeling as though I would drop from the height just before his hands found me again and then slung my form over his shoulder. Then he simply began to walk.

Too confused and exhausted as the shock and adrenaline left me with the imminent threat now gone, the blood rushing to my head as I hung over limply over his shoulder my torso bumping into his body with every gait, my eyes begin to close as I drifted into an fatigued sleep.

---

I awoke to warm air on my cheeks, partnered with the sounds of a crackling fire that must have created it, the feel of a soft bed beneath me and a conversely chilling air that alerted me to my own nakedness. I sat bolt upright at the realization, grasping for the covers beneath me as I tried to draw them up around my body for cover to no avail as they were too tightly secured and tucked to the bed. My arms quickly compensated by drawing over my breasts to shield them as my other went to arrange my hand to my lap, my legs clamped together tightly as my knees bent and calves curled up to the side.

A masculine chuckle caused my face to whip around, eyes searching for the source and falling upon my savior from the woods. I began to relax, feeling safer though confused, as my mind tried to make sense of what lay before me. My cheeks heated with realization as it struck me that my mind was trying to make sense of the knight's form suddenly without its tabard or chainmail, naked as well...

I cried out and turned my back to him, drawing my shoulders nearly to my ears in embarrassment. My actions only succeeded in drawing another mocking chuckle from the knight.

I could hear his feet padding across the wooden floor of what seemed to be his cabin home, my back tensed with every new step closer he took. Finally flinching, nearly jumping, as a warm, dry, and callused hand lay heavily upon the pale skin of my back. He chuckled again, though this time it was warmer... deeper... and somehow more dangerous.

He petted his hand down my back a moment before drawing me by my shoulders to face him again. A soft expression, though not quite a smile, painted his eyes and lips, even as he pushed my reluctant form down to the bed. As I lay stiffly with my back to the bed below, he calmly drew my arms and hands away from my breasts and 'twixt my thighs, uncovering all my secrets for him to see as my betraying body limply let him.

I looked up at him with a blank expression, almost a pout as my thoughts spun with what was unraveling before me, though I never met his eyes always keeping mine just below his the moment he would have caught my gaze. His face moved to follow the path his eyes made as they took in all the details of my body from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, my bashful blush following the same path as it heated my skin.

The bed sank with his weight as he gracefully climbed into it; first one knee then the other nudging my tightly clenched thighs apart. He shifted to lay along my body, his hips fitting between my newly pried apart thighs, as his length lay un-insistently nestled to my sex. His arms hugged to my ribs as he propped himself on elbows and forearms, lowering his head to nuzzle his lips and cheek along the slope of my breast to my already peaked nipple. With lips teasing against the pink and aching bud, I felt his breath draw as he would say something.

"You owe me your life. So it is mine now to do with as I will."

He paused to wrap his soft lips around my nipple, sucking at it gently but still causing my breath to catch and my back to arch at the sensation of it.

Mouthing the rest of his thoughts around my nipple he finished by saying:

"And I will make this a night to remember.."

And so he did.