Page 5 of The Warrior Priest
I jumped.
Rhys caught me effortlessly. He didn’t set me down immediately, however. With his hands at my waist, I was pinned against his body. The cloth of his tunic and the shirt underneath hid nothing, not the ridges of muscles across his chest, rising and falling with breaths that had suddenly become ragged for the first time. Could he feel the contours of my body through the layers of my disguise? Was that why his gaze suddenly heated as it locked onto mine?
Eye to eye, chest to chest, I could easily kiss him. Iwantedto kiss him. It was as if a madness had come over me, taking control. I’d never felt this brazen, this much desire and need. Rhys consumed my thoughts, even to the exclusion of my own safety, and I hadn’t even known him an hour.
I reached up my hands to bury them in his hair, when he suddenly lowered me to the ground.
That’s when I heard a door behind me crash back on its hinges. I suddenly turned to see the second constable barreling out of the house and into the courtyard. He drew his sword. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Brother.”
Rhys put his hands in the air. “Let the lad go. He’s just a hungry child.”
“I thought you had a plan,” I hissed.
“Who says it’s not going how I wanted it to?” he hissed back.
“Youwantedthis to end in our surrender?”
“Not ours. Just mine.”
“I’m not letting you do that for me.”
“All will be well. Nothing will happen to me, Jac. You can still escape through the sewers. I’m standing on the grate. When I step off, open it quickly. Climb down the ladder then continue left. Always go left. Eventually, you’ll come out at the river.”
“I know the way. You’re not coming with me?”
“I’ll stay up here and keep him busy. Don’t worry, I won’t let him follow you.”
I glanced up to where the constable on the roof was carefully navigating his way down the slope, arms out for balance, his attention focused on each slow, cautious step.
Rhys stepped off the grate. I bent down and wrapped my fingers around the bars.
“Stop!” The constable in the courtyard advanced.
Rhys moved to block him, his hands still in the air. “I said, let the lad go.”
The constable, however, thrust his sword point at Rhys. “Move aside, Brother.”
Rhys glanced at me. “What’s taking you so long?”
“It’s stuck,” I said.
“Pull harder.”
“Easy for you to say.”
He grunted, conceding that he must have miscalculated. He swore under his breath, and the fingers of his right hand twitched, as if he wished he held his sword. For the first time since the pursuit began, he seemed rattled.
The constable ordered Rhys to step aside. Rhys hesitated before complying. The constable drew in a relieved breath then came for me.
I pulled out the iron grate and swung it at him. It hit his arm, and he lowered the sword with a grunt of pain.
I sprang up and ran past him, grabbing Rhys’s hand as I did so. “Your plan needed a slight modification.”
To the shouts of both constables, we raced across the courtyard. Just as we were about to enter the building, the constable on the roof cried out. I glanced back to see the constable on the ground look up at the same moment his colleague rolled off the roof. He dropped his sword in order to catch the man.
Both tumbled to the cobblestones in a tangle of limbs and curses.
Rhys and I ran on, out through the building and back down the lane. We reentered the market briefly before turning down another street then another. More twists and turns later, I was quite out of breath.
