“Like that, do you?” he asked with a chuckle. “And how about this?”
The heels of his hands lifted the weight of her full breasts and his fingers spread over them, touching everywhere except where she most wanted to be touched. Then, just briefly, his middle fingers flicked the tips back and forth.
Intense, wildly erotic pleasure shot from her breasts to her aching center, and her inner thighs hugged his legs tighter. “More,” she pleaded in a hoarse whisper.
But Selik withdrew his hands from her breasts and placed them on the small of her back. Pulling her forward, he adjusted her so that her cleft rode the ridge of his erect penis. Then his hands moved upward, tunneling in her hair, holding her scalp in a firm grip.
She looked into his blazing eyes and begged, “Kiss me. Please.”
“I thought you would never ask,” he said in a raw voice as he lowered his lips to hers. He angled his open mouth over hers, then, without any soft preliminaries, plunged his tongue into her mouth, searing her. She felt a hot liquid pool at her center, and her center swelled and opened. Reflexively, she rode him with jerky thrusts of her hips until spasms of electrifying pleasure shot through her. She tried to tell Selik that she wanted him, all of him, but she could not speak for his hot tongue, which matched the movements of her hips in the slick sheath of her mouth. His hands were holding her rib cage, moving her from side to side so her nipples brushed abrasively against the wool of his tunic.
She groaned, then exploded in a million wonderful, wonderful sparks of the most intense pleasure she’d ever experienced in all her life.
And she wanted more.
For a moment, she rested her head against Selik’s shoulder. She knew he hadn’t climaxed. She could still feel his hardness pressing against her and the panting of his breath near her ear told her his iron control was slipping.
Quickly, before he could protest, Rain pushed away from him and slid off his lap, kneeling between his legs. She began to undo the clasp of his belt, then raised the tunic upward, urging him with silent motions to lift himself slightly to accommodate her.
She could not stop herself from touching him then. She brushed her widespread palms over the abrasive dark blond hairs on his chest, along his wide, wide shoulders, across his flat male nipples. She felt the shudders that rippled through his tense body and looked up. His beautiful gray eyes glazed over with passion, and the whiteness of his scar stood out starkly against his flushed skin.
“I love you.”
He put a hand to her lips and shook his head. He didn’t want her proclamations of love. Well, she would give it to him anyway, but without words—with her body.
This is my beloved. The Biblical words in her head shook Rain. She was not sure they were her own, or God speaking through her, but they seemed to describe her feelings completely. And a sense of wonderful completeness overtook her.
She took off his boots and untied the cord on his braies, pulling them off his legs. When he was fully naked, her gaze swept him lovingly.
“You are so beautiful. You take my breath away.”
He smiled, and Rain felt warmed. “I am not, but it pleases me that you think so.”
She leaned down then and put her lips to him, lovingly. He gasped, pulling her away quickly. “Nay, sweet witch, you will not end this love play afore it begins.”
He stood her upright so her breasts were level with his face and began to pay delicious homage to them, alternately laving and flicking them with his tongue, then taking the tips into his wet lips and tugging.
“Oh…oh…oh-h-h!”
“Am I too rough? Shall I stop?”
“Don’t you dare,” she gasped out.
Selik fell back to the bed then, taking her with him, and she couldn’t wait. She straddled him and guided his rigid, pulsing length into her body, which welcomed him with soft, clasping spasms.
“Bloody, bloody hell!” he groaned. “’Tis too soon. You are so tight. Nay, do not move. Not yet. I want to savor this feeling for as long as possible…forever.”
“Selik…?”
He unshuttered his eyes lazily, exposing the depth of his arousal in blazing gray pools that almost seemed to swirl with need, and a mouth swollen with passion. “What?” he whispered thickly.
“I love you,” she said, despite his orders to the contrary, and raised her body on his shaft, then slowly sank back down.
“Nay,” he protested, but put his hands on her hips to regulate the pace of her rhythm.
“I love you,” she repeated against his parted lips and tried to convey with loving kisses the intensity of that love.
“Nay, you love the feel of me inside you.”
Rain laughed exultantly. “Yes, that too.”
She smiled, barely, between his agonizingly slow strokes.
“What else do you love?” he whispered as he stroked the peaks of her aching breasts with his fingertips.
“I like that,” she said, gasping, “and that,” she added as he took one breast into his mouth and grazed the nipple with the edges of his teeth. She arched her back, throwing her head back, and began to keen in a low whimper as the storm between her legs accelerated, turning her mindless and out of control.
Placing his middle finger between her legs, against the throbbing bud, Selik rubbed up and down in the slick groove until she screamed, “I can’t…I can’t…oh, God, stop…no, don’t stop…I want…”
He flipped her over onto her back, still inside her, and pushed up on her ankles and outward on her knees. Then he tormented her by pulling outside her body, the tip of his rock hardness pressed against her most sensitive fold. She tried to move against him, to pull him back inside her, but he would not allow it.
“Tell me what you want,” he demanded in a voice so thick with passion that she could barely understand the words. Rain could see that he was as aroused as she, but still he tormented her by withholding himself.
“I love you, and I want you to love me, too,” she said, expressing her fervent wish.
Rain saw the surprise on his face. They were not the words he’d expected. But he closed his eyes, as if in resignation, and slammed into her.
“I love you,” she cried, and on each of the hard strokes that drove into her body, she repeated the words over and over and over, “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou….”
The veins stood out in Selik’s neck as he imbedded himself into her one last time, almost to the womb, and cried out his own piercing climax, before she joined him in a cataclysmic shattering of her senses, which convulsed and convulsed and convulsed around him, until they finally shattered into little aftershocks.
The weight of Selik’s body pressed her to the cot, and she relished its sweet warmth in the afterglow of their lovemaking. At first, he panted, then breathed evenly against her neck.
“Are you asleep?” she asked softly, brushing a hand caressingly over his silky hair.
He made a small strangling sound low in his throat, then lifted his head and smiled. “Nay, I am dead.”
She smiled back and felt her heart expand with the love she felt for him. No torment marred his handsome face now. The lines of pain and bitterness that usually bracketed his eyes and mouth had melted with their lovemaking.
“Why are you gazing at me so?” he asked, chucking her under the chin.
“How?”
“Like a bear suddenly presented with a bowl of honey, when it should be the other way ’round,” he said with a growl. He rolled off her to his side, then quickly leaned down and licked her lips. “Hmmm. Yes, I do think I taste honey. Let me check further.”
When he finally tore his lips away from hers, breathing unevenly, he nipped at her shoulder and commented, “We have not finished our a-Viking.”
“We haven’t?” Rain exclaimed, and the note of astonishment in her voice drew a chuckle from Selik.
“Nay, I have yet to show you your G-spot,” he said, sitting up, then moving to kneel between her legs. He sat back on his heels, th
en pushed her knees up to her chest, holding them there with the pressure of his left arm.
Placing his thumb above her pubic bone, he stretched two other long fingers inside her so that they met the thumb from the inside. Then he began a rapid, hard, pumping stroke that continually brought him back to that spot beneath the thumb.
A fiercely intense arousal began at the point of his expert sliding fingers, aided by the wetness of their previous lovemaking. “Selik, I don’t know if I like this,” she said hesitantly.
“You will.”
Unlike her other arousal, which encompassed all her senses, this fiery excitement centered in just one spot. When the first shutters of climax began to shake her, she tried to close her legs, afraid to increase such a powerful cataclysm, not sure where it would lead. But he forced her legs to stay apart with his arm, and, when the first spasms hit her, he did not stop. Over and over and over, his hard fingers rubbed abrasively over that sensitized inner spot until she rolled from side to side, trying to escape. She came and came and came until suddenly she shook and felt a gush of liquid come from her, like an ejaculation.
Selik released her legs then and entered her with his hard, hard length filling her. He soothed her with soft whispers, stroking in and out with slow, agonizingly slow, caresses. “Shh, it will be all right. You were wonderful. Magnificent. Can you do it again, sweetling, with me inside you? Can you? Can you?”
And she did.
Chapter Sixteen
“I’m hungry,” Rain gasped several hours later, and her stomach grumbled redundantly in agreement. She lay in Selik’s arms—depleted, wrung out emotionally and physically, and happier than she’d ever been in her entire life.
“Me too,” Selik growled and nipped at her shoulder playfully.
“Not that kind of hunger. Selik, stop it,” she squealed as he began nibbling lower and lower. “Keep it up and your precious manhood is going to fall off from overuse.”
His head shot up and his eyes widened in alarm. “Nay, do not tell me. One of your sex manuals claims that a cock can fall off from too much bedsport?”
Rain laughed. “No, but even if it did, there are surgeons who can sew a penis back on.”
Selik jerked upright and made a snorting sound of disbelief. “For shame, Rain! That statement is so outrageous it does not merit consideration.”
“Listen, Selik, there was this abused woman who cut off her husband’s penis…”
When Rain completed her explanation, Selik stared at her, mouth agape and eyes wide with astonishment. “And it worked as good as afore the cutting?”
“Well, no one knows for sure, but his doctors seemed to think it would be all right in time.”
“I do not believe you. Methinks you weave these tales for your own twisted amusement,” Selik declared with finality, lying back down beside her. “No doubt you will have great fun relating this jest to your friends when you return to your country—how you made the fool of a lackwit Viking.”
Rain turned on her side, facing Selik, and laid her right hand on his cheek, tracing his scar lovingly with her fingertips. “Selik, I’m not going back. I’m never going to leave you.”
“Do not make promises you cannot keep,” he said gruffly and pulled out of her embrace, folding his hands under his head and staring somberly at the roof of the barn. “Besides, I did not ask you to stay.”
The storm had ended, but the steady patter of raindrops against the barn boards made their little pallet seem like a tender cocoon of peace and love. But Rain knew this was only a temporary reprieve from danger and hate, and she had to convince Selik of her love while she had the chance.
“I can promise not to go near the Coppergate site in Jorvik,” she avowed fervently. “I can promise to stay with you as long as you want me. I can promise to love you forever. I can—”
“Do not do this,” Selik protested on a groan of despair, turning to face her again. His sad eyes and tightly pressed lips bespoke his conflicting emotions. Finally, unable to keep his feelings under control any longer, he pulled her roughly into his arms and hugged her tightly. “Ah, Rain,” he said on a sigh of utter hopelessness.
When he pulled away, his pain-filled eyes tore at Rain. He told her in a shaky voice, “I cannot protect you. I did not keep my wife and son safe from harm. I cannot promise to do any better for you.”
“And who appointed you my protector? Who said you were responsible for the safety of the world? Oh, Selik, can’t you see? It wasn’t your fault that Astrid and Thorkel died. Stop tormenting yourself with the past and start living. Living. Not just existing. Not waiting to die.” Rain stopped suddenly, realizing that she’d probably gone too far.
But for once Selik didn’t seem angry at her mentioning Astrid and his past. He gazed at her pensively, then said, “Mayhap ’tis true. If I had been able to accept my blamelessness years ago, soon after it happened, perchance I could have lived a normal life. But too much has happened since, too many deaths, on both sides—”
“But if you left Britain, started over somewhere else—”
“Give it up, Rain. I cannot rest until Steven is dead, and Athelstan will never allow me to live with the blood of so many of his soldiers on my hands.”
“But—”
“Nay, dearling, we have no future,” he said, cradling her against his shoulder, stroking her hair lovingly, “but we have now. Let us make the best now that we can.”
Later, after they had slept for a time, Selik shivered and shook Rain awake. The aftermath of the storm had left the barn drafty with frigid air.
“Bloody hell! ’Tis colder than a whale hunter’s arse on a glacier. Best we move to the pallet downstairs near the hearth or your tits may turn to snowballs.”
“And your penis to a popsicle?” Rain asked saucily and moved quickly off the bed to avoid his swatting palm. He had a very fair idea of the meaning of popsicle.
They moved downstairs and made sure that the barn doors were barred from the inside and Selik’s sword lay nearby, in case the Saxon soldiers returned.
After gorging themselves hungrily on whatever food they could rustle up—manchet bread, cold venison, hard cheese, and watered mead—they pulled a pallet up close to the roaring fire and put several cauldrons of hot water on for bathing. They sat companionably wrapped in one large fur blanket, feeding the flames with bits of kindling while they waited for the pot to boil.
“Admit you lied to me afore?”
“About what?” Rain slanted a sideways look at him.
“About your bad ruttings with men.”
Rain jabbed him with an elbow in the ribs and he pretended injury.
“I never used those words. I said, as I recall, that I could take sex or leave it, that I had a poor history of relationships with men.”
“And you still feel the same?”
“Fishing for compliments, are you?” she asked, raising one brow mockingly.
“Nay, I know how good I am,” he boasted. “I merely wanted you to admit you were wrong, for once.”
“I didn’t lie, Selik. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I love you. And I think that’s what made the difference in making love with you.”
In truth, he did not mind her saying the words so much now. Actually, the sentiments warmed his soul and made him feel more alive than he had in years.
“And if you did not love me, you think you would not have enjoyed our coupling?” he asked, biting his bottom lip with concentration.
“I don’t know,” Rain admitted honestly. “Maybe it would still have been good. All I know is that from the moment I first saw you, long before the Battle of Brunanburh, from the first time you haunted my dreams, there’s been a special connection between us. And last night, it was as if two pieces of a broken whole were finally connected. That sounds really corny, doesn’t it?”
“Corny? I do not know that word, but I like the part about being coupled,” he said with a smile, then caught his breath at the open look of adoration in Ra
in’s eyes.
“I didn’t say coupled, you horny toad, f said connected. C’mon, let’s see if that water is hot enough before you get distracted—again.”
When they had finished bathing, and she helped Selik shave his face and he did not help her shave her legs—choosing, instead, to make erotic remarks the entire time—Rain rummaged in her carryall for a comb. While Selik combed his hair and then hers before the roaring fire, pulling the teeth sensuously through the drying strands, Rain looked through her bag to see if she might find a loose Lifesaver she’d overlooked. No such luck.
But she did find something of interest.
“Selik, how do you feel about strawberries?”
“I like them well enough, but the fruit will not be in season ’til next spring.”
Rain opened the little metal tube in her hands and applied the strawberry lip gloss. Then she turned and took the comb from Selik’s hands. “I’ve got a little out-of-season treat for you, babe.”
Sometime later, Rain whispered, “I sure hope you don’t have an allergy—a bad reaction—to strawberries, like some people do.”
He retorted with a gasp of pleasure, “Holy Thor! If I do, I will have rashes in some hard-to-explain places.”
That afternoon, Selik wakened from a deep sleep with Rain’s arm across his chest and her knee between his legs. He did not want to open his eyes, burrowing deeper under the warm fur blanket whose silken hairs caressed their naked bodies.
But something had jarred him. A sixth sense, mayhap. Selik came suddenly alert and carefully reached for his sword. Then he slitted his eyes carefully to peer at his surroundings.
A dozen pair of wide eyes stared back at him in open curiosity.
“Ubbi! Where the hell are you, you lackwit?”
Ubbi stepped forward immediately. “Yea, master, did ye call?”
Rain sat up beside him, pulling the furs up to her bare shoulders, exposing his naked body to the cool air.