By the light of two wall torches, he could see her every action in the dark barn. He paused, relishing the sight. Right now, she was bending over, exposing to him one of her best body parts as the fabric of her braies stretched over her rump. She was wrapping a sword in protective cloth. God only knew how she planned to use the weapon.
“Going somewhere, Ingrith?” he inquired as calmly as he could when fury boiled his blood.
“Uh.” Guilt bloomed like fire on her cheeks.
He reached up and lifted her to the ground.
She was too surprised by his arrival to protest.
“You were leaving without my permission?” He stepped closer to her…in a menacing manner, he had to admit.
She bristled and moved back from his close proximity.
As if he would let her escape!
“I do not need your permission. You are not my husband.”
“Let me rephrase that. You were leaving without even saying good-bye.” He moved closer again.
She backed up more. “’Tis better that way.”
“Better for whom?” He saw an empty stall behind her with fresh straw and a blanket. Her bed for the night, he supposed. It would be a bed all right, but not for sleeping.
This time when she backed up, she realized where she was and panic filled her blue eyes.
Why the panic? “You need not fear me, Ingrith, lest you consider being naked and being stroked to screaming ecstasy a danger to fear. I intend to punish you for this transgression, but in a way you will ultimately enjoy.” That had not been his original intent when seeking her out. Leastways, not that he’d been aware.
“I don’t want this.”
“Liar!”
Tears filled her eyes. “I want this too much, then.”
I do not need tears now. Tears dampen enthusiasm. “And that is why you leave?”
She nodded, watching intently as he removed his long surcoat, tunic, and belt, hanging them over the stall gate, which he had closed behind them. As he toed off one boot, then another, she began to speak. “I can’t stay here, John. It’s too dangerous.”
I’ll tell you what is dangerous, m’lady. Trying to talk down a raging enthusiasm. “And you think traveling on an open road with only a gnome to guard you is not dangerous?” He inhaled sharply for patience. “Where were you going, by the by?”
“Jorvik. To find your stepfather’s longship and go to Stoneheim.”
“Jorvik!” He cursed under his breath. “And Loncaster? Didst not imagine he is watching the road from here to Jorvik?”
“I planned to camp in the woods a few hours from here, and then travel by night.”
“God above!” He shrugged out of his braies and yanked off his hose.
“God above!” she exclaimed, but she was not remarking on the idiocy of her plans, as he had. She was staring at the cockstand that pointed at her like an accusing finger. A giant accusing finger, if he did say so himself.
It was only when he began to remove her apron and loosen the neck ties of her tunic that Ingrith struggled, then put her hands on his shoulders to stop him. “Wait,” she said. “I really must go. Opening my thighs to you will only make things hard when I go.”
“Things are already hard, if you must know,” he muttered, and he didn’t mean difficult. Aloud, he said, “Your mention of opening your thighs doesn’t help your cause.”
“Tsk-tsk-tsk!” Apparently she knew good and well what he’d meant. “Loncaster will kill you if I stay. He told me so.”
He paused in his attempts to undress her squirming body and tilted his head to the side. “He cannot kill me when I have an army behind me, and, believe me, the combined forces of Hawk’s Lair and Gravely are an army.”
She shook her head in dispute and ducked under his arm, which had been raised to loosen the braid arranged atop her head and to finger comb it over her shoulders. He grabbed her by the neck of her tunic when she attempted to open the gate. The tunic ripped right down the center of her back, as much to his surprise as hers.
Turning, she blinked at him in dismay and leaned against the stall to hold the back of her tunic in place. Useless effort, that. He merely yanked on the sleeves and had the garment off and lying in the straw before she could speak. And speak she did. The woman did like to talk. Which would be fine under other circumstances, but right now he had other plans for her mouth.
“Loncaster would not use obvious means to wield his evil. He would find a way to stab you in the back when you least expect it.”
For a moment, he did not understand, his brain having gone blank at the sight of her perfectly round breasts with their palest rose nipples. He wanted to taste them and touch them and bring her to ecstasy when he finally suckled. But wait. What had she said about Loncaster? John rubbed a hand across his mouth, studying her. It was true concern he saw in her eyes. Concern and, yea, mayhap even love, which he did not want. Did he? Not unless it meant she would give him her body freely and without inhibition.
“You were going to risk your life for me?” His heart was beating so fast he could scarce breathe.
“Yea, but not just you. Loncaster would go after others I lo…care about, too. Like Ubbi. Or the orphans. Look what he did to the orphanage for spite. A man like that would stop at nothing.”
The woman risked all for me. Does not matter what she says. To protect me, she was going to expose herself and the children to Loncaster’s threat. “How could you think I would want to hide behind a woman’s shield? What honor is that? Methinks death would be better than a loss of manhood.”
“That is lackwit talk. Dead is dead. Pride need not be your downfall.”
“You are my downfall, Ingrith, but not because of some miscreant military commander.” He touched the tips of her breasts with his fingertips only, but they bloomed into hard points of arousal.
“What…what do you mean?”
“You and I have unfinished business.”
As he removed the rest of her clothing, she gave up on shoving his hands away with a groan of surrender. “Why are you doing this, John? You know it’s best for all of us if I’m gone. You’ve said as much more than once.”
“Can a man not change his mind? Can a man not say lackwit things without being reminded of them forever and ever?”
“Huh?”
He smiled at her and saw the way her lips parted on a sigh. She’d told him more than once that his smile melted her. He could only pray that it did so now. With that in mind, he smiled some more, besotted lackwit that he was.
“We’re going to make love, Ingrith.”
“Really make love?”
He could tell she was skeptical. “We are.”
“Do you mean…oh, my! But why now? What is different now than it was…let’s say, yesterday?”
Blather, blather, blather. If I am not careful, we are going to talk our arousals to death. “It was inevitable, but Bolthor brought home to me tonight how fleeting life can be. Danger lurks everywhere. Best we cherish each day as it comes.” That was good! I did not realize I could be so poetic.
“You are taking advice from Bolthor now?”
He grinned. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
He was lowering his mouth to hers when she stopped him again. “Will you be doing that honey thing?”
“Honey thing?” I wonder if my eyes are crossed with frustration.
“The things you make the people do in your birthing-control experiments?”
That stopped him short. She knows about that. Truly, my people cannot keep a secret worth a damn. “Nay. One of the females in the experiment is breeding, which means the honey paste is not foolproof. Plus, methinks breeching a maidenhead would be more than hardened honey could withstand.” He flicked her woman-fleece with his fingertips and chuckled. “After having touched you here, I know how hot you are. Your woman-heat would melt a stone, let alone a honey cap.”
She blushed and attempted to cover her breasts with one arm and her nether parts with the other,
but he took both hands and placed them on either side of her on the stall’s rail, a position that made her breasts present themselves in the most tempting manner.
“And afore you get offended, woman-heat is a good thing.”
He kissed her bare shoulder and licked first one nipple, then the other, pleased at the moan it produced. “I will withdraw afore spilling my seed. There is still a risk, but not as great.”
“Is that a risk you really want to take? We can do…you know…what we did before. Oh, my gods! Do that again.”
He had just rubbed his chest hairs back and forth across her breasts.
“Happy to oblige.” And he did. But to answer her question: “Heartling”—it was the first time he’d seriously used that most precious endearment to her, and she knew it, he could tell by the softening of her expression—“you were willing to risk your life for me. How can I do anything less?”
“I don’t want payment. Can’t you see—”
“Shhhh!” He was exploring the inner whorls of her ear now with the tip of his tongue, an activity she seemed to enjoy immensely. He did, too. “Our making love was going to happen eventually. We both know that. This way, I can at least take a modicum of caution.”
And thus began a sexual journey the likes of which he had never experienced, not since he’d learned the full extent of his father’s insanity by age fourteen. He only hoped it would not end in tragedy.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
You could say it was a sexual healing…
Ingrith still intended to leave Hawk’s Lair in the morning, as planned, but when the gods plopped a gift in your lap, you did not say them nay. And making love with John, really making love, was a gift, to be sure.
At almost thirty and one, she was a strong woman, accustomed to the loneliness of a single life. She would be strong again, despite the soul wounds she was bound to carry, but not for anything would she deny herself this one night of bliss.
For now, she was lying on her back in the straw, watching John as he watched her. Then, levering himself on his elbows and nudging her knees apart, he settled himself over her. Raising her eyes, she saw him scanning her face, intently.
“I want you.” His thick voice was like a velvet caress.
It was a heady feeling, having this particular man want her. “You make me feel beautiful and special.”
“You are beautiful and special.”
At first his lips coaxed a reaction from her. A kiss of persuasion, that’s what it was. Little did he know, she was already persuaded.
With her fingers gripping his shoulders, she opened her mouth to him, welcoming the bite of his teeth and slide of his tongue. She could smell the musk of arousal on his skin.
When his kisses moved to her neck and shoulders, she sighed. “My easy surrender should shame me.”
“Never! Your ardor is my pleasure. Surely God meant for two people to share bedjoy. Why else would He have made it so exciting?”
“Methinks Adam said the same thing to Eve.”
“Or Eve said to Adam, since she was the one tempting him with the forbidden apple,” he corrected.
They smiled at each other, sharing the humor and the intense physical awareness that always resonated between them, more so now. Squirming a little, she enjoyed the sensation of skin on skin, male on female, rough on soft.
“Temptress,” he chided, and rolled over onto his back.
At first, she felt off balance and embarrassed, but he arranged her legs so that she kneeled astraddle his belly, with his erection nestled against the crease of her buttocks. “Oh, I do not know about this,” she protested.
“For me, Ingrith,” he coaxed. “Do it for me.”
With a sigh of surrender, she settled her rump on him. “I do not know what to do, precisely.”
“I’ll show you. Remember how I taught you to ride my finger? You will do the same with my…member.”
If she had not been blushing before, she was now, in remembrance of that wicked activity.
“But that will come later,” he said. “We have roads to travel afore reaching that destination.”
His first stop on that road was her breasts, which seemed to fascinate him.
“They are not very big.”
“They are perfect.
He palmed her breasts in a circular fashion, and she could feel the nipples prodding his skin. When he touched her nipples with a forefinger each, then began vibrating back and forth, she tried to jerk back, but he grabbed her hips and held her in place. “No trying to escape now, sweetling.”
As if she could! As if she would!
He continued fluttering the tips of her breasts, making them grow bigger, and there was an echoing flutter between her legs. In fact, she could feel moistness seeping from inside her onto his belly.
With a moan of equal parts embarrassment and ecstasy, she closed her eyes.
“Nay, do not think of shutting your reactions away from me. Open your eyes, Ingrith. I want to watch your reactions. To see what pleases you. Do you like this, for example?” He tugged her forward a bit and he leaned upward so that he could kiss each taut nipple. Then his mouth closed over a breast which he had lifted from underneath while the other hand played with the opposite breast.
“Yiiiiiiiiiiiii!” she squealed.
He lifted his mouth from her breast and glanced upward. “Does that mean you like it?”
“Are you demented?”
“I take that as a yea.” He chuckled, and even his hot breath on her aureola drew an answering ache low in her belly. “If you like that, methinks you will love this.” And he began the serious business of suckling. Hard, then soft. Alternating with licks of his tongue and nips of his teeth, he soon had her keening out her agony of ecstasy. And then—Holy Valhalla!—he moved to the other breast. Soon she was rising to an imminent peaking, which she did not want to happen with her in this position, alone. She tried, futilely, to break away, and her thighs braced, fighting off the impending explosion of sensations too intense to bear.
“Relax, dearling,” he said, lying back to watch her.
“Relax? You really are demented. Dost enjoy torturing me so?”
“Delicious torture, I hope. I know it is for me.” Laughing, he made her sit upright on him, even though she was inclined to hide her face on his chest. He did the most scandalous thing then. Cupping her buttocks, he lifted her slightly, and his expert fingers stroked her slick folds from behind.
“Let it come,” he urged.
And she came, all right. Wave after wave rolled over her, making her lightheaded and flushed all over. Her breasts had swelled and ached. The slickness down below felt like hot syrup surrounding a spasming bud of pleasure. Even her inside woman channel was spasming.
When the peaking ended, she opened her eyes, not having realized that she’d closed them. The look in John’s eyes was worth the embarrassment. And Holy Thor! When had he rolled them over with him molded over her?
“Are you ready?”
“M’lord, I have been ready for years.”
He laughed and slapped her buttock. “That is for m’lording me.” Then he turned serious. Lying between her legs, he raised her knees and spread them wider. Then he twined his fingers with hers and raised their hands above her head. Slowly, so slowly she wanted to scream, he worked the knob of his phallus just inside her woman channel. To her embarrassment, she felt herself grasp him in a welcome peaking.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” he murmured.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Do not apologize for giving me more pleasure than I have had since…since forever.” Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead as he shoved in a little bit more, then almost pulled out. She wanted to grab hold of him and yank him in to stay. Instead, he took her a bare finger span at a time. In. Out. Each time, her inner muscles clenched him in an attempt to bar his escape. The friction was unbearable and blissful at the same time.
Finally, he was filling her. All of him penetrating nig
h to her womb, which was a miracle to her. No one had ever told her that a woman’s channel expanded with pleasure to accommodate a man’s size. Or that the fullness of a man was a joy in itself. There was a oneness to the sex act that had a celestial aspect to it. Two people made one.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “It only pinched for a moment.”
“You feel like the tightest, warmest glove around my cock,” he told her.
“You feel like hot, living steel. As if your manpart had a mind of its own.”
“It does. Believe me, betimes it does.”
She almost wished that he would stay unmoving inside her. To do otherwise would break the spell. She thought that until he began to move, and she entered another level of paradise. “Oh, my!” was all she said.
“I agree,” he choked out.
Then began the real business of sex. Like swordplay, it was. Lunge, then retreat. Lunge, then retreat. At first long and slow strokes. Then shorter and faster.
He whispered wicked words and promises into her ear.
She writhed from side to side with incoherent pleas for relief. His impatient hands were everywhere, discovering all her hidden erotic places. Who would have ever guessed that the backs of her knees were as sensitive as her breasts? He left her no secrets.
It was all too new and unbelievable for Ingrith to take in. Physical delights beyond any she ever could have imagined assailed her from all sides. And John was equally affected. She could tell by the violent shiver that overtook his body.
Her world narrowed to the scent and feel of her lover. The only sounds were those of their heightened breathing and the erotic, wet slap of sex parts. Only occasionally did a horse made a noise in a nearby stall.
And then he threw his head back and seemed to be counting silently. But, nay, he was waiting for her to peak first, which she promptly did. With mounting tensions, all of her insides were wound tighter than a ball of yarn, and then—Oh, thank you, gods!—it unfurled, sending sparks of relief to every part of her body, especially the thrumming bud between her legs.