“You don’t for one minute think I’m a witch,” she accused.
He turned to glare at her. She still knelt in the middle of his massive bed, looking smaller and more frail than he knew her to be. “Nay, I do not,” he admitted. “But that does not matter. You are capable of a woman’s sorcery.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged and went to the corner, where he’d placed some boxes earlier—the “gifts” he’d given Alinor the day they’d left King Anlaf’s court. From the smallest box he took four velvet ropes, each the length of a woman’s arm. With slow, deliberate care, he tied one to each of the four bedposts. Through his side vision, he saw Alinor watching his every move, saying nothing but wetting her suddenly dry lips—a gesture that he found oddly arousing and guilt-provoking at the same time.
“That’s not necessary, you know. I’ve been beaten dozens of times by my brothers and never had to be tied down.” Her voice shook in spite of her best resolve.
Dozens of times! Nay, do not feel sorry for the wench. Do not feel sorry for the wench. Do not… “I told you that I was not going to beat you,” he snapped.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, I did not have to be tied down for the coupling with my husbands, either. I just closed my eyes and spread my legs.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “And said the Pater Noster,” he reminded her.
“That, too,” she agreed, casting a quick glance his way, no doubt thinking his mood toward her had changed because of his small jest. It had not.
“Give me your hand, Alinor,” he ordered, taking one rope in his fingertips.
“I don’t want to,” she resisted.
“Give me your hand, Alinor,” he repeated more firmly.
He saw the fear and stubbornness in her eyes war with the certainty that some battles were best conceded early on. She gave him her one hand, then the other, followed by both ankles. Soon, she was tied to the bed, spread-eagled and vulnerable.
But not vulnerable enough for his taste. Especially when he heard her murmur under her breath, “Troll!”
He took the small knife from the scabbard at his waist and approached the bed. She flinched involuntarily, obviously thinking he intended to cut her. Instead, he pressed the blade to her collarbone, holding her eyes the entire time…eyes that were green as the deepest ocean on a summer day and so fair they nigh took his breath away. Then he sliced her chemise from neck to hem, cutting away the shoulders, too. Now she was fully exposed to him.
God above! She’s beautiful, freckles and all. In truth, I am beginning to love freckles. Yea, I am. Every blessed one of them. Especially the ones…
With a concerted effort, he raised his eyes above her neck.
The green eyes grew glassy with unshed tears, and she bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out. He sensed instinctively that this blow to her pride would be more painful than any cut to her flesh.
“Well, why don’t you say it, Viking?” she spat out.
“Say what?” he said in a strangled voice.
“That I am the homeliest female this side of kingdom come. That I have so many freckles the devil must have been spitting for a sennight. That my breasts are too small to suckle a babe and my legs too long to cradle a man’s hips. That my red hair would scare a heathen Viking.” She turned toward the opposite side of the bed so she wouldn’t have to face his scrutiny.
He smiled at the last of her statements, which she didn’t even realize might be offensive to him. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he took her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “Who told you those things?”
She blinked in confusion at the gentleness of his touch. It was a momentary lapse.
“My husbands. My brothers.” She shrugged. “Everyone.”
He trailed a forefinger down the length of her arm, tracing a path of freckles. “Is the leopard any less splendid because of its spots?”
She said nothing, but a shiver passed visibly over her body. He was fairly certain it was not due to the cold.
He tugged at a strand of her hair, pulling it down to lie over one breast, which was indeed small, but lust-provoking, nonetheless. Fighting the tight constriction in his chest, and in his braies, he continued, “Is the lion with its fiery mane not magnificent?”
Her mouth parted in surprise at his sweet words.
“As to your form,” he said and had to cough away the raspiness in his voice, “none would fault the cougar for its sleekness. Those who would do thus with you have never really seen you.”
She stared at him—bedazzled by his own brand of sorcery, he would wager. But then she shook her head, as if to ward off unpleasant thoughts. “What are you trying to say, Viking? Spit it out.”
He rose and walked to the far corner again, choosing not to address her hurled words just yet. Returning to the bed, he placed another of the boxes atop the furs.
“You are beautiful, Alinor. Unbiddable, shrewish, foolish, for a certainty, but beautiful nonetheless. Never doubt it. That is what I meant,” he told her as he unlatched the long, flat box with its fancy carvings—a purchase he’d made from a sultan who had been disbanding his harem.
She narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious. As well she should be.
He opened the lid of the box, displaying the vast array of peacock feathers. All sizes and textures. And he smiled.
“Now, ’tis time to see if the she-cat can be made to purr.”
Chapter Fourteen
What was the troll up to now?
After setting the box of peacock feathers on the bed next to her naked body and making the cat purring remark, Tykir had left her alone. And now he’d been gone for more than a half hour.
Was it a form of torture?
Of course it was.
Did he want her to contemplate her crimes and wonder exactly how he would punish her?
Of course he did. Not that she’d committed any great crimes, and certainly none that were not warranted. She was the aggrieved party here, not him.
Did he want her to be humiliated by her continued nudity?
Yea, he did. The troll!
But what remained a mystery to her, as he no doubt intended, were the feathers. Obviously he intended to torture her with them. But how? Did he intend to stick the quills into her body, like a bird? Or make her eat them?
Adam had inferred, when she’d shown him the gifts, that the feathers had some perverted sexual purpose, but for the life of her, Alinor couldn’t figure what that might be.
“Oh, for the love of Freyja!” Girta had started to open the door with a load of freshly laundered linens in her arms. Her mouth went slack-jawed with disbelief. But then she scurried off, giggling, no doubt to tell the world about Alinor’s ignominious position. And that was probably Tykir’s intent.
“Have you missed me, witchling?”
Tykir pushed the door open wider with his hip and carried in a pottery jug and a huge wooden platter loaded with food—manchet bread, cold meats, cheese, apples and pears, along with a honeycomb dripping its sweet nectar. He set the jug and food on a low chest and locked the door behind him.
“Nay, I haven’t missed you,” she said sourly. Then she made the mistake of adding, “Have you missed me?”
He grinned, though she could still see fierce anger in the glittering gold of his eyes and the hard lines bracketing his mouth. “Yea,” he replied. “With a passion.”
More innuendos! Alinor was tired, tired, tired of all the sly words. And she was hungry. And embarrassed beyond belief at the way the brute was staring at her with…well, hunger. “Are we going to eat?”
“Not yet.”
He walked slowly toward the bed, toed off his ankle boots, then lifted his tunic up and over his head. His hair was clubbed back at the nape with a leather thong. He kicked the boots to the side. Then, with a careless flourish, he tossed the tunic over his shoulder. It landed in the rushes.
Blessed Lord! The man had the body of a god. All muscled contours and sun-toughened ski
n, he exuded masculinity in a wide-shouldered, lean-hipped frame—a frame that drew the reluctant eye.
“Have you had time to contemplate your fate, my lady?” He crawled up onto the bed and knelt between her legs, wearing only a pair of low-slung braies.
Oh, the mortification of her nakedness! And he was enjoying it all! “Get on with it, Viking. Lest I fall asleep.”
“In time, in time,” he drawled. “Do not be so anxious.” He leaned forward and tapped her playfully on the mouth with a forefinger, cautioning, “You are a foolish, foolish maid to challenge me with that remark.”
She pretended to yawn. A foolish taunt that bolstered her flagging pride and naught else.
He grinned infuriatingly. “Are you familiar with peacocks, Alinor?” he asked, pulling the case closer.
“I am,” she said hesitantly.
“I would wager you do not know the things that I do.”
What? He is going to give me a lecture now? I really will fall asleep. And, oh, she wished he would cover himself. I am not going to notice the flatness of his stomach or the deep ridges of his ropey abdomen. I am not going to notice the hotness of his honey eyes under thick fringes of golden lashes. I am not going to notice…
“The male peacock, of course, is the more resplendent of the species. As most men are.”
“And they both squawk in the most ungodly fashion during the mating season,” she pointed out, then gave an imitation of the “Honnk, honnk, honnk!” noise the birds made for nights on end. A neighbor of hers had tried breeding peacocks at one time and soon gave it up.
He nodded his head in agreement. “Yea, and ’tis all to attract the female. The squawking and the plumage. See what you females force us males to do, all to gain your sexual favors.”
So, that’s where this conversation is leading?
“The most interesting thing about peacocks is their feathers, of course. So many different textures, everything from the spectacular eye feathers to the soft underdown, all on one bird. ’Tis why they are so popular in the eastern harems.”
A long silence followed in which she presumed that he wanted her to contemplate how they would be used in the harems. She pretended to comprehend what she did not by prodding, “So?”
“So, I think we should experiment with them.”
“Experiment?” This time her voice betrayed her calm facade by coming out as a squeak.
He smiled. “Yea. Look at this one.” The quill itself was not that long, but from it came an extended trail of tendrils—azure blue silk threads intermingled with pure white.
As he leaned upward, Alinor felt the tightly coiled power in him and tried her best not to cringe. He passed the feather over her forehead, her exposed ears, then her cheeks and mouth. Her lips parted in surprise at the tickly sensation.
Sitting back on his haunches, he employed his “torture device” from her neck, along the fine skin of first one, then the other, of her inner arms, still tied above her to the bedposts. She never would have suspected that her armpits could be so sensitive to touch. Or her wrists. Or her elbows. These were delicious, unnerving sensations, which caused goosebumps to arise on her skin and a dull ache to lodge in her lower stomach.
“How does that feel, Alinor?”
“Terrible.”
He chuckled. “Well, then, perhaps I am doing it wrong.”
“I wish you would not do it at all.”
“I know,” he said, but he did not stop. Instead, he moved his handiwork lower, swirling the feathery threads around and around one breast, then another.
She felt odd. She wanted him to stop. And she wanted something more. Soon she discovered what that “something more” was as he employed the feather like a fan, back and forth and back and forth across the nipples of her breasts. She arched her back upward in protest and keened low in her throat. Her nipples grew into hard points, and the breasts themselves seemed to swell and throb.
“Tell me how it feels,” he urged in a raspy voice.
She could not.
“Tell me,” he repeated, “or I will continue.”
And he did.
She clenched her fists. She braced her feet flat on the mattress. She bowed her back and tried to turn away, from one side to the other. To no avail. He and his silken instrument were merciless in their fine torture. Up the curve of one breast, dragging over a nipple, down the valley, up the curve of the next breast, dragging over a nipple and down again. He repeated the procedure so many times she lost count. Alinor could have screamed with the sweet agony of it all.
When she thought she could stand no more, he squirmed backward so he knelt between her calves. Then he proceeded to employ the same soft torment to her abdomen, her flat stomach, her legs from hipbone to the arch of her foot. Then he did the most scandalous thing of all. He passed the feather, lightly, over her woman’s hair, and the ache in her lower stomach dived downward and lodged in a hot pool between her legs.
“Tell me that you like it,” he entreated.
“I do not,” she said, and it was the truth.
Next, he took a shorter, broad-feathered quill in hand and informed her, “The most interesting thing about these are that they are called ‘hot feathers.’ Can you guess why?”
She soon found out. Unbelievably, these feathers seemed to hold heat, or create heat in their path.
He used the hot feather much the same as he had the first. Her skin was on fire now. The hot pool within grew even hotter and began to seep outside her body, much to her embarrassment.
She hoped he would not notice.
He did.
He placed the tip of a rich purple eye feather, splashed with tints of green and gold, against her there, and it came away glistening. She heard his soft intake of breath at the sight.
He was probably repulsed.
“Alinor,” he whispered in a most appreciative voice.
He was not repulsed.
“Now, Alinor. Now we come to the true tail feathers of the peacock. They are stiff and shorter than the other more beauteous ones, but, oh, I think you will like them very much.”
“Tykir, stop. Enough! You have proven your point.”
“And what point might that be?”
“That you can humiliate me. That the greatest punishment for me is loss of pride. That I cannot abide loss of control.”
“Ah, but Alinor, you haven’t lost control yet. Not nearly.”
She whimpered.
“Now me, on the other hand: I am in greater danger of losing self-control,” he confessed, passing a hand brazenly over the erection that stood out from his braies. “I have endured a long period of self-denial these past sennights.”
“Oh, God!” she whimpered again, accepting that he was not done with her yet.
Now he used the bristly strokes of the shorter feather to trace the outline of her mouth. “Soon I will kiss your lips, and you will kiss mine. Endlessly. With my tongue, I plan to re-enact the feather’s journey. What say you to that?” When she said nothing, he added, “I do so like kissing, don’t you?”
What could she say to that? In truth, what could she say at all when her lips were parting at the feather’s tantalizing path? When she was already imagining Tykir’s lips pressed to hers? Yea, she did so like kissing, too.
“I love your breasts, Alinor. Have I told you that afore?”
While she’d been only half-attending, he’d moved his feather to new, more dangerous territory. He was circling and circling and circling the aureoles with the feather, avoiding the rosy peaks.
“I cannot wait to taste your raspberry nipples,” he declared. “But that will have to wait till the second stage of your ‘punishment.’”
Alinor wanted to respond to several of the outrageous things he’d said, but she was unable to speak above a croak. Tykir had brought her nipples to life with a mere flick of the feather’s bristles. And now he was vibrating the feathers back and forth rapidly over the pulsing peaks like the wings of a hummingbird.
Think? Think? She was a quivering mass, incapable of thought or reason. She bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out at the tantalizing torment assaulting her nipples and the private place of which chaste women never spoke.
“I am a wanton.” She had not meant to speak the words aloud. They slipped out in the horror of her discovery.
“I hope so,” Tykir said. “May all the gods intercede on my behalf. I certainly hope so.”
But, wait, the Viking was up to some new mischief. Before she could blink, or say “Bloody hell!” the troll had spread her legs farther apart, then begun to assault a new region of her body. A totally virgin area, to her. When she tried to protest, rolling from side to side, he pressed the palm of his free hand on the bottom of her stomach, just before her woman’s hair. With that palm, he established a pressing rhythm to match the feathery flutter in that other place.
As he intently worked his sorcery on her body, his ragged breaths and her mewling whimpers were the only sounds in the room, except the crackling of the fire. A strange inner excitement was overtaking Alinor. She was frightened and excited at the same time.
He stopped suddenly and glanced up at her. “Relax, Alinor. Your legs are stiff as pikes. Relax, and let it come.”
Let what come? she wanted to ask, but no words would pass her pressed lips.
He waited till he felt the tension seep from her limbs, then resumed his assault on her there. “Reach for the peak, Alinor. It’s there, witchling, just within your grasp.”
“Peak? What peak?” she cried out.
“Don’t tense up again. Let me give you this woman-joy.”
Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God! With each touch of the feather and each press of his palm, she was building and building toward some great event. She hated the not knowing. The vulnerability. Being manipulated beyond control. This shattering of the senses.
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