The ebony hair within his hand felt like silk. So did the flesh of the ivory column of her long neck. He cupped his hand in the water to sluice it over her shoulders, then again retrieved the soap to run it along her spine. Her back was long, tucked deeply at the waist, dimpled beneath the water’s edge at the top of her buttocks. He silently laved the soap over her, feeling her shivering beneath his caressing fingers. He leaned low to plant his lips against her nape, grazing it lightly with his teeth. She went rigid, but the shivering continued. He saw the knuckles of her long slender fingers grow white over the edge of the tub, and he moved his lips closer to her ear, his breath a caress that brought about a new spasm of shivers. “I’m a barbarian, Princess, a dog of the North. Only following form.”
Still behind her, he slipped his hands beneath her arms and raised her, soaping her back again, then dropping the soap as he splayed his fingers over her shoulder and massaged her ivory flesh, moving ever downward to cradle her buttocks and keep the sensuously caressing massage at a fluid flow. He didn’t know what force controlled him as desire ravaged his body. Yet his every action was calculated and precise. She shivered so now that her slender form visibly shook.
He touched his lips to her neck again, then moved them slowly down the entire length of her spine, his tongue flicking gently at each vertebra. He shifted his hands to encompass her hips, and knelt, leaning his chest against the tub to nip lightly the shadows of her dimples and the firm ivory cheeks below them.
“No, damn you,” she gasped, her voice barely audible. He felt the beautiful play of her hip and bone as she tried to twist from him.
He allowed her to turn within the slick grasp of his hands and saw that her eyes were wildly dilated. He smiled, and the flame that conquered the blue ice in his eyes made her lashes raise high and flutter nervously as she realized she had merely abetted his assault. He released her only momentarily to dig for the soap again, and his hands moved up her calf.
“Please …” she whispered, and a roar of triumph surged through his body for he knew that she whispered like a stunned animal, trapped by the spreading sting of the hunter within her own body. She wanted so badly to remain still, to ignore him, to do nothing other than indifferently endure, and she could not. He had evoked the stirrings of the passion and sensuality he had long sensed, and though she could hate him till her dying day, she could never again deny that her body knew a natural response to his touch.
He rubbed the soap higher up her leg, taking his massive sweeps as high as the flesh of her inner thigh, where he left off, rising to bring it over her belly, allowing his fingers to tease the hollows of her hips and the pit of her belly upon the flat sleek midsection. And then with both hands he began to massage her breasts, cupping the weight and fondling slowly in a circular pattern, his thumbs grazing the suds over her nipples.
She remained standing still, her fingers clutched into her palms, a pulse ticking madly at the base of her throat. He gazed into her face as he leisurely held her breasts, feeling the erotic rise of her nipples, dark and rouge beneath the soap. Her eyes were still wide, glazed, her jaw tightened, but her lips parted, as if she would issue a plea again but could not. He leaned closer and touched his lips to hers. She allowed him to do so as if mesmerized, then, at the touch, tried to twist away. He brought his powerful fingers around her neck, holding her still as he bent his head, parting her mouth with his, driving deeply into the moist depths with his tongue. A tiny sound escaped her, but his lips were too sure, too demanding, for her to do anything other than be swept along in the tide. As he held her, he moved his hand over he breast, gliding the soap downward again, his hand massaging the silken flesh between her legs. A sound, a gasp, a moan, a protest, broke into his ravaging mouth, but he continued his massage, his fingers probing surely between her legs to lave her most tender flesh.
Only then did her hands desperately clutch about his shoulders. He was sure they did so in her effort to stand and fight him with a strength rendered useless in the muscles of her thighs.
He broke his kiss, dipping to cup water and sluice it quickly over her body, aware that she braced herself with her hands on his shoulders even as she tried to plead with moist and swollen lips. No sound came from her attempts.
He lifted her, wet, into his arms, and carried her to the furstrewn bed. He laid her down, gazing upon her, her stunned and brilliant emerald eyes, her full ivory mounds with the rouge crests grown hard and dark, her smooth lean belly, her shadowed hip bones, her beguiling ebony triangle that seemed to promise the greatest riches held in modesty beneath, at her long, silken, lithe and shapely legs …
Mageen’s words came back to haunt him, yet even as a corner of his mind registered that he would kill Fennen mac Cormac with his bare hands if he discovered her touched, he believed in the innocence mirrored by the shock in her eyes. The fires in his own body seemed to leap and flame out and fan beyond control, yet he still endured the agony of his desire. He kept staring at her, drinking in her beauty.
She could no longer think. Something had happened with his touch. She had started to tremble, and then she had seemed to lose control of her limbs completely. A lassitude had stolen over her, and yet it felt as if a great energy were about to be released. Hot liquid seemed to rush through her like the continual tide of the sea. Blackness had seemed to overwhelm her, and then stars, and then light, and then blackness again. Something began, imperceptible at first, but rising undeniably like a firestorm. It began from deep within her, swelling with an ache that was both sweet and debilitating, multiplying with each sure graze of his hand, centralizing like a shattering brand as he sudsed with gentle but unrestrainable fingers between her thighs.
Now she felt weighted down by clouds. She was free as he stared at her, but all she could do was stare back. She had no strength within her, only the strange sweet fire that was both agony and trembling deliciousness.
She felt as if she were drugged. He moved away from her, but she hadn’t the wits or energy to attempt an escape. Her eyes followed his body as he moved to the trunk at the door and then returned to her, carrying one of the oil vials. Only when he straddled her, keeping his weight on his own haunches, did she think of flight, and then it was too late. He pinned her to the bed with his eyes as well as his muscular legs, the blue fire that blazed both mocking and strangely tender, reading and countering the trembling emotion within hers.
“I would not think, my wife, of demanding any service of you I wouldn’t gladly give in return,” he murmured huskily. He poured a small amount of the lotion into his palms and set the vial upon the floor, continuing softly. “Not sandalwood, but an essence of flowers. Perhaps my thorn can be gentled to a rose …”
Erin felt she had lost all power of speech. She managed to lift her hands against him, which he captured easily, and then he began to massage her fingers first, bearing the slightest pressure on the muscles, then moving to the palms.
She had to speak, had to stop him. “Olaf … leave me be. I-I—” She tried to rise. She met his eyes, and the firm touch of his hands on her shoulders.
“Lie still,” he commanded.
His eyes. She couldn’t fight him when they were like that. She felt herself pressed firmly back to the bed. “The laws,” she murmured, only to be interrupted mockingly.
“Damn those Brehon laws! Surely they do not deny a husband the pleasure of serving his wife?”
“You do not serve me,” she protested, shivering. But he ignored her, and the languor began to steal over her again. She wanted to press against him but she hadn’t the strength. She closed her eyes to think, but all she could do was feel. He placed her hands at her sides and his fingers moved soothingly over her collarbone, light and firm, easing her to further lassitude, robbing her of coherency.
She almost cried out as his hands moved over her breasts, caressing them with the light, scented oil, stroking them firmly, gently, circling their weight as his thumbs grazed the nipples over and over again, only to leave
them aching and bereft as his massage moved over her rib cage, slowly, deliberately. He touched her hips, and the fire within her centered, low in her belly, as each sweep of his subtle and knowing hands created new laps of flame.
Erin kept her eyes tightly closed, hoping to fight the hypnotism, the spell of fire and need that was encompassing her like the sure waves of the ocean in a storm.
He shifted slightly and rolled her over. She felt his touch upon her shoulders, and down her spine, and with each caress of his fingers, she floundered further in the sea of sensation. He touched the dimples low on her back with fascination, smoothing the slim mist of rose oil over her buttocks, her upper thighs, her calves, and her feet, working the tension lightly from even her toes.
Feeling his own fires burn ever brighter as he touched her was both agony and ecstasy. A strange triumph leaped within him as he watched her stunned and unwittingly, sweetly pliant in his hands. His thorn was becoming as soft and enticing, as ripely primed to be plucked as a full blossoming rose.
His heart was pounding with a drumbeat of desire like nothing he had ever experienced before, and he eased her around again to face him and then stood, watching her again. She opened her eyes, but they were heavy lidded. He smiled slightly. One knee was slightly crooked as she lay there, a last defense of modesty, and yet he knew he would allow her no barriers against him now.
Erin wanted to move, but again, she couldn’t. She wanted to close her eyes against him again, but he held them. Warnings were sounding at long last in her mind. She had to move, to protest, but she could only stare at his towering form, the golden breadth of chest, the hard and narrow waist, the manhood that now flamed full and potent. She stared, feeling removed from her body, yet feeling every pore of her body as she had never felt it before. Her lips had gone dry. She tried to wet them with her tongue, and then some form of sanity leaped into a mind more drugged by his touch than any mead could ever do.
A cry escaped her as she realized with a sudden and startling clarity that he was not taunting her. He was at a point where he no longer teased and demanded to bring her to heel. He would have her now.
She desperately struck out at him. “No! Don’t touch me any more, barbarian!”
“I do not touch you as a barbarian, and we both know it,” he assured her in a gentle tone.
He had seen it in her eyes as she first fought sensation, seen the mesmerization switch to fear. Ignoring her frantic blows, he brought his weight quickly over hers, locking her eyes with the demand of his, catching her wrists gently, then pressing her hands down on either side of her shoulders, held palm to palm by his. He curled his fingers with hers, and the tension within them was great. He did not hurt her. He was merely firm, compelling her with his eyes that were a soft but relentless demand. Her fingers curled hard around his as she swallowed, her heart pounding furiously. She attempted wildly to struggle. “Please … I beg you, Olaf!”
“Erin, you are mine. My wife. And this too has been our destiny. Be easy, for you know that you tremble at my touch.”
He did not fight her, but held her, watching her, commanding with those eyes that she lie still. Her body was still ready for flight, trembling, but she ceased her struggles, as if once more a stunned victim with a hypnotizing potion flaming her blood to a dizzying boil.
He kissed her again, slowly, leisurely, tracing her lips with the tip of his tongue, nibbling upon the full lower section. He darted his tongue into her mouth, then probed deeply. His beard grazed her cheeks, and even that flamed and increased the trembling she could neither control nor cease.
Still holding her hands, he lifted himself slightly and caught her eyes again. Then he shifted to lower himself against her and take her breast into his mouth, fondling the nipple slowly, then more demandingly with his tongue. She tasted delicious, of the exotic rose oil, and the raging desire within himself grew to wilder proportions with the ambrosia that was the taste of her. He glanced at her again, noting her eyes were more than half closed, then repeated the gesture on the other sweetly curved, high and firm mound. Her fingers began to flex, release, and then grip tightly over his.
Too late she realized that he had parted her thighs with his knee and that the bulk of his weight was between them. He kept lowering himself, soft kisses, gentle bites, the moist hot lave of his tongue taunting her ribs, tasting the drop of clean fresh water and light rose oil caught in her navel, following the slope of her hip.
He wedged his chest deeply between her thighs, forcing them gently to give way fully. He felt their liquid quivering, and a writhing beginning, just beginning in her body, a sensuous rhythm that lay just beyond. He looked up at her face, pale and beautiful in the mantle of fine ebony hair splayed across the pillow and fur. Her eyes had closed, her lips trembled. He heard her whisper “No,” but there was barely breath behind the word.
He tightened his fingers firmly around hers, feeling the tension in her hands, then kept his eyes upon her face as he delved into the ebony curls with his tongue. She gasped and shuddered wildly and a mew of protest escaped her. He held her hands more surely and continued, probing gently to find and fondle the tender, vulnerable folds of her womanhood with the most gentle of weapons. Then he released her hands, sliding his own beneath her buttocks, and delved deeply, questing, seeking her feminine warmth. He was rewarded by a surge within her. She arched to his hold, shuddering in tiny spasms.
She moaned out “Please!” and he looked back to her face, seeing that she tossed her head and moistened her dry lips with the delicate pink tip of her tongue. She writhed against him with the natural grace and rhythm of a dancer, undulating sensuously, her tempo increasing wildly as her body’s new knowledge of desire and arousal swept away her fear and inhibitions. He felt the drumbeats pound and wrack his fire-swept body. The fingers that he no longer held dug into the bedding, then into his shoulders. The world, the bed, the beauty before him, all became cast in a glow of red. Yet still he held himself back, taking her gently first with persuasive lips and tongue until her body replied to his sweet administrations with an ambrosia of moistness.
Still she screamed out when he settled himself between her and entered her slowly, but with a need strong and sure. He held himself still, feeling the pulse of his sex sheathed warmly within her, and he began whispering to her, gentling her, stroking her hair. “Easy, Erin … hold me … easy.”
“Olaf.…” She buried her head against his neck, her fingers clinging tensely to his shoulders. He was within her and the pain was like burning steel, yet his broad chest offered a strange security and comfort. He had made her his, and at this moment, she needed his warm strength and assurance.
“Hold me, Erin, the pain will fade. Come with me.…” He began to move again, and he was encompassed and embraced fully, accepted by her sweet, giving heat. He drove deeper and deeper, whispering her back into his tumultuous rhythm, feeling again the sensuous undulations beneath him.
Red and black exploded in his mind. Beautiful stars, exploding in rapid fire across the heavens of his mind. The passion he had tortured himself to contain swept through him in wave after wave of hungry need. Control was lost, and deep within her, he demanded and devoured. Tempest-swept, he kissed her lips, and then her breasts, and then her lips again, thirsting and shuddering and straining himself, no longer aware of anything but the female he conquered and surrendered to in turn.
He knew that her slender legs wrapped around him, that her breasts pressed to his chest, arched to his lips, and he knew that she soared with him in the world that was red and black and blazing light. Then she screamed again, a cry echoing with his own groan of ultimate release and triumphant, shuddering, volatile rapture.
He did not release her, but stayed within her as the world slowly took on its proper proportions again. Then he left her slowly, savoring even the wonderful sensation of withdrawal.
He had intended to hold her, to speak softly, but his words froze as he watched her. Her eyes were closed, her flesh covered i
n a fine and glistening sheen of perspiration. She didn’t move, except to shift her thighs together. Again he started to speak, then scowled, abruptly changing his mind. She shied away from him, and his anger grew as he recognized she was turning from him in shame even after he had carefully, gently, and thoroughly prepared her for their lovemaking. Even after she had enjoyed her first experience after the initial pain, giving as well as receiving, soaring to the peak.
As least, he consoled himself bitterly, she was his. He had felt a base and a very male pleasure in the moment of pain he had caused her and the smear of blood upon them both. He would have killed if he had been betrayed.
He scowled again, looking at the sculpted lines of her back. He was sure she cried silently. Rage rose within him, and then confusion, and then fury with himself. He had not taken her; he had cherished her. He had not merely fulfilled his need.
Grenilde …
He had forgotten Grenilde with her, and in forgetting, he had betrayed her memory. He had taken women, but he had not made love since her death. But he had made love to the Irish bitch who despised him above all men, who prayed for his death. He had given as fully of himself as he had ever given, even with Grenilde, and Erin turned from him to cry.
Confusion and rage and heartache swelled within him, and the ice that blanketed his heart returned to his eyes.
He ran a slender finger down his wife’s back. “Well, Princess, now you can tell yourself that you have truly been mistreated as expected by your barbarian Viking husband. You have been struck … and cruelly raped.”
The last was uttered with such soft mockery, she felt as if a sword had pierced her heart. She bit into a knuckle, drawing blood, so that he would not hear her sob. She felt his touch upon her arm, and then heard his voice, suddenly gentle. “Erin …”
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