Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 03]

by The Tarnished Lady

  Eirik raised an amused brow at her feisty words, tearing his eyes from the clear outline of her breasts and hips and long legs. “Well, then, we shall both examine our purchases.”

  As he stepped after her into the shallow water, she glanced downward and inhaled sharply, noticing that he’d discarded his loincloth. “Have you no shame?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  He proceeded to remove her clothing. And it was no small feat, with her kicking and scratching and swearing vengeance on him the entire time.

  “Do not dare touch me…oh, you have torn my gown, you clumsy brute.”

  “Stop twisting so. You are as slippery as an eel. Ouch! You scratched me. You drew blood with your claws,” he exclaimed incredulously and dunked her under the water.

  She came up sputtering, “You bastard!” and launched herself at his chest, knocking him over, attempting to kneel on his chest. His nose burned, and he barely escaped emasculation when she tried to knee him in the groin.

  “Eadyth! ’Tis time you behaved like a wife, not a fish-wife.”

  “Hah! ’Tis time you behaved like a chivalrous knight, not a rude troll.”

  “A troll!” he gasped out. “We shall see who is the troll here. I have had enough of your obstinance and unwomanly ways.” Forgoing tenderness then, he roughly ripped her gown and undergarments from her body.

  “Look what you have done to my shoes. Oh, you will pay for all this damage to my belongings.”

  Grinning at her soft leather slippers which floated by ignominiously, he yanked her stockings from her legs.

  Once naked, Eadyth gave him no opportunity to view her bodily charms. Slipping out of his grasp, she dove into the water and swam away from him, giving him only a momentary glimpse of her bare buttocks and deliciously long legs.

  He smiled.

  Grasping the soap Britta had left on the bank, he took off after her, overtaking her in a few strokes. Grabbing hold of her hair, he pulled her back toward the shore and sat down on the bank, pushing her into a sitting position in the water between his knees. Her screams could, no doubt, be heard in Jorvik.

  “Do not turn your back on me from this day forth, you heathen Viking beast, for I will pay you back tenfold.”

  “I quiver with fright, my lady.” Quickly, before she had a chance to turn and truly render him impotent, Eirik soaped her long hair, then dunked her head under the water. Three times he repeated the procedure, ignoring her shrieks of outrage at his brutish treatment.

  When he was satisfied that he had finally removed all the lard from her hair, he let Eadyth stand. Angrily, she flicked her long, wet hair over her shoulder and stormed away from him before he had a chance to truly study her body. Ah, well, he would have plenty of time for that later.

  He began his own ablutions, going off to the deeper water. He washed his hair and body, diving underwater again and again to remove all the mud. When he finally emerged from the water, Eadyth was standing on the shore, fully clothed in a belted gunna of soft lavender silk, combing her waist-length hair.

  And she was beautiful.

  Britta must not have brought undergarments for his lady wife, thank the gods, for the thin fabric of her gown molded her womanly curves. She was slender as he had originally thought, but not uncomely so. Once again, he berated himself for being such a dim-sighted fool.

  His lips twitched with a grin of anticipation. He reached for a drying cloth and slowly, languorously blotted the moisture from his body, watching her the entire time.

  And she was watching him, too. Warily.

  He felt himself grow hard under her steady scrutiny.

  She blushed and looked away.

  “We are finally going to consummate our marriage. You know that, Eadyth, do you not?”

  She hesitated, biting her bottom lip, then nodded grudgingly. “But do not think I will be standing on my head for you.”

  Eirik’s eyes widened. “Well, mayhap it will not be necessary now that I see you do not look quite like the back end of a mule.”

  Eadyth shot him a look that said clearly he was the one most resembling a mule’s arse. “And do not think I am going to give you one of those five-hour candles for your lusty purposes,” she added shrewishly.

  “Huh?”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “You know…that five-petaled lotus thing you boasted about. Oh, I know that I cannot escape the marriage bed now, but do not think you will get me to cooperate in your perversions.”

  Understanding began to dawn on Eirik then, and he laughed aloud. Good Lord, Eadyth believed his outrageous tale of five-hour sexual bouts, and no doubt she expected such a performance from him on this their wedding night.

  “Ah…refresh my memory, Eadyth…how many times did I say the woman in that tale peaked in one evening?”

  “I disremember,” she said, her face flushing prettily. “Seven or eight times, methinks.”

  “Sev…seven or eight?” he said, amazed at his own fantastic stories. Then he thought of something else. “And how many times did I say the man peaked during that five-hour session?”

  “Twelve,” she said without hesitation.

  Eirik made a small, choking sound deep in his throat and stepped closer. He took the comb from her hand and threw it to the ground. Then, putting his hands on her waist, which fit rather nicely into his palms, he lifted her off the ground so their bodies met—thigh to thigh, belly to belly, breast to chest.

  Lowering his head, he murmured huskily against her lips, “Eadyth, I fear I will not last five minutes, let alone five hours.”

  “Ah, I should have known. Men ever boast of prowess they have not.”

  He put the tip of his tongue to the mole above her lips, then traced the edges of her finely sculpted mouth with mind-splintering pleasure. “Do you challenge me already, wife?”

  “Nay, we are in agreement on that, at least. I care naught for any extended periods of love play. I would just as well get it over with and be done,” she said in an unconvincingly defensive tone as she leaned her head backward, trying to escape his lips. Her movement only gave him access to her smooth neck.

  “Ah, that is where you are wrong, wife. We will light your blasted five-hour candle,” he said, nuzzling the warm skin, “and I promise to make your pleasure last…even if we both have to peak over and over and over ’til we get it right.”

  For once, Eadyth had nothing to say. But the wildly beating pulse in her neck jumped traitorously against his lips.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As they walked back toward the keep, Eirik draped an arm casually over her shoulder.

  She glared at him.

  He winked.

  What kind of husband winks at his wife?

  Eadyth ducked and moved away defensively. “Stop teasing me,” she demanded and started to walk ahead of him at a brisk pace.

  The brute called after her with seeming innocence. “Me? Teasing? I was just behaving as a husband should. By the way, Tykir was right about your hips.”

  She looked back over her shoulder and saw his eyes riveted outrageously on her backside. Holy Saint Hilary, the man’s mind ran on one path only. She stopped and waited for him to catch up. She was not going to display her posterior for him in her flimsy silk gown, especially since Britta had failed to bring her a chemise or any undergarments.

  “You really should accustom yourself to my touching, Eadyth,” he remarked offhandedly as he tried to entwine his fingers with hers.

  She swatted his hand away. “Why?”

  “Because I intend to do a goodly amount.”

  She frowned, not understanding his words at first. When she realized that he meant he would be touching her excessively, a hot flush worked itself up from her suddenly full breasts to her undoubtedly red face. “You…you…libertine,” she sputtered, trying to find the words to tell him of her lack of appreciation for his playful ways. He surely did not mean them. He only goaded her to raise her ire. At least, that’s what she thought until she no
ticed his eyes gazing appreciatively at her chest.

  She looked down and almost groaned aloud. Her nipples had grown hard. Oh, Lord. “Are you perchance a pervert?”

  Eirik laughed, and the tiny crinkles around his eyes deepened in a most delightful way. He had slicked his thick, black hair off his face, but already the sun was drying it and the vast amount of skin revealed by his short-sleeved, open-necked tunic. His freshly scrubbed, sun-bronzed skin shone with good health, vitality and raw maleness. Really, her husband was sinfully attractive. And a danger to her hard-won independence.

  “Nay, Eadyth, I am not a pervert.”

  “Then why do you talk so much of touching and fornication?”

  “Mayhap because it has been so long since I have done either.”

  That surprised her. She wanted to ask how long, having assumed he had visited his mistress between the time of their betrothal and his return to Ravenshire several days ago, but she could not. Asking would indicate she cared. And she did not care for him, or any man. She could not. Oh, Lord.

  “Three months,” he said, as if answering her silent question.

  Her eyes widened, and, against her wishes, a little flutter of gladness rippled through her. Fighting to regain her cool demeanor, she commented in as uninterested a voice as she could manage, “Well, I suppose that is a long time for a man, but surely you place far too much significance on the coupling betwixt a man and woman.”

  “A husband and a wife,” he corrected her with a slight grin.

  She waved a hand dismissively. “Man, woman. Husband, wife. ’Tis just an overvalued physical act in the end. Like eating. Or yawning. Of too short a duration to merit such importance. Oh, I warrant it is pleasurable for a man. At least, they boast of it often enough, but I misdoubt it is more than a nuisance for very many women.”

  Eirik gave her a sidelong look of amazement and shook his head slowly from side to side. “Yawning? Ah, Eadyth, ’twill be a joy to teach you otherwise.”

  “I want none of your sinful lessons.”

  “There is naught sinful about good lovemaking betwixt a husband and wife.”

  “Good. Bad. Little difference it makes to me.”

  “It will.”

  “Hah!”

  Eirik reached forward and took a long lock of her curly hair in his fingers. Sensuously, he rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, then, holding her eyes, he lifted the strand to his lips. “I suspect, my prim and proper lady, that you harbor a misconception about lovemaking. If you had your way, I wager, ’twould be quick and quiet, clean and cool. You would manage it very efficiently, like your household.”

  She lifted her chin, stubbornly refusing to rise to his bait this time.

  He chuckled softly and continued, “Well, let me tell you, dearling, good lovesport is long…and wet…and messy…and noisy…and very, very hot.”

  Hot? Wet? Oh, Lord. Eadyth could not stop her mouth from opening with incredulity. “See what I mean?” she scoffed finally. “You are constantly taunting me. All I wanted was a husband to protect my son, a legal arrangement.” She closed her eyes with exasperation and gritted her teeth.

  “And I want more.”

  Eirik’s softly spoken words startled Eadyth, and she opened her eyes to meet the hungry fire of his burning scrutiny. Hungry? For what? Oh, nay, it cannot be…oh, surely not for me.

  She stumbled, and Eirik grasped her by the waist to help her stay aright. The mere graze of his hands against her silk-clad skin was enough to set her heart thumping and blood pounding to all her extremities. And, Sweet Mary, his touch felt so uncommonly wonderful, she wanted to catch the moment and hold it in her palm forever.

  This was the sweetness she had dreamed of as a young girl, before Steven of Gravely had shattered her illusions. Her mouth parted on a soft moan of despair at her crumbling resistance to Eirik’s lure.

  Eirik inhaled sharply, apparently understanding too well her unwilling response to him.

  Before she could turn and run, as she surely should, before he burned her alive with his smoldering eyes, Eirik pulled her sharply against his hard chest. Then, wrapping his arms tightly around her waist, he lifted her body upward so her bare toes dangled in the soft grass, and he walked her to a nearby tree.

  With her back braced against the rough bark and her feet still barely touching the ground, he pressed his hips against her belly and proceeded to show her exactly what he had meant by a great deal of touching.

  “Lovely…so lovely,” he murmured against her neck as his hands played havoc with her body, moving the slippery fabric of her silk gown along her thighs, across her back.

  “Do not…oh, please stop, you lusty goat,” she gasped out, trying to catch his wrists, but he was too quick for her. His hands were everywhere at once.

  “I cannot stop, Eadyth…I cannot,” he rasped out huskily and nipped playfully at her ear.

  “I feel shameless.”

  “A shameless wife,” he said pensively. “Hmmm. I think I like that prospect, Eadyth. Very much.”

  Then, like a bursting dam, his caresses moved over her in waves, out of control, without direction or concern for her cries about the unseemliness of the intimate places he claimed. When he moved his wool-clad chest lightly, from side to side, against her silk-covered bosom, Eadyth shuddered with the pure, exquisite sensation of her breasts being abraded so enticingly.

  “I did not know,” Eadyth said, with wonder.

  “I know,” he said with maddening arrogance.

  She wanted to say more, but she was too overcome with the erotic tingles that were spreading like wildfire across her body.

  “I do not want to feel like this,” she groaned.

  “Yea, you do,” he asserted and moved his warm lips closer to hers. At the same time, his large palms cupped her buttocks in a scandalous manner she should have found repulsive, but did not, and pulled her even closer against his hardness.

  “Do you want me to kiss you, Eadyth?” he whispered against her lips.

  “Nay,” she lied, still trying to fight the raging fire which threatened to consume her and all that she had held dear.

  “Why, then, are you trembling so?”

  “With revulsion.”

  He chuckled softly at her resistance and moved his right hand to her left breast. With the heel of his palm on the underside, he flicked a callused thumb back and forth across the pebbled tip until her breast felt heavy and ached for some fulfillment she could not understand. Then he did the same with his left hand and her right breast.

  She was drowning in a pool of ecstasy.

  “Does that feel good?” he asked in a thickened voice.

  She could not speak, just shook her head stubbornly.

  “You lie, Eadyth,” he said with a knowing grin. “Your lips swell in invitation. Your eyes, your beautiful violet eyes, are hazed with passion. And your legs have parted of their own volition for our joining.”

  Horrified, Eadyth looked down to see that she had, indeed, spread her legs to accommodate the cradle of his hips.

  “Oh…oh…see what you do to me. I have become a sinful wanton.”

  “Nay, not a wanton. My wife,” he said thickly, with satisfaction, brushing his warm lips across hers lightly—tempting, teasing, tantalizing her hunger for more. “Tell me what you want, wife…tell me…tell me,” he coaxed.

  “I want your kiss, and you well know it,” she cried out finally in surrender, then pressed her lips against his.

  The surprised hiss of Eirik’s breath mingled with hers. Then he turned his head slightly, shaping his firm lips to better fit against her mouth. Oh, the sheer pleasure of his deepening kiss! When his tongue slipped between her lips, she wrapped her arms around his powerful shoulders and whimpered incoherently, wanting what he gave her and so much more.

  Eadyth never knew a kiss could be so erotic, stripping away a woman’s resistance petal by petal. Her mind whirled with all the delicious sensations accosting her, surrounding her, enveloping
her—the taste of Eirik’s mouth, a breeze carrying the scent of sweet clover, the raspy sound of their ragged breaths, the buzzing of a hornet, the feel of Eirik’s long fingers tunneling in her hair, the delicious odor of her husband’s sun-warmed skin, the snorting of a horse—

  The snorting of a horse! Eadyth tore her mouth from his, and her eyes fluttered open. Glancing over Eirik’s shoulder, she saw, to her horror, Wilfrid and several of Eirik’s men sitting astride their horses a short distance away, watching with amusement the degenerate display she and Eirik had been putting on for them.

  Mortified, she tried to shove her husband away from her, informing him in a strangled hiss, “We have company.”

  Eirik’s misty blue eyes had turned slumberous with desire, and his lips looked sensually swollen from their deep kiss. Oh, Sweet Mary, what must she look like? A trollop, that was what, she thought, cringing.

  “What?” Eirik asked, a violent shiver of restraint passing over him as he gently brushed some strands of hair off her face. His eyes remained unfocused with passion.

  “Your men are here, and they are ogling us,” she informed him in a suffocated whisper.

  Suddenly alert, Eirik glanced over his shoulder and nodded to the men companionably, as if embracing his wife openly were an everyday happenstance. As if they were not there for some special reason.

  “I must seem a wanton in your men’s eyes. Oh, I will never forgive you for embarrassing me so!”

  “Really?” he asked silkily. “Well, best you get used to being embarrassed then because I find I like the idea of a wanton wife.” He winked at her and pinched her backside outrageously before starting to turn toward his men.

  She pulled him back.

  He raised his right eyebrow inquiringly. “Changed your mind already, have you?”