He grinned and shook his head ruefully at her question. “Neither. I settled a sum of money with her to buy her own business and maintain her home. And I did not touch her enticing body, not even once.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips lightly across hers, teasing, tantalizing her senses.
Eadyth’s heart began to pump wildly. Eirik’s thumb drew erotic circles on her wrist where he continued to hold her hand. Surely he could feel her racing pulse.
“Do you object?”
She shook her head and cleared her throat. “No doubt I will have to sell a great many more candles and honey and mead to cover the expense,” she said, trying hard not to succumb to the seductive magic of his fingers and imploring eyes.
He chuckled softly. “Ever the shrew, Eadyth! Nay, those coins came from my own pocket.”
Then another part of Eirik’s words came back to her, painfully. “So Asa has an enticing body, does she?” No doubt her breasts wobble like cows’ udders.
The brute grinned, and despite her elation over his good news, Eadyth felt an uncommon urge to wipe the grin off with a slap.
“Well?” he said finally with a self-satisfied smirk. “Do you not want to know why I severed my ties with Asa?”
The magnetic pull of Eirik’s pale eyes drew her to him, but she fought mightily, feeling her defenses crumble. “Because you found another mistress?” she offered weakly.
“Nay,” he said, the edges of his lips tilting upward.
“Because Asa has grown fat and slovenly…and…and her breasts no longer wobble?”
Eirik’s mouth dropped open in disbelief at her crude words. Then he recovered himself. “Nay, Asa is gloriously beautiful.”
The idea of a slap to his mouth became increasingly more attractive. “Then why?”
“Because I have a wife who pleases me greatly, in the bed and out. When she is not disobeying my orders, that is, or masquerading as an old crone, or attacking me with bees, or nagging at me shrewishly, or demanding I do her bidding, or usurping my authority, or calling me foul names, or—”
Eadyth pulled her hand out of his grasp and put her fingertips to his lips, halting his words. “But that is all the time,” she said on a groan.
He held her fingers at his lips, then nipped and suckled on the tips, one at a time, causing her to inhale softly with delight.
“Yea, ’tis,” he agreed, “but I have decided to allow you time to change your waspish ways if—”
“If?”
“—if you will continue to please me in all other ways,” he said smoothly.
And Eadyth thought that would not be such a sore fate.
John and Larise and Godric ran up the steps of the dais then, all speaking at once. Barefoot and covered with grime, they smelled like the stables. Normally, Eadyth would have chastised them. Today, it did not seem so important.
Emma straightened in Eirik’s lap and brightened with pleasure, clearly wanting to be with the other children, but fearing to leave the safety of her father’s arms. But then, all of a sudden, Emma jumped off Eirik’s lap and ran to the figure following behind the children. It was Tykir.
Dressed in fine wool braies and a short-sleeved, knee-length tunic of a soft brown color, Tykir looked the fierce Viking warrior. His long blond hair hung down to his shoulders, but it had been braided off to one side to highlight a rakish gold loop earring. Wide metal armlets encircled the huge muscles of his upper arms. He walked toward them jauntily, knowing full well the handsome image he portrayed.
“Blessed Lord, I had best lock up all the maids in the keep,” Eadyth muttered.
“And you call me a lusty lout!” Eirik responded, but with an affectionate regard for his brother.
“Uncle Tykir!” Emma yelled happily and threw herself into Tykir’s open arms. Wrapping her thin arms around his neck as he twirled her in a circle, Emma giggled like any normal child. Her laughter rippled merrily around them, sweeter than a harpist’s music. And Eadyth began to believe, finally, that Emma really might recover.
Eadyth and Eirik exchanged grateful looks.
Eadyth rose and gave Tykir a kiss of welcome, then slapped his hand away when he tried to pinch her backside.
“I thought you were coming back here days ago,” Eirik grumbled. “I could have used your help training the new men and patrolling the northern reaches of Ravenshire.”
Tykir shrugged. “We had a fiercesome storm in Jorvik and my workers could not complete the work on my ship ’til today.”
“Does that mean you will be leaving us once again, now that your ship is seaworthy?” Eadyth asked. She liked her brother-by-marriage and, with all the problems she and Eirik had been having with Emma, not to mention their own disagreements and her agonizing over the ominous silence from the Witan, they could all use a little of Tykir’s levity in their lives.
Tykir grinned in his usual rascally fashion. “Well, if I had known I was missed so much, I would have returned long ago. Apparently, I have not taught Eirik well enough how to keep a woman…happy.” He jiggled his eyebrows at his frowning brother.
“Sit down, Tykir,” Eirik muttered, “lest I teach you a few lessons in brotherly respect.”
“Hah!” Tykir said, trying to ease into the chair next to them. It was difficult with Emma wrapped around his body—arms circling his neck, legs locked around his waist.
Eadyth stood and held out her arms for Emma, but the little girl shook her head vigorously and held on even tighter, whimpering, “Uncle Tykir.”
“Women love me no matter their age,” Tykir boasted unashamedly. “But listen, sweetling,” he added gently, stroking the little girl’s bony shoulders, “I must needs visit the garderobe. Let go, for now.”
She refused.
And Eirik looked at Eadyth, offering her a quick, arresting smile, as if suddenly enlightened. He stood and snaked his arm around her waist, looking down at Tykir. “You know how you hate to sleep alone, my brother,” Eirik said smoothly. “Well, you have a new lady to share your bed linens.” He pointed at Emma, who smiled brightly, apparently understanding perfectly and having no objection to her Uncle Tykir taking the place of her father or stepmother.
“And, you, my lady wife,” Eirik said, turning to Eadyth. “I have something for you.” Searching the various folds of his surcoat and tunic, he finally retrieved a bedraggled green feather.
“What?” Eadyth asked, tilting her head questioningly as Eirik laid the parrot feather in the palm of her hand.
Eirik’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Since I abandoned you on the night of our marriage, and since we have had no time to ourselves since then,” he said in a low, husky voice close to her ear, “you have my permission to consider this our wedding night.”
“Permission?” Eadyth choked out, then looked down at the feather. “And this?”
“’Tis your bride gift.”
“A bride gift?” Tykir chortled. “What kind of bride gift is that? You have become tight-fisted in your old age, my brother.”
Eirik ignored his brother’s taunts and put his hand over Eadyth’s. His eyes smoldered with some hidden message. “Remember the feather I demonstrated for you one day in our bedchamber and my promise that the exercise would continue?” he said smoothly, running the quill across her lips as a reminder of what he had done once before. “’Tis time, Eadyth. Past time.”
Then he scooped her up in his arms before she had a chance to protest and started to carry her off the dais. She squirmed and protested shrilly as Tykir and his men cheered and offered lewd suggestions.
“You are truly a loathsome lout.”
“Yea, I am.”
“And an odious oaf.”
“Yea.”
“A lecherous libertine.”
“Most definitely.”
“And a…a…”
“Do not forget horny toad.”
Eadyth tried to push out of his embrace, but he held her arms firmly in his embrace. Then he called out over his shoulder, “Good eventide, everyone. We will se
e you on the morrow.”
“The morrow!” Eadyth squeaked, giving up on her struggles and burying her hot face in his neck. “’Tis only past noon now.”
“Yea,” he said, smiling with supreme male satisfaction. Then he added in a voice of silky promise, “I have twelve ‘peaks’ to climb afore then, and I want to get an early start.”
“Twel…twelve! Oh, you are outrageous.”
“Yea. That is one of the things women love about me.”
Once they were in his bedchamber, Abdul began squawking, “Loathsome lout. Awk. Big trouble. Awk. Kiss my arse. Awk.” Without hesitation, Eirik picked up the cage and deposited it in the hall, ignoring the bird’s angry protests.
Then, with the door locked behind them, Eirik began to light the many beeswax candles scattered around the room. Eadyth’s heart was beating so loudly, she was sure he could hear it across the room. She leaned against the closed door, almost light-headed from her thickened blood and heavy limbs.
Oh, Lord.
“You do not need candles now. ’Tis daylight outside,” she remarked nervously, still propped against the door.
“Yea, but you know I have a vision problem. And I want to make sure I see everything today.” He flashed her another of his bone-melting smiles.
Oh, Lord.
“You can see well enough when you want to. Do you know how much those candles cost?” she said, weakly searching for conversation, hating the sudden reticence that had overcome her once the door closed.
“Do you know how much I do not care?”
She started to reprimand Eirik for his spendthrift ways, then stopped when she saw him hop about on one foot, then the other, as he removed his boots. Then he lifted his tunic over his head. His eyes glowed with a savage inner fire as they held hers captive. Unable to look away, she watched as he released the ties on his braies and dropped them to the rushes, stepping out of them easily.
Boldly, he took his hardened manhood in his hand and said in low, strangled voice, “Do you see how much I want you, wife? Do you want me half as much?”
Twice as much, Eadyth thought as she felt a hot liquid pool at her center. The tips of her breasts ruched and ached. And he had not even touched her yet.
Oh, Lord.
“Disrobe for me, Eadyth,” he entreated in a low, throaty voice. “Take off your garments whilst I watch.”
And Eadyth surprised herself by doing as he bid. Shyly, she moved away from the door a few steps and undid the belt of her gunna, letting it drop to the floor. With the edges of her toes, she removed her leather slippers, then removed her overtunic and chemise.
She should have been embarrassed to stand naked before a man, but she was not. Eirik was not just a man. He was her husband. And the pleasure she saw on his face as his eyes scanned her body gladdened her.
“You are beautiful, Eadyth,” he whispered rawly. And Eadyth did feel beautiful then, for the first time in many, many years.
“Touch the tips of your breasts with your fingertips, Eadyth,” he coaxed, still standing a short distance from her. “I want to see your pleasure as you imagine they are my hands on you.”
“Oh,” she said on a soft whisper, but did as he asked, and almost swooned with the intense yearning that radiated, almost painfully, from her nipples.
“Now leave one hand on your breast and place the other at your nether hair. And tell me what you feel.”
Eadyth felt a hot flush sweep her face and shoulders. “Desire,” she whispered in embarrassment.
“’Tis your body readying itself for me, Eadyth,” he barely choked out, and closed the distance between them.
She tried to put her arms around his neck and draw him into her embrace, but he would not allow it yet. “Nay, sweetling, we are going to go slowly this time…very slowly.” He kissed her lips lightly and took her hand, leading her over to the window well. “Stand here,” he directed. Then placing her against the wall, near the light of the window, he positioned her arms so that her fingers were clasped behind her neck.
“Oh, I do not know if I like this,” she protested. “Let us lie on the bed, Eirik.”
“Nay, not quite yet. We are going to play a game first.”
“A game?” she choked out.
“Yea, the feather game.”
“I do not understand.”
“You will. You will.”
“And what do I get if I win?”
“Me.”
She laughed scoffingly. “And what do you get if you win?”
“You.”
Her brow furrowed in puzzlement. “’Tis the same thing, is it not?”
“Oh, nay, there is a vast difference. ’Tis all in playing the game. Now, first off, you must not remove your hands from behind your neck. Not even a bit. Or you lose. And I may not touch you with anything other than a feather, not my hands or lips, or I lose.”
“And how will I know if I have won?”
“When you ‘peak’.” He smiled widely as if he were the most brilliant man in the world.
“Peak?” she squeaked out. “With feathers? Are you sure? Have you done this afore?”
“Never, but I am absolutely sure.”
Then he picked up the feather which she had dropped on the floor and began to trace her eyebrows, the lines of her nose, her mole, the edges of her lips. She closed her eyes with a sigh as the delicious caresses progressed.
“Nay, you must keep your eyes open,” he said. “That is another one of the rules.”
“Oh,” she said suspiciously. “Do the rules change as we go along?”
“Mayhap.” He moved on to the undersides of her upraised arms, down her sides, circling her breast. She held her breath, waiting. The circles got smaller and smaller as he edged the feather closer to the center of her breast.
“Do you want me to touch you there?” he whispered seductively.
“I will die if you do not.”
“Well, we cannot have a dead bride on a wedding night, now can we?” he chuckled, and flicked the feathery edges back and forth over her pebbled nipple. Her hands almost slipped from behind her neck with the overwhelming pleasure that flooded her.
“Tell me,” he urged in a passion-thick voice as he began to do the same to her other breast. “Tell me how it feels.”
“I ache. I throb. I yearn for…”
“For what, sweetling?”
“Your mouth on me…suckling, I think…oh, I do not know.”
“Soon, Eadyth, soon. Nay, do not close your eyes. Remember the rules.”
She forced her eyes open and looked downward where his feathery torture had moved to her belly and inner thighs. “Why are those blue veins standing out on your man-thing? Does it hurt?”
Eirik made an odd strangling sound deep in his throat and leaned an arm against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment, as if to gain strength. When he opened them again, Eadyth asked with a knowing smile, “Do the rules say you can close your eyes whilst I cannot?”
“Yea, you minx,” he said with a shake of his head.
Eadyth had no mind to tease him after that when Eirik employed his feather on her woman hair. Kneeling before her, he asked her to separate her legs, and Eadyth complied, mindless with yearning now as all the boiling blood in her body seemed to lodge in one tiny nub of sensation. Using the feather, he separated her folds and told her how she looked to him.
As his game progressed, Eadyth began to whimper helplessly, especially when he set the feather to fluttering, like birds’ wings. The ache in her breasts and her woman folds grew and grew, almost to bursting, and Eadyth arched her hips outward, her legs stiffening. Eirik increased the pace of the flickering feather, rapidly, rapidly.
Eadyth wrenched her hands from behind her neck and put them on Eirik’s shoulder for support as her knees grew weak and tiny spasms of pleasure rippled outward from her core. Bright lights exploded behind her closed eyes, and she moaned, “No more, Eirik. No more. ’Tis too much.”
He dropped the feathe
r and put his face against her taut belly. When he finally stood, Eadyth saw through her passion-glazed eyes that his manhood had grown enormous and a small bead of his seed stood out on its end. His eyes raked her body hungrily and ragged breaths came from his parted lips.
He wanted her, Eadyth could see, and she was pleased.
“Did I lose?” she asked self-consciously as he moved closer.
He flashed her a dazzling smile and lifted her into his arms. “I would say that we both won, sweetling. But now it is my time for the prize.”
He threw her onto the bed and followed immediately after her. Putting his hands on either of her ankles, he pushed upward and outward. He looked down at her appreciatively for one moment only, then plunged into her depths with one long stroke. Eadyth keened with the intense pleasure of being filled by her husband, as they melded together as one.
“You are so hot,” Eirik ground out as he leaned over her on straightened arms, his neck arching with his painful control. “Your womanheat is burning me alive. I want to kiss you and suckle your breasts and whisper sweet words to you, but I cannot wait…I cannot wai..”
He pummeled her body then with long strokes that grew increasingly shorter and harder. She braced her upraised palms against the headboard and tried to match his strokes. When the quivering flutters began again in her woman parts, she spread her legs wider and arched her hips up off the bed. The flutters became spasms, then full-blown convulsions, as Eadyth flailed her head from side to side, reaching, reaching, reaching…. When she reached her “peak” and splintered into a thousand shards of pleasure, Eirik arched his neck back and slammed into her one last time, crying out with a raw, masculine groan of triumph.
Eirik fell heavily across her, his chest heaving from his efforts, his ragged breaths tickling her neck. Eadyth felt a wetness between her legs—his seed and her woman’s moisture. His limp man part still nestled inside her.
And a warmth like spring sunshine flowed through Eadyth. She brushed her fingertips lightly across his shoulders and down his back. In the aftermath of their fierce lovemaking, Eadyth felt peace and a sense of rightness.
“I love you, Eirik,” she whispered, stroking his hair.
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