by Sandra Hill
And she liked it.
She liked the way his nostrils flared as he pretended he was unaffected.
She liked those wicked things he’d said about sex play being wanton and not for the faint of heart.
She liked the fact that finally…finally…she would understand what her sisters meant about peaking and bliss, even if it wouldn’t involve penetration.
And, gods help her, she liked John.
Without looking down, she knew that her nipples were pearled into hard points, and her nether folds wept with the dew of her arousal. A new, strange inner excitement made her restless and anxious to begin the game.
Oh, she knew that John’s order that she disrobe was a blatant attempt to humiliate her into withdrawing from his reluctant agreement. But she could not care.
He grinned wolfishly and flicked his fingers, a gesture designed to annoy her. “Turn.”
She arched a brow.
“So that I may examine the goods.”
She would like to give him the goods…with a smack upside the head. “Just so you know…I will be examining your goods later, too.”
The laughter that burst from his lips had a sharp edge to it. “I cannot wait.”
He flicked his fingers again.
She gritted her teeth and turned slowly, full circle, hoping he wouldn’t note that her bum was a bit jiggly or that she had big feet.
“Again,” he said in a choked whisper.
With a foul word muttered under her breath, she twirled again, this time faster. “Do I meet with your approval?”
“You will do.”
Her upper lip curled. “So, I am lacking when compared to Joanna?”
“Why do you keep bringing up Joanna? She has naught to do with us.” He inhaled and exhaled as if to give him time for his next words. “You are who you are, Ingrith. Beautiful.”
Her heart lightened. Oh, she knew she wasn’t beautiful, but at least he found her somewhat pleasing.
But then he added, “’Tis a blessing that you do not have dimples in your buttocks as women your age are wont to do.”
Her eyes shot up to spear him. Was he teasing? Or really viewing her as a woman of advanced age?
His deliberately blank face told her naught as he walked over to a hardback chair and sat down. “Come here, Ingrith.”
When she got closer, he tugged her to stand between his outspread thighs.
Under his steady scrutiny, she could scarce think. “This doesn’t feel right,” she said, “with me naked and you clothed.”
“Do you protest our arrangement already?”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Actually, Ingrith, I would not. You beguile me.”
“I do?”
The expression on his face was hungry and lustful.
She was oddly pleased that she could tempt such a man.
He lifted her breasts from underneath and strummed the already erect nipples with his thumbs.
“Eek!” He could have warned her that he was going to do that. Her breasts ached and she could swear there was a pulse, like a heartbeat, betwixt her legs.
“Do you like that, sweetling?”
Lackwit! “Nay. My knees fold on me all the time.”
“Never fear. I will catch you.”
“Must we talk?” Let us get on to the good stuff.
“Have you ne’er pleasured your own breasts?”
Huh? “Of course not.” I did not know I could.
He spent an excessive amount of time playing with her breasts then. Cupping them. Massaging. Tweaking and strumming the nipples. On and on he continued the blissful torture, until she was mewling for satisfaction. Only then did he take a nipple in his mouth and draw her in deeply.
“Aaaaaaahhhhh!” she keened. Was there ever such a comparable pleasure in this world? With each suckle of one breast and fondling of the other, every hair on her body stood on end, even on her scalp, which prickled with sensation. The pulse between her legs was now a series of spasms.
“You taste wonderful,” he murmured, open-mouthed, against her breast. “Do you like my touching your breasts?”
“Do frogs spit?” Talk, talk, talk. The man is becoming a chatterer.
He choked out a laugh, then resumed his delicious torture. From one breast to the other, he alternated his attentions
And then he stopped.
His blue eyes were glazed and at half-mast. His lips were parted with a soft panting. “We need to slow down.”
Is the man mad? “Nay. We need to hurry up,” she insisted, drawing his hands up to her breasts again.
“I am captaining this ship, Ingrith,” he said, and withdrew her hands, but almost immediately he lifted her by the waist up high, so that he could arrange his legs together and her astride his thighs.
Oh. My. Gods! “This is scandalous,” she protested, trying to draw her knees together to cover her exposed nether parts.
“Yea, it is,” he agreed. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
She gurgled out a further protest, but he spread his thighs, and hers, wider. She was shocked into speechlessness.
But then he put a hand to her nape to pull her closer to his lips, his hand massaging the tense tendons on the back of her neck. At the same time his other hand was moving over her back and bottom in wide sweeping caresses. His lips moved over hers from side to side, as if adjusting to the perfect fit. And then he was kissing her fervently.
Besieged by sensations from so many directions, she wanted to pause the kiss, or swat one hand or the other away from their distracting, albeit wonderful, forays so that she could concentrate on one thing at a time. It was too much. And not enough. How was she to know what she liked if everything was happening at once?
And then he stopped once again.
Puzzled, and highly aroused, she gaped at him.
His eyes were closed and his head thrown back. She could see the wild pulse beat in his neck. When he was seemingly back under control, he looked at her lazily through half-closed eyes.
“Methinks ’tis time to go down to dinner,” he said.
“You jest!”
“Nay, ’tis always best in bedplay to stretch out the anticipation.”
“Best for whom?”
“Both parties.”
She smacked him on the chest and attempted to wiggle off his lap. She had felt only a twinge of humiliation standing naked before him. But now she felt full-blown humiliation as she sat spread before him like a ripe peach ready for the plucking, whilst he remained cool and casual as to whether they continued the game or not.
Well, the game was over for her.
“Let me go,” she demanded, fighting his grasp on her upper arms. “This arrangement is over. Ne’er did I bargain for one-way bedplay. Dost get satisfaction turning me breathless and wanting as you remain an indifferent observer?”
“Ingrith! Is that what you think?” He laughed.
She hit him again.
He took one of her hands and placed it over the large bulge in his braies. “That is how indifferent I am to you, sweetling.”
“Then why did you stop?”
“Because Katherine is knocking on the door.”
“What?” she squealed. “How long has she been knocking?”
He smirked.
“Lackwit!” This time he let her wiggle off his lap. Grabbing a gunna, she held it up in front of her and opened the door a crack. “Katherine, sorry I did not hear you sooner. Is something amiss?”
“Nothing is amiss lest you consider a scorched fig pudding a problem.” Katherine was grinning in a knowing fashion.
“I’ll be right there,” she said. “In the meantime, take it off the heat and pour it into several bowls. Be careful not to scrape the burnt bottom.”
When she closed the door and was about to turn back, she noticed John staring with interest at her bare arse. Men!
“I must hurry. Dinner will be ruined.”
He slouched in the chair, grinning.
“I thought you were training a new cook.”
“I am, but she is slow to learn. Oh, where is my undertunic? There. Under the bed.”
“Let me help you dress.”
She raised a brow at that.
To her amazement…though she soon understood why…John preferred that she don the red gunna she’d worn to the honey shed a few days past, the one that clung to her body like a second skin. His helping her dress was foresport in itself, with all his presumably inadvertent touches. And he insisted she wear naught beneath.
“Why?” she wanted to know. “Why no under-garments?”
“Anticipation. Remember what I told you. Betimes anticipation can be as intense a pleasure as the end result.”
“I have ne’er heard a man favor waiting. For anything.”
“See? I am teaching you new things,” he said, and whisked the backs of his fingers over both breasts so that the nipples stood out, even under the fabric. “See?” he told her with an arresting smile of overblown male arrogance. “Another new thing. Now, when you walk and your gunna rubs against your turgid nipples, you will think of what is to come.”
“Yea, I see,” she told him, mimicking his arresting smile of overblown arrogance. And she whisked the back of the fingers of one hand over the front of his braies.
If his groan was any indication, they were going to be equal combatants in the bed battle.
“I have changed my mind,” John said suddenly. “Take your garments back off.” Already he’d removed his belt and was raising his tunic over his head.
“What are you doing?”
Instead of answering, he tossed his tunic over his shoulder and sat down on the side of the bed. “Help me remove my boots.”
It was a sign of her melting brain that she knelt to do his bidding. “You said anticipation is to be highly valued.”
He shrugged. “The best warrior knows to change tactics as the battle progresses.”
“Is this war?”
“Most definitely.”
“I have always thought I would make a good soldier.”
He shook his head at her persistence for equality, even in the bedsport.
“We really should go down to dinner,” she said.
“We really should not.”
“I thought you were hungry.”
“I am. Ravenous, in fact.” Glancing up at her through smoldering eyes, he told her in a passion-raw voice, “But not for food.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sometimes the best meals involve no food…
John let Ingrith study his naked body with its rampant erection for a long moment. He hoped she wasn’t too shocked.
“I have seen many a naked man,” she began.
Mayhap not so shocked.
“But none of them waving a flagpole at me.” She grinned.
The impudent wench! Does she have a shy bone in her body? “So, a connoisseur of male flesh, are you?”
“Tsk-tsk-tsk! My father had hundreds of warriors in residence. They had no qualms about exposing private parts to women, even five Viking princesses. Betimes they even practiced battle exercises in the nude, like berserkers.”
“And how do I compare?” I cannot believe I asked such a pitiful question.
She tapped her chin and pretended to study his body once again. Well, no pretense, she did look him over in detail. “Truth to tell, John, you are a finely made man, all over, even with your shaved head.”
“Thank you very much, m’lady.” He bowed at her, which probably looked ridiculous with his “flagpole” waving. “I will show you later what I can do with that shaved head…and flagpole.”
Her head shot up…she had been giving his “flagpole” extra attention, turning her head this way and that. No doubt she would have got on the floor to examine the underside if he hadn’t spoken.
John knew his way around the bed furs. And he knew what to do now, for damn sure. He had taken a deliberately long time putting Ingrith’s gown back on, but it took him only the blink of an eye to remove it now. With both of them naked, he tossed her, shrieking, up and onto the middle of the bed. Then, with a triumphant war cry, he came up over her. He could only imagine what those below stairs were thinking about the noise.
“I am going to eat you like one of your delicious honey cakes,” he promised.
She smiled, uneasily. “I am not nearly as tasty.”
“I beg to differ, sweetling. Let me see. First, I will lick you. All over. Like I do all sides of your juice-seeping pastry.” He demonstrated by giving her ear a wet lap of his tongue. Then he blew it dry. After that, he licked her lips. The inner skin of her elbow. Her breastbone.
She shivered. With pleasure, he hoped. “Are you saying that I seep juice?”
“Only if I am lucky.”
“What next?” the impatient wench prodded. “With honey cakes, I mean.”
“I enjoy nibbling along the edges.” He gently bit the edge of her stubborn chin, the curve of her shoulder, and the aureola of one breast. “Yum!” he said.
“Am I permitted to participate in this meal?” she inquired with mock docility.
This woman had never been docile. She no doubt came screaming from her mother’s womb, trying to organize the birthing room. In truth, her eagerness excited and frightened him at the same time since he was unsure whether he could really resist her in the end. “Definitely. Later.” He moved down her body so that he straddled her knees and put his face to her woman-fleece. “I especially want to eat you here.” He dipped a finger inside, which came out wet. “Didst know they call this woman-honey?”
Her feet shot up and her arms flailed out. She almost knocked him off the bed. “Get away from there, you perverted oaf.”
He was laughing so hard he could scarce speak as he moved up to lie on his side, with one leg pinioning hers to the bed. Best not to give her an opportunity to bolt. “I thought you were going to let me do anything I wanted.”
“You stipulated wanton things, not perversions.”
Stipulated? Where does she get this stuff? “A sex kiss is not a perversion.”
“It isn’t?”
Mayhap a little. He shook his head. “But mayhap it is too soon in our arrangement. I will give you time.”
“You are too generous.”
“Uh, uh, uh!” he chided. “Sarcasm has no place in bedsport.”
“Methinks you make these bedsport rules up as you go.”
“Open your legs, Ingrith.”
“Not so you can put your mouth there again.” She turned slightly away from him, as far as she could go with his leg thrown over hers.
He smacked her lightly on the rump. “Do as you are told.”
Amazingly, she lay back again and spread her thighs a bit.
“More.”
With a muttered curse, she widened the space so that he could settle himself over her with his overenthusiastic cock nestling where it most wanted to be.
When she felt him there, her shock rippled out through all parts of her violently shivering body. “Oh, my!” was all she of the usually blathering mouth said. “I thought men looked more like worms there, but yours is surely a snake.”
First, I am a flagpole, now a snake. What next? “You tremble, Ingrith. Are you fearful? Of my snake?”
She shook her head. “I tremble with…anticipation,” she said, throwing his own word back at him.
“I am going to have such fun playing with you,” he murmured against her parted lips.
“Good!” she murmured back at his parted lips. “I have not played since I was a youthling.”
“’Tis not youthling play I have in mind.” Then he proceeded to kiss her to silence. She surprised and pleased him at every turn. When he thrust his tongue in and out of her mouth in the rhythm of the type of sex he would not be able to enjoy with her, and explained it to her, she was soon mimicking his actions. The first time she inserted her tongue inside his mouth, way far in, by the by, and began to stroke him, he almost peaked, way
too soon.
He flipped her over on her stomach, and kissed and caressed, examined and stroked, every bit of skin from nape to feet, even her buttocks. “Your big feet are ticklish,” he told her.
“My big feet suit me well and good,” she told him with a hint of chagrin.
He had been teasing. She did have long feet, but he liked them. Including the slim toes, high arch, and shiny, neatly trimmed toenails.
“If you do not stop looking at my feet, I am going to sleep,” she pronounced.
He licked her arch.
She would have jerked upright if he had not placed a palm on her back. “Not asleep now, are you, dearling?”
“Lout!” she muttered.
“A lout mayhap, but your lover-lout,” he corrected, rolling her over again. More endless kisses. Soft and hard. Gentle and hungry. Coaxing and demanding. Submitting and dominating.
“You taste like cherries,” he said.
“Katherine and I made cherry tarts. Dost like cherry tarts?”
Oh, God! Now we are going to talk about food. “I like your tart tongue.”
She smacked his shoulder. “Are we supposed to talk when doing…this?”
“If we want to.” But only about sex. “There are no set rules, Ingrith. Like your recipes. Surely, there are dozens of ways to make a tart.” Now I am the one bringing food into our bed talk!
“This is fun,” she said, brushing her breasts back and forth across his chest hairs.
He saw stars behind his eyelids. “And to think we have scarce begun.”
“By the runes! My insides are already melting out from betwixt my legs. Soon we will have a flood.”
He burst out laughing and could not stop, to her chagrin. “Truly, you are priceless,” he told her when he finally settled down. Then he moved down her body to her breasts and said, “Let us see what else we have at this feast. Ah, aspic cream cups topped with tiny strawberries.”
“What?”
“Hey, if we’re going to discuss food, it might as well be my way. Now, where shall I start?”
“Aspic? Holy Frigg!” She gripped his shaven head and pulled him down so that his mouth landed over one breast…nipple, aureola, and half her breast in his open mouth. “That is where you should start,” she told him.