by Sandra Hill
Only then did John release a roar of satisfaction as he withdrew and spilled his seed into the straw. She could feel his chest heaving as he lay heavily upon her, his face buried in the crook of her neck. Instinctively, she caressed his back and the dip behind his waist, one of her favorite spots on his body.
Ingrith wanted desperately to tell John that she loved him because, of course, she did. But she had learned her lesson once. Those were not the words he wanted to hear from her. She had shown him, though, through her lovemaking. If he knew, he would probably run for the hills.
When he raised his head, finally, she thought he would grin and make a teasing remark about her wanton ways. Or he would make some cutting remark about how he wasn’t going to marry her.
Instead, although the familiar silent sadness that entranced her was gone from his eyes, his expression remained serious. As he lightly traced her lips with his fingertips, he said, “God help me, Ingrith, but I feel as if I have long been sick, and now I am healed.”
First she churned his butter, then she milked his…
John couldn’t believe he had revealed himself in such a pathetic way. He rolled them over onto their sides and studied her face. To his relief, there was no pity there. Just a wonderful satiety, for which he was proudly responsible.
He lifted her thigh so that it rested on his hip. After what they had just shared, there was no way he was letting her escape him now.
“I feel the same,” she said.
No one can feel the way I do right now. I am a god. I am Adam before he ate the apple. I am King Solomon and King David combined. I am an idiot. “What same?”
“What you said about being healed.”
You cannot possibly know what it’s like to carry insanity in your blood. Always on the alert that it will finally manifest itself. “No offense, m’lady, but you are healthy as a prime horse on racing day.” He deliberately teased to lighten their conversation, and besides, what need was there for conversation when he was naked, and she was naked, and…
“Loneliness is a sickness of sorts. Even though I am often surrounded by people. Growing up with my sisters. A royal estate overflowing with Viking warriors, cotters, and household servants. All the children at the orphanage. Still, I felt alone without realizing it. It wasn’t until I experienced all this”—she motioned a hand between the two of them—“that I realized what I was missing.”
“All this?” He grinned.
“You know.” She attempted to smack him on the chest for his teasing.
He grabbed the hand before it could do any harm and kissed the knuckles instead. “Nay. Tell me.”
“I feel fulfilled as a woman. Do you…I mean, since you didn’t actually…does this satisfy you?”
Did I not shout my satisfaction there at the end? Am I not now as limp as a winter stale carrot? “Unlike you, I am perfectly aware of what is missing from our joining, but it was still good, Ingrith. Better than good.” I cannot imagine how it will be once you gain some experience. I may die of satisfaction then.
“Did I…did I do things right?”
“More than right. But…” Time to put an end to this blather.
When he rolled onto his back and didn’t immediately answer, she prodded, “But…?”
“But I have a need.” Will she fall in with my game? “A yearning, really.” Mayhap I should bat my eyelashes. “I wish…”
She braced herself on one elbow and leaned over him. “Your wish is my command, m’lord.”
Thank you, God! “Ooooh, Ingrith, do not make such statements to a man with ideas.”
“Within reason,” she amended.
“I want you to touch me.” Teasing aside, that is the truth. Forget want, I need her touch.
“All over?”
“All over.” Please, please, please.
She winked at him mischievously. “That I can do. In truth, I, too, have yearned to touch you.”
Oh, Ingrith! You could not have said anything to please me more.
“In all the ways that you touched me.”
All the sated parts of his body blinked to attention.
“An exploration, really, since you are the first man I have seen naked up close.”
First sounded as if there would be more. For some reason that bothered him. But he couldn’t be too upset. The woman had promised to touch him. Intimately.
Before she even started, his cock was rising with enthusiasm. By the time she was done, the enthusiasm had bloomed into a full-fledged, let-me-let-me-let-me cockstand. And, oh, the pleasure in between!
“On your belly, knight,” she ordered with an exaggerated sternness.
He did as she asked, gladly, and laid his face onto his folded arms. That way he hid his grin of satisfaction.
“For a beekeeper, you have a well-muscled body,” she remarked.
“I must needs be a warrior for my king, as well. ’Tis the law,” he explained. “Do you like my body?” How pitiful! Now I am reduced to begging for compliments.
She chuckled. “You know I do.”
I do? “Show me.”
Thus began a tortuous venture starting with a wet sensation on his shoulder. Was she licking his skin? By the saints! She was. Now it felt as if she was lightly scraping the surface with her fingernails.
What followed fulfilled all his longings for her touch. Sweeping caresses from his back to his ankles. Deep massages that soothed sore muscles. Kisses at the small of his back and the backs of his knees. When she sucked on one of his toes, and thank God I bathed tonight, he’d had enough of her torture and turned over onto his back.
“Methinks you need new territory to explore,” he husked out, “but not below the waist. I do not want to disgrace myself by being overeager.”
This should be a particularly enjoyable exercise since he could not only experience the pleasure of her touch, but he could watch her doing it. Men were visual characters. They liked to watch whatever they were doing.
But back to Ingrith. Her eyes were fixed on his erect phallus. “Methinks your ‘new territory’ has a different idea.”
Hah! Ideas like you wouldn’t believe, sweetling.
Before he could stop her, she lifted his cock and peeked closely underneath at his ballocks as if they were wondrous objects.
Do. Not. Peak, he ordered himself, and he meant peak as in spill his seed, not the kind of peeking she was doing. Do. Not. Peak. Do. Not. Peak.
“They are like peaches, with that fine fuzzy hair.”
Peaches! That was a new one! He tried to laugh but it came out as a gurgle. “Enough of this ‘territory’ for now,” he told her and lifted her body up so that they were face level. He was about to kiss her when she tapped his lips with a fingertip. “Uh-uh! I am leading this expedition.”
Am I in Valhalla? Is she a Valkyrie come to grant all my wishes? But wait, I am not a Viking. I am Christian. She must be an angel. A fallen angel?
She leaned over to touch the tip of her tongue to one of his flat nipples, which was nice, and not nearly as dangerous as her foray into his man-parts.
“Are your nipples as sensitive as mine?” she asked.
He blinked through the haze of his arousal. “’Twould seem so.”
“Good,” she said. And spent an inordinate amount of time playing with them.
Then the hair that ran from his chest in a V down to his crotch fascinated her, with a few dips along the way in his navel. “I hate a hairy man. You have just enough,” she declared. “I saw a man once who had so much body hair he looked like a bear. My father said it kept him warm in winter. Hah! He smelled like a bear, if you ask me.”
John couldn’t believe a naked woman with breasts brushing his belly was discussing some Viking man’s body odor. “Could you move on, Ingrith? Please.”
She skipped over his most important parts, which was just as well, considering the state of his excitement, and went to his feet once again.
“No sucking of toes,” he warned her.
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nbsp; “You’re ticklish,” she hooted with glee. Then, as she licked and kissed her way up one leg and thigh, she glanced up at him and inquired with her usual disarming bluntness. “Are you as aroused as I am?”
He choked out a laugh and waved a hand at his bobbing cockstand. “How can you even ask? Come here, sweetling. We are going to have to continue this touching exploration another time.”
He lifted her up to lie on top of him, and what an excruciatingly delicious position that was, with her breasts nestled in his chest hairs and her curly mons touching the tip of his cock. “Top or bottom?” he asked against her parted lips.
“Both.”
“You greedy wench!” He helped her to rise on all fours, then ease herself down onto his cock. When he was in to the hilt, and every drop of blood in his body had drained from his fevered brain, she rose up on her knees and cast him such a tantalizing smile that his heart lurched.
She jiggled her rump on him, even as she was impaled, to get a better fit, he supposed.
Bloody hell! He closed his eyes. He was fairly sure his eyeballs were rolling back in his head.
Before he could catch a breath, she began to move on him. He didn’t know where to look. At her sliding up and down his cock. At her breasts jiggling with her energetic bouncing. Or at her glorious hair with its mass of blonde waves tumbling down her back, over her shoulders, and brushing his chest when she leaned forward.
“This is fun,” she said.
Fun would be a vast understatement.
“Look, when I spread my knees and lean forward a little, I hit that little bud in my woman-folds on the downstroke. Can you see?”
“I see. I see,” he husked out.
“How am I doing?”
I am in sex heaven. “Fairly well.”
“Oh. I thought you wanted me to be gentle. Guess I’d better work harder.”
“I was only teas…oh, my God! What are you doing?” Blood was pounding throughout his body, all running thickly to that part of his body Ingrith was using like her own personal butter churn. “Easy, dearling, easy.”
She stopped suddenly, and her eyes went wide with wonder as he felt her inner walls grasping and ungrasping—milking, for the love of all the saints!—his cock in a seemingly never-ending peaking. “Oops!” she said, when the peaking stopped, but not to worry, she was about to resume her bouncing.
Worry? Hah! Enough of this torture! “Bottoms up,” he said, putting his hands on her hips to hold himself inside her channel, then rolled over. He stared down at her as he arranged himself better, cupping her buttocks and tipping her up.
Propped on extended arms, he began to ride her hard. He couldn’t help himself. To his amazement, her inner spasms resumed, and it felt as if he were plunging into a flexing fist.
It was the most incredible sexual experience of his life.
And it wasn’t over yet.
Fierce tremors overtook him. Even worse, his emotions were out of control. He had never intended to let himself fall under Ingrith’s spell, but all his good intentions were for naught under the onslaught of his desire for her.
What happened to the sane, logical man of yestermonth?
And who the bloody hell cared?
His head and shoulders reared back as he felt his ballocks tighten and rise, presaging an imminent peaking. He wanted desperately to stay inside Ingrith, to shoot his seed to her womb, not to breed children but for the sheer pleasure of the natural culmination of the sex act. But that was not to be.
He disengaged quickly and spilled his essence off to the side. Then he turned away from Ingrith, not wanting her to see him in this state. But sensing his distress, she curved her body into his, knee to knee, breast to back. With one arm wrapped around his waist, she kissed his shoulder. “Regrets?”
“Shouldn’t that be my question? I’m a selfish bastard, Ingrith, taking your maidenhead.”
“You took nothing, you idiot. I gave.”
“To answer your question. How could I be sorry for such an experience? Thank you.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this, John, but I have to tell you. I love you. Nay, nay, nay,” she said as he started to turn, “stay where you are.”
Which was all right with him. He didn’t want her to see his face when he was this defenseless.
“I don’t expect you to return my sentiments. You are safe.”
Dolt that he was, he said nothing, and soon he felt her even breathing against his back. He put his hand over hers, which was resting on his waist.
Only then did he whisper what he could not in good conscience say aloud. “I love you, too. God help me, but I love you, too.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He never promised her a rose garden…
When Ingrith was young, she loved to climb trees. One time she even hung from a limb by her knees, her gunna fallen down to cover her face, and the summer breeze warm on her nether parts.
But she was a girling no more, and she couldn’t recall the last time she’d climbed anything higher than a bush. Still, she was hanging, and—
Her eyes flew open, and she saw by the torchlight that John was lying between her legs. Correction. John was kneeling between her legs, and her knees were in the shameful position of hanging from his bare shoulders.
“What?” she shreiked. “This is surely perverted. Do not try to convince me it is not. Put my legs back down, you…you lecherous lout.”
“Shhh. Do not wake the horses. I am just doing a bit of exploring myself.” He blew a warm breath against her exposed cleft.
She realized then where the breeze of her dream had come from. The lackwit was the windbag at her most intimate parts.
“See. There is this cave here that begs exploring. But first an expert explorer must brave the slick water of the channel that protects the cave opening.”
She wanted to protest his actions, to get her legs down to a modest position, but she burst out laughing. I never realized that sex could be fun. Until, that is, said explorer’s tongue did a long, lapping survey of the wet folds. I am definitely not laughing now. “Oooooh,” she groaned.
“You like that, do you?”
She refused to answer, just wallowed in the erotic skills of his tongue and, yea, his teeth, too.
“Hark! I see danger up ahead. A little boulder.”
“A what?”
He parted her folds wider with his fingers, then flicked that nubbin of pleasure she had only discovered under John’s tutelage. Oh, that boulder. She was about to marvel to him that she was almost thirty and one and was just now discovering her body parts when he began to suck softly on that bud of pleasure and at the same time stuck a long finger inside her.
Holy Thor! Instant peaking! “Oops!” she said, mortally embarrassed at her hasty, wanton response.
“Oops indeed!” He grinned. “Now, my dear, there is something I have wanted to do ever since you forced me to shave my head.”
“As if I could force you to do…aaarrgh! Get your head out of there.”
He was rubbing his shaved head against her slick folds and the erect bud. The short bristles caused the most incredible friction. To her shock, she peaked. Again. Is there a crack in the earth where I can fall in?
He chuckled and rose to his knees. There was an embarrassing dampness on his fool head.
Yea, a big wide crevice where I can hide my shame for an aeon or so. “Where do you learn these things?”
“Needs must,” he said. “When you cannot have children, you are forced to be inventive.”
“But how—” Her question was cut off. In fact, she forgot what she wanted to ask as he cupped her buttocks and slid his erect phallus into her tight inner channel, which welcomed him in its usual way. With her muscles clutching him a heated vise. Is there any pleasure in the world, for a woman, that matches this fullness…this sense of becoming one with the man you love? I cannot believe my sisters never told me. All they ever mentioned was men’s dangly parts that turn from snake to pole i
n a matter of seconds. I will have a few words for them, to be sure.
He made a hissing sound through gritted teeth, which she assumed meant that he was equally aroused. “You are incredible.”
“I am?” She wanted to participate in this mating but was unable to do so with her legs locked wide and her knees still planted on his shoulders. It was a vulnerable position, and she did not like giving up all this control. Not one bit.
Liar! her conscience immediately chided. She was liking it too much. “Release my legs so I may participate,” she demanded.
“Participate all you want, but you are not lowering your legs. Touch your breasts while I swive you, Ingrith.”
Did he actually say…? “What? Nay, I will no—”
Even as he was buried inside her, he took her hands and encouraged them to play with her own breasts. She had not realized that she could pleasure herself in this way.
“That’s the way, sweetling.”
Unbelievable! Ingrith felt as if she were floating above her own body and could not believe that wild, uninhibited creature was her.
Whilst she examined her nipples with tentative fingers, he pummeled her below with deliberately long and slow thrusts, deeper than before because of the tilt of her body, she assumed. “It is hard concentrating on two titillations at once, you brute. Halt and let me catch up.”
“Titillations!” He laughed, a joyous sound coming from a man who had so little humor in his life. “Do not concentrate then. Just let it happen.”
“In other words, give up control,” she gasped out.
“Exactly.”
As John worked his magic strokes in her, she admired his body with her own magic. Caressing his wide shoulders. His sensitive paps. The hard ridges of his abdomen. The well defined muscles of his arms, which were braced on either side of her. His blue eyes were stormy with arousal under half-shuttered lids. His deliciously full mouth was parted as he panted with excitement.
This time, she rose to an even higher peak and surrendered to all the sensations assaulting her. A heated flush covered her from forehead to toes. Blood thickened and rushed to her female parts. Breasts swelled and ached. And then, as his lunges became shorter and harder, she arched up, mewling little cries of agony…a sensuous agony. She could scarce see John through the haze of her need.