Naked (15 page)

My breathing quickened.

He twisted away.

My heart sank.

Didn’t he like what he saw? My skin goose fleshed as though I’d been ducked in an icy river. I thought he would find it pleasing, with my smooth white skin, unmarked except for the battle-scar on my arm, my legs muscular from many hard days’ riding, my pre-childbirth slender waist, and my breasts, not as large as some of the village girls, but full as ripe russets. Didn’t my youthful body meet his expectations?

“My lord…” My whisper a sliver of shame.

He turned.

A glint in his raised hand.

Petrified to stone.

No! Every woman knew of what some men were capable when alone with a woman. Every woman knew the risks; had seen the scars, both physical and mental. Some men even thought it their God-given right to chastise, to correct, and to enforce that a male would be head of the house, of the marriage bed.

How wrong I had been to trust Leofric of Mercia!

Edmund had tried to warn me.

“He’s a Saxon lord,” I’d said.

“That doesn’t mean you can trust him.”

Leofric himself.

“
I must give you some warnings of my own, Lady. I will be your lord
.”

He’d told me, but I hadn’t understood. I would have believed Thurkill the Tall a wife-beater but Leofric of Mercia? The way he had kissed me, the way I’d responded …

My instincts hadn’t warned me. I hadn’t intuited it, body or soul.

My gaze fled to the barred door.

His step forward.

Breath strangled.

My step away.

Reaching for anything to aid me, a fire poker, an axe …

Closer, he moved. Revealing the golden Mercian belt I’d worn for the wedding, he clasped it around my naked waist.

The metal of the belt was warm against my skin, but not as warm as his fingertips, sliding upon my skin as he set the belt in place; that molten heat I hadn’t expected. The eagles just below my navel, their beaks pointing to the tender part of me that lay below.

In a single swift movement he lifted me off my feet. Swung me into his arms. Laid me on the bed.

Under his long-cast gaze. My naked body.

He unclasped the belt.

He didn’t speak.

As he unclothed.

My husband.

His silver sword.

Double-eagle domed. Cast aside.

His belt.

Brown. Studded. Slid through his hand.

His tunic.

Wool, dark, rough-woven. Ruffling his tawny hair as he lifted it over his head.

His shift.

Unmarked. Linen, fine-woven. Removed.

Chest hair. Golden.

Muscle. Sinew-stretched. The Dane-axe cut still livid.

Skin. War-toughened. Battle-scarred leather.

His malehood.

I swallowed my gasp.

Of such a size. I had never seen.

He came to the bed.

He didn’t speak.

On top of me.

Heavy. Warm.

He didn’t speak.

His breath. My own. Great shallow gasps.

His lips opening mine. Seeking, sucking, tasting.

His mouth on my breast. Teasing, suckling, biting.

His hands between my legs. The place no man had ever touched. Rubbing, stroking, gently bruising.

He didn’t speak.

His fingers hard inside. One, two, three. Searching, prodding, pushing.

He didn’t speak.

And when the huge shaft of him went deep, so deep …

And as the weave inside me ripped and tore …

And as the pain came, rose up and fell away …

He didn’t speak.

And so I bit my lip.

And didn’t speak.

*   *   *

Pale pink fingers of light edged the blankets covering the windows. Leofric lay next to me, the linens tangled around us.

In the soft morning light I peeked at him. He appeared younger than when he was awake. In repose, his face lost its harsh edges, revealing traces of the boy he’d once been. An urge struck me to trace that jaw with my fingertips, across his cheekbones to where the lines gently fanned out from his closed lids.

But he’d awakened.

Crystal blue. Sunlight on water. “You rise early.”

“The dawn is my favorite time of day.”

“I, too, like the dawn.” He raised himself, the sheet falling away. In the morning light, the swirls of hair on his chest were darker than they’d appeared the night before. They’d glinted golden in the candlelight.

I ought to be grateful. He’d been gentler than many men would have been, I suspected. The rust-colored stain on the sheets meant my virginity wasn’t in doubt.

Yet his sheer size …

I bit my lip.

He stared at my mouth as my teeth caught at the tender flesh.

In the rose-gold light of dawn he reached for me.

And turned me.

His lips on my core.

As if he knew.

As if he understood how much he’d hurt me. As if he licked my wound.

I tensed.

He lapped.

His mouth became a healing balm on the tender place his shaft had made.

I gasped.

Then a sigh.

Juddering through my body.

Harder. Deeper.

Lips.

Tongue.

Teeth.

He sucked the marrow of me.

Another gasp. Another judder. Another sigh.

I’d never known such pleasure.

My back arched, my mouth opened.

And in return I took him.

By instinct, between my lips.

Full. Deep. Strong.

I took him in.

He moved as if to jerk away.

Stopped. Stayed. Grew larger.

Hard. Unyielding.

Yet smooth-skin sheathed. So unexpected.

The smell of him.

Musk thistle.

My lips rubbed. My tongue licked.

The taste of him.

Sea-fed. Whelk-wash.

Down my throat.

While from below waves made by his lapping tongue came over me until we split apart.

Our breathing the only sound. Except for a skylark, summoning the morn anew.

Judders still ran through me as we lay together.

Silently he rolled away and reached over to where his belt lay cast aside on the floor. My eagle gold beside it.

A small leather pouch. He held it out it to me.

“The
morgengifu
. Your morning gift
.
”

My brow furrowed. “But we’ve set our terms.”

Coventry
. Was he revoking our agreement?

He shrugged and pressed the package into my palm.

Slowly I untied the long cord.

A ring. A dull gleam of gold. Carved swirls. A large, smooth gem in the center, egg-shaped. I held it up to the light.

The gem glowed red as a wild cherry. “It’s beautiful.”

“A ruby.”

I’d not expected such a courtesy of him, just as I hadn’t expected the pleasure he’d given me.

I slipped the ring onto my finger. “Thank you,” I said, made shy. “Where did it come from?”

“It was my mother’s. It’s Mercian made.”

So he’d brought it with him to Coventry. The eagle belt, too, he must have had with him. He must carry them with him always, a family keepsake.

“And now you give it to me.”

“Does it fit?”

“Almost. It’s big.” To hide my sudden bashfulness I twirled the ring, traced the carving with my finger. “I’ll take it to the blacksmith.”

He made no reply as he swung himself out of the bed. Some morning modesty made me avert my attention from the part of him my lips had wrapped only minutes before.

Instead my gaze fell on my bride garland that Aine had laid on the table by the window. The day’s eyes were curled and dry. It was then I noticed the last herb Aine had added, it’s pointed leaves like a star and a purple button in the center.

One-berry.

For passion.

For true love.

17

Ever at a breath

She linger’d, looking like a summer moon …

—Tennyson (1842):
Godiva

The last of the sun slanted on my face as I sat in the herb garden. Laziness had become my companion, a languor, a strange kind of sleepiness that made me sit in the sun contented as a kitchen cat. Herbs were growing: sage, rosemary, lavender, and rue. My lashes had been closed as I breathed in their fragrance and listened to the fieldfares call overhead. Spring was departing and soon summer would come. All around me newness and greenness had flourished from the coldness of the winter earth.

And from me.

The Danish threat still hovered, yet I felt so safe in the garden. Cabbage moths fluttered past. The wind gently murmured.

His protection. My peace.

With Leofric as an ally, serenity and calm had come to Coventry and the Middle Lands at last. And to me.

Daily I still fretted about Edmund. I’d expected to hear from him. A letter, a sign. Nothing. The days drifted by like the clouds floating overhead.

My waking hours were full, acting as both lord and lady, picking up the reins of my parents’ governance. Managing the hall and stores, settling disputes, collecting taxes, holding the
althing
, making visits. I thought I might clash with Leofric, but he kept his promise. He didn’t interfere. At times, I wished I hadn’t been so determined to be in charge, alone. My parents had formed a partnership, relied on each other. Often I wanted to ask my husband questions, seek advice. But pride forbade it.

Leofric was busy, too. Letters and messages came from Mercia and elsewhere. He didn’t share their contents with me. He spent many hours answering them and in consultation with his
cnihts
, especially Acwell, who continued to unnerve me. Their conversations always ceased when I was present. After one message Leofric took a short trip away, I knew not where. When he returned he came straight into my bower, still in his travel garb, horse scent on his skin.

No longer did he prefer to sleep in the open air.

For with each day that passed by came its dark twin night. My skin heated thinking of those nights. Each shadow hour had been a discovery. A revelation of the intensity of pleasure one person could bring another.

On the mattress. On the floor. Against the bower wall.

Clothed, unclothed.

In my mouth. In his mouth.

In front. Behind.

Dawn. Dusk.

Midnight.

Again.

Again.

Again.

“Marriage agrees with you, my lady,” Aine said.

My honeymoon was over. A month had passed since my marriage to Leofric, and I knew now why it had that name. Not for the sweet mead we drank at the wedding feast to celebrate our troth, but for something else: another kind of sweetness that made me liquid at the core.

Yet he did not speak.

Was I the kind of woman who needed sweet nothings murmured in her ear? Did I need protestations of love? Leofric had married me. We were husband and wife. Bodies, joined.

Yet he did not speak.

“It’s not as I expected it to be,” I said to Aine.

With a smug expression she paused in her herb cutting. “It’s as
I
expected. I knew it would go well for you in the bower as soon as I saw you and Lord Leofric together.”

My cheeks warmed. “Oh Aine—”

“There’s no use saying ‘Oh Aine.’ I know a satisfied woman when I see one. There’s something about the eyes.”

I evaded her shrewd glance. But it was so. My whole body tingled from Leofric’s searching hands and lips. His caresses made me helpless in his arms, only able to pleasure and be pleasured, using my hands and lips in return. Thought dissolved in those nights we spent together, only wild sensation remained.

Yet he did not speak.

Leaning against the wooden bench, I released a sigh. No, I could not deny our match at night. When he reached for me our bodies came together in a rhythm that seemed to be known by both of us by instinct.

And yet the more I knew of his body, the less I knew of his mind and heart.

In a new habit I’d formed, I twisted the ruby ring Leofric had given me on my finger. The closeness we shared in the hours of darkness didn’t entirely disappear during the day. Sometimes I sensed him studying me and the heat of our nights would rise up yet again to tint my skin: my breasts, my neck, my cheeks. But there was still a distance between us, as far as when I had first seen him from the watchtower, a lone rider breaking out in the distance. Even in the brightness of first daylight when we awoke and he so often took me again, I would search his expression. Yet I couldn’t read what feelings lay there. Those windows to his soul were shuttered as tight as windows on Coventry’s main street on a cold night.

So easily now I could envisage in my mind the set of his mouth, the firm lips, the hard jaw, the expression that gave nothing away, even as his stare searched mine. I’d started to know his face as well as I knew my own. Not only the appearance of it, but also the touch of it: the temperature of his skin, the roughness of his jaw, the line of his brow …

Restless, I began to pace the plant yard. The scent of herbs was growing stronger each day, as the earth began to warm and new shoots of green life pushed through the soil. Leaning down I touched a green bud growing at the edge of the grass, a primrose, its leaves tightly clasped its colored center.

“Is it different, Aine? For men and women, do you think?”

She snapped off a sprig of rosemary. “It depends on the man, my lady. Some men can close off part of themselves. They just fill their need, like thirst, or hunger.”

Was Leofric one of those men who were able to separate their minds and hearts? I rejected believing it so. Was it merely my woman’s vanity that made me feel there was something more being created between us, something more than a simple slaking of Leofric’s hunger, or thirst? Sometimes, there would be a kiss, or a touch, that surely it was impossible for a man to give to a woman without feeling. I shouldn’t ask for more. Considering our alliance had been forced upon me, I should simply be grateful that the physical side of our relationship was one of passion, not of pain. It could have been a hardship, just as I had feared on my wedding night, when I’d seen the chain belt in his fist. Instead there were some nights when I could barely wait to hear the lifting of the latch as he entered my darkened bower.