Sandra Hill (27 page)

“If you run away again, I will add a week to your term of confinement. And I will put a chain around your neck and take you up to the keep like a trained bear.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me, Esme. I am not in a good mood.”

“You are never in a good mood…lately.”

He muttered some foreign word that she was fairly certain was foul.

A long period of silence followed in which she pondered all her choices. There weren’t many. Finally, with a long sigh, she said, “All right.”

At first, she didn’t think he’d heard her. He still lay with his back to her, the fur pelt pulled up to his waist. But then he rolled over onto his back.

To his credit, he didn’t smirk or snicker or say anything demeaning. He just watched her, waiting for her next move.

Hah! As if I know what move to make next
. “A little help would not be amiss,” she said snippily.

His only response to her plea for help was to lift the bed fur on one side for her.

She practically dragged her feet as she walked toward the bed.

His hot eyes raked her nude body as she approached. Her nudity no longer bothered her all that much. She had much bigger problems to cope with. Like how to seduce a Viking. Or what to do with that thick pole standing up midway down his magnificent body.

She slid into the bed beside him and felt his body heat like the blast of a bonfire. He pulled the fur pelt up over them both. Enveloped in that warmth, with his chest against her face and her arm across his waist, she felt an odd lethargy. “Mayhap we could sleep for a while,” she suggested.

He laughed, and his mirth rumbled in his chest under her cheek. “Or mayhap not,” he said.

She ran a palm over his lightly furred chest and over his flat nipples. She thought he must like that, because
she felt his heart rate accelerate noticeably. When her hand skimmed lower over his abdomen and belly, his heart practically jumped against her face. He must
really
like that, she thought, smiling to herself. It was kind of fun discovering she could have an effect on him with just the stroke of a hand. When her hand started to move lower, he grabbed her wrist and growled, “Not yet.”

“What do you want?”

“What do
you
want, Esme?”

She thought a moment. “Well, I liked the kissing you did before.”

He nodded. “I liked the kissing, too.”

Still on her side, she leaned up over him so that her breasts rested on his chest. And wasn’t that an amazing sensation…her nipples brushing against his chest hairs. She thought she heard Toste groan, but when it wasn’t repeated, she figured she’d been mistaken. First she kissed the cleft in his chin…she just couldn’t resist the temptation. Then she burrowed her fingers in his silky hair to hold him in place—not that he was moving at all—shifted her lips over his and tried to find the right position. At one point, she admitted, “Your breath doesn’t really smell like goat.”

He smiled against her mouth. “I know.” Then, “You smell like roses.”

And she said, “I know.”

Quite the conversationalists, they were. More like two dunderheads.

Mostly he let her fumble her way through the kissing process till she slid her tongue inside his mouth. He opened wider for her, sucked on her tongue and made low masculine sounds of appreciation in his throat. When he reciprocated with his tongue in her mouth, she did the
same. Esme ever was a good pupil. And she made low feminine sounds of appreciation in her throat.

She wasn’t sure what to do next, except she realized belatedly that she’d been unconsciously rubbing her breasts back and forth across his chest, abrading the nipples into hard pebbles which ached for…something.

He noticed the direction of her gaze and took her by the waist, lifting her so that she lay on top of him, her belly on his abdomen, her thighs spread on either side of his hips, her breasts hanging over his face. “Give it to me,” he asked huskily.

At first, she did not understand his meaning, but he looked pointedly at her breasts, and she knew. It was an oddly surrendering thing to do, but Esme lifted her breast from underneath, then lowered herself till the nipple pressed against his mouth. Without warning, he began to suckle her, wet and hard in an unending rhythm. She tried to jerk back at the incredible ripples of torturous pleasure he set off in her body, but he had one hand on the back of her waist and the other on her nape, holding her firmly in position. While he continued to alternately lave and suckle her, he moved the hand at her waist to the other breast, which he fondled unmercifully. Then he switched breasts. There seemed to be a direct erotic thread between the tips of her breasts and her nether region. Without thinking, she began to buck her hips against him, trying instinctively to rub that place between her legs which throbbed and throbbed.

Esme had felt much the same way that time when Toste had put his mouth there. So she knew what her body was yearning for…that wonderful, awful peaking business.

Once again, he lifted her by the waist and arranged her
body over his…this time with her sitting on his belly, her female folds forming a perfect channel for his hard, hard manpart. She glanced up at him in question. He half reclined now, his upper body braced on his elbows, as he looked at the place where their bodies met. His blue eyes were misty with arousal. His full lips were parted as he panted slightly. Esme felt oddly exhilarated that she could bring such pleasure to a man, especially an experienced one like Toste.

“Move,” he said in a raw voice.

“How?”

“Any way that feels good to you.”

Hmmm. She undulated her hips forward, her slick folds moving with surprising ease.

He groaned.

She smiled.

“Witch,” he said.

“Wretch,” she said.

This time she undulated back and forth and noticed that the knob at the end of his manpart hit a particular bump in her channel, causing her eyeballs to practically roll back in her head with bliss. She did it more slowly this time, just to experiment. By the saints! What was this marvelous spot?

When she repeated the process twice more, Toste asked her, “Does that feel good?”

“Nay.”

“Liar,” he laughed.

Then Esme decided to experiment with other moves. Side to side. Bouncing. Circles. But always she came back to the undulations which had her riding the ridge of his staff, then bumping her bud.

“Why am I so wet there?” she asked.

He made a choking sound, then said, “Because your body wants me. It is preparing for my entry.”

“Oh.”

“Can you guide me into your body, sweetling?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll help. Raise yourself up a bit.”

He placed himself at her entrance, but she knew…she just knew…his massive size would never fit in her. She was right. Only the head went in.

She looked at him with dismay.

But Toste, still leaning back on his elbows, was staring with carnal concentration at the place where they were partially joined. Then he reached one hand forth and used his forefinger to strum that bud which was apparently exposed by her widespread thighs.

She saw stars for one brief moment and her inner muscles clasped and unclasped him, pulling him in halfway.

“That’s a good girl,” he encouraged her. “I don’t want to hurt you. Go slow. Just a little more.”

She had no idea how to go fast or slow. She was obeying her body’s commands at this point.

He tweaked her nipples, and she took more of his manpart.

He spread her thighs wider, and she took a bit more.

He tap-tap-tapped her woman-bud with his thumb, and she screamed as her body began to peak.

With a roar of frustration, Toste flipped her over on her back and thrust himself into her, up to the hilt. She winced at the pinching sensation, but he made soothing sounds in her ear and did not move. Only when her body relaxed did he pull out slowly, almost all the way, then go in again, very slowly.

She sighed.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Am I hurting you?”

She shook her head. “Am I hurting you?”

He laughed. “Only in the best possible way.”

No more talking after that. He took her ankles and pressed them up against her buttocks, then spread her knees wider. For a long, long time then, he stroked her, long and slow. Then he got faster and faster and shorter and shorter, till she was wailing and peaking almost continuously. Was it possible to die of too much pleasure? She loved the friction of his plunging on her inner walls. She loved the way the base of his manpart hit her woman-bud every time he came home. She loved the fullness of him imbedded in her.

When it seemed she could take no more pleasure, and Toste was gasping for breath, he raised himself on straightened arms, his neck thrown back. Like a Norse god he looked. Blond and glorious. Then he thrust himself into her one last time and roared out his triumph. She rippled around him in yet another peaking.

After that, he slumped over her body, completely sated. In truth, he might have fallen asleep for a moment.

When he raised his head finally, he gazed at her in wonder, leaned down and kissed her lightly on the lips, and murmured, “That was good.” Then he grinned and remarked, “One down and ten more to go.”

Esme glowered up at him, as if he’d given her a painful reminder of their punishment pact, but in truth she did not mind at all. Sometimes, “punishment” was not such a bad thing.

It’s hard work, but someone’s gotta do it…

Toste awakened after midnight with a smile on his face. And not just because he smelled like a bloody rose.

He should get up and put more wood on the fire. The room was cool because the fire had burned down to embers. He did not get up immediately, though. He was too comfortable with Esme curled up on him like honey on a hot rock. He chuckled to himself at that apt description. She made honey like a busy little bee, and he was definitely hot and rock-hard.

Already Esme had chipped three days off her confinement. And though she would never admit it, she had enjoyed the process immensely, as much as he had…or more. Holy Thor, his almost-nun had taken to lovemaking like a harem houri. The second time she’d made love to him, she’d ridden him like a horse. And a fine rider she was, too. The third time she’d licked him till he was the one to surrender, even though she’d avoided that most important place of all.

His nose was starting to get cold. So finally he eased himself off the bed and went to the far side of the room, where he relieved himself in a chamber pot. Hunkering down before the fire, he quietly laid several logs on the grate and blew the embers aflame. Soon he had a roaring fire once again.

He dusted off his hands and turned to go back to the bed. Only then did he notice Esme lying on her side, watching him.

“You are awake,” he said unnecessarily.

She nodded, and from the way she stared at him he knew what she had in mind. A part of his body knew, too, and reacted accordingly.

Esme grinned with satisfaction.

He shook his head at her as he slid back under the fur pelts. “You are not going to wipe out your entire punishment in one night, Esme. So forget about it.”

“What? You could not rise to the occasion eleven times in one night?”

Rise
to the occasion? She certainly had a way with words. He looked at her to see if she was serious.

She was.

I am good, but I am not that good
. “Nay, I cannot do it eleven times in one night.”

“I could.”

“I doubt it.”
What kind of wanton have I created here?

“What is this mark here?” she asked, tracing the cloverleaf imprint on his inner thigh, up high.

“A birthmark.”

She continued to trace the outline with her forefinger. He could even feel her breath there, which he liked immensely. His staff liked that tracing and breathing business, too, and began to thicken.

She giggled. “Does…did…your twin brother have the same mark?”

His chest constricted and he realized that he hadn’t thought of his dead brother in days…or leastways he hadn’t been dwelling on his absence the way he had since the battle. Esme was responsible for that.

Bored with the birthmark, she curled up against him once again, like a pet cat. In fact, she might have even purred. “Toste, you said that you have been celibate for a year. Why is that? I mean, I cannot imagine a man of your appetites depriving yourself of such…uh, pleasures.”

Toste felt great satisfaction in her mentioning the pleasures he’d gotten from their bedsport, because her words also revealed that she’d gained those same pleasures. “My appetites?” He hooted with laughter. “Well, actually, I was not celibate by choice. Vagn talked me into
joining up with the Jomsvikings, and they are celibate whilst living on their island fortress.”

She nodded. “Poor fellow. Must be you need a woman’s touch to satisfy hungers.”

“Yea, I do,” he said with mock seriousness. “In fact, Esme, there is something special I would do for you, in return for your…uh, ministrations this day to my…uh, hungers.”
By thunder, what a great idea I have just thought of. Will she go for it?

She narrowed her eyes at him, not at all fooled by his sad demeanor. “Something you would do
for me?
”

“Yea, it is a particular sexual position that women adore and men…well, we abide it, though it is not our favorite.”
Vagn would get such delight out of this ploy of mine. Will Esme?

“Really?” She was still skeptical, but interested.

That’s it, Esme, girl. Let your curiosity take over
.

“And this thing you would do for me—would it count toward my decreasing days…you know, since you initiated it, not me?”

Esme, you are way too smart for a woman
. “I suppose I could bend the rules a bit. I am a kindhearted fellow.”

She slanted her eyes at him and said, “I don’t know. Explain this particular sexual position that women adore.”

“Have you ever seen dogs engaged in coupling?”

“Yea,” she said and curled her upper lip with distaste.