Dream of Me/Believe in Me (26 page)

The ball of cheese hit his chest with a hollow thud and fell to the floor, rolling away into a corner. He watched it roll, looked at her, and looked at the cheese again, now lying still and slightly dented. When he raised his head once more, the light in his eyes had changed. Gone was the ominous darkness. In its place was silver fire.

“The first time I saw you,” he said, almost pleasantly, “I thought you needed messing.”

“W-what?”

“Messing. You looked too perfect to be real.” He glanced around almost casually before his gaze lit on a bowl on a nearby table. He picked it up, hefted it lightly, and tossed the contents right at her.

Cymbra yelped, more in surprise than for any other reason, and tried to jump back, to no avail; she was
splattered with whey. The drippy, oozing stuff landed in her hair, on her cheeks, on the front of her cloak. She stared down at herself in disbelief.
“Why, you—”

She picked up a honeycomb and threw it right at his face. It landed, stuck, and stayed there until he pulled it away.

“If that's how you want it, my lady—” He strode toward her, honey dripping from his face, and before she could move, caught her around the waist. “Far be it from me to deny you.”

The world turned upside down. Cymbra landed in a pile of flour sacks. Instantly she tried to get up, but her husband came down on top of her, holding her trapped. He caught her flailing arms and pinned them down. His teeth flashed whitely. “Not so bold now, wife?”

She'd show him bold. She'd show him what a Saxon woman was made of. Frighten
her
, would he? Smear
her
with whey? She'd make him regret— Trying to gain leverage against him, Cymbra dug her heels into the sacks. Dug … and dug … and stopped digging abruptly as the fabric gave way and flour shot up, covering them both.

As the powder settled around them, she looked up into her husband's face, streaked with honey and coated with flour, and laughed. She couldn't help it.

He quirked an eyebrow. “This amuses you?”

Her response wasn't smart but it was honest. She nodded.

He held her eyes, smiling, looking oh so very beguiling as she remembered how worried she'd been for his safety and how truly glad she was, despite everything, that he was home. It was so silly of them to waste time like this. They had been apart for a week. They should be—

“Oomph!”

Milk poured over her, a sea of milk emptying from the bucket her insufferable husband had seized. She was soaked through, covered with whey, flour, and milk.

She was at a loss how to respond until her eye fell on a basket of eggs lying nearby. With unholy glee, she yanked away from Wolf, who was nearly doubled over with laughter, seized the eggs, and pelted him with them. Yellow yolks and runny whites matted his hair, dripped off the end of his nose, and turned the flour all over his tunic to glue.

She was on her feet, trying to scramble to the steps, when Wolf caught her by the skirt. She landed again in the torn sacks, briefly blinded by a new shower of flour. When her vision cleared, it was to see him over her, holding a handful of ripe berries descending right toward her—

—mouth. “Open up,” Wolf growled. Dazed, heart pounding, she obeyed. He slipped one of the succulent fruits between her lips. Instinctively, she chewed and swallowed. He watched her intently.

Slowly, deliberately, the Norse Wolf fed his disobedient wife berries as they lay amid the shambles of the kitchen, stained, sticky, and dripping.

Until the berries were forgotten. Slowly, sweetly, their lips met. Cymbra moaned in relief, in need, in sheer pleasure. Wolf's beard rasped her delicate skin. His hands moved over her, possessive, urgent, yet controlled.

“Missed you,” he murmured against her mouth. “So much.”

“Mmm … the same …” She tugged at his tunic, shameless in her hunger for him. He pushed aside her cloak and raised her gown over her legs, bunching it at her waist.

“Someday,” he muttered as he rose over her to undo the ties of his trousers, “I'm going to take my time with you.”

“But not right now,” she said, demand and plea together. She clasped his upper arms, her fingers digging into the powerful muscles. A sob of pure desire broke
from her as he spread her legs and moved to join their bodies.

He was so big, filling her so completely, that for just a moment she felt too stretched, too invaded. But she adjusted quickly, her hot, silken sheath alternately tightening and relaxing around him. She was rewarded by his husky groan.

Moving within her, he whispered of how she felt to him, how he wanted her to feel, how he had thought of her when they were apart, what she did to him. His bluntness shocked and excited her. She felt herself spiraling out of control and clung to him even more tightly.

He raised her legs, clasping them around his hips, and drove even more deeply. She rose to meet him, her back arching, her head falling back to expose the vulnerable curve of her neck. He laid his mouth against her delicate skin, tracing the pale blue line of her life's blood down to where it disappeared beneath the gown she still wore. His teeth tore at the fabric, ripping it aside, freeing her breasts. Urgently, he suckled her, drawing her deeply, raking her lightly, the sensation teetering on the edge between pain and pleasure. Before it could tip over, he raised his head and took her mouth, his tongue thrusting with the same powerful, driving rhythm as his sex.

She was lost, the world shattering, every particle of her being resonating with the exquisite fury of her release. Yet still she felt his own when it followed swiftly, incredibly renewing and extending her ecstasy until nothing remained save sweet, soft oblivion.

G
AZING DOWN AT THE FACE OF HIS WIFE, WOLF
traced a finger carefully over the faint, half-moon smudges beneath the thick fringe of her lashes, and a little farther over the curve of her cheek, along the delicate line of her jaw, lingering on her rose-petal lips, now slightly
swollen. He kept his touch feather-light, careful not to disturb her. A rueful smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. A man could do worse than to make his wife faint with pleasure. Much worse.

Tentatively, he sought the stinging anger that had struck him the moment he realized what she had done, anger he had struggled mightily to control even as he faced the grim but seemingly inescapable duty of punishing her. Only the faintest echoes of it remained and those were fading fast. He let them go gladly.

If he had failed in his duty, so be it. For once in his life, he was content and more than content to be only a man—and a husband. Cymbra's husband.

The sudden image of his wife as she had looked when she threw the cheese at him made him chuckle. No meek, docile little woman, his Saxon bride. No cloying, simpering female to make him long to go adventuring.

No wonder Frigg favored her. She had the spirit of a true goddess. For surely she had taken him like one, milking the life from him in a soul-shattering rapture he could still scarcely believe for all that he had experienced it. He could well believe that no god had ever climaxed as long, as hard, or as intensely as he had just done. She made him feel like he could conquer worlds, if only to lay them at her feet.

Something nibbled at the edge of his awareness, slowly distracting him from the pleasant contemplation of his wife. He glanced over his shoulder, seeking the source of the faint, dripping sound, and saw the upturned pitcher of water, no doubt spilled in their … contest. Yes, it would be as well if he thought of it that way. A contest between two superbly matched contenders, so well pitted as to assure that both emerged victorious.

Standing, he righted the pitcher, then looked again at Cymbra. She had turned onto her side, one bare leg drawn up, an arm resting over her full breasts. Escaped flour
covered the sacks on which she lay and drifted over her skin. Traces of the whey still clung to her and there was a little stain from the berries on her chin.

He glanced down at himself, noting that he had fared worse still. Flour and egg clung to him along with the sticky honey. A deep laugh rumbled up from his chest. The master and mistress of Sciringesheal, coupling in the kitchen on flour sacks amid the wreckage they themselves had caused. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done something so inappropriate to his rank—or so pleasurable.

Grinning broadly he lifted Cymbra in his arms. She stirred against him and blinked. “Wolf … ?”

He looked down at her, his smile softening, becoming tender. “I think the cooks would like the kitchens back.”

She stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment. “Oh, no!” Turning bright red, she hid her face against his chest. Yet was her muttered distress clear enough. “I can't believe we did this! What were we thinking of? The kitchens! Everybody will know … they'll—”

“Cymbra,” he said gently, with utmost patience.

She peered up at him. “What?”

“They already know we lie together.”

“Not in the kitchens! Not on flour sacks! Anyone could have come in and—”

He laughed even more at the sheer absurdity of that. “You're joking! They feared the worst and were glad to get as far from it as they could. When they realize what did happen, they'll be relieved.”

“Maybe they won't realize. Maybe they'll think we talked and—”

She faltered, looking around at the kitchen. If Loki and his mischief makers had rampaged through it, it wouldn't have been in worse shape. Were that not bad enough, the clear imprint of where they had lain on the flour sacks made the outcome obvious.

She hid her face against him once more. Still laughing, he carried her from the kitchens. It was time, he decided, for his Saxon wife to experience another kind of pleasure.

He went into their lodge just long enough to get a few things, then carried Cymbra back outside and across the flat top of the hill to a beehive-shaped building made of rocks and set low in the ground. She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at it in surprise. “The sauna? I haven't been in there yet.”

“I know.” He eased open the wooden door and stooped to descend the steps. “Any particular reason why not?”

“You'll laugh.”

“That's bad?”

“You'll laugh
at me
. An old monk at Holyhood, Brother Chilton was his name, said only devils could endure the heat of the sauna. He thought it proved what Vikings were.”

“You believed that?”

“Well, no, but I did take it to mean that saunas are extremely hot.”

His smile returned. “They can be. We'll go a little easy.” He bent closer, his lips brushing her ear. “This being your first time and all.”

A shiver ran down her back. She knew he was only playing with her, deliberately inciting memories of their first time together, but it worked. If she wasn't careful, she would be clay in this man's hands.

Such large hands, honed for battle, callused by sword and rein, bronzed by the sun. Yet such careful hands as he set her on her feet in the center of the small chamber, lingering for just a moment on the curve of her hips before drawing away.

She looked around curiously. The stone walls narrowed to a small opening at the top of the structure.

Directly below it, in the center of the floor, was an iron firebox. A hole in the top of it directed the smoke to an opening in the roof. Around the vent lay several dozen smoothly rounded rocks of a size to fit into a man's hand. The floor beyond the firebox was covered with planks of polished wood. Other planks were set up as benches around the chamber. The air was just a little smoky, smelling mainly of pine.

Wolf bent down in front of the firebox and began feeding branches into it from the stack set nearby. Over his shoulder, he said, “Take your clothes off.”

When the fire was going strongly, he went over to the door and pulled it shut, securing it from inside. With the faint remnants of twilight gone, the interior was plunged into darkness save for the red glow of the fire. Slowly, Cymbra's eyes adjusted until she could make out her husband taking his own advice.

He stripped easily, pulling off his boots, then drawing his tunic off over his head and dropping it onto a bench. His leggings followed quickly. Naked, he stretched without a trace of self-consciousness, the powerful muscles of his back and buttocks flexing. With graceful ease he returned to the fire, went down on his haunches, and continued feeding wood into the flames.

Cymbra swallowed against the fluttering in her throat and tried, without success, to look at something—anything—other than her husband's magnificent body. She moistened her lips, took a quick breath, and murmured, “Isn't that … uh … hot enough?”

He glanced up, saw that she was still dressed, and shook his head chidingly. The thick mane of his ebony hair brushed his massive shoulders. “You'll pass out if you don't get out of those.”

When she still hesitated, he went to her and gently put a hand beneath her chin, compelling her to meet his gaze. “Cymbra, is something wrong?”

How to explain to him that she felt suddenly, almost unbearably self-conscious? He knew her so intimately and so completely that she felt she had no defenses against him. Life had schooled her to an inner world of carefully crafted serenity. He shattered all of that, plunging her into a turbulent sea of emotions in which she could barely stay afloat.

Why, in scarcely an hour she had gone from worry to fear to anger to passion and now … to what? She felt utterly drained yet oddly exhilarated. And very confused.

“Cymbra?”

She didn't answer, only looked at him. He saw again the shadows beneath her eyes, recalled his intention when he'd found her in the kitchens, and remorse pierced him. She had delivered a baby only a short time before. She needed rest and care, not yet more of his relentless passion.

“It's all right,” he said gruffly. “You'll feel better when you're clean.”

Encouraged when she didn't object, he removed her cloak, then gently, carefully did the same with the rest of her clothes. He was surprised to see the tear across the top of her gown, having been completely unaware of doing that. It hinted to him of the force that consumed him when he took her and he resolved, yet again, to hold it in strict check.