The Viking Takes a Knight (11 page)

John removed the damp cloth from the bed and went over to the pitcher and bowl, where he proceeded to wash his phallus. All very sensible. But not so sensible when he came back to the bed with another wet cloth and attempted to cleanse her nether parts. She swatted at his hands. “I can do that myself.”

“Let me,” he insisted.

And she did, besotted fool that she was becoming.

And was that really her, lying here bare-arsed naked, waiting for whatever he would do next? When had she become so biddable?

When he lay back down, splatted on his back, he almost bumped her off the bed. With his arms extended outward in a pose of surrender, he grinned at her, and she knew that she was more than besotted. She was falling a little bit in love with the man. An impossible situation that could only lead to her being hurt. But who could stop this avalanche of emotion?

“Well? I'm waiting,” he teased.

“For what?”

“For you to have your way with me.”

“You are a rogue,” she said, turning on her side so that she could begin her own game. A tantalizing prospect.

“Is that a compliment?”

“Definitely,” she said, rubbing a palm over his head. “You are getting bristles already. Will you shave again?”

He nodded. “Until after Loncaster comes and goes. Besides, I have an idea how to please you with those head whiskers.”

She tried but could not figure out his meaning. “How?”

He chucked her under the chin playfully. “'Twill be a surprise.”

“Mayhap I will have some surprises for you, too.”

“I am counting on it.”

She leaned over to kiss him, and he put his arms around her waist to embrace her. She shoved his hands aside and said, “Nay. I need to concentrate on one thing at a time. You confuse me when you kiss and touch and press and prod and tickle all at once.”

He chuckled. Her mouth was almost over his when he inquired, his hot breath like a caress in itself, “May I kiss you in return?”

She pondered a moment. “Yea, as long as you follow my lead. I am the one making bold with you…this time.”

He chuckled again, and she could feel laughter
rumble in his chest, under her breasts. That, too, was like a caress.

“Kissing is a new experience for me,” she told him.

“Truly?”

“Not that I haven't been kissed in the past. Of course I have. After all, I am almost thirty-one years old.”

“Ancient, really.”

She smacked his shoulder. “But the men were the aggressors in all those instances. Now I get to do whatever I want, and it is a heady prospect.”

His smoldering eyes told her that he was pleased.

She licked her lips first, and then his. Lapping like a kitten with fresh cream. He muttered something under his breath that sounded like, “Help me, Jesus!”

Once she had wetted him, she shaped his lips with hers 'til she got the perfect fit. Then she opened her mouth and his, almost gobbling him with her lips. She angled her head from side to side, giving the hungry kisses different nuances. And then she plunged her tongue inside, beginning the dance he had taught her. She did not need to look down to see that he was aroused. She could feel his excitement in the way he kissed her back, by the rapid increase in his heartbeat, by his soft groans. In truth, she was exciting herself.

She was not nearly satisfied that she'd had enough kisses, but she had more territory to cover, and she was not sure how long he would allow her free rein. Sliding lower, she touched his flat male nipples with the tips of her fingers. “Does it feel good when I touch you here?”

“Very good.”

She put her mouth to his nipples and suckled. Not as much to grasp onto, but by his sharp inhale, she figured she was doing things right.

Traveling lower, she examined his phallus in detail, mesmerized by the way the skin was loose and pliant on the outside and hard as a marble rod inside. The mushroom-shaped head was already seeping his seed, which was apparently encased in a milky fluid. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

“What? Your touching me? Nay, it feels wonderful, but be gentle with me, sweetling. I am tender there.”

She nodded. “I meant, does it hurt when your dangly part gets hard?”

He choked out a laugh. “Only in a pleasurable way.”

Her brow furrowed with confusion, wondering how pain could be pleasurable, but her mind was already moving on to new activities. Rising up on her knees and leaning forward with her hands on his shoulders, she straddled him and arranged his staff along her female channel with the bulbous
tip against the newly discovered bud of pleasure. “Am I doing this right?”

He made a gurgling sound through kiss-wet lips, and his eyes were misty blue with passion.

She tried to ride his staff to give them both the most pleasure, and seeing how awkward she was, he put his hands on her hips and showed her a rhythm and position that worked for both of them. This time, they peaked at the same time. Ingrith could not imagine how much more intense sexual penetration would be, when this particular activity gave so much satisfaction.

While she lay in his arms afterward, he murmured sweet compliments and answered her questions.

“Do you want to go down to the kitchen with me and find some food?”

“Nay, I would not want to run into anyone who would surely question where we have been and what we were doing. Tomorrow is soon enough for that.”

“No one will question you,” he assured her. “They will just think it.”

“Oh, that makes me feel better.” But she could not regret what she had done. Yawning, sleepy with satiety, she fell asleep. But that was not to be the end of their bedsport.

In the middle of the night—she assumed it was the middle of the night, since the candles had burned out—she awakened to find the
brute with his face at her nether parts and her legs over his shoulders. “Have you lost your—aaaahhhhh!” He was using his tongue and teeth in the most extraordinary way. “This has got to be wicked.”

“Wicked good,” he agreed. After inserting his tongue inside her body, he used a middle finger to strum the erect bud—
What he had done to get it that way, she could only imagine
—and a palm over her stomach to hold her down. Over and over and over, he brought her almost to peaking. Then stopped. And resumed. And stopped. And resumed. Her mounting urgency was so intense that when her shattering finally came, it was with fierce convulsions rolling over her in waves that almost made her faint.

“I ne'er knew,” she said when her pounding heart slowed down to a mere racing.

“Ne'er did I,” he said, kissing her ravenously.

How could the man be ravenous when she was so sated? Ah, he had not peaked himself, she realized.

He rolled over on his back and coaxed, “My turn?”

“How?”

And he showed her the age-old ways of pleasuring a man with her mouth. Blessed gods and goddesses, he did show her!

The next morning, Ingrith took special care braiding her hair, donning a sedate gown, and at
tempting to cover the whisker burns on her neck. To no good end.

When she stood at the entrance to the kitchen, alone, Ubbi took one look at her and said, “I'll kill the troll.”

And Katherine yelled out toward the open courtyard door, “Bolthor, heartling, you must come and see this.”

Good thing Hamr had not yet returned from Jorvik. He would no doubt give a hearty Viking cheer of approval.

“It is not what you think,” she lied. “I had trouble sleeping last night and rolled off the bed into the straw.”

Ubbi snorted, and Katherine giggled.

None of which was helped when John came up behind her and kissed the back of her neck, walking the fingers of one hand down her back, from shoulder to buttock in a teasing, lover fashion. But then he glanced ahead and saw their audience.

“Uh-oh!” he said.

She just moaned. What else could she do?

T
he shortest distance between two people is a smile…

John moved about his ordinary duties that day as lord of Hawk's Lair. Exercising hard on the practice field with his men. Checking his beehives and flower patches. Discussing the honey birthing-control project with its participants. Making a list with his steward of items needed to purchase from market.

But there was nothing ordinary about the way John felt. He could not stop smiling.

When he missed his target three times on the archery field, and grinned, Ordulf remarked, “Methinks your bald head is causing your brain to melt.

“Pfff!” he said.

But Bolthor disagreed. “'Tis another part of his body that is melting. His heart.”

“Pfff!” he said again.

“Fergit the meltin'. 'Tis what's been gettin' hard
that bothers me.” Another person had entered the conversation. John glanced down to see that Ubbi had come up to stand at his side, and he was not a happy gnome.

“Go away!” John told him, whisking his hand as if Ubbi were a bothersome bug, which he was.

Ubbi hitched his little breeches and straightened his age-humped back. “I'll not be goin' away on yer say-so. I'm here ta warn ya, troll. Besmirch my mistress's reputation, and I'll have five hundred Vikings here, led by her father. Lopping off yer randy manroot will be the least of yer woes then.” On those words, he stomped off, back to the keep.

John, Bolthor, and Ordulf exchanged glances of amazement. He'd just been insulted by a dwarf.

“How about
my
reputation?” he yelled to Ubbi's back.

Ubbi kept walking but he made a rude gesture over his shoulder, one understood equally by Vikings and Saxons alike.

That incident didn't hamper John's good mood at all.

When answering a missive to his mother, who was concerned about the welfare of the children and “that sweet unmarried Viking princess,” he did not even tell her in no uncertain words to mind her own business. Instead, he was gentle in telling her to mind her own business, and he smiled as he did so. He did not even curse when
the thick encaustum ink splotched on the parchment, looking like a gummy teardrop when he blotted it off.

Next his mother would be rushing here to rescue her weeping, melancholy, unmarried son. Worse yet, Bolthor would be writing a poem about it. “Tears of a Knight,” or some such nonsense.

Still, he smiled.

He resisted until noon his overpowering desire to track down the source of all his smiles, the woman who had more than pleased him through the night. He felt feral and predatory chasing after her, but he could not help himself. He found her in an underground storage room. Not surprisingly, she was organizing the goods on all the shelves.

She glanced up to where he stood on the steps, and smiled.

He smiled back at her, like the idiot he was becoming.

She was wearing traditional Viking attire today. With her hair braided into a coronet atop her head. And a long, lavender, open-sided apron over an ankle-length purple gown. She even smelled like lavender, from her soap no doubt. Gold brooches in writhing dragon patterns secured the straps of the apron over her shoulders. Her lips still looked bee stung from his kisses, as his probably did, too. He took inordinate pride in the bite mark on her neck. He had one on his belly.

“Do you know what I would like to see you wear?” he asked as he came closer and took the spice jar from her hands and placed it on the shelf. Cloves, he thought irrelevantly.

“What? A samite silk gown embroidered with silver thread? A crown of precious jewels? An ivory-linked belt?” She was staring at his lips. Was she imagining the things those lips had done to her?

“I would like to see you wearing that apron…and nothing else.”

“Is that so?” Her blue eyes flashed impishly. “Dost know what I would like to see you wear?”

“Nothing?” he guessed hopefully.

“That, too,” she said. “Nay, I was thinking of you in that beekeeping veil…and nothing else.”

“Mayhap we can arrange both our desires,” he murmured against her neck, having tugged her into his embrace, which she did not fight, thank the saints! Cupping her face in his hands, he studied her face. “You are beautiful.”

“'Tis lust speaking,” she replied, linking her arms around his neck. “But thank you just the same.”

It was unclear where her insecurity about her appearance came from, but she was wrong if she thought herself less than comely. “Thank
you
for one of the most memorable nights of my life.”

“Truly?” She kissed the side of his mouth gently and was about to pull back when he yanked her
back for a more thorough kiss. God, he loved kissing her. Each time he discovered a facet he hadn't expected. A surprise, that's what she was. A sexual surprise.

“Truly,” he finally answered.

“Even without…?”

“Intercourse?”

She nodded.

“I will not deny that it could be so much more, but you gave me immense pleasure. I wish I could give you more.”

“I cannot imagine more,” she said. “Was I too…wanton?”

He chuckled. “A woman's ardor is a man's delight,” he assured her.

The whole time they were talking, he was un-pinning her apron, which puddled at her feet, and lifting the hem of her
gunna
.

Cupping her bare buttocks, he whispered, “Wrap your legs around my hips.” Then, even as he kissed her hungrily, he walked to a far wall, where he braced her in place. With loosened breeches about his knees, he arranged his now exposed cock along her cleft.

“You are wet,” he said, raising his head with surprise.

“I have been thinking about you all morning,” she confessed. Scarlet stains colored both her cheeks. After all they had done, she could still blush. Amazing!

“Ah, Ingrith!” he sighed, beginning to thrust between her slick folds. At the same time, with one hand holding her around the waist and the other massaging a breast through her wool gown, he kissed her deeply and thoroughly, as if he could sink into her, make them one.

Then he stopped and took his cock in hand, using the knob to stroke the raised bud at the top of her channel.

She began to beg, “Please, please, please…”

He resumed his thrusts then, matching his tongue thrusts to the same rhythm, and they both peaked together. To his embarrassment, he had not pulled away quickly enough, and he'd soiled the back of her gown.

“I am sorry,” he said.

She put a fingertip to his mouth. “Shhh. I will arrange my apron over it before going to my room and changing. Truly, 'tis no problem.”

He blinked at the sudden burning in his eyes. “I have felt like a cripple, Ingrith. You make me feel whole.”

She had been straightening her clothing, as he had been, but she stopped and cradled his face in one hand. “I am the one who has been crippled, without realizing what I had been missing. For the first time in my life, I feel like a woman.”

They stared at each other for a long time as something frightening sizzled between them.

“I wish I could give you more.”

She shrugged. “I wish you could, too.”

“I still will not marry you,” he said, and could have bitten his tongue.

She flinched, and walked away.

Even if it was true, the words did not need to be said aloud. Not at this time. He felt lower than dragon piss.

What could he do to make it up to her?

 

Skinheads aren't all bad…

Ingrith was in her bedchamber, changing her
gunna
, when she heard a rustling sound under the bed. At first, she thought it might be mice among the rushes, but soon discovered in was Henry.

His tear-tracked face was woeful when she dragged him out.

“What are you doing under there?” she asked as she wiped his wet cheeks with the edge of her apron and took him onto her lap.

“I doan want my head lopped off.”

“What?”

“I heard Lord Hawk and Ordulf talkin'. They say my father wants ta kill me.”

“That is not true, Henry. He wants to meet you, but the men who surround him might do you harm. That is why we are hiding for the moment. We will protect you, though. Do not doubt that.”

“But what if…”

She shook her head. “I promise, you are safe, as long as you do as you are told. You must pre
tend to be Samuel, and we must keep your hair shaved. But only for a little while, until matters are resolved. Do you understand?”

He nodded, but she could tell he was still scared. Therefore, she did not chastise him when he nipped at her heels for the rest of the day. And, truth to tell, she needed a diversion to keep her mind from dwelling on John's hateful words at their last parting.

Oh, she knew he would not…in his mind,
could
not…marry her, but his timing had been cruel. Could he not at least pretend affection for her?

She would like to think that she would avoid him now. That she could stop the sex play. But she knew herself too well. Now that she knew what lovemaking entailed, she wanted to experience everything. Even if it was only for a short while.

So, that evening at dinner, when she sat down next to John and he tried to apologize, she raised a halting hand and said, “Nay. No regrets. I knew coming into this that it was not to be permanent. If you think that you are using me, do not. I am using you.”

“
What?
”

“By the time I leave Hawk's Lair, I expect to be well-versed in the love arts. Mayhap I will be more receptive to men's attentions now that I know what I was missing. Mayhap even one of the suitors my father has presented will do. Or
else I will become a courtesan of sorts. A Viking courtesan. I like the sound of that.”

“You cannot do that!”

She frowned at him. “Why not?”

“Because…because it would not be right.”

“How do you figure that?”

“What I am teaching you is for us alone.”

If it were any other man than John, she would swear that he was jealous. Was that possible? Hmmm. She decided to test the waters. “The only man who can make such a demand on me is my husband, and you will ne'er be that, by your own proclamation.” She patted his hand, which rested on the table. “Not to fear. I will be in your bedchamber tonight. I have much to learn yet.”

His face flushed. Even his shaved head had heightened in color. He
is
jealous, Ingrith concluded, and smiled to herself. She would decide later how to best use that information.

“Think I am funny, do you?” John prepared to stand and no doubt stalk away, but Bolthor put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him back down.

“Wait. You must hear my latest endeavor,” Bolthor insisted.

Katherine, leaning forward so that Ingrith could see around both Bolthor and John, pointed to her husband, then to John, and winked.

Oh, good gods! What would the skald say now?

“This saga will be called ‘Ode to Shaven Heads.'”

Ah, that wasn't so bad. John was to take the brunt of Bolthor's warped humor. She was to be spared.

Or so she thought.

“This is all your fault,” she said to John, and stood.

“Me? I am as much a victim here as you are.”

“You have honey enough for your experiments. I have decided that I do not want to be one of your subjects.”

“Subject?”

“Bedplay experiment.”

“Ingrith! Where do you get these ideas? You know I…oh, what the bloody hell! Go if you must! I do not need you.”

Her heart cracked a bit at those word-arrows. “You have made that abundantly clear from the start.”

As she lay in her lonely bed that night, she wondered if this was what they meant by cutting off your nose to spite your face. Except that it wasn't her face that was suffering, lest it referred to her pride. Yea, losing face had become too important to her.

She buried her head under her pillow and tried to sleep. Forget about counting sheep. She counted bees.

 

Would you like to see my…garden?

John resisted his base inclinations until the following afternoon.

After a sleepless night, which ended in a most unsatisfactory self-pleasuring; after a morning in which his men snickered behind his back; after an hour in his honey shed, where he was unable to concentrate, he stomped into the kitchen, surprising Ingrith, Katherine, and a half dozen maids, including the woman Ingrith was presumably training as her replacement cook. Oh, that there could be a replacement lover! But, woe to him, there could never be another Ingrith, he was fast discovering.

“What are you doing?” Ingrith asked as she paused in the midst of stuffing some bird…a pigeon or sea bird or small chicken, he could not tell. No matter! She wiped her hands on a damp cloth and followed in his wake through the kitchen and into the pantry.

He was tossing various items into a leather saddlebag. A wedge of hard cheese. A circle of manchet bread. A hunk of smoked ham. Two apples. A flagon of wine.