“Let’s all try it,” Eve suggested.
Hell and Valhalla! We are all going to look like a bunch of moony-eyed maids, tipsy from ale or a blow to the head. Barmy as barn bats. Helga threw her arms in the air. “I don’t think I can do this.”
Rona shrugged. “Methinks you are not ready to be a temptress, m’lady. Best you sit back and wait for things to happen. Let the man… Vagn… control this love-play.”
“Never!” Helga exclaimed. She was a fighter and stubborn as a horny bull… that’s what everyone said of her. How else had she managed to succeed as a merchant in a man’s world? She could not give up so easily. She just couldn’t. “What next?” she asked Rona.
“The actual steps to sexual expertise. There are probably hundreds, but I will mention just a few of the tamer ones.”
Yea, tame would be good for me. “Like?”
“Learn to caress yourself.”
Oh, oh, oh! I don’t believe she just said that. And if that is tame, I am in way over my head. “By myself or in company with a man?” she asked, afraid to hear the answer.
Everyone laughed.
“Both ways. If you learn your own body, you will know how to use it.”
“I remember the time you told me to lock my bedchamber door, take off all my garments and sit on the floor with my legs spread and a polished brass facing my woman-place,” Eve said. “Whoo! The things I learned about myself that day.”
Never, never, never had Helga looked at herself there. And she was not about to start now. Talk about wicked! Next they will call me Helga the Sinner.
“Caressing oneself in private is fine,” Rona went on, “but it is even better in front of your man. Men love to watch a naked woman bring herself to fulfillment.”
Fulfillment? Helga wasn’t even going to ask what Rona meant by that.
“And whilst we’re on the subject of self-fondling, let me suggest that you practice flexing your sex muscles.”
“That’s the trick I told you about earlier,” Sigrud said.
Helga’s eyes almost bugged out. “What in bloody hell are sex muscles?”
“Those are the muscles inside your female parts.” Rona pointed to the area between her legs. “Try putting a candle in there, just as you have a finger, and keep gripping and ungripping, over and over, the way you will eventually grip the man’s staff.”
“Firstly, I have never inserted a finger there.”
“Really? You do not know what you are missing, lass,” Bera said, with Sigrud, Eve and Rona nodding their agreement.
Helga’s eyes probably bugged out again. “Secondly, I am not putting a candle there.” She thought a second, then asked, “Do women really do that?”
“They do,” all four women chirped.
“Lit or unlit?” Helga asked.
Four jaws dropped open.
“Just teasing,” Helga said.
When Helga had first approached Rona for advice, she had never expected to receive such precise, intimate suggestions. She would die if Vagn heard about the candle bit, or self-caressing, or any of it, for that matter. “Need I remind all of you to keep this to yourselves?” she demanded, staring at each of them in turn.
They made motions across their closed lips, indicating their pledges of silence.
“The best part of sex is that period before actual tupping,” Rona continued.
There’s more? By thunder, I thought she was done. This is way too complicated for me. Who knew?
“I like to call it foresport… the period leading up to bedsport. ‘Tis that time when the man and woman tease each other mercilessly… touching, kissing, nipping, tickling, whispering lewd words, licking. By the time the swiving actually begins, you should have your man as wild as a caged animal, hot with desire for you. And likewise, the woman wild for the man.”
“That’s enough for me!” Helga said, standing. “Methinks too much information could be a passion killer.”
“Tsk tsk tsk!” the four women said at her disdain for the sex principles.
“Oh, do not misread me, Rona. I appreciate all your advice, which I am sure is superior, but I need time to digest it all before implementing my plan.”