This was the sweetness she had dreamed of as a young girl, before Steven of Gravely had shattered her illusions. Her mouth parted on a soft moan of despair at her crumbling resistance to Eirik’s lure.
Eirik inhaled sharply, apparently understanding too well her unwilling response to him.
Before she could turn and run, as she surely should, before he burned her alive with his smoldering eyes, Eirik pulled her sharply against his hard chest. Then, wrapping his arms tightly around her waist, he lifted her body upward so her bare toes dangled in the soft grass, and he walked her to a nearby tree.
With her back braced against the rough bark and her feet still barely touching the ground, he pressed his hips against her belly and proceeded to show her exactly what he had meant by a great deal of touching.
“Lovely… so lovely,” he murmured against her neck as his hands played havoc with her body, moving the slippery fabric of her silk gown along her thighs, across her back.
“Do not… oh, please stop, you lusty goat,” she gasped out, trying to catch his wrists, but he was too quick for her. His hands were everywhere at once.
“I cannot stop, Eadyth… I cannot,” he rasped out huskily and nipped playfully at her ear.
“I feel shameless.”
” ‘A shameless wife,” he said pensively. “Hmmm. I think I like that prospect, Eadyth. Very much.”
Then, like a bursting dam, his caresses moved over her in waves, out of control, without direction or concern for her cries about the unseemliness of the intimate places he claimed. When he moved his wool-clad chest lightly, from side to side, against her silk-covered bosom, Eadyth shuddered with the pure, exquisite sensation of her breasts being abraded so enticingly.
“I did not know,” ‘ Eadyth said, with wonder.
“I know,” he said with maddening arrogance.
She wanted to say more, but she was too overcome,with-the erotic tingles that were spreading like wildfire across her body.
“I do not want to feel like this,” ‘ she groaned.
“Yea, you do,” he asserted and moved his warm lips closer to hers. At the same time, his large palms cupped her buttocks in a scandalous manner she should have found repulsive, but did not, and pulled her even closer against his hardness.
“Do you want me to kiss you, Eadyth?” he whispered against her lips.
“Nay,” she lied, still trying to fight the raging fire which threatened to consume her and all that she had held dear.
“Why, then, are you trembling so?”
“With revulsion.”
He chuckled softly at her resistance and moved his right hand to her left breast. With the heel of his palm on the underside, he flicked a callused thumb back and forth across the pebbled tip until her breast felt heavy and ached for some fulfillment she could not understand. Then he did the same with his left hand and her right breast.
She was drowning in a pool of ecstasy.
“Does that feel good?” he asked in a thickened voice.
She could not speak, just shook her head stubbornly.
“You lie, Eadyth,” he said with a knowing grin. “Your lips swell in invitation. Your eyes, your beautiful violet eyes, are hazed with passion. And your legs have parted of their own volition for our joining.”
Horrified, Eadyth looked down to see that she had, indeed, spread her legs to accommodate the cradle of his hips.
“Oh… oh… see what you do to me. I have become a sinful wanton.”
“Nay, not a wanton. My wife,” he said thickly, with satisfaction, brushing his warm lips across hers lightly—tempting, teasing, tantalizing her hunger for more. “Tell me what you want, wife… tell me… tell me,” he coaxed.
“I want your kiss, and you well know it,” she cried out finally in surrender, then pressed her lips against his.
The surprised hiss of Eirik’s breath mingled with hers. Then he turned his head slightly, shaping his firm lips to better fit against her mouth. Oh, the sheer pleasure of his deepening kiss! When his tongue slipped between her lips, she wrapped her arms around his powerful shoulders and whimpered incoherently, wanting what he gave her and so much more.