Eadyth never knew a kiss could be so erotic, stripping away a woman’s resistance petal by petal. Her mind whirled with all the delicious sensations accosting her, surrounding her, enveloping her—the taste of Eirik’s mouth, a breeze carrying the scent of sweet clover, the raspy sound of their ragged breaths, the buzzing of a hornet, the feel of Eirik’s long fingers tunneling in her hair, the delicious odor of her husband’s sun-warmed skin, the snorting of a horse—
The snorting of a horse! Eadyth tore her mouth from his, and her eyes fluttered open. Glancing over Eirik’s shoulder, she saw, to her horror, Wilfrid and several of Eirik’s men sitting astride their horses a short distance away, watching with amusement the degenerate display she and Eirik had been putting on for them.
Mortified, she tried to shove her husband away from her, informing him in a strangled hiss, “We have company.”
Eirik’s misty blue eyes had turned slumberous with desire, and his lips looked sensually swollen from their deep kiss. Oh, Sweet Mary, what must she look like? A trollop, that was what, she thought, cringing.
“What?” Eirik asked, a violent shiver of restraint passing over him as he gently brushed some strands of hair off her face. His eyes remained unfocused with passion.
“Your men are here, and they are ogling us,” she informed him in a suffocated whisper.
Suddenly alert, Eirik glanced over his shoulder and nodded to the men companionably, as if embracing his wife openly were an everyday happenstance. As if they were not there for some special reason.
“I must seem a wanton in your men’s eyes. Oh, I will never forgive you for embarrassing me so!”
“Really?” he asked silkily. “Well, best you get used to being embarrassed then because I find I like the idea of a wanton wife.” He winked at her and pinched her backside outrageously before starting to turn toward his men.
She pulled him back.
He raised his right eyebrow inquiringly. “Changed your mind already, have you?”
“Nay, ’tis not that, you dolt. Do not turn around, or you will humiliate us both, more than you already have.”
He looked down at his braies unashamedly. “You are right.”
He pushed her along in front of him, over to where Wilfrid and the others sat atop their horses, idly flicking their reins back and forth, smirking from ear to ear.
” ‘Twould seem you have taught the bee how to make honey, after all,” Sigurd, the Viking soldier, commented crudely. Another man in the background made a soft buzzing sound.
And Eadyth wished she could sink into the very earth.
But Eirik and his men soon forgot about her as Wilfrid informed Eirik anxiously that a cotter had just, arrived to tell of more cattle being slaughtered, this time at a farmstead new Ravenshire. Eadyth noticed Eirik’s saddled destrier then, which they had brought for him.
“I thought you would want to know immediately,” Wilfrid finished explaining, looking apologetically toward Eadyth.
“Yea, you did right in coming to me. We will go now to investigate.”
“Well, then, I will just return to the keep,” Eadyth interjected with deliberate casualness, thankful to have this respite from Eirik’s intoxicating presence, an opportunity to rebuild her shattered defenses.
But her husband had different plans.
Eirik walked back to her, leading his horse by the reins. A small, mysterious smile lifted the edges of his lips. “Nay.”
“Nay? What do you mean, ‘nay’?” Her voice betrayed her by rising shrilly with dismay.
“You will not escape me so easily from now on, wife. You will come with us. ‘Twill make for a pleasant ride, in any case. But do not fear for your safety. I will protect you from any villains.”
Hah! And who will protect me from you? “I cannot ride with you,” she protested, then lowered her voice so the others could not overhear. “I am wearing no undergarments.”
“I know,” he said and smiled wickedly.
He knows? Well, of course he knows with all that touching and feeling he has been doing. “I do not know how Britta could have been so careless in bringing only my outer gunna. And it is my best silk gown!”