He smiled enticingly and crooked a finger, coaxing her closer.
The intense physical awareness building between them resonated in the stillness of the silent glen.
How could she surrender?
How could she not?
Hesitantly, Eadyth moved one step closer. “You have ensorcelled me,” she whispered.
“Yea, but ’tis a sweet enchantment.” He gave her a soft smile that set her pulses racing, and she stepped a little closer.
She loved the fact that he was not forcing her to mate with him, that he gave her the choice. Not that she had any choice now, really. A new inner excitement filled her with wonder. “You make me… uninhibited, out of control.”
Eirik’s lips quirked with humor. “Ah, Eadyth, do not lay that sin at my door. You were uninhibited long afore we met. You just channeled your passion in other directions.”
“Oh.”
” ‘Tis naught to be shamefaced about, my lady. A woman’s lack of inhibition is a man’s pleasure.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Eirik gazed at his wife and knew the time for talking was over. His patience and his self-control were wearing thin. “Come, Eadyth, ’tis past time.” He reached out a hand to bridge the gap between them, and she allowed him to pull her forward into his arms, finally. He sighed deeply with satisfaction.
“I feel as if a million butterflies have jolted to life in my stomach and are threatening to break through my skin,” she confessed shakily, her warm breath caressing his neck.
Eirik felt a jolt of his own, between his legs. He chuckled against her hair, her wild mane of silver blonde curls, and wondered how he could have ever been so blind to her beauty. “Butterflies are good,” he said, pulling back to gaze at her. “Let us see what we can do about freeing them.”
He removed her gown slowly and forced her to stand still while he feasted on her beauty. Her hair tumbled carelessly about her shoulders and down the smooth skin of her straight back, matching the tight curls of her nether mound. Eadyth was tall and long-legged, with a narrow waist and breasts just big enough to fill a man’s hand. She pressed her finely defined lips together nervously, calling attention to the delightful mole.
“You are so beautiful,” Eirik said in wonder, “and you are mine.”
“I have marks on my stomach from giving birth,” Eadyth said shyly, trying to be honest about her defects, under his intense scrutiny.
“Yea, but your breasts are glorious.”
“The nipples are too large.”
Eirik almost choked on his tongue. “Nay, I do not think they are too large,” he told her when he calmed his senses to the point where he might not spill his seed upon the ground.
“Truly?”
“Truly. They are just right to fill a babe’s mouth for suckling. Or a man’s.”
Her eyes lit up at that, but then she bit her bottom lip in hesitation before adding with misery, “But my breasts do not wobble.”
“Wobble?” He burst out laughing then. “What do you mean, wobble?”
“Bertha says men like women with wobbling breasts.”
“And you suddenly take advice from Bertha? Ah, Eadyth, I think I am going to enjoy having you for a wife.”
“Mayhap I will not hate having you for a husband, either,” she added with sudden impishness.
He reached forward and touched the enticing mole above her full mouth, then traced her parted lips with the pad of his thumb. All humor ended as he lowered his lips to hers.
At first, his kiss was gentle, persuasive, but when she accommodated him with open, eager curiosity, his lips turned hard and searching. Eadyth returned his kiss with reckless abandon, even when he plunged his tongue into her moist depths. Pleasure, pure and explosive, burst through his body, and Eirik sank to the mantle on the ground, taking Eadyth with him.
She lay on her back, looking up at him expectantly, and Eirik felt a long-dead part of his heart begin to stir. “Oh, Eadyth, do you realize how much I want you?”
Her mouth curved into an unconscious smile of age-old femininity.
“You like that, do you, having me under your thumb?” he asked with a growl, skimming the smooth skin of her belly with an open palm. Then his hand moved lower, toward her hidden depths.