“Does it hurt?”
“Does a horse piss?”
“Tsk!” Eadyth clucked at his vulgarity and muttered, “You make it sore hard for a person to sympathize—”
“Save your sympathies for someone who cares. Mayhap your lover.”
Eadyth bristled, angry herself now. “I do not know what you are talking about.”
Eirik just scowled.
“Do you want my help or not?”
In response, Eirik hunched over on the stool, resting his arms on his widespread thighs. The ingrate! She reminded herself to bear with him. Like many fighting men, he could, no doubt, bear great battle wounds stoically but would whine like a child over the smaller ills of life, such as an aching tooth, or a small fever, or a bee sting.
First, Eadyth worked methodically on his back. One by one, she painstakingly scraped the edge of her index fingernail against the center of the bites until the stingers came out. It was not an easy task. Eadyth’s fingers trembled at the first touch of her husband’s pale gold skin as the smell of him enveloped her sensuously in a pleasant aura of soap and fresh sunlight and his own distinctive man scent.
She bit her bottom lip to stifle a soft groan of pleasure.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. Keep your head down.”
Eadyth moved lower to his waist and hips, pressing her fingertips in a testing fashion on his hot flesh. Sweet Mother, his body threw off heat like an oven. Was it fever, or just hot blood? And were all parts of his body so deliciously hot?
Scandalized by her wayward thoughts, Eadyth chastised herself silently. She had never had such lewd fantasies before, not even with Steven. In fact, her yearnings for Steven had always been pure of spirit. Until the one painful, joyless coupling, that is.
It must be her advancing age, she decided. She had heard that some women got these odd urgings as they grew older and their bodies matured. What other explanation could there be for this not unpleasant aching in her limbs? She studied Eirik’s well-proportioned back for a long moment, refusing to believe that these new feelings stemmed from proximity to this man, and this one alone.
“God’s Bones! What takes you so long? Do you deliberately malinger to prolong my agony?”
“Oh, hush,” Eadyth said.
When she finished with his back and arms, she asked him to stand so she could work on his legs, both back and front. She studiously avoided that part of him, and instead found her senses teased by the inadvertent brush of his crisp leg hairs across her cheek as she moved about her work.
It seemed to take forever.
“Are you enjoying yourself, my lady wife?” Eirik said in a voice thick with sarcasm.
“Nay, are you?” she responded carelessly, and without thinking looked up to see his manhood standing out from his body, hard as polished marble. Immediately, she looked away, hating the blush which she felt sweep her face.
He laughed scornfully. “That part of a man’s body cares not whether a woman is beautiful or ugly as a mole. Nor does it trouble itself whether she oozes treachery like a running sore.”
Eadyth snapped her mouth shut, refusing to acknowledge his hurtful words. She straightened to begin working on his chest, taking care to keep her face averted. The room was dim, and he kept swiping at his half-closed eyes in misery, but she could not be too careful.
Even so, it was hard to still her hammering heart, which was unnerved by the lazy seductiveness of his stance. She found herself responding to his enticing nearness, despite her long history of disdain for the male touch, despite his cruel accusations, despite all that she sensed was dangerous to the self-control she so valued.
Forcing a shrill tone into her voice, she hunched her shoulders a bit and asked, “Why do you keep accusing me of treachery? I have done naught to cause your distrust.”
He shot her a withering look but said nothing.
Moving through the wiry hairs that encircled his flat male nipples, she removed the last of the stingers there, then knelt to search out the stingers on his flat stomach. It was not a position she relished. Totally embarrassed, she studiously maintained a space between them and avoided looking down.