“Things? What things?” she asked suspiciously, turning onto her back to look at him.
“Well, I knew this man once—”
“Not that bloody caliph again!”
“Eadyth! Your language! Tsk tsk. Nay, ’twas another man, not the caliph. A silk merchant from Micklegaard, methinks it was,” he said, waving a hand airily. “This man’s dough had a ‘leavening’ problem, as well. No doubt because his wife’s face looked like the back end of a mule.” He gazed at Eadyth with soulful compassion.
Eadyth cringed inwardly at her husband’s appraisal of her physical attributes… or lack of them.
“But his wife did try hard, I give her that,” he went on. “He said she ofttimes would stand on her head at the foot of the bed to entice him. Nude, of course. With her long hair hanging down to cover her homely face. The man said it always worked. And, of course, they had ten children. I do not suppose—”
“Never!” Eadyth snapped her gaping mouth shut, rolling over on her side away from the insufferable wretch. Of course, he lied. Women did not do things like that. Eadyth just knew they did not.
Did they?
He infuriated her then by rolling over and ignoring her once again. Not that she wanted Eirik to want her. Really, it was better this way, she told herself.
So why did she feel oddly bereft?
* * *
The next morning, she awakened to hear Abdul squawking to high heaven. Eirik was standing before the bird’s cage, fully dressed in black braies and boots and his padded undertunic, obviously preparing to go to the exercise fields with his men. He held out a morsel of bread for the hungry bird.
“Loathsome lout! Awk!” the bird squawked in a voice a lot like Eadyth’s. “Bothersome brute! Witless wretch! Lord Lackwit! Awk!”
Eirik glanced toward her, arching a brow accusingly. “Mayhap you have too much time on your hands, Eadyth.”
“Wouldst ye like to kiss me tail feathers?”
“I did not teach him that,” Eadyth asserted when he raised another mocking brow in question.
“Limp lily. Limp lily. Limp lily.”
Eirik’s eyes narrowed menacingly as the bird repeated Eadyth’s words of the night before.
Eadyth felt her cheeks flame with embarrassment.
“Hmmm. Mayhap you need a lesson, my lady wife,” Eirik said in a silky voice and reached into the cage, picking up a long green feather that the bird had molted. He slanted a look at her speculatively as he walked toward the bed, then sat down on the edge, his hip warm against hers, despite the cloth barrier.
Touching the edge of the feather to her mole, he said huskily, “Someday… someday, Eadyth, we are going to do some fascinating things with this feather.”
She stared at him, entranced by the rapid pulse that beat in his neck, the fiery sparkle of sensuality in his pale eyes, the fullness of his marvelous lips. How could the man go from complete lack of interest to flaming passion from one moment to the next? And there was no question in Eadyth’s mind that, at this moment, he wanted her, in the way a man wants a woman. She would warrant he was having no trouble with leavening under his tight braies now.
Holding her eyes, he began brushing the feather over her lips, along her jawline, over her bare shoulder, and, oh, Sweet Mary, over the tips of her still-covered breasts. Through the thin linen, they could both see her nipples peak.
Eirik inhaled sharply.
Eadyth closed her eyes on a soft groan as a new and wondrous pleasure flooded her body.
But her eyes shot open when she felt the feather trace a light line down between her breasts, past her waist, over her belly to the juncture of her thighs. The worn linen offered no protection at all. Her precious self-control crumbling, Eadyth wanted desperately to part her legs and arch into the feathery caress. It took all her determination to stop herself.
Oh, I am becoming a shameless wanton, Eadyth berated herself. And I like it.
Her skin turned hot everywhere he touched, even through the fabric—over her knees, down her legs, to her ankles. Blood rushed to her ears, and her breath came out in ragged gasps. Her body craved some sinful sustenance she could not understand. Before she realized what he was about, Eirik flipped up the bottom edge of her bed linen, and teased the arches of her feet with the silky feather.