She keened aloud at the pure ecstasy of his torture. Or was it the pure torture of his ecstasy? Her befuddled mind could not distinguish one from the other.
Eirik stood with a grim look of satisfaction on his face as an intense physical awareness crackled between them, like summer lightning. He seemed to hesitate, then turn away from her with reluctance, before walking toward the door.
“You are going to leave me here in this… condition?”
He stopped and turned slowly, flashing a heart-stopping smile at her. Eadyth could see that his emotions raged as much as hers. Softly, he asked, “What condition?”
“By the faith, I do not know, but I warrant that you do. Stop it, I tell you.”
“Stop what?”
Eadyth could tell that her discomfort amused him. “These games you play with me.”
“Games? Nay, wife, ’tis not I who play games.” He tucked the feather into the clasp of his dragon shoulder brooch and patted it. “I will save the feather for another time, Eadyth. I promise we will play the game to completion then.”
“What game?” she cried out after him, but he was already gone.
And her body thrummed with an appetite he had whetted for… feathers.
Yea, the man was driving her mad.
* * *
Eadyth was driving him mad.
Eirik forced his body and the bodies of his men to the limit of their endurance on the exercise fields that day, but he could not erase the image of his wife lying in his bed that morn, her body quivering with the need for consummation. A need he shared mightily.
Not only had he been mistaken about his wife’s true appearance. But, apparently, she was not the cold man-hater he had thought her to be, either. Cold? Hah! If she were any hotter, he might burst into flames.
Indeed, Eirik had a problem. He was a healthy man with a man’s healthy appetites. And he had been without a woman since before his betrothal, ten sennights ago. He knew he would not be able to resist her allure one more night in the intimacy of his bedchamber. But he could not risk impregnating her whilst still unsure of her loyalty.
No, he had to form a barrier between them until Sigurd returned from his spying mission. But how could he do that when he knew he was about to succumb? It was up to Eadyth. He must do something to make his wife turn cold toward him, for a while; something to make her angry enough to halt her unconsciously seductive invitation to bed her. He must make her stone-cold angry.
That should not be too difficult.
Eirik wiped a forearm across his sweaty brow and glanced distractedly to his side where one of his new men, Aaron, was greeting his young wife, a beautiful Moorish woman of tiny stature with slanted eyes and olive skin. With a smile of sudden inspiration, Eirik approached the young couple with a quickly concocted scheme. At first, they protested, skeptical of his unusual proposal, but soon, with the warmth of a few coins crossing palms, they agreed to cooperate.
Eadyth would have a fit, Eirik thought with a grin. He only hoped it would last until Sigurd’s return.
* * *
Eadyth dropped her beekeeping veil onto the kitchen bench and brushed the raindrops from her mantle and gown. Thunder cracked loudly outdoors presaging an early-summer storm that promised to be turbulent but brief.
“Have the men returned?” she asked Bertha, who was cracking eggs in a pottery bowl for a sweet custard.
The cook nodded, but her eyes shifted secretively.
“What is amiss?”
“Naught.”
“You are lying. I can tell. Where is Eirik?”
Bertha’s pudgy face turned beet red. “How would I be knowin’?”
“You know everything else.”
“Hah! Find him yerself then.”
“Best you mind your manners, or you will find yourself assigned to scrubbing the garderobes,” Eadyth rebuked Bertha, but not unkindly. She had grown fond of the outspoken cook.
Grabbing a chunk of cheese from the table, she walked away, nibbling thoughtfully. Eadyth decided to search for Eirik. She sensed that she and her husband would be consummating their marriage soon, and she wanted no guilty secrets between them. She determined to tell Eirik about her charade, now, even if she had to tie him down and gag him to do so. She smiled, with an unaccustomed thrum of pleasure in the pit of her stomach, at that oddly tantalizing prospect.