Eadyth realized then that she had perchance been hasty in her method of showing her displeasure to Eirik. She should have waited until she had contained her roiling fury and discussed the situation with him rationally. God’s Bones! Where was the cool-headed, logical woman she had been before coming to Ravenshire? She did not recognize this hot-tempered termagant she had become.
Eirik started toward her, a predatory gleam in his eyes.
Eadyth spun on her heels and ran down the steps and through the hall, ignoring the knights who had come in out of the rain and sat about dicing at the long tables. She raced blindly out the courtyard door, unsure of her destination, just knowing she had to escape the pounding footsteps she heard following her.
She had barely reached the courtyard when she heard Eirik’s bare feet slip on the outside steps. He slid, swearing loudly, before falling to the muddy ground of the bailey.
Eadyth looked over her shoulder with concern and considered going back to see if he was all right. One look at Eirik changed her mind. He was sitting in the mud, still wearing only the brief loincloth, glowering at her, and she decided she had best find a hiding place until his anger cooled.
She made it almost to the kitchen garden when Eirik lunged at her from behind, grabbing her waist. She landed flat on her stomach, her face pressed into the mud, Eirik atop her. The rain pounded down on them both, creating a pool of mud.
Eadyth pressed her palms into the soggy ground and tried to raise her head and shoulders, but she could not move. Eirik covered her from neck to toes with his own much larger body, and she was having difficulty breathing.
“Get off me, you big oaf.”
Eirik rolled Eadyth onto her back but continued to press her to the ground with his body. Despite the rain, which was lessening now as sunlight peeked through the clouds, despite the fact that his lady wife looked like a drowned, muddy rat, despite his formidable anger, Eirik felt a keen pleasure in the pressure of his hard body against her womanly curves. Yes, curves, he realized, not without pleasure; his wife definitely was not the bony creature he had once imagined.
With deliberate care, he adjusted his body atop hers and ground his burgeoning manhood against her center.
She gasped and gazed up at him with questioning innocence. Rivulets of rain made tracks in the mud plastering her face, and her sodden hair escaped her wimple in ugly gray clumps.
But somehow Eirik was not repulsed.
With a deft movement of both legs, he entwined his ankles with hers and spread her legs. Then, through her thin, rain-sodden gown, he expertly touched hi miself to her center of pleasure—at least, it was a pleasure point on other women he had known. But then, mayhap his wife was different.
Eadyth’s mouth parted on a soft sigh of enchantment. “Oh.”
Eirik smiled. She was no different, after all. And in that he found great cause for satisfaction… and anticipation. “Oh?”
“Oh, you are a brute!” Eadyth exclaimed in her usual prickly tone of voice, trying to shove him off as she came to her senses.
“A brute, am I?” he asked. “My lady, you do not know, yet, what a brute I can be.” He reached his right hand out and gathered a fistful of mud. Then, with a chuckle of glee, he smeared it onto her face. “That is for throwing dirty bath-water in my face.”
She sputtered and spat, spraying his face with mud, and tried to claw at him. But he pulled both wrists above her head with one hand. Then he dished up another handful of mud and smeared it onto each of her breasts, rubbing his palm seductively over the slick surface he created. Fascinated, he watched her nipples blossom through her thin gunna.
And he grew even harder against her.
“Why are you doing this?” she moaned.
“Because I like to.”
Carefully, he rotated his hips back and forth against her, experimenting, watching closely for her reaction. She did not disappoint him.
Instinctively, her legs widened and she arched up for more. Closing her eyes languorously, she parted her lips to accommodate her short, ragged breaths. Her body told him what her prideful tongue could not: she wanted him. As much as he wanted her.