The Enchantment (36 page)

“But we haven't finished discussing the terms of surrender,” she insisted, raising her chin. She liked the huskiness of his voice, the thick, sensual undertone of his command, and the excitement it stirred in her blood. “I have a few demands of my own.”

“‘Demands'?”

“My shoulder,” she said, lifting her arm and grimacing as dramatically as possible. “You can clearly see . . . I will be unable to tend the hearth for quite a while.” A mischievous glow entered her expression as she conjured additional possibilities. “And no hunting or trapping or skinning. No carrying water. And chopping wood is much too difficult . . . I may not be able to swing an axe until spring. That means you will have to do the hunting and cooking and tanning and fire-making . . .”

“Anything else, my greedy little captive?” He pulled her closer, staring at her mouth, anticipating the pleasures of sealing her surrender with something vastly more pleasurable than a handclasp.

“A bath,” she said, slipping from his hands and eluding his attempt to retrieve her. She darted for the door and he sprang after her, slamming the half-opened door shut and trapping her against it with an arm on either side of her.

“You demand a bath?” he said, lowering his head, crowding her with his heat. “At this hour?” She nodded, sweeping him with a long, sensual challenge of a look.

“I'm not the least bit sleepy, Jorund. And I demand that you come along. To help.”

She ducked under his arm. He followed her out and up the slope to the bathing hut.

Moments later, she perched on the edge of the wide wooden shelf, watching as Jorund stoked the oven until the rocks heated and the bathing house grew warm. When he got to his feet and turned, she reached out with one long leg and kicked the door shut. There was a wry, tempting curl at one corner of her mouth, and her eyes glowed like liquid amber.

“I need more of your help. I need you to remove my garments.” Her requirement, issued with a smile and carried on a husky purr, was a pure invitation to pleasure.

“You can start with my boots,” she said, arching one long leg onto the low shelf and waving her knee ever so slightly—and suggestively—from side to side.

He ambled forward, watching that knee, then glancing at the luminous, dark centers of her eyes. She was playing a game, he understood, kneeling by her upraised leg and working the laces of her boot. And he loved games . . . especially ones he was fated to win. As he worked, his eyes traveled up the shapely arch of her braced leg, lingered on the tantalizing wrinkles in the deerskin at the other end of that leg. His skin heated as he slowly peeled back the worn leather of her buskin and slipped it from her foot.

“My leggings, too,” she coaxed, flexing her foot sinuously in his grip.

The small bathing chamber filled with a tension as palpable as the light haze of smoke produced by the fire. She could both see and feel the effect she was having on him; his big, square fingers trembled as they made contact with her skin and a sheen of moisture appeared on his face. The tips of her breasts and her woman's core tightened, responding to his arousal and to her own newfound sensual power. Over and over his words had invaded her body, and now she experimented with words of her own, discovering how it felt to compel such longing in another.

“What is it about my legs that you find pleasing, Jorund?” She raised her bare legs one at a time, turning them to offer him a critical view of each side. “Their length? Their shape? Their hardness? Or is it just the thought of having them wrapped around your body that appeals to you?”

Ohhh, she had struck a spark with that one, she realized, as a flame flared in the depths of his eyes. A trill of response raced through her shoulders.

“You said . . . you could teach my arms and legs sweeter duties . . .” His lips parted and his chest rose and fell harder. She leaned back on her arms, luxuriating in the pull of wanting between them. “Now my breeches.”

He slid closer, still kneeling beside the shelf, a willing participant in her exploration of sensual power. His hands trembled as he untied her breeches and peeled them down over her sleek, curvy buttocks. She lifted her bottom slowly to let them pass and sat up, bent her naked legs, then slid them over the edge of the bench, on either side of his big, heated body.

“Now my tunic. Take it off.” She followed his burning gaze to her thighs, which were spread erotically before him, pale skin framing a dark wedge of shadows pointing to the liquid heat smoldering at the base of her belly. He grasped the ripped shoulder of her garment and eased it over her injured arm and her head.

She sat before him, naked except for her wound dressing. His eyes became hot, simmering pools, his tunic clung to his damp body, and she could feel his tension through her knees, against his sides. But still he made no move to claim her.

“My breasts . . . you said you like how soft they are,” she whispered, sliding her fingers across one full, rounded globe, cupping it briefly and lifting, as if offering it to him. She released it to rub her fingertips over the tightly contracted tip. “But part of them isn't soft just now. Do you like their hard parts, as well?”

Her sultry eyes allowed no evasion, demanded an answer. His hands rose and hovered. When they closed hotly over her breasts, a wild shower of sensation cascaded through her body and she gasped.

“I love both their soft swell and their hard tips, Long-legs,” he whispered thickly, dipping his head to kiss one taut nipple, then to swirl it with his tongue. He suckled that peak, then paused, watching her sleek body undulate helplessly with pleasure and longing. “Such breasts. Like the rest of you . . . so hard . . . so soft.”

“Oh, Jorund,” she said, feeling rivulets of liquid fire running along her nerves. Somewhere in the play of words and desires he had usurped her game and turned it against her. Her head dropped back and she arched into his hands, her whole body aching for his touch, for the half-remembered weight and feel of him. Unable to bear the yearning much longer, she lifted her arms, sank her fingers into his silky hair, and pulled him nose-to-nose with her.

“The enchantment is broken,” she said forcefully. “But you must wield your blade against me one more time, Warrior-heart.” When his muscles stiffened, she reminded him with a triumphant smile: “To make good your vow to mate Odin's she-wolf.”

The challenge rang in his very blood. He grinned and slid his arms around her, reeling her hard against his body, devouring her lush mouth with his eyes as he savored the anticipation of tasting it.

“I know which blade you want, She-wolf. Be warned—from this day on, it is the only one I will ever wield against you. Now, wrap your long, dangerous legs around me . . . and prepare to reap the rewards of defeat.”

Moving them back onto the bench, he spread himself over her body like a great bear skin. She wrapped her legs around his, welcoming him into the cradle of her thighs, and she laughed, knowing the victory was all hers.

“Now,”
she said huskily.
“I surrender.”

He plunged into her kiss, demanding and claiming her softer recesses, then gentling to explore and relish the territory he had conquered. Their kisses gradually lightened and became a varied feast of sensation—playful toying one instant, deep stirring penetration the next. Heat rose precipitously between and around them and he pushed up, sliding onto his knees between her legs. When she made a groan of disappointment, he laughed.

“I'm roasting in these clothes. And I want to feel my bare skin against yours.”

But when his tunic and boots and breeches were shed, and he knelt between her legs again, he did not move immediately to fill her outstretched arms. Instead, he surveyed her body with exquisite leisure, running his eyes up her parted legs, then up her flat belly and curving waist to the full, dark-tipped mounds of her breasts.

She lay in a tangle of burnished hair, blushed with heat, dark-eyed with desire. Her lips were parted and reddened from his attention, and her body was covered with a light sheen of moisture that made her glow golden in the dim light. She was passion incarnate . . . the lush, receptive goddess of a warrior's dreams.

“I want to learn you, Long-legs. Every part of you. I want to know you with every part of me.” His fingers started at her ankles, tracing her form, reaching beneath the sleek exterior for the firm muscles beneath—massaging, caressing, stimulating every bit of her he could reach. And his mouth followed where his hands led. He tongued and kissed the curves of her calves, the bends of her knees, and the silky skin of her inner thighs. She started when she realized where he was headed and tried to prevent him, but he simply laughed and nuzzled the soft furring of her woman's mound, then continued up her belly, her waist, to her breasts.

He held his body away from hers on his massive arms, braced above her like a great, devouring beast. But his mouth was achingly gentle over her nipples and his sucklings set her writhing softly, erotically beneath him.

When she could bear it no more, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him down on top of her. “Now, Jorund,” she murmured, feeling the throbbing heat of his great flesh-spear against her woman's mound. She braced and held her breath, but his shaft merely parted her folds and thrust gently along her moist inner channel. She gasped and pressed against him, meeting each stroke with a motion of her own. And with each perfectly aimed thrust, she felt a frisson of pleasure radiating outward, from the very heart of her.

“Now, Jorund,” she said with a groan, arching and straining to rub harder against him. But each time she deepened the contact between them, he eased back by the same amount, maintaining that gentle but relentless friction against the core of her sensation. She began to tremble, grew desperate for the weight and force of him against her, for the filling of the hollow ache inside her.

“I want the lightning . . . make the lightning in me,” she entreated.

“Soon enough, greedy wench,” he whispered maddeningly into her ear. “Enjoy this first part . . . it is better if you are prepared.”

Prepared. He was preparing her . . . for a pleasure storm . . . for the rending to follow. She could feel her body responding, could feel the liquid heat swirling, coiling in her womanflesh. A small, lingering anxiety in her melted. She knew what it was to prepare for fighting . . . and now Jorund prepared her for loving. . . .

She gave herself over to it. It was oddly familiar, this driving, mounting tension that reduced all sensation to broad strokes. Suddenly her whole consciousness focused on a pale halo of hair, a lush mouth, a great, warm weight molding her body, a wild thudding in her veins, and fluid, rhythmic surges of pleasure lapping through her loins. The pace quickened and she felt her blood-heat rising, felt the gathering in her loins . . . she was suddenly launched into a firestorm of pleasure.

She felt herself expanding and contracting at the same time, as she shuddered through searing blasts of pleasure. Then she felt him pause and draw back . . . and enter her. The sensations of fullness, of parting and opening, were overwhelming. Her untried flesh yielded slowly before his invading force. Over and over he withdrew partway and thrust again, each time deepening his conquest of her until they lay completely joined.

“Did I hurt you?” he murmured softly into her ear. She could not speak, but shook her head. “There is more, Long-legs. Much more.”

With her gaze captive in his, he began to move inside her, watching the shifting lights in the depths of her eyes as he filled her loins with his throbbing heat and poured a new tension in her blood. She arched and clung to his shoulders, feeling his shimmering eyes penetrating her soul as he penetrated her body.

Each long, luxuriant stroke lifted her again along a sleek, tightening spiral of sensation that exploded abruptly, flinging her into a wild, soaring arc through brilliant, uncharted realms of pleasure. She felt him stiffen and shudder, then clasp her fiercely against him as he poured his passion into her receptive depths and launched into those enchanted realms with her. Suddenly they were one . . . joined in light and warmth . . . known and knowing . . . giving and given, without reservation.

Together they settled back into the smoky warmth of the little bathing hut, lying side by side, their bodies wet from the steamy heat and their eyes glowing like the hearth's cooling embers. She traced the thick mounds of his chest, lingering over his taut male nipples, and marveled that the shape of his body was so very like her own, and yet so different. Beside her, he was thinking much the same thing, until his eyes fell on the binding on her left shoulder and he touched it gently.

“Your shoulder,” he said softly. “Is it all right? I forgot about it.”

“It's fine, Jorund,” she said, rubbing the furrow from his brow with her fingertips. “All of me is fine. It is wonderful . . . your loving. It was well worth fighting for.” The light in his eyes flickered and she seized his chin and pressed her nose against his. “Promise me you will wield your pleasure-blade against me again.” Then her fierce expression softened to a frown and she bit the inside of her bottom lip. “We can do it again, can't we?” The brazen sound of her question made her pull back, but he caught her before she moved far.

“Eager for another taste of defeat, are you?” He laughed softly, then saw the genuine embarrassment in her face and realized that it was the maiden in her, not the warrior, who asked. His tone gentled. “We can do it again, anytime you want . . . as long as you give me a few minutes to rest between requests.” He glanced down his body, drawing her eyes, too.

His flesh-spear was softer, but still swollen, and she glanced up quickly, flushing a deeper red. Moments ago she had yielded up all her body's secrets to him . . . and now she felt unaccountably shy. “I don't mean to . . . it's just that I've never . . .”