Wicked (21 page)

She eased down into the wooden tub and gave a long and luscious moan. “This feels so good.”

Sweet Mother, but she was a beautiful woman. And a handful. ’Twas not easy to look at her like this and truly believe she was his, finally, this spirited young woman of seven and ten. They were young, the two of them. But it seemed like years ago when he first saw her.

It
was
years ago. Five long years.

He would be one and twenty at Michaelmas. How many years would they have together? Fifty or more? A lifetime. Sweet Mary and Joseph, he hoped it was a long one.

She had her back to him as she washed and scrubbed. Her skin was soon glistening in the red glow of the coal brasier, and he watched her slide under the water to dunk her black hair. When she did, her long white legs came almost out of the tub and he caught a glimpse of the shadow between her thighs.

Lord, but his action this night, lying there unmoving like he was, should keep him out of Purgatory forever. A true test of strength no tourney could best, for no man could possibly lie there as he was and do nothing. So he watched her, drank in his fill of her. He wanted to get up and pull her from the tub. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to lick the water from her body. He wanted to strip off his clothes and join her. God’s blood, but he wanted to join with her.

He waited, then gave up the possibility of going straight to heaven after he died and stood quietly, covertly, pulled his linen undertunic over his head and began to untie his chausses. He pulled the points aside and stripped out of them, then untied his loincloth and let it fall to the floor.

Before she could turn about, he was kneeling on the wooden floor behind her.

“Tobin!” she shrieked and crossed her arms over her breasts! “You have no honor! You gave me your vow.”

“Not truly. All I said was ‘aye.’ I did not say aye to what.”

She frowned at him from over her pale shoulder. After a moment her eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

“Washing your back.” He ran his hands over her damp back, over the soft, soft skin and he leaned down and kissed the nape of her neck, then her shoulder and her spine. He reached lower, until his hands were on her buttocks and he rubbed them, then squeezed them, kneaded them.

She stiffened for a moment when he first gripped her there, but soon she moaned a soft and quiet kind of moan, the kind that was the same as saying “do it more and more and more.”

He gripped her by the bottom and picked her right up out of the tub and stood, holding her in front of him.

She shrieked, but it was too late, he stepped into the water and sat down with her in his lap. He released her. She spun around and almost killed him.

“Careful, brat!”

“Let me up.”

He shook his head and grasped her wrists and pulled her forward so her palms were flat against his chest. He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Wash me.”

“Do I look like your servant?”

“A hundred years ago and it would have been your duty and honor to bathe visiting knights.”

“Aye, we women have come a long way.”

He laughed and took her left hand. He placed the ball of soap in it, then put her hand and the soap on his chest and began to rub over the coarse, curly black hair there until it was lathered and foamy.

He opened his eyes to find her staring at her hand and watched as she raised the other one and began to rub through the lather, to play with the foam and draw small circles with her fingertips.

“You learn quickly.”

She gave him a wicked smile, then grazed her fingers over his nipples.

He grasped her wrists and pulled her forward, so they were breast to chest. He looped her hands around his neck and lowered his, then held her by the waist and slowly moved her upper body so the lather was between both of them and their bodies moved in slick sliding motions.

Soon they were both moving on their own and he moved his hands to her head and clasped it, then pulled her mouth to his. He gave her soft, nipping kisses, on the corners of her mouth, along her lips. Then he flicked his tongue over her lips and she opened her mouth with a deep sigh.

Then they were kissing each other, deep, long and wet kisses, where their tongues played together and taunted and drew the other’s into their own mouths. He sucked on her tongue and she did the same to his.

She mimicked his every move, as if she wanted to be taught the ways of loving, all the ways. He took the soap and her hand and moved both lower and made the same foaming lather there as he had done on his chest. He took the soap and lathered the shadowy hair between her legs, kissing her mouth the whole time and swallowing her weak protests when he touched her between her legs, when his fingers drifted over her.

He moved their bodies again, sliding together and up and down so they both could feel every inch of skin, every soft or hard muscle, every rib against rib, every plane of their bodies against the other.

The water was growing colder now and the room was fast chilling. He pulled her away from him and placed a kiss on her nose. “Come, the water is cold.” He held her as he stood, then grabbed a towel and ran it quickly over their bodies and scrubbed her hair dry before he did his own.

Small black curls were forming around her face and her eyes looked huge and dark and intense, as if he could step into them and lose himself there and never find his way out again.

He swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed, jerked back the coverlet and placed her on the linen sheet, then he crawled under with her and began all over again. The touching, the kisses, the soft words.

“Touch me . . . Touch me . . . ” he said and placed her palm on him. He moved his hand to her body and stroked her from her shoulder to her knee, long soft strokes where he barely touched her soft skin, just drew his fingers over her again and again.

“You are so soft. Your skin is so soft,” he murmured, then he moved his mouth to her ear and asked her to stroke him.

Her hand moved tentatively at first.

“Harder,” he whispered. “Harder.”

And she did. She pressed the palm of her hand against him and began to move.

He groaned, “That’s it . . . that’s it . . . Don’t stop.”

Then he kissed her deeply, their mouths locked together until he moved to her neck and her ears, where he tasted her with his tongue and breathed into her ears and waited for her to shiver in reaction.

“Tobin . . . ” she said on soft breath.

He lowered his mouth to her breasts, tasted them, sucked on the tips and rolled his tongue around them. He moved downward, his mouth on her ribs and he followed each rib with his tongue slowly, as if he were drawing them on her body.

He pressed his lips to the soft dip under her ribs and kissed the softest and whitest skin he’d ever seen. His head dipped to her navel and he tongued it, then sucked on her soft belly until he made a love mark there, and another—one on each side. He buried his face there, taking in her scent and nuzzling her belly until she gripped his head in her hands and sighed.

His mouth traced the bones of her hips, the line of her hip and thigh. He shoved back the covers and ran his tongue along the inside of one thigh, down, down until he was near her ankles. He moved his shoulders between her legs and he kissed up the other leg, stopping at the knee.

He shifted her legs and kissed the backs of her knees, wet them with his mouth and blew on them. He licked upward, slowly, drawing damp lines along the skin on the inside of her thighs.

Until he reached center of her. He blew his warm breath on her there, knowing she was wet and could feel the chill of his breath there.

She gasped and called out his name.

Then he kissed her there, that place for lovers only.

She cried out to heaven and tried to shift away.

He gripped her buttocks and kept on, deepening his kiss from lips and breath to the stroking of his tongue, the sucking of his mouth, until she was crying and moaning and telling him not to stop.

She was so close, her pleasure was but a touch away. He could feel it in the quiver of her legs, in the new taste of her. She was coming. She was coming.

One more flick of his tongue and she cried out and spasmed, pulsing against his mouth and gripping his head tightly in her clenched hands.

She kept swearing to saints, pleading to Mary and saying she was dying. Finally, she was finished, her breath hard, labored just a moment before it began to slow and ease. She just lay there.

He shifted, crawled back up her soft body. She slowly opened her eyes and looked into his.

The wonder he saw there almost broke him, almost pulled him in to a place from which he could never escape. He could not look at that look very long, so he drew her legs up and settled between them and he began to move, slowly at first, just rubbing against her, hard against soft, moving and shifting so he was against her most sensitive spots.

When he was certain she had the rhythm down, he slid his hands upward and cupped her breasts and then drove his fingers into her hair and kissed her, still shifting and moving only against her.

Their kisses grew hotter and more intense. They moved faster and then he shifted his hips, stopped, and changed angles, then just barely entered her, only slid the tip of him inside. “Can you feel me?”

“Aye, Tobin, You feel so good.”

“So do you. You taste so good. You smell so good. You are so wet and hot.” He slid inside a bit more, then shifted out a little, just small, inching movements. “Wrap your feet around my back.”

She did and he lifted her up a little higher, then dipped a little deeper. He moved in and out, still not touching her virgin’s wall. He would not breach it, not yet. Not this night.

He shifted positions and sat back on his heels with his legs folded, his knees spread wide. He grasped her hips and pulled her slowly over his legs to his cock. He inched inside again, in and out, a little deeper each time, in and out, a little deeper, in and out, a little deeper.

He set the rhythms. He moved her to their pleasure. She was tight and hot and he wanted to go inside as deeply as he could, but he held back, just the heavy wide tip of him was filled with all that sensation. He tilted her up higher and sank inside some more, until he felt the thin wall that told him no man had ever had her.

He did not go any farther, but pulled slowly back, then dipped inside again, and slowly back, over and over, building the rhythm and feeling her response. She lifted her hips higher, she moaned and twisted her head from side to side. He kept pumping in and out until he thought he would explode.

He pushed once, twice; she quivered and her legs shook in violent little tremors. One more thrust and she came hard, pulsing around the tip of him and crying out his name.

Letting her finish was the hardest thing he’d ever done. But he waited, gritted his teeth together and recited the names of the saints in Latin, then again in French.

He pulled out of her and shifted, unfolded his legs and lay atop her, rubbing against her belly and her woman’s bone, faster and faster, gripping her hips in his hands as he moved, closer and closer to completion, his release growing and climbing higher and higher.

A shudder ran through him and he came hard, his hands moved to her hair and his mouth was buried in her shoulder and neck. His life flowed in pulses, warm and wet between them, onto their bellies and over their skin.

They lay there for a long time, until his breathing slowed and had joined hers. He brushed a lock of her hair from his nose, then took another deep breath and lifted his head.

She was looking at him from those eyes and he was lost already. Gone. He never had a chance.

She raised her finger to his mouth. “You did not hurt me.” She sounded puzzled.

“I did not breach you. Had I done so, you would have felt the pain, but only then. Only once.”

She frowned, then said, “Why?”

“Why the pain?”

“Nay, why did you not take me completely?”

“We are not wed. Betrothed, but not wed. I will save that act for our wedding bed. Not for this night. This was for us. For now.”

“It was wonderful.”

“Aye,” he smiled, then shifted from between her, and lay alongside of her, looking at her, watching her expression. She looked down at the moisture on her belly and she touched it with her fingertips, then looked at him.

“That is my life. After we are wed, it will go into you. It will mix with your seed and from us, together, will come our children.”

She nodded, then just stared at her belly. After a moment, she shifted and looked down at him, ran her gaze from his head to his chest, his hips and lower. She stared at him for the longest time.

He began to laugh. “Don’t fret. It will grow again.”

She punched him in the arm and said, “I know that.”

“Oh? And how do you know that?”

“Women talk.”

“What do women talk about?”

“Things.”

“Such as?”

“Men.”

“What about men?”

“Their hard heads.”

“Only their hard heads?”

“And their privy members. What do men talk about?”

“War and weapons and women, not necessarily in that order.”

They grinned at each other.

She moved a little closer and smiled at him, the first truly real smile she had ever given him.

He felt something inside of him stop, like his heart.

There was no malice there, no honeyed sweetness that was feigned. No play-acting.

Just a smile.

He slid his arm under her and pulled her close, tucking her head with its crown of black, saucy curls under his chin.

He rubbed his chin over her head, over the soft hair, and she flinched.

He pulled back and looked at her head, frowning. He raised his hand and ran it over the top of her head. “You have a knot.”

“Aye.” She was quiet for a long time, then she sighed and said. “I was juggling some wooden balls and missed.”

“I heard.”

“What?” She sat up and looked down at him. “You wretched thing, you. You knew?”

“Aye. That was how I found you, following the trail of your accidents.” He paused for a moment, then said, “I thought the wild pig tossing you into the gutters was particularly vivid, at least according to the tavern owner on the corner where you were performing this great and entertaining feat.”