Branded By Etain (5 page)

Her sheath no longer felt as if cleaved into two.

She trusted him to care for her and gave him a watery smile. This close, his breath fanned her cheeks and his scent once again had her sotted.

Étaín gripped his shoulder and pressed her mouth against his. Remembering his soft sipping, she mimicked the caress, and when he growled, grew emboldened.

She looped her arms around his neck and trailed her fingers over the deep grooves of the muscles of his upper back. Before her courage failed, she outlined his mouth with her tongue.

His palms framed her face, he slanted her head to one side, and commanded the kiss. He ate at her without mercy, left no cavern, no niche, no tooth unexplored. ’Twas the paradise she had dreamed of these long months.

When he withdrew his prick from her womanhood, she dug her nails into his flesh.

“Odin have mercy.” His whisper tickled her lips.

“Oh!” she yelped when he drove back into her.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he muttered, his voice hoarse.

She complied. His stiff pecker retreated and then plunged deep. His stones banged her sensitive folds. His groin jammed her pearl. She quivered from prickling scalp to curled toes. Excruciating anticipation coursed through her blood.

Her eyes widened in amazement. ’Twas starting anew. That wondrous flood of stabbing desire that had her nipples taut and aching, and her woman’s pearl throbbed to the point of pain.

He moved faster, pounding into her, his fingers biting into her waist.

She lifted to meet him once, twice, and then became oblivious to anything but the way he hammered into her. He slapped against her nub, slipped his hand underneath her bottom, and on his next thrust, she fractured.

Her sheath fisted him, sucking at his thickness. He withdrew, and her walls squeezed him like a vise. His pecker stabbed a sensitive bundle of flesh deep inside her channel. Vibrations strummed through her.

“Together, wife,” he rasped, reached between them, and tweaked her pearl.

She surrendered to the waves of ecstasy, no longer able to do aught but lock her ankles in the small of his back and hang on for the ride.

He roared. The sound echoed around and around while he jetted into her channel. His hot, spurting seed coated her sheath and filled her womb. She collapsed into the soft straw mattress and moaned his name over and over while her channel clenched around his throbbing shaft, the intermittent contractions too titillating, too rapturous to do naught but yield to the blissful wondrous trance claiming her mind.

Étaín had no notion of how much time elapsed, but gradually the room came into focus.

Somehow she lay on top of him and they remained joined, his pecker still thick and pulsing in erratic bursts. Her sheath reacted automatically, squeezing his cock, and sending her into corresponding shudders of pleasure.

Every so often, the blazing fire in the hearth erupted in snaps and pops. A cozy warmth filled the room and invaded her soul. Never had she felt so complete, so replete. She inhaled his warrior essence and smiled a secret smile. Her dreams could never match the astounding reality of their coupling. Unable to resist, she rubbed her nose into the grizzly hairs coating his chest.

“Fare you well, Étaín?” She loved the way a growl infused his deep rumble even though he spoke softly and tenderly massaged her nape.

“Aye, my lord. More than well, much, much more.” She sighed and dared a tentative sketchy caressing of the grooves of his ribs.

He captured her errant hand and kissed the middle of her palm. “Brand.”

Shy all at once, her cheeks roasting, she murmured, “Brand.”

“The pain has eased?” He threaded his fingers through her curls. The gentle caress made her want to purr with contentment.

“’Twas momentary and now long forgotten.” A flash of worry and uncertainty made her blurt, “Did I please you, my lord?”

“You sent me to Valhalla, wife. ’Tis our version of your Christian paradise,” he explained, lifted her, and his pecker withdrew with a loud, wet plop.

She bit her lips to repress a squeal of protest.

With infinite care, he eased her onto her back alongside him, and then rolled off the bed.

Confused, Étaín followed his long legged strides to the washing basin on a table adjacent to the hearth. She shifted to see him better and something oozed from within her and trickled down her thighs. His seed. Margie had told her of this, that men spurted semen when they found their pleasure.

She relaxed into the fine linen, thrilled at her achievement. She had his seed inside her.

“What has you smiling so sweetly?” The straw dipped as he sat.

Flustered, she averted her gaze. “I am pleased that I pleased you.”

He nudged her legs apart, set a warmed cloth to her mound, and proceeded to clean and scrutinize every little crevice of her womanhood.

Shocked at his actions, Étaín stilled and bit her tongue. Margie had not warned her that he would inspect her woman parts so closely his breath whispered over her engorged folds.

“Your bleeding has stopped. ’Tis a good sign.” He toyed with her damp curls.

Not knowing what was expected of her, and worried she had failed in some way, she blurted, “I know not my duties now. Do I cleanse you as well?”

He flicked her chin and kissed her. “Mayhap after two moons have elapsed. Frown not, Étaín. You are new to the intimacies ’tween a woman and a man. Should you touch my tadger now, I would want to swive you again. You are too tender for another joining.”

Tadger? Yet another word for a man’s shaft.

Standing he made quick work of washing his tadger. ’Twas fascinating the way he rolled back the skin to reveal the enormous crown. Should not have the thing reduced in size? For he had spilled his seed. Étaín searched her memories. Nay Margie had not spoken of the after the breeching of her maidenhead. She needs visit Margie soon and ask the scores of questions jamming her mind.

He slipped under the covers, pulled her to his side, and drew the furs over the two of them. Tipping her chin up, he asked, his stare direct and fixed, “Now, wife, let us speak a while. Why did you not inform your father that I am Norse? You knew so, since you took the time to learn our dialect.”

Brand had deliberately left the oil lamp hanging from the rafter above the bed lit because he wanted to catch every nuance of Étaín’s expressions. His life and that of his family had been saved too oft by the flicker of an eyelid or a swift change in breathing to chance his plans coming undone because of his new wife.

Étaín neither blinked, nor did her rhythmic breathing hitch.

“I knew not ’twas Norse. ’Twas simply another dialect.” She did not avert her gaze from his.

“No monk taught you our language.”

Her lashes fluttered. She shook her head. “Nay. How know you this?”

“It matters naught. Who was it?” What game did she play? Had he failed to notice some devious malice in her?

She snagged her lip with a tooth. “’Tis difficult to explain. I am a truthsayer. When I awake from a truthsaying trance, my mind is filled with the words and speech of the person whose deceit or truth I test.”

He digested not only her words but that she trusted him with such a revelation. No noble woman he had ever met showed her genuine emotions. Nay, they masked the schemes they wove with simpering smiles and coy, sidelong glances.

“Why did you tell me ’twas a monk from whom you learned our tongue?” He abhorred falsehoods from any source, but none more so than from a female.

“I have learned many languages from travelling monks. ’Twas not a lie.”

“You quibble details. I would have an explanation in full. Now.”

A wash of color stained her cheeks. “’Tis a lengthy tale and not one to be told in the great hall during The Choosing.”

Her voice quaked, and she tugged at her throat with trembling fingers.

The gesture awoke an urge to settle her nerves. He captured her hands and held them, rubbing a soothing caress over her jumping pulse. “Be at ease, Étaín. I am not angered, merely puzzled.”

She slid him a quick peek. A brief smile chased away the worry lines between her brows and she relaxed, reassured by his bland expression.

“When I was but seven summers, a Saracen trader visited with many warriors and ships. Da suspected he intended to invade, arranged a private conference with him, and commanded me as a truthsayer. I spoke Farsi after my trance and for some time did not recall my native tongue. Whispers of me being possessed by Satan coursed through the settlement. Some tried to harm me. ’Twas the reason my guards took me from the hall after I swooned. To protect me from any who would accuse me of witchcraft.”

Confounded, Brand sifted through her declaration. He tested her in Farsi, “What did my brother tell me after I questioned you about knowing our dialect?”

She answered with Nikolas’s exact wording in the same language.

“I have displeased you, my lord?”

The distress in her query stabbed at him. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears and her hand jerked in his hold. He brought each one in turn to his mouth and kissed the tips of her fingers.

He had pushed the matter too far and was not responding to her as he should, a lover and an affectionate new husband. During their loving, her response to him had been naught but delightful and intoxicating. His pecker stiffened as he recalled her arching to meeting his thrusts.

That she would prove even more passionate in time he did not doubt. By Odin, she was entrancing, even on the verge of tears. Unable to resist, he thumbed lips the hue of a garnet, and now plumped to pouting, evidence of their earlier fevered kissing. “Nay. You have been naught but pleasing to me, Étaín. I have ne’er met a truthsayer before and seek but to understand the whole of it.”

A tremulous smile curved her lips. “Some are repulsed by truthsayers. Some say Satan has a hold o’er them.”

’Twas the preachings of the rabid monks obsessed by their Christian God, he was cert. In the last two winters, the priests he had encountered had become more and more virulent about this Satan.

His sisters had converted to Christianity and he had not objected. But when they urged him to refute his Norse heritage, he made it plain that every man and woman was entitled to worship the deity of their choice.

“I hold no such belief. Forsooth, in my eyes your truthsaying is a boon I had ne’er expected. Who has dared say such about you? About
my
wife?”

She beamed at him and stroked his cheek. “Da banishes any who calls me she-devil. He is a most fierce protector. But I give you my thanks, my lord, for assuring me that you hold no disgust of me.”

Brand choked back a growl. He was her protector now. She belonged to him. He wanted her relying on him, not any other man, not even her father. But he knew better than to voice such a notion. ’Twas time to remind his wife who was her master. He drew her hand to his erection. “Disgust? Nay, Étaín. Feel this.”

Her eyes widened. She dropped her gaze, and her mouth opened. She peeped up at him from under fluttering lashes. “’Tis always full?”

What delight he found in her unfettered, innocent curiosity.

“’Twill remain so for this night. For you will be tender here for a time. Are you sore?” Brand cupped her mound, and the heat she radiated had his prick jerking to attention. Forsooth, she had given him the most memorable climax of his life this eve, and his cock had no right thickening, particularly since he could not take her so soon again.

She blushed all over. “Mayhap. Nay. Aye. ’Tis tender there.”

Guilt assaulted him. He had had every intention of wooing her gently and not taking his pleasure this eve, but her naive passion and vocal declaration of such had fractured his famed control. Her throaty moans and gasps of delight, her insistence on
more,
had scattered his warrior discipline.

“I seek only to please you, my lord.”

Unable to resist the sincerity in her eyes, he feathered kisses across her temples, the tip of her upturned nose, and the cleft in her chin.

She sighed and tilted her head back.

The invitation proved more tempting than any siren’s practiced posing. Clasping her cheeks, he licked the seam of her mouth, and she opened for him at once. He explored the sensuous heat of her, touched his tongue to hers, and retreated.

When she pulled back and arched a brow, he coaxed, “What is good for the goose—”

“—is good for the gander,” she retorted, and grinned at him. “You must close your eyes.”

Happy to obey her command, he lowered his lids and waited.

She was going to kill him.

His stones drew up tight and hard on the first graze of her satin-soft lips to the side of his mouth. He took a deep breath in the hope of hanging onto his self-control, but the action rebounded because he inhaled the arousing aroma of their joining and her blossoming woman’s spice.

When she touched her tongue to his lip and ventured a tentative caress inside, her honey drenched his fingers, and he growled his frustration.

Immediately, she withdrew and pushed away from him. “’Twas wrong?”

“Nay.” He forced his hand away from her quim, strangled the temptation to lick his fingers, and leaned his forehead on hers. “’Twas
too
right. You are tender. ’Tis not the time for loving. I will douse the lamps, and then we can speak and drowse. For there is much to do on the morrow.”

Brand edged off the bed. He saw to the fire, adding more logs and prodding the base until flames whooshed up the flue. Then he pinched the lamp’s flickering wicks and joined Étaín under the bedcovers. He arranged her so she lay on her side with one leg draped over his thigh and tugged at the furs.

After tucking the soft pelts around her shoulder, he blew out a long sigh and kissed the top of her head. Some flowery smell wafted from her hair when he threaded his hand through her curls. She relaxed into him and a whiff from her gentle breath tickled the hair on his chest. He snagged his arm on the curve of her waist and marveled at the feel of her skin, all pillow-soft and smooth.