Gayle Eden (9 page)

“Illara…”

She heard her name rumble from him, but her body felt such pleasure and such heat that she welcomed when his mouth found her. She rubbed against his tongue and lips that chaffed there.

“Pagan.” The tightening gathered, and for a moment, her eyes opened wide, her body stilling.

Pagan arose to kiss her, more scented with her musk, more forceful with his kiss. He dragged his lips to her ear and whispered, “Do not fear it, Illara. It is your pleasure.”

He bit softly at each nipple, suckled, and went back to her sex. His touch and laving harder and faster, until Illara cried out, falling back while tremors raced from head to toe, a shower of warm pleasure emanating through her body.

Chapter Four

Illara lay under the covers later, where he had placed her. She was on her side and Pagan sat up against the scrolled headboard, dressed still, all save his boots. Her fingers brushed idly at the seam on his breeches by the thigh. If the climax were not enough on its own, her sex still contracted and throbbed slightly with arousal.

She knew Pagan was aroused, knew it because of his scent and heat, and because after he had laved her sex during, and dipped his tongue deep into her, he had slid her up in the bed, covered her and sat with his back to her, his body slightly bent—and fought to steady his breathing.

Coming out of the fog, she had asked him to lie beside her, experiencing an odd need to be held. His fingers brushed through her hair now, but she could feel the tight waves of tension in him. She eased her hand atop his thigh feeling the contours of muscles, shaping her fingers to it. Illara rubbed from knee to groin, noting that Pagan had become motionless, his hand in her hair had stilled.

Carefully she caressed closer to the ties on his groin. She felt the warmth, an amazing heat from him, and arched her neck to look up at him. The hooded face, more in shadow, did not hide the glow in his gaze, half-shuttered but intense. Holding that stare, she palmed the laces, moving up and over both sides, feeling the length and steel hardness of his sex.

“I have seen men. I have never touched. I would like to make you experience and feel as pleasured as I feel.”

His lips tensed before Pagan wet them, and his hand covered hers for a moment. His voice sounded darker, raspier, when he said, “I’ve never had a woman touch me.”

She stilled and rose to her elbow. “Never?”

“Nay.”

“You--You are untouched--completely?” She was stunned.

“Aye.”

A frown rippled across her brow. “How did you know—”

“I watched.”

Her face heated. “Watched whom?”

“Lovers,” Pagan supplied and massaged her palm against him. “There’s nothing covered when it comes to females who follow their husbands into camp. And less hidden when men bring….purchased--”

“Whores?”

“Aye.” He grunted.

“And you just…stood and watched?”

“Nay. Not precisely. Certain things I saw through tents, shadows. Others I was on my camp bed not a foot away. I heard a young knight once, with his bride, who was older. She told him boldly where and how to touch her.”

“I see.” Illara was fascinated by that. She felt a tremble in him, a complete rigidity of muscle that had tightened. “And you did nothing.”

“I masturbated.”

She bit her lip.

“Eased my own loins,” Pagan offered, and rubbed her hand more rhythmically over his sex.

“The kissing?”

“Instinct. And witnessing kisses.”

She said worriedly, “Now I fear I shall do something wrong.”

Pagan laughed a bit strained. “Nay. That cannot happen. If your hand touches my flesh at all, it will likely have my seed spewing.”

She raised higher, her shoulder against his and her body more toward him. “You must guide me through this.” Her fingers moved from his and began undoing laces.

He turned his head and bent to kiss her, and took the task from her, leaving her hand on his thigh as he widened the gap. His touch on her head kept her face toward him. He took her hand again and brought it to his sex. Pagan shuddered and lost his breath a moment, his eyes closing.

Illara liked the feel of it, the hot silk, and smoothness. Her fingers clutched him lightly and moved down, her hand feeling the fluffy hair at the base, then up to the head, where sticky moisture met her fingers. She watched his eyes open again.

“Is this—”

“Aye.” His hand covered hers and Pagan smoothed it up and down leisurely.

She could feel his heart beat jarring him, and sense his tension gathering.

Suddenly he kissed her, his tongue deep and body convulsing. His hand over hers held tighter and worked over the lubricated head. The scent of his seed strongly followed.

When Pagan lifted from the kiss, he fell back breathing intense and heavy.

She eased up, her hand was loosed, and Illara left the bed to wash her hands. Kneeling by the taps in the bathing room, she was soon joined by him as Pagan wet one of the cloths and cleaned himself.

Back in the solar, she lay in the bed and when Pagan entered, asked, “Will you not trust me enough to disrobe?”

“It is not a matter of trust.” Pagan sat on the side of the bed. “There is very little of me, Illara, that is not scarred, either by flogging or the fire. Aside from marring from battles, it is not a body to expose to a wife.”

“I will not look,” she promised.

He stared at her clearly torn.

“Snuff the candles out.”

Pagan sighed, arose, and did so, but avoided the firelight. He stood as a shadow beside the bed and began removing his clothing.

Though only a dark outline she was stirred by his powerful height and frame, and when he slid into the bed, warmed by his heat.

“Come close.”

“Illara—”

“Come, my beast.” She nestled herself against him. “Your body is so balmy, so hard and yet silken.” Her hand went down his arm, and yes, she felt scars and indentions. Illara knew Pagan was tense, but she smoothed her hand over his collarbone and down to his nipple. There she rubbed with her thumb.

“Do you want more this night?”

“Aye.”

“To have your sex inside of me?”

He groaned and gathered her against him, his heart pounding under the slab of chest muscle. Pagan murmured, “Will you consent to that?”

“Yes. I feel…incomplete.”

His large frame vibrated and his hand went down her spine and to her buttocks. There he felt them, their firm roundness; afterward Pagan caressed between and lower, touching her damp sex.

Illara found herself turned on her back and Pagan was leaning over her. His kisses were sensual and explicit. His hands moved to her breast and massaged, rubbed, next his fingers were lightly rolling her nipples.

Pagan slid down and suckled them, each a long time, while his hands felt her body. She glided hers where she could reach, enjoying his shape, and soon ignoring the raised or indented scars. There were so many, some wide and long so that her stomach cinched thinking of the pain it must have caused.

He kissed her navel, her mons, and licked between the lips until finally parting her legs. Moving his body between them, he held her hips and only rubbed the head of his sex there, letting it enter her and bringing it out.

Stirred, she arched her hips, holding to his forearms. “More please more.”

Pagan tensely began to give her more, stretching and filling her, stopping when she hissed, though his body trembled.

She raised her knees higher and adjusted, and as he sank to the hilt, Illara felt a pain even without her veil of flesh.

“Pain?”

“Aye. I am sorry--”

Pagan eased out and his large palms went up to cup her head before he eased in again. Again going in inches. He did that until Illara bit at the pad of his hand and whispered, “Pleasure.”

Though it gave him permission, he still stayed shallow with his strokes. He summoned more wetness from her, and felt the ease of her muscles. She was burning and snug.

Pagan was past aroused, but it was pleasure all the same to be in her an inch or more, to be lying between her silken legs and feeling her body under his, her excited breath fanning his hand.

She moved subtly, her body letting him know when it sought more and though it was likely the slowest consummation on earth, at the end—he was fully moving in and out, and their strident breathing matched. Her thighs held him and hips arched up. Pagan rode her silken heat, stroked and being stroked with honey warmed silk inside her sex, until a climax caught him by surprise.

Breathing inflexible into the pillow, he held his weight still and rasped, “I will learn to control that.”

Her laughter was soft and faint. “I thought it rather pleasant. It certainly soothed any sore places.”

Groaning again because he knew she still vibrated with need. He would be hard in again shortly—hard all night, which she was not ready for. Pagan rolled off her and sat up, scooping her up with him and making it to the bathing chamber. He separated from her on one end, and cleaned himself in the shadows.

Sitting there a moment on the ledge, Pagan said, “If I lay with you, I will seek your body more than you are prepared for.”

She glanced his way. “But you will return…after I am rested. I will grow more accustomed.”

“Aye. Now that I have tasted you, I fear that my appetite for you will never be sated.”

She bit her lip, a half smile behind it that was part shy, part tempter. “Goodnight, my beast.” She whispered finally then padded to the solar.

Pagan sat there moments more and when he returned for his clothing, she was asleep. He gazed at her, thinking that if anything could destroy him—this woman could. He had breathed her, drank her, suckled, and sank his sex into her body. There was nothing he had done or felt, that he did not want to feel and taste and touch, all over again.

Dressed, he made his way through the deeper snow to the tower. Once there, Pagan stripped and sat on his bed, his elbows on his thighs as he peeled off the mask. Dropping it on the floor, he rubbed his face with his hands and then stared at the stone with them buried in his hair. He must finish it, he would. Yet, he wanted nothing more than to be back there, in bed with his wife.

Lying back, Pagan let his hands fall lax. He stared at the ceiling. Sex was heady and alluring. Not unlike battle and competition, it made his body and mind elevate to some beyond thoughts plane. Illara was color, sun, and silk, wet, warm, and sensual. He recognized parts of himself that wanted to feel the soothe of her touch, to bask in her giving, and the part that wanted to thrust and thrust deeper and find forgetfulness in it.

There was a part of him that was beast, and part of him that was lord—but he needed to hold onto the past long enough to finish it. He would not stop until he’d come full circle.

Sometime, deep in the night, Pagan lay awake, listening to the ghosts about him, voices and energies, spirits of those he had loved.

Baron Ryngild, a man who was only twenty when he betrayed Eadwyn by forging his name on documents that plotted a rebellion, had challenged him. Ryngild made his riches in wars and razzed his neighbors and fancied himself a man of import. He was oft at the palace and involved in intrigues. At one of the Tourney’s last year, he had challenged whom he called the Black Knight, and it seemed like the opportunity that Pagan had been waiting for. He meant more than to unseat the man. With others, an insult or mockery oft led to antagonism and when they were in battle, oft they found themselves facing him. He saw their fear and he was brutal, just short of death. He wanted them to live, to lose their pride and their wealth, to die forgotten.

A cold wind howled through the tower. Pagan thought of Randulf, waiting so long to deliver his final blows and to call into account those whose castles and lands and wealth he owned. He could retire the legend—when he abased Ryngild, and when he unseated three knights who were sons of his enemies. He wanted to leave that last Tourney ground with the blows still jarring his arm, and the riche prizes weighting him down. If he could have blood too, so much the better.

* * * *

Illara had not meant for her husband to avoid her all together, but for the next week she only saw Beroun at her practice. She honed her skill and found a likable companion in the young man. He was witty and once he got past the fact she was a woman, and his mistress, a worthy challenge.

On the fifth day, it was also Beroun who went to the stables and introduced her to her new mount. A dark brown gelding that flew like the wind when Illara was on its back.

They rode the parameters of the castle walls, plowing through snow and slush. She laughed at nothing but the freedom of it, at one point glancing at the gatehouse to see the shape she recognized as her husband.

Illara did not grow fretful until the seventh day. Lylie had said something about the Master leaving in a week and Illara was baffled, not knowing if something she had done in their intimacy had caused the absence.

She began to wonder if he had told her what she wanted to hear, or perhaps he thought he had done her damage. Her body was fine, a good soak and soothing herbs and oils and she was without soreness. Her dreams however were vivid and she woke more than once wet and aching for his kiss and touch.