The Norse King’s Daughter (24 page)

She smacked his hands away, and he retaliated by pinning both hands to her sides so he could look to his heart’s content, which should be a good long time.

“As I was saying, you must understand that men see things differently than women. We like to look, and while there are so many bits on a woman’s body that are a delight to the male eyes, these”—he waved a hand at her red-tipped breasts—“are like flags waving at a man, saying, ‘Look at me. Touch me. Taste me.’ ”

“That is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard. Especially about my ridiculous breasts. Anyhow, I thought we decided not to do this anymore.”

What? Look at red nipples?
Best he check her meaning. “This?”

“Sex.”

Think quick, Sidroc.
“Uh.”

“I am saving myself.”

Oh, good gods!
“I have news for you princess, you have nothing to save. You already lost it to me.”
I should feel guilty. Do I feel guilty? Not even a little, after what she has taken from me. But I am not going to think about that now.

“I’m not talking about my maidenhead, you lout, and it is not nice of you to remind me of that misstep of mine.”

“Misstep?” he hooted.

“Shhh. You will wake the cows and horses.”

And I should care about that . . . why?

“Stop staring at my breasts.”

Are you gone barmy, princess? How could I not look at your breasts? ’Tis like placing a roast boar in front of a starving man. Um, mayhap I won’t share that with her.
Reluctantly he raised his eyes to her face. It did no good. He still had the image in his head. “If not your virginity, what is it you are saving? And for whom?”

“I have decided that lovemaking is too special for lust-sex.”

“Lust-sex?”
Mayhap I am the one gone barmy.

“Yea, lust-sex, as compared to love-sex.”

Now she is an expert on sex?

“Sex is best saved for a man and woman who care about each other and are either married or about to be married.”

That woman refrain! ’Tis the monks’ fault. We ne’er should have allowed the monks into the Norselands.

“Ianthe and I discussed it and we both came to that conclusion.”

I am going to kill Ianthe. After about a hundred bouts of lovemaking, Ianthe is going to turn into a nun. And turn Drifa along with her. I do not think so!

“Sex without caring is like a bath without soap.”

Huh?
“I care,” he said.

“Liar,” she retorted.

“Anyhow, I am the one who said we would end our sex deal.”
What? Now I am talking myself out of sex?

“And?”

I regained my sanity.
“I changed my mind.”

“When was that?”

I cannot believe this. She is naked. I am naked. And we are discussing when we had a particular conversation. Lack of sex must be affecting my brain.
“When you sat bouncing on my lap for three days, causing me to have a continuous enthusiasm for you.”

“That was not me bouncing. It was the camel.”

He shrugged.
Now we will converse about camels?

“I do not appreciate lying here naked whilst you ogle me.”

I am appreciating it, though. Very much.
“If we are not going to tup, I must get my pleasures in small ways. Can I taste?”

“Taste what?” she asked dubiously.

“Your nipples.”
But other body parts might appease my appetite, too.

“Absolutely not.”

“Does it wash off?”

“Do you think I would still look like this if it could be washed off? Stop grinning.”

“Mayhap you should let me try washing it off for you. My hands are calloused, and with some soft soap, I might be able to wear off some of the color.”
Or stir your ardor.

She actually seemed to consider the suggestion for a second, and he suspected she might be getting aroused. A little bit. “Actually, one of Bahir’s concubines told me that a mixture of olive oil and salt might fade the color.”

“See. Calloused hands with my skin’s oil and saltiness. Perfect.” He released his hold on her arms, which he still held to her sides, and reached for her breasts.

She used the opportunity to duck under him and roll to her stomach, then stand. Her
gunna
was sliding over her head before he could react. The witch was enjoying the chase, immensely.

In truth, he was, too.

“There is one other way that the color can fade,” she told him with a mischievous grin. “If I lie outside with my bare breasts exposed, the sunlight might leach out the color.”

Oh, the wicked idea you stir in my brain, princess. Wicked, wicked, wicked!
“A great idea,” he concluded with as serious an expression as he could muster on his face. “You can ride naked on your horse on the morrow, and then when we stop to rest, I will rub olive oil and salt on them, just to make sure we have covered all remedies.”

“Are you always this lecherous?” She was staring at his cockstand.

“Only around you.”
And
that was the gods’ truth.

“Blow out the torch so I can go back to sleep. That way you won’t be able to see my ridiculous breasts, and your undangly part can go back to being dangly again.”

“I have news for your princess, my undangliness is going nowhere.”
Without your help.
He stood to do her bidding and noticed her staring not just at his cockstand, but at his rear end, as well. And she liked what she saw.

Once he lay down beside her again in the pitch black, he said, “See, I can still see your flower buds in my head. I have mind pictures of you wearing the harem girl garment I bought for you with your red flower buds showing through the sheer fabric. Then I have mind pictures of your hennaed nipples growing even bigger and redder with the nipple rings. And then, whoa! I have this most scandalous mind picture of you—”

“Stop! Enough with the mind pictures!” She rolled over on her side, turning away from him. The tip of his dangler was touching the tip of her buttock.

Oh joy!

But then she ruined the mood, or enhanced the mood, depending on one’s perspective, when she muttered, “Bloody hell! Now I have mind pictures, too.”

“Of your nipples?”

“Nay, not of my nipples, you idiot. Of me riding a horse naked.”

He put the same mind picture in his head and was musing over it, erotically, when she added something else.

“And the horse is you.”

He groaned aloud.

He would never sleep tonight. Is this what they meant by that old saying, “Impaled on his own lance”?

Chapter Twenty-three

It wasn’t Appomattox, but it was a surrender . . .

D
rifa hadn’t slept much at all the night before, and by the sounds of Sidroc’s grumbly mood, he hadn’t, either. He started picking on her as soon as they arrived at the stable where coins were being paid for the horses, above the trade value of the camels.

“What in the name of all the gods and goddesses are you doing now?” he bellowed, nigh knocking her to the ground with surprise.

“What does it look like I’m doing, lackwit?”

“Shoveling camel shit into a leather bag?”

“Yea. I am taking it back to the Norselands with me. The gardener at the Imperial Palace told me it makes a wonderful plant fertilizer.”

Sidroc was standing, hands braced on his hips, staring at her as if she were demented. “Do you honestly think I am going to allow you to carry shit in a bag for the two or three days it will take us to return to the city?”

“Do you honestly think you can allow or disallow me to do anything? It’s not like I’m carrying it on your horse anyway.”

He shook his head as if she were hopeless while she continued to shovel up the piles. She was holding her breath as she worked; so, at first, she didn’t hear what he was saying. Then she saw him handing her some garments.

“These should fit you. They belonged to the stable master’s son.”

“Boys’ clothing? For me?”

He nodded. “Disguise yourself as best you can. Wear the cap, too, and tuck all your hair under it. Try not to pucker your lips in that flirty way of yours.”

She ignored the flirty-mouth remark and took the items he handed her. “Dost think it necessary?”

“Why take chances? At some point we will be followed, for a certainty. Let us just hope we make better time than they do.”

She couldn’t argue with that, and so a short time later she emerged from the bushes, no longer Drifa, but a slim boyling in tunic and
braies
.

“Drifa!” Sidroc exclaimed on first seeing her.

“Not Drifa. My new name is Askell. I always liked that name.”

“Pfff! More like Ass-kill. That would be more appropriate for our situation.”

She just smiled at his mispronunciation and showed him all sides of the new attire.

He groaned, which was what she’d intended, knowing how tight the
braies
were across her buttocks. He deserved the torture after what he’d put her through the night before with his “mind pictures.” This morning, too, truth be told. Every time he shot her one of his hot glances, she felt the heat all the way down to her bones. That must be why she gave her bottom an extra wiggle as she walked away from him.

His muttered curse was her reward.

They rode steadily that day, avoiding villages or farmsteads because Sidroc said, and she agreed, that the less notice they garnered, the better. They stopped only occasionally to water and graze the horses, and eat their own cold repasts. The smoked snake was long gone, thank the gods! Now they had slices of mutton, hard cheese, and bread, which Stamos and Vera had given them on their departure this morning from the farmstead, washed down by the cool water of a stream cupped in their hands.

The entire day—and this was what caused her tension and abetted her exhaustion—attraction sizzled between the two of them. And it went both ways, she knew it did.

He would glance her way as they cantered side by side, and her nipples would harden.

She glanced his way and saw the bulge betwixt his thighs, which seemed to be always present.

When she bent over to get a drink, she noticed his eyes riveted on her bottom.

When he bent over to get a drink, her eyes latched on to his bottom.

He licked the excess water from his lips, and she imagined those lips in other places.

When she put her hand to the small of her back and stretched her aching muscles, he watched her with what could only be described as hunger.

She would be hair-tearing barmy by nightfall if she didn’t do something. So, as they rode side by side through the mountain path, she tried to divert herself with conversation. “Tell me about your plans,” she urged. “Oh, not what you intend for Runa. What were your plans when you decided to leave the Varangian Guard, before you knew about your daughter?”

“Finn and I had both grown tired of Byzantium. The endless fighting in a war that was not our own. The climate. Yea, we actually yearned for deep snow and blistering cold on occasion. And it was too soft a life for a Norseman.”

“And what did you decide was preferable?”

“Well, when I came to you for marriage, I was without home or coin, my home and belongings having burned to the ground the season before that. My situation is different now. I plan to settle in my own home.”

“In the Orkneys? Is that not the site you mentioned one time?”

“Nay. I had considered the Orkneys, and whilst many Norsemen live there, I prefer the Norselands. Nowhere near my father, but still in my homeland. And that is all I will say on the subject. So do not consider asking how my daughter fits into that picture.” She could tell that his inadvertent use of the word
picture
brought forth thoughts of those other “mind pictures” they had discussed yestereve. Thus he asked his own questions, to divert their already aroused attentions. “Why have you ne’er married?”

She shrugged. “I always intended to, but every time a man offered for me, I found some reason to decline. And they were not all bad, either, though some of the specimens my father paraded before me would make the most desperate maiden cringe.”

“And you were not desperate.”

As you were when you proposed to me?
“Not even when you offered for me.”

“Why did you accept me, then?”

How much of the truth can I tell him? How much of my emotions can I spill like fallen blood?
She hesitated. They were entering dangerous territory. Dangerous for her, leastways. “I thought you were a man I could love.”

“And you thought I loved you?” The tone of his voice was incredulous and, yea, insulting. But honest, she had to give him that.

“I assumed you had a warm regard for me and hoped that it could perchance grow into love, over time. Foolish of me, wasn’t it?”
Do not laugh. Oh please, do not laugh.

After a long pause, he said, “Not so foolish. My time constraint for regaining my daughter was too desperate for me to think of much else, but methinks my attraction to you, even then, could have grown into something more.” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

Drifa didn’t know whether to be dismayed or hopeful.

He grinned at her then. “You said something else when I rescued you. Not just about hennaed flower buds. You mentioned marble phalluses. Like the ones in the marketplace?”

“Just like,” she said with an air of disgust.

“What did you do with them?”

“Not a thing, but I would have been forced to if I’d remained there much longer. Mainly they were used for teaching tools.”

“Phalluses for teaching tools? Now I am really intrigued.”

“Don’t be. ’Tis not what you are thinking.”

“How do you know what I am thinking?”

“Hah! I’ve known what you were thinking, all day long. It does not take an experienced harem houri to know what has been on your mind.”

“Your mind, too, m’lady. Do not place all the blame on me.”

And so they rode, mostly in silence, toward their destination.

Drifa was in torture. The coarse material of her tunic abraded her nipples. The undulations of the horse between her thighs caused her woman-dew to weep. Sidroc’s smoldering gaze gave her ideas . . . erotic ideas.

By the time they stopped for the night in a secluded clearing near a stream, Drifa was so aroused she could scarce stand. She glanced over at Sidroc, whose glowering demeanor told her, without her asking, that he was in a similar condition.

She moaned.

He groaned.

And before she could say, “I yield,” she was lifted and braced against a tree trunk with her legs wrapped around his waist. He kissed her voraciously, and she met him with wet, openmouthed kisses of her own.

At one point he drew his head back and stared at her through passion-glazed gray eyes. And all he said was “I care.”

That was enough.

It was the Perfect Storm . . .

Sidroc was shocked at the intensity of his arousal.

He’d been aboard a longship one time during a violent sea storm that buffeted the boat and all the seamen about like specks of dust. That’s how he felt now. A fleck of lust-dust on the wind. Totally under the control of an erotic storm, unable to fight its power. Uninterested in fighting it, truth to tell.

“Should we lie down?” he gasped between kisses.

“Can’t wait,” she gasped back, and surprised the spit out of him by beginning to unlace his
braies
.

That works for me.
He was a quick learner and began to unlace her
braies
at the same time.

Without any foresport, he surged up into her wet channel and pounded her against the tree. She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she was rubbing her breasts back and forth across his chest and making keening sounds of satisfaction.

For a moment Sidroc rested, in her body to the hilt, his ballocks touching her body. He felt the vise of her slick glove shift to accommodate his size and seize at him, as if to keep him inside. He could swear he grew even more.

Sidroc had been with more women in his thirty and one years than he could recount. He’d engaged in some interesting exercises with a few of them, way beyond what Ianthe, or Drifa, would call perverted. But this . . . this act of bliss with Drifa . . . was like nothing he’d ever experienced.

Even though it was his cock plundering her narrow sheath, every part of his body was involved, from his ringing ears to his tingling toes. He could no more have stopped swiving her than he could have stopped breathing.

In the end, he roared out his peaking in harmony with Drifa’s sweet screams of ecstasy.

Well, that was short and sweet.

And belatedly realized that he’d forgotten to withdraw at the last moment.

And possibly disastrous.

Was this how he was to be trapped into matrimony? Was this something Drifa had planned? Nay, no one in the world could have planned something this spontaneous.

Carefully he eased himself out of her and lowered her legs until she could stand. She stared at him dazedly. “Was that another perversion?”

“Nay, Drifa, that was normal sex. Almost boring.”

Her eyes widened. “Were you bored?”

“Hardly. More like so interested my eyeballs might have been rolling back in my head.”

She smiled then. “Good. I was worried that I would only like perverted sex.”

He could swear his heart expanded as he smiled at her. Was there anything better than a woman who could make a man smile during sex?

“Can we do it again?”

Mayhap he’d smiled too soon.

Stepping back from her, he noted both of their
braies
pooled at their feet, as if they were overeager youthlings. He toed off first one, then the other of his half boots, and shrugged out of his
braies
. Then he took a blanket off his horse and shook it out on the ground.

“You. Blanket. Naked. Now.”

He half expected that she would balk at his order. But instead she licked her kiss-swollen lips, cast him a sultry look from slanted eyes, and said to him, “You. Blanket. Naked. Now.”

Gods help me. I think I am falling in love. A little.

A short time later, after Drifa demonstrated something to him that the harem ladies had been taught about phalluses, he
knew
he was falling in love. A little. Milking the Tree, indeed! What man wouldn’t develop an attachment to a woman who could do
that
? He couldn’t wait to see what she would do next. Wait. It was his turn to surprise her.

“Driiiifffaaa,” he drawled out.

She was lying sprawled on her back, arms thrown over her head, legs spread. She claimed that he’d depleted her. Hah! She was the one who’d depleted him; he’d only returned the favor.

She slitted her eyes at him. “What?”

“Have you ever heard of Riding the Rolling Log?”

Here comes a total eclipse of her heart . . .

Sidroc had told Drifa at one time that she would be his love thrall, but she never realized that she would enter that thralldom so willingly. After two days and nights of lovemaking, Drifa was good and truly enthralled by the man.

And she didn’t dare tell him. One word of love and he would be running off to the horizon. With her daughter. Rather, his daughter. Leastways that’s what she feared. Even now that they’d been so intimate, the future loomed before Drifa. Uncertain. Frightening. Empty. Dark.