Beware of rogues with bad intentions ...
Drifa, daughter of the Norse King Thorvald, was being seduced, good and well.
After twenty-four years of resisting matrimony, even when she viewed the good examples of her four married sisters, Drifa was falling in love a little bit. Or in lust, leastways. And after only three sennights of the man launching his game of pursuit.
And what a handsome rogue, he was! Sidroc Guntersson was not much older than she. Perchance only twenty-six. She was of average height for a woman, but he was at least a head taller. With shoulder-length, chestnut hair, dark gray-green eyes framed by thick, dark brown lashes, a full sensuous mouth, and a battle-honed body, he was pure Viking man at his virile best.
He had been wed before, not that that mattered to her. His wife had died. What was odd to her, though, was that he refused to talk about her death. “Later,” he kept saying. “Not now.”
On the one hand, she thought his pursuit of another woman was disrespectful so soon after his wife’s death. On the other hand, some men were like that. If they loved hard enough, they wanted to replace that love with another. Not that he had said all this, but his silence on the subject was telling to Drifa. Who could not be drawn to a man who had loved so much?
“Open your mouth for me, princess,” Sidroc murmured against her lips, which were already swollen from his numerous kisses. Somehow he had managed to find her in a secluded section of her herb garden, where he had her backed up against a stone wall.
“Why?” she asked, which gave him the perfect opening.
His tongue slipped inside and began to stroke her with an in-out motion that mirrored what he was doing down below. With his hands cupping her bottom and his thighs separating her legs, which were dangling off the ground, he undulated his hips against her. It was impossible not to notice the hard rod of his lust as it sought her woman-channel.
“My sap runs thick and hot,” he rasped out. “Quench me, m’lady.”
Oh! Oh! She began to swoon with utter ecstasy, especially when he sucked lightly on her tongue.
So this was what her sisters had sighed about.
So this was all the fuss the maids were always whispering about.
So this was why the gods had created men and women.
How could she have been so ignorant for so long? Was her sap rising, too? Did women even have sap? Was it this man alone, or was the time ripe for her to yield? Oh, good gods! Was she overripe? Nay, she did not think she would yield to just any man. Holy Frigg! What is he doing now?
“Tell me you will be my wife,” he whispered against her ear, which he was also plying with wet-tipped tongue and hot breath. “I. Need. You.”
“Why?” she asked again on a keening wail of torturous pleasure.
With a chuckle, he pressed the evidence of his need against her. If possible, it was bigger ... and harder.
“Why me?” she elaborated.
“Because I want you above all others. And because you want me, too,” he asserted with the usual arrogance of a Norseman.
She was confused. How could she answer when she was beset with so many conflicting emotions? She was unaccustomed to yielding to a man’s attention. In truth, more than two dozen Norsemen, and a few Saxons, had offered for her in the past ten years. None of them had affected her like this. What an understatement! My blood is boiling in my veins. My bones are melting. My brain is one big throbbing mass of sexual fog. “I ... I ...’tis too soon.”
“Nay. Betimes too much thinking clouds a person’s thinking. Betimes a person must jump into a decision. Betimes a woman must wed or go barmy from lack of carnal bliss.”
What? You are making that up. She had no chance to say that, though, because he was kissing her again. And caressing her breasts. And rubbing himself against her nether parts.
A flush of arousal swept over her in waves, and when he asked again, “Please, sweetling, be my wife,” she answered, “Yea, I will.”
Then—oh, praise the gods and all the goddesses!—he used his wicked, wandering hands and his thrusting hips to bring her to a peak that would have had her screaming her woman-joy if his tongue had not been firmly planted in her mouth.
For long moments she lay boneless against his chest, her face nestled in the crook of his neck, panting like a warhorse.
What just happened? Have I died? Was that what he meant by carnal bliss? Best I pretend that this was not a shocking happenstance for me, or he will laugh at me. “That was nice,” she said in as calm a voice as she could muster.
He laughed. The brute just laughed at her. “We will go to your father this eventide,” he told her between quick, nibbling kisses, as he helped her straighten her gunna and the long, open-sided apron worn by most Norse women.
Did I say him yea? I must have, but ... “Mayhap I should approach him first, alone.” And mayhap I need to think this through in some quiet place far from his tempting self.
He shook his head. “Together. We will go together. And we will be wed within a sennight so we may return to Vikstead and present you to my father.”