“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.
Best not to think of what-ifs. What would happen would happen. And soon. Because they should arrive in Miklagard sometime on the morrow.
To give him his due, Sidroc seemed as enthralled with her as she was with him. In fact, more than once he’d murmured in the sex-husky voice she’d come to relish, “What are you doing to me, princess?”
As much as I can, sweetling. As much as I can.
They made love often and every which way but upside down, and every one of them was unique and satisfying to her, even the “normal” ways. But then she no longer knew what was normal and what was not.
He touched her all the time, even in passing. And she was like a kitten that preened and rubbed against him, begging to be petted. Pitiful, really, except she could tell he liked her constant touching, too.
He regaled her with wicked words of what they would do next as they rode their horses ever onward toward Miklagard. Twice they’d had to stop because he’d aroused them both so much. With words!
She’d even ridden her horse naked from the waist up one afternoon to test the theory of the sun fading hennaed skin. She didn’t know if it had done any good, but it did arouse her to the point of lust madness. When they’d stopped to rest, she’d nigh jumped him for sexual favors.
“Are you sleeping?” he whispered now.
“I just woke up,” she lied, and nestled closer into his embrace. It was the way they slept now, wrapped in each other’s arms, as if afraid one or the other would skip off during the night. Or mayhap just because they fit together so well.
“We should be in Miklagard soon,” he told her, not for the first time.
“And then what?”
“Ivar knows the route we will follow into the city. He should connect with us soon and let us know whether it is safe, or not.”
“You expect trouble.”
“I do. Leastways, ’tis best to plan for the worst. Then if naught happens, we have only lost the time spent on caution, not a life.”
She smiled. “That reminds me of the proverbs Rashid used to quote all the time. Rashid was Adam’s healer assistant. ‘Pray to Allah, but ride a fast camel.’ ”
“Precisely.” He squeezed her tighter against his side.