Page 110 of A Tale of Two Vikings

“You are not sleeping.”

“I’m trying.”

“You forgot to lock the door.”

“If you run away again, I will add a week to your term of confinement. And I will put a chain around your neck and take you up to the keep like a trained bear.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me, Esme. I am not in a good mood.”

“You are never in a good mood…lately.”

He muttered some foreign word that she was fairly certain was foul.

A long period of silence followed in which she pondered all her choices. There weren’t many. Finally, with a long sigh, she said, “All right.”

At first, she didn’t think he’d heard her. He still lay with his back to her, the fur pelt pulled up to his waist. But then he rolled over onto his back.

To his credit, he didn’t smirk or snicker or say anything demeaning. He just watched her, waiting for her next move.

Hah! As if I know what move to make next. “A little help would not be amiss,” she said snippily.

His only response to her plea for help was to lift the bed fur on one side for her.

She practically dragged her feet as she walked toward the bed.

His hot eyes raked her nude body as she approached. Her nudity no longer bothered her all that much. She had much bigger problems to cope with. Like how to seduce a Viking. Or what to do with that thick pole standing up midway down his magnificent body.

She slid into the bed beside him and felt his body heat like the blast of a bonfire. He pulled the fur pelt up over them both. Enveloped in that warmth, with his chest against her face and her arm across his waist, she felt an odd lethargy. “Mayhap we could sleep for a while,” she suggested.

He laughed, and his mirth rumbled in his chest under her cheek. “Or mayhap not,” he said.

She ran a palm over his lightly furred chest and over his flat nipples. She thought he must like that, because she felt his heart rate accelerate noticeably. When her hand skimmed lower over his abdomen and belly, his heart practically jumped against her face. He must really like that, she thought, smiling to herself. It was kind of fun discovering she could have an effect on him with just the stroke of a hand. When her hand started to move lower, he grabbed her wrist and growled, “Not yet.”

“What do you want?”

“What do you want, Esme?”

She thought a moment. “Well, I liked the kissing you did before.”

He nodded. “I liked the kissing, too.”

Still on her side, she leaned up over him so that her breasts rested on his chest. And wasn’t that an amazing sensation…her nipples brushing against his chest hairs. She thought she heard Toste groan, but when it wasn’t repeated, she figured she’d been mistaken. First she kissed the cleft in his chin…she just couldn’t resist the temptation. Then she burrowed her fingers in his silky hair to hold him in place—not that he was moving at all—shifted her lips over his and tried to find the right position. At one point, she admitted, “Your breath doesn’t really smell like goat.”

He smiled against her mouth. “I know.” Then, “You smell like roses.”

And she said, “I know.”

Quite the conversationalists, they were. More like two dunderheads.

Mostly he let her fumble her way through the kissing process till she slid her tongue inside his mouth. He opened wider for her, sucked on her tongue and made low masculine sounds of appreciation in his throat. When he reciprocated with his tongue in her mouth, she did the same. Esme ever was a good pupil. And she made low feminine sounds of appreciation in her throat.

She wasn’t sure what to do next, except she realized belatedly that she’d been unconsciously rubbing her breasts back and forth across his chest, abrading the nipples into hard pebbles which ached for…something.

He noticed the direction of her gaze and took her by the waist, lifting her so that she lay on top of him, her belly on his abdomen, her thighs spread on either side of his hips, her breasts hanging over his face. “Give it to me,” he asked huskily.

At first, she did not understand his meaning, but he looked pointedly at her breasts, and she knew. It was an oddly surrendering thing to do, but Esme lifted her breast from underneath, then lowered herself till the nipple pressed against his mouth. Without warning, he began to suckle her, wet and hard in an unending rhythm. She tried to jerk back at the incredible ripples of torturous pleasure he set off in her body, but he had one hand on the back of her waist and the other on her nape, holding her firmly in position. While he continued to alternately lave and suckle her, he moved the hand at her waist to the other breast, which he fondled unmercifully. Then he switched breasts. There seemed to be a direct erotic thread between the tips of her breasts and her nether region. Without thinking, she began to buck her hips against him, trying instinctively to rub that place between her legs which throbbed and throbbed.