Chapter 11
He didn’t need to be told twice.
Brandr captured her face, palms on her cheeks, and slowly brought her mouth to his. Her soft lips molded to his, fitting together so perfectly there was no space, no break in the seal between them.
He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, tasting her. She was sweet, a sip of nectar. Succulent, juicy, and moist as the exotic pomegranate he’d tried in the South. Salty, a chilling reminder of the sea and the jagged rocks she had narrowly escaped.
When her lips parted, he drank more deeply of her, determined to push aside all thought of those horrible things that might have been. His tongue sought hers with feverish desperation.
Without breaking their kiss, he rolled so they lay side by side. He hitched a leg over hers, keeping her close, claiming her. Her eyes were shut, but Brandr kept his open so he could watch her.
So he wouldn’t lose her.
Her dark lashes were silky crescents on her cheeks. Her brows drew together in longing.
Her lips parted wider, and she sucked the breath from his body. Then she refilled him with her own. Brandr was used to taking the lead with a woman, but Katla seemed to want to wrestle him for control, even now.
He wasn’t the least surprised. She wouldn’t be Katla otherwise.
She kissed him fiercely, as if it were the last thing she’d ever do.
Or maybe the first thing.
A brush with death made a body feel reborn. He’d stared down that cold specter a few times himself and recognized the vibrant rush of lust that followed. He heard his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, felt Katla’s throbbing against his chest. The echoing rhythm of blood surged in his stiff cock.
Katla pressed herself against him, rocking her pelvis. She felt it too—the drumbeat of life pulsing between them. She groaned into his mouth.
She was no longer the acknowledged head of her people, bowed by her burden and stiff under the mantle of leadership. She was only herself. Unfettered, passionate, free of all constraints.
Alive.
He abandoned her mouth to press hot kisses down her neck to the open collar of her thin underdress. Her skin was tender, and he barely restrained himself from sucking a bit between his teeth and giving her a love bite. He didn’t want to chance anything that might cause her to stop him.
She smelled of cedar and warm woman. Her scent made him ache so badly, the line between pleasure and pain started to blur. He couldn’t find enough bare skin to ease his throbbing need.
Her hands roamed over him, pulling up the hem of his tunic and slipping beneath it to smooth her palms over his abdomen and chest. His nipple tightened when she raked a nail around one.
He almost sat up and yanked off the garment to give her unimpeded access, but he feared she’d come to her senses and call a halt if he stopped kissing her.
In a one-handed feat of dexterity, he unhooked her left brooch and pulled down that side of her overtunic. He cupped her breast through the linen underdress and thrummed her nipple. It strained toward him beneath the thin layer of fabric. He covered it with his mouth and sucked, linen and all.
She murmured something. He couldn’t make out the words, but they sounded earthy, needy, full of deep hunger. When he nipped the tender flesh, she cried out his name.
It was a surrender.
He released her nipple. It showed clearly through the damp underdress, the wet fabric nearly transparent. He pressed another kiss to the fabric, and she arched into his mouth.
Her bare skin would be sweeter, but he didn’t dare try to undress her completely. Not here. Not if it might lead her to start thinking again instead of feeling.
He kissed back up her neck and captured her mouth again. This time, she didn’t fight him for control of the kiss. He rolled her onto her back and ravaged her lips. He made love to her mouth, plunging his tongue in and out.
Would her body receive him as warmly and with as much luxuriant wetness?
It was time to find out.
***
Brandr’s hand was on her breast again, teasing her through the wet linen. She ached when he rolled the taut bud between his thumb and forefinger.
She wanted to climb inside his tunic and feel the heat of rock-solid chest against her damp breast.
And his kiss! Skalds sang of the nine worlds of creation. Of all of them, only smoldering Muspel was said to be a place full of fire. Brandr’s kiss was a molten world of its own.
He consumed her. Every place his mouth touched, he branded her. He turned her insides all warm and liquid with nothing more than his lips, teeth, and tongue.
His beard and mustache stubble had grown enough to be soft, yet it was still short enough to prickle her cheeks and chin. She ran her hand over his sleek head. It was like stroking a selkie.
She gave in to the downward pull in her groin.
A heaviness gathered between her legs, a throbbing, aching mass.
When she felt the breeze slip up under her skirts, she knew he was rucking up her hem, sliding his fingertips from her calf, over her knee, and up her thigh.
She propped up one knee to give him easier access to the tender skin of her inner thigh.
He skimmed over her, brushing the small hairs over her sex and then trailing down her other leg. She moaned into his mouth in frustration.
His hand stroked her again, and this time she lifted herself into his questing fingers, but he moved on once more, teasing and circling.
She longed for his intimate touch. She was near to begging for it.
She reached for him, rubbing his hard shaft through his trousers, and this time, he groaned.
The next time his hand passed over her, his skillful fingers slipped into her soft folds. He massaged the lips of her sex and circled her opening until she squirmed for him to slip a finger into her.
Two fingers.
The yawning emptiness was still there. She wanted more. Needed more.
Slick with her own wetness, Brandr’s fingers glided with ease to her most sensitive spot, but she didn’t break off their kiss. She couldn’t get enough of the man’s mouth. Tendrils of bliss radiated through her.
The world started spinning. She tore her mouth from his kiss to catch her breath, hoping for a slice of sanity. But she fell into Brandr’s amber eyes instead.
She gasped a lungful of sweet air. The musky perfume of her arousal mingled with the crisp sea air and thick pine. She swallowed hard but couldn’t look away from him as he continued to drive her to aching fury.
He made soft sounds of encouragement. She knew he was speaking to her, but her mind refused to make sense of his words. Her whole world spiraled down to the heat, the friction, the aching need between her legs.
And the throbbing emptiness of her womb.
“Please,” she whispered as a single tear slid into her hairline and down to her ear. The man had reduced her to pleading, but she could feel no shame over it. Want knew no shame. “I need…”
“What do you need, Katla?” His voice rumbled over her, a wave of masculine sound. All that was feminine in her shivered in its wake.
“You.”
She groped for him again, and this time, her fingers found the drawstring at his waist. He helped her pull down his trousers.
Then he moved into position between her legs.
He braced himself on his elbows to spare her from the full brunt of his weight. He needn’t have bothered. She wanted to feel him.
All of him.
He leaned down to kiss her again. The tip of him teased her entrance.
She gasped at the contact, longing to be filled. Ached for his thick, long length inside her.
He slid into her in one slow stroke, penetrating her so deeply her breath caught in her throat. The emptiness retreated, but the ache remained.
Then he began to move.
She rocked with him, rising to meet his slow thrusts with an undulating roll of her hips. When he fully sheathed himself in her, his lips parted, and she recognized bliss on his face. Each time he pulled out, his brows drew together, as if he were bereft at nearly severing their deep connection.
Her insides tightened, coiled. A knot with no end, no way to untangle itself.
Brandr picked up speed, and each time he drove into her, the pressure on her sensitive spot made her cry out a little, sobbing for more.
Then when she thought she couldn’t be tied in any tighter a cluster of frayed ends, it was as if someone tugged the right thread, and she unraveled like a spool of yarn bounding across the longhouse floor. Her inner walls clenched.
He stopped moving, sheathed to his balls, while she spasmed around him. Her limbs shook, and her body bucked with the force of her release. She drew a shuddering breath as her womb constricted once more.
When she subsided, he gave one more slow thrust. A low growl sounded from the back of his throat, and she felt him erupt in hot pulses inside her.
He rocked his hips a couple times as he finished, and then his full weight settled on her. He laid his forehead on the mossy ground beside her head, close enough that his stubbled cheek tickled her ear.
Brandr lay there panting for a few heartbeats while Katla tried to recover her breath as well.
Then he started to rise.
“No, don’t,” she said, wrapping her arms and legs around him. It felt so wonderful to hold him inside her. She couldn’t bear to be empty again so soon.
He laid his head back down, obviously content to remain where he was, still joined with her.
Katla stroked his head and neck, reveling in their deep connection.
She smoothed her hands down the rough tunic covering his back.
It would have been lovely to have touched his bare skin, glorious to feel it against hers, but the act had been so instinctive, so spontaneous, they were both still almost fully clothed.
“I wish you had taken this off,” she said. Now that her mind was functioning again, she could actually form intelligible sentences. Osvald had ridden her hard on occasion, but he never reduced her to such incoherent need.
He turned his head to nuzzle her ear. “I didn’t want to do anything that might give you a chance to change your mind.” She could hear his grin.
It was hard not to smile a bit in return. How could he know her so well already? She’d never felt so sated, never had such a shattering release. If Brandr took advantage of a momentary weakness, she realized she didn’t care a whit.
Then with the benefit of a clear head, she thought about it for a moment.
She’d taken pleasure with her thrall. He’d reduced her to senseless, blind need. This had the potential to change matters between them, to tilt the balance of power in his favor.
But perhaps not as much as if he were a freeman. She was still his mistress, after all. Still in control.
And she needed to be seen to be in control.
He rose up on his elbows and grinned down at her. “I’d like you a good deal less dressed too. Mayhap next time we’ll pick a place where that’s possible.”
“Next time?” she said as he slipped out of her. “What makes you think there’ll be a next time?”
He arched a brow at her. “Because you and I both liked that. A lot.”
“You presume too much.” She pressed against his chest, but he didn’t budge. “Let me up.”
His smile faded. “Did I hurt you? What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “But we’ve been gone too long with naught to show for the time wasted. We need to get back.”
With a dark frown, he rolled off her.
She quickly smoothed down her skirts to cover her legs.
Her silver brooch was partially hidden in the grass, but she leaned over to retrieve it now.
She lifted up the corner of her overtunic to cover the damp spot on her breast and refastened the brooch.
Her nipple was still perked and tingling under the thin linen.
“Did we lose everything in the basket?” she asked, studiously not looking at him.
He didn’t answer. His silence forced her to meet his gaze. He regarded her through narrowed eyes, as if she were a type of beast he didn’t quite recognize, and he wasn’t sure whether she was a threat or not.
“Did that mean nothing to you?” he finally said.
She swallowed hard. It meant worlds. She’d never felt the like, but it wouldn’t do to let him know it. A woman had to be strong, lest a man run roughshod over her. How could she remain his mistress if he knew how adroitly he’d controlled her, how weak she was in his hands?
“It was a pleasant diversion,” she said simply. “And that is all.”
She rose to her feet and was chagrined to find her legs wobbly.
The basket was upended near the cliff’s edge, and all the gull eggs were either lost or ruined.
The meat pasties she’d packed must have tumbled into the sea, but one of the drinking gourds was still intact.
Katla took quick gulp and held it out to Brandr.
“The sun is near setting,” she said, “and we have work to do at home.”
He waved the gourd away and stood to pull on his trousers. “As you will, princess,” he said with a scowl. “As you will.”