His big hand grasping the hem of her blouse again explained to her senses what her brain refused to grasp. He didn’t wait for her assent, just started tugging the blouse upward, and then it was gone, leaving her vulnerable in nothing but a too-thin shift. Seconds later that was gone as well, leaving her completely naked outside the bath for the first time in her adult life.
Yet as much as she feared the unknown, she did not fear
“You are mine,” he said, a feral expression in his eyes.
She could do naught but nod.
He reached out and yanked the flap down on the tent, cutting off the light from the rapidly fading sky. There was barely enough light to see his form, much less read his lips.
She could tell he said something, but not what it was.
She reached out and placed her hand against his lips. “No talking.”
She had no idea how he would receive the order, but nothing could have prepared her for the kiss that he gave her. His lips dominated hers, demanding entrance into her mouth, silently claiming his right to her.
She could do nothing but allow her lips to part. Inexplicably, she craved such intimacy. His tongue slipped between her parted lips, gliding past her teeth. He tasted like apples and the dry biscuit she had not eaten, but more than that. There was a wild, feral flavor to him that her woman’s instincts told her was nothing but her husband.
And she who had been starved of any affection for the past two-plus years could not get enough. The truly intimate sensation of tasting him in a way no one else had a right to do was instantly addictive. She savored his tongue with her own. He allowed her untutored exploration for long patient moments. A jolt like lightning burned all the way to the most feminine part of her as his patience broke and he began to suck on her tongue.
She stopped caring that she was naked, stopped worrying that he was, too, and simply reveled in the amazing and blissful connection between them.
He rolled on top of her, his body hotter than the furs. Rather than feel frightened by being blanketed by the huge warrior, Abigail felt safety unlike anything she had ever known. His hard knee pressed her tender thighs apart and she did not resist.
That big, hard manhood rubbed against the apex of her thighs, and she thought she might expire from the pleasure of it. She knew they were not actually copulating; he was not inside her as he said he would be. But she could not imagine anything more personal. This was something she would never share with another.
Something he would give only to her. He’d told her that, too.
His mouth slid from her lips to move down her jaw and then onto her neck, where he stopped. She waited, her panting breaths sawing in and out of her. Finally, he broke the suspense of the moment.
He gently bit the join of her neck and shoulder, pressing down so she could feel his teeth in a circle of claiming. She did not think he would break her skin, but his teeth felt unusually sharp. Or perhaps her senses had simply been heightened.
To near-unbearable levels.
He began to suck hard enough she knew it would leave a mark. She could not make herself care. Instead, she arched her neck in silent invitation to continue the unexpected pleasure. Shocks and excitations shivered through her body, the wonderful feeling from his biting kiss almost too much.
His teeth slid from her skin and he laved the small sting, building pleasure upon pleasure.
Her body writhed against his, though she’d had no conscious thought of doing so. Their skin slid along each other. And it felt delicious. Incredible. How could any woman withstand such pleasure?
Her hips arched toward something she could not name.
Hard hands pressed down on her thighs, stilling her movements.
Then he was on his knees above her, his mouth burning a trail downward until he reached her breast. When he gave it the same series of kisses he had on her neck, she felt a keening cry leave her throat. But she could do nothing but let out a silent wail of indefinable pleasure when he moved to pay similar attention to her nipple. He played, first with his tongue and then with his teeth, until she thought she would die from the unfulfilled, nameless longing coursing through her.
But his mouth did not stop there; he moved farther down, stopping several times along the path he had set for himself. Each time, she thought she would reach some pinnacle of pleasure that might well kill her, but in each case, he moved on as her body verged on the precipice.
When his mouth covered her most intimate flesh, she was so far drowned in the pleasure he had given her she had no thought to protest. He licked at her and then stabbed inside her with his tongue, not far enough to breach her maidenhead, but deeply enough that she felt irrevocably marked as his.
They lay together in a tableau so unbelievable, her mind refused to picture it—his head between her legs, his intimate kissing so intense she could barely breathe. He reached up with both hands, first cupping her breasts as if weighing their small curves before pinching both her nipples at once. She screamed . . . did not know if it had been silently or not, and could not make herself care if his warriors had heard.
He changed the way his tongue moved on her. The cliff of pleasure she had felt over and over drew closer, and then she was going over, her body going rigid as convulsions rocked her. He took her through the pleasure and into a series of smaller inner explosions until her body fell limp against the furs below her.
He surged up between her legs and reached for her hand. He placed it over the burning heat of his erection. Her fingers curled around him convulsively. He wrapped his hand around hers and began to move them both over his male heat.
His hips snapped too and fro, his hand around hers so tight it bordered on painful. Then she felt him give a triumphant shout, the sound beating in the air around them even though she could not hear it. Hot liquid landed on her stomach and breasts, searing her with yet another act of his possession.
Talorc’s wolf howled his triumph as the warrior shouted his pleasure and his seed shot out to land on the silken skin of his wife. The climax lasted longer than any orgasm he had ever had, each spurt of his come that landed against her skin giving his wolf feral pleasure Talorc could not begin to deny.
When he had finished climaxing, he leaned forward and began to rub his seed into her skin, marking Abigail in an unmistakable way for all Chrechte warriors to recognize.
Unlike other women who might have objected to something so earthy, Abigail lay compliant below him as he caressed every last drop of his come into her skin, until she was so thoroughly marked with his scent his own wolf would have a hard time distinguishing between their bodies.
She was his and all would know it.
Chapter 6
Abigail woke alone.
After an initial pang of disappointment, relief flooded her. She did not know how to face Talorc after her wanton behavior the night before. It had felt so natural then, but in the first light of day, it seemed aberrant. She wished she could convince herself it had been a vivid dream. An amazing, if outrageous, dream.
Anything but the embarrassing reality that it was.
Did men and women really engage in such acts as a common occurrence in the marriage bed? Regardless if others did, she had a feeling she and her husband would. Talorc was not a man to deny himself what he saw as his, she thought. Add that to his assurance the morning of their wedding that he expected them both to find pleasure in their shared bed, and doing such again would be a definite matter of course.
At least until he learned the truth of her affliction.
She could only be grateful she would have experienced the mysteries of her own womanhood by then.
What had once terrified her had become a journey she was eager to take. And that, as much as what they had done last night, mortified her.
She was a true wanton.
