Page 94 of The Bewitched Viking

She whimpered.

“Now me, on the other hand: I am in greater danger of losing self-control,” he confessed, passing a hand brazenly over the erection that stood out from his braies. “I have endured a long period of self-denial these past sennights.”

“Oh, God!” she whimpered again, accepting that he was not done with her yet.

Now he used the bristly strokes of the shorter feather to trace the outline of her mouth. “Soon I will kiss your lips, and you will kiss mine. Endlessly. With my tongue, I plan to re-enact the feather’s journey. What say you to that?” When she said nothing, he added, “I do so like kissing, don’t you?”

What could she say to that? In truth, what could she say at all when her lips were parting at the feather’s tantalizing path? When she was already imagining Tykir’s lips pressed to hers? Yea, she did so like kissing, too.

“I love your breasts, Alinor. Have I told you that afore?”

While she’d been only half-attending, he’d moved his feather to new, more dangerous territory. He was circling and circling and circling the aureoles with the feather, avoiding the rosy peaks.

“I cannot wait to taste your raspberry nipples,” he declared. “But that will have to wait till the second stage of your ‘punishment.’”

Alinor wanted to respond to several of the outrageous things he’d said, but she was unable to speak above a croak. Tykir had brought her nipples to life with a mere flick of the feather’s bristles. And now he was vibrating the feathers back and forth rapidly over the pulsing peaks like the wings of a hummingbird.

“I wondered how your nipples will look when you are aroused,” he confided in a voice raw with his own arousal. “Will they be tiny and pink like unripe raspberries, or thick and succulent like the ripened fruit? I think they will be a mix of both. What do you think?”

Think? Think? She was a quivering mass, incapable of thought or reason. She bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out at the tantalizing torment assaulting her nipples and the private place of which chaste women never spoke.

“I am a wanton.” She had not meant to speak the words aloud. They slipped out in the horror of her discovery.

“I hope so,” Tykir said. “May all the gods intercede on my behalf. I certainly hope so.”

But, wait, the Viking was up to some new mischief. Before she could blink, or say “Bloody hell!” the troll had spread her legs farther apart, then begun to assault a new region of her body. A totally virgin area, to her. When she tried to protest, rolling from side to side, he pressed the palm of his free hand on the bottom of her stomach, just before her woman’s hair. With that palm, he established a pressing rhythm to match the feathery flutter in that other place.

As he intently worked his sorcery on her body, his ragged breaths and her mewling whimpers were the only sounds in the room, except the crackling of the fire. A strange inner excitement was overtaking Alinor. She was frightened and excited at the same time.

He stopped suddenly and glanced up at her. “Relax, Alinor. Your legs are stiff as pikes. Relax, and let it come.”

Let what come? she wanted to ask, but no words would pass her pressed lips.

He waited till he felt the tension seep from her limbs, then resumed his assault on her there. “Reach for the peak, Alinor. It’s there, witchling, just within your grasp.”

“Peak? What peak?” she cried out.

“Don’t tense up again. Let me give you this woman-joy.”

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God! With each touch of the feather and each press of his palm, she was building and building toward some great event. She hated the not knowing. The vulnerability. Being manipulated beyond control. This shattering of the senses.

But wait. She tried to focus through the haze of passion that was clouding her brain. Passion? Me? Something different was happening now. Something…compelling.

At first there was a slight fluttering between her legs, inside. But then the fluttering heightened into spasms, followed immediately by sharp clenching and unclenching of her inner muscles. Her heart stopped, then thundered wildly as blood raced to all her extremities.

He made a rough sound. Was he, too, losing control of his faculties?

Too late! No more time for thinking. She screamed, “Ty-kir!” as she hurtled through a place consumed with swirling red light, intense heat and the most astonishing physical pleasure she had ever experienced.

Alinor must have swooned for a moment—something she’d never done in all her life, but then, she’d never experienced this peak or woman-joy either. ’Twas not an experience she ever wanted to repeat. What woman in her right mind would want to yield so much to a man? For what? A momentary pleasure? Even though it was an amazing momentary pleasure, she conceded to herself.

“You’re smiling,” Tykir observed from the side of the bed.

When had he left? What had he been doing while she’d been woolgathering? Her eyes shot wide, and she realized that while she still lay spread-eagled on the bed, with satiation of some sort, her ropes had been untied. Quickly, she scurried to a sitting position and grabbed for a bed fur to cover herself.

He tossed the furs to the floor.

She scowled at him and drew her knees up to her chest.