Page 33 of Lord of Fire and Ice

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.