Page 39 of Lord of Fire and Ice

He unfastened her shoulder brooches and laid the silver ornaments on the trunk nearest her bed. Then he unclasped the chain around her neck that bore all the keys to every lock in her household.

He knew the load those keys represented, the responsibility for the lives of so many, was far heavier on her than their actual weight.

“Raise your arms,” he ordered.

She lifted them in surrender, and he pulled her tunic over her head. Her underdress clung to every curve. It would have peeled off the same way as her tunic, but he wasn’t ready for that yet.

He wanted to savor her. To put his stamp on every finger-width of her skin.

“Sit.”

“Don’t get used to giving me orders, Ulfson,” she said, some of the usual vinegar creeping into her tone, but she plopped her bottom on the bed’s foot all the same.

He knelt before her and pulled off her leather shoes. Then his hands slipped beneath her hem to untie the bindings that wound around her calves and held up her stockings.

She really did have lovely feet. They were delicate and well formed, with high arches. Her small toes were topped with neat, square nails, smoothly filed.

He raised first her right foot, then the left, to his lips for a kiss on the joint between her big toe and its nearest neighbor. Each time, he was treated to a glimpse up her leg to the shadowy realm beneath her linen underdress.

His cock urged him to more than a stolen glance. If he’d listened to his member, he’d have plunged a hand under her skirt and claimed her sex, then and there. He knew how to drive her to helpless need that way. To tease her with glancing touches and circle her sensitive spot till she writhed and wept, but he held back.

He wanted to hear her beg for his touch. So he consoled his cock with another peek at her soft curls as he kissed her right foot once more, this time slipping her big toe into his mouth and giving it a hard suck.

She all but purred.

“Took you long enough to get around to obeying my first command,” she said, her lips twitching in a suppressed feline smile.

“Figure I’ve owed you those. And I always pay my debts.” He shot her an answering grin and flipped her hem up to bare her knees. “Besides, the view’s well worth the trouble.”

Her eyes flared with feigned indignation, but her lips fought a smile. “Swine.”

“I haven’t done anything to deserve that.” He lifted a brow at her. “Yet.”

She fell back on the bed and loosed a deep, fruity laugh. “Then by all means, get to work.”

“You peeked into my mind, princess,” he said as he eased his shoulders between her knees to spread her wide. He delivered a string of kisses up the inside of her leg. “Now keep still. I dare you.”

The skin of her inner thigh was soft and sweet, and he hitched the linen to bare more of her legs as he moved up them. She smelled wonderful, her warm, musky scent blooming afresh each time his lips drew nearer to her sex. He pressed open-mouthed kisses on her, running his tongue into her intimate cleft.

She made a helpless little sound of need.

He drew back to look at her. Katla’s dark hair was spread out over the bed in a fan. She’d draped a forearm over her eyes, trying to shield herself from him, he supposed. Before this night was through, he promised himself he’d break through every barrier she erected between them.

Her breaths came short and quick. Her hem was rucked up around her waist in front, exposing her flat belly. Her legs were splayed in abandon.

He parted the soft lips of her sex. When his warm breath passed over her, she quivered.

He ached in response.

He tongued her once, and she raised herself into his mouth. He suckled the little nub, swirling his tongue over the spot.

The sounds of longing she made went straight to his cock, and he felt the pressure of his seed rising in the shaft. If he kept at this, he’d end up spilling in his trousers.

He pushed the underdress up more, baring just the undersides of her breasts, leaving the pert tips still covered. He moved up her body, ignoring her sigh of frustration, leaving a trail of nibbling kisses along her ribs.

He ran his tongue along the crease beneath each breast. She rocked her pelvis against him, and his cock throbbed almost painfully.

He laid his head between her breasts and drew a deep breath. The goal was to make her beg for him, not for him to succumb to the need to rut her blind in greedy, uncontrollable lust.