Page 40 of Lord of Fire and Ice

Once he reduced her to helpless pleading, then he could rut her blind in greedy, uncontrollable lust.

For now, he forced himself to run through the ingredients for Greek fire in his head—anything to delay his body’s inexorable reactions to Katla.

Quicklime, sulphur, bitumen…He felt steady enough to lift her dress the rest of the way to completely bare her breasts. He nuzzled them, running his open mouth around her areola, teasing her with his nearness. Pitch, resin, nipples—damn, I mean naptha.

“Brandr, please,” she moaned, arching her back and thrusting her breasts upward.

He forgot all about Greek fire and closed his lips over one while he massaged the other with his thumb and forefinger.

Her hands ran over his shorn head and down his back. She rocked her hips against him.

He rose up to look at her. “I thought you were supposed to lie still.”

She shrugged. “I thought you dared me to try. Besides, that tunic of yours is rough. We need to get you out of it.”

His face stretched in a wide smile. “You only had to ask.”

***

She sat up so she could remove his tunic over his head. It was so tight across his shoulders, there was a moment or two when she thought the seams might rip. Finally, she worked it free.

“That’s far too small for you.”

“I’ll have to take the matter up with my mistress,” he said with a lopsided grin as she smoothed her palms over his chest. Muscles tensed and flexed under his warm skin. “Or mayhap her brothers. I don’t know what they did with my clothes, but I wasn’t bare arsed when they first drugged me at the mead house, you know.”

He bent his head and claimed her mouth in a deep kiss.

He’d certainly been naked when Finn and the others dropped him on her floor. She already knew he was magnificent, from that time when he lay bound and helpless before her and then later in the bath house. Perfectly proportioned, endowed by nature with every masculine beauty. She could hardly wait to see him that way again.

“What were you wearing the night you were taken?” she asked when he stopped kissing her long enough to peel off her underdress. The linen slid over her skin with a soft rustle, and she was suddenly naked before him.

His eyes glowed with appreciation as he moved closer. The tips of her breasts grazed his hard chest.

“I asked you a question,” she reminded him.

“Oh!” he said, not stopping his leisurely perusal of her. “I was dressed for travel. Leather breaches, woolen cloak, a tunic with tablet-woven trim, and—as a matter of fact, now that I think on it, seems to me Finn was wearing that tunic at table this night.”

“Don’t count on him returning it.”

“Right now, princess,” he said as he gathered her hair in his fist and tipped her face up to his, “my old tunic is the last thing on my mind.”

As he bent to her, everything else fled from Katla’s mind as well. The world seared away in his fiery kiss, and her whole life sizzled down to the wonder of his mouth on hers and his skin gliding smoothly against her skin.

Her hands found the drawstring at his waist and plunged in to stroke his hard shaft and fondle his balls. He growled with pleasure, and a thrill of power surged over her. There might be a way to reduce him to pleading as easily as he seemed to bring her to her knees.

But the need between her legs was back and throbbing with a vengeance. Mayhap she’d play at tormenting the man after her own desires were satisfied.

They tumbled together into the bed, a tangle of arms and legs. Once they finished rolling, Katla found herself on top of Brandr’s long, strong body.

“Now, princess,” he said, folding his hands beneath his head. “Mount your stallion at your pleasure and ride him as you will.”

She sat up abruptly, surprised. Osvald had never allowed her to straddle atop him like this. It wasn’t fitting for a woman to so dominate a man.

“Besides, woman, if it’s a child you want,” her husband had always said, “why force a man’s seed to swim upstream?”

She blinked back the tears Osvald’s remembered words called forth. If she was barren, it wasn’t his fault. Hadn’t he done his duty by her, giving her a quick swive almost every night? If no child quickened in her body, Osvald was not to blame.

“What’s wrong?” Brandr sat up and wrapped his arms around her.