by Lara Adrian
Gunnar's head and shoulders broke the surface of the water about ten paces from the shoreline. Fie, he had beaten her! Perhaps he did have gills; he must have swum the entire distance underwater. He turned, standing chest-high in the water and grinning at her.
“Shall I name my boon now, or later?” he asked.
He hadn't yet touched the shore, Raina noted with a glimmer of satisfaction. She could still win. She kept swimming, casually now, lest he suspect what she was about. “How did you learn to swim below the surface as you do?” she queried, drifting closer.
“My father taught me. I reckon I was swimming not long after I learned to walk.”
Nearly to the place where he stood now, she decided to attempt a distraction. “I should think I'd be afraid to drown with my face so long in the water. How can you hold your breath all that time?”
“Practice,” he said with a shrug. “And control.”
“Well, I am duly impressed, my lord.” He grinned at her praise. Pride was evidently potent bait. Poor tadpole, he was about to bite the hook. “Will you show me again how you do it?” she coaxed.
“As you wish.” He began to submerge himself, slowly, all the while his eyes on her.
The instant the top of his head went under, Raina lunged forward, pulling for the shore. Strong arms wrapped around her waist just two strokes later, halting her progress and drawing her backward. She shrieked as Gunnar hoisted her out of the water and draped her over his shoulder.
“You don't play fair, my lady,” he charged on a laugh, lightly smacking her bare rump. Up the embankment he tromped with her, then set her down. “Now, since I have won by default, I shall have to think hard on a fitting boon.” He gripped her buttocks and pulled her against him, grinning wolfishly as his erection swelled to life between them.
“Not so fast, my lord,” she argued, stepping out of his embrace with mock admonition. “You carried me ashore, which means we arrived at the goal together. We both win, therefore we each can claim a boon.”
“Hmm,” he growled, “not only a bold cheat, but a clever one as well. Have you always been this impertinent?”
“Always.”
He chuckled. “I might have suspected as much.” Reaching out, he gathered her wet hair into a queue behind her neck, smoothing it back off her face and shoulders so she stood before him naked, her body completely unveiled to his smoldering gaze. “Have you always been this beautiful?” he rasped.
She didn't get the chance to voice her denial. Gunnar's mouth closed over one of her nipples and she gasped in a ragged breath, all words and thoughts taking flight on silken wings. He knelt before her, suckling her breasts, his lips and tongue so warm on her skin, the peppering of rough growth on his jaw a sweet, savage abrasion.
He moved lower, kissing her belly and lower still, nipping at the tender skin of her hips. A nudge at the juncture of her thighs and she opened her legs, tentatively, unsure what he wanted of her. But he knew. He overwhelmed her body with his mouth and hands, tasting her and pleasing her in ways she could never have dreamed and even now didn't fully understand. She moaned, feeling his fingers part her, enter her.
“Oh, Gunnar...” It came out little more than a strangled whimper. A vow of total surrender. “Oh, yes...”
And then she shattered in his hands. All at once her legs turned to liquid, her flesh molten and quivering under his skillful seduction. She wasn't sure if her feet still touched the ground for inside she was soaring, spiraling high as the heavens on a wave of rapture so exquisite she nearly wept with the sheer pleasure of it.
Wildly, reverently, Gunnar kept stroking her with his tongue. Sucking her. Devouring her.
His name was a murmured plea on her lips as another wave washed over her in glistening ripples of ecstasy. Spent and dazed, floating back to earth, she became vaguely aware that he had left her. Where he'd been, the summer breeze now skated over her, cooling her flushed, perspiring skin.
“Race you back to the other side, my lady?”
Reluctant to let go of her ebbing pleasure, Raina opened her eyes, trying to make sense of what she was hearing. Her head still rang with the rush of orgasm, her entire body slack with passion quelled. Gunnar stood several paces from her, edging toward the water. Beaming.
“There's a bright red apple in the basket over there. First one to the other side of the pond claims it.”
Raina took a step forward on weak legs. “You wish to race again? Now?”
“I don't always play fair, either,” he said with a wink. Then he plunged into the water and disappeared below the surface.
It was all Raina could do just to make it to the other side of the pond, never mind provide any sort of competition. Instead she took her time and enjoyed the refreshing coolness of the water, swimming leisurely across the distance. Gunnar was already reclining on the blanket he had spread under the willow tree by the time she trudged out of the water.
Like Adam before the Fall, he seemed blissfully unconcerned with his nakedness, leaning on one elbow as he cut a slice from the apple with his dagger and popped it in his mouth. “Two of the sweetest-tasting boons, both in the course of one day,” he remarked. “I am a lucky man, indeed.”
Raina felt herself blush. “You, sirrah, are a scurrilous knave with a wicked sense of sport.”
He chuckled, slicing and offering her a wedge of apple as she took her seat beside him. “And you are a sore loser, lamb. Eat your apple.”
She munched the piece he gave her and another. When there was nothing left but the core, Gunnar pulled the basket over and rattled off the inventory of items he had purloined from the kitchens: a loaf of dark bread, a wedge of cheese, some strips of smoked venison, and a skin of wine. Hearty fare for a picnic, but Raina suspected they would be working up quite an appetite.
Grazing companionably next to him after Gunnar had broken the bread and served the cheese, Raina wondered how it was possible to feel so comfortable with this man she hardly knew. She knew him intimately, of course. Deep inside, she even felt certain their souls were entwined, that perhaps they had been somehow since the dawn of time. But looking at him now she realized just how little she truly knew of him.
Of his past.
“You say your father taught you to swim. Was he a good swimmer himself?”
He glanced at her for a long moment, as if assessing the purpose of her query. “Aye,” he answered finally, “the best in the shire.” His gaze averted, he busied his hands with the dagger, using the tip to dislodge a stone at the perimeter of the blanket. “He was a good teacher as well, physically adept at many things, though he preferred his academic pursuits.”
“He was a scholar?”
“A student of life, to hear him tell it,” Gunnar said with a distant smile. “But, being the eldest son and heir, his course was decided the day he was born. There would be no time for books and learning. His would be a fighting man's life, a knight beholden to his liege. That didn't stop him from lining his walls with texts and papers, however.” He chuckled wistfully. “Nor from filling mine and my mother's heads with stories of the Greeks and their ancient philosophers.”
That is, until her father slew that gentle man and put an end to his learning and stories, Raina thought. Guilt made her voice thready. “He must have been a remarkable man.”
“They were both remarkable, my parents. Fair-minded, hard-working. Decent people.”
“Does it bother you to talk about them...with me?”
“Nay,” he answered, meeting her gaze again at last. “'Tis only that I haven't thought of them in so long. Not just...thought about them.”
“And you, my lady?” he asked after a lengthy pause. “How did you learn to swim? Were you taught, or were you born with these purportedly webbed feet?” He seized one and brought it to his mouth, feigning a toothy assault on her toes.
“I taught myself,” she said, laughing as she pulled her foot from his tickling grasp. “I sneaked out of the castle once when I was young and it
was very dark that night. I missed my step and fell into the moat.”
He let out an amused exclamation of disgust, chuckling. “Then it serves you right. What were you doing sneaking about in the dark by yourself? Or were you meeting someone?”
“I was running away.”
The solemnity of her statement must have surprised him because he cocked his head, scrutinizing her expression. “Why?”
She didn't want to tell him. It cut too close to the bone. She tried to avoid it with the same sort of casual dismissal her father had used so often when faced with uncomfortable topics. “'Twas nothing, really. A child's foolishness, is all.”
His intent gaze told her he would not be swayed. “You evidently didn't think so at the time. How old were you?”
“Oh, I don't recall...four or five, I would guess.”
Five, and it had been the springtime of that year. Not long before her mother died. Without trying, she could smell burned lavender leaves again, the pungent stink of a healing incense that had often filled her mother's chamber, as it had that day.
Gunnar's voice broke through her thoughts, a gentle whisper. “Raina, sweetheart, why did you run?” He pulled her into his arms, cradling her with the warm length of his body. “You can tell me.”
She took a fortifying breath then let it out, burrowing her forehead in his chest. “Norworth wasn't anything like your home. There were no picnics, no storytelling or swimming lessons. My father was either absent or too busy to trifle with entertaining a lonely child, and my mother scarcely left her chamber most days....”
Without wanting to, Raina could hear her mother weeping brokenly on the other side of a partially open door. She squeezed her eyes shut but could still see that frail body lying in the center of the big bed, her back to the door while a handful of servants tended her. Her mother had hissed in pain as one of the maids dabbed gently at her face with a cloth. Another wrapped her bruised arm in an herb-soaked poultice.
Mama, will you read to me?
At the sound of her voice, the maids had all glanced to where Raina stood in the doorway, clutching her mother's Bible. No one uttered a word. Then a desperate-sounding sob carried across the room.
Get her out of here! I don't want Raina in here!
She trembled at the memory and Gunnar held her close, caressing her shoulder. His silence, his tenderness, gave her courage. “I suppose I left because didn't feel that I belonged there. I didn't feel I was wanted.”
It sounded worse than silly to her now, admitting to someone who had lost his family to senseless tragedy that she was willing to flee hers simply because of hurt feelings. But it was deeper than that and for some inexplicable reason, she felt compelled to share the entire, ugly truth of it with Gunnar now. “I thought she might be happier if I wasn't around.”
“Your mother?”
Raina nodded mutely. “She used to be happy once, long before I remember her. My father said she was the belle of England when they met, but something must have happened to her. Something must have changed her. Perhaps my birth was a disappointment in some way.” This last thought she could only whisper, it shamed and hurt her so.
Gunnar's exclamation of disbelief made her look up. “Surely you cannot actually think that.” When she could only blink up at him, he chuckled sympathetically. “Raina, I don't know what transpired behind closed doors at Norworth, but I can tell you that your birth was no disappointment to your mother.”
She touched his cheek tenderly, moved that he would wish to soothe her after everything her family had cost his. “Thank you for saying so, but you couldn't possibly know--”
“I do know,” he said, “because I saw her with you once.”
Raina drew out of his embrace, stunned. “When? And where?”
“'Twas during a feast time at Norworth when I was a lad of perhaps six summers. You were just a squalling babe of less than a year, I reckon.”
She could hardly believe it. “You came to Norworth? You remember seeing me with my mother?”
“Aye, though I confess I didn't have much time for infants as a young boy. Beautiful women were quite another story. And your mother was beautiful.” He smiled at her appreciatively. “But even she pales beside you now.”
Raina let him kiss her, though impatience to hear more made her break the contact a scant moment later. “You must tell me everything you can recall!”
“I'm afraid there isn't much more to it,” he said. “A group of us were taking turns hiding from one another in the gardens after the meal when I heard a woman's voice, sweet and mild, reciting the Psalms.”
“My mother.” She knew it without asking.
“I crept around a rosebush and found her sitting on a bench in a quiet corner of the garden. You were suckling at her breast and in her lap was an open Bible. She was reading softly, both of you the picture of bliss. The image burned into my mind. 'Twas the most profound expression of love I had ever seen. I just stood there, listening and watching, until one of my friends spied me and dragged me off to the game again.” He paused suddenly. “Why are you crying?”
“So many times after she died I would take that Bible down from the shelf and read it, certain I could hear her voice forming the words. Believing I could feel her arms around me. I thought it was only wishful thinking. A dream.”
“Nay, not a dream,” he said, smoothing her hair.
Though this new information eased her heart, a new trouble formed in a dark corner of her mind. What sort of nightmare could have turned her mother into the sullen creature she remembered? What kept her prisoner in her chamber for so many years? She felt an explanation forming and tamped it back down. It was too horrible to contemplate.
Gunnar lifted her chin and brushed away a straggling tear. “The sun is nearly setting and you have yet to name your boon from our race,” he reminded her, gently guiding her to less distressing subjects. “What will you claim as your prize, my lady?”
She nearly voiced the answer that rolled so easily to the tip of her tongue. She wanted his heart, his love. But she could not ask for that. She didn't think she could bear it if he denied her. Instead she said, “You've shared this day with me and given me something precious to cherish about my mother. 'Tis boon enough.”
“If you will not name your prize,” he teased, “I'll be glad to claim it for myself.”
Raina laughed as he began to cover her with his body. Of their own accord, her thighs spread for him and he wedged between them. “Are you trying to frighten me, my lord?”
“You don't look frightened,” he joked, returning to their banter of a few hours ago. “Name your boon, wench.”
“Very well, then,” she relented with mock exasperation. “As my boon, I wish that we could stay here forever.”
Laughing, he rolled with her until she was on top of him, her legs between his. “You'd wish never to leave this glade? How would we spend our days? I think I should like to hear this.”
He closed his eyes and settled beneath her, waiting expectantly. Bringing her hand up to stroke his hair, Raina studied his handsome features, from the faint creases at the corners of his eyes and the strong ridge of his brow, to the trace of shadow on his chiseled jaw. So unmistakably a man, yet he looked so innocent at times. She longed to cradle him in her arms, to soothe his worries and share his triumphs...always.
And because she loved him dearly, without regret, she opened her heart.
“We would spend our days like this one, no interruptions, no troubles. Out here, where everything is fresh and green, and no one could find us. We'd have each other and want for naught.”
“A pleasant enough idea, but what would we eat?” he asked. “And where would we live? Surely, even as blissfully happy as we'd start off, you--and your belly--would be cursing my hide come winter.”
“You fill my appetite, and your arms are warm. I vow I'd need no other comforts.” She scowled and tugged his ear. “This is my wish. You are supposed to be listening, my lord.”
“Well met, my lady, so I am...and with great interest.” His lips twitched into a rakish smirk. “Now, tell me of our nights.”
“Hmm,” Raina mused, envisioning endless evenings in Gunnar's arms. “Our nights would be wondrous, magical. You would love me thoroughly, ensnaring my heart and soul with your wicked, sweet torture, and I would devote myself to discovering a new way of pleasing you each and every night...something to make you so dizzy with want for me that you'd never leave my side for even a moment.”
He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her palm. “With nights so filled with passion, doubtless there are children in this dream as well?”
“Oh, aye,” she whispered bravely. “Strong, handsome sons who would grow to be fine men like their father.”
Gunnar grunted. “I'd like a girl. Pert, like you, with your same impish nose and a smile to charm her father into doing whatever her heart desires.” A furrow rankled his brow suddenly and he scowled up at her. “Nay, better that she favor her father's surly looks, elsewise I would be forced to spend my elder years chasing off hordes of bedazzled swains.”
Raina giggled, picturing an aged Gunnar purposely scaring the wits out of unsuspecting would-be suitors. “Her father would be the only man in her eyes,” she whispered, “at least for a time.” She smoothed his brow, letting her fingers then wade through his hair. “But one day she will meet someone who will storm her heart with such tenderness, she will want naught but to spend every waking moment in his arms.”
He paused before asking, “And what if no man met with her father's approval?”
“Then her father's heart would surely be broken, for a love as strong and true as that seeks no permission. It knows only that it must be.” She held her breath through the silence that followed, fully aware that they could as easily be speaking of themselves.
“Ah, lamb,” he said at last. He kissed her hand and pressed it to his heart. “Wishing can be dangerous business. And dreaming only makes reality harder to accept.”
