Maia sat straight up in the bed. She hoped that the bedsheet she gave her father in the morning was as bloody as the one Averil had offered him the previous year. Her maidenhood must be attested to very clearly. She remembered how all the men had brought a naked Rhys to Averil. Would they do the same again? Then to her surprise the door to the bedchamber opened, and her husband stepped quietly inside. He threw the bolt, locking them in, and then coming to her, took her hands in his, and kissed them.
“I am glad the men did not strip you naked,” she said softly.
“They are either asleep, or gambling,” he told her. “They did not even see me go. I waited to see your mother return to the hall.” He sat down on the bed next to her. “Now, my love, it is rare that I use serious magic, but tonight I would make an exception with your permission.”
“What would you do, my lord Emrys?” she asked him.
“This chamber is small, and its little fire gives scant warmth on a late autumn’s night, Maia. The chamber you and I will share at Ile du Lac is spacious and warm. I would not offend your family, but I should far prefer to spend our wedding night there than here, my love. With your permission, of course.” His dark eyes met hers.
“Shall we be more private?” she asked softly.
He nodded. “There will be none to hear our cries of pleasure,” he told her.
“You are certain we will have pleasure, then?” She teased him gently with a small smile, her emerald eyes dancing.
He nodded again, and a slow smile lit his features. “Aye, I am sure, Maia.”
“We will not be missed?” she asked him.
“No one will disturb us on our wedding night, my love, and we will awaken, I promise you, in this bed on the morrow,” he told her.
“Take us home, then, my lord Emrys, that you may begin to teach me what it is to be a woman,” Maia told him. She closed her eyes.
The Lord of the Lake wrapped his arms about his wife, whispering, “Do not be afraid, Maia,” and his right hand moved from the top of their heads downward.
Her head spun for just a quick moment, and then she heard his voice.
“We are home, my love,” he said.
Maia opened her eyes to find herself in a beautiful room with a large fireplace in which a bright fire was even now burning. The bed in which she now sat was oak, and it was carved all about with beasts, flowers, vines and leaves. The bed curtains were a dark forest green velvet. Though it had been raining at Dragon’s Lair, she could see the moon shining on the waters of the lake through her windows here. The pillows behind her were encased in silk, and very soft. The silk coverlet she clutched to her breasts was filled with down, and light as a feather. The linens on the bed smelled of lavender.
“Aye, this is much nicer,” she said softly.
“And there is no one to hear us,” he murmured, kissing her ear.
She shivered. “If you are going to do things like that, Emrys, my love,” she told him, “then you had best get out of your clothes.”
He grinned, arose from her side, and began to undress. “My magic does not frighten you, does it, Maia?” he said.
“Nay,” she answered. “Is not our land of Wales steeped in magic? We have both grown up with magic all about us.”
“But I use my magic,” he said, “and I know far more than most folk.”
“You love me, and I love you. ’Tis all I care about,” Maia answered him. “Tomorrow when we leave Dragon’s Lair, can we come home using magic instead of traveling two days? I should like it if we could.”
He nodded. “It shall be as you desire, Maia.”
“And you will show me the wall of portraiture of our ancestors that you revealed to my father?” she asked him.
“I will,” he promised as he pulled off his chemise.
“Oh,” Maia said as she saw him completely naked for the first time. “You are very beautiful, my lord husband. Your limbs are perfectly shaped.”
He laughed. “Another might have admired my other attributes,” he teased her.
“They are in goodly proportion, too,” she replied with a small smile, “but I should hope they would be bigger eventually. Averil says the manroot grows in relation to the excitement my body generates in you.”
He climbed into bed next to her. “She is correct,” he said. Then he embraced her with one arm while he tipped her face up to him with his other hand. His lips descended gently upon Maia’s, and they kissed a long, slow kiss.
“That is a nice beginning,” she told him when his mouth freed hers at last. One of her hands caressed the nape of his neck. The other pressed flat against his broad smooth chest. She could feel the prickles of excitement on the back of his neck.
He smiled down into her eyes, and for a moment found himself lost within her gaze. It surprised him, for no woman had ever had such an effect upon him. Was she the one? He did not dare even entertain the thought. The hand that had been upon his chest now reached up, and her fingers brushed across his lips. He knew that she was an innocent, and yet her actions were born of an instinct deep within the female soul. He took the little hand in his, and kissed each fingertip. “Do you love me, Maia?” he asked her.
“Oh, yes, Emrys!” she answered him. “From that first moment, my dear lord, when you entered my dreams.” Then a blush suffused her cheeks as she boldly asked, “Do you love me, my Lord of the Lake? Really love me? Not just because you needed to take another wife, but do you love me above all others? Would my loss break your heart?” Her young face was anxious for his answer.
“Yes!” he answered her without hesitation, and then he kissed her again.
His mouth was hot upon hers. The kiss was deep, and very passionate. More so than any he had offered her before. It was as if he sought to prove his words to her so that there would never be any doubt in her heart as to how he felt about her. Her arms slid about his neck, and she arched her lush young body, pressing against him. Her head spun with the excitement his kiss was generating within her. She felt his tongue pushing past her lips suddenly. Instinctively those lips parted for him. She shivered hard at the first contact his tongue made with hers, but she easily caught the sense of what he wanted from her, and she gave it to him willingly.
Then his kisses were blazing a burning trail down her throat. He kissed the hollow in her throat where her pulse beat wildly with her own accelerating excitement. Lingering there he felt the throb beneath his lips. Unable to help himself he licked at the graceful column of her neck, reveling in the taste of her before moving on to worship at her wonderfully round breasts. They were deliciously full breasts for a girl. His kissed them first, then licked at them. Then his mouth closed over a pert nipple, and he suckled upon her eagerly.
She gave a little cry, but the sound held no distress in it. His lips tugging at her nipple was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. Oh, he had fondled her, and suckled before, but she had always been clothed. This was different, and it was but the beginning of the passion they would share tonight. She caressed the dark head at her breast, and murmured, “Yes!” She could lie here with him like this forever, Maia thought, and she was not afraid of what was to come.
He lifted his head from her nipple. His dark eyes were glazed with his own desire. “You have the most perfect breasts, my love,” he told her. “I shall be jealous of our children.” Then he lowered his head, and moved to enjoy her other breast.
“I feel so strange,” she told him.
“How?” he asked, and licked the nipple he had been suckling upon.
“The hidden spot tingles, Emrys,” she said.
“Does it?” He smiled. “That is good.”
“I want something,” she spoke softly.
“What?” he asked her, and he took the nipple in his mouth, and sucked hard upon it again.
“I do not know,” she admitted, “but my need is growing greater with each passing minute, Emrys.”
“I am being selfish,” he replied. He kissed her breasts
, and his head moved to kiss the lush young body she offered him now. “I want to salute every part of you,” he told her. “You are so delicious, Maia, I cannot resist you.”
“Will it soothe my need?” she inquired.
“Nay, not right away,” he told her. “It will, in fact, but increase your desire, for that is what it is. Your desire is rising as I love your luscious body. But if you will trust me, my adorable wife, I will quench your passion shortly.”
“I will trust you,” she said.
He turned her over, laying her flat on her belly, and pushing her flowing hair from her neck he kissed the soft nape of it. He planted kisses across her shoulders, and then his warm tongue traced the outline of her spine down to her buttocks, which he kissed, each in its turn.
“You are making me blush,” she cried, giggling as he licked her thighs, and nibbled his way down her shapely calves. “Ohh!” she felt his hot kiss on the arch of each foot, and then he surprised her as he turned her onto her back once again, nibbling at her toes. “Emrys!”
“What?” he replied.
“Would you eat me up?” she demanded.
“If I could and yet still have you, aye! I know you are a virgin, and yet you have no fear of me, or my actions,” he told her.
“I love you,” she answered him, “and you love me. Why would I be afraid?”
“Maia! Maia!” he murmured her name, and then he was kissing her mouth again, hungrily, his long lean body covering hers, feeling the heat between them.
She felt it then. The hard length that was his manhood. It was no longer small and soft. It was big and it was very hard. Her heart hammered in her ears. This, then, would be the moment as Averil had explained. It was exciting and terrifying all at once, and yet as she had told him, she was not afraid. She knew he but waited for her assent. “It is time, Emrys,” she whispered in his ear, “isn’t it?”
“Aye,” he said as softly.
“This is what the longing is about.” He was spreading her thighs.
“Aye,” he told her.
She felt the wet tip of him pressing against her own moisture. Her breath was coming in short pants of anticipation.
He pressed forward, the head of his lover’s lance pushing slowly, ever so gently into her. She was so wonderfully tight. He moved slowly, slowly, opening her to his pleasure. And then suddenly he could go no farther, for he had reached the barrier of her maidenhead. She winced slightly, and he knew it was kinder to penetrate her quickly than wait any longer. He pulled back just enough, and then thrust hard, shattering her innocence in a single swift movement.
Maia cried out. The pain was cruel and sharp. She struggled to dislodge him, and her nails raked down his back in an effort at her defense. He held her tightly, and whispered hotly against her mouth, but she didn’t know if she believed him when he told her the pain would be quickly gone. She sobbed into his shoulder. But then the pain faded as quickly as it had come, and Maia was very aware of his manhood within her. “Oh!” she cried softly, and without further explanation he began to move within her. The rhythm was intoxicating, and the heat he generated within her was amazing. She was astounded that she did not burst into flame. “Oh! Oh, Emrys!” she cried out again. He ground himself into her, and suddenly her head was spinning. Stars appeared, and burst behind her closed eyelids, and she was, without warning, racked with such pleasure that Maia thought surely she was dying. And then he was kissing her again. Her mouth, her closed eyelids, her face.
“You are amazing,” he told her. “For a virgin to have obtained such heights her first time! It is surely because I love you, my darling.” He lifted himself from atop her.
“It is because I love you, too,” she agreed, curling herself against him. “Averil did not explain this all to me. She said I must experience it to understand, and she was right.”
He arose from their bed, and going to a carved oak sideboard poured them each a goblet of rich, sweet wine. Maia sat up against the pillows, and accepted one of the goblets as he returned to their bed. “It will strengthen you,” he told her.
“Do I need to be strengthened?” she asked him, smiling.
He nodded. “I will never get enough of you, Maia, but I will try!”
She sipped her wine, looking at him seductively over her goblet. “Nor I you!” she told him. “Why did you wait so long to come to me, my husband?”
“I was a fool, my darling. I did not listen to my own heart, and voice within. I will never again do that no matter how desperate I believe the situation to be,” he swore to her.
“I cannot believe that I am so happy,” Maia told him softly. “I cannot believe that it is right to be so happy. Tell me I am not being greedy?”
“You are not being greedy,” he replied.
When they had finished their wine Maia arose from their bed. She found a basin and warmed water on a shelf built into the hearth. There was a soft cloth next to the basin. Gathering it all up she returned to her husband, and bathed his male member. Then she bathed herself. “Gorawen says it is necessary after passion for passion may reignite once again, and there should be no barriers between lovers.” She stared at the brown water in the ewer, realizing it was her own blood. Her eye went quickly to the sheet beneath them, and saw the great evidence of her lost maidenhood. A little smile touched her lips. The stain was even greater than Averil’s. Her father would be proud.
“Do you understand what Gorawen meant by no barriers?” he asked her.
Maia shook her head. “Nay, but I know you will teach me, Emrys, my lord.”
He nodded. “Aye, I will, my love, but perhaps not quite yet. Put your basin aside now, and come back into bed with me. I am going to need to make love to you again before we sleep this night.”
She looked and saw his manhood once again beginning to stir with his longings for her. Maia set the basin and cloth down back on the hearth ledge. Then she returned into her husband’s welcoming arms. “Do not linger this time, my lord,” she told him. “I am already hot for you, and need you within my lover’s sheath.”
His fingers began to play almost at once with her. He found the tiny nub of her womanly jewel, and he teased it with a single finger. Maia moaned with her rising excitement. Soon she was wet with juices, and he pushed two fingers into her sheath even as he pushed his tongue into her ear, whispering, “You are a shameless wench, my fair wife. Totally and utterly shameless!”
“Would you have me any other way, Emrys, my husband?” she taunted him low. “Come! You long to fill me with your own hunger. Do it! Do it now! Ahhhhh, yes!” He was inside her again, and instinctively Maia wrapped her legs about him that he might push himself even farther within her.
“Ah, Maia!” he cried low. “How I want you, my love! How I want you!”
Their entwined bodies heaved and thrust creating a heat that almost caused steam to arise from them, so great was their lust for one another. Their mouths were bruised with their kisses. They ached with their mutual pleasure. He filled her with his hot juices, and she craved more. He cried out with his desire as she did. Finally exhausted the lovers fell into a deep sleep, and when they awoke in the light of the dawn, they were back in the tower room at Dragon’s Lair as he had promised her.
Maia stretched her limbs with a contented sigh, noting that the little chamber was cold. She arose, and moving quickly across the stone floor added a bit of wood to the glowing coals. The fire sprang up once again. She quickly snatched the basin from the ashes with it’s water lukewarm from the coals. Then she washed herself again, her face first, then the rest of her. Opening the shutters she dumped the basin of water and refilled it from the pitcher in the coals. Then she gently shook Emrys’s shoulder. “Wake up, my lord. The sun is already arising.”
“If you do not put on some clothing, lady, I may never come forth from our bed, and neither will you!” He reached for her, but laughing, Maia dodged his grasp.
“I have water for you to bathe in,” she said. Then she drew on her s
ilk chemise, noting that there was a simple nut brown gown on the same chair with it. She drew the garment on over her head. “You must lace me,” she told her husband. “I cannot reach.”
“I should rather unlace you,” he said mischievously.
“Emrys! My father will want to see I have survived a night with you, and he will want to see the sheet, for you know he will fly it from the window above this room.” Then Maia paled. “Emrys! We were not here, but at Ile du Lac. What are we to do?”
He climbed from the bed, and she could see the sheet beneath as pristine as it had been the night before, but with a wave of his hand the stain of her innocence appeared. “I have just shifted it from there to here,” he said calmly. “Now, come, wife, and let me fasten your gown for you.”
She felt his fingers threading the laces, and the gown was made fast. “It is very convenient to have a husband with such talents as yours, my lord,” Maia told him with a smile, and he grinned back at her.
“Help me dress, woman,” he said.
“First you wash,” she returned.
“That I will do myself, for I recall when you did it for me last night it but led to further delights. I want to go home today. Do you?”
“Aye,” Maia told him, “I do. Can we ride until sunset, and then travel the rest of the way by means of your magic, my lord?”
He nodded. “The day is fair, and while I can think of a nicer way to spend our day, I will acquiesce, my love.” Then he took up the damp cloth and began to wash.
“What will it be like to live at Ile du Lac?” she asked him. “Is it like other households, Emrys? Will I manage our servants, and see to the other chores a good wife does for her husband and family? You do not use magic all the time, do you?”
“Nay,” he replied. “The household is yours to manage as you wish, my love. The servants will all obey you. I but request you use Sion to guide your path until you are certain of how to manage the castle.”
“Of course,” she agreed. Then she asked him, “Do you have many visitors?”
The Dragon Lord's Daughters Page 20
