Kathryn had nae notion of how he had brought her to this state. From the moment they had left the Chieftain’s apartments to attend the Hall, Gavyn had barely graced her with his touch. Apart from him taking the decision about Geala away from her, all speech between them had been commonplace.
Why, then, did her skin quiver each time his eyes grazed her face, or asked her to explain who folk were and their position in the Comlyn household? Distracted, her answers had become vague, her attention drawn inward. Though she sat at the high board, her mind roamed their chamber, remembering how her heart had fluttered when she saw the way his prick appeared to move in her direction, as if it had a mind of its own and was searching her out.
Before she came to a conclusion, his hands were on her shoulders, sliding her shift in the direction of her kirtle. Soon there would be naught betwixt them but his linen shirt.
“Lovely lass,” he groaned, his voice a rough-hewn caress that followed the path of her spine. Her hands formed fists in the fine linen of her shift.
“No, please, no. Let me get into bed and wait for you there … please. I’m nervous, and I can tell you’re impatient. Let’s make it easier for us both. You finish undressing while I slip into bed.”
He kissed her ear, whispering, “If that’s what makes you happy, lass. But be assured it will happen, though I’m all for making it easy for both of us.”
Contrary to the expected, the fear that might have paralysed her sent Kathryn running from his arms towards the bed. Pulling back the top covers, she revealed the clean creaseless linen sheets. Unlike her, Lhilidh had been only too eager to help spread them over the mattress once she realised it was the Laird who’d arrived flying the Raven on his shield.
Try as Kathryn might, she couldn’t see Gavyn as that anymore. Tonight he was simply a man eager to get inside his wife. At that blinding thought, she almost froze with a clutch of covers in her fist as her female centre tightened in panic.
She heard Gavyn’s belt drop to the floor, buckle jingling. A sound guaranteed to unfreeze her limbs. Swift as a linty, she climbed upon the bed. Eyes tight shut, she dragged her fine linen shift up around her waist then waited, her whole body atremble.
“Ach, Kathryn, lass,” he laughed softly as he approached, “do you think this is what a man, a husband wants to find waiting in his bed? His young beautiful wife laid out as stiff as a plank?”
She felt the mattress dip as he joined her in bed, form a hollow at her back as if it sighed the way Gavyn did. In the space of a heartbeat, Kathryn was rolled onto her side and pulled back against him, held close to his hard chest.
The heat of his body seared hers, burned, and at the instant he bent his head to kiss her nape, the flames in the fire leapt up the chimney and the candles flared white hot as she capitulated to need.
Gavyn felt the moment of her surrender. Recognition of the gift the gods had presented him with became more obvious as his hands rounded her ribs and cupped the fullness of her breasts. Their softness filled the cup of his wide palms, though the feel of her linen shift gave him pause for a moment. “You should be wearing silk,” he told her, lying utterly still with his cock pressing against the warm crevice separating her buttocks, content a for a wee moment until greed swamped him.
With both hands he moved o’er the fullness of her breasts, smoothing his thumbs around their nipples, rubbing the tempting flesh in firm yet teasing swirls until the hardening points poked out betwixt his fingers.
His fantasies had helped the passage of time in a foreign land, but naught could compete with the reality of the true weight of her breasts in his hands, or the sweet taste of her honeyed skin in his mouth as he pressed his tongue into the hollow at her nape and licked her there.
Kathryn squirmed in his arms, her body arching with pleasure. Kissing his way across the slope of her shoulders, he turned her onto her back. Grasping the neck of her shift in both hands, he pulled it apart, bared her breasts to a gaze made hotter by the long-awaited sight before him.
He had imagined her, aye, but naught, nae vision compared with reality.
The King had done well by him. Not only the Laird of the Comlyns, but husband to the most beauteous woman he had ever beheld.
Kathryn, his wife.
Even while he surveyed his prize from end to end, her sable-coloured lashes shaded the blue-green of her eyes to lie softly against her high cheekbones. Rose-gold hair flowed in a stream on the sheet from her nape to her hip. Short, bright gold curls shielded her entrance—a treasure trove indeed, a trophy that would soon be his and his alone.
That was the instant he understood that he dared not let her know the depths of his desire, or tell her too often that he regarded her as a vision of loveliness.
Kathryn, being a Comlyn, would be sure to take advantage of his weakness. Aye, he would take her, make her groan with need and want, but he would ware against speaking sweet tributes in her ear. That was to take the devil’s road, a way that could lead to his doom.
Her eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes, the light blue of aquamarines, watched pouting as he eased her up off the bed and released her ripped shift from beneath her body, murmuring, “If the loss of a shift bothers ye, mayhap you should wear silk afore they’re all shredded, A fine silken shift would excite with glimpses of what lies beneath its folds … though I admit to enjoying the process, and the expression on your face was something to behold, bonnie lass. However, it’s past time for a wee taste of what’s mine by right.”
He buried his mouth in her neck, tasting the different flavours without making a single comment to reveal the pleasure he found there. Now it was Kathryn who sighed, Kathryn who groaned when he sucked her rose pink nipples deep into his mouth and lathed them with his tongue.
She squirmed as he slid a hand between her thighs, caressed the creamy skin, soft as velvet, while he ran his tongue around her navel. Soft gasps of air escaped her lips as her head rolled from side to side on the pillow, as if his kisses held her captive; but for Kathryn he promised no escape.
She was wet, weeping from her core, just waiting to be filled.
But Gavyn wanted more—for both himself and his little virgin wife. And for that she needed to be prepared.
Kathryn let out a scream as Gavyn parted her legs and fitted his face between them. She would have sat up, but he pushed her flat with one large hand while the other continued to sweep up her leg from knee to thigh. His tongue circled as his mouth sucked gently, almost tenderly. Soon, she didn’t care what he did, only about the pleasure that he wrought. Her hands clawed at the sheet under her until she gathered it up into fists that were the only thing holding her on this earth, the only thing stopping her from flying into the sky amongst the stars, until naught but his lips could hold her down. Her body arched and bucked as she flew, elated by a pleasure she had never known existed, until the moment she crashed to the ground, felt her body broken, splintered, as if there wasn’t enough air in the world to fill her lungs.
Gavyn reluctantly lifted his head away from the vessel of honey he had supped from—so sweet, so pure. The lover in him wanted to share his findings with her, but the warrior in him knew he had to defend himself from his Comlyn wife.
While she still lay lax and almost squandered, he knelt between her thighs and spread her before him, as if for his delectation, which it was. She protested slightly as he slid her towards him till her thighs encircled him and he could see her wet and wanting like a pink diamond in a field of gold as he pushed into her, slow, easy. She was hot, tight, and he was determined to do no damage.
God’s blood, this was his wife, not some slut roaming the fringes of a battlefield after easy pickings.
He began to rock, holding her by the hips, opening her, wider and deeper until he hit her barrier. He held his breath for a few moments, tamped down the urge to ride right in and claim what was his. “Are you all right lass?”
Her eyes looked huge in her face, a glazed blue that dazzled with moisture, but she nodde
d and said, “Aye. It feels peculiar but not too sore.”
“Not yet, but I’ll have to hurt you. This time, Kathryn, there can be no pretence, and the blood that I spill will be yours.”
“I’m not frightened.”
Even as she said the words, he realised she might not be frightened, but he was. Scared he would damage her tight wee flower, and with that close the tentative breakthrough he had made in their fragile relationship. With care, he bowed his back, held her hips with both hands and stared into Kathryn’s eyes as he plunged and left them both gasping for air. Then he began to move, taking her with him. Faster, longer—fierce strokes that he could no longer control, as the dream that had carried him over all these miles, kept him sane in all these battles, was finally within his grasp.
He felt Kathryn clasping him as he moved, holding him tight as he thrust until he felt her female climax with every push, circling him until he plunged over the edge and yelled her name, “Kathryn!” and toppled full length on top of her.
He was built like an oak, solid, yet she didn’t mind the way it pushed her deep into the mattress as if she would never want to get up again.
Brodwyn had lied. Certainly it had hurt, but only a little until the pleasure had taken o’er. Aye, Brodwyn hadn’t told her about the pleasure. And Kathryn was of a mind not to let on that she had experienced any. It would be her secret, though it would be difficult keeping it from Gavyn. Her tongue might keep it close, but her body had surely given her away.
Yet when Gavyn began to move, she was of a mind to keep him where he was, and clutched at his shoulder, not quite pleading though she wanted to.
“Comfortable as I am, lass, I need to clean you up.”
Even after all she had experienced that night, a blush was her first reaction when he bundled up her torn shift and wiped the blood from between her legs, showing her evidence with a gruff, “Proof, if I’d needed it. But I didn’t. You were so tight I knew straight away I was the first to ride you.”
Kathryn’s colour rose again, suffused her face. She was used to men, surrounded by them daily, none who would have used the word ‘ride’ to her face unless talking of a horse. She supposed his was a warrior’s way, and she would have to get used to it, or attempt to change him.
The former would definitely be easier.
Gavyn took the ruined shift over to the fire and, setting it upon the flames, added another log to force it down. “Only you and I know that this was our true wedding night.”
He turned his wrist to look at the thin bright scar crossing the inside. “And nary a soul will ever know how we deceived them.”
“I never thanked you for saving my face,” she murmured, shy again as he slipped under the covers behind her and pulled them up higher to cover their shoulders.
He chuckled. “Did it never occur to you that what I did saved my face as well? However, that’s all behind us now. We’ve both had a long day and now it’s time to rest.”
“You don’t want to do it again?” she asked, unable to hide her surprise.
“It? No, not tonight, you’ll be sore and we have tomorrow and all the rest of the nights that lie ahead of us to make fine, strong sons.”
She struggled slightly with that concept. If making bairns was all it was about, why go to the trouble of making sure the act was so pleasurable, for both of them.
And what about daughters?
She grappled with her conclusion. If they had both enjoyed it so much, surely she was part way to making him love her, or did men only need the act without the emotion?
She wondered as he wrapped her in his big arms and pulled her in tight against his chest, saying, “Sleep now, this is but the beginning.”
She felt warm and safe in his arms, better than she had since her father died and left nothing behind him but angst and confusion. Soon her eyes began to droop closed and, as she fought against sleep, a smile shaped her lips at feeling Gavyn’s length rise hot and hard against the curve of her bottom.
Chapter 11
France was more than a month behind Gavyn, and at Bienn á Bhuird the crops would be ready to harvest in a day or two. Summer: this year they had been fortunate, and all the signs predicted it would last until the crops were in, and some of the superstitious were saying it was the return of the Chieftain.
That wouldn’t last beyond the harvest. The next time their small world turned bad, he and his men would take the blame. However, that wasn’t peculiar to Dun Bhuird; it was the way of the world.
Since his return, he had done everything possible to keep busy. From crofters to housecarls, he had made it his concern to speak to them all. He’d got his hands dirty moving stone for the masons and had trained with his men—mercenaries and clansmen both—preparing them for heaven knew what. He had this feeling in his bones or his innards—whatever. He would as soon not lose Dun Bhuird the moment he had actually laid claim to it.
His days he kept full for his wife’s sake. ’Twas enough that he took her under him every night without dragging her to his bed in the midst of the day as well. He had made up for two years of abstinence in one month.
He felt driven, and he didn’t like it.
Kathryn had thought the days she spent sitting with Magnus and Abelard settling quarrels and grievances would be over when Gavyn came back to Dun Bhuird. Not so. While Gavyn went about what he termed the Chieftain’s work, she was left with what he thought of as domestic duties. When she first took her place today, there had been a reasonable-sized crowd, but the very instant they noticed Gavyn wasn’t in her usual place at the high board, the complainants had melted away. Now there was only one left—a local man with a small croft who also did service under arms when required.
Magnus, recognising the man, spoke up first. “And what can we do for ye today, Grogan?”
Almost ten paces away, Grogan approached them hesitantly. Kathryn wished he would get a move on. She wanted to be outside watching her husband. It was reasonably quiet and sombre where they sat at the farthest end of the hall, away from the entrance. That being said, Kathryn was certain she could hear a distant clash of steel, the noise of men practising with arms outside. Out the corner of her eye, she recognised Brodwyn standing beneath one of the hall’s pitch-tipped torches. The flame’s reflection cast dark lines of discontent across her cousin’s features, but when Kathryn looked again, they had been replaced by her usual self-satisfied smirk—the one that always said, ‘I know something you don’t’. She had always been the same, even when the Bear first took her in after her father fell off his horse and died.
Grogan pulled off his cap, turning it around in his hands until she wanted to say, ‘here, give it to me’ and plonk it back on his head, but Magnus—no more happy about the delay than she was snapped, “God’s blood, man, do we have to sit here all day whilst you make up you mind?”
Straightening his shoulders Grogan finally came out with, “It’s ma woman. She’s ta’en up with one of the mercenaries.”
Magnus mumbled something unintelligible under his breath as he turned to Kathryn. “You had better deal with this, Kathryn. It could git messy.”
Charming, she thought, the moment a female became involved they turned it over to her. Eyes narrowed, she grazed both Magnus and Abelard with a haughty stare. As far as she knew, the situation had never come up before. However, they had never had such a preponderance of mercenaries at Dun Bhuird afore Gavyn returned. “What would my father have done?”
Abelard shook his head, pleading ignorance of her father’s dealings with female matters. Magnus, on the other hand, said, “He’d be just as likely to tell them to fight it out.”
Aware Gavyn would never countenance that, she turned to the man wearing out his woollen cap with his constant fiddling and asked, “Are you married?”
Grogan shook his head.
Kathryn tried again. “Hand-fasted?”
“Nae.” He shook his head vigorously in denial as if bewildered anyone would expect that of him, which an
noyed Kathryn. Many the lass she had seen used then abandoned when they became large with child.
“Then you have no right to complain,” she said, and curtly nodded a dismissal.
“It’s yon silver, that’s why. It’s nae fair.”
Magnus leaned forward in his chair as if to reprimand Grogan, but Kathryn stopped him with a touch. “Tell me,” she asked, “did you use the woman fairly or just give her the back of your hand when she displeased you?”
Shuffling his feet Grogan looked down at the floor, then back up, eyes bloodshot and surrounded by matted eyelashes—sly, sleekit. “Only when she deserved it.”
“Then it would seem you got what you deserved. You can’t claim her as your woman unless you are married or hand-fasted. As for the man having more silver in his pouch, he earned it by putting his life in danger and fighting for some French king, and you did not.” She took a deep breath to calm her heartbeat, unaware of such feelings until she spoke her piece. “You can go now. I’m sure you have better things to do.”
For the first time, Kathryn saw one of her own folk look at her with hatred. He practically spat at her saying, “We didnae ha’e all this bother until the new laird brought his men here.”
She heard Magnus growl deep in his throat. “Enough, Grogan. Don’t ye dare speak to Lady Kathryn like that. Now, off with ye and behave yersel’ or ye can leave Dun Bhuird.”
From the high board, the three of them sat silent, watching Grogan hurry off much faster than he had arrived. Kathryn had no notion of what the others were thinking. As for her, she wondered whether Gavyn would say she could have handled the matter better.
All of them turned as if startled from a dream when Brodwyn wandered by, her eyes glinting in the torchlight and a smile on her lips. “Mighty me, things are getting exciting around here. I can’t wait to tell Harald about it.”
Again the three of them watched someone walk away, but Brodwyn did it with a sway of her hips rather than at a run. Walking towards the sunshine, her cousin’s dark silhouette appeared a hundred times more sensual than Kathryn felt she did. And who would argue the point? Not her. She was the wife whose husband wanted her body in the night, but abandoned her during the day the way he had when he left for France.
Chieftain By Command Page 10
