by James, Elle
“Good,” Kroan said. “I have business to attend to. Be ready to sail in two days’ time at sunset. And, men, if I do not return by midnight, shove off without me.”
They grumbled and sneered at his words.
The largest of the crew, save for himself, stepped forward. His arms, as big around as the gut of a spit-roasted hog, folded over his chest. “The ship will await its captain,” Broden said.
“As first mate, you become the Swaran’s captain. And you will follow my orders. Understood?”
“Aye, sir,” his friend growled.
“On we go,” Kroan barked.
With begrudging nods, half his motley crew followed. Their sturdy frames thunked onto the mooring. The others stayed behind to guard the vessel, while he and the first group headed to market.
Though the crew wasn’t looking for trouble, harbor workers scurried from their path, making way for the band of behemoths. When they hit solid ground, Kroan stepped to the side, ordering his men to precede him with a jerk of his head.
He eased from the stone path to the brilliant sand. It sucked his feet to the ankles and warmed them through the tanned leather. The last time he’d set foot on the parched Persian earth, he’d saved an old man from certain death and gotten settled with a child bride as his prize.
Of all the tainted luck.
She’d been a virgin to life, much less lust. But her eyes had shaken his stalwart morals to rubble. Dark as pitch in the midst of the sea. Vibrant as a million stars glinting in the eve. Everywhere he’d ventured in her father’s silk hut, her knowing gaze had followed. Those attentive orbs fanned with lashes long enough to tickle his skin and were framed with a jeweled headdress and thin veil that had shown only a glimpse of her smooth walnut skin.
Anticipation wrestled every nerve in Kroan’s body, threatening to topple him onto the blistering ground. Steeling his spine, he strode onto the path an older, and hopefully, more worthy husband than he’d been at twenty-one. The city itself had matured in the time he’d been away. Its streets filled to bursting with patrons. But he wondered about the girl.
At twenty-three, she’d likely be ripe enough to bring him to his knees, assuming he could find her after all these years. He weaved through the sea of people to the main fair of vendors in search of his wife.
*
“Pardon, my lady. I am in need of silk, and I’m told you have the finest in all the world,” a booming voice spoke gently in her native tongue.
Shîrîn’s heart shuddered. What pleasure and pain that voice—or, more accurately, the memory of that voice—brought her over most of a decade. When a shadow large enough to accompany the man cast her in darkness, her hands faltered. The point of the needle missed the fabric altogether, stabbing into her finger.
“Angra Mainyu,” she cursed the devil and his destructive forces.
The piercing sting was restitution for turning her back on the hut’s entrance, beginning yet another bolt of silk in the obsessive pattern sure to put her family out of business. None of her countrymen wanted silk with a Viking astride a dark horse, his chest wide and bare with one sinewy arm brandishing an axe above his long blond locks.
“Are you hurt?” The voice and shadow grew bigger until both leaned over her shoulder. “Please, let me help.”
A hand, large enough to completely encompass her throat, gathered her smaller one and lifted it high. Though strong enough to inflict damage, his hand cradled. Heat radiated from roughened fingers.
Her breath lodged in her windpipe. Desire ran amuck in her mind, creating a desire for things she wanted more than all the silk in the land. She clamped her eyes shut. With a fast back and forth, she tried to shake away the absurdity of her thoughts.
An acute burn snapped her lids wide. Shîrîn rocketed from the woven rug, dumping the roll of expensive fabric and spools of vibrant threads to the ground. She turned, anger perched on the tip of her tongue.
“Have mercy on…”
A mountain of a man stood over her. It seemed his shoulders spread almost as wide as her arms could. She tilted her head and found her hand nestled inside his much-larger one, and snugged against the cleft of two bulging pectorals.
Shîrîn’s gaze locked there for far too long, mapping the thatch of light hair and tautness of the sun-kissed skin. In his other hand, the needle stood pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Crimson tarnished its point. Her cheeks suddenly grew hot, no doubt matching the vibrant red of the feather-light veil threatening to suffocate her.
She struggled to swallow, to speak, but her mouth grew as dry as the dunes. She should feel ashamed, ogling this man who conjured every fractured memory of her long-lost husband, as well as every carnal fantasy she’d entertained over the years. But she didn’t turn away, only continued the tour. This man’s jaw was wider than the man in her dreams. The scowl deeper. His nose sat proudly, if not a little crooked, between sky blue eyes flecked with cloud white fissures. Her palms slicked with sweat and her pulse stuttered.
She knew those eyes, would know them anywhere in the cosmos. “Kroan,” she gasped.
“You’re bleeding, Shîrîn.”
“I don’t care.” Her words were thin as Mand river reeds.
His grimace deepened still, but faltered with the rise of one brow. A smile played at the edge of his lips. He inclined his head and opened his mouth. Firm lips engulfed her fingertip in silk rivaling any she’d had the pleasure of experiencing. Chinese, Byzantine, Indian—none came close to the soft heat of the Scandinavian silk bathing the smallest bit of her skin. The rough give of his tongue caressed her pad, and then all too soon his lips dragged off her finger.
“I care,” Kroan said.
The spell broke as surprise morphed into outrage. “You care?” She yanked her hand from his grip and surged into his space with a brashness she’d never dared to display. Since he hunched forward her covered face crowded his own.
“A husband shows concern for his wife by sharing the responsibilities of life. By speaking with her every day and holding her close every night. By loving her mind and worshiping her body with his own. But not you, my husband. You leave me alone, without the favor of your smile or the heat of your body.”
Heat indeed. It radiated from his exposed chest and arms. His hands balled into tight fists. The muscles in his jaw danced.
But she couldn’t stop. Words held captive for too many years tumbled out between them. “Was our courtship not pleasing? Did you find me boorish, stupid? Fear me ugly? Kroan, I am not any of those things.”
She ripped the covering from her face in what would have been plain view of the passing throng of market goers were it not for her husband’s Herculean frame. Her gaze dared him to call her unsightly, begged him to enfold her in his arms and kiss her as boldly as he had in her imaginings.
Instead, his grip encircled high on her right arm. He drove her back from the storefront, his hold careful and strong. With his other hand, he pulled down swaths of silk, which hung from the ceiling. The fabric barricaded the light of day and hid them from the sight of the street goers. It plunged them into a dim cave of luxurious textiles.
Kroan scrubbed a hand over his face. His muttering came hoarse and in a language she didn’t recognize. The lilt of the words caressed her in a velvety wave, priming her as if his hand had done the work. Her nipples beaded, and she flushed lower still, in the place she’d only toyed with in the dead of night when her imagination forced her to the brink of sanity.
“I don’t understand. Kroan, please.” Shîrîn didn’t know for what she begged, but she did, and would at his feet, if necessary. She clutched her loose dress to keep from throwing herself at him, to keep from exploring the feel of his pale locks. Everything about them was so different. Size, coloring, beliefs. But she prayed their desires were the same. Like her, he held himself in invisible restraints.
“You are more provoking than a harem of willing women at my feet, wife, more fascinating than any scholar. Our courtship dared t
o please me too much.”
“Then why leave?” she shouted.
He placed his fingers over her lips. His gaze tightened, but he whispered, “Are you set on getting us in trouble? Do you not realize that married or not, the guards will arrest us for being together? You’re a Persian beauty meant for a pretty Persian man, not a brute like me.”
She pressed her mouth more firmly to his fingers. Her soft lips molded around them. After placing a chaste kiss, she eased back. “This body is meant only for you, ruffian. So why did you leave?” she breathed.
“You were barely fourteen,” he answered.
“I was the proper marrying age. The laws of church and man deemed it so.”
“But not the proper bedding age.”
She huffed a breath. All she heard was a thin excuse. “Are you really so savage?”
“Don’t mock me.” His hand cupped the side of her face and then tangled amongst the hair at her nape. He crushed the small space between them with one step. That mesmerizing blue gaze slid to her mouth. “You weren’t bedding age, but you are now.”
Shîrîn lifted her chin and parted her lips. For him? Her delicate bone structure, perfect skin, and rosy lips were refined enough for royalty. His peasant blood and warrior’s face couldn’t begin to compare, but with her this close, this willing, he couldn’t deny the need.
“Your father promised you long ago. But, wife, do you wish to be mine?” Kroan’s breath seized as he studied her features and awaited her reply.
Her lips trembled and moisture welled in her dark eyes. “All those years ago, I set out for the harbor with a package a customer had left behind. When I reached the city gate, I saw you, bare-chested and dripping sweat, working on the deck of your ship. I watched you heave sacks of spices over your head, and before I realized the day turned to dusk. You dried off and headed into town, not even sparing me a glance.” Her small pink tongue wet her lips, while her rapid breaths did their best to dry them.
It had been his first voyage on a merchant ship and he’d been greener than his homeland in spring, learning everything the hard way and loving every backbreaking minute. She’d been young and covered head to toe. He wasn’t surprised he hadn’t noticed her, but the fact she’d noticed him had him swollen with more than pride.
“I thank Ahura Mazda every day that you spared my father a glance for it was my fault the men wanted him dead. I had forgotten about the package clutched to my chest for those short hours, but the customer had not.”
Her petite hands released the dress and settled over his heart. “Don’t you see, Kroan? I was yours before I became your wife.”
He lost himself in her words and hungry gaze. With a dip of his head, he sealed his mouth over her lips. Saffron and sex mingled on his tongue. To his surprise, her tongue artfully delved inside his mouth, fumbling and exploring. Shîrîn’s hands spread on his chest. Her back bowed, pressing her soft body against his.
Kroan groaned his agonized pleasure as she cuddled his erection with her belly. Knowing he shouldn’t, here in the center of market, he skated his left hand over her shoulder to the small of her back and pulled her closer. He longed to pump his hips into the pressure, but didn’t dare move, fearing he’d forget himself entirely and take her on the floor of the hut.
Shîrîn’s hips rolled in a tiny circle, spurring his lust higher until it filled him to bursting. He stabbed the needle into the hut’s wall and barred her hips with his hands, but knew his mistake the moment his fingers sank into her soft bottom. He molded the supple flesh through the aggravating layers of clothing.
She moaned into his mouth, and her fingers roamed his shoulders. His back. His neck. She wound her fingers through his long hair.
A whimper gargled at the back of his throat, threatening to mark him as the enthralled sapling he was. Shîrîn broke the kiss before he could embarrass himself. She held firm to the hanks of his hair, so they didn’t stray far. Her breaths cooled his cheek.
“Kroan, I am yours, but I want to make you mine. Please, let me.”
Unshed tears glistened in her eyes, and he couldn’t have denied her, if he’d wanted to. He nodded his approval.
The grip on his nape loosened. He in turn loosened his grip and allowed her to step back. Her hands went to the top of her wispy orange gown. With two easy sweeps, the fabric fell from her shoulders to her hips.
“Praise be your gods and mine,” he rasped.
Dusky brown circles crowned two luscious breasts, not large, but enough to overflow his hands. The tips of each stood for him, begging his attention. He couldn’t yet give them their due. Her hands smoothed over her flat abdomen and his gaze followed, starving for the next morsel of her skin. With deliberate movements, she pushed the dress over her hips and let it fall to the floor. Enraptured by the curve of her hips and the patch of midnight hair covering her mound, he froze.
She stepped out of the heaped fabric, her feet as bare as her beautiful body. Only the gold jeweled hairdressing draped across her forehead, which kept her long hair from her face, hid any part of her from his gaze.
She turned and stepped deeper into the tent, tormenting him with the full globes of her bottom. Loose tendrils of her hair brushed against the small of her back, and he wished they were his fingers. He stepped forward to do just that, but she turned and stayed him with an arch of her brow.
“I’m pleased you are impatient. I have the mind to make you wait as long as you have made me. But I haven’t the will.” She yanked on the pile of silk she’d been threading. The fabric billowed wildly, and then landed in wavy pools across the carpeted floor. Her body arched and bent as she layered four more hills of textile in the same artful way.
“I’ve waited as long as I can, Shîrîn.”
She stepped boldly forward. “Wait no more.” Her hands reached for the leather straps crossing his body and holding his weapon in place. He moved to secure it, but she waved away his hands. “Let me take care of you, husband. I’m not worldly practiced, but I have pleasured you enough in my dreams that my skills rival the prince’s harem.”
Why in hell had he stayed away so long? Her touch was swift and sure. Kroan’s blood rushed in his ears as it did when he headed into battle. His wife wasn’t armed, and still he knew this was one battle he’d lost long ago. She’d owned his heart as assuredly as she owned his body now.
The weight of the axe left him. She weaved with the thing, but set it to the ground without incident. Next the leathers covering his skin fell away. His erection stood heavy, bobbing between them. Her sweet hand fisted his length, and though he fought the sensation, his head lolled. His body took over, hips pumping into her hand.
A prick of pain skimmed a nipple as his pure, but not so demure, wife, nipped and then sucked the sensitive area. He’d always been a quiet lover, but his lips tingled with the need to praise and love her with his words. Of all the weak-natured gestures.
He clamped his mouth closed, focusing on the steady strokes of her fingers and tongue.
Her mouth left his chest. One of her hands kept a steady rhythm, while the other slipped between his spread legs. A groan bled through his lips as she cupped his sack and tugged. “Yes, wife, just like that. Oh, the gods, you’re too good.”
Each brush of her hand ratcheted his hunger, tightened his muscles until they threatened to bust through his restraint. Then her cool lips encircled his head. “I’m yours, Shîrîn, and have been for these nine long years.”
Slurps and moans whirled about the tent. Hers. His. Kroan was too far gone to worry about the other merchants overhearing, patrons entering without warning, or city guards checking the disturbance.
When he could no longer temper the violent thrusts of his hips, he pulled from her mouth, plucked her off the bed of silks where she knelt, and pulled her to his chest. “Put your legs around me.”
Kroan kissed her slicked red lips and sank into the kiss as he knelt and laid her onto the makeshift bed. Her ruthless heels dug into his back. With t
he finesse of a rutting oxen, he positioned at her wet opening and rammed home. Sweet silk overwhelmed his senses. Her cry, though muffled by his hand, cut him deeper than any blade. He kissed her cheek and buried his face in her hair, holding her as close as they could ever be, as close as he planned to be for the rest of his days.
“I’ll not move until you’re ready.” Perfect rows of teeth clamped down on his pinky. He ground his own to keep from hollering. As soon as the vise of her jaw loosened, he yanked back his hand.
“Had I known this awaited me, I may have altered my daily prayers,” she muttered.
“Don’t curse me,” he ground out. “I swear the hurt will ease. Just relax and feel.”
“Feel?” she said, her voice rising. “Oh, I feel—”
Kroan bravely placed his hand over her mouth again, leaned back, and tweaked her raised nipples in turn. Her lips parted, and he braced for her bite. Hot breath dampened his hand on a soft moan.
“That’s it,” he coaxed, relieved pleasure now edged the pain.
He molded the supple flesh, jostled it this way and that. The wet of her tongue skated over his pads as he moved his hand to her other breast. He gathered them together for a feast, the generous curves stacked against one another. With a dip of his head, he suckled them one, and then the other, laving and lashing with care.
Shîrîn’s fingers tangled in his hair. She pulled and bucked beneath him, setting a frantic pace he could never maintain—not for the first time with her, and probably not ever. She pushed him past reason, past humanity, to the base of animal instinct. He shifted to his elbows and met her thrust for thrust.
The fine silk scuffed his knees, but his pain did not exist in her pleasure. Leaning to one side, Kroan mapped her contours with his hands. The hollow of her neck. The peak of her breasts. The dip of her hips. The folds of her pussy. He forked his fingers over his hot penis and pressed his knuckles against her receptive nub. A hint of blood sheathed him, and a Viking’s yell rumbled deep inside his chest at the proof of his claim.
