Galen pulled her toward him. “Nay, Laoghaire. You are exactly as I desire you to be. You have bewitched me, lady wife.”
With a soft whimper, she clutched hold of Galen’s upper arms and molded her body to his. Locked in a lovers’ embrace, they stood so close to one another that she could feel the pound of his heart against her chest.
Slipping his forefinger under her chin, Galen gently tipped her head up. “I have yet to properly welcome you,” he said, just before he bent his head and covered her mouth with his.
The instant that his lips touched hers, Laoghaire felt a rapturous quickening of all her senses.
When, a moment later, Galen’s hand slid down her back and lightly squeezed her buttock, she pressed her woman’s mound against the hardened bulge between his hips and wantonly rubbed herself against him in a slow, grinding motion.
All the while, lips and tongues continued to entwine, their sighs mingling, their breaths merging.
Suddenly seized with a desperate desire to feel Galen’s bare flesh, the flame fanned by a passion eager to take flight, she tugged impatiently at the laces of his aketon.
There is only one way to satisfy this craving of the body. This yearning of the heart.
When the kiss finally ended, Galen stared at her, long and hard, his chest rising and falling with each indrawn breath. In that silent interlude, his eyes grew dark and heavy-lidded. Without uttering a word, Laoghaire sank to her knees before him. Shoving the hem of Galen’s aketon to his waist, she began to tremble with excitement.
Just outside the tent, she could hear raucous laughter and the fainter sound of someone strumming a gittern. And though she knew there were at least a score of people in the encampment, at that moment they seemed a world away.
While she busied herself with untying various knots, Galen made quick work of removing his aketon and undertunic. After she slid the chausses down his legs—carelessly flinging them aside in her haste to disrobe him—Laoghaire plied her fingers to the ties that fastened Galen’s braies. Once she was finished with that, she very slowly pulled the linen undergarment between his legs, using the fabric to gently caress his cods.
Galen groaned softly, jutting his hips in her direction.
Taking firm hold of his erect member, Laoghaire angled it toward her mouth and warmed the stiffened rod with her breath. She then moved her hand up and down the veined length of it, glorying in its unique feel—thick, silken, hot.
“When I first saw yer manly appendage, I thought it strange to behold. And yet, for all its strangeness, it fitsperfectly.”
Galen thread his fingers through her hair. “Mayhap that is because we are made for one another.”
“’Tis a lovely thought,” she murmured . . . just before she lathed his manhood with several slow, torturous strokes of the tongue.
“Do you enjoy tormenting me, lady wife?”
Galen’s voice was now so hoarse, the tone so low, that Laoghaire had to strain her ears to hear him.
’Tis obvious he has great need of me.That he did filled her with womanly satisfaction.
Having teased and tormented him enough, she took him inside her mouth, pursing her lips around him. Galen hissed through his teeth, his entire body going rigid as his fingers clasped her head more tightly. Emboldened by his response, she used her lips, tongue, and hand to caress him.
When she sensed that he was near to climax, Laoghaire was surprised that Galen suddenly pulled away from her.
“I am close to the edge,” he said on a harsh breath. “But my pleasure will be more keenly felt if you share it with me.” He wrapped a hand around her elbow, pulling Laoghaire to her feet.
No sooner was she upright than Galen began to remove her clothing, tossing aside boots, tunic and chausses, and finally her linen undergarments. When at last she stood naked before him, he cupped both of her breasts in his hands. As he strummed his thumbs over each distended nipple, the little nubbins of hardened flesh were so sensitive that the pleasure bordered on pain. And yet it was an exquisite sort of pain, one that caused a trickle of moisture to seep down her leg.
Without warning, Galen suddenly slipped one arm behind Laoghaire’s knees and the other around her shoulders. Swinging her off her feet, he carried her over to the pallet and laid her upon it. His eyes glimmering with a blatant desire, he stood beside the cot and peered down at her.
Neither of them spoke, the only sound to be heard in the tent the collapse of several coals in the brazier. It felt as though time had somehow become suspended, holding them in a passionate moment of exquisite anticipation.
He is my heart’s desire. A marvel among men. And he is mine.
“Have ye finished welcoming me?” she asked with a knowing smile.
“I have not yet begun.” Lowering himself to the pallet, Galen situated himself between her legs.
After shifting to better accommodate him, Laoghaire breathed in his scent, a wild, manly smell that she found utterly intoxicating. Feeling his erection twitch against her inner thigh, she finessed a hand between their two bodies and guided him toward her.
With a deep-throated growl, Galen penetrated her, surging so powerfully, filling her so completely, that he became a part of her; as though they had fused together, one to the other. Galen then pulled back, almost to the point of complete withdrawal. Laoghaire gasped, able to feel the broad tip and swollen flange of his rod as it momentarily corked the opening to her woman’s place. Lifting her head, she peered downward, to where they were joined as one, and watched as Galen once more drove into her.
