Alex’s gaze hardened as he looked past Strian to Gressa who looked to be cowering behind Strian to anyone who did not know her.
“She doesn’t seem as happily wed as the other wives in your group. I didn’t know you called your slaves wives. I thought they were only concubines.” Alex’s toned had hardened to match his glare.
Gressa was not about to let Strian get into a fight with their host, nor was she going to allow the man to continue with his misconception of their relationship. She stepped around Strian, shooting him a dirty look when he tried to block her.
“Laird Mackay, I am Strian’s wife and have been since well before you saw us together. We’ve been married for more than ten years. What you thought you understood is much more complicated than it seemed. Just to be clear, I am happy to be with my husband again, and I am too busy to look at anyone else. I don’t need rescuing.”
Gressa turned toward Strian, fisted a handful of his tunic and yanked until he bent over. The kiss they shared had several people turning away and clearing their throats. Strian grunted as he pulled away. He hefted Gressa over his shoulder and turned away from the group without a word. He carried Gressa until they reached the loch.
Twenty-Three
Strian placed her on her feet, and it was only a heartbeat later that they once more came together in a cataclysmic kiss, both frustrated and needy after so many days of forced abstinence. They tore at one another’s clothing, shedding them in a pile at their feet. Strian pressed Gressa back against a boulder as she tangled her fingers in his hair and held his head as she wanted it while her tongue invaded his mouth. There was little finesse as Gressa wrapped her legs around Strian’s waist, and he thrust into her. Their coupling was rough as fingers bit into flesh and nails raked across skin, each marking the other as possessiveness and love tangled into inextricable need. A voice in Strian’s mind emerged from the fog long enough to warn him that he would hurt Gressa by being so rough with her against a rock, but when he tried to slow and shift them, Gressa’s teeth tugged at his lip and her heels dug into the base of his spine.
Gressa gasped with pleasure that coursed through her each time Strian surged into her. Nothing permeated the cloud she floated upon as she clung to the only man she had ever been with. She knew the Valkyries could claim her now, and she would go to Valhalla without having missed anything by not having more partners. She could not imagine any man could make her feel what Strian did. The hunger for Strian that gnawed at her throughout their voyage, ravaging her each time he was near, now controlled her every move and thought. His breath tickled her ear as his tongue brushed against the whorl of her ear. He nipped then sucked her lobe into the warmth of his mouth, scalding her wherever his lips touched. His whispered words eliciting moans she did not try to stifle.
“Do you have any idea how much I’ve wanted to thrust into you over and over until I can no longer say my name? How many times I nearly took you against the rail of the ship, crew be damned? Gods Gressa, I want to fuck you as much as I want to make love to you. I just want to be bollocks deep in you and hear you scream my name.”
Gressa felt her nipples tighten into painful peaks as his words pushed her closer to the edge.
“Then fuck me, Strian. Don’t hold back. My whole body aches for you. I need you. Show me I’m not alone in how much I need you inside me.”
Gressa’s last words shredded Strian’s final vestiges of control. He could no longer hold back. He would feel guilty later for being so rough, but as Gressa’s moans filled his ears, and her soft chanting for more released his last threads of reason, he plunged his cock into her over and over. Each time he thought he was as deep as he could go, he pushed just a little further. Gressa’s feet pressed against the rock as she lifted her hips to meet each thrust, her nails biting into the flesh of his backside as she held him within her for an extra moment while the muscles of her core contracted around him. Their movements driving one another closer to the brink; the pressure building within them both. Strian saw stars dancing behind his clenched eyelids each time he felt Gressa’s inner muscles tighten around him, holding him deep within her.
“Gressa, let go. I need you to find your release because I can’t hold on much longer. I need to spill, but I refuse to finish until I’ve pleasured you and you scream my name. Fuck, Gressa. Hurry.”
Gressa bit into Strian’s shoulder as she ground her mound against him, the burning ache within her belly giving way to her climax. She moaned as the feel of Strian’s body grinding against hers tipped her over the edge.
“Strian!” she did not care that her scream scared the birds from the trees and was surely heard all the way to the keep.
“Gressa!” Strian’s responding bellow only confirmed to anyone who could hear that they both found their release.
Gressa’s knees cradled Strian’s hips, as they lay panting, Strian’s chest pressing against Gressa’s. Her fingers drew lazy circles over the sweat drenched skin, and Strian continued to press kisses along the column of her neck and behind her ears. They were content to remain joined as they struggled to regain control of their breathing. The physical need satisfied, their emotional need demanded they remain connected as tenderness overtook them.
“I wish it could be only the two of us. At least until our family grows. Then I wish we could live without the demands of others interfering,” Strian murmured as his hand cupped Gressa’s neck and she nuzzled against him.
“You would have us live like hermits? Wouldn’t you miss our friends?” Gressa’s toes ran along the length of Strian’s calf before winding around his leg.
“You forget that I go into the mountains at least once a year for longer than a moon.” Strian felt Gressa suck in air, surprised he knew that she knew. “I figured Freya told you that morning she pulled you off to the side. Your face went so gray, I feared you’d pass out.”
Gressa’s mind flooded with guilt and doubt about her decision to stay in Wales. She had been so sure that it was what was best for their child, that Strian would understand, but once again the harm her absence caused Strian confronted her.
“Stop, Gressa.” Strian pushed up on his forearm to look at her. “I would have stayed with him, too.”
Gressa’s eyes filled with tears as she stroked Strian’s jaw, his beard grown in after days at sea.
“I should have told you that sooner, Gressa. I’m still angry and bitter about the years stolen from us, but I should have said something before I now. I’ve thought about it countless times since you told me your reasons, and I would have done the same thing. Gressa, I think about him all the time now that I know. I can’t stop wondering what he looked like, what he would be like now. He’d be old enough to train with us. I would have already given him his first wooden sword. I want to know if he would have been fair like me or had your dark hair. I can’t stop wanting to get to him faster and being frustrated at having to wait. I want him to know that his father loves him.”
Strian’s voice caught on the last sentence, and he hung his head. Gressa’s cool hands lifted his chin, and she curled up to brush a kiss against the corner of his lips. Her thumbs swiped away the tears that fell from Strian’s misty eyes. She wrapped her arms around his back and nudged him to lie against her again. She stroked his hair as he rested his head against her shoulder.
“I told him every day that you loved him. I had no way of knowing if you had moved on, found another wife and had a family, but I knew that you would have loved our son no matter what. I didn’t want to think about you being with another woman, creating a life with her that we had promised each other, but I knew I was gone too long to expect you to not continue your life. I even sat at his graveside and wondered aloud what your new family would be like. I told him of the brothers and sisters I assumed he had, and how you would have gladly included him as you played with and taught each of them. He knows, Strian. No matter where his spirit rests now, he knows you would have loved him just as much I love him.”
“But you saw him. Were you able to hold him?”
Gressa nodded, unable to force words around the lump in her throat. Strian tilted his head to see Gressa’s face. Tears leaked from her eyes, too. Their shared pain still looking for ways out.
“I did. Strian, he looked so much like you.” Gressa’s hoarse whisper came with a feeling of gravel traveling along her throat.
Strian rolled onto his side and covered her belly with his hand as though he might feel whether a new life already grew inside.
