She shook her head even as she whispered, “Aye, but it hurts as well... hurts...”
He lifted his fingers and felt her suck in her breath. He kissed her as he eased his middle finger inside her. By Odin, she was small, but her passage was moist now, for she was coming to her excitement. He thought to bring her to pleasure before coming into her, but he knew if he didn’t come into her now, he would spill his seed. He hurt, and his sex was swelled and hard and ready. He gritted his teeth, but it didn’t help.
He jerked up her gown and pressed her legs apart. Her eyes were no longer vague with growing excitement. There was only fear now, and he smiled, though it hurt him to do so. He positioned himself between her legs, then bent her knees. “Now, hold still. I won’t hurt you.” Slowly he guided himself into her. The heat from her body nearly sent him into oblivion, but he held on, held to control, and eased slowly, ever so slowly, into her. She was tight, her muscles squeezing him. He closed his eyes. He felt her fists pounding at his chest, his shoulders, but he didn’t stop, couldn’t stop.
She was crying. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was lying there beneath him, letting him do as he wished with her. He was butting her maidenhead now, and the pain was building. He came over her, holding himself still, and gently kissed her cold lips. “Zarabeth, look at me.”
She shook her head, her eyes tightly closed.
15
He didn’t move, didn’t allow himself to give in to the incredible desire that was prodding at him. He told himself again and again: She is just a woman who is a maid and I am her first man. That is the only pleasure there is from this mating. My possession of her. There can be nothing more.
“Look at me,” he said again, his voice lower and rougher this time.
“No,” she said, infinite pain in her voice.
And he said the words before he could stop himself. “Please, Zarabeth, I want you to look at me when I come fully into you.”
Never in his life had he requested anything from a woman whose body belonged to him. He waited. Slowly she turned her face and opened her eyes.
She moved slightly under his weight, and Magnus groaned with the feelings it brought him.
He pushed forward just a bit and felt her tense. “That is your badge of maidenhood, a bit of skin that I will tear. Just a moment of pain, Zarabeth, then there will be no more.”
“And then you will leave me?”
He smiled painfully, willfully misunderstanding her. “Aye, but I shall try to pleasure you before I do.”
He grasped her wrists in his hands and pulled them above her head. He was stretched his full length on top of her, and he looked at her closely as he pushed slowly forward. He felt the skin stretch. He felt her trying to pull away from him, her flesh flinching and tightening around him, and he kissed her. “Slowly, sweeting,” he said into her mouth. Then, suddenly, he reared back, and he looked into her eyes as he drove through her maidenhead and came to the mouth of her womb.
She cried out, unable to hold it in, and he covered her mouth with his. “No more,” he said again and again. “Hold still and become used to me.”
“It hurts,” she said, and he felt the wet of her tears on his face. “I didn’t think it would hurt like that.”
“I’m sorry for it. I wish I could have spared you that.” But there was no regret in his voice. On the contrary, his voice was filled to brimming with pride and satisfaction, and to Zarabeth’s ears, filled with a man’s triumph. She lay there silently, feeling him moving deep inside her. It was over now; he’d taken her; he’d won.
The pain was receding but she was still stretched to hold him. When he began to move, she felt the fullness of him, the slick hardness. It didn’t matter, she told herself as he moved within her, it didn’t matter. He had won, but she wouldn’t let it matter. When he was done with her, he would be tired of her and leave her alone. Her maidenhead was gone now and he had been gentle with her, and for that she was grateful, she supposed. She was glad she hadn’t fought him more than she had. It would have gained her naught but more pain. She felt nothing now save the stretching and fullness inside her and the revulsion for this man grunting over her, this man who was inside her body, who was doing to her precisely as he wished to do.
She listened to his breathing quicken, deepen. He moaned then, a raw deep sound, drawing back, and then he was pushing into her harder and harder still, and he was groaning wildly. Suddenly he froze over her, his head thrown back, and he gave a muted yell. She felt the wetness of him and knew that he had filled her with his man’s seed.
He grew quiet. She accepted his weight, for she had no choice. She felt incredibly tired, yet oddly relieved that it was over and it hadn’t been so horrible after all, this mating, this taking that men did of women’s bodies. And he hadn’t touched her, not really, not the part of her that was silently and wholly her.
He released her wrists and came up on his elbows to relieve her of his weight. He was still deep inside her, yet she didn’t feel so full of him now.
“Did I hurt you again?”
“Aye.” She saw too late that his additional sign of her innocence pleased him, and she wished she had lied.
“But you don’t hurt now, do you?”
She shook her head, closing her eyes against the intentness of his gaze, wondering what was in his mind now.
“In a moment I will give you pleasure. I truly wish you hadn’t had to suffer me before I could bring you to joy.”
Her eyes flew open. He smiled down at her, enjoying her utterly bewildered expression, her disbelief at his words. He dipped his head down to kiss her.
“You will see.”
