“Why not?” she demanded. “Why should we not disport ourselves for our mutual enjoyment in the getting of our bairns, my husband? Should our bairns not come from love? Why should our passion be sober?”
“It shouldn’t,” he agreed as her wise words penetrated his brain. Then he raised his head up to look into her warm amber eyes. “I love you, Rosamund. Do you, can you, love me?”
“I do not love you yet,” she told him honestly, “but I believe I can love you, Owein. Do you really love me?”
“Aye, I do. I probably have loved you since we first met. I admired how well you conducted yourself in the face of your uncle Henry’s behavior and greed, and Hugh Cabot just in his grave.”
“Your timely arrival saved me,” Rosamund said quietly.
“I know,” he replied.
“Owein, I do not want to talk anymore,” Rosamund told him. “I want to become a woman this night, and I want to know the pleasures of the marriage bed. Are you shocked?”
He thought a moment and then he said, “Nay, I am not shocked. I think I am relieved, for I am mad with love for you, my bride, and beginning to be filled with lust.” He bent and kissed her until she was quite breathless and rosy.
“I want your manhood inside me,” she whispered hotly, sending a bolt of raw desire through him. “Will you mount me like the ram mounts his ewe sheep, Owein?”
“I could,” he said, “but I will not. The more common way for a man and a woman to mate is face-to-face. Ask no more questions now, Rosamund. Just let me show you how much I love and desire you.” Now he began to kiss her again, his mouth fusing with hers, their tongues playing hide-and-seek with each other. The blond hair on his chest tickled her young breasts. He felt the smooth mounds giving way beneath his weight.
Her head began to spin in a most pleasurable way, Rosamund thought. Her nipples tingled as the soft fuzz on his chest taunted them. She let her fingers caress the nape of his neck, smooth over his broad shoulders. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the plethora of delicious sensations sweeping over her body and spirit. His lean body was hard against her. She felt a ripple of unfamiliar sensation rising up. Was it desire? It had to be! She was experiencing desire for the first time!“Ohhh, husband!”she murmured against his ear, and then her teeth nipped at the fleshy lobe, for she was unable to constrain herself.
Her obvious rising and newly discovered lust thrilled him. He had been afraid as to how she might react to his own burgeoning passion. Catching her head in his hands again he kissed her once more. The auburn tresses were soft beneath his fingers. Her dark eyelashes lay spread across her cheeks like summer moths. Those lashes were gold tipped he noticed. There was so much he was going to discover about her now that she was his wife.
Rosamund felt the hardness against her thigh. A long and very firm hardness. His manhood had ripened and was ready to penetrate her. Her heart began to beat even faster. Now his hand was covering her mons and pressing down upon it.“Oh,”she cried out with the sensation he produced. A single finger began to move along her slit, sliding through to find her love bud, which was already tingling in anticipation. He played with it but briefly, instead sliding the long finger within her wet love sheath. Then he pressed a second finger forward, moving the two digits slowly back and forth.“Yesss!”she hissed. She was ready.
Without a word Owein mounted his wife, his love lance pushing forward through her nether lips, gently, gently, entering her eager body. He paused a moment, allowing her the opportunity to become used to this first invasion.
“Are you ready to become a woman, lovey?” he murmured against her love-swollen lips.
She nodded, and then her amber eyes widened as he thrust deep within her. She cried out as her maidenhead was torn asunder, quick tears slipping down her cheeks, which he swiftly kissed away, but to his relief she clung to him as he pistoned her until he could bear no more of the sweetness that possessing Rosamund’s body had given him. To his delight he heard her cry out, but this second cry was one of pleasure and not pain. His love juices thundered into her love bower even as her fingernails dug sharply into his shoulders and raked down his broad back.
There had been pain, and then it had dissolved almost magically. The fierce driving, repetitive motion of his loins had had a strange effect upon her. She seemed to lose all control over herself, living only for the delicious sensations that poured through her straining body. With each thrust of his love rod she had grown more dizzy until finally the passion erupted within her, and she had actually lost consciousness for a brief moment or more.“Owein! Owein!”she heard her voice calling out to him from a very far distance.
He enfolded her within his arms, kissing the top of her auburn head. Warmth streamed through them both. “There, lovey,” he whispered. “You are a woman now, and perhaps this night we have made a child.”
She sighed and snuggled against him. “I should like that,” she told him in a low voice. Then she looked up at him saying, “It was wonderful, sir knight. Even the pain was good, I vow. I am relieved to be a maid no more, and a true wife at last, Owein. Thank you.”
He could feel the tears pricking against his eyelids and forced them back. Men did not cry. “Nay, lovey,” he told her. “’Tis I who must thank you for the magnificent gift of your virginity. I shall always be true to you, Rosamund. This I swear to you on our wedding night.”
In the morning Henry Bolton arrived at Friarsgate early, even as Maybel brought down the bloodied sheet from the bridal bed. Boldly she waved it at him.
“She’s wed good and true this time,” Maybel said with a grin.
“He could die,” Henry Bolton said grimly.
“She could already be with child,” Maybel snapped. “You’ll not have Friarsgate now, Henry Bolton. Hugh Cabot, may God assoil his good soul, outfoxed you!” And Maybel laughed aloud.
“He could die, and children perish young in this country, as you and I well know,” Henry persisted. “Then she would have no choice but to wed my son.”
“The Hepburn of Claven’s Carn came courting, and only went away because he is an honorable man,” Maybel replied. “God forbid anything happen to Sir Owein, but if it did, the Hepburn would be over the hills and into this house as quick as a wink.”
“That Scots bastard had the temerity to come courting my niece?” Henry Bolton demanded angrily.
“Aye, he did, and he’s a good man, too,” Maybel answered. “He came to my lady’s wedding and played his pipes for the bridal couple.”
“He came to get the lay of the land,” Henry Bolton snarled.
“He brought salmon and whiskey, uncle,” Rosamund said entering the hall and overhearing the conversation. “The salmon was delicious, and we will enjoy the whiskey this winter. We are sorry that you and Mavis missed the wedding. Did she not come with you, uncle?” She smiled at him, smoothing her russet skirts of an imaginary wrinkle.
