Catching my breath, I reached up to undo my braid crown, first removing a handful of pins and then unbraiding it, the hair still somewhat damp from my bathing, the smell of lavender blossoming around us as it hung down my back. The hairpins fell to the floor with tiny pings.
He leaned in, his nose close to the back of my head. “That scent,” he whispered. And then he touched me. He placed his hands on my waist and worked them up and down my sides slowly, the fingers spreading over my round hips and coming back to together as they reached my waist. “This figure.”
My unsteady hands had gathered my hair, pulling it to the right side, twisting it.
With pressure he pulled me back to him, his prick hard. “Do you know what I have done without you, wife?” His nose was still in my hair and his breath on my scalp made my nerves sing. His fingertips roamed to my stomach, dancing just over the place where a woman’s belly gives way to her cunt.
“No, husband, what—” My breath caught as he pushed himself against my rear. “What did you do?”
His next words were as much confessional as they were carnal. “I fucked my hand in a forest of saltwater oak and envisioned it was your sex.”
I had never heard him swear and that word in his ever appropriate mouth said with his ever monotone voice made me half delirious with need. I held onto my hair, afraid to set my hands free and show him how much he lay waste to me, how covetous I was of my own backside, that I wanted to feel his prick with my hands.
He breathed out into my hair, his exhale faltering and shallow. His left hand reached up, flattening, pressing over my bosom to lay against my breastbone and he pulled me entirely to his body. His right hand was fisted in the skirts over my sex.
Our faces were nearly aligned, I leaned so far back and he bent his head to kiss my throat, his mouth heated and open, his teeth scraping, his tongue lingering on the edge of the hagstone that had slid to my right side. He kissed the same spot a second time, but with his mouth closed, with care.
“Edith,” he said against my racing pulse. “I am not myself with you and yet, I am entirely myself. I do not know how to explain that any better.”
My hands had released my hair and I placed them over his left hand on my chest. “Let us kiss again,” I said. “I have so wanted more of your kisses.”
His hands and arms relaxed and his hands moved to my upper arms and helped turn me to him.
At last, we faced. He was less than a handspan taller than me, the end of his nose touching my forehead. We were made to kiss each other. I put my hands around his neck and brought my lips to his. Our first kiss that night was tender. But he used his teeth shortly thereafter and soon our mouths were open, our hands possessive.
It happened quickly. He backed me into the bed and we fell onto it, lips still engaged. Holding himself up with his left forearm, he pulled up a portion of my skirts with his right hand, letting out a breath of relief when he found my wet sex.
“I knew,” he panted into my mouth. “I knew it would feel like the most divine thing my hand has ever touched. I knew this would be as close to a god as I could get in this life. I knew it would undo me. You broke me with your kiss, wife. What will sharing your bed do to me?”
I came fast, faster than I had thought I could after so minor an act as his touches. But I had shared his bed for nine moons now and I was ready to be his.
“Edith,” he whispered, watching my face.
I had never looked a man in the eye while I came, but for the first time, without the intention, I did that night, my pleasure doubling at his adoration. My hands slipped out of our embrace and my head fell back on our bed. He had sunk me and I went under willingly.
He held himself up with his left arm and with his swift right hand, undid his laces. He returned to me and pushed himself into me. Because I was languorous, having had my lust slaked, he fit inside, as if we had done this before, in another lifetime, as if my sex was long intimate with his prick’s thrusts. He swived into me, his face in my neck and took his pleasure in haste.
Once he had slowed and was catching his breath, I wrapped my naked legs around him, my winter boots resting against the back of his leather breeches. “Now, I am truly your wife.” I kissed his cheek.
He pulled out of me and stood abruptly, causing my legs to fall clumsily. Tucking himself inside his breeches and lacing them, he went to his wooden chest and opened it, pulling out a small linen cloth. He then went to the tin pitcher of water we kept on the desk and dipped his hand in, holding the cloth inside. He wrung it of excess water and returned to me, eyes downcast, hand extended with the cloth.
Hurt, I took the cloth and swiped it over my sex and inner thighs. I sat up on the bed, my skirts bunching around my knees, calves in their winter boots dangling. I moved closer to the edge of the bed to sit upright, twisting the cloth in my hands. Had I been too daring to look him in the eye? The things he said implied he had been taken with me and how I felt. Why did he now face our wall of hooks, armor and weapons with his hands on his hips?
“What is it?” I asked, quelling the defensive anger that rose in me, because, no, I had not done anything wrong. He could not be upset at my passions. We were as two people who lusted in tandem, consummating that lust. It was not that.
“Forgive me,” he said. He remained where he stood. “It should not have gone thus.”
“Look at me.”
He did not turn. “I was overcome and I did not take my time with you.”
“You can take your time with me a second time. We did not come together as most men and wives come together. What makes you think any of this needs to be a certain way?”
He said nothing and brought his hands up and laced them over the top of his head.
I admired the clean line of his shoulders tapering to his waist. There was not a bit of excess on him, every knotted muscle hard won and yet, I could easily see the specter of the boy who had been scrawny, thinner than all his brothers, too small to lift a hammer in a forge. The love he had unknowingly planted in me bloomed wilder than anything I had ever known. I ached with it. “Alric,” I said softly.
“I have failed you in so many ways. I regret that this is yet another misstep.”
