"What happened?" she asked in a panic. "Your staff has gone limp inside me. I want it hard. Make it hard."

ShouldI laugh or cry?"I told you to wait."

"It is not over yet, is it? Do not dare to stop now."

He leaned down and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. "Give me time to regroup, Tyra."

"Time?" she shrieked, thumping on his chest with her fists. "There is no time. I need you now." Apparently, the quick kiss was not going to suffice.

He should have known. He should have been prepared for what Tyra did next. After all, this was Tyra... warrior woman... a person accustomed to going after what she wanted. An out-of-control boulder, by her own description.

With a twist of her hips, she flipped him over on his back and sat on him, his embarra.s.singly limp member still held inside her slick walls.

"Well?" she prodded.

"Well what?" he gurgled. The sight of a wild Amazon G.o.ddess straddling him, naked as Eve in the Garden of Eden, was enough to make any man gurgle. Adam-that would be him-would love to accommodate Eve-that would be her-but, unfortunately, the "snake" was uninterested... at the moment.

"Regroup," she ordered.

"Tyra, a man cannot get erect on command," he explained to her patiently. "He must be aroused... again." This was the most outrageous situation Adam had ever found himself in, and there had been plenty in his ill-famed past.

"Tell me how to arouse you, then," she said with all the logic of an illogical female. In other circ.u.mstances, he would probably be enticed by such a suggestion from a female, but not now. Meanwhile, she squirmed on his lap to make herself more comfortable.

The "snake" perked up at her squirming, and Adam saw stars. "That would be one way," he choked out before inhaling and exhaling several times. "Hey, hey, hey, Tyra," he called out to her, placing his hands on her hips to still her motions. "Just relax."

"Relax," she repeated after him. Then she, too, inhaled and exhaled several times. "Now what?"

He grinned at her enthusiasm. "I do not want you to say anything, or do anything. Let me lead."

She nodded her head slowly, but then she raised one hand, as if asking his permission to speak.

Now what?

"There is just one thing. I'm weeping all over you."

At first he didn't understand. When he did, he started to laugh, which caused his "snake" to jiggle, which caused Tyra's eyes to widen. Finally he said, "The 'weeping' is from both of us, and it's natural... to be expected."

"Oh. All right. Proceed then."

"No more talking," he reminded her.

"No more talking," she agreed, running the back of her hand across her lips to demonstrate just how shut her mouth was.

For several long moments, he just gazed at her. Still straddling his body, trapping his half limp member inside her, she gazed back at him, waiting. G.o.d, she was magnificent.

"Lift your hair and place your hands behind your neck," he instructed.

She did so without question, and Adam decided then and there that there had never been a more beauteous or desirable female in all the kingdoms of the world. With just his fingertips, he traced her upraised inner arms from elbows to armpits, then the muscled planes of her sides and waist and hips.

The position of her arms caused her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to be outthrust. Leaning up off the bed, he took one nipple and areola into his mouth, just licking it at first with the tip of his tongue.

She made a soulful whimpering sound... the kind that makes a man thank G.o.d he is... well, a man. He hoped to elicit more of those sounds from her.

Pleased with the progress of what he hoped would be a slow a.s.sault, Adam began to suckle her. Slowly. Deeply. Rhythmically. Each time he drew on her, her inner muscles contracted around his staff, and soon he was hard enough to serve as the mast pole of a longship... certainly erect enough to give her all the pleasure she could want. But it was too soon for that. This time, he wanted to prolong her arousal, to double... nay, triple... her rapture when she finally peaked.

Tyra in the throes of ecstasy would be a sight to behold.

He hoped he survived.

Chapter Sixteen.

Tyra was so excited she could scarce contain herself. How she would survive this wondrous night, she had no idea, but she could not wait to find out.

She sat as still as any woman could in her position. And wasn't that an amazing feat... that two people... a man and a woman... could fit together so well? She was not sure what she had expected, but not this... fullness, accompanied by the most delicious tension. Why didn't women tell other women how wonderful it was? Why keep it a secret? Or could it be that she was the only woman who experienced such bliss... or that only this man could bring it on?

"Why are you smiling, witchling?" he asked, chucking her playfully under the chin with his knuckles.

"It is a secret," she replied, hoping the smile on her face was one of mystery now, and not a silly grin.

"Ah, then, I will have to torture your secrets from you." Even as he spoke, he put his hands on her b.u.t.tocks and rolled them over so she was on her back once again. Luckily, his manpart had remained within her, but then, mayhap it could not escape once it reached this size. She would have to ask... later.

Adam began an a.s.sault on her then that could only be described as sweet agony. He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her till she did not know where he ended and she began, whether his tongue was in her mouth or hers was in his.

He wet the inner whorls of her ears, then blew them dry with such erotic appeal that she felt as if there were a thread connecting her ears to that special place between her legs. She wanted so very badly for him to movethere , but she was following orders, for a change, and she liked it.

He allowed her to return his kisses and caresses, but nothing more. She liked that, too.

He worshiped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She would be sore on the morrow, but that soreness would be a reminder of how much she had enjoyed his attentions.

He whispered wicked, wicked things about her body and the things they would do. Some of them were surely physically impossible, though she would be willing to try.

They were both panting loudly by the time he sat back on his haunches and pulled out of her slightly. Wrapping his heels under her thighs, he spread her wider, then ordered, "Watch this, dearling. I want you to see yourself."

She propped herself on her elbows and gazed downward where she could see her woman-folds and the portion of his manpart that was not inside her. He did the most tantalizing thing then. He wet his middle finger in the moisture they had made there and began to strum the exposed pleasure bud that rose up, distended.

At the first touch of his finger, she let out an agonized, wail, then began to keen, "Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. It is too much." In truth, it was not enough.

"Shhhh. Let it happen, sweetling," Adam said, his voice hardly recognizable for its hoa.r.s.eness.

Flutters began inside her that quickly turned to clasps of his male organ, then a continuous series of full-blown spasms. She thought she might have screamed at the peak, so mindless was she.

"Now it is my turn," he said. "G.o.d willing, I will last longer this time than a boy with his first maid."

His turn. She had thought it was over. She certainly felt complete. But no, he had raised himself up on straightened arms and now began to thrust in and out of her... long strokes that went on forever, dragging on her inner walls, sucking her back into the vortex of pa.s.sion with a jolt of even more intense pleasure.

She could not think. She bucked her hips. She writhed from side to side. She wailed her building arousal, much, much more powerful than the previous ones.

"Do something," she screamed. "Do it, do it, do it!" She had no idea what she was urging him to do to put her out of her agony. All she knew was that the infuriating man just continued those long, slow strokes that were driving her mad... although she noticed that his teeth were gritted now, and veins stood out on his arched neck and forehead.

She reached out behind him and squeezed his b.u.t.tocks.

He rewarded her with a groan. Only then did he begin shorter, harder strokes that drove her across the bed. She was meeting him, thrust for thrust, her legs spread as wide as they would go with her feet flat on the mattress. Her insides were grasping him so hard, it was a wonder he was not in pain. Finally it was too much. He roared out his male triumph as his hot seed spurted into her womb, and her pleasure spiraled and spiraled and spiraled till her insides shattered into a million small ripples of woman-joy.

Adam lay atop her for a long time, breathing as heavily as a warhorse. She sounded no better.

When he finally raised his head to look at her through glazed blue eyes, he kissed her swollen lips and whispered, "That was wonderful, my sweet warrior lady."

Her heart sang at his softly murmured sentiment. She asked a simple question then-one which any sensible-minded woman would have asked, in her opinion, but which prompted long peals of laughter from the rogue. "Oh, Tyra, you are priceless," he sputtered as she shoved him off her and onto the floor.

And all she'd said was, "Can we do it again?"

Tyra was straightening out the bed linens, and Adam was making crude but complimentary remarks about her b.u.t.tocks and what he referred to as her "b.u.t.t-scar" as she bent over the mattress, when there was a soft knock on the door.

She looked at Adam, who shrugged.

"Tyra, are you all right? I heard you scream." It was Drifa, and her voice was definitely worried.

Adam made a m.u.f.fled snorting sound and muttered something about her having screamed more than once.

"I'm fine. I... I saw a mouse." She glanced pointedly down at the object lying at rest between Adam's thighs.

He was leaning casually against the wall, waiting for her to finish fixing the bed.

"A mouse! You have never been afraid of mice." It was Ingrith speaking now.

"I was startled, that is all. Besides, this was a particularly hairy mouse."

Adam made great show of examining his male part for hair. Then he silently mouthed at her the words, "You... will... pay."

"Let us in," Breanne insisted, rattling the door latch, unsuccessfully. Holy Thor! Was the whole tribe here? "Mayhap the Saxon has kidnapped you and he is holding a knife to your body, forcing you to mislead us."

Tyra made a little squeal, but not in response to what Breanne had said. She was reacting to the Saxon coming up behind her while she was still bent over the bed. And it was not a knife he held to her body.

'Twas something altogether different, though it was hard.

"I heard a squeal," Vana said. Yea, it was the entire tribe, come to cheer her on... or something.

"Must be the mouse." Tyra could scare breathe, let alone speak, for the ingenious man had lifted her up onto the mattress so that she was on all fours, and he had come up behind her. Into her ear he whispered, "Have you ever seen a stallion mount a mare?"

While her very own "stallion" fondled her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and mounted her from behind, and her eyes rolled back in her head, she managed a forceful, "Go away!" to her sisters. She couldn't be absolutely sure that they had left. They might have their ears pressed against the door. To be on the safe side, she made sure that she uttered no neighing noises.

They had no sooner completed their "ride" and were lying limp on the bed with satiety... she on her stomach, Adam on top of her... when there was another knock on the door, more forceful this time.

"Adam, open the door. I was in the hall under this room, and the ceiling is shaking. Has your Amazon lady been beating you?" It was Tykir.

"Amazon lady?" Tyra exclaimed and attempted to pummel his shoulders from behind. "Did you refer to me as an Amazon?"

"Only in the nicest possible way."

"Tyra's sisters are worried about her. Let us see that she is well." b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! It appeared that Alinor was there, too. What next?

A child's voice added. "The king sent me with a message fer Master Adam. 'My eldest daughter has a hu-u-uge dowry.' " It was Alrek now.

"Adam does not care about money. He is an honorable man, with more than enough coin of his own," Alinor a.s.serted.

"G.o.d bless the woman," Adam declared. "Sometimes she is not her usual pain-in-the-a.r.s.e busybody self."

"I think he is looking for love," Alinor continued.

"On the other hand..." Adam said.

"Love?" all four of her sisters said in a swooning voice. They must have returned.

"That is ridiculous woman-nonsense." Tykir was talking to his wife now. "Men do not think of love when the l.u.s.t is running high. Hey, why did you hit me?"

"I hit you because you are behaving like a troll, you troll."

"Really, Adam, just open the door so I will know you two have not killed each other," Tykir implored.

"Then I can be off to my bed where I will prove to my winsome wife just how much of a troll I can be."

With a sigh of disgust, Adam lifted himself gingerly off of Tyra. "It seems they will not leave till one of us makes an appearance." He wrapped a bed fur around his middle and stomped to the door. Opening it a mere crack, he said, "See, I am fine. Now go away." He tried to slam the door shut, but Tykir stuck a foot in.

"Why is your hair standing up like you combed it with a hay rake? And is that a bite mark surrounding your nipple?" Tykir asked with the innocence of a seasoned rascal.

Adam looked down. Then he looked over at Tyra and winked.

She hated it when he winked at her. It set off all kinds of strange ripples through her body... a body that needed no more ripples tonight, thank you very much.

"Holy Valhalla! Our lady is stark naked, and she looks as if she wuz flattened by a warhorse." It was Alrek, who had scooted down to his knees and was peering around Tykir's legs and into the bedchamber.

Tyra scurried to cover herself.

"That is it! I am closing the door now." Adam was tired of being the brunt of everyone's speculations.

"Wait! Just one minute. I have something to say," Alinor shouted. She shoved her husband and Alrek aside, then advised Adam in a surprisingly warm, almost motherly way, "Treat her well."

Adam closed and locked the door, then dropped the bed fur. Tyra wasn't sure if he was talking to Alinor or her when he said, "That is precisely what I intend to do. Very well indeed."

Tyra hoped so. This was to be her one night of love. It would have to last her a lifetime.

After midnight, when most of the keep was abed, he and Tyra slipped outside to the sweat house, where they soaked their aching muscles in the hot springs.