The Raven's Table by Christine Morgan

Author:Christine Morgan [Morgan, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Word Horde
Published: 2017-02-28T06:00:00+00:00

THE MOTTLED BEAR

They undressed in the longhouse’s firelight, fine men all, stripping to wash now that the meal was done.

Here was a flesh-feast of a different sort, a feast for the eyes to follow the feast that had filled their bellies.

A feast for the eyes, but Hvit’s hungry gaze sought only one.

Bjorn, the king’s son. Bjorn, young and breath-taking. His broad shoulders, the sinews of his powerful arms and his back… his thickly-furred chest, tapered waist and slim hips… taut buttocks, long firm thighs and lithe legs… at his loins a thatch of hair from which rose a thin line almost to his navel…

Hvit imagined the touch and taste of him, clean love-sweat and salty desire. She imagined him thrusting into her, filling her as she so ached and yearned to be filled. She imagined his hands on her breasts, his mouth locked with hers in hot and wet urgency.

As she watched him, through a gap in the wall between her own chamber and the feast-hall, the craving became too much to endure.

Why she had ever consented to marry such an ancient relic as Bodvar…

Pushing from her mind all thoughts of her husband and his tepid love-making, she looked again, with lustful admiration, at young Bjorn.

In place of his hands on her breasts, her own would have to do. She brought them there, cupping the ample white curves. A ruddy flush swept tingling through her.

Bjorn, by the fire, tipped a wash-basin so that the water coursed down his body in rivulets. Drops steamed on the flat hearth-stones. He took up a dry cloth then and commenced drying himself.

When some friend of his made a witticism, white teeth flashed a bright smile through his beard. His eyes, on occasions grey as storm-clouds, seemed to have the warm shine of pewter.

If she went to him…?

No.

If she sent for him…?

No.

Much as she might want to, Hvit did not dare. Not yet, not now.

Instead, as the men in the hall began retiring to their sleeping-platforms, Hvit went alone to her bearskin-heaped bed. Tucked beneath the carved bed-frame was a small wooden chest of intricate design; inside this was what Hvit’s own mother had given her as a bride-gift.

“Likely, you’ll need it,” Hvata had said, cackling. “A girl such as you marrying a man so old? It’ll be this or take lovers… but, of course, if you did, he’d be fearfully wroth… all the more so because of the shame of the failings of his poor limp-withered prick.”

Hvit took from the chest a piece of polished whale-bone, shaped and smoothed in ways meant to pleasure a woman’s most sensitive secret places. She cradled it in her palms, rubbed it, blew her damp breath upon it, until it was no longer ivory-cool.

She envisioned Bjorn with her, Bjorn above her.

Bjorn. The son of her husband, by a queen long dead. King Bodvar, known as a wise lord and peace-maker, was often away visiting the halls and council-meetings of other kings. He’d been in need of a wife

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