Page 90 of Storm of Fury
“Tormund.”
“I know.”
His lips grazed her jaw, and then she was arching her spine as he kissed his way down. The rough curve of his palm found her breast and he pushed it up until his tongue slid over the fleshy globe barely shielded by her shirt.
Teeth raked over her nipple through the linen, and then his fingers found the other one. Bryn moaned, rocking into him. She liked the edge of pain, liked the firmness of his hands. He pinched her hard, until a whimper escaped her.
She tugged at the buttons on her shirt, furious with need. The shirt vanished, and then he was tugging her bindings down, the hot cavern of his mouth enveloping her nipple.
This was a man set upon conquering her, and curse fate, curse destiny, but tonight, all she wanted was to submit to his claim.
But submission was not in her nature.
Bryn locked her thighs around his hips and rolled them, shoving him down onto the bed. The timber groaned as he splayed there for her perusal.
“Like what you see, love?” Tormund demanded, tilting his head back arrogantly.
“Strip,” she demanded.
He sat up, tugging roughly at the buttons on his shirt. Then he reached over his shoulder and hauled it over his head. Every inch of his chest was covered in thick, dark hair, but it was the scars there that caught her attention.
One slicing dangerously close to his nipple.
Another glancing off his ribs.
She’d seen him without his shirt many a time, but she’d never let her gaze linger long enough to see those little signs of mortality. A lump formed in her throat as she traced them. Her own skin was completely smooth, devoid of the brands that should have lingered there like ugly scars, after her Valkyrie brethren burned her marks from her body.
But this was merely another sign of the difference between them.
He was mortal, while she had no true idea how long she would live.
He would die one day, while she barely aged.
And that thought struck her straight through the heart like an arrow, for she couldn’t imagine this vital, rugged bear of a man lying still and breathless.
She didn’twantto imagine it.
“Old wounds,” he whispered, capturing her wrists.
“Then let us not talk of it.” Bryn traced her fingers across the broad slab of his shoulder. She closed her eyes, trying to fight down the brief surge of grief that threatened to steal her away from the moment. “When I said strip, I meant all of it.”
His fingers dropped to the buttons on his trousers, and then he was tugging them loose, peeling the oiled leather down his powerful thighs as she shifted from one knee to the other. Bryn kissed that dangerous mouth as he kicked his boots free. He tossed his pants aside, and then lay back on the bed, looking for all the world as if he did this every day.
“And now?” he challenged, running his hand down the flat plane of his abdomen and fisting the enormous jutting length of his cock.
In answer, she knelt over him, sliding her palm up the hairy length of his shin.Freyr’s balls, the man was hung. “At first I thought you nothing more than a braggart, but you were right: you are man enough for me.”
She skimmed his knees, leaving him breathless, and then kissed her way up his thighs. Every inch of him was corded with thick muscle. A warrior in every sense of the word, though it was the small imperfections—the scars here and there—that made her heart skip a beat.
“I didn’t think you’d be this forgiving,” she admitted.
“Oh, I haven’t forgiven you yet,” he whispered, still toying with the strands of her hair. “Though I could be so inclined. Now it’s your turn. Clothes off.”
Bryn considered the statement, her gaze dropping to his cock. She tossed the remnants of her shirt behind her, and hauled her linen bindings over her head. Getting her trousers undone required a bit of patience, and his eyes twinkled as if he could read her frustration.
Finally she was naked, and she could see the satisfaction in his eyes as his gaze traversed her lush figure.
“Hell of a woman, Bryn. You’re so fucking beautiful.”
