Death Blow by Jianne Carlo Page B

siren’s isle. ’Twas the last time I saw my half brother as a man.”
    “I cannot believe a chance storm saved you from slavery and another chance storm brought me to you.” He outlined her mouth with his thumb.
    She shivered. “Too much happenstance. What evil plagues us?”
    He framed her face. “I know not, Nyssa, but I will allow none to hurt what is mine. We cannot afford any to foster mistrust ’tween us. I know not your reasons for this handfasting, but I vow to you on my honor, you are my wife and I will ne’er cast you aside. Will you give me back this vow?”
    Her lips trembled. She pressed a fist to her mouth, and her eyes brimmed. She shook her head.
    A band tightened around his chest, he dropped his hands, and searched for the words to persuade her to his side.
    “You will not want me as a true wife.” She spoke to the space between their torsos. “I am tall and ungainly. I have no womanly curves. Until four seasons ago, I had not even these meager titties, and I have seen eight and ten summers. ’Tis true what Monette says, I should have been born a warrior and not a woman.”
    Rage bubbled through his veins setting his blood to boiling. He cupped her cheeks. “To me wife.”
    Tears coursed down her cheeks wetting his fingers. “You are bewitching and beautiful beyond comparison. Ne’er have I seen a woman find her pleasure with such passion and abandon. Aye, you are slim, but strong, and I have no use for jugs of breasts. Yours are perfection, small, firm, with rosy nipples and after this night—you will ne’er doubt what you are in my eyes.”
    He tore the sheet away, laid her down on the pallet, and cupped her breasts. “Perfection. Rounded, firm, with nipples that beg for a hearty suckling. You are beautiful, Nyssa.”
    She blinked, long lashes now dampened to a deep brown. “I cannot be beautiful. My hair is shorn.”
    “Mìlseachd, mìlseachd. You are more beautiful with shorn locks than any woman with tresses to her knees.”
    “Grelod’s hair reaches well past her knees.”
    “Stubborn woman. Worry not of the length of your hair, Nyssa. Worry that you will have the strength to stand after my loving of you this eve.”

 
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
    A night of loving?
    Could Konáll really think her beautiful?
    A tiny bud of hope sprouted deep in Nyssa’s chest. Mayhap the rest of the curse, too, could be broken.
    Konáll had moved the pallet to the middle of the tent and surrounded the soft linen-covered straw mattress with a mixture of candles and oil lamps. He had also stoked the fire in the rock pit near the entrance to a low blaze. Whilst he did all this, she surreptitiously covered herself with the sheet and concentrated on quieting her pounding heart.
    Why could she not recall him taking her maidenhood?
    The fire, the candles, and the lamps chased any hint of chill from the tent. ’Twas warm and the air seemed to grow heavy and dense with each breath she took. Nyssa glanced up when she no longer heard him moving around.
    He stood above her, a warrior in all his glory. The sun had kissed every part of him. E’en his cock’s foreskin glowed in bronzed magnificence. And ’twas of a size to frighten the most stalwart, experienced siren, yet it scared her not. Nay. In truth, the thick rod jutting from his groin fascinated her.
    All of him transfixed her, the heavy testicles, the Saracen’s ring embedded in his flesh, his broad shoulders, the runes etched around one bicep, the dark gold curls nestling his enormous erection. Aye, she liked the power of him, the massive muscles of his thighs, but ’twas his pecker, his stones, and that ring that had her mesmerized. Why had he called the ring his weakness?
    When he had been in his nigh death trance, she had had to force herself not to touch him, not to learn his body with her hands. Had she known of the Saracen’s ring, her resolve would have shattered.
    “What e’er your thoughts are right now, cleave to them, Nyssa. For you