The question caught her off guard, and Deirdre immediately knew that she shouldn't have asked it. She knew he could have said yes. But she'd gambled that he wouldn't. It had seemed like a sure thing, at the time.
The thought that he could have said 'yes' was completely foreign, and yet once the initial shock had passed, Deirdre realized how obvious it had been.
He couldn't keep his eyes off her, but it had been easy to write that off as just being impatient to get what he wanted. To get his "curse" removed. The fact that she was surprised also forced her to confront her own thoughts.
Sure, he was handsome. Sure, he made her think about men, made her think about being a woman. But that was just because she couldn't help feeling bound up by the situation that she was in.
Right?
The feeling of his eyes on her burned as she hesitated, unable to take her eyes off him. It was just because she had her freedom taken from her, that made her want to experience all the things she was missing out on. The words made sense. It fit neatly into her mind.
Something told her that wasn't all there was to it, and as if to prove her wrong her body started moving almost entirely without her consent. She watched as if she were a passenger as she moved across the wagon, leaning in, and then felt the press of her lips into his.
His whiskers tickled, but the feeling of her lips on his was electric, setting her on edge. What was she doing? She should stop. She had to stop, and she shouldn't have done it in the first place.
Finally under control again, Deirdre sat back, her own eyes wide. He looked surprised, unsure how he was supposed to respond. She wanted to say that wasn't how he was supposed to respond, that it wasn't how she imagined it.
She wanted to say that she hadn't meant to do it, too, and the two thoughts battled in her mind. How could she have wanted a reaction to something that she didn't want to do? He should have kissed her back, fiercely putting his hands behind her head and kissing. Passionate, fiery.
Gunnar's entire personality was dark and controlled passion. She could see it, all the time, boiling just under the surface, and it wasn't hard to figure out why she was so fascinated by it.
It was the essential expression of mannishness, she thought, and created a mystique around him. The fact that he'd come from some far away land, a place she had only heard vague stories about as a little child seemed like it should matter. That they used to tell stories about wicked vikings who would come and take naughty children away.
Here the boogeyman was, right in front of her. What on earth was she thinking about? If Gunnar's reaction wasn't what she'd wanted, it was at least what Deirdre had expected. But now here she was going on and on in her head about stories she hadn't thought about in years, not even after she had been taken away by the same men that her mother had tried to scare her with as a little girl.
She blinked and tried to refocus, and she didn't see Gunnar moving until she felt his whiskers brush her lips again, felt his arms wrap around her, pulling her up nearly standing. She could feel the hardness of his muscles, the strength pulled tight through his whole body as he pulled her in.
Her thoughts vanished, replaced with memories of the visions she had seen when s
he had sat in that tent, trying to figure out what to do about Gunnar's immortality. What it would feel like to be under these muscles, to be moving with him as he plowed her.
She tried to push the thought away, but it came back again, forcefully, and she had to put her hand on Gunnar's chest to separate them.
"Are you okay?" His voice was deep and gruff, and she could hear the arousal in it, could feel it in the tenseness of his body even as he tried to give her the space that she so desperately needed.
"I don't know if this is—"
"I'm not asking you to give more than you're prepared."
She slipped out of his arms and sat down, trying desperately to calm herself, to pull herself out of the moment. The road continued pulling away from them, the wagon gently rocking with the soft rolling of the packed dirt beneath them.
Gunnar sat back down. She couldn't help paying attention to him, making sure that he wasn't hurting himself.
She wanted to kiss him again. The thought hit her out of nowhere. She wasn't surprised at it. She knew herself, knew her own mind, but it came at the same time as noticing something else, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. She only knew that the taste of his lips, the feeling of his body—she couldn't get enough of it.
As soon as the thought came it was gone, replaced with that very feeling as she lowered her own arms around him, slipping into his lap sideways. She could feel him stirring beneath her. That was what made him a man, she realized.
As soon as she realized it, she couldn't get it out of her head. That was what she had thought about, fantasized about, imagined. What would it feel like for him to put that inside her? What would it feel like for him, when she pleased him? Would he reciprocate?
She didn't have much time to imagine what it would feel like. He broke the kiss, both of them breathing hard, and before she knew what was happening he had pulled one of her plump breasts free of her dress, claiming the bud of her nipple between his lips and sucking hard.
She didn't know when she had run her fingers through his hair, but now she closed her hand around his head, encouraging to take it deeper. The thought that anyone could have seen them, that they were anything but private, only seemed to drive her to greater pleasure.
She could feel him growing still harder, pressed against one of the soft cheeks of her ass. When she pulled him away gently, letting him take one last nip at her before pulling away, she could see the need in his face.
She knew that she had the same expression on her own face, the same arousal. But she couldn't—not right now. Not when there was so much at risk, and when she had so much to lose. Both of them did, and that was what scared her so much.
She realized with a start that she was completely ready to give him what he wanted. Give him every part of her, deep down to her core. But now was not the time, in the back of a covered cart with a pair of delirious soldiers lying beside them. She covered herself again and took a deep breath.