“Lie down,” he said, and I obeyed. He kissed me again and started to move his hands down. I waited for the pain of being struck, but it didn’t come. He took my nipple in his mouth and started to suck gently, playing with the other one with his fingers. I felt something stirring in me, something I had never felt before, and it felt pleasant. He trailed his hand slowly down over me and flitted his fingers gently across my private area. I tensed, but he murmured to me in his own language and it soothed me. He inserted two fingers into me while his thumb played over me. I gasped in fear and surprise and tried to push him away. He lifted his head up to look at me and he whispered, “Don’t fret, my sweet. Let me show you what you can feel. Let me show you the pleasure I can give you, you just need to let me.” He whispered over and over, all the while moving his fingers in and out of me, his thumb still playing with me. I started to feel wet down there and he moaned, “Yes, my sweet.”
I felt happy that I was doing something that pleased him, and I relaxed again. It felt so good what he was doing, I forgot about everything else except his fingers. I cried out as a wave of pleasure rushed up from the tips of my toes and a throbbing occurred between my legs.
“Good girl,” he murmured.
He moved over me and prepared to enter me. I tensed up again expecting the pain, but it was so easy after what he did to me. He pushed into me and he slid in. Careful not to place his weight on me, he braced himself with his arms on either side of my head. “Move with me, Aefre,” he whispered. I stared at him not understanding what he wanted me to do. Realizing I didn’t understand him, he slid a hand down to my unbruised hip. He lifted me up slightly and pushed me against him. “Wrap your legs around me,” he whispered, and I obeyed. It pushed him further into me and I liked the way he felt. I gasped as he rubbed against a sensitive spot inside me. “Now, move against me. Find the pattern, my sweet.”
I concentrated hard on what he was saying, wanting desperately to please him and make him happy. He kept rubbing against the spot inside me and it started to feel like what he did earlier with his fingers, but more intense. I was breathing heavily now, and I felt like a pot about to boil over.
“Oh Aefre,” he moaned. “Do you feel the pleasure? Do you feel what I am doing to you?”
“Yes,” I cried out.
“Let go, my sweet. Let go,” he whispered.
I cried out again as a second wave of pleasure rushed over me to the place where we were joined and he cried out then, too, as he finished.
“Thank you,” I whispered in wonder.
“No, thank you, Aefre,” he said quietly as he rolled off me and pulled our cloaks around us. “I have become so jaded, so disillusioned with this world. You have shown me that goodness and sweetness and light still exist.” He brushed my hair out of my face. “It has been a long time since I felt this content,” he said and looked at me adoringly with those dark eyes. I fell in love with him, more in love with him, as I was sure that I felt that way the first time he looked at me.
“Oh, Aefre,” he said again. “I want to teach you, to show you how I can make you happy and how happy you can make me in return.”
“Show me. I want to know everything you know,” I said eagerly.
He closed his eyes and said, “There are things that I want you to do to me, but you aren’t ready yet, my love.” My heart pounded at his words “my love.”
“Can I see you at the same time tomorrow?” I asked hesitantly.
He smiled down at me and kissed me softly, “I will be here.”
T hat night I waited for Radulf to return. I was not afraid anymore. He didn’t scare me. I would endure his punishments, but I would no longer be afraid of him.
It got darker out and he should have been home by then. I was not worried. In fact, for my sins, I hoped something had happened to him on the road home. Then I would be free, free to be with my true love, Constantine.
Sometime later, after I fell into a doze at the hearth, he staggered in. I awoke suddenly as he gruffly called my name, “Aefre.”
“Yes, Radulf I am here,” I said, relighting the candles that had flickered out.
“Get the healer,” he ordered me as I stared at him. He was bloody and beaten and his arm was hanging at an odd angle. “Now, woman!” he yelled, and pulling on my cloak I ran to the cottage of the healer. I didn’t feel bad for him. He deserved whatever came to him. He told a tale of a gang of men who surrounded him from the next town on the road home. It was a pity they didn’t finish him off, I thought to myself but remained silent. Mercifully, that night I was left alone as the healer had given him a sleeping herb that sent him straight to sleep. I slept soundly for the first night in an awfully long time.
I smile as I think back about how naïve I was. I gave him everything and it never even occurred to me to be cautious. I loved him so much. He was my savior. My knight in shining armor. When I learned of the beating he gave Radulf that night, I fell just a little bit more in love with him. I feel a flare of longing go through me. Longing for the days when it was just the two of us.
Sighing, I pull my attention back to the present. What’s done
is done, but I do resolve to ask him about why, really why, he left me in 1506. I also resolve to tell him I know about him and bitch-face so he can stop pretending he doesn’t know why I left him in 1112.
At some point.
Maybe.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
We arrive at Milan’s airport by G6 the following Tuesday morning. All of us are a bit fed up now of air travel, but I can’t ‘Astral’– as we are now calling it – here due to us needing to be here legally with our passports stamped, etc.
Dragging our heels, we exit private passenger security and bump into Nico. I smile genuinely at him, pleased to see him.
“Buongiorno, Nico.”