The Craftsman Read Free Page A

quickened. He coughed.
    Her eyes met his and held. She licked the cherry, gathered it in the curve of her tongue and sucked it in, but her fingertips held the stalk and tugged so that it slid partially back out, the cherry still attached.
    Her eyelids drifted downward, bronze tinted lashes fluttering against her pale cheeks.
    Wulf moved a hand beneath the table to adjust himself.
    Somewhere, far away in the distance, his little sister was still talking.
    But his sac was so achingly tight he couldn’t breathe.
    Here came the pink tongue again, swirling around the cherry, pulling and teasing. Wulf stared across the table, the sensation of an imaginary tongue tormenting his cock head. He felt his balls fill, ripened so that only the slightest touch would split them open. She closed her lips and her cheeks hollowed as she sucked. He thrust slightly with his hips, under the table where no one would see. His hand closed over the mound in his breeches and he grunted softly.
    The cherry popped free of the stalk.
    And Wulf‘s knee hit the underside of the table.
    The woman opened her eyes fully and stared at him through the flickering, weaving candle flames. She raised an elegant, cupped hand to her mouth and deposited two cherry pips into her palm.
    Wulf finished his ale in one swig, his other hand still beneath the table, trying to placate the ravenous beast between his thighs.
     

Chapter Two
     
    “I’ve never seen such an unmannerly wretch,” her maid, Joan, exclaimed under her breath, as she unpacked one of the coffers they brought with them. “Could barely open his lips to speak a word and constantly scratching himself. I shouldn’t be surprised if he has fleas. What a scandal it is that you—a fine lady of high birth—should have to put up with the like of that.”
    Barefoot, in her nightshift, Emma stood at the tall, narrow window of her small bedchamber and brushed her hair, gazing down into the inner courtyard. “He does seem a little strange, but then he is a Saxon and they can be discourteous creatures.” Face still turned away from her maid, she smiled wryly. “As for me putting up with it—a woman’s lot in life is to suffer, Joan. We both know that.”
    She also knew now that her new husband was not mute, just sparing with his words. As for the deafness, she couldn’t be sure and didn’t like to ask. He still hadn’t reacted to anything his sister said, but he’d answered Emma at supper, even if it was in a slow, steady, unnecessarily loud manner, followed by a strange, wooden attempt at a smile. Perhaps he’d read her lips. She’d made certain to pronounce her words clearly and move her lips more than usual, just to help him understand her question.
    But that smile was the angriest smile she’d ever seen. And his dark eyes bore through her wimple and her gown, assessing her churlishly. Big, gruff Raedwulf was not happy with her, it seemed.
    She’d tried her best to be pleasant, just so he would not think she came there to cause him any problems. But it was no easy thing to marry a man she’d never met and she supposed this arrangement must be equally difficult for him. At least, with her first husband, they knew one another for a few years before they married. In a marriage like this, it was all very different. A few days ago she’d been arranging her retreat to a convent. Now she was here on the sudden, surprising orders of the king, about to embark on a new path, just when she thought she’d reached the end of all her roads.
    She ran the brush slowly through her hair from crown to the softly curling ends and pondered the lantern light that still glowed softly through the window of that wood shed. He’d been out there ever since supper ended. According to his sister, he spent a great deal of his time with his carpentry, shut away in that little thatched building. The other men had returned from the hunt, making a great ruckus in the yard, but even that had not tempted him out of his hiding