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“If I like?” he repeated hoarsely. His breathing was very labored.

Gunnilde glanced down at her breasts. “You want to touch me here?” she suggested, remembering his words about “buxom women.” He favored them apparently. She was still reeling from that confession, but it gave her confidence.

She smiled at him reassuringly, and he trailed one hand down her neck, down to her breasts, so slowly and carefully that Gunnilde found she was holding her breath. His gaze remained on her face until he reached the swell of her breasts and then transferred to her full bosom.

“Gods,” he groaned, kneading first on one breast and then the other. “I knew they were bountiful but this...this is almost too much. They’re so soft.”

“Too much?” Gunnilde faltered. Was he saying they were too big?

“I doubt I could even fit them in my hands,” he whispered. “Let me try.”

Gunnilde squinted up at him. To her surprise, she found both breasts cupped firmly in his hands and squeezed with somewhat less reverence than she had expected.

He groaned again. “I can scarcely contain them,” he whispered.

“They’re spilling over.” She regarded him with bemusement, but he was wholly caught up in his endeavor.

“Let me try that again,” he said thickly, adjusting his grasp.

This time his hands caught her nipples between his fingers, giving them a light pinch as he squeezed. Oh! To her surprise Gunnilde felt a corresponding pinch between her legs. She moved against him, restlessly rubbing her body against his.

“James,” she gasped.

“Hmmm?”

Too shy to put it into words, she reached up to catch his fingers there, pressing them closer together so they repeated the pinch. She gave a soft moan and bit her lip.

Again, he went very still. “You like that?” he asked. “Like this?” Experimentally he deliberately squeezed a rosy nipple between finger and thumb.

“Oh!” Gunnilde exclaimed, arching her back. James hissed his breath through his teeth as their bodies shifted and he slid between her hips. Gunnilde’s heart thudded against her breast. At least, she thought it was her heart. It could have been his, so closely were their bodies aligned.

She drew her legs up to hold him more firmly in place where she wanted his weight. Where she wanted him . “James,” she said tentatively. “Would you like to—to—”

“I’d like to kiss your breasts,” he interrupted her throatily. “May I?”

“Oh.” She had not anticipated this request. “Of course, if you like.” She opened her mouth to reassure him further, but he had already lowered his head, and was greedily engulfing one nipple, making her gasp.

This was not really a kiss, she thought, wide-eyed, as he licked and sucked her there with wanton abandon.

Or if it was a kiss, then it was not the innocent kind she had anticipated from him.

This one made her squirm and wriggle in his grasp.

James groaned around his mouthful, sending a reverberating sensation through her core.

Gunnilde caught hold of the hand resting beneath her breast and dragged it down her belly. As she ran his hand over the hair between her legs, he released her breast and looked down, panting hard.

“Touch me here,” she blurted.

His eyes flashed. “How? Show me.”

She slid two fingers over his own, guiding them into her cleft.

Finding herself so wet already, Gunnilde blushed.

Was he shocked? When she dared venture a look at his face, his gaze was riveted to the place where their combined fingers disappeared between her legs.

He did not look shocked so much as awestruck.

He breathed in raggedly. “This is how you touch yourself?”

She cleared her throat. “Sometimes.”

After the slightest hesitation, he mimicked the same circling motion as her own. “Tell me if that is right.”

“A little harder.”

Once he had the pressure right, Gunnilde withdrew her own fingers, trusting him to the task’s completion and giving herself over entirely to sensation.

“This feels nice?” he rasped, his gaze very intense.

She nodded her head. “Yes. Oh yes ,” she breathed, her eyelids drifting shut.

She didn’t want to shut them. The most handsome man at court was currently looming over her with his fingers working between her legs.

If Gunnilde closed her eyes she would find it hard to believe such a thing was happening to her.

He thought she was a seductive siren who tempted men from the straight and righteous path with her buxom person and ungodly hair arrangements.

Gunnilde’s eyes flew open, and she gasped.

But no, it was real. James Wycliffe’s expression was one of rapt concentration.

He whispered her name in a sort of awe. The wave crested and she gave a choked cry.

James’s fingers stilled at once as though he knew. Slowly he lowered his head to press a reverent kiss her brow. He murmured something she did not quite catch, though strange to say, she thought he had thanked her.

“Now you show me,” she requested once she had caught her breath. “Show me how you do it, James.”