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Castle Rivenloch

Winter

Adam had told Eve there was nothing like a Rivenloch wedding feast, and he was right. It didn’t matter that it was the dead of winter. The great hall was full of candles and music and merrymaking, crowded with clanfolk, friends, and neighbors.

All of the local and many of the distant Rivenloch clan attended the wedding.

Adam’s sister Feiyan brought her new bairn all the way from Darragh. She recognized Eve as the nun from the convent, but couldn’t believe she was also the archer from the tournament.

Adam’s cousin Jenefer couldn’t tell Eve was the same person as the French lad she’d shot against at Perth.

His other cousin Hallie thought Feiyan and Jenefer were fools to mistake lovely Eve for a male archer, but she didn’t remember her as the nun who’d been at Perth.

It still confounded Adam how his clan could be so gulled by someone he considered uniquely beautiful. But Eve was grateful that, for him, she was never invisible.

Isabel, the romantic young lass Eve had met before, delighted in showing off the decorations she’d arranged. Beeswax candles lit up every corner. Fragrant herbs were strewn atop the rushes on the floor. Swags of holly and ivy decked the walls. Even the hounds wore sprigs of holly on their collars.

Isabel’s clever brother Ian had devised a special final dish in honor of the newlyweds.

It was a sugar subtletie sculpted in the form of a castle that he claimed was—just like Adam and Eve—“not all it appeared to be.” When he gave Eve a tiny silver axe to crack the delicate exterior, the sugar castle broke apart, revealing a golden dragon made of almond paste and dyed with saffron.

Everyone cheered. No one was more impressed than Eve.

The Rivenloch warriors—male and female—were anything but shy. They regaled each other with tales of adventure and full-throated boasts, each one more improbable than the next.

The hounds barked in excitement over the smells of roasting meat and slavered at the sight of stripped bones that would soon be theirs.

The musicians played over the conversations, plucking a lute, blowing a sackbut, beating a tabor, and finally resorting to the raucous bagpipes in order to be heard.

Now the feast was nearly over. The trestle tables in the great hall looked like a battlefield.

Bones littered the trenchers. Splatters of red wine and brown sauce stained the tablecloth.

Knives were tossed carelessly onto the platters.

Finally, after hours of course after course, the white linen napkins had been thrown down like banners of surrender.

But Eve felt uneasy. There was one thing more to come. And she dreaded it.

From Adam’s cousins, she knew all about the traditions the Rivenlochs had carried down from their Viking ancestors.

Training women for battle. Using longboats as funeral pyres.

Bathing every day. Telling stories about gods and goddesses, fantastic beasts and mythical hammers.

Young Ian had spoken eagerly about the sunwheel he was building to roll down the hill in celebration of Yule.

According to wedding custom, the ladies always undressed the bride for bed. The men carried the groom up to her and put him in bed with her. Then they waited outside for proof of the consummation—bloody linens.

The last thing Eve wanted to do was disappoint her new clan by refusing one of their traditional rituals. But it seemed barbaric. Humiliating. And, unfortunately, too revealing of the truth.

Adam seemed to sense her disquiet.

“What’s wrong?” he murmured.

“Everyone knows I was raised in a convent,” she whispered back.

“Aye?”

She glanced involuntarily toward the steps leading to the bedchamber Isabel had shown her. The bedchamber that had been prepared with fresh linens decked with flower petals for the newly married couple.

“Mmm,” he said. “Are you worried about the wedding night rites?”

She winced in apology. “I don’t want to ruin anythin’. Your clan has been so kind to me. And I know how important tradition is to them. But the linens won’t be bloody, Adam. They’ll know I didn’t come to this marriage a virgin.”

Adam gave her a wise and sober nod.

But inside he was grinning.

He doubted many Rivenloch brides had come to their marriages as virgins. His clan wouldn’t dare demand anyone go through such archaic rites. As Laird Deirdre had long ago decreed, such traditions were an abomination, an insult to women, and the ruin of perfectly good linens.

His clan would, however, mercilessly harass the newlyweds. And he didn’t want to give them the pleasure. Not on his wedding night. Not when his bride sat beside him, looking up at him with dewy apprehension in her eyes.

He wanted her all to himself.

“Damn tradition,” he told her. “I have an idea.”

Adam figured it would be the clan’s own fault if they let the bride and groom out of their sight and they happened to disappear.

Perhaps if his cousin Brand hadn’t been helping himself to so many portions of beef, if Logan hadn’t been bellowing out his heroic tales, if Hew hadn’t been fondling his new wife under the table, and if Aunt Helena hadn’t been quarreling with Uncle Colin, they might have noticed when Adam stole upstairs and Eve slipped out of the great hall.

Stuffing the goose-down pallet through the high bedchamber window was not an easy feat, especially with Eve watching from below. But Adam managed to get it past the shutters and heave it onto the sill. Then he pushed it over until it toppled onto the sod.

Eve waved up at him, letting him know it was undamaged.

Then he grabbed a pair of plaids and came downstairs. Creeping back through the crowd, he exited into the courtyard.

Together, he and Eve wrested the pallet across the courtyard to the stables. He’d seen the stable lad at the feast, so the outbuildings would be deserted and relatively warm.

At one end of the stables was a pile of clean straw. He dragged the pallet on top of it. There were horses at the other end. But they were calm, likely used to visitors having midnight trysts.

Once he closed the door, it was as black as a cave.

They wasted no time, divesting of their wedding attire in the dark and stripping down to their leines.

“I can’t see anythin’,” Eve complained.

“Well then, my love, I suppose we’ll have to go by touch,” he replied, reaching out to sweep his hand across her jaw and into her hair.

“Will we?” she murmured.

With one hand, she patted at his chest, feeling her way up to his shoulder and then inward to his neck.

But while he was distracted by that hand, she clapped her other hand boldly over his braies.

He sucked in a breath of pleased surprise.

“What’s this?” she teased. “I can see naught in this darkness.”

He didn’t have the wit to reply at the moment. Instead, he closed his eyes with a groan and caught the back of her neck, pulling her close for a kiss.

She tasted of wine and sugar, almonds and desire, an intoxicating combination that made him harden at once.

She sighed into his mouth, and he let the fingers of his free hand drift down her body, sowing heat through her thin leine. He brushed over her supple breasts. Gently squeezed her nipples. Then ventured farther to caress the lovely planes of her abdomen.

But her hand was doing amazing things to the questing beast between his thighs. It ached with need, pulsing beneath her palm, eager to be free of its linen confines. He needed to couple with her…now…before he recklessly spilled his seed.

So, disengaging from the kiss, he swept her off her feet, laid her out on the pallet, and peeled off her leine. Using one of the plaids to keep her warm, he settled himself between her knees and burrowed underneath.

Of all the succulent dishes at their wedding feast, this one was the most appetizing.

His new bride, Lady Eve la Nuit of Rivenloch, was a dish both tempting and filling. Earthy and ambrosial. Wholesome and decadent. Teasing open the delicate shell of her keep to expose the roaring dragon of her climax was delicious and satisfying.

As she shuddered with release beneath him, he felt need swell his loins. And though he wished he could make the night last forever, he knew relief would come for him quickly as well.

Eve wanted him. Now.

She reached for him, sinking her fingertips into his shoulders to urge him upwards.

“Wait,” he said on a chuckle. “I’m still clothed.”

“Hurry, husband.”

“As you wish, wife.”

She heard him wrench down his braies and tear off his leine. Then she felt the heat of him as he hovered above her.

His fingers sought out her womanly folds. She clasped his firm, velvety staff in her hand, guiding him.

He groaned as he entered her, and she arched as he filled her with exhilarating warmth. Their union felt so right. So destined. So perfect.

Because she was blind to his beautiful face in the dark, her other senses compensated, drinking in all the smells, sensations, flavors, and sounds around her.

She smelled the fresh hay and earthy horseflesh of the stables, as well as Adam’s own masculine scent—a subtle blend of steel and sweat, leather and cinnamon, smoke and woodruff.

His breath rasped against her ear, and his sensual groans brought out the animal instincts in her body as she thrust against him in carnal pleasure.

He kissed her, opening her mouth to feast with abandon. He tasted sweet and intoxicating, like the mead they’d drunk to celebrate their vows.

Every nerve in her body felt alive, awakened by the searing contact with his flesh as he drove smoothly into her, like a dagger into a sheath. Her blood pulsed. Her skin flushed. Her head swam in a dreamy cloud of longing.

Together they scaled the walls of passion. Climbed a mountain of desire. Flew among the stars of heaven.