Virgin Slave, Barbarian King

‘This.’ Her slender hold on her temper snapping she launched herself at him, striking with her free hand at his imprisoning fist. ‘Let me…’

His response was never what she expected, she should have learned that by now. He made no attempt to evade her blows, simply pulling her close in against himself. Frightened, furious and excited in equal measure, she looked up into the clear green eyes so close that she could count his lashes.

‘You savage! Let me go.’

For a long moment they stared at each other, then with a growl Wulfric released her hand, encircled her waist and trapped her mouth under his. It was her dream of the night before and more. Their bodies touched together, slipped apart, as her hands came up to grip his shoulders and her mouth opened under his with an instinctive, fierce response she did not know she possessed.

They were both angry. She had no idea whether she was more angry at him than herself, but there was no mistaking that Wulfric was furious with her, and utterly determined to bring her panting and pleading to his feet.

His grip on her was punishingly hard, his mouth plundered without any mercy, lips and teeth and tongue possessing and taking with a power that seemed to only increase as she refused to be cowed by it. He plunged his tongue into her open mouth, hard and hot. Innocent of a man’s body she might be, but Julia knew what this invasion mimicked. Writhing against him under the water, she tangled her own tongue with his. I will reduce him to begging for me and then I will laugh…

He let her go as violently as he had taken her. Julia fell back against the side of the tub gasping, rubbing the back of her hand across her swollen mouth, staring at him wild-eyed.

‘You are a virgin—you should behave like one,’ he snapped at her, his chest heaving.

‘You hypocrite! You presume to lecture me on my behaviour? You kissed me, you forced me!’ Her hands were shaking. She clasped them together.

‘Forced you? I think not, Julia.’

She could feel the shamed blood staining her cheeks, saw on Wulfric’s face nothing but male arrogance and the desire to dominate. She had fought back, not with her fists but with her sensuality and he could not deal with that, she told herself, fighting for some balance.

‘You are an animal,’ she managed to spit out.

‘I would be taking you on the floor by now if that were the case.’ She gasped. He stared at her haughtily and she read his pride and the indignation that she had insulted him in the hot green look. ‘Wash my back.’

‘What? Now?’

‘Yes, now.’ He reached one long arm over the side of the tub, groped in the jar and came up with a soap ball.

‘I would sooner stick a knife in it,’ she retorted flatly.

‘I am aware of that.’ Wulfric shifted round until his broad back was towards her. His disregard for the danger she posed was an affront in itself.

Julia stared at the expanse of shoulder, the long, flexible line of his back, the strong dip to the spine, the dramatic narrowing to his hips. Below the water she could see the taut shape of his buttocks. His hair was plastered to the skin, covering his shoulder blades.

‘Now,’ he growled. ‘The water is getting cold.’

Julia began to make lather, and then to wash her own body as fast as she could. Sharing bathwater was a dubious way to get clean in her opinion, but she was going to wring what benefit she could from this hideous situation.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Washing.’ She ducked under the water to rinse off the suds, pushing her hair back out of her face. No rosemary hair wash, no sweet oils, just one large, sweaty barbarian’s bathwater. Julia grimaced at the magnificent back in front of her.

‘Then wash me, slave girl.’

She scooped one hand under the fall of his hair and threw it over his shoulder, then attacked his back as hard as she could. Wulfric grunted, not, she was sorry to realise, with discomfort, but with pleasure. Gritting her teeth, she scrubbed the coarse soap ball over his back, following up with her other hand, kneading the muscles as though to pummel her anger out into them. She followed the fascinating masculine lines as far as his waist. No further.

‘You have stopped.’ He turned his head to look at her. Julia shifted closer, the only way to shield her naked body. Her breasts were a finger’s breadth from his back.

‘You can reach the rest.’ She tossed the soap ball up over his shoulder. Reflexively he lunged for it and she scrambled over the edge of the tub, seized her sodden clothing and ran for her bed space.

Wulfric caught the soap one-handed, pivoting as he did so to admire the exquisite rear view of Julia vanishing behind the curtain. ‘Little witch,’ he murmured to himself, settling back into the rapidly cooling water. ‘Little vixen.’

What had happened just now had been no part of his intentions, but with Julia Livia it seemed his prized self-control was like a reed in the wind. She could provoke him just by the way she lowered her lashes with exquisite disdain, let alone by the sight of her naked body a hand’s span from his.

Wulfric lifted a foot to the rim of the tub and began to soap his leg, trying to give proper attention to the condition of his muscles and the feel of the tendon he had strained two weeks before. His physical condition was important; some chit of a girl, however aggravating, was not.

Only…he lowered that leg, satisfied with the lack of discomfort in the tendon, and raised the other. Only, she was not a girl. He had let her lack of stature compared to the women who surrounded him delude him into thinking her nearer Berig’s age than his own twenty-seven summers. But she must be twenty, he supposed.

Well past marriageable age in his society. What was the matter with this senator she was supposed to be betrothed to? Had the man ice water in his veins?

He, Wulfric, was very uncomfortably aware that what was coursing around his own veins was not ice water, but hot blood. He had not meant to kiss her. He had known, without having to think about it, what the effect of taking that lush, red, angry mouth would be. His own body had predicted absolutely what her narrow frame would feel like under his hands, how the sweet curves and soft skin would feel against his own hardness, against his bruised flesh.

And he would not take what he so easily could, because his faith told him it was wrong and his honour despised the thought that he would force a woman.

Even this one who attacked him with his own weapons of sensuality and of anger. He knew what she was about, even if he doubted she could explain it to herself. She had wanted to show him that he was less than he believed himself to be, and he knew that even greater than her fear of him was her own terror of being afraid, of not living up to the standards of a patrician Roman lady.

Did she know what danger she had been in? Had she any concept of the fire she was playing with? Surely she did. Somewhere, under that angry defiance, there must be the belief that he would not force her. She had gone white around the mouth when he had flung that remark about taking her on the floor. That had shocked her deeply and yet she had the spirit to continue to taunt him, to play her dangerously provoking games with him. Somewhere there was a trust in him and in his honour. He should not care, but it seemed that he did and that the thought warmed him, deep inside where he kept the emotions that a leader could not show.

He stood up in a surge of water and reached for a towel, swathing it around his hips as Berig ducked into the tent. The boy was clean, damp and his hair was slicked back.

‘Una says, do you want the salve for…Bloody hell!’

Wulfric followed his gaze to the beaten earth of the tent floor. Trodden, swept with a stiff broom, the summer-hardened earth had made a perfectly serviceable floor. Now there was a muddy ring right around the tub, a quagmire directly in the centre of the living space.

‘Your lord splashes a great deal.’ Julia emerged from behind her curtain, her creased clothes clinging to her, her gaze scornfully averted from Wulfric as he stood there up to mid-thigh in cooling, dirty water. ‘I was surprised to find him so clumsy.’

With a flick of her skirts she picked her way around the mud, past the gaping youth and out of the tent.

Wulfric balled the towel up in his hands. ‘Empty the tub, get some straw for the floor and sort something out with that hell-cat for dinner.’ He climbed grimly out of the tub onto the stool and from there to dry ground.

Berig swallowed audibly. ‘What are you going to do to her?’

Wulfric stood where he was, hands on hips, and considered his tactics. He saw the shadow slide under the tent flap and raised his voice. ‘Do to her? Why, nothing. Nothing at all. If she wants to eat, then she must cook. If she wants to drink, then she must fetch water, and, if she wants to sleep on a bed, then she must wash the linens.’ And if she wants to tempt and torment me with those red lips and those soft curves, those big brown eyes—then she will find I am as much a rock to her wiles as to her temper.

Chapter Six

Julia stepped silently away from the entrance to the tent. Smoke padded round the corner and eyed her. ‘We are both in disgrace,’ she told him. ‘You for acting like a dog, me for being me, I suppose.’ Further defiance seemed pointless. She would end up hungry and thirsty, Wulfric would be no worse off than he had been before she had come into his life and Una would carry on looking after two households.

The sun was low now, the smell of food wafted from cooking pots all around, the noise levels were rising as the men returned and the children ran home after play.

It was too late to start preparing food, even if she knew how. If Wulfric told Una not to feed her, then the other woman would obey him, but surely tonight she would help.

Una came out of her tent as Julia approached, her small daughter peering round her skirts at the stranger. ‘I have clothes for you,’ she said before Julia could speak. ‘I do not know the names in your tongue, but here.’ She held out a pile of fabrics and smiled as Julia took them. ‘Soon, they will be too little for me.’ She gestured at her swelling figure. ‘I will teach you, you can make more.’

‘Thank you. Will you teach me to cook too? After tonight, Wulfric says I must cook, or not eat.’

Una smiled, a twinkle in her eyes that made Julia blush. Wulfric’s voice raised in a roar would not have been stopped by canvas walls. How much had their neighbours heard? ‘Help yourself.’ She gestured at the fireside. ‘Berig had already brought me two chickens, they will be ready soon. There is bread here, butter in the crock in the tent.’

Julia thanked her again, smiled at the shy little girl and made her way back, passing Berig laden with two buckets of dirty water as she did so. She had no intention of going into the tent while Wulfric was in goodness knows what state of disturbing undress, so she set the new clothes on a stool, poured the cool, greasy water off the dirty dishes and set to washing them.

They were draining in the bucket when Smoke lifted his head and his tail began to thump, cautiously. She turned, just as warily.

Wulfric was bare to the waist, a towel thrown over his shoulder, a bone comb in his hand. He nodded to her as casually as though they had been discussing the weather just a few moments before, tugged the wolf’s ears and hooked a stool towards him with his foot.

If I tell him to put his tunic on, he will realise just how much he disturbs me, wandering about half-naked, she fumed, managing a tight smile. Berig, his friend at his heels, vanished into the tent, reappearing at length with the tub. Julia dragged out the trestles and set them up, decided she could not manage the board by herself and began to collect up the stools.

When she turned back to Wulfric, he was sectioning off a wide strand of hair. It was, now she saw it both wet and combed out, almost as long as hers. It would be a thorough-going nuisance, getting caught in chain mail, sticking to sweaty skin in battle, blowing in his eyes. All the men wore their hair long, so it must be the fashion, she supposed, but she had not thought Wulfric so bound by such trivia that he would overlook the disadvantages. Roman soldiers cropped their hair even shorter than most, which seemed eminently practical for a fighting man.

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