God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1)

by Susan Fanetti

  “With that. With love.” A smile, sad and small, and tears topped over again. She ducked her head against his chest, and he held her, his heart swelling.

  She was innocent of so much more than coupling. Vali ached to think how lonely and hard her life had been, full of blood and battle but bereft of kindness and love. He could not take her, cause her the pain it would cause her, when even the gentlest touch was new and overwhelming to her.

  “You should always be held with love, Brenna. Let me do only that tonight. Let that be enough. Sleep, and when you wake, I will be here, loving you.”

  Her only answer was to hold him more tightly. And, gradually, to stop shaking.

  Brenna woke in a dark room, feeling rested and comfortable. Before she opened her eyes, she understood that something was different, yet familiar, and with that understanding came the memory of the night before.

  Vali had come to her. She had slept in his arms. She was still in his arms; the scent and feel of him was all around her—it was that which was familiar.

  Once before, she had woken with him so close—when she had fallen asleep lying next to him in the healer’s tent. That had been the last time, until now, that she’d slept well.

  She tipped her head back, and his beard brushed over her forehead. It was soft, much softer than she’d expected, and she let herself shake her head lightly, savoring the touch of it on her skin.

  “You are awake,” his voice rumbled, quiet and deep, and she froze, feeling abashed. Then he bent his head down so that their eyes could meet, and he smiled.

  His eyes were a bright, brilliant blue, the color clear even in the faint light, and this close to him, with the warm glow of the fire reflected in them, Brenna thought they seemed like the faceted jewels that had adorned so many of the prince’s treasures. His smile was bright, too, his teeth white and straight and his full lips surrounded by that dark, lush beard.

  Perhaps he was handsome, after all.

  “Did you not sleep?” Brenna asked, and watched her hand come up so that her fingers could comb through his beard. He closed his eyes with a rough sigh.

  “I slept. Though I admit that I watched you as I could. You are beautiful.”

  He’d said that before; she was more comfortable pretending she hadn’t heard him. It wasn’t that she thought he was lying to her—it was that she didn’t know what sense to make of his admiration. So she dropped her eyes from his and focused elsewhere. Her fingers left his beard and smoothed over the hard, contoured planes of his broad chest, tracing the lines of his tattoos, the rampant bear and wolf.

  Many berserkers had ritualized tattoos of a similar sort. The bear and the wolf were their special symbols. The most ferocious of the berserkers, who fought more like beasts than men, the Úlfhéðnar, were thought to be Odin’s own warriors. Having seen Vali in battle, Brenna knew him to be Úlfheðinn. She had noticed, too, that he had kept the head and tail of the wolf that had become his main fur, so that the animal itself was slung over his back, in the way of the Úlfhéðnar. He had as much of the Allfather’s special notice as she might possibly have.

  She traced the bear tattoo over the rounded mass of his shoulder and down his arm, drawing over his scars, lingering in the valleys between each perfect muscle. She was entranced by the presence of him, so big and so firm, and his skin so soft.

  Finally, Vali groaned. “Brenna. We lie bare together, skin to skin. I cannot take much more of your exploration. Forgive me.” He took her hand and kissed it, then leaned in to kiss her forehead.

  When he moved next to turn back the furs and leave the bed, Brenna caught hold of him, hooking her hand around the muscle atop his shoulder. “Don’t.”

  He stopped and looked into her eyes, so deeply. No one had ever seen her the way Vali did. She wondered what he saw inside her.

  “What do you want of me?”

  She wanted him to make sense of the feelings inside her. She had seen men and women coupling many times; often, she had slept in longhouses full of people or in camps just the same. Their people did not much stand on matters of privacy. But what she had seen seemed ugly, cursory, little different from animals mating. Grunt and sweat and groan. The feelings she had for Vali were not ugly. They were visceral—deep, deep inside her body, in places she’d never fully understood of herself—and they were compelling, making her want things she hadn’t wanted to want, but they were not ugly. They were beautiful.

  She wanted him to love her.

  “I want to understand what it is between us. I want why you came to my room.”

  “And you’re certain?”

  No, she was not. She didn’t understand enough to be certain. But she knew she wanted to understand. She nodded. “Yes.”

  He settled the furs back over them and cupped her face in his hand—so broad and strong that he could have smothered her easily with just his palm. “If you will trust me, I will help you understand.”

  Again, she nodded, and he leaned in and kissed her. No one had ever kissed her but Vali, but even without anyone to compare him to, Brenna knew that he was highly skilled. She was stunned by the sparking sensations that heated her body, simply by the touch of his lips. And his tongue in her mouth! What a thing that was! She could feel, she could almost taste, the small nick in its side, where his father had meant to sever it. Again and again, she found herself teasing at that spot while his tongue explored her mouth.

  While she marveled at the kiss, at the way his beard scraped gently at her cheeks, at the feel of his breath on her skin, at the thick silk of his hair caught in her fist, Vali groaned hoarsely, into her mouth, and then his hand left her face. She felt his fingers sweep down her throat and over her collarbone, then down, over her chest.

  His hand covered her breast, and Brenna jumped, breaking the kiss with a gasp. It…hurt. Her breast ached under the heat of his palm, and she felt the skin tighten, which only made it…hurt more. But without her bidding, her body arched, pushing itself into his touch, wanting it more. She wanted more. Then his hand shifted, and he drew the pad of his thumb over the pebble-hard point, and she cried out, “Wait!”

  Vali went still, but kept his hand where it was. Not even in battle did Brenna’s heart beat as hard and fast as it beat now.

  “Trust me. Let me help you understand.”

  When she nodded, he rolled, putting her on her back, his body on hers. She could feel the long, hard heat of him pressing into her belly—her belly that ached low and deep, throbbing downward so that she felt swollen between her legs. Was she ill? “Vali, I don’t…”

  “You will, shieldmaiden. Trust me.” With that, his hand left her breast, moving down, along her side, and he shifted his whole body as if to follow that course. She whimpered, mourning the loss of that strange, wonderful pain in her breast. But then his mouth was on her neck, sucking, his tongue teasing lightly at her skin, his beard tickling, and she whimpered for another reason entirely, and brought her other hand up, scraping back across his shorn scalp so that both hands could tangle in his hair and hold him close.

  Every touch of his hand or his mouth made her throb at the place of her womanhood. She flexed her hips, a movement as involuntary as the arch of her back had been when he’d first touched her breast, and he groaned as her body pressed up against him. She felt the vibration of it, and the cool of it as his harsh breath dried the wet he’d made on her skin.

  Vali moved his body down farther, and his beard brushed over the excitable bud of her nipple. Again, she cried out and arched up, feeling that not-pain, an intensity too strong to endure.

  He stopped and resettled himself so that they were face to face again. Brenna was gratified to see that he seemed stunned, too, and his breath heaved his chest against hers. “You are a revelation, Brenna. Do you trust me?”

  Again, she answered with a nod, and again he moved his body down, his skin sliding against hers, and she waited to see what he would do.

  When he covered her breast with his mouth, Brenna cried ou
t and twisted away, trying to sit up. Vali stopped and looked up, but held her in place. “Did I hurt you?”

  “Y—N—I—I don’t know.” Now that his mouth was gone, her breast still ached; she could still feel traces of that shocking sensation, and she wanted it. All of this was so confusing. “No. Forgive me.”

  He smiled—a smile came so easily to his face and looked like it belonged there. When Brenna smiled, she felt the rusty stretch of it in her cheeks. He reached with one hand and combed his fingers through her hair. “Brenna, heed me. What you feel, it’s good. It can be bliss, if only you will be easy and trust me. Give me your trust, shieldmaiden. I swear you won’t regret it.”

  This time, when she nodded, she took a deep breath and let it out, as she did before a battle, making her body still and loose.

  “Say the words.”

  “I trust you.” She did trust him. But everything that had happened between them since he’d come upon her at the river was beyond her ken. It wasn’t in her nature to sit back and allow things to happen to her.

  Vali took her breast once more into his mouth and sucked. Brenna drew in a sharp breath as his tongue flicked over her taut nipple, but she made herself lie as still as she could. Once she let herself truly feel what he was doing, she understood that it was not pain—it was as intense as pain, yes, but it was a pleasure far greater than any she’d known, greater even than his kiss, or his mouth on her neck, greater even than his hand where his mouth now was.

  Then his hand came up and took the breast his mouth had neglected, and she had to bite down on her lip to keep a scream from finding sound.

  She could no longer be still. What he was doing made more feeling than she could contain, and her body demanded to make some kind of response. Pressed between his heavy, broad body and the bed, she could only writhe, and gasp, and moan. She needed. Oh, how she needed. Her belly ached and cramped with need. Of what she had no idea, but when she lifted her hips and pressed her legs and all between them to the firm heat of him, she could feel that succor was near. As she rocked, trying to reach what she did not know, he grunted harshly over her breast, and his fingers clutched her flesh, pinching her nipple and digging into her hip.

  Releasing her breast from his mouth, again he moved downward, kissing a trail over her ribs and down her belly. He reached back and pulled her hands from his hair, and the thick hank fell over her like a drape. It was cool; the fire had sputtered to mere embers, and the room beyond the heat of their bodies and the furs that surrounded them had gone dim and cold.

  So distracted was she by the feel of his hair and by the touch of his hands on her breasts, still caressing and lightly pinching, making her body arch and twitch, she hadn’t realized where he’d been headed next, not until she felt his nose brush through her curls.

  He couldn’t mean to kiss her there, could he? She had never seen such a thing, or heard of it.

  “Vali! What?”

  He chuckled, making her moan and twist beneath him. “Shhh. Trust, my love. Wait and see.”

  She felt his breath against her most private place. He did mean to kiss her there.

  At first, though, he did not. Instead, his hands went away from her breasts, and one grasped her hip as the other slid over and up between her thighs. It was his fingers that first touched her there, a place she only touched to clean, or when she had her blood.

  She had felt stirrings before, and she had touched herself once or twice, when she was young, but the feeling had been inconsequential, and she had not thought to do so again. The feelings Vali had stirred were of the utmost consequence. Nothing had ever been so important in her life as what she felt when his fingertips, roughened by war, brushed again and again over the point that seemed to ache beyond all measure.

  “Vali! Vali!” she gasped, afraid and eager all at once. This was the need, where it would be met. Where it must be met. Yet she could sense that all would be different for her when it was.

  “Ah, shieldmaiden. You are wet with want. I need to taste you.” His tongue touched that small point on which her very sanity seemed to balance, and Brenna lost all control of her body and her mind.

  She could not say what her body did, because her mind had become the night sky, filled with stars and empty of the world. All she knew was the perfect, consuming, encompassing release, which was all the pleasure she had ever felt, and all the pain, all the love and all the loss, all of life and all of death. All at once.

  In the space of several heartbeats, it was over, and she slowly came back to herself, finding her body curled into a curve, rocking hard against Vali’s face, her hands pulling his hair. Her breath came hard, heavy, as if she’d finished a fight. Her body, indeed, felt much the same as it did after a battle.

  As she relaxed, the touch of his tongue and scrape of his beard made her twitch, and he eased away and lifted his head, smiling.

  His beard was wet. Even in the dim room, she could see the gleam of it in what was left of the fire’s glow. That was her.

  “I make you this promise, Brenna mine. I will see to it that you know well that bliss. You will know love of body and mind and heart. I will love you with all that I have.” He put his hands on either side of her body and came up, pushing her back to the furs as he loomed over her. “But first, my love, I must cause you some pain. Not too much, I hope.”

  He took her hand and brought it between them, until he held it over the wet heat of her sex. His sex was there, too, between her spread thighs. “Feel me, Brenna. Take hold. I want you to know me before I take you.”

  He curled her hand around his length and groaned when she squeezed lightly and then moved her fingers over him. She had seen other men but had thought little of the sword they always carried. Some men seemed especially proud of their endowment and had, she’d supposed, cause to be, and others less so. Vali was one who could have been proud.

  Her fingers arrived at the tip of him, which was much softer than the rest, and his skin seemed looser and moved over the tip smoothly. When, curious, she explored that difference, he groaned and covered her hand with his. “You will unman me. My need is great. Will you let me feel you now? I need the heat of you.”

  Trying on a smile, she took her hand away. “Please. I want that, too.” She wasn’t sure whether she could survive another feeling like she’d had when his mouth was on her, but she thought she wouldn’t mind at all to die that way.

  Breathing a long groan, he took her hand again and brought it back to his sex. “Hold me as I enter you. I want you to feel that with me.” Then he took his own hand away and hooked his arm around her thigh, bringing her leg around his waist. When he had her in the position he seemed to want her, he reached between them and took hold of himself and her hand.

  His face hovered over hers, his hair dropping over them both. With his serious eyes locked on hers, he said, “Forgive me this, love. There is no other way.” Then he pushed himself against the soft, swollen tenderness of her sex—and she lost the ability to breathe.

  This was different by far from anything else he’d done. This was an invasion into her body, an impalement. He pulled their hands from between them and propped himself up over her. “It’s better if I take your maidenhead quickly, and then the ease will come. I swear it, Brenna.”

  His words made her anxious. It was stretch, not pain, she felt now—the pain was in her mind somewhere; it was that intrusion that had her wanting to flee him. But she took a deep breath and made herself loose and still. He saw that she had, and, with a nod, he thrust once, hard, his hips slamming into hers—

  —and there was the physical pain, sharp enough to make her grunt and gasp. And yet, it was tolerable. Feeling the thick, hard mass of him inside her confused her, however. The pain was already easing; why was her instinct to push him off of her, out of her?

  She looked up into Vali’s eyes, still locked on her. Each of his breaths came like it had been ripped from his chest, and she could feel his arms shaking at her sides. He flexed gen
tly, moving only slightly inside her, and the feeling under the sting was pleasure, enough that her eyes rolled up.

  “Ah, Brenna. Now you are mine.” His voice was even deeper than usual and harsh with strain.

  That was it, her anxiety. He was claiming her. One thing her solitary life had afforded her was dominion over her body. Even when she had been a slave, no one had breached that boundary. And now she was his. Vali’s. No longer her own.

  “And are you mine?” she asked, hopeful and fearful of his answer.

  He stared down at her, his intent focus on the eye that vexed her so. Shy, she tried to turn away, but he shifted, coming down to his elbows and catching her head in his hands. He pulled her back to face him. His broad, rough thumb traced a light line over her right cheekbone, along the tender skin under her eye.

  “I have been yours since you first slept at my side, Brenna,” he murmured and bent his head to kiss her gently. “I am bewitched.”