As soon as she ceased her struggle, the man lifted up slightly so that she could inhale. Her chest heaved as her body begged for air. She saw bits of stars dance before her eyes, but refused to acknowledge them. The Viking stared down. He lowered his face, daring her to look away, but she wouldn’t. His eyes were dark, and she briefly wondered what color they were in the daylight.
He smiled then and raised one brow. “You’re not afraid, are you?” She didn’t answer, but her gaze remained narrowed in fury. “More furious than afraid, I think.” He was so close. She smelled honey mead and pine. The Viking lowered his face to her hair. Was he sniffing her? He pulled back and with barely a grimace he moved his injured arm up to her face.
Merewin felt a pang of guilt at causing the injury, but it quickly vanished as she felt his manhood bulge against the juncture of her legs. If I could get my dagger back, I’d stab his wound again or lower still. His hand touched the side of her head, gentle touch, a caress. Merewin turned her face toward his hand and bit down on the fleshy ball of his thumb.
The Viking wrenched back his hand and Merewin squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for him to strike. Instead she heard a low chuckle. “Ferocious,” he said. “Will I need to gag you?”
Merewin’s eyes blinked open.
He leaned over her face, his lower half still entrapping. “If you continue to poke holes in me, I will gag you, little fox.” He stared and shook his head. “No more.”
The Viking lifted his hand, and Merewin flinched briefly before she stilled.
He moved toward her face, palm open, like a man trying to tame a wild animal.
Merewin frowned. She wasn’t some beast to be gagged and tied. Demeaning, she thought and remained still. She wouldn’t flinch or react. He was nothing.
His hand touched the side of her head, gently but firmly. Moving down the length of her braid that lay to the side, he pulled the leather tie from the end and ran fingers through the tight weave, freeing it from the braid.
“Merewin,” his voice sounded husky, like a soft caress, and Merewin’s stomach flipped. “You haven’t answered my question.”
She looked blankly. What question was he talking about? The moonlight slicing down shadowed his face, though she knew he must be able to see clearly. His hand fingered downward to release the curls.
“I asked you before. What color is your hair? It smells like,” he hesitated, “wildflower and spice.”
Was the man muddled?
His face came close to hers again. Would he kiss her?
Merewin’s heart pounded, and she realized she could move her leg. With a rush of energy, Merewin punched her knee upwards toward the bulge. Her aim was a bit off, but she managed to surprise him enough that he reared back. She rolled out from under him.
She only had time to put feet beneath her when his vice-like hands grabbed her hips, lifting her easily from the ground as he stood. His strong fingers dug into the intimate bend that connected her legs to her hips. She kicked with her still numb legs. She threw her arms this way and that. Bloody evil hair! Its lengths tangled around her as she fought with all her strength.
“Be still, woman,” he threatened, his voice once more cold as he turned and pushed her back up against the oak she had been trying to reach. His good hand gripped her wrists and raised them up high. With a strap from his waist, he bound her wrists together. Without a word, he took her dagger, still bloody, and stabbed it into the tree, through the strap. “It’s dull enough. It might hold,” he said. Then with a predatory stance, he slowly pushed his large body against her, pinning her between his rock hard length and the tree. His legs braced against her own so that they could not move even an inch.
He lowered his head, the gentleness she had glimpsed now gone. His breath came out warm against her lips. The close cropped beard brushed her chin. “If you are going to attack a man’s groin, Merewin, you’d best disable him. Otherwise you will only anger him beyond his self control.”
The threat was there. Had she pushed him too far? Merewin swallowed hard and closed her eyes to hide the fear she knew lurked behind them. He could kill her with eyes closed. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of watching her terror.
They stayed thus for several more moments, the sound of her rapid breathing heavy in her head. She tensed when she felt fingers touch her cheek, and she tried not to squeeze her eyes further shut.
“So brave,” he complimented softly and brushed lips against hers.
Merewin’s eyes snapped open.
A curious, serious gaze searched. “Aye, brave and beautiful.” He touched her parted lips with the tip of a finger.
Merewin’s heart pounded. No one had ever spoken like that to her before. She was pinned to the tree, hands overhead, his hot, hard body pressed intimately against hers. He’d called her brave and beautiful. Was that true? Was she beautiful? She was so tired, not just from tonight, but from living alone. Tired with no one to help. Did someone actually think she was brave when most of the time she felt frightened and alone?
His hands came to the sides of her face and he tilted her head for a kiss. It was warm and deep like hot cider running smooth into her belly.
The giant pulled back and the cold night air hit her body. She blinked.
He stared for a moment, then frowned and turned away.
Merewin closed her eyes in mortification. She hadn’t even tried to kick, or move her face away. Oh no, she had just let him kiss her, had actually relaxed into the warmth of his body. Was she so needy of some company that she’d fall into this Viking’s arms? Never! The flush of anger, anger at herself, scorched her skin.
Cracking her eyes open, she saw that he still stood turned away. She pulled down on the blade in a sawing action and felt the thick leather move, but it didn’t snap.
Merewin couldn’t help but gaze down his broad shoulders and back to his muscular backside and thighs. He was magnificent, even if he was deadly and her enemy. Halt this foolishness, she chided and her gaze flew back up. He was the enemy. It didn’t matter if he thought she was brave and beautiful. She continued to move the leather shackle along the blade until he turned around.
His eyes had narrowed slightly, his jaw hard. “That was for mangling my stitches,” he indicated his arm. His stare pierced her.
She didn’t dare close her eyes again, and she wouldn’t look away. No fear. So she stared. It became a challenge not to blink, and she concentrated on the sting of her eyes instead of the way he seemed to look deep inside. Down to her core as if he were trying to figure her out.
When he turned and sat down on a stump, Merewin nearly sighed in relief. She blinked long to clear her fuzzy sight.
“Now, some answers. I tire of listening to my own voice,” he said and then turned to scan the woods. “First, there is the color of your hair, woman.” He studied her in the moonlight then glanced at his arm.
Merewin could see a spot of blood seeping through the binding. It would need to be re-stitched if her magick wouldn’t work on him, not that she would try to heal him. Although she had been the one to reopen the injury.
“I know your name is Merewin as I heard it spoken, but are you the witch of the woods?” Once the wound was wrapped tighter he stood and circled. “You don’t look like a witch, although you are wearing strange clothing.” He stopped as if waiting for an answer.
Merewin had no intention of speaking or answering. She didn’t even know who he was. He had chased, tackled, kissed her against her will, and now had her pinned to a tree. Merewin pursed lips tightly together.
“Mute? Nay. I heard you speak to the injured in the tent.” He frowned and waited. He would be waiting a long time if he thought she would just start answering questions. “You play tricks like other healers.” His lips pulled back as if he’d just eaten a rancid mushroom. A glare turned his dangerous face deadly. He stood tall. “Stubborn? Aye, you are.” He moved to touch the wisp of hair that fell across her cheek, but stopped. Perhaps he was afraid she’d bite a
gain.
Not likely. Merewin couldn’t imagine this brute afraid of anything. He paced around while she remained staring straight ahead.
“I need to know if Navlin is the famous healer, and if she is really dead. I need to know if you are also a healer. Perhaps you are the famous healer we have heard about in Denmark?” He stopped and leveled his gaze with Merewin’s. He ran his good hand through his tussled hair. “I know you can hear me, and I think you understand me.”
She looked blankly at him. Nothing, she would say nothing.
“That’s another trick, how you understand me. You speak your words with the same inflections as the villagers, but the words are mine, Danish.”
She said nothing.
The Viking snorted and walked back to sit on the stump. “Very well then, if you can’t understand me, I guess I can say out loud what it is I plan to do with you.”
Merewin’s heart thumped up into her throat, but she showed nothing but smouldering fury.
He stared at her, without a hint of a smile or frown or any expression. “Are you still a maid, then dear Merewin?”
Of course she didn’t answer.
“I think you might be from your kiss.”
She wanted to kick dirt in his face, but stayed passive and leaned back against the tree.
“But don’t worry, I will teach you all you need to know. Starting with your mouth.” His voice remained even as if he were telling her how to saddle a horse or milk a goat.
Merewin’s fingers tingled on the verge of numbness. She laced them together and continued to stare straight. He might be able to physically overcome her, but he couldn’t make her answer his questions. Merewin’s gaze moved to where he sat on the stump as if he had all the time in the world to just sit. Anger rose up in her again, giving her strength. He wanted answers. He knew her name. He was stronger and faster. But he didn’t know how stubborn she could be. He was a stupid barbarian who didn’t even have the courtesy to tell her his name.
Her anger made her glare natural. Although it didn’t matter since the bloody barbarian kept looking all around, everywhere but at her. Look at me, ye demon. See how I glare at ye. Thoughts screamed behind gritted teeth. She pulled against the leather binding and felt the knife cut a bit through it.
“I think first I will teach you how to kiss me, using that sweet mouth of yours.” He picked up a rock. He threw it far with his good arm, into the forest. When it cracked against a tree he continued. “I will slip my tongue inside to stroke you and teach you to stroke me in return. I doubt you’ve kissed a man like that.”
What was he talking about? Kissing, how insane.
He kept an even voice.
“Then when I feel you lose yourself a bit, relaxing into me like before,” he paused to glance at her for a brief second.
Damnation, was she still glaring when he looked?
“Then I will send shivers down you as I run my hot tongue along the sensitive line of your lovely neck, down to your round soft breasts.”
Blessed Mother, he was talking about her breasts!
“I will peel that cloth,” he indicated the tight fitting fabric, “from you. I will lick those lovely white mounds and tease them with my hands, my mouth, graze them with my teeth.” His gaze raked her body stretched against the tree.
Even more than his words, the gaze caused a rush of heat to wash down through her, suffuse her with a jittery feeling of languidness, like she could run a mile, but also wanted to lie down and stretch.
He brought his gaze back up to hers.
Holy Earth Mother, what horrid reaction was this?
“Aye, and you will like it. You will moan as I suckle you, my hands roaming down across your soft, hot skin until I find that lovely pelt between your legs.” His look held hers, and she couldn’t tear her gaze away. His sensual lips formed the words that promised pleasure she had never known. What was he trying to do to her?
“You will be slick and hot there.” He swallowed and Merewin’s breath hitched in time with her heart.
She swallowed too, watching the way his gaze sank to the juncture of her legs revealed by the tight fitting trews she wore. She felt naked and crossed her legs.
“Since you cannot understand me, I am free to tell you what I will do to you next.” He watched her and waited.
She stared back silently. Merewin realized her glare had melted away as his words invaded, shocked. Shaking the mental images she narrowed her look and stood tall.
As she straightened up against the tree, her breasts thrust out more, and the Viking’s gaze moved back to them.
Merewin felt a chill and her nipples hardened beneath his stare. How could he control her body without touching it? She looked away, out at the silver washed trees standing like massive sentries. She needed to escape. Instinct warned. This man was more dangerous than death. If he kept her alive, she would be a slave.
His voice began again, low and insistent. “Aye, you will be wet and quivering as I run my hands and tongue down your body. You will moan my name, begging me to touch you.”
Ha, moan his name, she didn’t even know his name. Merewin opened her mouth to tell him just that, but then snapped it shut. She ground her teeth. This was a mere game to make her talk and reveal that she understood. Never, she was cleverer than he.
His voice was a rough whisper in the night as he continued to talk on and on in infinite detail of touching and licking every inch of her body.
Merewin closed her eyes against the look in his gaze. Raw hunger blazed, a hunger that made her tremble. Not with fear, Merewin wouldn’t allow it. But with some other emotion that threatened to consume. So she shut it out, closed her eyes to him. But she couldn’t shut out the sound of his deep voice. Passionate images of his body against her own penetrated her mind. She pressed back into the tree to still the wobbly feel of her legs.
She opened her mouth to better draw in breath, and licked her drying lips. His words ceased in mid description. Merewin opened her eyes to find him staring at her lips, open desire changing his face to match the one in her mind, the one that loomed over her straining body. For a long moment he just stared, and she noticed that his breath also came quicker. Was he as affected by his words as she? Somehow she hoped so. Would he come over to her, touch her inflamed body? By the Earth Mother, she hoped not, because if he did, Merewin didn’t think she could fight him.
Without moving his eyes, he began again, his voice stronger. “Have you ever taken a man in your mouth, Merewin?” Merewin closed her eyes again. “Nay, probably not,” his voice hardened, “and since you are mine now, I will be the only man you will touch.”
Her eyes widened. She was his? When had that happened? Ridiculous. She wasn’t his, she was no man’s, and as soon as she escaped he would never see her again.
His voice softened again. “But you will learn to take me in your sweet honey mouth.”
Merewin’s lips opened in shock as she was no longer able to control her reaction. She wasn’t supposed to understand his words, but this was too much.
“But first I will taste you. I will lay you back and spread your long legs apart, baring your core, opening you first with my fingers.” He bent his fingers against each other as if stretching them, readying them to explore her flesh. They were long, strong fingers. “Then when you are dripping, I will lower my mouth and...”
“My hair is brown,” Merewin yelped, drowning out his words. “A medium shade of brown, perhaps with some lighter golden spots, I’ve been told.”
The Viking stopped. He had won.
Merewin looked away while the words rolled out of her mouth. “Navlin was the Witch of the Woods, she raised me. She died two moons ago. I am also a healer.” She opened her eyes again. “And ye will tell me yer name, demon,” she demanded with as much dignity she could pretend to have. “Now.”
Hauk had won. Hauk stared at his captive. He had won this battle, but the look in her eyes, they were sad, embarrassed, self-loathing perhaps. Hauk alway
s won, but this woman didn’t know that. And somehow this victory felt bitter. No he didn’t rape, not like some of his crew. But had he not just done that to her with his words? What was this sinking feeling under his ribs? Remorse? Never. He had a mission, and it had been a tactic to make her talk, nothing more. And he hadn’t harmed her body. Others may have tortured her, ravished her. He thrust the bitter feeling aside.
“I am called Hauk Geirson of Spring House, and I’ve journeyed from Denmark to find the famous healer from the woods of Northumbria.” Regardless, he didn’t like this look on her face, as if he’d crushed her spirit somehow. He much preferred her glares.
“But you can call me master,” he said arrogantly and grinned when he saw the fire light her expression once more.
“I think I will call ye barbarian,” she spat. “Release me. I have answered yer questions.”
Hauk looked at her lips closely. “How is it that I hear you speak my language but your lips form other words?”
“Magick.”
Hauk felt his stomach tighten, and it had nothing to do with remorse. “There is no such thing. You’re an illusionist.”
“I am the daughter of a Wiccan priestess.”
“Navlin.”
“Nay, she found me. My birth mother was a powerful Wiccan priestess.”
“Wiccan, you mean you speak to spirits and can heal.” Hauk couldn’t hide the anger that laced his words. “There are only false healers, there is no magick here in Midgard, only with the gods in Asgard.” He had made that mistake before, believing in the tricks of healers claiming to be able to heal, offering false hope, deadly remedies. He had been fooled before and lost nearly everyone he loved. Only Dalla and his sister remained. He wouldn’t be tricked again. “You use tricks, illusions.”
Merewin shrugged her shoulders. “Very well then, it’s all an illusion that my lips form words native to Northumbria but ye hear the tongue of yer homeland,” she said sarcastically.
Hauk snorted and pulled the dagger out of the tree. Her arms fell, and he saw a small grimace cross her features. He cupped her bound hands in his large ones and worked the blood back into each digit. With a quick slice of his own sharp knife, he snapped the strap. She kept her gaze straight ahead, level with his chest. This woman was taller than most, but still stood a head below him. She would match him well.
Magick (The Dragonfly Chronicles Book 2) Page 4