by C. R. Jane
I cried out, clinging to him, as the wave swept through me. My body clenched and then went slack. Echoes of that pleasure kept tingling through me while Jerrik bent to kiss me once more, so tenderly it made my heart ache.
As the haze in my head cleared, it occurred to me that on the occasions I’d stumbled on two humans engaged in this sort of activity—and hastily retreated—both parties had appeared to be getting equal pleasure from it. I eased my hand down Jerrik’s chest to the front of his pants. The hard bulge there and the breath Jerrik sucked in confirmed my suspicions. He hadn’t gotten any release yet.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
I cocked my head, raising an eyebrow at him as I tugged down his pants. “What if I want to?”
I wasn’t selfish. I didn’t know if I could give him back half the pleasure he’d brought me, but I could at the very least try. And I was rather curious to discover those new sensations too.
“Well, then—” His Adam’s apple bobbed when my fingers closed around the hard but silky length of his cock. “It’s been more than five years since I last… with anyone…”
“I spent eons without ever doing it,” I said. “Better late than never.”
He let out a laugh that turned choked as I stroked him up and down. A groan reverberated from his chest. I kissed him, and he returned it with a graze of teeth and a slick of his tongue. His hips bucked toward me. I gripped him more firmly, speeding up my rhythm, until he was trembling like I must have been before. I reveled in the feeling, in the control I was making him lose, in the corded erection so hard and smooth and hot against my palm.
“Muninn,” he murmured. “I’m—”
His voice cut off with a choked sound, his embrace around me tightening. His hips jerked, and a warm spurt of release spilled into my hand.
“Did I do all right?” I asked, not entirely sure what was normal. Should I have tried to extend his pleasure longer like he had mine?
Jerrik let out a guffaw and kissed me hard. “It was perfect,” he said.
We lay there for a few minutes without speaking, our breaths settling into a softer rhythm. I felt the hesitation in Jerrik before he opened his mouth. He bowed his head close to mine.
“It’s probably better if I leave you to get your rest. Sometimes I don’t sleep quietly.”
Was he worried I’d be offended? I kissed him softly and smiled. “Then go sleep. I’ll see you in the morning, won’t I?
He smiled back, his eyes shining. As he left me, I snuggled into the blanket. Any tension my body had been holding was gone now. My eyelids drifted shut, and I was out in an instant.
With sleep came dreams.
At first they were gauzy fragments, glimpses of clashing swords, of wind-whipped branches, of scudding clouds. Then I was over a battlefield again, like the one where I’d first transformed. Chilling rain whipped against my human skin. Blood and mud slopped together in the fray below. My gut turned in newfound horror.
Odin stood next to me, towering twice as high as he ever had in reality. His hand squeezed around my shoulder tight enough to make the bones throb. When he shook me, my jaw rattled.
“Raven of memory,” he bellowed. “Watch close. Listen hard. I want every drop of blood.”
He tossed me down into the chaos again. I tumbled head over feet. Feathers burst from my arms. I flapped, half bird, half woman, dodging the swing of swords and the jab of spears. Odin’s voice carried on behind me.
“Go, raven. Bring it all. I’m waiting.”
I spun around, and blood sprayed me from a slashed throat. No. I couldn’t do this. Not again. Not ever again.
Suddenly Odin was looming over me. His hand lashed out and clamped around my neck. His skin was scaled with stone like the dragons, his eyes glowing just as red as theirs. The press of his thumb cut off my air.
“You do what I tell you,” he thundered. “You serve me.”
I choked and sputtered and flailed. Wrenching against him, I managed to slam my elbow against his wrist. His grip released. I hurtled away, scrambling, flapping, toward the pale green-gold light that shone across a quiet field just beyond the battle. If I could just make it—
A hand closed around my ankle and yanked me back. I flinched awake with a gasp.
The cave room was dark and still. No one there but me. The thumping of my heart started to ease. Just a dream. Just a dream.
I could still taste the iron of blood on my tongue.
I burrowed deeper under the blanket, but it was a long time before I found my way back to sleep.
Chapter 7
When I slipped into the common room the next morning, Svend was the only other one up, sitting on one of the stone seats and chewing on a strip of dried meat. He grinned at me and nodded to a platter on the central stone that held more meat and hunks of hard-looking bread.
“This is the best I can offer for breakfast. But I’m guessing you’d better eat something. You didn’t have much for dinner, did you?”
A playful gleam danced in his bright brown eyes. Had he heard Jerrik and me together last night?
A flush crept through me, but it wasn’t exactly uncomfortable. I might not love this new body, but I could admit it was very good for some things. Things brought back by the look Svend was giving me, with a tingle of a different sort of hunger through my chest and low in my belly.
Surely humans weren’t always insatiable. They seemed to manage to do rather a lot of things other than pleasure each other, despite all the pleasure these bodies were capable of. Maybe it was simply that the body was so new to me, those aspects so unfamiliar and exciting—or maybe, as I’d suggested to Jerrik, I’d had eons of desire built up without even realizing it before.
I sat on the stone next to Svend’s and picked up a piece of bread. He’d smeared a little butter on them that cut the dryness some.
“I pass through the tunnels all the time,” he said in his usual chattering way as I chewed. “This is one of my regular way stations. Everyone in the realm wants something, but an awful lot of them can’t be bothered to figure out how to get whatever that is. It’s a busy life, being a tradesman, but it means I can have just about everything.”
Did he know how his casual rambling drew my attention from the memories that shrouded him? He might simply be in the habit of talking like this with everyone. Answering any questions he thought they might have the way he wanted to, before they had a chance to frame the issue any differently. Deciding how to put his own life on offer.
“Were you a trader in Nidavellir?” I asked. “Before you had to leave?”
“Ah, no, we all had pretty much the same there, so the demand wasn’t quite the same. I come from a proud family of lichen farmers. You know, I always thought the stuff was dull, but now that I haven’t had a bite of it in years, I’ve got to say I miss it.”
His family. Another wisp of memory drifting from him caught my attention. The crying woman—barely as tall as Svend’s chest, fingers black-tipped, hands at her face. No, no, don’t let them. His mother, I thought, with an instinctive certainty.
“They didn’t want you to leave,” I said. “Your parents.”
Svend’s mouth snapped shut. His grin turned crooked. “Raven of memory,” he said. “The past is your business, isn’t it? I try not to think about that time.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think about,” I told him. “Your past goes with you anyway. It clings to you like leaves to an autumn tree, but there’s always more with each one shed.”
“Well, there’s a pretty picture. You must get bored, all that history whirling around you all the time.”
His tone was jaunty, but I had the feeling he was trying to distract me again. I wasn’t going to be diverted.
“No.” I cocked my head as I studied him. “There’s always something interesting. But you don’t like that, do you? Some of the interesting parts you’d rather keep to yourself.”
His handsome face went still. He managed to hold his smile.
“I’d expect we all have things like that.”
“I don’t,” I said honestly. “What is it about your banishment you’re talking around? Is there something— Jerrik thinks you might have hurt people somehow.”
The smile disappeared completely. Svend shoved his toe against the central stone. “Jerrik thinks the worst of everyone,” he muttered. “Look, what happened with my family has nothing to do with that. He doesn’t know. My parents were ready to fight for me. To protest to the authorities that I should be allowed to stay, that accommodations should be made—they were going to make such a fuss they’d get themselves banished too. So I told them I wanted to go. I told them I was tired of living in that dingy cave and of their fussing over me, and that I was looking forward to being rid of it.”
My stomach dropped. It took an effort to swallow the last of my bread. “You left them thinking you hated them.”
“It was the only way to make sure they didn’t try to stop the banishment from happening, didn’t try to bring me back—didn’t meet the same fate.” He sighed, running his hand through his short black hair, his gaze trained on the ground. “I was convincing. I’m very good with words, you know.”
“A very talented individual,” I said.
He looked at me again, the corner of his mouth quirking back up at a bittersweet angle. “As for Jerrik… There was another who lived near the three of us. A troll, from Niflheim. He kept to himself—he’d done something that angered The Blaze, and he knew the giant was looking for him.”
Svend paused. His voice dropped so low it was almost a whisper. “I could have earned a lot if I’d told where he was. But I didn’t. Jerrik thinks I did, because three of The Blaze’s guards came to gather him one day. The truth is, Gunnar let it slip, by accident. He mentioned the troll in passing to another cast-out who’d needed his foot patched up after a burn. It was three days later the guards came. I don’t think he’s ever realized.”
The memory of the moment breezed past me with the words. Gunnar bandaging the foot of a wizened woman. A remark about the troll next door falling from his mouth. The woman perking up just slightly at the mention. Svend, who’d brought her there for help, tensing a little inside. Hoping he was reading her reaction wrong.
And then the guards, the shouting, the clash of weapons…
I shook those fragments of the past away, my brow knitting. “Why don’t you tell Jerrik?”
Svend’s lips twisted. “Then he’d be angry at Gunnar. And Gunnar would hear about it, and I know how horribly guilty he’d feel. Jerrik already didn’t like me. It’s easier, leaving things like this.”
Easier for everyone except him. Svend had seemed all charm and brightness, but there was a sadness to him too, underneath. A willingness to sacrifice that he extended automatically to everyone he cared about even a little.
My hand moved as if of its own accord, rising to touch his cheek. His whole body went still, but he held my gaze with a hint of his former smile. “You’d better not be pitying me now. If there’s anything I won’t stand for, it’s that.”
“No pity,” I said. Only a pull to be closer to him, to soak up that goodness in him as if I could become a part of it too. I leaned in and caught his lips with mine.
I didn’t have much practice at initiating kisses yet, but I appeared to have done a decent job of it. Svend came alive at once, cupping my cheek and tilting my head so our mouths could meet even more deeply, his breath mingling hot with mine.
The tingling I’d felt before raced all through my body. He kissed differently than Jerrik, more gently and yet with more certainty at the same time. I wasn’t sure I liked one more than the other, but the fact that there were even more sensations to discover sent a thrill to my core.
I scooted to the edge of my seat so my bare knees pressed against his leg, seeking the warmth of his body. Svend’s arm came around me—
“What in Hel’s name!?”
There was nothing wry in Jerrik’s voice as it crackled through the room. I flinched, breaking the kiss. My hand stayed on Svend’s arm as we both turned to look toward the hall.
Jerrik had emerged from the room where he must have slept. Gunnar hovered right behind him, looking pained. Jerrik… His face had flushed red and the gleam in his clear blue eyes felt dangerous.
His hands fisted at his sides. He drew in a long ragged breath. “What are you doing with her?” he demanded. His gaze jerked to me. “What are you doing with him?”
“I was kissing him,” I said, and blinked. Oh. “Did you think, because of last night—” Something in me bristled in resistance. My tone turned sharp. “What we did doesn’t mean I belong to you. If I’d known you’d think it would, I wouldn’t have done anything.”
Jerrik stared back at me. The anger in his stance deflated slightly. “I didn’t mean that. I know I don’t own you. But normally, when two people…” He motioned vaguely between us. Gunnar shifted behind him, his arms folded awkwardly.
My hackles came down a little in turn. “This isn’t exactly a normal situation, is it?” I said. “And I’m not exactly a person. In another day or two, we’ll be going our separate ways anyway, won’t we?”
“I suppose,” he said. He didn’t sound as if he liked the idea. “I still— It meant something to me.”
“It meant something to me too. It meant a lot.” I paused, taking in the emotions churning inside me. “I like how I feel when I’m with all of you. I want to feel… everything. To feel all the things I never could before, while I have this chance. But you don’t have to be a part of that. Either of you.” I caught Gunnar’s eye for a moment so he’d know I welcomed him too. “As much as I hope you will.”
“You want all of us?” the giant said, with the huskiness that had affected me so quickly yesterday.
I licked my lips. Every nerve in my body screamed Yes! Preferably soon. Preferably now.
“Very much,” I said.
Svend had sat quietly through the discussion so far. Now he stroked his hand lightly up and down my side. “I can share. Whatever you want, lovely lady.”
Jerrik wavered, but the hunger I’d seen last night had lit in his eyes. “But him… You don’t know him.”
“Neither do you.” I swallowed down Svend’s secret, but it couldn’t hurt anyone to say this much. “You don’t believe him? Believe me. I’ve seen his memories for myself. He’s never hurt anyone, not the way you think.”
Jerrik blinked. A flash of regret crossed his face. “I—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Svend said. “No resentment here. Shall we give the lady what she wants while we have this moment?”
I held out my hand. Gunnar approached us. Jerrik exhaled in a rush.
“You have no idea how hard you are to say no to, Miss Raven.”
“Then don’t say no.”
He hesitated only a second longer. Then he came too.
“Let’s take it slow,” I said as they circled me. Now that I had a taste, I wasn’t looking to rush. “I want to savor this.”
“Just as we will,” Svend murmured, and tugged my mouth back to his. Gunnar knelt behind me, his broad hands skimming my shoulders and trailing down my sides. Jerrik sat by my stone and pressed his lips to my knee, his thumb tracing a lazy teasing circle on my inner thigh just above it.
I didn’t know what to do with all that warmth, all those touches, all around me. I broke from Svend’s kiss and pulled Gunnar’s head to mine to discover what he would taste like. As his the giant’s musky scent filled my lungs, the dark elf slid his hand across my chest, testing my nipples with soft flicks of his fingers. I whimpered, and suddenly slow didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.
Jerrik’s kisses moved from my knee to my wrist and traveled up my arm. Gunnar reached around to stroke one of my breasts. Svend nibbled my shoulder and dragged the sleeve of my dress down, down, until the neckline jumped over the peaks of my chest with a lance of pleasure. I moaned as the giant fondled one of those small mounds skin to skin
and the dark elf lowered his head to suck my other nipple into his hot mouth.
Gunnar released my mouth to kiss my neck, his lips massaging the sensitive flesh in time with the swivel of his thumb over my breast. Jerrik rose up to claim my lips. His hand stayed on my leg, still drawing those teasing patterns on my skin, easing higher inch by inch.
I hadn’t thought anything could feel better than the stroke of Jerrik’s hands last night, but the wet heat of Svend’s mouth on my breast and the flick of his tongue was another realm altogether. A whimper worked from my throat as he grazed his teeth against the nipple. It turned into a moan of protest when he drew back. But he was only sinking lower.
The light elf eased to the side as his darker companion dropped to his knees between my legs. Svend kissed the skin newly sensitized by Jerrik’s touch. Jerrik yanked my dress even higher, all the way to my hips, like an offering, and then he was bringing his mouth to the breast Gunnar had just released. The giant kissed my mouth, caressing me on the other side now.
Svend traced a path up my thigh with his lips until his breath spilled over my core. I was trembling with wanting now, my fingers clenched tight in Gunnar’s soft chestnut curls, in Jerrik’s familiar shirt. Svend slid me just a little forward, and then he pressed his mouth against the neediest part of me.
I cried out, my hips bucking of their own accord. Svend’s tongue slicked over that nub of pleasure and then down across my opening. Bliss sizzled through my veins. So much I couldn’t bear not to give some back.
I pushed Jerrik upright while my hand slid down his chest to wrench at his trousers. As his cock sprang free I turned my head and licked the salty liquid beading at its tip. Jerrik groaned. Svend suckled me harder, his tongue dipping right inside me, and I arched right off the stone with a gasp.
Jerrik’s cock still stood at attention, waiting for me. I closed my mouth around the head. The light elf’s breath stuttered. His hips started to sway in a needy rhythm as I took him deeper, my tongue lapping up the salty sweet taste of him. The pulse of him in my mouth and Svend’s mouth against my core came together in perfect harmony.