by Mariah Stone
He licked his lips, lowered onto his elbows, and kissed her. Then he slid inside her, stretching her deliciously, filling her completely, and a deep moan escaped her throat. He withdrew slowly and glided back again gradually.
“Oh, you feel better than Valhalla,” he whispered in her ear.
Mia spread her thighs even wider and urged him deeper, but he was still moving slowly in and out.
“I want you to savor this like the best feast of your life. The first of many to come.”
He was teasing her, taking his time, stretching out the pleasure, and it was driving her wild. And she couldn’t take it anymore. She felt he was holding back, but she needed him, needed more.
“Hakon, faster,” Mia moaned. “I need you to be you. Let go.”
“Argh!” he roared.
He began moving faster, harder, grunting and growling, and Mia thought she’d never heard anything hotter.
He continued thrusting into her, picking up speed. He grabbed a handful of her ass, making their body contact even fuller, adding a new, intense edge, and even more sweet pleasure.
Mia loved every moment, every thrust, every breath, every stroke, every groan.
He began to shudder, and she knew he was holding off to let her come first. And she was close.
The buildup was deep inside of her, and it took her, making her rise higher and higher, heating her up more and more.
Hakon shuddered, threw his head back, his muscles firm, still pounding inside of her, and shouting her fake name.
Mia convulsed in the sweetest of agonies as her release took her like a warm tempest, and her release surged against his.
When he collapsed on top of her and slid to her side, taking her into his giant, warm hug, Mia thought that she heard him whisper, “I love you.” But she wasn’t sure if it was only her raging heartbeat. A beat that answered, I love you, too.
Cold shiver ran through her, and she opened her eyes, her arms around Hakon. She stared into the night sky full of stars.
She loved Hakon. But he had just made love to Arinborg, the Norse princess. Not Mia, a pregnant runaway pediatrician from the future.
She should have told him the truth before they’d gone this far. The real Arinborg was out there somewhere, waiting to marry Hakon. And when she finally arrived, Mia would get her heart broken again. And so would Hakon.
She needed to tell him before that happened…even if it meant losing him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hakon did not want to fall asleep. He could not.
If the gods had decided to forgive him, this was it. She was it.
He held Arinborg in his arms the whole night, her sweet breath tickling his chest, her hair spread on his shoulder and arm like a blanket. They were cuddled together under the cloaks, lying on the sheepskin. The fire died in the night, but Hakon did not stir to feed it. He was holding a gift far too precious to let go even for a moment.
He drifted off just before dawn.
Her movement woke him, her hair tickling his skin. She was sitting next to him, covering her breasts with the cloak, her silky hip pressed against his leg. The scent of her hair touched his nostrils. She smelled divine.
“Good morning.” She smiled.
“A very good one.”
The sun had risen and lit the ground next to them. Arinborg looked around, her eyes bright in wonder. The white mountain tops rested against the morning sky, their slopes dark green with the thick forest. Gentle wind rustled through the leaves. He loved that she was as much taken by this place as he was.
“Come here.” Hakon tugged at her hand. She fell on his chest with a happy laugh, and he kissed her.
Her sweet smell enveloped him. Her soft lips and gentle tongue lit a wildfire in his veins, and he was instantly hard.
“Arinborg, I don’t know if I ever can get enough of you,” he whispered.
She stilled and leaned back, her eyes wide.
“What did I say?” Hakon said and sat up.
“No, no, nothing.” She lowered her eyes and bit her lip. “It’s me. I need to tell you something.”
It was as if she had poured a bucket with freezing sea water over him. “What?”
She found her shift and put it over her head, still avoiding looking in his eyes. “I’ll just feel better if I’m dressed when I tell you this.”
Panic squeezed his gut like an iron fist. He had a sinking feeling that this was the end of his happiness.
No. He should not dive into the old habit of believing that he’d never be happy. What they had, what they’d said yesterday—
He stretched his hand out and lifted her chin gently with his finger. She met his gaze, and her green eyes were dark with welling tears.
“Arinborg, nothing you will say can break the bond between me and you, my wife.”
She swallowed. “I’m pregnant.”
Hakon frowned. He must have heard her wrong. “You are pregnant? Already? You cannot know that yet.”
She tightened her hands into fists, then loosened them. “It’s not yours. I was pregnant when I married you.”
Rage rose up in his blood like the fountain of fire that scorched him from inside and the pain was excruciating. He jumped up, naked and all. “What?”
She looked up at him, her eyes big and full of sadness. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”
“You are sorry?” He felt as if she had stabbed him in the heart. He walked away from her and began pacing. He wanted to hit something.
The thought was rolling in his head like thunder: his wife was pregnant with another man’s baby.
“I felt it in my bones that you were too good to be true. The gods do not want to grant me happiness. I could tell I was not your first, but I did not care. But this! Who is he?”
He stopped and glared at her. She was pale, still sitting on the sheepskins, clutching the fur cloaks that were wrapped around her legs. He wanted to kill the man in the most brutal way. Cut his balls off and throw them to the pigs.
“He—he is no one you know.”
Hakon clenched his jaws. The next question made him go so rigid his whole body felt like cold stone. “Do you love him?”
“What? No! I don’t. I thought I loved him once, but not anymore. We were,” she paused, as if looking for a word carefully, “in a relationship.”
What did it mean? Why was she using these strange terms?
“Were you married?”
“No. But we were close.”
“Lovers?”
She looked down, as if in shame. “Yes.”
“You were lovers, but unmarried.”
The images of her body next to another man twisted his heart in agony.
“Why didn’t you marry him? Did he seduce you?”
She met his gaze. “Our love died. He was the wrong man for me. And when I wanted out, he—”
Her voice broke off and she looked down at her hands, and something about her hunched shoulders, her hands clasped together made his stomach feel as if a boulder had sunk in it.
“He wouldn’t let me go.”
“What do you mean? Did he hold you by force? Did he violate you?”
His fists clenched so hard they felt like they would never unclench. She was quiet for a long time.
“Answer me,” he said.
She looked up at him, her face a bitter challenge. “Yes. Yes, Hakon.” She rubbed her forehead with her hand, and it was shaking. “God, it’s the first time I’ve told anyone.”
His nostrils flared. “Did your father avenge you?”
She frowned. “No—”
He cut her off, too angry. “So your deceitful father married off his pregnant daughter to me, and did not even kill the man who took you against your will? He is even worse than I had thought.”
Arinborg stood up now, alarm on her face. “He didn’t know.”
“You did not tell your father? Why not?”
She raised her chin. “I couldn’t.”
“Why?�
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Arinborg hugged herself. “It’s not something women are proud of, Hakon.”
Hakon looked her up and down, then began putting on his pants. “You and your father,” he scoffed. “You learned betrayal from him, did you not?”
“No! Hakon, I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, you meant it. You knew and you hoped to marry a jarl instead of that man whoever he is, did you not?”
“But I am telling you now. After what you shared with me yesterday, I couldn’t live another day with the lie.”
“How noble of you. And what do you want me to do now? Raise another man’s child as my own?”
“I don’t know. It’s up to you, of course. But if you want me, you must accept my child.”
The pain of her betrayal and deception, rage at the man who had hurt her, and jealousy were boiling and swirling and bubbling inside of him. He wanted to be the one who gave her a child.
“What is his name?”
“What?”
“His name. If your father did not avenge you, I will.”
“How?”
“I will look for him when I—” he almost said, burn your father’s borg to the ground, but cut himself off. He also had a secret from her that he had not shared yet, and guilt stung him. “When I visit your father. Tell me his name.”
She hesitated but then nodded. “Dan.”
He picked up his cloak and began rolling the sheepskin. He could not look at her. He was such a fool for believing for one moment that the gods favored him. It was the curse again. “Let us go back.”
She laid her hand on his arm, but he withdrew without looking at her.
“Hakon, talk to me.”
But he only went on packing.
“What happened to ‘nothing can break the bond between us’?” she asked, her voice shaking.
He clenched his jaw. One part of him wanted to take her in his arms. But that was a very small part. His beast thundered inside of him from anger and pain and loneliness.
“Odin help me, you deceived me! I need to think, woman. You would be wise to stay out of my way.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
During the next three days Hakon didn’t guard Mia, nor did he sleep in their bedroom.
Their bedroom… She was so silly thinking of it as their bedroom! Wasn’t this exactly what she had wanted to avoid—falling for a guy and calling things theirs? She barely knew him. She had rushed into a relationship with Dan, thinking she had fallen in love with him, and moved in too quickly. And look where it had gotten her.
No more.
But Hakon’s withdrawal hurt.
Not only had he avoided her, he’d barely said a word to her since they’d returned from the mountain. The night they were there had felt like a small honeymoon.
But it was just an illusion, to think that everything would be all right, that she would be a Viking’s wife. She was an idiot.
How could she have thought she could stay here at all? Was she insane? Give birth here? Raise her child here? She was making that mistake again, following her emotions rather than thinking clearly.
She had hidden so much from him, and now he didn’t even care anymore if she ran away or stayed.
Well, at least she was still safe. If he had reacted like that about the pregnancy, what would he have done if she had told him the whole truth—that she was not princess Arinborg at all? What would the people of the village do?
They would probably throw her out, wouldn’t they? It was hard to imagine that they would actually harm her, or that Hakon would let them. But, in any case, Mia was safer under her fake identity.
At least for today.
Mia and Hakon had not seen each other much during the day, Mia being busy at the hospital. And Hakon… Well, who knew where he was? When they saw each other at dinner and she sat in her chair by his side, she felt his careful sideways glances on her skin like pin pricks. But when she looked back at him, he was staring at his bowl and brooding.
She tried several times to talk to him, but he only demanded that she leave him alone. Mia had a hard time falling asleep without him by her side. Jealousy clawed at her heart. What if he was looking for comfort in the arms of another woman, like Dan had? Every morning, he came to breakfast in disarray, hay in his hair and his clothes rumpled.
On the breakfast of the fourth day, Mia demanded to know where he had been, her voice shaking.
He blurted, “I slept in the slaves’ shed.”
Relief flooded her. Slaves and servants all shared a house that was full of hay for them to sleep. It had barely any walls, let alone any privacy with a dozen or so people there.
“When will you come back?” she said, damn pregnancy hormones swirling her relief and intensifying it into a tornado, her eyes blurring.
He turned away from her, took a spoonful of his oats, chewed, then said, “I have not decided.”
“Let me know when you do. I miss you,” she whispered and left the great hall to go to the hospital.
The next day, when Mia was listening to the chest of a ten-year-old boy with a hearing tube that she had asked the carpenter to make, Oda’s voice rang through the hospital. “Mistress! Princess Arinborg! Mette is choking!”
Mia rushed to Oda, who was cradling the little bundle with Mette. Ever since Mia and Hakon had come back from the mountain, Mette had gotten progressively worse. Her airways were closing tighter every day, and the episodes when she could not get air in between coughing fits were longer.
One glance told her Mette was choking. Her little lips were blue, her face turning purple, the skin around her eyes red from strain, and her little hands grabbing at empty air. Mia felt all the blood drain from her face and neck, her hands and feet turning to ice.
“Oh my god! I need a suction tube!” She looked around hopelessly for a moment. She’d been trying to figure out a suitable solution for the past three weeks, but the sad fact was that she needed something plastic. Nothing in the Viking Age would work. But she didn’t have anything except the contents of her purse, which were mostly useless. Why didn’t she have a first aid kit in there, at least, instead of such silly things as a glow-in-the-dark bracelet?
The answer she’d been searching for flashed into her mind like a light in the darkness. If she emptied the fluid it just might work… “We have to run, can you run, Oda?”
Mia was already tugging the woman, and they flew.
Under normal circumstances, it was probably a two-minute walk to the great hall. If they ran, they might cover it in half a minute. Mette might have a minute until she became dangerously deprived of oxygen. Mia would have no time to check if the suction tube worked before she used it on Mette.
It had to work.
If not, this would be the first death on Mia’s hands.
People, houses flashed by as Mia and Oda ran, Mia tugging the woman after herself because she was slower with the baby in her arms.
“Arinborg!” she heard Hakon’s voice calling after her.
It was the first time he’d addressed her directly since her confession.
“Not now, Hakon!”
They ran through the mead hall, right into the bedchamber. Her back to Oda, Mia went through her purse and grabbed the glow-in-the-dark bracelet. She twisted off the top and emptied the liquid onto the floor, then whisked the tube through a bucket of fresh water. Mette’s eyes were bulging now, panic in them, her lips blue. She had little time before her little brain would become completely deprived of oxygen and she would die. Mia opened Mette’s mouth and carefully inserted one end into her throat. The baby gagged a little. Mia put the other end of the tube into her own mouth.
And sucked the air in.
Mucus came, and she spat it out. She sucked again, and more mucus came. Mette still couldn’t breathe.
It must be an airway spasm. Mia needed to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and push the air past the spasm. She took Mette from Oda, the baby tense and hard in her arms, and put her flat on the bed. Mia pressed
her lips to the baby’s mouth and carefully blew. She had to be very cautious not to blow in too much air as Mette’s lungs were much smaller than her own.
Finally, Mette breathed in, making that whooping sound that had become too familiar, a sound that meant bad news—but in this instance, it brought relief.
She breathed in more and cried, then more whooping and another cry. Oda grabbed her in her arms, and pressed the girl to herself, sobbing with joy.
A shadow appeared next to Mia, and Hakon’s hands were on her shoulders, massaging her.
His hands, heavy and warm, finally brought her back to her senses. She turned into his arms, into his bear hug. His scent of hay, musk, and slightly tired clothing enveloped her. She pressed her face into his chest and cried soundlessly, relieved that Mette had lived, that the bracelet had worked, and that Hakon was there like a safe haven.
His arms wrapped around her, soothing, stroking her, warming her up, and Mia calmed down. She had saved the baby. She looked up at Hakon without breaking the hug, and he watched her, his golden-green eyes tender.
“Are you all right?” Mia said.
His eyebrows rose. “You are asking me if I am all right? Now?”
“I’ve barely seen you for four days, and you aren’t talking to me. I want to know how you are.”
He smiled. “Better now.”
Mia smiled back. She wanted to kiss him so bad. She missed his hard, warm body, and she wanted to get him naked and feel his skin against hers.
Hakon looked at the bed where the bracelet lay. “What is that?”
Mia’s heart pounded against her ribs. She swallowed hard. “A healer gave it to me, back home. I’m not sure what it’s made of. But does it matter? It saved Mette.”
Hakon studied her, then gave a nod. Mia hid her face against his chest, guilt heavy in her heart. He trusted her. He believed her without question. What would happen once he found out?
She almost jumped as a suckling noise reached her—she had forgotten for a moment that they were not alone. She turned back, and sure enough, Mette was breastfeeding, smacking her lips in delight.
“You.” Mia heard Oda’s low voice and turned around. The woman’s face was livid, and she was glaring at Hakon. “It is you and your curse. Because of you my daughter almost died. You held her! You cursed her! Your bad luck brings death to everyone around you.”