The door opened, revealed the sleepwalker, black hair awry, dressed in linen brecs, though tied loosely to hang low on his hips. A glimpse of straight white teeth, a smile, rarely seen, played upon his wondrous mouth. His dark eyes captured highlights and reflected undiluted pleasure to see her.
He did not tarry at the threshold, but quickly crossed the distance to Llyrica at the base of the ladder, took her in a swift and effortless embrace. Before she surrendered troubling thoughts and all of her senses to him, Llyrica saw Byrnstan rouse the thralls, send them out, bidding them sleep elsewhere for the night. With haste, the priest padded close to convey a parting message.
“He untied his own hand and I guessed what he was about. I dressed him in the briefest sense, lest the StoneHeart be discovered walking naked across the yards at midnight, trailed by his priest. I will come for him long before the cock crows.”
Llyrica managed a nod, then was lost before the closing of the door as she descended into muscled heat. The sleepwalker enveloped her, the low rumble of his moan reverberating from his chest to hers before it unfurled throughout her limbs. He inhaled deeply of her neck, grazed along her jaw and cheek until his seeking lips found hers. His firm grip on her plaited hair, a gentle tug and Llyrica’s face tipped up to receive his kiss. A suffusion of moist warmth and clean mint drugged her, compelled her to open her mouth that he might pour himself into her. The sleepwalker did, with a fervent groan, a plunge of his tongue, and a press of his body that pushed her against the ladder. A long moment and he let her loose, took her hands in his. He drew her fingertips to his lips, then to his brow. Llyrica understood his wordless request to smooth away life’s cares.
“I have gone mad without you,” he said. His eyes were closed, the masculine planes of his face cast in undulating shadows from the candle and the odd angle of moonlight above. He was beautiful. “The thought of this, of your hands on me, has kept me from running as a lunatic through the streets of London.”
“Yet you have been content with only thoughts of me?” she chided gently as she massaged his brow. She felt an occasional spasm of his eyelid, so stroked it gently, planted a kiss. If he would only let her tend him thusly until his deepest worries fell away.
The sleepwalker pulled her hands from his face, brought them around his waist where he held them behind his back. Her breasts flattened against his chest. “I have not known contentment until now. So turn, my silken bride, and climb this ladder as I have had also fed my sanity on thoughts of following you to the loft.”
“I have thought you would never come.”
He gave Llyrica a twist to face her about, and hand over hand, she began the ascent with the sleepwalker at her heels. Thirty steps to the top, but he overcame her at fifteen, captured her midway. Along the climb, he had kicked off his brecs and now straddled her from behind, his feet planted on the outside of hers on the same rung. One hand held tight to the ladder, and with one arm around her waist, he nestled his body into hers, kissed the nape of her neck. His naked sex, already full and hard, prodded her hip from behind.
“I know you have been busy uploft, weaving while you sing.” His breath was hot on her neck as he undid her plait, combed her hair with splayed fingers. “But surely you have had time to look for me from the window. ’Twould wound me, love, if you say you have not.”
Elation blossomed. Llyrica clung two-fisted to the rung above her head. “In idle moments between weaving my braids, yea, I have looked out into the world. Perhaps I even gave in to brief curiosity as to what kept you so occupied, that you stayed out of my sight.”
“Whatever it was, I damn it now ... and myself ... and vow make retribution for my failings as a husband.” As a token of his word, his hand moved from her waist, slipped over silk to cup her breast and tease her nipple into a hard pearl. Llyrica’s head fell back onto his shoulder, invited the sleepwalker to kiss her throat. She sighed a note from a song, and his hand dropped to between her thighs, stroked her to a desperate need.
She could scarcely form words. “I pray we go on up to the pallet. Have you forgotten we stand on a ladder?”
“Nay, I have not. Turn around. I will not let you fall.”
“But I ... we ...” Her objection lingered on her lips as the sleepwalker assisted Llyrica to face him on the ladder. A precarious perch half way between the floor and the loft, her hands held to the rung above her head, her feet draped on the rung beneath. The sleepwalker held her securely, kissed her, snugged his hips to hers. She felt his manpart throb and move between them.
“Hold on tight,” he whispered in her ear. Leaving her breathless and perplexed, the sleepwalker descended the ladder to her feet, carefully nudged them apart, to the width of the rung. He began a slow climb up ... inside of her gown. A torturous caress, he glazed her ankles, calves and knees with hungry kisses and nips of flesh.
“StoneHeart!” Involuntarily, her protest arose at his unholy ministrations. It must be wicked, this passion expressed in an unseemly location amid a fear of falling. Yet she was caught, strung up on a ladder, prey to the pleasure inflicted by her husband’s lips. She had felt his fleeting hesitation when she called him by his daylight name, and vowed to be more careful, lest he become troubled and awaken.
The sleepwalker persisted, unchecked. “Soft as dove’s wing.” He murmured against her inner thigh, brushed his lips across quivering skin.
Climbing higher beneath her garment, holding one-handed to the rungs behind her, he pressed his ear to the valley of her breasts. Pushed to her leg was his magnificent iron shaft, an astonishing reminder of their marriage consummation. Would that she could let loose a hand and reach down to touch it.
“How have you done this, little fox? Reduced me to a blithering idiot with a single craving ... to know every inch of you inside and out.”
The answer might lie in the potent lovesong she wove into his tunica braid, but she discovered he had spells of his own. Her position on the ladder thrust her breasts forward, offered them defenseless to the sleepwalker. He rooted for a nipple, suckled firmly. Whimpering, she could naught but hang onto the rung above and arch closer.
The trembling in her limbs increased. “I-I am slipping. I w-will surely plunge to my death.” Yet the danger heightened her arousal.
The sleepwalker moaned at her nipple. “Hold on a moment longer, Sweet Softness, while I drink my fill of you. I must find forgiveness for despoiling you in haste a moon ago.”
Skimming down her body with his nose and mouth, he greeted her swollen sex with a nuzzling. He burrowed deep within her femininity. His tongue gifted her with wet lashes and slipped inside, a sinful penetration. Heat met heat, probed her soft interior until flesh caught fire. A dizzying fever bloomed, spread in waves until Llyrica was blind and panting with pleasure. Detached, suspended, nothing existed save the shimmering release that lay just beyond her reach. The sleepwalker seemed to know this, took her to the brink of climax, led it fade, then drove her to the edge again.
“I p-pray thee, husband. Why do you torment me?”
His reply came when he left his tent of Llyrica’s cemes. He climbed a few rungs until he aligned with her, cradled her head with one hand, kept a steady grip of the ladder with the other. “Tell me you want me. Then kiss me, Llyrica. Open your soft mouth for me.”
The only answer possible was her strangled sigh, a cry of a passionate desperation.
Demanding, urgent, he took before she gave, his lips hard, bruising, a hint of the StoneHeart in the sleepwalker. Sustaining the kiss, he dropped his hand from her head and lifted her gown. Warm male flesh encountered the bud of her need. In a swift maneuver, he pressed his manpart to her entrance, a tight arrangement, since she could spread her legs only to the limits of the ladder. He cupped her hips with one hand.
“And now.” He groaned against her mouth. “Open your silk and let me in.”
Llyrica braced for his immense size, though the liquid passion inside her ensured a measure of ease. But his gliding upward thrus
t, a deep sheathing of exquisite friction, evoked Llyrica’s sharp gasp.
The sleepwalker went still, his breath labored. “I pray I have not hurt you.”
She shook her head, overcome by the throbbing heat that filled her, the promise of release that pulsed between them. “You will if we do not continue. And soon.”
A low chuckle and he kissed her. “Let go your hands. I have got you.”
Secure in his strength, she wrapped her arms around his neck, rode him as he began to plunge and withdraw. His frequency increased, his manpart stroking her within and caressing her outer nib. Sensations spiraled to a desperate frenzy, a mindless insanity on a ladder, lit by the moon.
Her climax came in brilliant flash, its succeeding currents rippling to her fingertips and toes. She clung to the sleepwalker with weakened arms, her legs quivering as he moved in and out, harder and deeper. The sleepwalker’s groan of pleasure attended a final forceful thrust and she felt the hot liquid of his seed pour into her.
He heaved heavy breath into her hair, lingered as he seemed to recollect his strength. “You heal me. Make me whole.” His words came low and thick. Slick warmth slipped away and with his free hand, he swung her up into his arms. “Hold to me, love.” Llyrica clung to his neck, received a kiss. “You are as light as silk and I will carry you to the loft.”
Llyrica’s eyes fluttered closed as she rested her head on his shoulder. Male strength enveloped her, filled a lack, unrecognized until now. I love the sleepwalker, would truly be his wife.
But doubt burst in as he carried her to the top, a rude intrusion on the after-bliss of passion. I cannot build a life on night liaisons with half of a man. This was also StoneHeart, who did not want her, had shunned her, resenting the trick wedding. This was a man of duality, a dubious future. And Llyrica herself was guilty of duplicity.
Slayde did not know they shared the same enemy, and she dare not tell him. She knew well his single-mindedness in his campaign against Haesten. If StoneHeart knew she was the warlord’s much-searched-for daughter, he would use her to his advantage, a hostage for negotiation. Nay, Llyrica would not meet her father as a pawn in a military action. She must be the first to confront Haesten with truth of it and once done, she would leave her father’s fate to StoneHeart. Llyrica could not think of that now, feared the consequences of a battle she would soon witness.
“You tremble, Llyrica,” the sleepwalker said, almost to the top of the ladder. “Let me warm you.”
Oh, such troubling thoughts would be banished for the night, exchanged for the forgetfulness found in the sleepwalker’s arms.
Chapter XI
On you I make my mark; you will always belong to me.
No matter where you go, you take my legacy.
To hide or to run is an impossibility.
Only revealing the truth will finally set you free.
Once uploft among a clutter of yarn, Slayde laid Llyrica on the pallet and stretched out beside her. An irony, a woman had quite taken over his room, was at home enough to pull of her cemes with shy immodesty and toss it aside. A night breeze, a scent of gathering dew and a silver shaft of moonlight paid visit through the window.
StoneHeart was sure of it. Llyrica had not guessed that he was no longer the sleepwalker, had not been since they had sealed their marriage on a bed of exotic fabric. Byrnstan was right. She had bound the two halves of the man into one. Slayde remembered it all, from his nightly searches for soft places to sleep, to finding Llyrica behind the loom. At first he damned the weakness of his vulnerable self. Under the guise of a mental sickness, he was a sentimental gull who gave in to the need for affection and the wiles of the soft vixen. Wretched battles waged within him, surpassing even those instigated by Ceolmund’s memory. Finally, a month of lying awake, desiring Llyrica’s solace and soft body, wrought a simple solution, one he was disciplined enough to act upon. He would be the StoneHeart by day, impeccably determined, relentlessly harder, ruthless in his duty. By night, he would be the sleepwalker that Llyrica knew, at liberty to woo his wife, be gentle, expressive, allow laughter perhaps. He could keep the two men separate, pay the price of a ruined life if he did not. By giving only half of his heart to her, he left the other to fight a war and maintain the reputation of the StoneHeart.
A shiver, soft cool flesh, a lilting sigh, Llyrica shifted under his arm. He took a long look at her body bathed in candlelight before he pulled a blanket over them.
Do not come soon too soon, Byrnstan. I need time to know her.
He rolled to his side, propped his head in his hand to gaze down at her perfect face, framed in a disarray of pale hair. A momentary distraction, a ray of moonlight picked out the row of tablets on Llyrica’s loom, which stretched between two benches near the curved stone wall. Solitary craft, this weaving was performed by a beautiful creature taken to hiding behind looms and hooded capes. With a detailed look, he saw a patterned braid, the StoneHeart's design. He pondered why she yet wove it. The sight of it was an intrusive reminder of military tunicas, Vikings and the Songweaver’s influence in war and love. Unwarranted, thoughts of Haesten came to the fore and suspicions reared anew about why the warlord’s rings had been in Llyrica’s possession. StoneHeart might demand to know, but the sleepwalker would not care.
“What are you thinking, little fox?” He asked. An innocuous question, meant on many levels. “Tell me everything. Your secrets are safe with me.”
She stirred warmly and giggled, a youthful sound. “I am thinking how you have shown me that ladders are for more than climbing.” Then a frown, a fading of mirth, though aqua eyes remained bright. “I think much on my Broder and wonder where he has gone to. He may be hurt somewhere, or lost. Byrnstan says he will help me look for him again.”
“I will help. We will look until we find your brother and you are reunited with him.”
Her smile granted him her gratitude. “It must be a comfort to you, knowing that your own brother, little Elfric is safe with your mother.”
Slayde was free to make an admission, though the price was to acknowledge regret. “I see comfort where before I did not. Elfric will know my mother’s soft touch ...”
“Though you did not.” Llyrica quickly lifted her fingers to his brow, smoothed it with her thumb. “Be at ease.” Longings of lost years choked Slayde, awakened, then soothed by Llyrica’s caress. She further calmed him with her sweet hum of an evocative melody. A reconciliation with his mother almost seemed possible, and so too, a closer bond with his little brother.
He swallowed hard, moderated his voice. “I can think of it now and know there is yet time to make amends. Judith has Elfric to tend as she was not allowed to tend me. She will right the wrongs Ceolmund did her. She will see that Elfric may choose what kind of man he wants to be.” Slayde felt Ceolmund roll over in his cairn, so hastened to change the subject. He caught Llyrica’s hand, kissed her knuckles, then pressed her palm to his heart. “But what of your mother and father? Have you also other kin?”
Her tune ended. “Mother has been dead for twelve years. Soso yet lives.” Evasive eyes replaced candid, and she looked to continue, but then did not.
“What of your father? You made mention that you and Broder had grown up without.” Silence. “I will not press, if it pains you to speak of it.”
“There is pain, but it was Mother’s. I remember a man standing over her with a giant fist.” She inhaled deeply, let out a long sigh and again met Slayde’s gaze. “My father was a much-feared, wife beater. Mother escaped from him with baby Broder and me, with just the clothes on our backs and a few weavers’ tools She took us on a long and secret journey across a sea to Hedeby. I have no memory of it. We came to live with Solvieg, mother’s sister that father did not know of.”
Slayde damned the man, damned fathers in general and tucked Llyrica closer. “And there you hid?”
“Aye, and Mother, too. Though father should have thought us dead. Solveig told me that before Mother ran off with us, she set fire to our house
, so that upon his return from his raiding, he would find nothing but ash.”
“You think that he did not believe it?”
“In the beginning, Mother needed to be sure that we were safe. She saw to it that no one knew we yet lived. Then the first man came through town, asking questions, offering rewards. Mother hid in a chest and I trembled behind the loom, ere father’s searcher discover us and steal us back.”
“I do not think your brother hid behind a loom or stayed out of sight. You have spoken of him as a wild boy.”
By the fleeting reflection of moonlight, Llyrica’s bright smile flashed. “Broder would never stay in the hut, so he did not hide. Solvieg warned him that a black devil would come burn out his tongue if he ever told a soul he had a sister. Later I told him I preferred my life behind the loom. Indeed, since I knew no other it was not a lie when I begged him promise not to reveal it. I loved him too well, indulged him, I think, to fill the lack his father left, and ease the guilt over my deception. But Broder never said a word and was never told of father, lest he run off to find him. We let Broder believe his father long dead.”
“Do you think your father is still alive?”
“Indeed he is. Men have come to Hedeby asking questions on his behalf, still offering bounties, even unto recently. It has seemed to Soso and me that he is as determined as ever to find us. But fortunately, a hideous loomstress and a wayward man-child did not fit the description of the family that Hae ... that he searches for.” Her eyes flicked away briefly at her odd slip of the tongue.
Slayde gave it a cursory notice, set it aside.
The sleepwalker bade StoneHeart be still from further questions, reminded him that love ruled his nights with Llyrica. “You need hide no longer. I will keep you safe from him and from all harm.” He lay his head down and enfolded her soft form in his arms, held at bay the new quickening in his loins.
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