“Be still, my love,” she said, inching closer on her knees. Tentatively, lest he start and bolt, she pressed her fingers to his temples, circling, anointing him with touch. His eyes opened, glazed with odd fear and his hands flew to her wrists to stay her massage. The grip was hesitant, a protest she would ignore, and overcome with persistence.
Not until his grasp loosened and his arms fell away to his sides, did she move and speak. “Now turn to lay on your front. It will not hurt, I promise.”
Slayde rolled over. He flinched at first touch, but she continued to rub him, determined to soothe him with her quiet song and a few drops of almond oil. Muscles flexed, then gave way beneath her sweeping massage. Her loving strokes encompassed vast shoulders and the thick columns that flanked his spine, then narrowed to waist and hip. She worked each arm to his fingers, finally felt him begin to relax, his low moan rumbling deep. Intimate, prolonged, this contact with his body made Llyrica’s heart race, her pulse quicken.
Slayde’s head was turned to the side, showed sweat beading his brow. Cool and damp, his skin felt as if a fever had just broken. Llyrica cooed words of comfort, urging him to rest and let troubles fall away. He twitched again when Llyrica kneaded her way down his buttocks, then moved to massive thighs and calves. His power and size took her breath, made her hands feel inadequate. Swift and aching, the stunning response to his body vibrated at her intimate core and tingled in her breasts. Compassion transformed to passion.
Her mounting desire to pleasure him thickened her voice. She gulped and took a deep breath. “Now roll to your back.”
Chapter XIV
Piece by piece, it will grow afresh: your heart, which has crumbled away.
Stone is gone, replaced by flesh, with room for me, I pray.
He had never known before, the power of a woman’s loving caress. Llyrica’s caress. An exorcism of a thousand hurts, her touch burned him, threatened to reduce him to a crying child. The healing effects of her affections, unsought and undeserved were given in abundance, confirmed his need for them. But his starvation for them was daunting. Slayde felt like a man who had fasted for decades, whose body, accustomed to lack, could withstand only the barest sustenance. He was filled with her, gorged, and could endure no more of her doting lest he lose the last of his male dignity.
Aided by Llyrica’s hands, he turned over to face her, but desperately summoned his familiar methods to self-control. An abrupt defense, he sat up. Father in Heaven. If he had not nearly been unmanned by her tender massage, he was now by the sheen of her skin and hair in torchlight. She stared at him with expectant eyes, kneeling beside him in her cemes, a disarray.
He knew his voice would betray the trembling in his limbs, the panic in his gut. “I am more composed, Llyrica. Now I must go out to my men and make plans for tomorrow. You and I need to discuss your brother and father. I will send a messenger to the fortress gate and arrange a meeting.”
She laid her hands on his chest. “And so it will be done. But stay a while longer. I want to give you everything. I-I love you.”
His heart froze. Staggering profession, the truth of it shone in her eyes. Wonder and fear allied and lured him to the brink of his undoing. “God, Llyrica, you do not know what you say. I pray you must not. For your sake and m ...”
Stifling his protest with a kiss, she pushed against him, her massage changing from wholesome to erotic. Her fingers plucked at his nipples. “Let me love you, Slayde. I know how. I know what you need.”
Resolve weakened, his body ignored the shouting of his rational mind. He fell to his back. “Please leave me in peace. Ale and sleep are what I need. Solitude is what I need.”
Llyrica acted as if she did not hear him, pulled her cemes over her head and tossed it in a silken slither on his pile of clothes. “You have been alone long enough.”
Her gaze lingered on his face, then shifted lower. Torchlight cast a telltale shadow, evidence of his arousal. She stretched out nearly atop him and kissed his mouth, the underside of his jaw, his neck.
“Christ, Llyrica. I beg you do not.” But he was too late to stop her. She had already taken a firm hold of his sex and caressed it with long strokes. It put him at her mercy, a hated notion after showing her his tears. He grabbed Llyrica’s wrist. “Cease this at once.”
It proved a futile effort since she would not let go and now slid her body lower along his. She pursed her lips around his nipple, exploring it with the tip of her tongue. “I will love you and will not be stopped,” she murmured against his breast.
He groaned as his shaft, rod hard, throbbed within the deftness of her caress. Mimicking coupling, she slid her lightly oiled fist up and down his length. Mounting pleasure overtook him, attended by the dreamlike sensation of Llyrica’s hair drifting across his chest and abdomen, then pooling between his legs. Her breasts brushed his thighs.
Her intent was clear, and Slayde’s throat constricted with want. “Oh, God. I shall die of it.”
“You will not.” Llyrica’s hot breath fanned him, then the silken interior of her mouth enclosed around him, drew him in deep. It proved a magnificent contrast between hard and soft, iron and silk, male and female. She lavished him until he clung at the edge of climax. This dangerous gift was the ultimate surrender to a woman, to Llyrica and to weakness. In this he would not succumb. Some tests of manhood could not be failed, lest all fragments of his identity scatter asunder.
To the sound of her surprised cry, he disengaged from her oral caress and arose to roll Llyrica to her back. On his elbows, he propped himself over her, lost in the lipid aqua of her eyes and her ripe mouth, which had just favored him so well. He pressed his cheek to hers, and with labored breathing, whispered in her ear.
“Know I will keep you, my lovely silken bride. I value what you have done for me. But the StoneHeart yet remains and will be so until my work is done.”
Llyrica shifted beneath him, raising her hips to meet his hard demand. He entered her easily, found instant release and collapsed, sated once more.
She held him tightly to her. “Yet remain if you will, StoneHeart. Be so until my work is done. Until you love me as I love you and become the man you are meant to be.”
Slayde thought of his mother, hurt and disappointed, still waiting for his love. “Guard your heart, lest your faith in me be unrewarded.”
He gave Llyrica a final kiss and pulled himself from her, with haste, lest this magic she wove around him rendered him senseless. Aware of her watchful gaze, he dressed and began the reconstruction of his stone facade. Llyrica had seen the weakness inside him, but his army must not. It cannot show on my face, or in my voice, that I am a man spellbound by his wife, done in by her mere sigh and the fragrance of ginger.
Neither would his men know what compelled their ealdorman’s renewed fervor against Haesten. Little would they guess he would pay any price or commit any crime to eliminate the roadblocks to his life with Llyrica. Cunning irony, this, to finally satisfy Ceolmund’s definition of a man for the attainment of a woman.
“Stay the night on my ship,” he said, adjusting his belt and sword. “I will post guards for your safety. Of a morning, we will see to this business that brought us each to the fortress on River Lea.”
Llyrica lay to her side, partially covered with a fur, resting her head in the crook of her arm. She was a vision of beguiling innocence, unaware of the mussed and sultry appearance that begged him to stay. “My business is to save my brother and destroy my father. Would that one does not interfere with the other.”
“We will pray that it does not.” StoneHeart turned and left the tent as if he cared not that he would see to a separate bed, this night and all others while on the river Lea.
I will not come to her again until he is gone.
Yet again, Llyrica prepared to pluck her brother from disaster, dreading the trouble she would find him in. To discover him alive gave her reason to rejoice, but this was a lifetime’s worth of ill fate and worry, to discover him under Haeste
n’s roof. I have kept it from him that father yet lives. What will Broder think of me when he knows the truth, and how will we share the knowledge of who our father is?
By messenger from the fortress, Slayde had received and negotiated terms of a meeting. He and Llyrica now approached the designated field, escorted by a score of Saxon warriors. The remainder of StoneHeart’s force stayed the distance, armed and wary.
“Am I not to see my Broder alone?”
Slayde shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked to the gate. None had yet appeared. “This is the agreement, that you meet at noontide at yon halfway point between our camp and the fortress.” His glance to her at his side betrayed nothing of last night. Deliberately on his part, it seemed, he brushed his arm against hers, skin to skin. “If all goes well, then we will give you a time for privacy.”
“I am bid play the part of witness, Llyrica,” said Byrnstan, a step behind her. “War demands it, lest secrets of military knowledge are exchanged. Do not deem it a personal affront.”
“I shall not, father.”
“Find out from him why he showed himself in Haesten’s place.” Ailwin kept pace at Slayde’s left. “We all want to know how he so quickly fell in league with the warlord. Yet if he is by some means Haesten’s spokesman, we will deal with him instead, through you.”
Llyrica shook off these opinions that her brother and Haesten had allied. Disaster if it was true. “He is no soldier, has no knowledge of warfare.”
Eadwulf flanked Llyrica’s right. “His appearance proved otherwise. Therefore, point out to him the strength and zeal in our fighting men. Convince him. Let him take a good look.” The thegn prompted the assembly to stop, turn and survey the Saxon camp. Timber structures already took shape, built from cut lumber shipped from London. “Contingents of warriors are stationed there, there and there, lest a number of raiders sneaks out to cross the river and harass nearby hamlets.”
Ailwin puffed out his chest. “Since our arrival, our garrisons are begun on both banks of the Lea ensuring Haesten’s ships can not pass. Within a sennight, by StoneHeart’s plan, we will have constructed two forts. Word has also arrived that King Alfred’s force is nigh, come to patrol all roads and tracks leading into Wessex from Danelaw. We are prepared to stay until Haesten either shows himself a fool and attacks us, or bends his knee, once and for all, and quits.”
Llyrica looked up to the silent StoneHeart, his gaze straight ahead. He started the party walking again, his stride hard to match. “Indeed, I have informed her of all of this and she is agreed to act as intermediary. But remember that first this is a reunion of a parted sister and brother.”
Slayde’s tone was firm, the sentiment, subtle, and all fell into ready agreement. Of course they would, and Llyrica wondered why StoneHeart would ever fear dissention among his men. She had never witnessed other than this bow to his authority, save Ailwin’s occasional insurgence. StoneHeart must not see it himself, the redoubtable image he portrayed, taller than most, voice deeper, words measured to a fault. He owned the trust and admiration of these hundreds of men, and yet ... Llyrica’s next thought reaped understanding. He must always stand guard ere the fairygirl within be exposed. Ceolmund had been as cruel a father as my own, destroyed a family.
Llyrica looked ahead to the gate, saw it open. “StoneHeart, look! He comes!”
She flung off the restraint of Slayde’s hand and ran toward her brother. Broder also left his band of twenty youngbloods whose appearance was not unlike those he used to run with in Hedeby. Brother and sister met in the field halfway betwixt opposing camps.
“You are here!” she cried, wrapping her arms around him. His sinewy embrace enfolded her as she laid her head against his chest and felt his stuttered inhalation. “If you cry, Pup, I will not bear it.”
“And why should I not cry?” Broder’s voice broke. Llyrica let him silently weep as he held her under the bright sun of noontide. “I am sore glad to see you. Little else did I think of than you drowning in a barrel or ...” He put her at arms length to look her over. “Or being ill used by the StoneHeart.” His watery eyes rose to look past her, where Slayde led the Saxon gathering at a slow pace toward the meeting. Broder shot him a fierce glance.
Llyrica must put a quick stop Broder’s mistrust. “Ease your mind! Can you not see I am completely well? But what of you?” Her hands in his, she took her turn to appraise him, frowned at the stranger who was her brother. She would not mention he stank or that his motley appearance alarmed her. “Your beard has thickened, I think. They have dressed you in blue linen and given you a sword? Yet it looks as though they have not fed you, for I can feel your ribs.” A remnant of braid from his old tunica hung loosely sewn at the hem of his garment.
“I have been given more than most. Wait until you hear it all.”
“Oh, my Broder, now we are together, you will come away from this place, and tell me how you came to be here, and all of your adventures.”
She pulled on his hand, but he did not budge. He was changed, his visage serious where it had once been carefree. “Nay, sister. Be assured I will take you from your captor and see that you forget the wrongs done you by the Saxon demon’s hand.”
“You have misunderstood, Broder. StoneHeart saved me from drowning and his priest gave me sanctuary. I have not been wronged in the least.”
The muscle along his jaw flexed as if he restrained an outburst. “My dear, poor sister. I know that as his slave, you have been induced to say this. It is well told the tortures the StoneHeart inflicts.” Deadly solemn, he leaned in, took her by the arm. “This time, I have come to save you. Prepare to run.”
A dismaying thought struck Llyrica. Haesten and StoneHeart were equals in their animosity toward each other, were surrounded by myths both true and false. She strove to quiet this hatred that Broder had so quickly adopted. “There is naught to save me from! StoneHeart is - is my husband.”
The color red crawled up Broder’s neck to his face. He looked ready to erupt. “Thor’s blood! You have fallen to another man who weds his slave in jest! He is less than Xanthus, I vow!” Broder yanked at Llyrica’s arm and began hauling her toward the fortress. “Come with me lest he further sours your mind through his fiendish methods!”
“Let go of me and listen! What has turned your mind to such madness?” Llyrica twisted her arm against Broder’s grip, while the men who had accompanied him, closed around her to secure her escort to the gate. She heard Slayde and his men running up behind her.
“Haesten will know what to do, Llyrica!” Broder yelled at her. “You will see. He is my lord and commander and together we will rid you of StoneHeart!”
It pricked at Llyrica’s worst fear that her brother had fallen under the old warlord’s influence, and formed a bond. “Quit this, Broder! I have something to tell you about Hae ...”
Slayde’s abrupt pull on Llyrica’s free arm jolted her, subjecting her to a brief tug of war between StoneHeart and Broder. Her brother lost his grasp on her and Slayde hurled her into Byrnstan’s arms, who quickly led her beyond the fray. Through a dizzying blur of bodies and clamor of shouts and drawn weapons, Llyrica saw Saxons and Vikings converge.
Great Lord, in center of it, standing but a rod apart, her brother and husband drew swords against each other! Men on each side looked to pair up, ready to exchange blows with the slightest crook of a finger.
“Hold!” StoneHeart ordered his men, freezing the Vikings, as well.
But Broder’s fury was unleashed. “I do Haesten’s bidding by striking you down!” He lunged with a swing of his blade.
Iron clashing against iron, Slayde blocked the blow as if it were naught. “He has done wrong to put a boy in his place. Why does the coward not show himself?”
Llyrica knew at once that Slayde’s easy parry and insult heightened Broder’s ire. She cried out as her brother readied to attack again. Wrenching loose of Byrnstan’s hand, Llyrica broke through the wall of armed men, each a head taller than she. Reaching her b
rother, she clung to his weapon arm, found a hard-muscled warrior where a rascal had been. “Stay this assault, I pray you! And you, StoneHeart, put down!”
But Slayde kept his sword high, reached out with his other hand to quickly pull Llyrica to his side. Broder grimaced at StoneHeart’s move on his sister, lowered his blade but an inch.
Llyrica gasped for a breath. “We are reunited, brother. Be happy in this and see to reason with the rest!”
“I am Haesten’s loyal man and so shall find no contentment as long as his enemy lives. Nor will I rest while knowing you are under StoneHeart’s evil influence! His crimes are renowned. Mutilations of children and deviant ways with - with females ...”
A rumble sounded deep in Slayde’s chest. His men tensed further, swords gripped in tight fists. Llyrica held her palm out to stay them, still protecting her brother, still praying that he would listen to her. “My patience thins, Pup, to hear you spout such lies! You prove deaf and blind to all but Haesten’s rantings about StoneHeart when you should look to your own warlord’s bloody history. The man’s past is grievously violent and cruel ...”
“Not another word against him!” He straightened and looked to contain himself, though a vein pulsed at the base of his neck. “But prove you love me as you have always professed to do, and come with me now. If StoneHeart has not a hold on your mind, then be free of him.”
“’Tis not so simple as that. I beg you to abandon this folly with Haesten since he is to be put out of this place by StoneHeart’s army. Please come with me lest you are within those walls when Haesten is vanquished.”
Broder backed up a few steps as if he had been physically struck. His sword arm now hung limply at his side. “I will not leave him, though I am wounded of heart that you choose this Saxon demon over your brother.”
“You must understand! You are the one making the choice and it is an ill one, indeed. Look over my shoulder to StoneHeart’s army and know that Haesten will not win. I beg you again to abandon him.”
Loveweaver Page 21