by Speer, Flora
As Erik talked, Lenora watched his dark face, smiling when his eyes met hers. It seemed to her as if his presence lit up the garishly painted, smoky hall, making everything around him more vibrant and alive.
He lavished attentions on her, cutting the best pieces of meat for her, covering her hand with his when she drank again from the new wineglass, and then turning the glass to drink from the spot where her lips had touched. Dazzled by his charm, her breath suddenly tight in her chest, Lenora responded with blushes and lowered lids and shy, happy smiles.
Her attention was so completely focused on Erik that in spite of all the noise and movement about her she was almost unaware there were other people in the hall. Then she lifted her eyes and saw, over his shoulder, Erna, standing in the shadows at one side of a pillar, clutching an ale pitcher with whitened knuckles and glaring at her in open hatred. Lenora was chilled by Erna’s look until Erik spoke to her again, and she forgot the other woman in her delight at the funny story he was telling.
When at last they left the hall, Erik stood for a time, looking at the dark gleam of the river.
“How strange,” he said. “I long for distant lands, I ache for the feel of a good ship beneath my feet once more and I am excited by the thought of new sights and sounds and smells, yet it is always so good to come back here. I spent most of my childhood away from Thorkellshavn, but this is still my home.”
“We have all missed you,” she replied dutifully.
“Have you? I know I have missed your gray eyes, Lenora, and your beautiful hair. I had no idea I would miss you so much.” One hand played lightly with her curls. For a moment she thought he might kiss her, but he stretched and yawned instead. “It is hot tonight. Unusual, so late in the year.”
They walked slowly toward his house, Erik calling out several times to men he knew, as those who had been present at the feast went off to their beds.
Their single room was stuffy and airless. Lenora expected Erik to leave and find Erna. When he made no move to go, she undressed quickly and wrapped herself in her woolen blanket. She lay down close to the wall, her back to the room, as she had always done when he was there. Erik stripped and lay down beside her on the straw mattress.
Lenora began to feel uncomfortable. The blanket was hot and scratchy against her skin, and she was almost unbearably aware of Erik’s naked body next to her. She wriggled around, trying to get comfortable while still staying covered. It was impossible. She flipped over onto her other side and found him watching her.
“You forgot to put out the lamp,” she said accusingly.
“I didn’t forget. I wanted to look at you.” Something in his voice caught at her senses, making her feel weak and lightheaded. It had been this way all evening, and now she realized the difference in him was his intense concentration on her.
“You have seen me before,” she whispered, suddenly shy under his gaze.
He did not answer her at once. His hand tugged at the edge of the blanket, which she had tucked tightly under her chin. A teasing smile played along his wide mouth.
“It’s not winter yet, Lenora. You don’t need to bury yourself in blankets and furs to stay warm. Uncover yourself as I do.”
Slowly, unable to tear her eyes away from his, she relaxed her tight hold on the blanket. He rose on one elbow and began unwrapping her as though he were uncovering a treasure.
“I thought of you constantly while I was gone,” he told her, still pulling at the blanket. “I think I needed to be apart from you in order to see you clearly. I have made a decision about you.”
“What is it?” Her voice quavered. She had begun to tremble with delicious, tantalizing expectation.
“I realized I have been wasting my most precious possession. You, Lenora. I decided to forget what is past, forget what was done to you against your will. You are beautiful, so beautiful, and I have wanted you since the first time I saw you. I believe you want me too. Lenora, my sweet, tell me you want me.”
Lenora closed her eyes against the green blaze in his. She sensed his mouth hovering just above her own.
“Yes,” she whispered, and she felt his mouth take hers. Thought spun away and vanished until she was conscious only of feeling, her physical perceptions suddenly sharpened to exquisite sensitivity.
Erik continued to pull at the blanket until she was almost completely naked. She felt first the warm air on her skin, and then his hands, stroking along her shoulders. She swallowed hard as his fingers slid lower with maddening slowness, until they teased the sensitive tip of one breast. Then she felt his lips and tongue.
She had never forgotten his hands and mouth on her breasts on the night she had become his slave. Those caresses had haunted her dreams, but she had not known until this moment just how much she had longed to feel them again. A new, wonderfully warm sensation began to spread over her. She gave into it willingly.
He continued his exploration down the satiny length of her body, his mouth following his sensitive hands over abdomen and hip and thigh. Everywhere he touched her, her flesh sprang into eager life under his skillful manipulations, aching, yearning, hot with long-denied desire.
“Touch me,” he whispered. “Touch me, Lenora. I want to feel your hands on me.”
She could barely speak. It was nearly impossible to summon a coherent thought, or to concentrate on anything but pleasure and warmth and Erik everywhere, touching her, holding her.
“I don’t know what to do,” she gasped.
“It doesn’t matter. Just touch me and don’t stop.” His mouth covered hers again, his tongue plunged into her, and stars exploded in her brain. She grasped his head, her tense fingers pulling his hair as she forced his mouth harder against hers. Shyly at first, then with growing confidence, her hands caressed his shoulders and lightly touched the scar on his left shoulder and chest as she flirted with the feeling of his warm skin beneath her fingertips. She traced the corded muscles in his arms and neck and back, felt the straight column of his spine and the firm, hard mounds of his buttocks. She felt as though, with ever-increasing contact, he was more and more a part of her, as if they were absorbing each other, magically blending and fusing together.
He buried his face in her belly, and she was dimly aware of his hands stroking her outer thighs once more, then gliding around to separate them. She moaned when his long fingers laced through the tangle of red-brown hair between her legs, probing with delicate determination. As he pushed deeper she felt a sudden twinge of pain. She cried out, twisting away from him, striking his hand aside, just as he exclaimed in surprise and let her go.
“We were wrong,” he said with an exultant laugh. “All these months I’ve kept away from you, and now I find that Snorri never touched you.”
“What are you saying?” She still felt between her thighs an echo of the brief discomfort his fingers had inflicted.
“I’m saying,” he told her, “that Snorri must have planned from the beginning to give you to my father, and thus he did not rape you. Your virginity was part of the gift. How angry he must have been when Thorkell gave you to me instead of keeping you for himself.” He drew her nearer, his lips meeting hers.
“I can’t.” Shocked at what he had told her, Lenora began to fight him. “I’m afraid.”
“I won’t hurt you any more than is absolutely necessary,” he promised. “It will be beautiful, my sweet Lenora. Let me show you.”
He began kissing her again and whispering of his delight in her, until she relaxed once more. Through long, slow, magical moments his hands and mouth urged her to the edge of something wonderful.
In the dim light of the oil lamp she saw his tense face above her as he covered her body with his own. He took her gently, easing her fears with tender words. In spite of his care for her, there was an instant of sharp, tearing pain. Then she and Erik were one and the moment’s cost to her no longer mattered.
He had been right; it was beautiful, incredibly, gloriously beautiful. He was cautious at first, moving slowly, as if to spar
e her further discomfort. His lips claimed hers again and again with infinite sweetness, but as she responded with growing eagerness his self-control disappeared.
He moved faster, plunging deeper, and she sensed his helplessness in the overwhelming tide of his own desire. She knew that she, too, was lost.
She looked into his eyes and thought she was drowning in the green, green sea. Waves lapped over her, softly, gently, in the beginning. Then larger, more tumultuous waves came, catching her up, tossing her back, ebbing and flowing over her, surging, crashing, thundering in storm-tossed swells. She gasped for air and gave herself to the sea. She felt it coming, felt its inevitability, as the final, huge, unstoppable wave enveloped her and spun her toward the sky in a dizzying spiral, flinging her upward and out of herself into a thousand pieces of spindrift.
It seemed only an instant, and at the same time long, long years, before she drifted slowly into the sea once more and was borne safely to shore by gently rolling swells.
“Lenora.” Erik’s voice was soft as the summer breeze swirling along the sand dunes at the sea’s edge. “Now you are mine, my sweet, and only mine.”
“Yes.” Happy tears glittered on her long lashes as he kissed her once more. “I am yours.”
Erik’s head rested on her breast, his breathing quiet. She smoothed back his hair and he burrowed deeper into her softness.
What of vengeance now? she asked herself. How could she dream of harming Erik, or anyone he loved, after he had brought her such joy, such beauty? How could she want to hurt Thorkell or Freydis, who had both been fair and just to her? None of them was responsible for what Snorri had done, and now Erik had blurred the memory of that horror and replaced it with peace and contentment.
Erik. In the light of the oil lamp she wrapped her arms around the sleeping man and smiled at the shadows on the wall.
Chapter 10
“Lenora, you have done well. I am pleased with you.”
“Thank you, Thorkell.” Lenora waited expectantly, and at last Thorkell smiled at her.
“I will begin paying you now,” he said. “Freydis tells me you have caused no trouble while I was away, and you have done more than your share of work for her.”
“Will you pay me in Arab silver?”
Lenora knew such coins were acceptable almost anywhere, although not for their face value. It was the purity of their metal that was important, for payment in silver was by weight. Every trader had his own scales, and purchasers short of coin had been known to hack off a piece of a silver necklace or an arm ring and throw it into the pan to balance the scales.
“Where will you hide your hoard, Lenora? Is there any place that is safe for a slave?”
“In Erik’s house. I’ll hide it there.”
“That’s not wise. Anyone may take it while you are elsewhere, and should Erik die, everything in his house will be assumed to be his, nothing yours. No, I have a better idea.”
“What is it?”
“I will write down your earnings and keep the record with my accounts. Your silver will be safely hidden with my own hoard. When you have earned enough to buy your freedom, I will give you all of your coins. Should I die, your earnings will be paid as one of my debts. Will you agree to that?”
“I will. Will Erik? Doesn’t my master have to approve of this also?”
“I will speak to him.”
Erik began to teach her to read and write Greek. He made her work on her Latin again, and continually tested her on her counting.
“The more you know, the more useful to me you are,” he told her.
These days Lenora seldom had time to spend with the women, for Erik and Thorkell kept her busy. She learned to make ink for them by mixing soot with vinegar or blood she had brought from the kitchen, and she watched as Erik carefully trimmed parchment leaves to the correct size. Parchment, which Thorkell bought in Hedeby, was expensive. Every piece, no matter how small, was used and then reused if possible. Lenora took the tiniest scraps and slivers to practice writing her Greek and Latin letters.
Each night they barred the wooden door of Erik’s house and lay in each other’s arms. Lenora, who one midsummer day had wondered about the attraction between men and women, now found all her questions answered. Erik was a skillful and demanding lover, taking as much delight in her pleasure as in his own. The memory of Snorri’s brutal crimes against her family was, if not entirely forgotten, at least set aside, and Lenora‘s desire for revenge against the Norse ebbed to nothing as her attachment to Erik grew.
She was devastated when he left to visit Halfdan.
“Take me with you,” she begged.
“I want you to remain here. Thorkell needs your help.”
“I’ll die without you.”
“Never. You will merely wait for my return,” he said, one long hand stroking her in the places she liked best. She moved against him with a sensuous purr.
“Don’t leave me behind,” she whispered. “You know you’ll need a woman.”
“Then I’ll find one where I am.”
“If you do, I’ll find another man,” she threatened.
“You dare not do that. Never forget, sweet Lenora, that I am your master.” And then, to her mingled fury and delight, he proved the truth of his statement.
* * *
The harvest was over and the winter storms had begun before Snorri and his men returned. Once more the plunder from his raids was piled before Thorkell in the great hall and carefully divided. Lenora watched, pitying the wretched captives who huddled to one side. She remembered too well her own introduction to Thorkell‘s home.
Snorri had sailed to the west of England and to Ireland, from where he had brought Thorkell a new slave. He led her forward, a tall, gray-eyed woman with flaming red hair. She stood quietly before Thorkell, showing no emotion when Snorri tore off her saffron-dyed mantle to reveal a near-perfect body, barely covered by a torn linen under-shift.
“This is Maura,” Snorri said. “She is fiery enough to warm your bed for many a winter.”
From her position behind Thorkell’s chair, Edwina stared coldly at the newcomer.
“I was angry that you and your men were not here to help with the harvest, but now I am pleased,” Thorkell said. “There is more profit here than from any of your previous voyages. In the spring we will take a great baggage-train to Hedeby and trade our goods for Arab silver. You are a good son, Snorri. I am proud of you.”
Snorri flushed with pleasure.
Early the next morning, Lenora found Edwina in the kitchen, weeping.
“I spent the night in the women’s quarters,” she said in response to Lenora’s question. “Thorkell took his new woman to bed last night.”
“What else did you expect?” Lenora asked.
“I thought he cared for me,” Edwina whined. “He said he did. He gave me clothes and jewelry. But he’s angry that I did not conceive. Now everyone will know what has happened. I’m so ashamed.”
“He is the master and you are the slave,” Lenora said, thinking of Erik.
“Don’t you think I know that? Oh, I’m so unhappy. How will I ever get with child if he sleeps with her? He’ll never marry me now.” She ran from the kitchen, sobbing loudly.
Lenora recalled this conversation when Erik returned a few days later. She watched him carefully for signs of indifference as he sat beside her at the evening’s feast. He raised his eyebrows in amusement at Thorkell’s red-haired slave, adorned with heavy gold jewelry and a green silk caftan brought from the Arab lands. Edwina, placed several seats away from Thorkell, looked very unhappy and ate little.
Any concern Lenora had felt about Erik’s interest in her was banished once they were alone in his house.
“How glad I am to be home with you,” he said. He pulled her into his arms with urgent tenderness, holding her close, her face buried in his throat. After a while, he stirred.
“Take this off,” he murmured, unfastening the brooches at her shoulders. “I want to to
uch you. I want nothing between us.” He let her go only to remove his own garments.
As she dropped her woolen overdress and pulled off her long-sleeved linen shift, letting it fall to the floor, he moved against her again, his hands sliding down her arms until his long fingers twined between her own and held her hands against his naked thighs. She put her head on his shoulder, and his lips set fire to the pulse in her throat.
Then they were pressed tightly together and she could feel the whole hard, masculine length of him, shoulders and breast and hip and thigh, bonded against her own joyfully yielding body.
Her arms were about his neck as their lips met at last. She felt like one who, dying of thirst, has been given cool, perfect water in an exquisite silver goblet. She drank him in greedily. She could not get enough of his mouth, which had suddenly become essential to her continued existence. She moaned in grief when he raised his head, barely aware that he had lifted her into his arms and was carrying her to their bed. She clutched at him as he laid her down, not wanting to let him go for a moment, pulling him back to her, aching for the touch of his mouth again.
“I have missed you,” he whispered, as his lips rained kisses of sultry fire from fingertip to elbow to shoulder to breasts, until she cried out in delight.
“Lenora, my sweet,” he breathed, his mouth setting toes and calves and knees and thighs aglow with heat and flowery explosions of joy.
“You are so beautiful,” he told her, his face buried in her throat, her breasts, her abdomen.
And then finally, when she thought she could bear no more pleasure, when her senses were spinning and her eyes were unfocused and half-closed, when she was totally bewitched by his tender explorations, she heard him out of the shimmering space above her.
“You are mine, Lenora,” he said at last, his voice trembling with emotion, his body fierce yet gentle with her as he led her to the ultimate joy.
“Yes,” she cried out while she could still speak, “I am yours, Erik. Always, always.”