Saving her people could mean losing her man.
In the months since an unexplained sickness wiped out most of their women, Sif and Ragnor have managed to hold their people together. Yet nothing can overcome the tribe’s overwhelming grief, and their future as leaders—and as a couple—is at a dangerous crossroads.
A series of sensual omens convinces Sif that a fertility ritual to honor the goddess, Freya, is the only path to healing, but it requires a sacrifice. One Sif is more than willing to make—but puts Ragnor’s heart in the middle of an emotional tug of war. He would give his life for his people, but share Sif’s body with his greatest rival? The goddess asks too much.
Refuse, and Ragnor will fail his duty and doom the tribe to violent destruction from within. Accept, and their trust could be rewarded with renewal for their people and themselves. Or shatter a love already stretched to the breaking point.
Warning: This title contains m/m/f sex, gay sex, anal sex, double penetration and good, clean fun with two hot Vikings and an ancient spring.
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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
Freya’s Gift
Copyright © 2010 by Corrina Lawson
ISBN: 978-1-60504-951-9
Edited by Jennifer Miller
Cover by Kanaxa
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2010
www.samhainpublishing.com
Freya’s Gift
Corrina Lawson
Dedication
For my husband, who bought me a desk.
Chapter One
Desire and grief warred within Sif as she watched her husband swing his warrior’s long axe. Would that Ragnor would handle her again with the same easy skill and power he applied to the axe.
Her husband was stripped to his leggings, his long, red hair was pulled back behind his head, and his muscles gleamed with sweat as he demonstrated to the crowd of young warriors surrounding him.
Once, Ragnor’s powerful hands had held her, gentle, loving and passionate. He would seize her, laughing, lift her off her feet and kiss her until she could not think. He would toss aside her clothes and run his mouth and his fingers all over her until she quivered with the need for him. They would take each other, and then they would do it all over again…
She hugged herself, chilled. That had not happened for far too long. It might never happen.
Ragnor had held their tribe together through the sickness that had taken nearly all the women. He had been a rock of calm leading them to their new home where they hoped to escape all that death. He had been all a leader should be.
But he was not the husband he used to be.
His brother Leif’s insanity and grief had driven a wedge into their marriage. Why else would Ragnor look at her with such cold eyes and stay away from her bed? Leif was a solid ghost between them.
Her husband stopped swinging the axe and ordered the warriors to begin their drills. Sif glanced to the left and noticed another watching, a grown warrior who was leaning against a large oak tree with his arms crossed.
Gerhard.
While Ragnor was the symbol of their survival, Gerhard was the symbol of what they had lost. Once their best warrior, now Gerhard sometimes did not speak for days. He had lost his wife and the baby son she carried. Since then, he’d been half a man.
How could Sif help Gerhard and the others if she could not even heal herself of grief? She must find a way.
Sif heard tiny footsteps coming closer. Eric, her brother’s son, pumped his little legs hard across the square, running toward her. He reached her, gasping for breath, and tugged at the hem of her deer-hide tunic. He held something tight in his hand.
She scooped him up in one arm and gave him a big hug. He giggled, his dark hair falling in front of his face. Eric was a blessing. Children were what her people needed.
And I never will receive a blessing like Eric, a child of my own, if my husband does not return to my bed.
“What’s that?” Sif smiled, pointing to something clutched tight in Eric’s stubby hand.
He held it up. A crude carving. She narrowed her eyes and looked closer. “It’s wonderful. Tell me about it.” Some sort of animal?
“It’s a cougar!” he said. “Papa said cougars mean good luck in the spring.”
She took the carving from him and studied it carefully, treating it like a precious object. “So they do. Big cats are sacred to Freya, goddess of fertility.”
“What’s that mean?” He frowned.
“She makes plants grow.”
“Oh.” He squirmed.
She laughed and put him down.
“You keep it!” he said. “I’m gonna go play warrior.”
Eric danced away, back toward his longhouse, probably to search for sticks and rocks to make into an axe.
Sif closed her hand tight around the wooden cougar. Maybe it was a good sign that Eric had been moved to make it for her. Or perhaps she was merely grasping for any good omen from the gods, no matter how slight.
In the square, Ragnor handed his axe over to a student. The young warrior, fumble-fingered, nearly dropped it. Ragnor cursed at him. The warrior gritted his teeth, spat and tried again, working hard to make up for his mistake. He raised the axe, his arms shaking and his body drenched in sweat. Would that they all had the young man’s determination.
The young warrior kept at it and the others joined him, practicing with their own axes. This was no game. They’d moved to this place to escape the Lenape threats, but Ragnor was certain they would encounter new enemies. When the Vikings had come across the ocean several generations ago, the new world had seemed full of hope and promise. Now, it seemed full of danger and death.
Ragnor finally called an end to the lesson, clapping the young man on the back for his efforts. He pointed toward the river, where they could all cool off.
Ragnor turned and walked to Sif, still holding the axe. Hers. He belonged to her. He’d waited so long to take a wife but once he’d looked at her, he’d never looked at anyone else. In her ignorance, Sif thought their union unbreakable.
She clenched the wooden cougar tight in her hand and closed her other hand over the long scar on her forearm, a scar that was the physical legacy of Leif’s crazed attempt to rape and kill her. If only the emotional scars had been as easy to heal.
Ragnor’s face did not change expression as he saw her. He set the axe down carefully against the side of the longhouse. “Sif. You wake early today.”
“I am feeling better.” Sif almost reached out to lay her hand on his chest. He smelled so sweet, so musky, so much like he did after lovemaking. She still found him irresistible. But she’d always known he’d welcome her attention before.
“Good.” Ragnor nodded.
Behind Ragnor, men carrying spears, bows and arrows gathered in the square.
“A hunting party?” she asked.
“It will do the men good.”
Meaning that it would be something to occupy him. “Yes, it will.” Her tongue nearly caught in her throat.
He set his hand on her hip
. “Sif.”
“Ragnor.” She felt her face flush and fought the urge to fall at his feet and beg for him to touch her further.
A chief’s wife does not beg.
“I’m glad you feel better.” Ragnor’s thumb moved over her skin, a light caress.
Her heart pounded. She put her hand on his bare chest, feeling the heat of him and fought the urge to fall against him.
“I am well enough for you to return to my bed.”
Ragnor removed his hand from her hip. Her insides clenched. She should not have been so blunt.
He looked her in the eye, face grave. “I do not wish to hurt you.”
“You hurt me by staying away.”
He frowned. “What? That isn’t punishment.”
Of course it is. “Then what, husband? I have been well enough for days.”
He shrugged and looked down. “I do not have to explain it to you.”
He’d wanted to grieve alone, perhaps. Without her. The ache in her chest grew.
Sif enclosed his face in her hands and rubbed her fingers along that strong jaw. Those broad shoulders, big enough to carry the burden of the tribe. But big enough to carry her burdens as well? She could feel his breath, warm and moist.
“You always trusted and depended on me. Before,” she said.
He looked down at the knife wound, barely healed. “I did not protect you. You should not trust me.”
She was so surprised that she dropped her hands from his face. “I do not blame you.”
“Yet the blame is mine.” Ragnor looked her in the eye again. “I should have killed my brother sooner for what he did to you. It makes me—” he looked away from her again, “—weak to have let Leif live long enough to fall on his sword.”
“No. It makes you Ragnor, the man I love, who cares about what happens to his people, even his crazed brother.” Had she resented that Ragnor had split his worry between her and his brother? Maybe. “It is past now.”
“No, not yet. Maybe not ever.”
Ragnor looked over at Gerhard. The blond warrior hadn’t moved at all, though he was now watching the hunting party form up.
“Until we help all of them, it’s not over,” Ragnor said.
“I know.”
And until the rest of his people were healed, Ragnor wouldn’t allow his wife to heal him.
She took Ragnor’s hand and squeezed it. “I will do something to bring Gerhard and others like him back to life. I will.” Before they became like Leif.
“Be careful. Some of the men are…unbalanced.” Ragnor rubbed his thumb alongside the slice on her arm.
Sif flushed, wondering if all the women who’d survived the sickness felt this way, vaguely threatened by grieving men, yet at the same time wanting to comfort them.
“I’ll be careful. And so should you.” She opened her hand and presented him with the wooden cougar. “For luck, husband. Eric made it.”
Ragnor’s eyes widened as he recognized what animal was carved into the wood. He smiled and it warmed her almost as much as touching him had. There is still joy in him, somewhere.
Ragnor put the cougar in a waist pouch attached to his leggings. “I’ll take all the luck I can get, especially from Freya.”
“It is time our fortunes change.”
“Yes.” He turned to leave.
“Bring back several deer.”
Ragnor turned his head, smiling. “Oh, we’re not hunting deer,” he said. “Bear.”
Bear? “Double luck, then, husband.” Such dangerous prey. But Ragnor would not want her to mention that.
“Not luck. Skill.” And he strode to the hunters.
She sighed and curled her hand against her chest.
She had called him “husband”. But he had not said “wife”.
Chapter Two
Ragnor led the hunting party from the square. Sif leaned against her longhouse, watching Gerhard, who had barely moved. Relieving the grief in the tribe by starting with Gerhard would be like trying to stop an army with one axe.
She needed to start smaller.
Sif went inside her home and threw more logs on the fire to keep it stoked. The longhouse was well built, despite the haste, but it was too big for only her and Ragnor. It needed family. It needed children. She used a wooden handle to lever off the cover to the stew pot and stirred, inhaling the smell of corn combined with meat broth. The hunting was well-timed, as this was the last of the stew.
She dipped a wooden mug into a barrel near the fire and slaked her thirst with the water. Once, there would have been many women and children in her home, all part of her extended family. She missed her sister, quiet and kind. She missed her forceful mother, who would have been amused at the combination of a native home, the longhouse, with Viking items such as barrels. But then, her mother had been half-Lenape, half-Viking, comfortable in both worlds.
And now Sif would not know her Lenape kin. They’d declared the Vikings “half-breeds” and accursed because of the sickness.
Still, perhaps she should look to her mother’s traditions. Women were leaders among the Lenape. Yes, that was where she should start. She would organize the few women left, create a plan to heal their men. They could do it together.
She should have done this before, but everyone had been so busy building the village, and then Leif had attacked her and she’d taken so long to recover.
It was past time to tend the tribe, before someone followed Leif’s example.
She walked outside, intending to see Bera first. Bera was one of the few young and unattached women to survive. If something were not done soon, the men would be fighting over her. There would be bloodshed again.
As Sif walked, her leggings slid down from her hips. She tied the rope at her waist tighter. She’d lost weight recovering, but at least her energy was returning. A few days ago, simply walking to Bera’s longhouse at the edge of the village would have left her out of breath. Today, she made it without fatigue.
She crept up to the doorway quietly, her sandals silent against the wet dirt and her tunic tight against her skin from the morning dew. Her heart pounded harder, which was silly, because Bera was no threat. No doubt it was because this was the first step to doing something in which she could not afford to fail.
Inside the longhouse, a woman laughed, high-pitched and musical.
A laugh?
Sif walked to the side of the longhouse, not wanting to show herself and cut off that laughter. Joy had been so rare. She did not want to dampen it.
A deeper voice laughed, a male voice. She peered into the longhouse through a gap where mud and straw had not completely filled in the space between the boards.
Three people were inside the house, gathered near the hearth. She recognized Bera. A girl just grown to womanhood, with long blonde hair that attracted men like a longboat attracted a sailor.
There were two men.
Now that was an interesting solution to the imbalance in their tribe, although it wouldn’t suit her. She wanted only Ragnor. Besides, her husband would certainly not accept another man in their bed.
One of the men walked in front of Bera. Sif recognized him as Ragnor’s grown nephew, Mykle, by his height. Only Ragnor was taller. Mykle, Leif’s son. Mykle had rebuffed her efforts at condolences. He was not rebuffing Bera’s arms around his neck.
The second man said something and she recognized the voice as the young warrior who’d tried so hard to use the axe earlier. The spear tattoo on his upper arm jogged her memory. Torger, Mykle’s closest friend. And more than friend, by some accounts. This bothered some of the tribe, but Sif knew her mother’s people viewed such preferences as god-sent.
Torger pulled Bera against him and Mykle laid hands on Bera’s hips from behind. Sif’s eyes widened. Oh! All three of them? Now?
Her breath quickened. She should leave rather than watch them in secret. But her fingers dug into the mud and straw covering the wood slats and her throat grew dry.
Sif had been without c
omfort too long. She’d been without feeling too long. If she couldn’t feel Bera’s joy, she wanted to at least see it.
Besides, perhaps she would learn something new to entice Ragnor.
Torger put his hands on Bera’s cheeks, smiling, and kissed her long and deep, a kiss that made Sif breathless.
I wish Ragnor would kiss me like that again.
Sif imagined Ragnor’s arms holding her close, her hands wrapped around his neck, his mouth on hers, drinking deep… Her hand wandered to her breast of its own accord.
A loud male groan of pleasure broke Sif out of her fantasy. Inside the longhouse, Mykle, standing behind Bera, slipped her tunic off, leaving the young woman completely naked.
Bera moaned, broke the kiss with Torger and laughed again. Mykle caressed Bera’s bottom and wrapped his hands around her hips.
Sif let her forehead fall against the wood. If only she could somehow switch places with Bera, to experience the lust, to stop being so dead inside. She squinted to see better, praying they hadn’t finished.
With Bera still between them, Mykle reached out and grabbed Torger’s shoulder, pulling his friend into an embrace. He leaned down and planted a passionate kiss on Torger, his hands leaving deep impressions on Torger’s golden skin.
Oh. Sif blinked, now fully wet between her legs for the first time since her injury. She’d never seen men kiss before. She hadn’t realized it would be so…primal. She’d thought the kiss between Torger and Bera had been passionate. This made that one look like a small peck on the cheek.
Apparently not wanting to be left out, Bera dropped to her knees, pushed down Torger’s leggings and exposed his erection.
Sif swallowed and felt her entire body heat. She bit her lip to prevent crying out and reached between her legs.
Ragnor had not responded to her offer to use her mouth lately. Bera had more cooperative bedmates. And Bera was letting go, not thinking, only feeling. Sif slipped her hand into her leggings to where she was wet and throbbing already.
Mykle released Torger from the kiss. Torger looked down at Bera. The woman smiled eagerly, awaiting his next move. Torger shed his deerskin vest and tossed it to the corner. A lovely sight he made naked, Sif thought. Though Ragnor was much larger, Torger had the advantage of wiry muscles with beautiful brown, curly hair on his head and around his penis. No beard, though. Like Sif’s high cheekbones, the lack of beards among the men was a legacy from their Lenape blood. But the hair, showcasing Torger’s erection, was plenty to enjoy.
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