Conquests: an Anthology of Smoldering Viking Romance

by James, Elle

  “I’d rather not.” She made no mention of the other warriors, who’d abused her, but her tone told of her concern.

  “She could stay with me.” I offered it before I thought better of the statement. “I’ve no wife, no child.”

  Neither of them mentioned the bitterness in my tone. She looked me over with her golden-brown eyes then gave a short nod. “I’ll stay with One-Leg and come to you if there are issues.”

  Seeming relieved, the Jarl agreed. “Best call him Teothir. Your father has given us leave to trade through his land, and we’ve given our word to leave his ships alone. That agreement cannot be undone, no matter the fuss you may make, but I will treat you as an honored guest.”

  With that, we were dismissed, and I led her out into the sunshine. I limped along next to her and showed her the way to my home.

  “It is large for one man,” she murmured when we ducked inside. “No wife, no child, but it’s big enough for them.”

  I ignored her and shouldered past. I’d made it so, big enough to have an alcove away from the fire in the middle, big enough for a woman and littles, her sisters even. My thigh ached, and I turned away from her questioning gaze.

  Too much like the AllFather’s, bright and knowing.

  Within a few days, we had worked out a routine. She was a strong one, and weaving and ale-making was the least of her work. She began brewing, the most bold and lively meads she said when talked of them, and the children would gather for the sweetened berry cordial she made. The soft rhythm of the loom she’d made Bersi carry from her home filled the longhouse most days. It was a blessed time, for certain.

  Which meant Bersi couldn’t let it continue. For a few moons, we held steady.

  First, it was rumors about Aridhe. Some of the men had been courting her to no real end, and Bersi twisted it as far as he could, setting one man against another, with Aridhe at the centre.

  The Jarl pulled me aside on one of my slow, increasingly painful walks into market. “Teothir, what do you plan for Aridhe?”

  “You waste no words, do you?” I grunted back, stopping to lean on my walking stick. “I’ve no plans, other than getting out of the way when she bids me to.”

  “Then she needs to find a man or leave.” He sighed. “The fighting is turning ill, and she needs to choose one of them. She’s been here long enough to find a husband.”

  Something twisted in my heart, and I grunted again. “I’ll give her your message. I don’t know that it’ll do much good though.”

  “You, and she, best hope it does.” He nodded, looking away from the gnarled bit of oak I leaned on. “Your service, your sacrifice, is a debt that cannot be repaid. I’d not wish to see this come to a bad end.”

  I watched his straight back and his even stride as he walked away and cursed him.

  After I returned to the house, I found her outside, working in the herb garden. When she stood and smiled at me, I felt my heart sink.

  My dark thoughts must have shown because she cocked her head to one side as she eyed me. “Teothir, what ails you?”

  “Many things, Ari, many things. But the Jarl has a message.”

  “What is it?”

  “You need to marry.”

  The silence fell, heavy as an axe. My thigh twisted in pain, and I winced and rubbed at it uselessly with one hand. “Men are fighting, with viciousness. He thinks you choosing one will change that.”

  Her face was still as stone.

  I swayed a little on my feet, watching her. Eventually, she returned to the herbs, and I made my way inside. I lay in front of the fire and poured ale into my mug, drank it, and then filled it again. The sun set and the fire burned low, and she came inside with cheeks burnt pink with cold.

  “Who exactly would I marry?” she snarled, hanging up her sickle. “Bersi? Hran?”

  “I don’t know.” My voice was soft and cloudy at the edges, far too much ale, but I continued on. “It’s not my idea. I’d rather you stayed here with me, and that we stayed as we are.”

  She turned, hands on her hips. “Would you now?”

  “Aye, Ari, nothing would please me more.” I paused. “No, a whole and hale body would please me best. If not that, then a body that didn’t pain me and a woman to overlook it. If not that, then your company and ale and warm home fires are enough.”

  “Your leg pains you?”

  I snorted. “Pains me. Agonizes me. Twists and burns enough that I’m almost unmanned.”

  “What do your healers say?”

  “I’m lucky to live. That the gods must be smiling on me that I can walk as well as I do.”

  “They’re probably right.” She sat next to me, staring into the fire.

  I passed her my ale. “It’s a good brew.”

  She swallowed and pursed her lips. “I’ve made better.” Then she stood and busied herself with the fire, with food. After we ate, she poured her own ale and sat beside me again. “Who should I marry, Teothir? None of these men are…I could not imagine the long nights with them.”

  The night seemed long around us. My stupid, treacherous heart rose up, and I swallowed ale to drown it out. “I don’t want you to marry any of them. I would not lose you. This.” I gestured with my mug, and then took a deep breath. “You could marry me.”

  Silence fell again, but it was filled with the snap of wood in the fire, the sparks, and the heat.

  “You would want to lay with me,” she said, finally.

  It was no question, but I turned to look at her through narrowed eyes. “Yes? That is how we have marriages.” I swallowed another mouthful of ale, my gut twisting as I considered her words. Why would she lay with a twisted, useless almost-thrall like me? My axe was still beside the door; I hadn’t wielded it since I walked out of my sickbed. So I blurted out the first thing to come to mind. “But you don’t have to.”

  She looked at me in surprise. “You’d allow me to say no?”

  “I wouldn’t force you.” The idea was abhorrent, and I swallowed more of the ale to wash the taste of the thought away. The flavor soothed and lingered on my tongue, and transformed, like Loki had laid his mouth on me, I spoke, soft and low. “I would not lay with you until you begged me.”

  She laughed, short and sudden. “Why would I beg?”

  I frowned again. “You don’t know?”

  “It’s not something I would beg for.”

  I let that comment lay between us as the ale and warmth, and the line of confusion between her eyes made me foolish. “A deal then, astin min.”

  The line deepened.

  “I’ll not lay with you until you beg me, but let me have a chance or two at it.”

  She looked at me, meeting my gaze, the line deep and her mouth flattened into a thin seam. “How? What would that mean?”

  I lay back on the rug mat she’d woven, my feet close to the fire, and stared up at the thatch. “Well, kissing is traditional. Some touching.” I looked over at her. “Licking, should the chance arise.”

  She looked utterly bemused. I pushed myself over, shifting close. She stayed still, looking down at me from the corner of her eye.

  “You tell me to stop, and I will. Freja strike me down if I don’t.”

  “I’ll strike you down if you don’t!”

  I grinned at her. “That you will.”

  I could see her back move as she took a deep breath. “So we will marry, but you won’t lay with me until I beg?”

  “Aye, as long as you let me have the chance to change your mind.”

  She nodded. “That’s as fair and as good as I’m likely to get.”

  Faint praise, but I took it nonetheless. “So, erskling, shall we start?”

  “What, right now?”

  I shrugged. The ale made me feel soft at the edges, and her mouth looked sweet and lovely in the firelight. “We can. I could kiss you.” She looked frantic, and I touched her hand. “We don’t have to; we can just sleep.”

  I stroked along the long bones of her hand, the calluses
from the knives, the loom and the needles. Her nails were short, blunt, and ragged in places, and I traced them with my fingertips. She stared down at our hands, and I stroked along the edges of her hand, the crease of her wrist, along the slim bones leading up her arm. The fine hairs rose, and with a prayer to Freja I lifted her hand, and she let me. I placed a kiss in the centre of her palm. I looked up and her eyes were wide and dark, her mouth open just a little.

  I smiled. “There you go, Aridhe, one kiss.” Her fingers curled closed, and I smiled wider. “Good night, astin min, we’ll go see the Jarl in the morning, aye?”

  She nodded, eyes still wide.

  I struggled to my feet and walked to my bedroll. After a moment, I heard her get up and move to hers.

  For most of the night, I was hard as iron.

  *

  The Jarl sent me and several of his men to Aridhe’s family. They agreed to the handfasting, with nothing like enthusiasm in their eyes as they looked at the oak under my arm, but gave enough of their kin, gold, and their trade to make up for it. How little they valued me was overwhelmed by how much they valued her. When I returned, the Jarl was dark with anger and Aridhe even more so.

  “So, Teothir, you return triumphant.”

  I nodded, eyes narrowed. “Aye, with gold and kin and promises of trade.”

  “Good.” He paused. “Aridhe had some trouble while you were gone.”

  A long-absent but achingly familiar coldness took me, and I heard myself speak as if from a distance, looking at him through a haze while I itched to act, my teeth bared. “Did she now?”

  The Jarl’s smile twisted at one corner of his mouth when he looked at me again. “Oh, she did, and she dealt with it. Well, Fasti did. She stayed with Aridhe while you were gone.”

  I nodded, slow and careful. Fasti had been on the ship when Ari arrived, had helped her onboard and off. She had also been with me when I’d taken the leg wound, had looked after my longhouse while I lay sick. Still looked after it, praise all the gods.

  “Well, Bersi and Varin decided to pay Ari a visit, to try and change her mind, I think. They weren’t expecting Fasti, or even Ari, to take all that much offense.”

  I swallowed down some of the rage, fighting for control. “She’s unmarked then?”

  “She is now. It happened not long after you left. Bersi will be scarred for life though, and Varin is still limping.”

  When I smiled at that, his eyes narrowed a bit, pinched and white at the edges. “I thought you’d like that.”

  The Jarl nodded and left just as Aridhe strode toward me, her gaze raking my frame. “Teothir.” Her voice was as strong, as clear as it had ever been.

  I let the cold rush of anger out with a growl. “Aridhe.”

  We stood silently, for far too long, watching each other.

  *

  The wedding had begun. Animals were roasting, other things baking, and the skald was reciting. Aridhe and I sat together, but not touching. Her cousins, her sister, and one of her brothers were telling tales of her father, her ancestors. And occasionally a story of her as a child—falling out of a boat and being feared lost but finding her way to shore and walking back home in a soaking shift; or getting into the ale and drunkenly telling her grandmother that she’d brewed it wrong. Since birth, she’d been a ferocious thing.

  Her ale was working now, brewed beautifully, and making everything smooth.

  I held more fear for this night than any battle I’d ever faced. Over the preparations for the wedding, I’d managed to make her breathless, kissing her hands first, then the creases of her wrists and her elbows, her neck and her throat. I’d made it to her mouth, and she’d sweetly breathed into me and made a noise that made me as hard as rock just thinking about it. I’d touched her breasts through her shift. Pressed against her, stiff and wanting, while she met my tongue with her own and made me moan.

  I’d not touched her quim, though, or tasted her, and I doubted Bersi and the others would let us be until I’d had her, in the torchlight, while they watched.

  If she was worried, it didn’t show. Not until the song started and others began gathering us up and holding torches. Then her lips thinned, and her eyes went wide. I reached out and touched her hand, and she clung to it. I drew her close.

  “Ari…”

  “I know what is coming.” Her voice was tight, stretched and dry.

  “I will not do it,” I growled. “I’ll not make you do a thing you do not want.”

  “If you don’t, they’ll call off the wedding. They’ll say you can’t. Then they’ll leave me here. I’ll not stay here for more of Bersi’s nonsense. No matter how much I enjoy your company, I won’t stay. I’m begging you, Teothir, this has to happen.”

  I snarled, hiding my face in her hair. It was dark and smelled of flowers.

  “I’ll miss it,” she said, in a small voice.

  I’d have missed her words, if not for lingering with my nose so close to her skin. “Miss what?”

  She tossed her head and looked away. “The kisses, the…touching. After we’re married, when you aren’t courting me. When you don’t need to do it anymore.”

  I pulled back. “I wasn’t going to stop.”

  She stumbled and looked at me with wide eyes. “But…”

  “Frigga’s Hair, Ari. That’s not…” I lowered my voice as one of her cousins looked at me. I bent toward her ear. “I’ll only stop touching you, and kissing you, when you ask it of me.”

  She stumbled again and didn’t speak until we were in our longhouse, surrounded by our families. “I ought to have let you do this weeks ago.” She murmured with her arms around me, “I should have been bold.”

  I let go of my staff and let it rest against the wall. The rest of the party swarmed inside while I pressed my lips against Ari’s softly scented skin. She reached up and pushed my cape from my shoulders, and then I heard her sister speak and heard people begin to leave, content Ari and I would consummate our union. I stumbled over to the bed, my hands on her shoulders for balance then laid her down. With a wince, I lowered myself to lay beside her and pressed my lips to her throat and felt it work against my mouth, felt her breathe.

  By the time I’d worked my way to Ari’s mouth and gotten her skirts pushed up to her waist, everyone but the Jarl and Bersi had left. I lifted my head and snarled, but Ari grasped my head and pulled me back down to meet her gaze.

  “Take me,” she whispered harshly into my ear. “Make me yours. In front of them, make it true.”

  I met her eyes, and she was smiling, though it was crooked and she was breathless. She loosened her grip and stroked down my neck and throat, curling through my beard and drawing me into a kiss. She tasted of flowers and herbs, and I groaned as my thigh spasmed and I fell into her embrace.

  “Are you..?” She grunted a little as I landed, but within seconds had twisted her hips, pushing, and rolled me onto my back.

  I could hear Bersi clear his throat to speak.

  But she snarled at him. “He doesn’t need to rut at me like an animal.”

  I lay on my back, trying to force the pain from my mind. When she straddled me, her sex firm against mine, the twinge fled chased by pleasure fierce like fire. With a swift movement, she stripped off her shift, baring herself completely. A writhe of her hips made me groan. “I can ride him for the same end.”

  The sudden bravery seemed to leave her, and she folded to press her whole body against me, her face buried in my chest. I stroked my hands down the glorious length of her curves, the soft sway of her back, and the swell of her arse.

  For long moments, I let myself have my fill of the sensation; years had passed since I’d been with a woman, years since I’d had even the barest of touches. The past weeks of touching Ari and kissing her had made me hungry for more. My fingers tightened, clutching her, and she shivered against me. I pressed a hand to her face, pulling her into a kiss. She made a noise into my mouth as our tongues met and I thrust up against her.

  The noi
se she made then almost unmanned me. I clutched her hip, and my hand tightened in her hair.

  She moaned again.

  “Ari.” I growled her name, then pulled off my shirt, and wrenched the ties of my breeches apart. At the first touch of her warm quim against my bare cock, every muscle in my body locked.

  “Teothir, could you..?”

  She pushed her hand between us, and I let go of her arse to join her fingers between her thighs. Her quim was barely damp. She parted her curls and the folds of soft flesh, and I dipped my fingers into the warm wetness. I could feel the back of her hand against my cock, and my own hand sought the glorious slickness hidden within her quim. I pushed up with my hips, and she shuddered against me. I gently pushed my middle finger into her and she thrust back down against me. I praised every god I could think of and pushed a second into her, and she stroked against her jewel while I fucked her with my fingers. I could feel her getting wetter and wetter, and I curved my fingers inside her until she made a choked, wailing noise.

  “Remember,” I said, my voice low and harsh with need. “Beg me then I’ll fuck you.”

  I looked over at Bersi and the Jarl as she shuddered against me again and whimpered. I held Bersi’s ice blue gaze as I pushed my fingers in to the knuckle, my thumb resting on Ari’s jewel.

  I broke with his gaze when she ground against me with a pleading moan. I pulled my fingers free. “Come up here, Ari,” I murmured, my hands on her hips urging her up to kneel astride my face.

  Her hand clutched my hair, and I licked from her taint to the top of her slit, and she shrieked. I did it again and again until her thighs shook around me, until I could hear her gasping for breath.

  “Are you ever going to fuck her?” Bersi’s voice was an odd mix of scorn and jealousy, and I couldn’t help curling my lips into a snarl.

  Ari twisted to look at him, too, so I reached up to tweak one nipple while sucking her jewel into my mouth and resting my teeth gently against it. She writhed and shuddered against me, thrusting into my mouth, and the taste of her intensified as she peaked. I could hear Bersi continue but couldn’t make out the words over the roaring in my ears. When I pulled down Ari’s still twitching hips so I could kiss her mouth, I saw Fasti was still in the room, and that she’d moved to stand between Bersi and the bed, facing away from us with her arms crossed.