He cradled one breast with his hand. "Ripe as an apple," he murmured, and bent to taste it. Meanwhile, the fingers of his other hand were toying lower. She saw his big, strongly built, male shape bent over her, the only thing between her nakedness and the whole wide sky. He lifted his head, and she found herself staring straight into his eyes. He smiled and let his lips touch her forehead.
"Tell me, it seems that when I touch this little swollen knob, you like it." And he gently pinched a certain kernel of flesh between her thighs. Yes! it did seem there was craving accumulated there. Flustered, she closed her eyes and nipped her lower lip.
"Look at me. I want no modesty now. Tell me, do you like this, what I’m doing?"
She couldn’t meet his eyes, but only stared at his corded neck, his broad shoulders. He was rolling the tender kernel between his thumb and forefinger. Her pulse deafened her. There was pressure in her ears, in her throat. She wanted to bury herself against his metal-clad chest, if for no other reason than to feel less exposed and vulnerable.
"Look at me, Shieldmaiden."
It seemed shock after shock was passing through her, gathering in a knot in her belly. She looked at him pleadingly — while he merely studied her with absorption and went on tormenting her. His eyes seemed grey to the core and revealed nothing; but his mouth was slightly open, his teeth showing perfectly white behind his lips. "Little plaything," he said in an underbreath, "talk to me. You know something that needs saying. I see it on your face."
Her mouth tried to speak, but only quivered and made no sound. She fisted her hands at her sides. What he was doing was like a dawn that threatened to blind her. Her eyes slid away —to two eagles that turned in patterns above them, their spread wings buoyed by the steady stream of the air currents.
"Do you want me to stop?"
"Yes!"
He did. She nearly cried out, did cry out: "Oh!"
"What?" He gave her a piercing frown.
She squirmed. Her breasts heaved softly. It seemed the air itself teased the ringlets between her legs. "I, oh, please!"
He seemed unsure, then opened his clothes quickly and moved between her thighs. But as he was opening her, his touch chanced upon that place again, and she moaned. He paused, looking at her —then suddenly embraced her between his thumb and forefinger once more.
"Oh! Ohhh . . " Another soft shock of shameful pleasure. There was no way she could conceal it. She felt almost mad. She was throbbing, heaving. She looked at him: He was curiously pale, yet his eyes were keen as a hunting bird's. "Stop!" she cried, and without realizing, stretched out her arms to him.
He spread her legs wide, quartered her, then covered her with his grand body and came down on her and, with a sudden downward plunge of his hips, entered her. His war shirt roughed her sensitive breasts exquisitely. He made strong thrusts, and she closed her eyes and let the sensations spear through her again and again.
When the muscles of his arms and back suddenly spasmed into stone and crushed her to him, when she heard the sound he made at the moment of his crisis, she knew he was nearly finished with her. And she was glad . . . yet not glad.
He rolled to her side and rested, then leaned up on his elbow to toy with her breasts again. "Did you feel pleasure?"
She turned her head away.
His hand on her far cheek turned it back again.
"You reached for me; you wanted me to take you. I think you felt pleasure."
She swallowed. "I felt . . . something. A wicked craving."
"Was it satisfied, this craving?"
She didn't know what he meant.
His eyes narrowed. "Do you feel it still?" His hand slid down her belly. His touch went through her like an impact. He saw. "Would you have me take you again, Shieldmaiden?"
"No!" She rolled away, sat up and reached for her clothes. In her spent state, this called for all the will she could muster, and if he'd made any effort to stop her, any effort at all, she would have been stopped. But he permitted her to dress.
He lay frowning at her, until, after a moment he sat up also. "Next time you'll tell me what I want to know."
Through the long, light, northern summer afternoon, following nothing but a thread of a path among tall grasses rippling in the breeze, he led her to his saeter. The hut he'd referred to was actually a good-sized cottage with a split-log facing on the outside and two rooms inside. The walls bore decorative carvings done by someone who understood the working of wood. The place was lifeless, however. It had an air of disuse. It was spider-scented, dusty, and damp, in need of a thorough cleaning after being used by only men for so long. Edin set about the chore immediately. The Viking seemed to approve. In fact, he took it upon himself to do similar work in the shed where he'd installed the horses.
He came in while she was finishing the cooking of their evening meal. She served him, and again he bade her to eat along with him. They sat at the table near the fire almost like husband and wife. He smeared a strip of dried fish with butter as if he were not a wealthy and powerful Viking jarl and she his captured slave, as if it were the most natural thing for them to share a meal. Yet it was hard for her to be at ease with him.
The log in the small firepit crackled and dispensed its scent. Hot coals glowed under it. The Viking reached for a hunk of flatbread. There was an inflexible authority in his every move, an arrogance. He gave her a sidelong look. "You haven't learned much of our language. The others are doing much better than you, though I know you aren't simple-minded. I think I converse with you too much in Saxon. I intend to remedy that while we're here."
The silence returned, as heavy as before, and expanded into a little forever. At last, when her nerves were on a knife edge, she asked, "How did you learn my language?"
He didn't look at her, but she saw his eyes flash with little dancing flames. "From my father's bed-thrall. No doubt you've heard about her; I imagine thralls gossip among themselves no less than free women. She was cunning. Aye, she managed to seem a gentle creature — like you in many ways. A gentlewoman, not very tall, delicately fashioned. Her eyes were brown, not a glowing pale green as yours, and she wasn't allowed to keep her hair. She had a sleek blond head. But like you, she'd been brought into a hard country and a hard climate, and there was about her something that seemed to move even the stoniest heart."
Beneath his words she sensed a huge reservoir of emotion, restrained, but gathered, biding.
"How old were you when . . . when your father died?"
"Fourteen winters."
"Was she-"
"You ask too many questions, Saxon, on a subject that does not please me. You would do well to step as lightly around this topic as on the first ice of winter."
She got up quickly to clear the table. She washed the dishes in water from a hogshead he'd brought in earlier, while he sat tugging his beard. She thought he was thinking about his father's murder, and was surprised when he said, "I've decided not to sell you"
She stopped washing the ladle in her hand and stared at him. Relief flooded through her. Until that moment, she hadn't realized how the threat of being handed over to yet another strange man had weighted her. He met her eyes, and with a small smile he said, "Aye, I've decided to keep you for my own."
She missed the import of that smile, of the honor he felt he was bestowing on her, the honor of being his favorite. The lifting of dread seemed to make her light-headed, and with a dripping ladle in her hand, her frozen tongue unlocked foolishly. "Red Jennie says that sometimes a thrall can earn her freedom."
She saw her mistake too late, saw that in his mind she'd just scorned his generosity once more and repaid it with indifference. She'd leapt over his proffered status to seek something else altogether. A serious tactical error. His look iced over; his voice was like thin ice breaking. "Fool woman," he muttered between clenched jaws. "Let me make clear your choices once again: You can stay with me and be my bed-thrall and learn all the terms and techniques of how to please me, or I can take you to Hed
eby and stand you up among the market stalls and sell you to the highest bidder. Who knows what another master might teach you?"
The saeter had its own high-seat of sorts, a tall-backed, broad-armed chair placed at one side of the fire. The Viking sat there long after their evening mead was over. Edin sat on a bench at the table, staring like him into the flames. On the surface she probably looked calm, but she was swirling with subaqueous currents.
For the first time she was forced to consider the foolishness of her struggles against her situation. She'd fought stubbornly, as if she had some recourse to victory. Now she was forced to see what alternatives really stood within her reach.
She could make herself disagreeable to the Viking to the point that he lost patience and put her out of his feathered bed. Then she would sleep on straw again, and wear rags, and be put to lowly labor. And, since she was not a virgin anymore, and would have no barred door or strong man to protect her, she would be used casually by one man after another, night after night. And after a season of this, she would be sold to a stranger.
Her other choice was to try to please this Viking. That choice entailed deception. Yet no more deception than she'd been prepared to practice if she'd married Cedric, and for much the same reasons — stability, a place in the society in which she found herself, the comforts of a high status.
Children.
She slid away from that thought and rushed ahead with the consequences of falling in with the Viking's desires. If she pretended to welcome his lovemaking, would he not revel even more in that activity?
Well, wasn't letting him do as he wished with her better than being sold to a stranger, a man who might be much rougher, much coarser, much more violent? In the main, the Viking used her without causing her pain. He left her sore, but never had he injured her. In the main he was gentle. Gentle in the way of a man who was not accustomed to gentleness. In fact, the extent of his gentleness was a thing that confused her, because he was not a gentle man; he was a barbarian, a ravenous, rapacious Viking. He was big and often grim —but he'd never used her brutally. He'd taken her, ravished her, but if the truth be admitted, he might have done so far less gently.
What then would please him and insure that he would continue to want her for himself? He could already command her to submit without much more effort than a certain daunting tone of voice. He'd said in bringing her here that he wanted something from her. What more could he take? Earlier, by the lake, he'd said, "Talk to me, Shieldmaiden." She'd seldom seen anyone simply talk to him, except Rolf, and that not often. Mayhap —the idea seemed too outrageous —yet mayhap he was lonely. Mayhap he longed for companionship.
She stirred on her bench. The room she was sitting in seemed to snap back as though someone had lit it to life. She was aware of their solitude, of the night outside and the night sounds of this alpine country which were skeletal, like the veined framework of a leaf after the rest of it has crumbled. The room seemed full of stillness so profound a listener might hear the sentiments of her own secret mind. A mind that whispered, I'm lonely, too.
She'd been sitting there for a long while, and when now she moved, it was with a racing heart. She rose and went to him. She couldn't look at him, but instead kept her eyes down. She felt, rather than saw, the inquiry in his gaze, and answered it with "I . . . I would sit near you."
A fearful breath came and went before he reached for her hand and drew her down. She curled her knees and sat on the soft carpet of rushes between his booted feet. She felt his big hand on her hair, stroking. After a while he said, "It's too bad we have no skald to entertain us. It's a perfect night to hear about some hapless little gnome in the clutches of a big, wicked, and not very ingenious troll." Was there really a touch of self-consciousness in his tone, or did she imagine it?
Was he making light of the two of them? Surely not! She made herself rise above her nervousness and ask, "What's a troll?"
"What's a troll? Well now, trolls are gruesome creatures. They spend their time making life wretched for the unwary man of iron —and for any captured gnomes, of course. They're incredibly grumpy."
He was making a joke!
"And what are gnomes?" she asked.
"Gnomes are dwarfish beings, little, old wizened women who keep themselves hidden away in caves where they guard their precious treasure."
Dwarfish? Wizened? "Are there no men gnomes?"
"Oh, I suppose. But it's the women the trolls are interested in."
"Why, if they're so ugly?"
"As I said, trolls are not very bright. They take what they can get."
She felt him tug her hair and looked up to find him grinning.
"Evil as they are, big trolls sometimes meet their match in these little creatures. Oft'times a troll finds himself with a captured gnome he wishes he'd never set eyes on."
"I would say he's got what he deserves."
"Mayhap. As I said, trolls are not known for their intelligence. They prowl at night and get into all manner of trouble. They sing, they weep, and they fight each other for the pleasure of it, then scurry home before the dawn comes."
"We didn't have trolls in England. They must be limited to this land, where it seems many untoward creatures have sprung up."
"Hm!"
She dared to continue: "You seem to know a lot about these nasty trolls. Where do you get your information? Have you ever spoken with one? Mayhap invited him to dine in your hall? Mayhap — "
"Mayhap my mother entertained one in her bed and gave birth to a trollish son?"
"Oh, no, surely not. Your mother has only one son, and that is you." She dared glance up at him again.
"Aye." His grin changed to something more rueful. Edin couldn't help laughing up at him. He seemed surprised. And pleased. He pressed his forefinger against the side of his nose as if to hide his pleasure, and said again, "Aye."
At length, making light of it, Thoryn led his "captured gnome" to the bed in the second room. Here the only light was what firelight fell through the open door. Her eyes were anxious, as they always were when she knew he was going to take her. Though she'd sat with him, and he'd made her laugh, now she was anxious again. She stood as if waiting for some signal from him or some order she must obey. He gestured to the bed; it was what she needed. She undressed quickly and slipped beneath the blankets.
He soon joined her, feeling a unique and voluptuous solace in so doing. In the dim light he caressed her face and ran his hand over her cheeks, her eyelids. The feel of her skin had a deeply soothing effect on him. He smoothed back her hair from her forehead. "I still terrify you." His big hand held her face and kept her from turning away.
"I-I'm trying not to be."
He looked down on her with pensive sympathy, then embraced her, seeing that she needed embracing. He stroked her hair, her shoulders, and kissed her. Tenderness unfolded in him, a sensation that was still as foreign to him as the voice of his conscience.
His next kiss was long and deep, and when at last he let her mouth go, she murmured, "'From the fury of the Norseman, good Lord deliver us.'"
She was bantering with him again. About the fury of his kisses. Through the sweet fog of his anticipation, laughter welled up. Unable to restrain the urge entirely, he chuckled. "Aye, well may you pray to your god this night, for I mean to find new ways to wring entertainment from you."
He'd been in an aggravated state of desire for hours and was as erect as a tusk of ivory. His hand went down between her lovely thighs. She inhaled as he found the entrance into her. The cheerfulness went out of her face, and her lips quivered slightly. He let his finger rest within her for a long minute, until it seemed she began to melt around him; she became wetter and wetter.
"Do you like this?" he asked.
She wouldn't answer.
Have patience, he told himself. He meant to break through all her barriers, to wear down all her restraints, and his technique was going to be deliberate, meticulous patience. She would see how efficient it was. She would
be totally open to him, and more profoundly enslaved than she'd ever thought herself capable of being.
He made his voice a whisper. "Saxon, you will tell me.
"I . . ." She seemed a little breathless. "It makes me feel .,.. truly I don't know!"
"Does it give you discomfort?"
"No, it-it makes me feel . . . uneasy. It makes me want . . "
"What?"
"To move!"
He felt a leap of triumph. With a sliding motion, he pulled his finger out. She gasped. He found that her little knob of flesh was swollen as a flowerbud. As he took it between his fingers, he whispered, "This is very plump suddenly."
"Sweet Jesu!" She pressed her hands against his chest.
"Put your arms around me."
She did; she slid her arms up his chest and around his neck. Her breath was sweet. She was so young and fragile. Avoiding his eyes and looking shy, struggling to hide her reactions, she was at the pitch of her beauty. He knew that essentially he had not yet satisfied her, and without knowing indeed that such a thing was even possible, that was exactly what he meant to do. If she could be lifted to that surrendering pitch of depleted and ecstatic release that he knew so well, he felt then she would be his totally.
"Do you like this?"
Again she didn't answer.
"Saxon, I want you to heed me, and I am afraid you're doing a very poor job. Now answer me: Do you like this?"
"Yes!"
The fervency in her voice half-thrilled and half-frightened him. Anxious to see as well as feel her, he threw back the blankets. From the door, the firelight glowed on her thighs. His gaze touched her all over.
"Please . . . please . . ." she whimpered. There was trouble in her face.
This was how he'd dreamed and imagined her, begging him to take her. Yet, though he was rampant, he didn't, not yet.
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