Enslaved by the Viking

by Harper St. George

  He wanted to stroke the smooth creaminess of her skin. To kiss her the way he knew brought her pleasure and thank her for the gift of her body. It had happened too fast. Her small body lay trembling beneath him, reminding him of how he had become the monster he’d feared lurked within him and abused her delicate beauty.

  He was unfit for her presence, much less the pleasure of her body. Eirik pushed away, and without looking at her, drew a blanket up to cover her. When he noticed his hands shook, he let it go and clenched them into fists to stop their trembling. He should have left her with Kadlin, despite her protest. He’d known there was no way to stifle his desire, yet he’d taken her anyway. He’d avoided women all these years because he’d instinctively known how it would end. Or maybe it was only she that made him lose control. He should have slaked his lust on a whore used to servicing men like him, men who were wild and uncontrolled in their desires.

  Determined to save her from his presence if he could do nothing else, he rose and put his trousers on. She sat up as if to speak, but he couldn’t bear to hear her recriminations. On his way out the door he retrieved the rest of his clothes and, furious at himself, made his way to the river that ran some distance away across the field. Once there, he discarded his trousers and paused when he caught sight of her virgin’s blood where it smeared on him. It brought back images of another day. A day he had long thought buried.

  Eirik realised then that he was just like them. Drawing pleasure from the pain he had caused. He’d known the size of him within her had been painful, but he’d spilled his seed anyway. For that brief instance he had given in to his own pleasure without concern for her. He closed his eyes against the sight and dived into the icy depths of the water. The shock of it was almost painful, but he welcomed it as no less than what was due to him.

  * * *

  Later that night, after he’d taken the horse across the field to Harold’s stable, he bedded down on a lonely, furless bench as far away from her as he could get in the house. It was cold. He deserved cold. Let her have the warmth of the fire and the furs. His still-wet hair had turned icy, but it didn’t matter. He’d known cold before. Besides, the pain of cold kept other thoughts away.

  But somehow sleep claimed him. In between thoughts of her and his conscious attempt to not shiver, the dreams got him. It started with that familiar liquid weight holding him down, only this time the force manifested into a hand so large that it covered the entire bottom half of his face, cutting off his air and making black spots dance before him. Eirik fought until he was able to bite, and the warm coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. After that there was only pain, exploding in his head and almost crippling him. But he fought them anyway. He would always fight them.

  Until they took away his fight because his hands wouldn’t work and his legs wouldn’t obey his commands. It was the part of the dream he despised. Usually the part where he started screaming, but he was too cold to sleep too deeply and was able to shake himself out of it. Eirik came to with a start that landed him on the wooden floor. The trembling was back, so he just laid there until it eased off and thought of Merewyn, of how good it felt to hold her. Her scent had stayed with him despite his dip in the river, so he let it soothe him now.

  Chapter Eighteen

  An awful silence filled the room after he left. Awful because it was bereft of the tender ministrations she had been expecting. He had left her. Merewyn lay back down and tried to recall what exactly she had imagined would happen after such a mating. She’d always expected it to happen with her husband in her marriage bed. Not with her captor. Perhaps he would hold her or kiss her brow and tell her how important she was to him. Perhaps he would tell her that she was treasured.

  The Northman had simply left. Was it because she was a slave or because she’d displeased him? He hadn’t even looked at her.

  The sudden chill in the room prompted her to rise and pull on her underdress. The apron dress she left alone, unwilling to bear its itchy discomfort, and moved back to the bench to huddle under the blanket, preferring to be cold rather than wear the coarse woollen garment to sleep. She intended to wait up for him, hoping that he’d gone for more wood or something else to explain his absence. But when it became clear she would spend the night alone, she removed the meat from the fire and laid down on the bench.

  Eirik was a Dane. Theirs wasn’t a love match or even a marriage. It had been a simple mating. Nothing more than his desire to slake his body’s need. Perhaps she should content herself with the fact that it hadn’t been entirely unpleasant. When she thought of how he’d felt moving above her, within her, her breasts began to respond. How did the memory of his touch ignite her even now that she knew there was no pleasure ultimately to be had from it? How had she let it convince her that mating with her Dane captor was a good idea?

  She rolled onto her side and pleaded for sleep to come, too confused to figure out how she should feel.

  * * *

  The next morning she awoke to an empty house. There had been no stable or outbuilding, so if he’d brought the horse inside during the night, she hadn’t been aware of it. If he’d come back at all during the night, she didn’t know. A hollow of disappointment formed in her belly, but she refused to let it bother her. There were too many other ailments bothering her.

  Her breasts were aching—more specifically her nipples felt as if they had been well attended to. When she sat up and swung her feet down to the floor, she noticed a distinct soreness between her thighs and became aware of an ache present in the muscles in that general area of her anatomy. Out of curiosity, she stood and raised the skirt of her dress to find faint markings left where his fingers had grasped her hips. She should feel shame and outrage, but the truth was that her blush was from the remembered pleasure. Her thoughts treacherously lingered on that languid heaviness his touch had built within her. The delicious tingle that had somehow touched her entire body and made it come alive.

  Why did the Dane have to be the one to make her feel those things? Why couldn’t any one of the men back home have caused half the chaos within her that he did? He’d hurt her, but here she sat thinking favourably of the encounter. Even believing that it was her own untried body instead of his hard shaft that had caused the majority of the pain.

  ‘Stop thinking of it!’ she whispered, afraid to let her voice carry far, but needing to hear the admonishment aloud. ‘Forget it happened like he has forgotten!’

  Despite the warning, she could do nothing but remember. She was bewitched. That was the only reason she could accept. He was a sorcerer who had cast a spell she was too weak to resist.

  Her suspicion was confirmed when he appeared in the doorway only moments later. His mere presence stole her breath and made her heart race. Every fibre of her body was awakened by him, a state that seemed to be a permanent affliction in his presence, but she refused to give in to the desire to look away from his piercing stare. He studied her with that same intensity she always found so exciting. When her nipples began to respond, she crossed her arms over them.

  Eirik swallowed and looked away as he walked towards the fire. Only then did she notice that he was carrying a pitcher of water in one hand and a small stack of wood under the arm of the other. He set them both down and shrugged out of the sack of moss he’d slung over his shoulder. The fire there was still smouldering, and she realised that he must have come in at some point to add more wood.

  Merewyn didn’t know what to say to him. What did one say to the man she had known so intimately, but in many ways didn’t know at all? So she watched him work as he added the moss to the fire so it flared higher and then added wood. When he was finished he notched an iron rod with two pots and positioned them over the fire before splitting the water between them. From a sack he retrieved from a shelf, he put two handfuls of grain in one and finally looked at her again.

  ‘Breakfast. The other you can use to was
h yourself.’

  Her face flamed as she realised he must know her need for washing. Though she had barely looked, she remembered seeing the streaks of red on her thighs the night before. Even as she stood before him at this very moment, his seed leaked down the insides of her thighs. Did he carry any reminders of their time together? Something about the way he stood there, tall and intense, made her think he didn’t. It had been nothing to him. The hollow in her belly grew larger so that it threatened to swallow her whole, but she refused to give in to it. If he didn’t want her, then her choice had been the wrong one and she had to but persevere and get through her life here until she could get home. Nothing mattered until then.

  ‘Are you injured?’

  She swung her head to look at him. He was watching the fire, but his jaw tightened. She despised the flare of hope the question ignited within her and reminded herself that he had left her. The act had been a common mating to him, nothing more. He’d probably had a hundred women that way. What did she matter?

  When she didn’t answer right away, he walked over and came to a stop just before her. He lifted his hand as if to touch her, but then dropped it again. ‘Did I hurt you, Merewyn?’

  He’d said her name! She hadn’t even been sure he’d known it since she’d refused to tell him on the boat. The genuine concern reflected in his eyes was unmistakable. But if it meant something more, she couldn’t tell.

  ‘I’m fine, my lord.’ It was best to keep formality between them. If there was nothing between them, then it behoved her to not foster illusions. ‘Thank you. If you have things to do this morning, I can see to breakfast.’

  His raised brow was the only indication that she had surprised him. If he was expecting her to dissolve into a puddle of tears and screaming hysterics, he would be disappointed. Thanks to Blythe, she’d been trained well in the art of pretending. She could pretend that she had felt nothing and that last night had never happened. She could pretend that she hadn’t wanted him to stay and sleep with her. She could pretend that she didn’t want tenderness from him, because it was the only way to insulate herself from the inexplicable pain his rejection had caused. She could be the slave. She could be mindless and not expect anything from him beyond protection, food and shelter. That way, everything would make sense and she could stop being so confused by him. He was a Dane, an enemy.

  Eirik paused a moment as if he would speak, but then thought better of it. With a final nod, he left and she was alone. When the door closed, her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears and her lip began to tremble. Merewyn refused to give in to the weakness to cry and moved towards the fire. She was fine. She would recover from her momentary lapse in judgement and be the same person she was before. Nothing had changed.

  * * *

  But everything had changed for Eirik. He had succumbed to his physical urges and become the man he had sworn to never be. The man who couldn’t control his urges; the man who took advantage of those weaker than himself. That was bad enough. But even worse than either of those was the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking of her. She filled his senses so that her soft, sweet scent was the only thing he smelled and he still tasted her on his lips. When he closed his eyes, he imagined that she was sprawled gloriously naked beneath him. In those imaginings, she was asking for his touch, her body warm and responsive in his hands.

  By the gods, he wanted her again. Even with his need for her so recently slaked, he could think of nothing but laying her beneath him and pushing into her hot, tight sheath. It was as if he lost control of his very thoughts when she was around. He cursed to himself and raised the turf knife above his head to drop it so it embedded in the ground at his feet. He repeated the motion again and again until he had a large square outlined. Then he angled the flat blade to cut the roots of the grass. His earlier inspection had revealed a corner of the roof that was failing. The house would be mostly unattended over winter, so he hoped to get it fixed before the failure caused a bigger issue.

  If he’d returned home sooner, he might have had the time to ready it with supplies and more repairs for the coming winter. But he hadn’t intended to stay there. It was only after the night with the girl that he imagined endless days and nights alone with her.

  Eirik shook the thought from his head and called for Harold, the caretaker, to pick up the square of turf and add it to the others in the wagon. He dug into the next one with a ferocity he hoped would banish the girl from his head.

  * * *

  He managed to avoid her for the rest of the day and was relieved when Harold and one of his sons agreed to stay and sup in repayment for their help that afternoon. The conversation turned to what was happening across the sea and Eirik welcomed Harold’s interest, anything to keep from thinking of her. The man had been partially lamed by a fall in his younger years and now walked with a pronounced limp that had cut his seafaring years short. Harold now lived his fantasies of adventure through the stories of others.

  But later, when the ale had run its course, the older man’s speech had turned slurred and the boy lay snoring by the fire, Eirik looked to her where she reclined on the bench. As if she felt his attention, she cast him a quick glance and blushed. She’d done that all day and then her gaze would move downwards over his body as if she were remembering the way he looked without his clothes. She did that again now, those beautiful eyes touching his chest and shoulders, before turning her attention back to the clothing on her lap that she was mending. He watched those long, graceful fingers as they tugged at a stubborn length of thread and then smoothed over the stitches.

  In his mind, he heard the soft mews of pleasure that had spilled from her lips when he’d touched her. He might have hurt her last night, but she’d found enjoyment in his touch before he’d taken her. The longer he sat there, the more he wanted to relive that pleasure again. As he watched her hands, he took a long, deep breath as he imagined those fingertips gliding along his cheek, the line of his shoulder. It came as a surprise that he enjoyed her touch, as well.

  If Harold and his son were gone, Eirik knew he would go to her again, whether it was the right thing to do or not. He couldn’t control himself with her. But it looked as though they were staying the night, so Eirik pulled a fur over and covered himself. There was no reason to alarm her with his body’s ready reaction to her.

  There would be time. It seemed one taste of her was not nearly enough.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Eirik slanted a glance at the girl where she sat perched on a rock overlooking the stream. He wrapped the rope around his forearm as he pulled the net free of the water. It was no surprise to find it empty. His poor concentration was making his throw off, so the net had closed in on itself. A despicable mistake he was grateful no one else was there to see. His concentration was on her rather than fishing. She consumed him.

  He took a deep breath and returned his gaze to the water, where it should be if they were to eat that night. It took three more drags of the net to snag a handful of minnows to use for bait. Even then, he almost lost them when he looked to her again. The cloak she wore was spread out on the rock around her while she sat with her knees to her chest. It was her face that arrested him. The simple beauty of her features had caught his attention before, but now it struck him anew.

  ‘You’re not a very good fisherman, are you?’ Her face was serious, but there was a teasing note in her voice that he didn’t think he was imagining.

  His lips twitched in a smile. ‘Not with a pretty distraction so near to me.’

  The blush returned to stain her cheeks. He’d found himself catching her gaze all day just to watch it bloom across her skin. It was proof of her innocence and proof that he shouldn’t touch her again. But more than that, it made him know that he affected her. That knowledge attracted him like a moth to flame. He wanted to drink in her innocence, to let it seep through his body until it became a part of him—until she b
ecame a part of him. Why this need for her had begun, he didn’t know. When it had become something far more than physical, he couldn’t even begin to guess. He craved the very essence of her, and monster or not, he needed it.

  As day was turning to night, he wanted to know if he could give her pleasure without pain. And if it was possible to redeem himself.

  Her face finally cracked a smile, a very small one, but it made his heart beat faster.

  ‘Perhaps you should stay with raiding.’

  ‘Aye, look what it got me.’ He tipped his head to indicate her. ‘I do seem better at it.’

  She smiled, though she bit her lip and turned her face away to hide it.

  Eirik looked back to the icy waters and resolved to ignore her until he’d caught their supper. Taking her to his bed with any regularity was never a decision he’d thought to make, but now it seemed the only option. It seemed only natural that she belong to him in every way. Excitement gripped him and he had to force himself to keep his calm composure. He was resolved to go slowly with her. There was no need to repeat the pain of the first time. Her body was made for his; she would accept him. He could give her pleasure.

  He thought perhaps she sensed the change in him when he approached her, fish in hand, to go back to the sod house. He had tied the fish to string and carried them at his side, but instead of continuing on in front of her, he walked with her. She gave him a puzzled glance, but didn’t speak as she gathered up the bundle of wood she’d collected. However, he sensed a nervousness about her that hadn’t been there before.

  * * *

  After they’d eaten the fish he’d prepared on the fire, he disappeared to the back of the house to dig into the stone cellar to retrieve a cask of wine. The need to please her was new to him, but it seemed only fair given the pleasure he would ask of her body. Though there would be no pain for her this time, he hoped, he felt he owed her something.