A Tale of Two Vikings

by Sandra Hill

  "Why?"

  "I have been… uh, noticing you of late."

  "Why?"

  "Do not be coy, m'lady," he said, tweaking her chin. Nobody ever tweaked her chin, but she was too surprised to react before he went on, "I have been getting your hidden messages."

  "What hidden messages?"

  "Oh, the sway of your hips. The licking of your lips. Your jutting bosom."

  Helga could understand how he might have misunderstood the signals she had been sending to Vagn.

  "Besides, Vagn said—"

  She dropped the threads she'd been sorting. "Vagn said what?"

  "Well, he didn't precisely say you were hot for me, but the way he worried over your attentions to me, 'twas obvious… you know."

  "Nay, I do not know. What precisely did Vagn tell you?" I will kill the lout. I swear I will.

  " 'Stay away from Helga'—that is what he said."

  "Vagn said that to you." An odd thrill rippled through Helga. Mayhap the lout did care for her, after all.

  "Yea, and I figure that he would not admonish me so if he didn't suspect you are attracted to me. Many women are, Helga; so do not blush. As to Vagn, he obviously envies me my fine beard, and you know what they say about men with mustaches, don't you?"

  The waggle of his eyebrows, which appeared to be plucked into a perfect arch, should have told her that further questions could be perilous. But did she listen to her intuition? Nay. "What do they say about men with mustaches?"

  "They are better able to please ladies in the bedsport." Now he was twirling the other end of his mustache.

  She frowned, unable to picture how a mustache would figure in the coupling in any woman-pleasing way.

  Finn must have interpreted her frown of confusion as permission to elaborate. "More friction when the man's mouth is engaged down below."

  Helga gasped. She'd never heard anything so outrageous in all her life. Could it be true?

  Finn preened as if he'd informed her of some great personal talent. Mayhap it was.

  "Methinks that Vagn envies my finesse. After all, I have a fine mustache and he does not. It's all in the bristles, you know, and the wax."

  This is more information than I want or need. How did this conversation go so far afield… like into the midden?

  She decided to let him down gently and tell him she was not really interested in him. But just then, Vagn came storming in.

  "I thought I told you to stay away from Helga," he shouted at Finn, fists raised.

  "Try and make me," Finn countered, raising his fists, too.

  She jumped between the two just in time.

  Vagn and Finn were of the same height and build, but to her way of thinking, Vagn was a much more handsome man. Today he wore dark brown braies tucked into low boots and a leather tunic belted at the waist. His long blond hair was tied back off his face—a face with high cheekbones, strong jaw and cleft chin. Eyes as clear as a summer sky glared at her icily. This was a man who needed no mustache to enhance his masculinity. He was man enough without adornments.

  But handsome didn't matter in her present situation. The man was interfering in her life.

  "Who are you to make decisions concerning my life, Vagn? 'Tis none of your affair whom I associate with." She did not stop to consider the irony of the fact that she'd planned to get rid of Finn herself and was now defending her association with him.

  "Hah! You made it my affair when you concocted that scandalous proposal."

  "What scandalous proposal?" Finn wanted to know.

  "Yea, what scandalous proposal?" her father wanted to know. She hadn't realized her father had entered the solar on the heels of Vagn. Her father had probably been drawn by the raised voices… as had a dozen or so soldiers and housecarls who were gaping at the spectacle.

  She would have groaned if there were time, but she had to act quickly before Vagn did something rash, like tell her father she'd asked for his seed.

  "I offered to make Vagn a cloak of bright red wool to match his eyes on a drukkinn night, embroidered along the edges with pink tongues. He considered the garment a scandal. Ha ha ha!"

  Tongues? Vagn mouthed at her, then gave her a cold look, obviously trying to decide whether to embarrass her in front of one and all by telling the truth. "Notice that I am not amused, m'lady," he said finally. Fortunately, though, his anger seemed to have dissolved.

  Finn left the solar chuckling, and her father remarked to Vagn, "You do not think a tongue cloak is mirthsome?"

  "Nay, I much prefer a cloak embroidered with… oh, let us say, candles," he answered to the bewilderment of all who remained.

  Except Helga.

  Who discovered she was suddenly left alone in the solar with Vagn.

  And he was not smiling at all.

  Let's make a deal…

  "Sit down, Helga. We are going to talk."

  Her eyes darted right and left, as if she were considering a run for freedom. When she realized that he blocked any escape route and there was no one left in the room to help her, she sighed in surrender and perched herself atop a high stool. She made sure that a table separated them, though it would offer little protection if he chose to attack. But that would come later. For now, he sat on a high stool on his side of the table, tented his fingers before his mouth and pondered the troublesome wench.

  How anyone could have called her homely was beyond him. Today Helga wore a plain blue gunna with a gold braid belt, covered by a sleeveless surcoat of a darker blue. Her golden blond hair was braided intricately into one thick braid that hung down to her waist. Her blue eyes were wide with embarrassment she tried to hide with fluttering brown lashes. Her lips, large and luscious, parted as if in invitation. If Helga only knew the power of those lips!

  "I'm not afraid of you," she said of a sudden.

  "You should be."

  She raised her chin defiantly.

  "I am a man full-grown, not a youthling whose strings you can pull like a puppeteer. For days you have been teasing me like a dockside tart. I have allowed you to think you can manipulate me, just to see how far you would go, and truth to tell, you shocked the spit out of me. No more games."

  "I did not play any games."

  He raised a halting hand. "Please! Helga the Gamester could be your new name."

  "Well, you forced me to use underhanded tactics when you would not agree outright."

  He laughed. The woman never gave up. "That is the most backhanded apology I have e'er heard."

  "I was not apologizing."

  "You should."

  She inhaled deeply, which caused him to look at her chest area… and wonder irrelevantly if her nipples were large underneath her clothes.

  She saw the direction of his gaze and folded her arms over her chest.

  Little good that did when his lustsome imagination was involved.

  "Are you a gambler, Helga?"

  "Huh?"

  "You heard me. This sex-dance you have been playing with me is like a game of chance. 'Tis time to even the odds. Are you willing to play?"

  "Nay!" she said without thinking. Then immediately amended, "It depends on the final prize, and whether the rules are fair."

  "You want a babe."

  "You do not."

  "I want your body."

  He saw her eyes light up and her lips part at that disclosure. He guessed that now her nipples were engorged or he was not the man he knew himself to be.

  "But I am willing to give my body only if a babe will result. You have told me that is out of the question."

  "I'm thinking of another alternative."

  "The game of chance you mentioned."

  Quick-thinking lady! He had to admire that. "The very same," he agreed. "There are ways for a man to prevent conception, Helga. Ways known all the way back to the beginning of time. 'Tis known as spilling one's seed upon the ground."

  Her face flushed as she comprehended his meaning. "And why would I agree to that?"

  "Because it
is not a certain method."

  "Are you asking me to make love with you on the mere chance that I might conceive?"

  He shrugged. "Even under the best of circumstances, conception seems to be in the hands of the gods. I know men and women who have been swiving their entire lives and never had children, whilst with others the quickening happens after only one poke."

  "My father would have a fit to know that some rogue was defiling his daughter under his very roof." On the other hand, if it fit his purposes in creating a grandbabe, he probably wouldn't mind that much.

  "Defiling? You make sex sound dirty. Well, actually, good lovemaking can be dirty… in a nice-dirty way." His lips twitched with mirth but only for a second. He was not in the mood for laughter just yet.

  He could tell that she had no idea what he meant by "nice-dirty," but she wasn't about to ask. Good. In his present mood, he would probably tell her in very precise detail.

  "Your father would not have to know… if we were discreet. 'Tis not my intent to shame you, Helga. In fact, I would insist that no one know of our arrangement or our doings, including your carnal mentor, the ill-famed Rona, or that peacock Finn."

  Her lips twitched with mirth then, too, at his accurate description of Finn.

  Vagn gave her a level somber gaze. He was taking this all very seriously, and he wanted her to know that.

  "It all seems so secretive… as if it were dishonorable."

  "I prefer the word 'private' to 'secretive.' "

  "I understand how the game would work if I do not conceive, but suppose your seed did manage to find my womb. What then?"

  His own face flushed now. "I would not abandon my son."

  "And if it were a daughter?"

  "I would not abandon my daughter, either."

  "Explain yourself."

  "I would wed you."

  She threw her hands in the air with exasperation. "Then I gain naught. If I were willing to wed to gain a child, I would have done so long ago."

  He would like naught more than to reach across the table and shake the willful wench. Why must she always be at cross purposes with him? Why could she not be biddable for once? He counted to ten silently, then offered, "A compromise, then."

  She tilted her head in question.

  "If I should get you with child, I would offer for you. If you refuse, then you must let me acknowledge my child and be a part of the babe's life."

  "You ask much."

  "Nay, Helga, you are the one who asks much."

  "Why would you be willing to make this compromise?"

  "Because I want you so bad my teeth hurt and my loins ache. I have never wanted a woman as much as I want you." And because my cock is so hard it hurts and must soon find a sheath. And because you are driving me eye-rolling barmy. And because I keep picturing candles. And because I want to see for myself if you have turned into a raisin down there.

  He could tell that his words pleased her. Good thing he'd kept his coarser thoughts to himself. "Besides," he said with a grin, "Toste wants me to."

  She grinned back at him. "Been talking to your dead brother again, have you?"

  "Yea. All the time." He reached across the table and took one of her hands in his. Just that gesture gave him a thrill, so besotted was he. When he laced the fingers of her hand in one of his and their wrists pressed against each other, he had to close his eyes against the intense emotion he felt. He could not imagine the outcome of this strange pact they were making, but it felt right. "Will I come to you tonight, or will you come to me?" he asked in a voice raw with need.

  "I will come to you."

  And so their fate was sealed.

  When a man loves a woman…

  Vagn had told Helga that he was a full-grown man who was too old for games, but he felt like a youthling now. And games were beginning to hold way too much appeal. Sex games, that is.

  He swept the stale rushes from his bedchamber and replaced them with new fragrant ones. He put clean linens on the mattress and shook out the bed furs. An extra candle burned on a low table. A warm fire burned in the small hearth. All this he did himself, wanting to please Helga with these intimate courtesies.

  As for himself, he bathed, shaved off his facial hairs and braided war braids on either side of his face. A man needed his hair off his face when leaning over a woman. Then he donned clean garments.

  He looked down at his hands as he waited for her and saw that they trembled. The sight pulled him up short.

  Was the trembling from excessive arousal? After all, it had been almost a year since he'd lain with a woman, thanks to his and Toste's forced celibacy as Jomsvikings.

  Or was he suddenly nervous about his talents in the bedsport? That could not be. He'd been making love for fifteen and more years, and his expertise had never failed him.

  Then it must be Helga who turned him into a jittery halfling. Scary prospect, that. No woman had ever had such an effect on him. It made him feel vulnerable and lacking in his usual self-confidence. Like a needy milksop, for the love of Frigg! Good thing his old friend Bolthor the Skald was no longer in this world. He would compose a horrible poem about Vagn's present dilemma… something like "When Viking Men Lose Their Swagger."

  It was unacceptable, he decided, slamming his cup of ale down on the table and causing the candle flame to flicker. I am Vagn Ivarsson. I do not humble myself for anyone. Not even a woman for whom my lust is high.

  He undid his belt and jerked his tunic over his head, tossing it to the floor and no doubt mussing his hair in the process. He did not care. He was angry with himself. Next he sat down on the bed and pulled off his half-boots and short hose, pitching them across the chamber to land hither and yon. He was about to shimmy out of his braies when he heard her soft knock on the door. He stopped in mid-shimmy, unsure whether to take them off or not. But Helga took that decision out of his hands by entering without waiting for his response to her knock. He yanked the breeches back up.

  Before she even looked at him, she turned and made sure the door was locked so they would not be disturbed. Smart thinking. At least someone in this room was thinking with the right body part.

  She wore the same blue cloak she'd worn to his chamber afore, but she was not nude underneath as she'd been then. He saw that when she dropped the cloak. She was covered from neck to wrist to ankles by a thin linen bed rail. The shift was plain, but Helga was not. Her blond hair hung loose about her back and shoulders and chest.

  Her wide blue eyes took in his state of undress. He saw fear there and in the clenching of her fists at her sides.

  In that moment, Vagn forgot his misgivings over his own seeming vulnerabilities. "Helga," was all he could manage to say.

  As if given a cue, she flew at him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and burying her face in the crook of his neck. "I thought this would be easy," she confessed.

  So did I. "It will be." I hope.

  At first, he just held her tightly against him with one arm around her waist and the other hand up under her hair, kneading her nape. He kissed the top of her fragrant head and murmured nothing words to soothe her.

  Helga was tall, only a half-head shorter than he. So, with her on tiptoe, they stood breast to bare chest, belly to belly, thigh to thigh, woman-place to manpart. It seemed they fit perfectly together.

  In that instant, Vagn realized something important. All his experience in bedsport, all the charm acquired during years of dealing with women—none of it mattered. This joining with Helga was special… different. He couldn't say how or why. It just was. In some ways, he would be as much a virgin as Helga. He thought he heard Toste laughing in his head at that outlandish notion.

  Helga raised her head finally and looked at him.

  He kept one hand on her nape and used the other to cup her cheek. He kissed her then, searching, slow and soft. Seeking the perfect fit.

  She kept her hands on his shoulders and followed all his signals with her own mouth. She mimicked his movements, shifting
and adjusting. He ran the tip of his tongue along the seam of her mouth; she did the same to his. When he deepened the kiss and filled her mouth with his tongue, she sucked him in welcome.

  He hadn't realized that his hands had moved, but they were everywhere, learning the curves and planes of her body. The soft places and the hard. His big palms moved the fabric of her bed rail as he caressed her. Sweeping her shoulders and back. Kneading her buttocks. Testing the smallness of her waist. And all the while, he kept kissing her hungrily.

  And, praise the gods, she kissed him back, just as hungrily. And ran her small hands over his shoulders, the flat nipples on his chest, his backside.

  "You won't be sorry, dearling," he murmured against her wet lips when he came up for air.

  "I know," she said and smiled.

  That smile caused his heart to lurch.

  He was aroused beyond anything he'd ever imagined, and yet totally in control now. He would go slow. More than anything, he wanted to please Helga as much as himself.

  Finally he took hold of Helga's forearm and held her away from him. Maintaining eye contract, he shrugged out of his braies and took supreme male pleasure in the way her mouth opened in surprise at the size of his thickening. He was pretty surprised himself. Blue-veined ones were rare and to be prized. Leastways, that's what Toste always said. Then he stepped forward and raised her bed-rail up and over her head, leaving them both naked to observe each other.

  She was as tall and willowy as a young sapling. Fine-boned, with a narrow waist tapering out to small hips. How does she ever expect to carry a babe there? Her breasts were so small they would not even fill his hand, but they were capped with big pink nipples that made up for any lack in size of the whole. Would she nurse a babe? Would her breasts change then? Do not think of that, Vagn. Do not even think it. Her long, long legs were thin but shapely. Would her sons be long-legged, too? Dangerous thought, that. Her woman-fleece matched the blondness of her hair, but was curly. She was different from the women he'd been attracted to in the past. But better. Way better.

  He smiled then.

  And she did, too.

  With a joyous whoop, he took her by the waist and threw her onto his bed, then landed himself at her side. The bed ropes creaked, but fortunately held.