Page 40 of Viking Beast
He turned my palm, bringing it to his lips. “If I enslave you, it shall be through love.”
The words were enough, and I pushed down the furs, bearing myself to him. “Touch me, my lord.” It was a demand but softly made.
Gently, he obeyed, trailing his fingers across my breasts, across the full-roundedness of my stomach, hard with the babe, until he fingered between my curls, slipping his finger where he knew I would be wet.
No other command was necessary. He brought himself naked to me, and I embraced the body I’d come to know so well—the tight curve of his buttocks and powerfully muscled thighs, the firm contours of his back.
As he moved within me, the expression in his eyes stilled my breath—for it was as if he were searching for my soul, thirsty for more than the oblivion of shuddering surrender.
It was a yearning that haunted us both.
16
Eirik
November 1st, 960AD
He became aware of voices and clattering somewhere, far off. All was dark, for he wasn’t ready to open his eyes, but he stretched his fingertips, rubbing at the weave of the cloth upon which he lay.
He tried shifting a little, reaching out for Elswyth, but his arms were heavy and wouldn’t obey, as if only his mind had woken and not his body. Not yet.
If only he could move, he’d find her. She would be there, next to him. He wanted to kiss her. His wife. To draw her close, his fingers tangled in her golden hair.
“Elswyth.” His lips moved to form the word, but his mouth was too dry to make the sound. He tried again, to no avail.
Someone squeezed his hand, and a feminine voice asked, “Are you awake?”
Of course he was. He could hear her—Helka.
He returned the pressure of his sister’s touch.
“Thank the gods!”
His hand received a sharper squeeze and was lifted to his sister’s cheek. Had she been crying? What was the matter?
A man was allowed to sleep late on the day after his wedding, surely. He couldn’t remember getting to bed, but it wasn’t the first time another had carried him. If a man couldn’t get drunk on the day he married the woman he loved, when could he?
Though his throat was parched, his head was free of the ache that usually accompanied a surfeit of mead.
“Drink this.”
A cup touched his lips, wetting them, and Eirik swallowed gratefully. He wanted to open his eyes, but it was so difficult.
“What do you remember?” Helka’s lips pressed to his forehead.
Eirik fought to recall. The wedding feast, and Elswyth looking beautiful in her crimson gown, her diadem not of hammered gold but of meadow flowers. And the room hung gloriously with boughs of blooms. Bride and groom, they’d paraded, then been carried from one end of the hall to the other, passed above the heads of their guests. How loudly everyone had cheered.
There had been games, riddles, and wrestling, and enough meat to fill a man’s belly thrice over.
Later, Elswyth, overcome by the warmth of the room, had gone to take some air—and Olaf had challenged him to a drinking contest. Ten horns they’d supped dry. “Climb on the table,” Olaf had said. “Whoever reaches the end first, without falling off, will be the winner.”
But he’d heard a scream. Then shouting.
Fire!
He’d looked up. The roof was crackling, amber licking between the timbers, eating the turf—dry from the good weather. Chunks were falling through.
Eirik’s heart leapt in panic.
