by Selena Kitt
She could see a beam of moonlight in the distance from another of those sky holes and they made their steady, silent way towards it until they stepped out into a dimly-lit area with a much higher ceiling. Ric straightened with a grunt and released her hand to touch the wall.
His hand emerged from the gloom holding a coil of rope.
“This is like some kind of Viking Penthouse.” She blinked. “Are you sure you don’t have a coffee machine hidden anywhere?”
“Sure we do.” He chuckled. “It’s called ‘a-bag-of-beans-and-two-big-stones.’ Okay, put your flashlight on the rock, strip down to your underwear, then put your belt back on.”
“Okaaaaay.” Annalesa did as he asked, hoping the flashlights were waterproof.
She clipped the belt back on and held her arms up as Ric tied the end of the rope in a knot round her waist, securing that to the belt too. She bit her lip as he stripped down, reverting to his Norse God status in the dim light. So strange how he looked even bigger in the half-light.
“Step down here with me.” He cleared his throat.
She followed him, stepping into darkness and then wet heat. The volcanic water was even hotter than the air of the cave. There were steps down into the hole and she felt for them gingerly, gasping as hot water pressed between her thighs, then soaked through her bra. Ric steadied her arm.
“This is where I died. I went through this cave and came out the other side, new. It’s about thirty feet from water to air, so stay close and swim fast.”
Annalesa let a long, slow breath go so she could refill just before going under. She was going to need to save her oxygen.
But then, something struck her.
“This isn’t a test, is it?” She frowned at him. “Please say this isn’t a test. Because I’m okay swimming in a pool, but—”
“Leesa, you’ll be fine.” He smiled his encouragement, looking a little guilty at her question. “And no, I promise. This isn’t a ‘test’. No more tests.”
“Okay.” Still nervous, she took a deep breath, saw him submerge, then went down with him.
Chapter 17
She suspected Ric might have been bullshitting about the thirty feet back to air.
Too-hot water pressed against her face, making her feel suffocated as she swam down to dip below the stalactites jabbing into the depths. She pulled herself towards the light, doing such a strenuous breaststroke her shoulders and hips would ache for days.
Finally, she broke the surface, sucking in hard, lungfuls of cold air. The temperature contrast hit like a truck and she wilted, her vision obliterated by white starbursts behind her eyes.
Ric’s arm snapped around her waist and she felt herself being tugged backwards through the water. The exit pool must have been like something out of an Olympic stadium because it seemed an age until her feet touched the ground.
He held onto her from behind, keeping his grip firm but loose. She rested back against him, her chest and belly rising and falling fast, in and out, as she fought to get her breath back. Her pulse gradually settled to something more toward normal and the white starbursts dissolved.
“Sorry,” he said at last. “I don’t remember it being that far.”
She waved her hand forgivingly, still unable to speak. Resting back against him was wonderful as he stroked her sides with his thumbs. She tugged in one last breath and smiled back up at him.
“I... I’m understanding why Vikings come through that tunnel to ‘die’. Bloody hell.”
“It’s not supposed to be a literal death, Leesa.” He nuzzled the side of her cheek. “Can you see, yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Turn around and look up.”
The sky was filled with a green swirl like a speech bubble, the outline tinged with fierce, almost neon yellow. From nowhere, on the west side, an electric pink bloom expanded, pushing into the bubble. The green outline faded altogether, bending and sliding like smoke in the wind.
In the middle of it all, white flickers scattered the sky like a thousand spotlights turned on and off behind a layer of smoke. She couldn’t stop staring and Ric let her watch without comment. She knew he was smiling at sharing this with her. She didn’t even have to look.
The sky was so beautiful, she felt a hitch in her chest. She’d never in her life felt like crying because something was pretty, but this was... spectacular. She felt tiny beneath it and entirely at peace.
“I can’t believe I’m seeing the Northern Lights.”
“I almost can’t believe it, either. It’s usually a winter thing. We’re lucky. But then again there’s almost zero pollution here and no coastal cloud, so...”
She loved it that he just let her watch until the intensity of the colors had faded, and the sky became a slow-moving curtain of pale green blooms.
She sighed and turned to him, looping her arms round his neck. “Did you get this light show when you were born again?”
“Yeah, just like that. It was a couple days after New Year’s, so it was really intense.” He gazed upwards to the skies. “I came out of the tunnel and surfaced, feeling a little giddy, like you did. So there was this long swim and I emerged with the wind beating against me. And then there was the Aurora Borealis. I felt like I’d moved to a different planet. When you see those lights in the sky, you can understand the power of the stories of the Bifrost Bridge. I remember walking across the pool, feeling like I could do anything. Not afraid anymore.”
“You were new,” Annalesa murmured, beginning to understand. “It couldn’t have been easy to come home after being re-born in such an amazing place.”
“Well, you probably get why it was so easy to stay here six months. I had to come back, though.” Ric took her face in his hands. “To you. For you.”
“You were really going to leave me?” She swallowed.
“That’s what I told myself.” He ran his thumb over her lower lip and looked deep into her eyes. His were huge again, searching for something in her. “But I was just afraid of you rejecting me again. I’m still afraid of it.”
“Still?” She rolled her eyes and gave a little laugh. “God, man, what do I have to do to prove it to you? Haven’t I done enough?”
“Almost.” He took a deep breath, tugging her by the hand to a ledge built into the perimeter of the pool. “Come here.”
She sat and waited wordlessly as he waded to a hole in the rock and produced a sealskin pouch. She didn’t see what he fished out of it before stuffing it back in the hole and splashing his way back over. He took her hand in his.
“Close your eyes.”
She felt the slide of cool metal along her finger. Her breath quickened as excitement rushed through her.
“Can I open them now?”
“Yeah, take a look.”
The ring was a band of gold with Valkyrie wings as the frame for a setting of three stones in an oval. Two red gems were already in place, surrounding a clear crystal in the middle. She looked up at him. That intense expression was back on his face.
“It’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen anything like it! Where in the world did you get it?”
“I forged it.” Ric stroked her knuckles with his thumb. “The red stones are for unconditional love. They represent the blood a Viking would be willing to shed to protect the ones they love and watch them from Valhalla, if need be. The crystal... is temporary. I’ll replace it with a diamond when our parents have retired and we don’t have to hide anymore.”
A hot thrill made her shake as he slipped onto the ledge next to her, pulling her up onto his lap. She couldn’t speak as she straddled him. She had an idea of what he was going to say and didn’t dare disturb the moment as he braced himself, his thighs quivering beneath her.
“Leesa, I love you more than anything else in this world or the next,” he told her. “You’re my other half—you always have been. You’re my Valkyrie.”
Her smile brightened at that as she rested her palms against his pecs. His pulse beat hard against her fingertip
s. She could feel the rhythm, rapid and clear, even through his slight trembling.
Did he really think, after all they’d been through, that she was going to say no? But that fear flickered in his eyes for a moment and she couldn’t wait to dispel it.
“I don’t know when we can make it official.” He cleared his throat. “But I can’t wait another moment to claim you as mine. Annalesa Genevieve LaFevre—will you marry me?”
“Oh Ric...” She choked on her tears and struggled to find her voice. For a moment, he looked uncertain, watching her face as her tears started to fall.
Then she gasped out, “Yes! Oh yes, yes, yes!”
She sobbed against his shoulder as she threw her arms around his neck.
“Thank God,” he murmured into her hair.
“Last test?” she teased, sitting back and looking at her ring. “Did I pass?”
“Wasn’t a test.”
The trembling left his body in a wave and he tipped his head back, laughing. The relief surged off his body, translating through the power of his hands on her waist and the press of his lips against hers. He kissed her hard, reaching deep, smoothing his hands up her back.
“But if it was, you passed with flying colors,” he whispered.
He pinned her against him with a forearm and slid his fingers between her legs. She arched into him, pushing up from her knees. He hooked her panties to one side and she groaned into his hair as he pressed his fingers inside, swirling two of them around between slow, deep strokes from tip to knuckle. She needed more.
She needed him, bare and hard inside her.
She stepped away, shedding her bra and ducking underwater to take off her panties. She felt Ric close to her as she surfaced and kissed her way up his chest. Water droplets beaded on his skin. One rolled down over his nipple and she licked it off, loving the mineral tang of the water and the soft grunt of pleasure he gave. He slid his hands under her thighs and lifted her.
The wind whipped the cry from her lips as he entered her in one hard, slick push, crashing the head of his cock deep inside. His breath erupted from him in a series of guttural sounds that increased her arousal to a whole new level.
She wanted to match his pace, bearing down on him, but his grip on her held her completely captive as he fucked her even faster. She’d never felt this way before when they fucked, and it thrilled her beyond words. He was taking her, claiming her, making her his.
She felt tender inside, a delicious soreness. His cock battered her cervix as if trying to seek entrance to her core. She grew slicker around him, her walls fluttering and squeezing his length, making him moan and fuck her even harder. Pleasure bloomed and spread through her thighs and belly, like something alive and growing inside of her as she clung to him, desperately trying to hang on.
“Leesa,” he growled her name like a warning and then froze, every muscle tensing and trembling. Then he threw his head back and roared as his cum erupted like a white-hot geyser, surging inside her with tremendous force.
Annalesa cried out—not with her own climax, she was far from it—but because she felt it in her core—his seed, his mark, his claim. She rotated her hips and dig her fingernails into his shoulders, squeezing and milking him, prolonging his pleasure as long as she could.
Seeing the delirious exhaustion on his face was as good as an orgasm, as far as she was concerned. His eyes closed, lashes flickering. Sweat misted his face. After a prolonged, trembling silence, he staggered backwards to the ledge, still holding her, and collapsed down on it. He looked contrite when he finally opened his eyes.
“Sorry. Too soon.”
“Just right.” She dabbed a kiss on his lips. “It’s the best compliment in the world, when you can’t hold back like that.”
“Holy hell, no, I couldn’t.” Ric brought her forehead to his. “I can’t hold back with you, Leesa. In any way. I’m so yours.”
“And I’m yours.”
As Ric stroked her back with his fingertips, she rested against him, feeling him soften inside of her.
She could’ve stayed the way they were forever.
The swim back was less scary, maybe because she was deliriously happy—enjoying her own rebirth—or maybe because she’d already done it and knew she wouldn’t drown.
They redressed, ate, and just as she thought he might be taking her hand to lead them to the sorely under-used mattress, he slung his backpack over his shoulder and led her into another tunnel in the caves.
The further down they went, the hotter she got, and the cool air that hit her when they emerged into another cavern did nothing to turn down the heat coming through the ground.
She wasn’t entirely shocked to see the lava pit at the entrance to another tunnel further down.
“Is this where you made the ring?” She squeezed Ric’s hand and grinned up at him.
“You have to ruin the romantic surprise, don’t you?”
“Sorry.” She shrugged, edging towards the lava pit. “This thing isn’t going to spit, is it?”
“No. It’s low-energy. Like Pele in Hawaii. But yeah, I made your ring here.” He picked up a brand by the side of the pit and a little disc that looked like a mold. “I made the ring not knowing whether you’d wind up wearing it or not.” His smile flickered and died. “There was no guarantee.”
“There is now.” She smiled up at him but he didn’t smile back.
“I have one more confession to make. God, I wish I didn’t.” His face remained stony as he reached into his backpack and hauled out some sheets of paper.
“What’s going on, Ric?” Her heart fluttered, telling her she couldn’t take much more, and she knew it.
“There’s something I have to show you. I screwed up, Leesa.”
“Please don’t let this be another test,” she said under her breath, but he heard her.
“It’s not a test. Not for you, at least.” Ric’s voice had dropped so low it was almost a whisper.
It would be so nice if her world could just stay on its axis for more than a few hours at a time. Annalesa took the papers he handed over, her fingers numb. A heavy rock sat in her gut, making her feel nauseous. She glanced over the information on the papers several times but couldn’t take it in, distracted by the cold crawling through her veins.
If she was reading it right—and she wasn’t sure she was—these papers would force her to hand over her entire Ryker stake to Ric and Arensen.
She re-read again. Still the same.
Annalesa looked up at him, dumbstruck.
“It’s not how it looks,” Ric whispered.
“No?”
“Leesa—”
Annalesa pulled away from him as his hand approached her shoulder and strode across the cave to the far skylight, determined to focus on what she was reading.
Glancing through, it seemed like a standard buy-sell agreement, which would oblige Ryker to buy her shares back if they moved in a direction she didn’t like as a minority shareholder. But why the hell should he be so worried about that?
She read further down, in the small print.
The papers also entitled Ric or Arensen to buy her shares back by force if the company was changing direction, and she refused to sell out or give them support on the board.
She couldn’t stay still, pacing the cave and scrunching the papers in her fist.
He put me through all of this so I could prove he could trust me?
There were so many things wrong with the set-up she didn’t know what to be mad about first.
“Leesa—”
“Don’t ‘Leesa’ me!”
“I wasn’t going to go through with it.”
“Go through with what?”
“Pushing you off the board.”
She gaped at him. “And why the hell would you want to do that? Is all this part of your complete inability to distinguish between revenge and justice?”
Ric couldn’t look at her. “I brought the papers with me to burn.”
“Well, than
k you, but I’m not sure a ritual burning’s going to make me feel any better about this!”
Ric looked like he was going to yell back but sighed hard, his hands on his hips. He dropped his head forward, clearly trying to get a grip on himself.
Eventually he met her eyes across the cavern. “This is really complicated.”
“This is complicated?” she scoffed. “This is complicated? We’ve gone a hella long way past complicated here! We passed complicated about a zillionty miles ago!”
“But you don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly.” She glared at him. “You needed my shares for a vested interest. You need a majority vote for something—for what, I don’t know—but that much is obvious. This isn’t brain surgery. Did it ever occur to you that you could just ask me, Ric? I know what Ryker Arms means to you! Or didn’t you trust me enough?”
“Okay, the truth. I was supposed to get you to sign.” He dragged his hands down his face. “It was part of the plan. The... revenge. These papers. I was going to get you to sign and then...”
“Then dump me. Heartbroken and penniless.”
“It’s not that clear—”
“Oh yes, it is—crystal!”
“You could forgive me Jenny and Ryan, but not this?” His jaw clenched. “Is the money that important to you?”
“Fuck the money! And fuck you!” She turned to face him, screaming.
“Listen, I’m not asking you to sign them.” Ric crossed the cavern towards her, treading like each footfall might send him crashing through thin ground into a bottomless pit. He stopped in front of her, his fists opening and closing. “I want to burn them. Consequences be damned. Don’t you see? This is the last thing... I swear to fucking God, it’s the last goddamned lie, and I want it in ashes. I don’t want anything left between us anymore.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before? When you told me about Jenny and Ryan?”
“I wanted to do it here.” He nodded at the lava. “With you. Hopefully, after you’d accepted my proposal. But I would have done it anyway, myself, if you hadn’t. I didn’t think the money stuff would mean so much...”
