She collapsed against him. Her mind emptied, shocked by the rapid contact of his mouth, scrabbling for self-control. Why did she not push him away, shout and scream in protest? Because you don’t want to, a tiny voice niggled her, like a fingernail scraping on wood, mildly condemning. As his lips played along hers, searching, plundering, her limbs melted, suffusing into his brawny outline. Her arms moved upwards, tentatively, arching around his neck, her fingers digging into the bright, flame-coloured strands of his hair. The pulse at the top of his spine bumped erratically against her thumb.
He pulled away, sank his face into the perfumed freshness of her neck. ‘Push me away, now!’ he commanded, his voice partly muffled by her hair. ‘Otherwise I might not be able to stop!’ He lifted his eyes to meet hers, silently pleading. ‘Do it.’
‘No, I will not,’ she whispered, her mouth burning from his kiss.
‘You know what you are saying?’
‘Aye, I do.’ She regarded him solemnly, clear-eyed.
‘So be it,’ he ground out. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
She shuddered as he pulled her close to claim her lips once more. His hands moved up the finely built ladder of her spine, exposed to his touch, splaying across the delicate wings of her shoulder blades. His fingers moved to clasp her cheeks, thumbs aligned along her jaw as he deepened the kiss, his tongue darting along the sensitive seam of her mouth, sensual, inquisitive. Fighting for air, she rocked against him, battered by sensation, the sear of his touch like liquid fire. He marched her towards a place unknown: a vague, nebulous destination built only of snippets of information from serving maids, from her own mother. Most of their pronouncements had been dire, full of warning, and yet she trusted him, this big, blond-haired Viking.
Clasped in each other’s arms, they sank down to the spongy earth by the fire, Ragnar tearing at his clothes, casting them off into a jumbled heap. Gisela’s chemise had slipped down between them, forgotten. Beside them, the flames crackled and spit as they rolled together, flesh against flesh. Breath jagged in her lungs as the lean, naked length of him pressed against her, rigid muscle crushing her velvet curves.
The vivid colour of his eyes deepened, crackling with energy, with need. He plunged his mouth against hers again, the damp ends of his hair tickling her cheek, then his lips moved lower, trailing down her throat, to the sweet hollow between her breasts...
‘Ragnar... I...’ Sensation buffeted her; she thought she would scream aloud at the intensity of feeling gathering at the base of her belly. Her insides squeezed with delight; a gradual building of sensation, of...something, she knew not what. Her ribcage flexed, quivering with need, tightening with sweet awareness.
He moved with infinite slowness, sliding his brawny limbs across her own, a gentle plundering. Fear gusted through her: a ripple of delight, coupled with the terror of anticipation. His need burned into her, yet he waited, seizing her lips once more, teasing and tantalising as his hand moved up the gossamer length of her thigh.
Logic chased away. Abandoning herself to the fiery seduction of his questing hands, her mind plummeted down to a maelstrom of emotion, a pool of heightened yearning from which she had no hope of escaping. She had no wish to. His scorching touch flayed her, exposing her, yet she wanted to scream out loud at the way he made her feel, her body not her own. Every muscle, every ligament strung taut with anticipation, a rope winched ever tighter, building with a great cavernous hunger towards...what? She did not know.
* * *
Little by little, he eased into her, his movements checked by an infinite slowness. She cried out, panting in startled delight at the sliding intimacy, the utter possession. He paused, a question held in the gasp of her name. Had he hurt her? ‘Gisela...?’
‘Nay, go on!’ she pleaded desperately. ‘Don’t stop!’ Her hands flew outwards, clawing for something to hold on to in the battering onslaught of sensation, then clutched at his shoulders, clinging to the possessive glitter in his eyes.
He reminded himself to go slowly, that she was an innocent and did not deserve the full onslaught of his passion, yet he seemed unable to check himself, or hold back, surging into her with a wild abandon that astonished him. The delicate snag of her virginity curbed him momentarily, before he filled her completely, utterly. His quick possession stung her, but he gave her no time to think about it, replacing the swiftness with slow gentle movements.
He shifted within her, deliberately slowing his tempo even more so, before quickening again, moving faster and faster.
* * *
She welcomed the increasing rhythm, matching his powerful thrusts with a delighted eagerness of her own. The logical, thinking part of her mind ceased to function; her eyelids fluttered down, her slender frame barely able to contain the deluge of sensation that coursed through her, great gusting waves of pure delight. Her innards tightened, flexed. She moaned, breath ripping from her lungs, a surging wave of release breaking through the constraints of flesh. White-hot needles of light cascaded across the blackness of her vision, a tumult of sparking stars.
She cried out then as unbridled waves of pleasure hurtled through her slender frame, leaving her collapsed and spent. Reaching his own climax, Ragnar threw his head back, shuddering with unstoppable force as ricochets of pleasure drove through him. He sprawled heavily across Gisela’s naked body, sated and alive.
Chapter Sixteen
For a long, long time, they lay together in silence, limbs entwined, stunned, the aftershocks of their lovemaking pulsating through their bodies. Ragnar sprawled over her, bristled jaw grazing her cheek, the silky fronds of his hair tickling her ear. His heart thudded against her bare flesh, a deep, pulsing rhythm, drumming hard. She relished his nakedness, nay, revelled in it, ordering herself to remember every detail with utmost clarity: the heady scent of his heated flesh, the ridged muscles of his stomach pressing against her belly in delicious intimacy.
‘Too heavy,’ he muttered vaguely, rolling to one side. A shard of panic scythed through her—surely he was not leaving her, not yet? She had no wish to speak, to voice what they had done, to pick apart their joining with blame and recrimination, for that time would come eventually, of that she was certain. At this very moment, she wanted to savour, to allow her mind to float in a cloud of utter happiness, with Ragnar at her side. Relief coursed through her as he settled close behind her, tucking her against him so her spine rested against his torso, her hips cradled in his. Reaching for his cloak, he tugged it over both of them, shielding their cooling flesh from the night air, his arm slung around her waist.
The fire waned slowly, lazy sparks of burning ash rising into the air above, pinpoints of light. Her cheek pressed into the mossy ground as she watched the bluish kernel of flame dance and waver in the ashy net of half-burned twigs. How could she have known? How could she have known how wonderful such a thing could be? That her body would be suffused with light as they twined together? She had lost all sense of identity, every nerve and muscle fired into ecstatic oblivion. She had never learned this from her own mother, who, with features frozen in grim disapproval, had told her daughter in no uncertain terms what she would have to put up with if she ever wanted to be a wife and mother.
Ragnar moved behind her. ‘Gisela...’ His breath stirred the drying tendrils of her hair, a warm gust against her scalp.
Her eyelids fluttered down; a flicker of shame stabbed through her. The way she had stepped up to him, willingly, and lifted her lips to his. She could have backed away; why hadn’t she? Because...because she had wanted to lie with him. There, she had admitted it. This tall, tousled-headed Dane with his easy laugh had barged into her life, chaotic and disrupting, and had scrubbed out the practical, level-headed woman that she used to be, a woman who scorned men and all they represented. But what had he turned her into? A harlot?
‘I suppose you don’t think very much of me,’ she murmured, her voice low and miserable.
Rolling away from him, she sat up, pulling the blanket up to cover her nakedness. Her hair spilled down over her shoulders, magnificent curling tendrils that touched her hips. Silhouetted in the firelight, she looked like a goddess of old, a fairy Medusa, spellbinding.
‘Because...of what we did.’ She shook her head and every glorious loop of her hair spun out around her neat head with the movement, the pale brown turned to a flickering molten gold. ‘You gave me the chance to step back...but I didn’t take it.’
His big hand sprung forward, engulfing her tight little fist at the point where she clutched at his cloak. ‘But I knew what lay ahead, Gisela, and you did not. I gave you no time. It...’ He sighed, remembering the headlong rush of pleasure, the speed with which he had taken her. ‘It should not have happened. What I did was unforgivable.’ Regret laced his voice.
The reproach in his tone staggered uncomfortably through her chest. ‘There’s nothing to forgive, Ragnar.’ Her rose-pink lips curved up at the corners. ‘Listen to me...you gave me the choice. And I chose...willingly.’
He stared at her, bemused. Her reaction was not what he had expected. Her anger, yes, but not this, this quiet acceptance of what had happened. Why was she not ranting and raving, beating at his chest? ‘I had no right, Gisela. What was I thinking, taking your innocence like that?’
She flushed in the darkness at his blunt speech, a heady colour moving chaotically across her cheeks. ‘It doesn’t matter, Ragnar. I don’t care.’
He stood up, a swift rush of movement, the remainder of his cloak falling across her bare shins. His naked limbs glowed in the fire, burnished, the muscle in his strong legs tightly honed, like carved marble. He began to pull on his clothes, his movements abrupt and jerky. Angry.
‘You’ll care when your wedding night’s ruined because your new husband suddenly finds out that you’ve been with another man!’ Winding his sword belt around his leather tunic, he secured it tightly. He looked up, his face lined with wretchedness. ‘I’m so sorry, Gisela.’
‘Stop this,’ she said, biting her lip. Why did he have to ruin something that had been so perfect, so beautiful? ‘There’s never going to be a wedding night, because I’m never going to marry!’
‘Never...?’ he replied, incredulous. ‘Why not?’
‘After what I have learned about the ways of men? After seeing how de Pagenal behaved with my sister? And me?’ Unconsciously, her fingers rose to the line of scarring at her neck. And because no one would have me, she thought. I am no fool; I can see the way people look at me when they see my scar, the way they turn away.
* * *
He flinched, thinking how similar his own behaviour had been to that of the Norman knight’s. Despite Gisela’s words of forgiveness, she couldn’t fail to put him on the same level as that bastard. And he deserved her condemnation, rightly so, after what he had done. He had the vaguest sense that he had ruined something that might have been beautiful, ripping it to shreds as he ploughed headlong into possessing her.
‘I can see why you would not want to,’ he replied, his voice wooden. Hope snuffed out in his chest, smoking blackly like a piece of charred wood. He frowned at the odd sensation. What had he been hoping for? That...that there was the slightest chance that he and Gisela would stay together? The thought stunned him. Up to this point, he had never considered such a thing: to take a wife and settle down, have children. But now, as he looked down at Gisela’s neat head, he realised it was because he had never found someone with whom he wished to be for the rest of his life. What had he done? A huge emptiness rolled over him, scouring out his belly: a sense of a future that might have been and now was lost. A future with Gisela, a woman who had given her innocence to him, but wanted nothing in return, the woman who he...? He stopped. What had he been about to say? That he loved her?
* * *
‘So, it’s all right, you see,’ Gisela said, trying to decipher his expression in the darkness. ‘I decided a long time ago that I would live alone.’ Her fingers spread across the cloak over her knees, picking unconsciously at the fine embroidery. She hated to hear the reproach in his voice, the self-recrimination. It destroyed the exquisiteness of what had been and turned it into something sordid, ugly.
Scowling, he turned away, whisking her chemise up from the ground, throwing the limp, gauzy fabric into her lap. ‘Stop this, Gisela. I don’t want to hear any more. Stop trying to make me feel better for my actions, absolve me of any guilt. I am in the wrong here, not you.’
The white fabric of her chemise shimmered before her eyes. A great surge of tears welled in her chest, clamping tight with misery. So, that was that. He was so consumed with guilt that whatever she tried to tell him would fall on deaf ears. He was furious, she could see that from his terse, precise movements, but furious with himself, or at her, she knew not. She had the sense of a spliced rope pulling apart, fraying ends wrenching adrift, until they finally tore, feathery wisps wavering in the air. The fragile bonds of their relationship had fractured and she was not at all certain whether they could be repaired.
‘I will fetch your clothes,’ he said tersely, ‘and you can sleep in the hut tonight. I will sleep out here.’
* * *
The following morning, Gisela awoke early, as the first fingers of grey dawn inched their way into the hut. Last night, she had dragged the tight-fitting gowns back on, the thin cloak, the leather boots and woollen stockings, wrapping herself in the blanket that Ragnar handed silently to her. She had resolutely turned away from him, tucked into a miserable little ball. Beset by a desperate exhaustion, she had slept fitfully, heart swollen with sadness at what she had done, at Ragnar’s reaction. What a fool she had been, rushing in, not listening to the warning voices in her head. She told herself sternly she had wanted nothing from him, but her heart crimped sadly at the thought. What had she been expecting? That Ragnar would declare his undying love for her? She almost snorted out loud. The man had barely known her above two days. In the gloom, she hugged herself, trying to find some comfort in the whole sorry mess. At least she had the memory, she thought, the memory of their lovemaking that she clasped close to her heart like a precious jewel. She would always have that and no one could ever take that from her.
Would Ragnar come back with her to question de Pagenal further? She had to find out where Richard had gone. Or had she scuppered any chance of his support by lying with him? Her heart quivered at the thought of facing the Norman knight on her own. She had no one to blame but herself.
The wooded clearing was wreathed in a light mist, floating above the damp hillocks of dew-soaked grass. Sunlight struck through the trees, highlighting the swirling haze, parting the veiled air as if it were constructed of thin layers. Ragnar hunkered down next to the fire, laying thin twigs in criss-cross fashion above the flames. The worn leather of his calf-length boots bent forward, creased at the ankles. Beneath his braies, his big thigh muscles bunched heavily. The cloak that had wound around their naked bodies was now slung around his shoulders.
Her breath caught, eyes sliding away. Over by the trees, the horses were already saddled, girth straps tightened around their bellies, bridles attached. Rolling on to her knees, bundling the blanket between her hands, Gisela walked out from the hut into the open towards him. Dew darkened the hem of her blue underdress as she walked through the long grass.
Hesitating, she stood before him, wadding the blanket between her hands. ‘I... I understand if you don’t want to come back with me...to de Pagenal.’ Her voice echoed out with a stilted weakness.
Balancing on the balls of his feet, unusually graceful for such a large man, Ragnar flicked his gaze over her face. ‘What do you mean?’
The piercing intensity of his emerald eyes unnerved her. Surely this was what he wanted? To be rid of her? ‘I thought... I thought it would be for the best,’ Gisela said
quietly.
‘So you think that facing the man who nearly killed you, on your own, is for the best.’ Breaking another stick in two, he chucked it on to the fire, narrowing his eyes against the smoke.
She angled her head, puzzled. Was this some sort of trick? ‘I don’t want you to think...well, that you have to do it.’
‘You cannot go back alone,’ Ragnar said, poking a stick into the innards of the fire, stirring the glowing embers. Sparks snapped up into the air.
‘Oh, but...’
‘No, Gisela,’ he repeated, his tone stern. ‘Look, I quite understand that you hate every bone in my body right now, but I am not about to let you do that. You will have to put up with me for a bit longer, I’m afraid.’
I don’t hate you, she thought. Her heart leapt with joy at his words, but she fought to keep her expression bland, neutral. ‘You...will come with me, then?’ she asked carefully. Hope inched through her, a flutter of expectation. Maybe it would be all right.
He rose to his feet, a sudden, dynamic movement that unnerved her. The light striking through the mist fired the gemstones in his brooch, radiating streaks of blue fire. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Because I need you to help me gain access to my sister’s abductor. When I finally track him down.’
She hunched her shoulders, frowning, trying to subdue the bubble of excitement that played around her heart. Could she do this? Could she stay with him, but keep her distance? If it was her only chance to try to rebuild their fledgling relationship, then she would seize it, gladly, with open arms.
‘Thank you, Ragnar,’ she said slowly, as if testing her words. ‘I will still help you.’ She eyed him warily. ‘It’s just that...’ Could she speak about last night? Or would it be forever buried, never to be spoken of again?
Rescued by the Viking Page 18
