But he was well enough now to chase her.
~oOo~
His hunch had been correct; he found her standing under a tree at the riverbank, watching him approach. She had her horse by the reins and her hand on the hilt of her shortsword, but when she saw it was him, she released them both and crossed her arms.
The aging afternoon had turned brisk with a sharp breeze coming from the north, and Brenna’s thick blonde hair was blowing loose from her braids in wispy strands. Her cheeks were rosy with the chill. He noticed that she had not brought a fur with her. She had walked straight out of the hall and to the stable, apparently.
She watched him silently as he rode to her and dismounted. As his feet hit the ground, the still-weak muscles in his back tightened sharply, and he clenched his jaw, trying not to react otherwise. She must have noticed, because she gave him a cocked eyebrow.
“If there were trouble at the castle, you would have sent someone else for me, so why are you here?”
He tied off the reins and freed his horse to graze with hers. The beasts bumped noses and wandered off together a short distance.
“To be sure you were safe. You should not ride alone, even now.”
She scoffed. She had a way of making a simple exhale of breath sound like a terrible insult. “You think I’d fall prey to a farmer?”
“I think even the great God’s-Eye can only fight so many farmers at once, and farmers often know how to fight. Many of our own warriors are farmers.”
He’d intentionally used the name she hated; he was irritated and tired of sparring with her. Her expression went dark, and she turned back to the river without answering him.
Closing the distance between them, he stood at her side. “I believed we were becoming closer, but you avoid me again. Have I been wrong about how you feel?” He knew he hadn’t. He’d caught her eyes often enough, even as she skittered away, to know she still felt that pull. But he wanted her to say it.
She sighed. “I don’t understand—”
Impatient, he cut her off. “Yes, I know. You say it again and again. I would help you understand me. But you seem to want to know nothing about me. Yet I know, I can see, that there is something between us. I feel it, and I see you feel it. Tell me that I am wrong, tell me to leave you alone, and I will. If not, Brenna, then tell me what you want of me.”
She walked a few steps closer to the bank, so that her boots were just at the edge of the water. Crouching down, she put her hands into the current and pulled out a fistful of shining, rounded pebbles. Then she threw them all in so that they rained lightly into the stream, the ripples swirling in the moving water.
“My parents were farmers. We lived in a tiny settlement near Halsgrof.”
He had assumed that much; they had first met in the woods outside Halsgrof. But she was speaking about her childhood, and he stayed silent and let her speak as she would.
“My father told me once that I was born with my eyes open, facing the world, and the midwife nearly dropped me when she saw my face. She wouldn’t stay to help my mother finish with the birth, so my father took care of me and her. Before night had fallen on that first day, our neighbors all knew I bore the Eye of the Allfather.
“My parents had four sons before me. The first three died in battle, and the fourth died of fever. I came later, the way that I am. Some people said I was a gift from the gods, and some, their judgment.”
She stood and turned, her eyes burning into his. “Do you know what I am, Vali? I am a person. I was a little girl, and now I am a woman, and that is all that I am.”
He took a step toward her. “I know that.”
“Why? Why do you know it when no one else has ever known it? Even my parents believed it. My mother wanted to apprentice me to a völva, someone who could ‘teach’ me to use my ‘gifts’ while she taught me the healing arts. She had made the arrangements. She thought I belonged in the woods, a crone, telling prophesy. That is why I left home in the middle of the night. I was thirteen. Åke took me into his home as a slave because he believes the gods gave me to him. But it’s not true. All I have ever seen out of either of my eyes is the world before me. The same world you see. And no one has ever seen me that way.”
“I do. Brenna, I do. I see you.” He took two more steps. She hadn’t backed away, and he was close enough that he could catch her if he reached out.
“Why? That is what I do not understand. What I cannot understand. Why would you see me, and no other?”
He did reach out, and he did catch her, wrapping her wrists in his hands. “Because I love you.”
The sound she made was one of pain and disbelief, and she twisted her arms in his grip, but he held on. “Brenna, hold. The girl who saved me in the woods all those years ago did so with courage. It was your heart, not your eye, that made you stand up and call him off.”
“He ran from my eye. So did you.” She pulled again, and this time, he pulled back, bringing her close.
“I was young and did not know better. He was an ignorant fool. But that is no matter. What matters is why you stood up. I don’t believe that Odin pulled you up and threw you before my father. You did that. The little girl with the big heart.”
She stared up at him, the eyes in question wide and gleaming. Her hair danced in the breeze, kissing her face and flying away, then back again. Vali released one of her arms and brought up his hand to cradle her jaw in it. With his eyes locked with hers, he said, “Brenna. Tell me what you want of me. If it’s in my power to give it, it’s yours.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t understand how to know.”
“Do you want me to leave you alone?” He thought he knew the answer. He hoped he did. But the silence after his question grew. “Brenna?”
She blinked and shook her head. “I do not.”
“Then I will help you understand.” He bent his head and kissed her.
Her lips were full and soft, pliable under his own, and at first he let the kiss be simply that: the touch of lips to lips. Brenna did not respond at all, except that he could feel her pulse quicken against his hand, which still cupped her face.
He moved his mouth over hers, as his body reacted to the silk and sweet of her, to the knowledge that she did want him, even as she remained still. Sliding his other hand over her hip and around to rest on the small of her back, he brought her tightly to him. She came stiffly, almost reluctantly, and Vali began to doubt her interest after all. Perhaps she did not like the feel of him.
But her breath came in quick, shaky bursts against his cheek, and she made a tiny moan that sounded like pleasure, small though it was.
He opened his mouth and brushed her lips with the tip of his tongue, testing her response.
She gasped and jumped from his embrace, and put her hand over her mouth. Vali, stunned, thought he might know where the trouble lay. He caught her hand and pulled her close again, noting the way her chest heaved, the way her eyes had flared wide.
Replacing her hand with his own over her mouth, he caressed the velvety skin with his fingertips. “Brenna. Are you a maid?” Rather than answer, she dropped her eyes from his and tried to free her head from his hold. He didn’t let her go.
He had thought her a thrall in all things to Jarl Åke. He had tortured himself with images of her coupling with the old man. As she had snubbed him of late, he had added to his torment the image of her enjoying that coupling. If she was yet a maid? Still innocent of any touch but his own—not even kissed before, as her reaction would seem to suggest?
Ah, then she would be truly his, and he would never let her go.
“Brenna, tell me. Have you never?”
Still she would not meet his eyes, but she shook her head. “No. Who would want me?”
He would. Forever. He wanted her right then.
But they were out in the growing cold, the rocky earth hard and unyielding under their feet, the horses less than a stone’s throw away. Vali cupped her face in both of his hands and kisse
d her forehead, on the small pink scar of the wound he’d treated the first time they’d spoken.
“We should return to the castle.”
Perhaps he was drunk with the revelation that she was his, unknown to any other, but he had not anticipated her reaction to his simple statement. He wanted to get her back to the castle, to a warm fire and a soft bed covered in furs. He wanted to honor her, to love her properly. But she gasped as though he’d slapped her, and she knocked his hands free of her. Then she turned on her heel and stalked to her horse, with such fierce intent that the mare shied a little, tossing her head, before settling again and preparing to take her rider.
She thought he was rejecting her.
“Brenna, no! Hold!” He caught up with her just as she had taken hold of the saddle, and he pulled her back to him. “I would have you. I dream of it. But I won’t take your maidenhead with a rut on the hard ground.” He brushed his fingers over her cheekbone. “If you would have me, let me come to you. Don’t wander in the dark tonight. Stay in your room and let me come to you.”
He kissed her again. This time, she was less rigid but still not responsive. With his lips grazing hers, he murmured, “Open your mouth, Brenna. Let me show you.”
She did, and he pressed his lips hard to hers and slid his tongue into her mouth. When his tongue found hers, she jumped and pulled away again. But not far this time, and this time the look on her face was surprise, not shock or suspicion. He smiled.
Then something truly magical happened. She smiled. And it was magnificent. Vali was, indeed, ensorcelled. By a brave, lonely girl with a brilliant, rare smile.
“May I come to you?”
She nodded—and grabbed his tunic in her fists. Pulling him close, she rose up on her toes and offered him her mouth.
He could hardly refuse a gift like that.
~oOo~
Vali had not yet grown used to living in the castle. It was cold and dark and felt more like a cave than a home, even in rooms full of sumptuous furnishings and fabrics. The long corridors lined with heavy doors confused him. More than once, he’d opened a door expecting to find his own bed behind it and had instead found something else, sometimes to his own embarrassment and the true resident’s. Once or twice, after a bit too much mead, he’d nearly convinced himself that the rooms shifted behind the doors.
But he knew Brenna’s door. She had taken one of the smaller rooms, at the end of a corridor on the east side of the building—about as far from his room as she could have made herself. This was not his first time walking down this corridor at night, the flickering light from the torch sconces breaking up what would have been oppressive darkness. He had trouble sleeping here, as he knew Brenna did. In his own wakefulness, he had seen her wandering. Once, he was ashamed to admit even to himself, he’d followed her back, almost to her room. She’d nearly caught him, too. Twice more after that, he’d gone to her room with the intent of knocking, but he hadn’t. He’d wanted her to come to him.
He doubted that she ever would have. Especially knowing now what he knew, that she had no experience of men, he knew she would never have made the move that would have brought them together.
But he had, and now, standing before the heavy oaken door of her bedchamber, he knocked.
After several seconds, as he prepared to knock again, he heard the heavy hasp lift, and the door creaked open. The room was warm and golden with a well-stoked fire. Before that welcoming glow stood a vision in white. Brenna had freed her hair from its braids, and she wore only a loose white gown with flowing sleeves.
“Gods,” he breathed. “Brenna.”
Looking up at him with wide, wary eyes, Brenna stepped backward and let him into the room. He closed the door, then went to her, reaching out to take her hands that she’d clasped together over her belly. When she tipped her head to watch their hands, her long, fair waves cascaded over her shoulders.
“You are beautiful, shieldmaiden.”
She lifted her face and met his eyes, and he pulled her to him and kissed her. As she had by the river, before they’d ridden back, she opened her mouth to him and let her body rest against his, and when his tongue entered her mouth, she let hers slide against it. He groaned and tangled his fists into her thick mass of hair—it was soft, all of her was soft, so much softer than he could have imagined, and as he held her close, he forgot himself and took her mouth with much more force than he’d intended, rocking his hips so that she would feel his need.
Wedging her hands between them, she pushed firmly on his chest until he knew himself again and released her. They were both breathless. Her red lips were all the redder now, and her cheeks had a pinkness made by his beard.
“Vali, I…no one…” She huffed and gave up.
He didn’t need more. It had been a very long time since he’d lain with a maid, and he had never lain with any woman for whom he felt so strongly, but he understood. “Forgive me. My need for you makes me rash.” He took her hand again and kissed it. “Why don’t we begin by showing each other ourselves.”
Brenna swallowed, and Vali saw the shieldmaiden rise up in her eyes—this was a fear she could contend with. Taking a step back, she shook her golden mane back from her shoulders and then pulled on a ribbon at her chest. The neck of her gown opened wide, and she shrugged, letting the soft fabric fall to the floor on a whisper.
And there she was, naked before him, her back to the fire. She stood, straight and proud, the shieldmaiden daring him to look. He let his eyes take their fill of her. Strength radiated from her, in her posture, in her long neck and squared shoulders, in the carved contours of her arms and legs, in the flat firmness of her belly and in the slimness of her hips, barely flaring from her waist. There was strength in the savage scars on her leg and her shoulder.
But there was softness, too, in the creamy pale of her skin, in her full breasts tipped with a rosy red like her lips, in the soft puff of dark gold at the join of her thighs, in the silken fall of her long locks, slipping forward over her shoulders and covering her breasts. Perhaps she had been favored by the gods after all.
When he met her eyes again, those wonderful, unique eyes, she cocked her head, like she was waiting for him.
Ah, yes—to remove his own clothes.
He was dressed as he had been when last he’d seen her, in leather breeches and boots and a belted woolen tunic. In safety, he slept without clothing of any kind. Under threat, he slept clothed and armed. To come to Brenna, he’d left his weapons behind. Now he unfastened his belt and sat on a tall wooden chair to pull off his boots. Then he stood and shed his tunic.
Brenna had seen his bare chest many times by now. He preferred to fight bare-chested, and after he’d been wounded, she’d become quite familiar with his back. Yet she watched him avidly, and when he turned from her—unsure why he did—to open his breeches and shed them, too, she came to him, and he felt her hand, small and rough, on his back. She traced the new scar. The skin around it was numb, and her touch felt strange, like faint lightning against his flesh.
He let his breeches fall and stepped out of them. Then he felt her pulling at the leather thong that bound the end of his braid. She pulled it loose and dragged her fingers through his long hair until the braid was undone as high as she could reach. He took over and unwove the hair at the top of his head, then shook it all out.
He turned to find her smiling at him. It took his breath away. Then she looked down, between them, and saw the part of him that showed his need most clearly, and she gasped her breath away as well.
She brought her eyes up to his. “I…I do not…I am…”
He put his hands on her shoulders, under the drape of her hair. She shook like a leaf in a breeze. The shieldmaiden was gone; left in her place was simply a girl, innocent and shy. “Let me take you to bed, Brenna. Let us touch and get to know each other. We need not rush.”
When she nodded, he took her hand and led her to her own bed. They lay together, face to face, embracing. Brenna leaned forw
ard and pressed her lips to Vali’s chest. The touch sent sparks of heat through his torso and into his loins, and he sucked in a heavy breath and clutched her close.
For a long moment she was quiet in his arms, her body still shaking. Indeed, the shaking had become more pronounced, not less, and he leaned back and caught her chin in his hand. He felt wetness on her skin.
“Brenna?” He lifted her face and saw that she was crying. “Have I frightened you?”
She shook her head at once, and he could see her seeking her courage. With a deep breath and a hard swallow, she said, “No. I am not frightened. Only overwhelmed. I’ve never…no one has ever touched me with…this.”
“With what, my love?”
God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) Page 8
