God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1)

by Susan Fanetti

  Laughing, he caught her hands. She was nearly beyond reason. “What has possessed you, shieldmaiden?”

  She calmed and looked up at him. “I don’t know. I feel day and night like I need to be close with you. Just now, seeing you training, the way your body…” Her cheeks reddened, and she took a step back. He held her hands fast, or she would have pulled them from his grip. “You think that is what it is—that I am possessed?”

  He had not meant to recall for her something that had often been said about her—that her strange eye meant that she might be possessed by the gods at any time. “Only by our child. The fathers among us tell me that how you feel is not so unusual.”

  “You’ve spoken about me with others? About this?”

  “Love, they’ve noticed.”

  Deeply flushed now, Brenna tried harder to pull away, but Vali kept his hold. “There is no shame in it. It pleases me that you want me so, and that you show how you feel among our friends. I only would like to go slower now. While I enjoying tossing your new skirts and taking you quickly on the stairs, now I would lay with you in our bed for a while.”

  The side of her mouth quirked up. “Have we time?”

  It was his turn to pull at her lacings. “We have the time we make.”

  Loosening her hangerock so that he could pull it over her head, Vali turned and stepped backward toward their bed. Then Brenna stopped, resisting his draw. He cocked his head.

  Before he could ask, she said, “I want…”

  Rather than try to draw her closer, he stepped forward, coming to her. “What do you want, wife? I can deny you nothing.”

  “When I sat on you in the hall. Over your legs as I was…”

  “Yes?” He could still feel the weight of her on his thighs.

  “I could feel you. Pressing against me.”

  Vali’s body clenched with the memory of it, and he groaned and hooked his hand around the back of her neck, under the heavy fall of her loosely-braided hair. He bent and claimed her mouth, finding her tongue at once. She laid her hands over his shoulders and dug her fingers into the muscle there.

  When they were breathless, he pulled back enough to ask, “Do you wish to ride me that way?”

  She nodded. “Can we? On a chair?”

  “Of course. But I want you bare. I want to feel all of you.”

  Smiling broadly—not yet a day had passed since he’d made her that promise that he hadn’t made her beam such happiness into the world—she took a step back and pulled her loosened hangerock over her head. She did it slowly, with her eyes on his. Then she pulled her boots off one at a time and let them drop. Each piece of clothing came off while he watched, and while she watched him watch, as if she were making a show for him, until she stood bare before him, the tail of her braid lying over one round breast.

  “Gods, wife. You make me ache.”

  In a gesture that was becoming habit for her, she looked down and swept her hand over the small new mound of her belly. He found that sight, and the sweet protectiveness and devotion to their child it conveyed, powerfully alluring, and he groaned.

  She turned her face up to his. “I ache also, Vali. Sit.”

  He shed his boots and breeches and sat on a tall-backed wooden chair. The fire had been banked for the day, and the room was chilly, but he was so hot with want that it hardly mattered. He patted his bare thighs in invitation, and Brenna straddled him, wrapping her hand around his shaft to hold him steady as she settled her weight on his lap. She was hot and slick, always ready for him, and he closed his eyes, growling at the liquid friction as her body took him in.

  She moaned, letting her head fall back. Her braid dropped from her shoulder and dangled over his hands on her back. He caught the silky rope and wrapped it around his fist, then sat forward, pulling her back, so that he could taste the flesh of her throat, her chest, her breasts.

  As he leaned over her, Vali felt her belly pressing against his, their son resting snugly between them. Soon, Brenna would be too great with child for them to couple face to face like this. The thought heated his blood even more, made his need to see her all the more urgent.

  She was a sight to behold in her pleasure, a pleasure only he had ever brought her. And now, as her need was nearly beyond her ability to manage it, she was like a wild thing. To hear this woman, his wife, who had been so guarded and inexperienced, grunting and moaning, to see her writhe and flex on him, her muscles rolling through tautness and slack as she climbed to release, to see her beautiful face so intent and enraptured, to scent her arousal in the scant space between them, to taste it on her flesh, to feel her body clenching around his, milking him—Vali had a great deal more experience than she, but he had never felt with any other woman the fire he felt with Brenna. It burned deep, in his marrow. In his soul.

  It had been his intent to slow down and savor her, but he wasn’t so certain he could manage it any better than she. With a groan of defeat, he caught her breast between his teeth and sucked, pulling the sweet flesh into his mouth, dragging her nipple over the edge of his teeth, knowing well how she would respond. There could be no slow savoring once he claimed her body in this way.

  She arched violently backward, taking a loud inward breath, then letting it out. Her hands dug into his shoulders, and her hips trebled the pace of their rocking. Moaning out every release of breath, each one coming more quickly than the one before it, she began to rock so hard that she bounced on his thighs and made it impossible to keep his mouth on her.

  Every bounce brought him deeper, closer, but she seemed to have found a level rather than her peak. It took all of his will to hold his own release back. “Brenna!” he gasped. “Please!”

  She stopped abruptly and went still, staring down at him, panting, her face flushed and glowing, her loose braid prettily disheveled. With her miraculous eyes locked on his mundane ones, she brushed her hand over his face, combing her fingers through his beard.

  “I love you.”

  He smiled at her whispered words. “And it is the greatest thing I have known in my life that you do.”

  “Make me see our stars.”

  It was the way she described her release, and Vali was charmed, as always, by its sweet innocence.

  “Hold on to me, shieldmaiden. I will bring you all the stars the gods ever put in the sky.” When she hooked her arms around his neck, he changed his hold on her, slid his arms under her thighs, and then stood. The move drove him in deeper, and he grunted with the effort to hold back.

  Brenna gasped, and her eyes flared.

  “Make yourself loose. Let me move you.”

  She nodded, and Vali felt her take a long, deep breath and soften her body. Then he lifted her away and brought her back, slowly, rocking his hips at the same time. He saw the fire catch in her and knew that she would peak. Thus freed from his torment, he abandoned restraint and slammed their bodies together until the room resounded with their mingled shouts, and they released together.

  Spent, Vali could no longer lock his knees, and he fumbled clumsily to the bed, just managing to lay Brenna down gently before he collapsed at her side. He set his hand on her belly, which swelled and receded with each of her heaving gasps.

  Brenna looked down at his hand. “I wonder what he thinks of us.”

  Vali chuckled and bent to press his lips to the mound where his child lived. “That he comes to a family full of love and will make it even fuller.”

  ~oOo~

  “If the winter doesn’t break, come summer, I fear we will leave many round bellies behind.” Leif sighed and turned from the scene at the back of the room, where young Harald and Sten paid enthusiastic attention to a comely young village woman, whose breasts were bared and whose skirts had been pushed high, and who was audibly content to be on such display.

  Leif, Vali, and several other men lazed before the hearth in a room off the hall. They’d never been able to understand the purpose of the room, and none of the villagers understood it, either. It had held onl
y a table carved with strange markings. Now it held furs and mats and made a comfortable place to rest and converse. Smaller than the hall, it was easier to warm, and the hearth was large and welcoming. It had become a room where people went to enjoy company and ease. It felt to Vali more like home than anywhere else in Estland.

  Anywhere else but the rooms he shared with his wife, that was. Nowhere had ever been such a home as that.

  As her belly grew, Brenna had begun to tire quickly and had taken to retiring early each night. He let her go up alone so that she would sleep. When he went up with her, they rarely slept right away. Her interest in the pleasures of their joining remained voracious.

  Though the winter was aging, it had not lost its vigor. Yet another storm had dropped fresh snow nearly to the tops of their boots. The drifts around the castle reached the windows on the second level. They had dug a corridor all the way to the village, so that they could convey supplies to the teams of men who kept the livestock, and so that each team could be relieved for a few days of warmth and comfort in the castle.

  Other than that work and training, and repairing damage from the cumbersome heft of the accumulated snows, the men had grown idle and bored. With little else to do, they had been drinking heavily and coupling as often as possible with any woman willing.

  The women were much less bored, still tasked with the care and feeding of the group and the tending of the castle, but they didn’t seem to mind the lavish attentions being paid them.

  At Leif’s words, however, Olga’s head shot up, and she turned a fierce, dark look on him from where she stood near the fire. Vali was surprised to see Leif catch her look and turn away, abashed. She gathered up her skirts in a huff and stalked back, catching the arm of the younger woman and dragging her away from her admirers and out of the room.

  Vali saw Leif’s regard follow Olga through the room and out. He knew they’d spent time together; she had taught Leif her language, and he had helped her refine her understanding of theirs, and Olga had charge of the castle, so she spoke often with all of those who had stepped into the lead. But now Vali wondered if there were more to them than friendship and cooperation.

  “Are you and she…?” He let those words stand for the whole question.

  Leif shook his head. “No. She is a fine woman and beautiful. I care. But we leave soon, perhaps as soon as two months, and I would not take her and then discard her.”

  There was more in Leif’s tone, so Vali said nothing, and waited to see if Leif would say more.

  He did. Staring at the fire, he added, “I would ask her to come back with me, but she is too fragile for our world.”

  “Fragile? Olga?” She was slight in stature, yes. But Vali had seen her put her hands deep into the belly of a man to close a bleeding wound. She had survived the horror their camp had been for the captives, and she had made herself an indispensible part of their life here.

  She was their equal—more than that, she was their friend. ‘Fragile’ was not how Vali saw her. No more fragile than Brenna.

  “Her bones are like a bird’s. When I put my hand around her arm, I feel I could break her with a squeeze. She is not made for our world.”

  There was true regret in Leif’s voice, and Vali was moved. He thought of how he would feel if he would somehow be separated from Brenna—how he’d have felt even before they had been wed. “You could stay here, with her.”

  Leif turned to Vali, frowning. “No. Åke will not give up seasoned raiders. He will bring peasants to settle here, and he’ll leave a younger son to govern. Ulv, I’d guess, who is smart but too gentle to make a life raiding. His warriors he will send off to find new treasure.”

  “You speak as if it will be only Åke who returns. I am here for Snorri, remember. I hope the alliance between them has held.”

  “And if it has not, then you and I are friends no more.” Leif looked back at the fire. “And Brenna’s position is difficult in any case.”

  He needed say no more; his worries about how Åke would take losing Brenna had been a regular refrain for months.

  Vali nodded; it was a thought that lurked always against the back wall of his mind: he had taken Åke’s talisman from him. She was no longer the jarl’s pet. Now she was Vali’s wife. He had married her and seeded her, and she would bear his child. It would be years before she might pick up a shield again. In fact, she might never. Here in Estland, she might always be a farmer’s wife.

  And Vali a farmer. Love Brenna as he did, willing as he was to see her happy at any cost, the thought of living the balance of his days as a farmer unsettled Vali’s heart. Would he be able to make a good home for his family in that way? Would he be contented in his own heart?

  They had told no one of their plan to stay, and Vali felt sure that it was news better left unsaid. Not all of the raiders had fully embraced their amity with the villagers, and Leif was right—their friendship balanced on the narrow point of the alliance between two jarls a sea away, two jarls who had warred often. To know that two of their great warriors planned to give up their home could well cause trouble. Right now, in the quiet within this savage winter, the only thing in strife was nature itself. They were at peace; they had friends, a home. His shieldmaiden had found a home, and he would not risk it while he could avoid doing so.

  The strife would come. They would need to fight for the life she wanted, the home they had found together. They both knew it, so it didn’t need to be said. Not now, not yet.

  Vali finished his mead and set his cup away. He stood and laid his hand on Leif’s shoulder. “I will see you in the morning. My friend.”

  Leif nodded, still staring into the fire, and Vali went up to bed.

  He missed his wife.

  “Bring the heddle tighter, or the weave won’t be smooth.” Olga put her hand under Brenna’s and pushed up, encouraging her to do as she’d suggested.

  Brenna knew how to weave. She’d been taught, at least, years before. But she loathed it. Nothing in all the worlds was more boring than standing at a loom moving strands of wool together. Her attention wandered within minutes, and then she had a knotty rag that no one would want to wear.

  Woman’s work was dreary stuff. She didn’t mind cooking; that could be made to be interesting—it was even physical at times—and she felt pride when the people she’d fed enjoyed what she’d prepared. But cleaning and weaving? Most days, she’d have happily taken her sword to the loom.

  It would be better when the winter was over, and she and Vali could begin to plan their new life. When she had her own home to make and land to work, and a new babe to raise. Now, trapped inside the gloomy walls of the castle, cleaning and cooking—and weaving—for a herd of ungrateful men, Brenna was out of temper quite often.

  But she wanted to be good at these things. She knew that her days as a shieldmaiden were interrupted, if not finished. It would be years before she could leave her child and sail away, and she would not wish war on her home so that she might fight near it. She had married, and her husband had planted his seed. Now she was a wife; soon she would be a mother. She wanted to make her name as proudly in those pursuits as she had made it battle.

  She could not, however, pretend that her new work was as interesting as her old.

  The worst of it was that she had been closed off from discussions and planning—about patrols, about repairs, about preparations for the summer. No one had begrudged her her place as a leader among the raiders as long as her belly had been flat, but as soon as the babe had made himself known, Leif, Orm, all the men—even Vali—had stopped making a seat for her at their talks.

  When she’d confronted her husband about it, he had been sympathetic—and unmovable. Her job, as he saw it, was to grow their child. Her attentions should be there, he said, and on learning the language of the place she wished to settle. The concerns of the castle and the village were no longer hers. The people who could do that work should have the say.

  And she’d had no strong rebuttal. She’d be
en relegated to the kitchen and the loom room.

  While they worked, Olga and she practiced the Estland tongue, and Olga assured her that she was improving. Brenna didn’t believe it, however. When Olga asked her to translate a word, she could usually do it, but when she tried to understand the Estland women around her, she still caught only half of their meaning. At best.

  Her mind did not want to know more words than it already knew. Her parents had spoken often of their fear when she was small, because she had not spoken any word until she’d had four years. It had lent credence to people’s belief in her strangeness. Perhaps, though, she simply was stupid in this way.

  She shoved at the heddle in a fit of pique. “I hate this loom!”