She wrung out the cloth and came back to the bed. As she sat near him again, closer than she’d been before, she held out the cloth to him.
Without understanding, he took it. He cocked his head, hoping she understood the gesture.
She did, and tapped her own nose, then nodded toward him. She spoke a sentence in her own language, and she nodded again.
He put his fingers to his nose and felt something sticky and wet; they came back bloody. Oh. He wiped his face with the cloth until no new red soaked in, and he found new aches he hadn’t yet noted. As he wiped a final time, dragging the cloth over his cheek, he winced. By the next day, that eye would be purple, if it wasn’t already.
She knew well how to punch.
The thought made him smile—and wonder of wonders, she answered it with a small one of her own. What a beautiful sight. She reached out and brushed her fingers over his sore cheek.
The touch was tender and possessive, and it gave him a fresh burst of hope. His heart swelling until his chest felt too small to hold it, Leofric caught her hand in his. He put it to his mouth and kissed her palm. “Can you forgive me?”
“Forgive,” she said, her accent charmingly thick and her voice low but not hesitant. “Förlåt.”
The word was similar enough that Leofric thought she’d understood his word and had given him her own of the same meaning.
He pressed her hand to his chest. “Fur-lote?” he attempted and was rewarded with another scant smile.
“Can you, Astrid? Forgive?”
Her eyes were on their joined hands for a long time. “Jag förlåter dig. Bara dig.” She lifted her eyes to his to check for understanding, but though he’d listened closely, he hadn’t understood. “You,” she tried in his tongue. “Forgive you.”
In her tone, and in her eyes, he saw that she meant that her forgiveness was for him alone. What that meant for her life beyond this room, he didn’t know, but for now, on this night, Leofric was gladdened enough that she could forgive him.
But when he leaned toward her, meaning to kiss her, she freed her hand from his hold and pulled away.
Perhaps he should have let that be the end of it, but he couldn’t. After the shocking violence of their coupling, they’d had this moment of understanding, and he wanted it to be more. He wanted her to know gentle pleasure. He wanted to give it to her.
So he reached for her, catching her hand before she could lock it again under her crossed arms. When he tugged against her resistance, fire ignited in her eyes, and she pulled more sharply. He tightened his hold but didn’t hurt her.
“Astrid. Let me give you pleasure. Do you understand pleasure?”
She shook her head.
Rather than force her closer, he released her hand, rose onto his knees, and leaned toward her. Guarded, her forehead creased with a leery frown, she watched him come. When he took her chin in his hands, drawing his thumb down the line of the scar crossing her lips, she didn’t pull back.
“Let me show you,” he said and brought his mouth to hers.
She didn’t fight him, but neither did she return the kiss. He eased his lips over hers, slowly, tasting her with the merest tip of his tongue. After a moment, she tipped her head away—not sharply, and not far. Just enough to put a breath between them.
“Det är inget,” she whispered again. He wished he understood the words; she’s said them over and over since they’d been bare in this bed together, and they seemed important. But, although he tried hard to make out each syllable, he couldn’t discern their meaning.
“Ingenting.”
“I do not understand, Astrid.” But he thought he did, a little. It seemed like a statement of resistance or reluctance—in her posture and her tone, he thought he saw that much. She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself of something that she didn’t believe.
She hadn’t pulled much away, so he kissed her again. If she felt conflict, he wanted to help her resolve it. This time, he moved his mouth with more intent, taking her head in his hands, pressing his tongue against the seam between her lips.
Her hands came up and hooked over his shoulders, and Leofric thought he had her, but she shoved him away. Her eyes flashed hot, and she spoke a string of foreign words, far too quickly for him to make out anything but their music.
Then she surged forward and kissed him—hard, demanding, fierce, the way she’d kissed him before he was fully undressed. Before she’d jumped away from him and curled into herself.
Though it had been passionate and intensely erotic, Leofric didn’t want that brutal coupling again. There had been too much pain in it—for them both. When she tried to shove him to lie back on the bed again, he grabbed her arms.
What he did next was a risk, but she seemed suspicious of his gentler actions. He brought her close in a firm embrace, overpowering the sudden tension in her body, and he laid her flat on the bed, beneath him.
She reacted exactly as he’d expected—full of fight, her expression tight with anger. “Nej!” she snarled, and spat out another string of furious words. Tired of being struck, he grabbed her wrists and held her still.
“I will not hurt you, Astrid. I want to be gentle. You are safe.” She quieted at his last words, and he thought she understood at least that, so he said it again. “Safe.”
In the space of her rigid quiet, Leofric bent to her and pressed his lips lightly to the corner of her mouth. He forged a path of kisses over her cheek to her ear, where he whispered “Safe,” again and sucked her soft lobe between his teeth.
She took a cautious breath, and he felt a layer of tension melt from her body. That small victory charged his own body as if lightning had moved through it. He kissed her neck, letting his tongue taste her skin. Her shoulder, licking the length of a scar. The notch at the base of her throat, laving its deep recess.
Her chest. Each time he came upon a scar, he attended to it, tasting its full length, trailing his tongue over the smooth, raised new flesh.
By the time he arrived at her breasts, her breaths were deep and slow, and he thought if he released her arms, she wouldn’t fight him. He lifted his head and found her watching him warily.
“Be at ease, love.”
Her only response was the calm that came with another breath, and he took that as leave to continue.
Despite the scars crossing them—he thought of the cane and the lash tearing at such delicate flesh and wouldn’t allow himself to shrink from the image—her breasts were lovely. Neither large nor small, they were round and full, and the peaks were of a pink so faint her skin seemed opalescent. All of her skin, except the scars, was fair and delicate. It was a stark contrast to the warlike woman inside it.
Her nipples were sharp points, and as he took in their beauty, that pale pink skin went tight under his gaze. It was the first clear sign of her arousal, the first true encouragement he’d had that forcing his point would not be their undoing.
Bending his head to her body, he tasted that puckered skin with his tongue. She drew in a sharp breath, and another when he sucked her nipple into his mouth. While he circled his tongue over her skin, he released her hands, wrapping one arm around her, under her back, and filling the other hand with her other breast.
Her hands went to his head; he felt her fingers sliding into his hair, and he smiled against her breast. She was with him. She would let him give her pleasure.
He attended fully to her breasts, traveling back and forth between them, taking his time, laving her gently, reveling in the way her body continued to relax by degrees. She gave few signs of her pleasure beyond that softening in his arms. She made no sound but the sighs of deep breaths released, and her hands in his hair didn’t pull.
And yet he knew, he understood, that he was giving her something important. Each deep breath she took in came more quickly than the one before it, and he could feel her heartbeat throbbing throughout her body, making her blood rush and pulse. Her nipples took on a deeper pink as her skin flushed.
&nb
sp; When his hand wanted to wander lower, over her belly, between her legs, Leofric forbore. He wanted to approach her slowly, with his mouth first. He didn’t know if she’d ever been tasted like that—few women he’d been with had, and even the servant girls were often scandalized when he sought it—but he knew that it wouldn’t have happened in the Black Walls.
Letting her breasts go, he continued his mouth’s journey, over her sharp ribs, her concave belly, still lingering over each scar he came to. The worst of her scars spanned her belly, just below her ribs. The corruption had gone deep in that wound, and Elfleda had cut away a wide swath of flesh and then seared closed what remained. The only time he’d heard Astrid scream was when this wound had been treated. She’d been delirious with pain and fever, and the thin, pathetic sound had broken Leofric’s heart.
Over this scar, he took especial care. Under the gentle attention of his lips and tongue, her skin twitched and quivered. “I will keep you safe now, I swear it,” his whispered against the ridged skin.
He left the scar and traveled downward and felt no shocked resistance in her limbs. Pressing his mouth to her sparse, silky golden curls, he shifted his hold of her, widening her thighs and taking hold of the globes of her bottom. He drew his tongue lightly through her folds, over the pearl between them, tasting her deepest essence.
“Åh,” she gasped and lifted her hips, pressing herself to his face. Leofric’s sex, hard and throbbing from the moment she’d first begun to find ease in his arms, leapt at the sound, and he groaned and sucked her pearl into his mouth.
She wasn’t shocked or shamed or scandalized by this; she knew it, and that meant he wasn’t the first to have tasted her in this way and given her pleasure. It didn’t surprise him; she had made it quite obvious over these months that her people had a different relationship to their bodies than his people did. No woman—or man, for that matter—in this world would have been so unaffected by their own nakedness as Astrid had been.
It didn’t surprise him, but it made a flare of disappointment in him. He wanted her to be his, only his. He wanted to be the only pleasure she knew. But if he couldn’t be her only, then he would be her last.
And her best.
With that in mind, Leofric put his mind to making what he was doing explosive for her. He wanted her to cry out. He wanted to know her scream of ecstasy. This woman who would not reveal her pain, he would make revel in her pleasure.
He slid his arms farther under her, shrugging her thighs onto his shoulders and wrapping his arms around her so that he could take hold of her breasts as his lips and his tongue laved and delved deep over her most tender, most vulnerable place. Keeping every touch gentle, slow and devoted, he found the rhythm that brought up her deepest needs until her body writhed beneath his, within his.
His own need was so great that he couldn’t keep himself from thrusting into the linens and furs, shoving his sex against the mattress. He needed to surge up and push her fully beneath him, to take her, to fill her sultry, honey-wet sheath, but he wanted her first pleasure with him to be only hers. When her fists tangled sharply in his hair and he heard her finally, finally moan, he nearly released into the linens. Her hips thrust frantically against him, and he tasted her release as it washed over his tongue.
Mercy, what a thing that was. To give this woman real pleasure. To know it was true. To feel it. To taste it.
Aching with need, he slid himself up, over her, until they were face to face—and he saw shock in her eyes. Not for what he’d done, but for what he’d given her. He didn’t need words to know it. It was written in the sheen over her flushed face, in her glittering eyes, in her heaving breath. In the smile that blossomed before him.
“Knulla mig. Knulla mig.”
Whatever the words meant, the voice that spoke them was husky and breathless, and her hand pushed between them and took hold of him. This time, she didn’t fill with fear at the feel of him. This time, her eyes locked with his, she pressed him to her own sex and sighed.
She wanted him.
Holding those beautiful blue eyes with his own, Leofric flexed his hips and filled her full.
When she’d mounted him, he’d been too surprised and confused to feel anything more than the shock and the twisted, stabbing surge of sensation. He hadn’t wanted that at all, no matter how intense his completion had been. He hadn’t wanted the fear and fury that warred in her eyes, he hadn’t wanted the pain for either of them. And then she’d nearly choked the life from him. No, he hadn’t felt anything he’d wanted to feel.
Now, this time, he filled her and felt her body sliding over his, inside and out, felt the velvet of her sheath and the silk of her skin, ruched with scars. He felt the way she clutched around him, pulling him deeper. He felt her back in his hands, arching up, felt her breasts like soft pillows at his chest. He felt her hands—mercy, her hands, skimming over his back, her nails dragging lightly over his skin.
But all he saw was her eyes.
While their bodies moved together, their eyes stayed locked, and Leofric understood everything about her. For this moment, at least, he knew her completely. Knew what she wanted, what she needed. Who she was.
He loved this woman.
During his devotion to her pleasure, his own body had been strummed to a frantic pitch, and Leofric felt that tension fraying his control. But just as he began to truly fight his own finish, the light changed in her eyes, and she sighed.
“Ja. Leofric, ja.”
At the sound of his name in her voice, and everything it meant, he surged hard, finding her deepest place, and she completed, sinking her nails into his back.
He flexed twice more to carry her to the end, and then, just as he was about to finally release his own tether, she shoved on his hips and tried to squirm from their connection.
She wanted him to pull out, not to spend in her.
But he’d decided he wanted her with child. It was the best way to ensure her comfort.
And, now that he’d let the idea take root in his mind, he wanted it. He simply wanted it. He flexed again, groaning harshly as his seed surged up.
“Nej! Snälla!”
That, he thought, was a plea, and he pulled out, just as his body could no longer be denied. He wouldn’t, couldn’t force her. Dropping his head to her chest, he grabbed his sex and helped his finish along, spasming with each pull, pining for the hot sheath he’d had.
When he was done and could focus again, he found clear blue orbs glinting suspicion at him.
She shook her head and spoke long in her language. Several sentences. None of the words but nej made sense to him. He assumed he’d just gotten a lecture about being careful where he cast his seed.
He would need much more language between them before he could persuade her to the merits of his will on the point. For now, he said something he knew she would understand—the word in her language that she’d taught him this night.
“Förlåt?”
As before, the attempt earned him a smile—this one packed with the clear message that there was only so much forgiveness to be had.
“Förlåt,” she answered. Her pronunciation was different, far more nuanced. “Gör det inte igen. No…again.”
“No, I won’t. I promise.”
She nodded. “Prom-ise.” He could see her trying out the shape of the word in her mouth.
He was pleased beyond measure to find her trying to use the language he needed to teach her. There was so very much hope in this night, and when he’d come into this room in the morning and found the guard on the floor, he’d thought the end for her loomed heavily over them.
The torches were guttering and the fire turning to embers. A chill of a late night near the harvest had crept into the room. Leofric rolled to his back and pulled the fur up, drawing Astrid with him as he moved. When he tried to tuck her under his arm to lay her head on his chest, she pushed back, locking her arm on the bed, and frowned down at him.
Did she wish him to leave? That was a sou
r thought, but he’d go if she wished it. Her expression, however, wasn’t one of impatience. She had that leery shadow again, like she was trying to understand what he was at.
Had she never slept in such a way before? No, she had—he’d held her like such when she’d been too ill to know it. But had she never chosen to? Had she never been close enough with another to have this?
He patted his chest, where he wanted her head to rest, and she finally relented.
Leofric fell asleep with her hand scratching lightly over his chest and belly, moving the hair there like a whisper.
~oOo~
He woke in pale sunlight to the creak of the door opening. Astrid had rolled away from him in the night and lay, apparently sleeping deeply, with her back to him. He was between her and the door, and he rolled and rose onto his elbow, blocking her from the view of whomever had entered.
Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Page 18
