by Joanna Bell
"Wait," I gasp. "Eirik. Please. Wait."
Why am I asking him to wait? I don't know. He doesn't either. He growls and buries the fingers of one hand in the fur, before balling it into a tight fist.
"Don't ask me to wait. Don't reveal yourself that way and then ask me to wait, girl."
"But I don't know what to do!" I say. "I don't know – I don't want to do the wrong thing – I"
Everything is heightened at this moment. Even as I'm terrified of doing something wrong, or stupid, my body is opening itself up, blooming for him. I don't want him to wait. He's right – it isn't him I fear, it's myself. As it always is.
It's all erased, though, my mind cleared utterly of anything except the Jarl, when he wraps his hand around himself and guides his full length into me not one second later. My back arches up off the furs and I suck air in, in, in to my lungs, scrabbling at the furs, at him, my eyes tearing up with the pain even as I want it – all of it.
Eirik holds me, puts his hands on either side of my face, forces me to look at him. And that alone brings me back to myself, calms me. I open my mouth for his tongue as he begins to move in and out of me and he gives it to me.
"I haven't been with a woman since that night," he breathes, propping himself up on his forearms and sinking into me over and over. "I chose – I wanted it to be you, Paige. Does it hurt, girl? Does it hurt? I don't mean to hurt you but you're so wet, my sweet one, so wet and tight around me. Voss...voss!"
I don't know what 'voss' means but the way he says it it sounds like he's swearing. Pain radiates out from my center as the Jarl takes me, but I make no move to stop him, I don't cringe away. Why? Because he's becoming incoherent. His breath is coming faster. His mouth hangs open and his eyes darken and nothing I have ever experienced in my life has been as good as this, as good as this man in this state. When he puts a hand on my belly and holds me down, fucking me harder, I curl my body up to him even as I'm still not entirely convinced any of this is physically possible.
"Paige. Oh, girl. I'm almost there. You've almost got me there. I'll put my baby inside you and you'll be mine. Is that what you want? Do you want –"
"Yes," I whimper, not thinking at all, just feeling, just reacting. It's not that I don't mean it, though. I do. An entire lifetime of messaging, years of sex ed, of lectures and warnings and it's gone in an instant. It's so gone I'm not even giving permission, I'm begging. "Yes. Eirik, please. Please..."
"Voss," he growls, moving faster. It's now that I start to feel it. A little tickle, a little something inside, a spot he's hitting. I angle my hips up.
"Look at me, girl. Look at –"
He takes my chin in one hand and turns my head towards him just in time for me to catch his face melting into a grimace of pleasure as he slams himself into me again and holds himself inside this time, his body rigid. I strain up to him, force my body open, starving for what he's giving me.
I watch the Jarl as I take all of him, I see the way the urgency melts away. He reaches down between our bodies and pulls himself out of me gently. I'm sore, out of breath, oddly restless.
As he collapses onto the furs beside me, catching his breath, I surmise that it must have happened – he must have come. Just the thought of it sends a shiver through my sex. And with the shiver comes another sensation – wetness, warmth. I slip my hand between my legs and draw my fingers across my thigh, looking for proof.
Eirik is watching me intently. When he sees what I'm doing he laughs. "Are you making a point?"
I catch his eye, confused. "What? No – I was just, uh, I was just checking to see if, um –"
He flattens one of his palms on my belly and leans in to kiss my mouth. "You really are an innocent, aren't you? Not anymore, I've taken care of that – but the look on your face, one would think you'd never pleased a man before. You seem to think of it as some difficult thing."
"I haven't pleased a man before," I reply, squirming on the bed of furs as what I think is bemusement – do I really have the power to please a man like the Jarl? – turns as if by some earthy alchemy into an even deeper desire. I wanted him before, even before he was inside me, but it was a chaotic wanting. Looking at my fingers, feeling the evidence of his pleasure, knowing I caused it – it's too much. I roll towards him and bury my face in his warm chest, hooking one of my legs over his hip. He grins.
"Come dawn, girl, you'll be weeping tears of my essence."
It takes me a few seconds to figure out what he's saying, but when I do, when I realize he's just told me he's going to spend the entire night filling me with his cum, a hot flush of lust seizes me and I wrap my arms around the Jarl, pulling him to me even as the painful throbbing between my legs has yet to die down.
I see that he's almost ready again, but instead of pushing me open again – something I'm dying to feel once more – he pulls away, easily holding me down on the furs with one hand.
"Eirik –" I sigh, impatient.
He pushes himself down, kissing my breasts, then my belly. "Mmm," he murmurs, going lower still. "I like the sound of my name on your lips, Paige. I think I will give up being Jarl and stay here with you for the rest of my days if you promise to never stop speaking my name in that way."
I've never been the girl who caused this kind of response. I've looked at other girls enviously, wondered how it felt to inspire such carnality in men, but never even seriously considered that I might have the same power. And now that I'm tasting it for the first time I am utterly intoxicated. A tiny sigh from me and Eirik growls, opening his lips against my bare thigh like he's just barely controlling the urge to devour me. And all I want is more of that – more of him, more of his need.
"Eirik," I whisper as he slides his arms under my ass and beings me up to his mouth. I'm about to say it again when he bends his head – his stubble prickly on my thighs – and suddenly I'm moaning like an animal, digging my fingers into the solid flesh of his shoulders. White hot bliss radiates out from the spot where his warm, wet tongue slips over my clit and everything that was diffuse is suddenly focused, concentrated.
"Oh my God," I whimper, my eyes rolling back into my head. It's way too much. Nothing I've ever done to myself has felt like this perfect, slippery pressure. I push my fingers into the Jarl's hair, unthinking, and pull him against me as my thighs quiver.
"Eirik," I cry out as he hesitates for a brief moment at exactly the right time, letting my orgasm build and build before pushing his tongue over me again and not stopping even as I beg and scream and claw at his shoulders.
And then my mind is blank. I don't hear the sounds I make, there is no consciousness of anything except the pleasure spooling out from my very center, coming and coming and coming until I'm a sweaty, half-giggling, half-panting mess on the Jarl's bed of furs.
When I regain the ability to speak – and who knows how long it's been – one minute? Ten? I shake my head, disbelieving. My body is limp, wrung out. And when I open my eyes, there he is, looking at me.
"How did you do that?" I whisper softly, because speaking any louder is going to take effort and I don't even feel I have the strength to move a single finger at this moment.
Eirik smiles and settles down next to me, sweetly unable to keep his hands off my body. "Sometimes it just happens that way, girl. Sometimes two souls are both at exactly the right place. I had an idea it would be like this, though."
"Did you?" I ask, looking down and then right back up again when I see he is completely hard. "Wait – um –"
"Do you want to do something about that?"
Yes. Yes I want to do something about it. It's new to me, this need to satisfy, and it warms my belly even as I haven't quite come down from what Eirik just did to me. Perhaps his comment about me weeping tears of his cum by the morning was a simple truth instead of a figure of speech?
"Are you afraid of it?" He asks, as I eye but don't touch his rigid cock.
I shake my head. "No. I – uh, no. It's just –"
"Here," he says,
taking my hand in his and guiding it down, using his own fingers to wrap mine around his length. And when he feels me, his eyes close and he exhales heavily. It's like a drug, that reaction. All I want is more of it.
Tentatively, I slide my grip down, and then up again. The Jarl's hips jerk forward, pushing himself harder into my grip. "Like this?" I ask.
"You're killing me," he responds, moaning quietly. "The way you ask so sweetly, the look in your eyes – you really don't know, do you? You don't ask to make a show of your innocence, you ask because you really don't – ohh," he stops, looking down, watching my hand around him, "ohhh. Paige. You're going to finish me again, girl, and too soon once more."
"It's not too soon," I insist, leaning in and kissing Eirik's cheek, his temple, his neck, filled with a desperate urge to please, to take care of him in this one way. "It's not too soon. I – I want you to."
He grimaces. "Don't say such things, girl. You only guarantee it."
But he's stiffening in my hand, a brand new sensation for me, and clear liquid is leaking out, running down over the head of him, over my fingers. He's moving quicker, too, and so I move quicker.
The Jarl's eyes consume my body as he gets closer. They linger on my breasts as they bounce and move with the intensity of our rocking movements, and on my bare belly, my lips before he opens his mouth against them, pushing his tongue in deep, deep. There's aggression there now, and I find myself wanting nothing more than to fan its flames, to push it higher and higher.
"Voss," Eirik groans, pushing two fingers between my legs. "Paige, voss! Paige, Paige –"
The thought pops into my head as the Jarl gnashes his teeth with lust, slipping his fingers into me, palming my sex like it belongs to him, that nothing could be better than this. Nothing could be better than him like this. He grabs my wrist tightly, controlling my hand's movements when he begins to come and I look down, watching it, watching him spill himself all over my hand, my belly, the furs. He keeps holding on tight, too, until he's wrung every last drop out of himself, and then he looks down at my white hand and lets go quickly.
"I'm sorry, girl, I didn't realize –"
"Don't be sorry," I sigh, starry-eyed, totally drunk.
I roll over onto my back and look at the roof of the longhouse – the trunks of young trees arranged laid out around a small hole at the center, to let the smoke from the fire escape, and then the gaps filled in with mud and straw. What's happening to me? I almost ask the question out loud. I'm warm, relaxed, as content as I have ever been in my life. I can't look at Eirik either, even as I feel him there next to me, his jewel-like blue eyes still focused only on me. I'm afraid to look at him. He picks up on it immediately, and with such accuracy I wonder for a moment if he's some kind of mind-reader.
"Why do you look away, girl? Are you frightened?"
I nod, and am shocked to feel tears spring to my eyes. They're not sad tears, though – in fact they're unlike any tears I have ever experienced before. The Jarl runs his fingers tenderly over my cheek.
"What is it that frightens you?"
And even though I have a strong feeling he knows what's happening in my heart better than I do, I respond anyway. "It feels like I might drown," I tell him. "Right now, if I look at you, it feels like I might lose myself. I'm sorry, I'm babbling, I don't even know what I'm talking about."
"Oh but you do," Eirik says, pulling me back against him and holding me tight. "You said it yourself – you might drown. You don't know enough yet to know that there is nothing sweeter in life than drowning in another person."
I roll back over so I can look him in the eyes. "That just makes it scarier."
I'm telling the truth. Lying there naked in the Jarl's arms, with his wetness still slick on my thighs and the fire warming us both, it feels like it wouldn't take any effort at all to let go, to drift off into whatever it is that's happening between us and forget all about 2016, as if I had lived my whole life in the past and the whole of my life in the future had been nothing more than a dream.
I fall asleep with Eirik's body curled around me, a dull ache between my legs and the feeling in my heart that things are not anything like as simple as it feels to be in his arms.
Chapter 17
9th Century
Things change for me after that night with the Jarl. I sleep with him now, every night. I no longer work, there is no more grinding of grain or washing of pots or mucking out of the pig sties. I eat better, too, two full meals a day – one when I wake up and the second in the evening. In between there is dried fruit and apples and cheese to snack on, and no one to slap my hand away when I reach for them.
Eirik is busy during the days, ensconced in the longhouse with his higher ranking men discussing things he does not discuss with me or hunting for deer outside the camp walls and returning sometimes with a buck. On those evenings when the hunt is successful there is a communal feast, Viking women and children included. The Jarl always brings the loin to the table himself, rare and bloody, and cuts off the choicest piece for me before anyone else eats. I sit during these times, humming with the joy of being cared for, and accept his offering with great respect and affection. He is a good hunter, a good warrior – a good man.
And yet I am not free to go.
Two things happen, as my days in the Viking camp turn to weeks, and then to a month, two months, and so on. The first thing is my certainty that I must leave. I'll be missing now, at home. The police will be involved. My father and my friends will be sick with worry. These are not small things to me. They are the biggest things in my life. And there is nothing to be done but to get back to them. To do otherwise would be to condemn them to lives of loss and worry. I cannot do that.
The second thing is the nights. I spend them with the Jarl, in his arms, and I come to know him in a way I did not think it was possible to know another human being. Sometimes I think I know him better than I know myself. I begin to know what the smallest, most fleeting expression on his face means. I begin to divine his moods in the angle of his shoulders, the sound he makes as he sits down in the roundhouse with me after a long day.
"I feel sometimes as if I'm getting a degree in you," I say sleepily one night after he has satisfied me three separate times and I feel as if I will spend the rest of my life limp on Eirik's fur-laden bed.
"Mmm?" He asks. "A what? A dekree?"
A shiver runs through me – I'm usually more careful than this. It's become automatic now, the simple exclusion of certain parts of my life from all conversation. I would no more discuss a car engine with Eirik as I would my time-traveling with a casual acquaintance in the 21st century.
"Oh," I reply, "nothing, I'm tired, I don't know what I'm saying. I just meant that it feels as if I know you better than anyone else knows you. Almost as if I'm not a fully separate person from you, sometimes."
The Jarl pulls me to my hands and knees, then, and enters me, bending his body down over mine, clasping his hand around the back of my neck. That's how it is for us now. There is no real line between us, he takes my body as if he owns it and no part of me would have it any other way. In the mornings, I wake him up with my mouth or my hand, or simply by pressing my naked body back against him until his own arousal pulls him from slumber. And when he leaves the roundhouse, stopping at the door to pull me close and cover me with kisses before heading off to meet his men with the bouncing lope of a man who has just been completely satisfied, I am content in a way I have never been before.
As fall turns to winter, the nights become frosty. Sometimes a light snow falls, and the morning sun glistens and sparkles in the ice crystals that form on every surface. The Jarl returns late one night, hours after the sun has gone down, and finds me braiding pieces of straw into a rope, the way Anja and Gudry have taught me.
"They say when I have enough I can link them together for a hat," I say, keeping back the part where I think this hat might be useful on a long journey down the coast if it's during a hot or sunny time. I look up and see i
nstantly from Eirik's face that he is not concerned about my hat.
"What is it, babe?" I ask, using a term of affection he has only ever heard from me, but one he has decided he likes. "What's wrong?"
The Jarl sits down at the wooden table and beckons for me, pulling me onto his lap, undoing the knot at the back of my neck that holds up my tunic and burying his face in my breasts. He looks up a minute later as I run my fingers through his hair and kiss his dirt-smudged cheeks.
"It's going to be a long winter, Paige."
"Is it?" I ask. "Are you worried there won't be enough food?"
"No, we have enough grain and pigs to last us three winters. But this is our first winter staying here. Usually, my people raid the land of the Angles when it's warm, and return to the our land when the frost comes. Soon there will be more of us here, more coming, but until then I worry we're vulnerable in exactly the same way the Angles have been vulnerable to us – sitting out here in the open, not moving, with a barely-dug ditch to keep out the King's men."
"There's more than a ditch – those palisades are pretty sturdy," I say, taking what I remember of my reading on the Viking invasions of Britain and trying to apply it specifically to our current situation. "Does the King even have enough men? We're in the Kingdom of the East Angles now, aren't we? They have enough to worry about with the Mercians on their doorstep to care about such a small group of Northmen, I think."
Eirik looks at me sharply. "How in Freja's name do you think you know so much about the military concerns of the King?"
"I don't," I reply. "I'm just guessing."
"No you're not. I know it because what you say is correct."
"Then why are you worried?"
"Because it's my lot to worry. There's no one above me, girl. If the people starve, if they're killed by the enemy, it's on my head isn't it? It's my duty to think of these things. The women don't weave precious stones into my leathers for nothing, you know. I don't eat the best meat for no reason. I am given those things because I earn them. Because keeping me strong means the people keep themselves strong. And you still haven't told me how it is you're advising me on the strength of King of the East Angles!"
