by Joanna Bell
I don't climb off his lap right away because my legs feel like jelly, all my strength is gone. Eirik is panting, as unable to speak as I am, but he manages to lift me off a few moments later, with a gentleness that was not recently in evidence.
"I love that," I whisper as he wraps my body, my arms and legs, around him. "Eirik, I love –"
But I can't finish, not yet. I still need to catch my breath.
"What?" He asks. "I know what you love, Paige. I know what –"
"No," I say. "I mean yes, that, of course. But I mean that thing you do, how rough you can be with me and then how sweet. The difference in you, the before and after – I love it. I love causing it. I love doing that to you."
He locks one arm around me and slips into the hot-spring, taking me with him. Then he kisses my cheek. "Sometimes I fear I'm too rough with you, Paige. Even as I planned to show you this place tonight I told myself I would control it, I wouldn't let my desires get the better of me. But girl, it's been so many moons since I was inside you and as little as you are in comparison to me you have some kind of hold over me, some ability to bring an animal out of my chest."
"An animal out of your chest," I repeat, smiling. "I even love the way you say things. I love everything about you."
I move to settle in against that broad chest, but he holds me back, looking into my eyes.
"What?" I ask innocently.
"It's what you just said," he replies. "Say it again. Repeat it."
"I just said I liked what you said about –"
"Paige!"
I bite my lip and grin, knowing I'm testing him, but also knowing he's in a mood right now where I can probably get away with almost anything. "I said I love everything about you, Eirik."
"I know it, girl. I've known it for a long time. But it's the first time you've said the words – did you know that?"
I nod, suddenly a little shy, but the Jarl doesn't allow me to turn my face away. "What is it?" He demands. "What is that look on your face, Paige-from-across-the-sea?"
When I speak again, my voice is no longer filled with the cocky pride of pleasing my husband. It's quieter, quiet enough so he has to lean in and stop splashing the warm water up over my back so he can hear.
"So you're not angry with me?" I ask. "You're not – because I left, I mean? I wasn't sure if –"
"Stop." He says. "Why do you always ask questions you already know the answers to, my love?"
"Because I don't know the –"
"Oh yes you do. You know I'm not angry. I said it many moons ago, girl, I cannot be angry with you. And I said this, too – that you would come back. You love me, and I knew you would be back. I don't know what it is you had to do – my men said you sought a healing plant for my arm, but I think it's not the whole story. No matter, I knew you would return. And here you are, where you should be."
"You're right," I say softly. "It's not the whole story – it's not a lie, though, I did leave to find a healing plant. Something to save you. I thought you were dying."
"I was dying. But I didn't. They told me in my fever that you were gone and the gods knew I had to stay alive, to be here when you returned to me. How could I leave this world, knowing you would come back for me, and find me gone? Perhaps one day you will tell me the rest of the story? Perhaps not. What matters is you're here. Our son is here, and he's healthy and strong and as bright as the dawn – like his mother."
The Jarl runs one hand down the length of my back, casually cupping one of my buttocks, and I know he'll need me again soon.
"I have a marriage gift for you, Paige," he says a moment later and I look up, thinking he's making a dirty joke. His expression is serious, though.
"Oh?" I ask, scooping up the warm spring water with one hand and letting it run down his neck and chest.
"I've sent Veigar south, to bring your friend – the one you left with. What was her name? Willa?"
I sit up straight, filled with a sudden, desperate hope and terrified it's a game of some kind, a trick. "Please don't say things like that," I say, "if they're not true. Eirik, please –"
"Why wouldn't it be true?" He asks, bemused. "You said she was your best friend, and I saw how you worried about her and her little children. I thought it would be a way to show my love on the occasion of our marriage, to bring your friend and her people here to live with us, as part of our family. Is it unbelievable?"
"No," I whisper, even as I'm afraid to believe it. "No. But – Jarl, she has a brother, Eadgar. He is my –"
"Girl, they've all been sent for. All her people. They know you're here waiting for them. Don't worry."
"Do you mean it?" I ask again.
"It pleases you, then?" He replies, tilting my head to the side and kissing my neck. "It gives your heart peace?"
"Yes," I breathe, wrapping my arms very tightly around his neck. "Yes, Eirik. You have no idea. I have been so worried about them for so long. You don't know. All I've ever wanted – although I didn't realize it until quite recently, and you played a part in that – is for the people I love to be safe and healthy and well-fed."
"You only realized that recently?"
I rest my head on one of his massive shoulders, basking in the simple joy of not being worried about a single thing. "I told you it's different where I come from, Eirik. It's not just our clothing or our accent. It's what we value, what we do with our lives. In some ways it's the opposite of this place, where people often go hungry and a small injury can lead to lifelong struggles – or even death. Here you have to deal with all of those threats, every day. Where I come from the people don't worry so much about those things. But we're not as close to our families or our friends as your people, we don't spend so much time with those we love."
"What do you do?" Eirik asks and then sees that I haven't understood the question. "What do you do when you're alone, is what I meant. When you're not spending time with your families and the ones you love, what are you doing?"
I laugh quietly, thinking of how long – how many days and weeks – it would take me to explain to a 9th century Viking what it is we in the 21st century spend so much time doing. And yet somehow I know that even if I could do an adequate job of explaining what the internet is, or TV or commutes or mortgages or any of those hallmarks of modern life, I still wouldn't be able to make my husband understand why it is 'my' people spend so much time attending to them. I don't think I know anymore myself.
"I don't know," I say. "I don't know what we're doing. I thought I was going to miss so many things from my old life. But the truth is the only things I miss are people, and only a few. I don't miss my –" I pause, because I won't even be able to explain something as alien as missing 'things' to Eirik. "I guess it just took me longer than some people to figure it out," I smile. "To figure out what matters, and what doesn't."
"Sometimes," the Jarl says, pulling me in even closer, "I worry the people will learn that you're the sharper of the two of us. I worry they'll all wake up one day and realize that their Jarl's wife is the one who should be planning all our raids. But other times you tell me things like this and I know my position is safe."
Laughing, he ducks my playful slap, and catches my wrist midair. "Are you happy, Paige?" He asks, suddenly serious again.
A wisp of smoky lust spirals up through my body from the way Eirik is looking at me. "Yes," I say. "Yes, I'm happy."
"Good," he tells me. "Because I want all of my people to be happy, Paige. But I don't want anyone to be happy as much as you."
We hold each other in the hot-spring, naked in each other's arms, and the only sounds are the gentle lapping of the water as we shift our bodies and the sounds of our own breathing. It doesn't take long for the Jarl to grow hard again and I sigh, my heart full of love, when I feel it against my belly.
"We need a daughter now," he whispers in my ear as holds me tight, pressing my bare breasts to his chest. "Perhaps if we try very hard, we can have one before summer?"
"I don't think it works like
that," I chuckle. "I'm breastfeeding your son, I think we may need to wait a little while."
The Jarl takes my face in his hands and pulls me in for a deep, slow kiss. I can taste it in him – the hunger returning.
"You're probably right, girl. But don't get heated with me if you've got a baby – two babies, perhaps – in your belly come the winter."
"Two?!" I exclaim, and the feeling of Eirik suddenly sliding himself between my legs – not inside me, but almost – transforms my words into a whimper. "Two?" I ask again, my voice much softer now. "Where I come from – oh – women sometimes have three babies. Or four. I think one even had eight! I don't know if – ohhh. Oh my God –"
He's teasing me, running himself up and down between my lips and then pulling away every time I move my body into a position for him to slide into me.
"Eight," he teases, biting my earlobe gently. "I think if we start right now we could get there, Paige. I could put eight babies in your belly, my love. I'll have the servants carry you around the camp when you grow as big as the moon."
It's too much. The ache that seems to emanate from my very center is too acute, I can't listen to him talking about being inside me anymore without him actually being there. I reach down between our bodies and guide him into me.
It feels different this time – slower, gentler, but no less intense. My back arches as my new husband fills me with himself once more and I lean back as he takes me, floating in the water and gazing up at the stars.
"Is it too much?" The Jarl asks as the sweet tension builds between us again. "Paige, if –"
"No," I murmur. "No, it's – it's not too much."
His breathing is rhythmic, getting faster, and my body follows his without the intervention of my conscious mind. And because it's Eirik, the one person I know I'm safe with, I'm able to let go completely.
"Paige," he groans, sliding one hand down my back, over the curve of my ass and then down the back of one thigh. "Paige. Gods, girl, you're getting me there again. You're –"
He breaks off, panting, and it's happening again, the echoes of his pleasure ringing out in my own flesh. I open my mouth for his tongue and he gives it to me, kissing me hard.
"This is what gets me there," I tell him. "This – you. I –"
I can't finish the sentence. I want to. I want to explain everything. But there's no time and my ability to string words together coherently is rapidly diminishing. I tighten my legs around him and he moans again.
"Voss, Paige. I feel it inside you now, how much you want it – how much you want –"
"I do want it," I gasp as he thrusts his hips hard, giving me that final push. I press my face into his neck, half-sobbing with the intensity of it as pleasure overwhelms me. And I'm not even finished when he pulls my head up so he can look me in the eye.
"I want to see your face, Paige. I want to see your beautiful face when I – when –"
I hold him, kissing his mouth, whispering how much I love him over and over into his ear as he comes. I watch his eyes close at the very height of it, and feel the quick, hard thrusts of his hips as he finishes us both off.
We don't speak for a little while, because there doesn't seem to be a reason to do so. I almost fall asleep in his arms, lulled by exhaustion, love and the heat of the water. But just before I can drift off, Eirik wakes me with a kiss.
"Not yet, girl. I'm not even close to finished with you yet. Not tonight. Not for a thousand, thousand moons."
I smile up at him and he must see that I am thinking something about him because he asks me what it is.
"The stars," I reply, looking up at them again. "I was thinking that the stars here are the same as the stars where I come from. And even though everything is different here I think what is most different is me."
The Jarl lifts a lock of hair that is dangling in my eyes off my face and tucks it behind one of my ears. "You, girl?" He asks. "You're different? How is that?"
"Well," I start. "I think it's you, really. You're the difference. Or you're what makes me different."
My husband us giving me the look again – the one that says he loves me, he respects me, he'll do anything for me – but he thinks I'm completely nuts. "Are you talking about yourself, Paige? Or is it me you speak of? I think I might have scrambled your thoughts just now..."
I giggle. "Yeah, I think you did. But what I'm saying makes sense, if you think about it in another way – the way I think of it. I'm always me, Eirik – wherever I am. But when I'm with you, I can be me all the way. Does that make sense? I don't have to pretend I'm stronger than I am or braver than I am. Not here, not with you."
"Ah," he nods, after thinking about it for a moment. "There's some of it for me, as well."
"I've never been this happy," I tell him, leaning my head against his chest. "When I looked up at the stars I wondered if I would regret coming back to you, if I would come to miss my home at some point. But I won't miss it. I'm more alive here, with you. Everyone is more alive here. You live with the elements and the seasons, and I feel myself becoming part of it – I feel you pulling me into it, like a dance."
I look down, unexpectedly tearing up, and Eirik is all concern. "What is it, girl?" He asks, stroking my cheek. "What do you think of now?"
"I told you," I whisper. "I'm telling you. I'm not sad – I'm happy. But I want you to know that everything I'm saying – I didn't know any of it before. I didn't know I could be this happy – and to think that I could have gone my whole life without knowing you, it means I could have gone my whole life without ever feeling this way."
Sometimes, when I'm talking, Eirik just gazes at me the way you would gaze at a car's engine if you didn't know anything about engine repair, or a particularly complex math problem. I don't dislike it – in fact I enjoy it quite a bit. He's looking at me that way now.
"You're always thinking, aren't you?" He asks, kissing my forehead. "Paige and her thoughts that never stop. Perhaps it's as you say, and you would never have known happiness. But it doesn't matter, my love, because here we are. It's as it is, you and I. Your place is at my side. And mine is at yours."
There was a time when being told my 'place' – especially by a man – would have had me bristling. But Eirik isn't handing down orders, or making an argument. He's stating a simple truth, one we both know down to our marrow. We're together now, we belong to each other – and to this place. I turn my face up to the stars again, safe in my husband's arms, as content and as free as I have ever been.
"You're right," I whisper to him. "It's as it is."
Author Information
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Other Books by Joanna Bell:
How To Catch A Cowboy: A Small Town Montana Romance
(also available in paperback)
Reviews for How To Catch A Cowboy:
"Holy smokes, this book was beautiful...Ms. Bell was really able to develop her characters and give a meaningful story behind Jack and Blaze. I'm not even going to lie, I cried, but mostly happy tears."
" Great characters that were well developed...really sweet and heartwarming!"
"This read was amazing, the characters, the story, the writing everything was done perfectly and as I was reading it time passed not realizing that hours and hours had gone by as I couldn't put it down. It was a long book but it was thorough and flowed beautifully with great character development and no page seemed unnecessary to me. "
"I love this book. Of all my many Kindle books, this is my hands down favorite."
"Absolutely a love story that goes from rags to riches. Jack and Blaze meet under
not so friendly circumstances and love blossoms from there. This union leads to lost treasure and lost families being brought together. Eternal love reunited families, a must read book."
