“How does he know where to find you?” Aelfwynn asked curiously, forgetting that she’d told herself to remain quiet. To keep her queries and her counsel.
Thorbrand turned to her again, his dark gaze unreadable. “He tracks us. How else?”
“I thought perhaps you and your men spend your days learning the secrets of these forests. When not...” She gestured at his sword, unavoidable tonight because he’d removed his cloak as he’d moved about the clearing.
He inclined his head, if slightly. “That too.”
Then he closed what distance remained between them, taking her arm and lifting her from the rock. And she winced almost instantly, though not from his touch. But because the soreness in her legs nearly took her down again.
He did not release his grip on her arm. “Are you unwell?”
“I have never ridden so much nor so swiftly, that is all.”
His dark eyes searched hers, then he held her away from him, looking her over as if he could see straight through the layers she wore to the truth of her beneath.
Aelfwynn could think of no reason whatever that she felt dizzy.
“You are sore.” When Thorbrand’s gaze rose to find hers again, there was a new heat there. Once more, it seemed connected to all those low places within her that ached and nearly cramped—sore and yet not, not like her legs—and that drumbeat in her chest besides. “Worry not. I will give you aid.”
“Is that what you do here?” she asked, and she still couldn’t understand why it was that she failed, repeatedly, to keep a still tongue around this man.
“I am not...not benevolent,” came his amused reply, and that, too, made her feel so warm she almost did not need the fire.
Thorbrand drew her with him, his hand on her elbow, and sat down with her on a cold log near the flames. Then he said nothing. He only sat there, silent, while Leif dressed and cleaned the birds and Ulfric prepared his own tent for the night. He shifted at one point and she braced, expecting more of his words she should not respond to, yet feared she would—but he only drew his cloak over his shoulders.
And the less he spoke, the more the heat inside Aelfwynn grew.
“You three need not speak to each other,” she found herself saying. “Yet you make your meaning known. It is uncanny.”
“We grew up as one,” Thorbrand said from beside her. “We were boys together, then became men. And since have fought side by side.”
She dared not look at him because he was too close again. And she knew that made little sense. Aelfwynn had been pressed against him the whole of this long day. She’d slept atop him last night.
But it was a different thing to feel the force of his attention upon her. It was easier to get herself to rights with the idea of him than it was to glance to one side to find him there, much too big. Dark and forbidding, even when he appeared to be at his ease.
“I always wanted a brother, but more for my mother than for me,” Aelfwynn said, as if he had asked. Why could she not stop herself? When she had kept her own counsel for so long? “What I truly wanted was a sister. I would have treasured her company.”
Thorbrand laughed. And though she could see the other men across the fire, and therefore knew that they did not seem to react at all, she could yet feel their attention. A good reminder, surely, that whatever happened between her and this Northman, it would not go unnoticed.
For good or ill.
“Then I wish you better luck in it.” Thorbrand laughed again. “Ulfric has been no decent company in years.”
“Years,” Leif rumbled in agreement. “And was but middling company before.”
Ulfric muttered something in Irish that set the other two to roaring, but he otherwise appeared to pay them no mind. Too busy was he spit roasting the birds, holding them in the fire on two long sticks, his arm far steadier than the spits Aelfwynn had seen used in her mother’s hall.
“How many more days do we travel?” Aelfwynn dared ask.
Thorbrand still had laughter in his face when he looked at her again, which only made her feel...shivery. She drew her cloak closer, telling herself it was the cold.
“As many as it takes,” he replied.
“Is it your purpose to make your aim so mysterious that it is the not knowing that slays me?” she asked. As usual, she had not meant to speak. And she thought he might have reacted differently had her voice carried across the fire. Had she sounded challenging instead of...this softer thing that seemed somehow caught up in all the ways she ached.
He studied her in the firelight. “Why do you wish to know? What can it help?”
“Once I know, I can prepare.”
“Will you indeed. What sort of preparation do you think will save you, Aelfwynn?”
“Perhaps I seek a direction for my prayers.”
“Your fate is written,” Thorbrand told her, his voice low enough she felt it in her bones. “Do you know it or do not, it cannot be changed.”
She found herself sitting a bit straighter. “I don’t believe that.”
He shrugged. “What you believe or do not believe changes your fate not at all.”
“I doubt you believe it either,” she said, recklessly. And perhaps more loudly. “Else why would you and your people spend lifetimes battling to take what was never yours? Surely, if you were resigned to your fate, you would have stayed where you were on faraway shores and let your gods do what they will.”
“That the path has already been laid out is not leave to live as a coward,” Ulfric said disapprovingly.
“You need not fear,” Leif added. “It has all been decided.”
She knew many thought thus, her own people included. But Aelfwynn had been raised by a woman who had never accepted fate. Aethelflaed had always fought.
Fate will do what it must, she had said. But then, so shall I.
“Is it fate if it is naught but sadness?” Aelfwynn asked softly.
She heard the others laugh, but all she could see was Thorbrand. His dark beard, his marvel of a mouth, his intent gaze. “Because you think you can decide your own fate, Aelfwynn? Is that it?”
Surely she should have laughed at that, yet could not.
“I decide nothing and control nothing,” she replied quietly. “Save myself. And so I wonder how it is a mighty warrior believes himself without choices when he possesses more than I will ever have.”
Something passed between them then, though she could not have named it. Everything within her seemed to narrow down to the beat of her heart, and the lick of flame that seemed to her both of it and because of it.
For a moment she forgot where they were. The long ride, the ache where she sat. Her unknown future, from where he might be taking her to what awaited her in his furs this night.
For a moment, she forgot her own name.
And then it returned, in a rush, in the form of Ulfric thrusting one of the roasted birds in their direction. Thorbrand took it, looking away from her as he did, and she felt as if he’d released her from the grip of his hands. She had to fight to breathe properly.
The meal itself was a quiet affair. Thorbrand cut off pieces of the roasted bird with his knife, then offered them to her. She took them gratefully, finding the meat succulent and somehow better for being both cooked hot in this cold night, and eaten outside.
But too soon, the meal was done and Thorbrand was ushering her into his tent.
Aelfwynn both wanted to obey him and wanted to fight. Instead, she only trembled. And crawled within as bidden.
He followed, quietly removing his boots at the entrance and then hanging his great cloak to seal them more fully within. It seemed smaller in the tent tonight. Aelfwynn was certain it was smaller. Closer. Thorbrand merely looked at her, and she hurried to remove her own cloak and shoes, then began unwinding the bindings on her hose. And her headdress, even though her heart
fluttered.
“Lie down, Aelfwynn,” he ordered her when she had finished. When she only stayed where she was, kneeling there and shaking slightly, he moved closer. And that did not make anything better. “On your back, with your legs wide.”
Every tale she had ever heard of what men might do to women came back to her then, as surely as if she heard it sung before her in a hall thick with mead, fire, and song.
“But...” Her mouth was too dry. “Thorbrand...”
“Lie down,” he said again, his voice a dark command.
And was not this what she had expected all along? Was it not what she had prepared for, most of her life? What all women understood was their lot, be it sooner or later?
Mildrithe’s voice sounded deep within her. It is within your power whether the sword cuts you in half or holds you aloft.
Aelfwynn took the deepest breath she could. She gathered herself until she knew she looked nothing but calm and obliging, there in the face of Thorbrand’s dark, relentless gaze.
He did not waver.
And thus she obeyed her Northman captor and lay herself out before him, like the sacrifice she had been from the start.
CHAPTER SIX
Sjaldan er ein báran stök.
There seldom is a single wave.
—Old Norse proverb
Thorbrand did not laugh, though he was sorely pressed.
Were he another man, he might have taken poorly the sight his Mercian princess presented him. For she had laid herself down before him as asked, flat on her back with her legs wide. Her arms she kept at her sides, her soft hands clenched into fists. Her eyes were not merely shut, but wrinkled with the effort of keeping them so—her whole face crumpled in on itself as if she were but braced for a blow.
Rarely had the obedience Thorbrand expected as his due entertained him so greatly.
He could have moved closer then, but he stayed where he was to well and truly draw out the moment. He watched her chest move as her breathing quickened. He saw the color that stained her face, no doubt as her imagination ran away with her.
Thorbrand let her run and run.
“I admire your obedience, Aelfwynn,” he said, eventually. Then had to bite back a smile when she flinched, turned even redder, and breathed all the more heavily.
But she stopped wrinkling up her face and her eyes fluttered open, pinning him with a gleam of pure gold in the dark of the tent. “You did not present me with any other option.”
“Indeed, I did not. I find your notions of captivity extraordinary. In your uncle’s court, or your mother’s, what generosity was accorded captives and slaves?”
Aelfwynn studied him. This time, her frown seemed genuine and not the braced anticipation of potential harm. Thorbrand found he preferred it. If she must frown.
“I think you know already,” she said.
“I do.” And it was only then did she appear to note that he had moved closer to her, and she startled, her gaze shooting to the hand he’d placed at her knee. “Very few choices are on offer. And yet you have already enjoyed many. I will accept your grateful protestations whenever they grace your tongue. For I am benevolent, is this not so?”
He slid his hand higher, then waited.
Aelfwynn’s response was deeply satisfying. She stiffened. Her eyes flew wide. Her lips, ripe like berries, parted. She lifted up her hands as if she meant to slap at him, then wisely dropped them.
“Well done, sweeting,” he murmured. And beneath his hand, beneath the gown and the hose she wore, he felt her heat rise. “Now be still.”
She made a soft, half-muffled sound at that order, and he could feel her quiver beneath him. But she did not lift her hands again. She did not rock from side to side. Slowly, he reached down and pulled the gown higher, baring her legs to his view. Unwrapping her like the gift she was.
And because he could, and wished it so, he took his time.
He could hear his brother and cousin outside, talking in Irish as they sat by the fire. It was a still night, so no wind howled through the trees, disguising any possible enemy approaches. Still, he knew that they did not allow their talk to keep them from their watch.
Thorbrand had the better bargain. He was stretched out on his furs with this lovely, distressed morsel before him, far prettier than any bird on a spit.
And the more prettily she worried that lower lip of hers, the harder he got.
Yet he still took his time.
And soon enough her gown was at her middle, exposing her lower half to his gaze, covered though she still was in the hose she wore next to her skin. He laughed at the sight of the dagger she wore strapped there.
“Do you plan to do me harm?” he asked.
She looked confused until he tugged at the fabric that held the dagger fast. Then paled. “I carried that for protection on the journey. I...”
“Be still,” he said again, more gruffly this time.
But he threw the dagger in its sheath toward his boots and had no intention of returning it to her.
Then he began to rub her. He ran his palms down the outside of her legs until he found her small, pale feet, and liked it when she curled her toes at his touch. He shifted around, going to kneel at her feet and then pressing his thumbs deep into the fleshy pad of each foot. And he grinned when she let out a long, low sigh.
Against her will, if he was not mistaken.
Thorbrand did not speak. He worked on both of her feet at once. Then took his time learning the shape of her calves, her knees. He took care to knead her flesh well as he worked his way higher and higher.
It would be better if she were naked, but he found he did not trust himself to take this lesson only as far as he wished to go this night if faced with the temptation of her bare flesh. Not when he had decided, after last night and the memories she’d stirred in him, that it would be better all round if he took his mother’s advice—and took his time. If she was naked, he might well be lost.
For he had never felt a thirst this powerful or a need so great. And slake himself though he would, and soon, tonight was for seduction.
The plans he had for Aelfwynn would work far better were she not merely willing, but begging for his touch.
No matter who she made him remember or how stained his battle-weary hands were.
He found that the more he smoothed his palms over her legs, the more he found the places where she stiffened or moaned, the more dedicated he became to his task.
And, sorely tempted though he was, he did not slide either hand between her legs to cup the true heat of her and test her softness. Or how she might yield.
Though the need for her pulsed in him, deep and hot.
She was flushed, her eyes but half-open, and looked at him as if already thoroughly debauched.
Truly, she was a ripe bit of fruit, his Aelfwynn. Ripe and sweet.
Thorbrand stopped, his hands lightly gripping her hips. And for a long moment, he only gazed down at her, this Saxon princess who had chosen him over the uncertainty of the road. Blond hair spilling out from her braided coronet, sending silk cascading this way and that. The lovely oval of her face, flushed with a need he doubted she recognized. Better still, no more did she lie like a virgin on a slab for the local dragon, ready to feel its flames. She was pliable in his hands. Needy.
“Thorbrand...” she whispered.
“Turn over,” he growled.
She blinked, then shuddered. And he was pleased indeed that his own garments were still firmly in place. For it would be far too easy to cast aside these notions of a slow seduction, plunge within her, taking her virgin’s blood as his due, and then teach her how to scream his name in pleasure.
Soon enough, he cautioned himself.
A bad rower always blamed the oar. Thorbrand preferred to row well at the first and leave no room for blame. Thus did he wait, ke
eping his hands on her as she huffed out a breath, then set about turning over as commanded to lie there on her belly.
“Legs apart, sweeting,” he said, but did not wait for her to obey. He separated her thighs himself, and then looked at the picture he’d made of lovely Aelfwynn, stretched out before him. Her elegant neck bared to his view and beyond, the graceful line of her willowy back. And best yet, the plump fruit of her bottom, presented so sweetly to his view.
Thorbrand started there, too aware of the faint keening sounds she made as he rubbed stern fingers into her protesting flesh. To say nothing of his own pounding, driving hunger. He kept at it until she sighed, a soft sound of release. Only then did he move lower down her legs. Once again he skirted her woman’s heat, filled with a dark anticipation when she squirmed, unknowingly moving as if trying to press herself into his hands.
There will be time enough for that, he promised himself as he rubbed her down. There would be time to explore her slick folds with his hands, his tongue, his teeth. To drink deep of the sweetest mead, honeyed and rich.
He had to wrestle himself to keep from doing so now, sure he could taste her already. He had to keep his mind on the simple task of easing the aches and pains her journey thus far had caused her. Because Thorbrand was going to take her innocence and bind her to him, as surely as if it were chains of iron he used instead of this. Heat. Greed. Longing so intense it would render her nothing at all but his.
Far better that he enslave her with her own flesh. That was what he had decided on the long, hard ride today. Something in him had leaped at the notion that he could take this woman who should have had nothing in common with his mother and make of her the kind of wife his mother had been to his father. Capable of raising strong sons, defending their home, and in her own, feminine way, formidable.
His long watch last night in the cold had cleared his head, thank the gods.
If he was going to remind himself of the past, better to remember the parts that mattered most. He had not protected his mother when the battle for Dublin raged. His father had lived long enough that wretched day to blame Thorbrand for her loss before going down himself.
Harlequin Historical May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 33
