Harlequin Historical May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Elizabeth Rolls

  And his eyes, so dark and so intent upon her, made her want to cry.

  A different kind of tears, she acknowledged.

  “Permit me,” Thorbrand murmured.

  Aelfwynn was astounded. She could feel his very breath on her lips. She felt torn, deliciously, between the hard heat of his palm at her cheek, the great stone of his chest, and the swooning, spinning, glorious heat that seemed to be coming from inside her...

  As slowly, almost carefully, he fit his mouth to hers.

  She thought she laughed, or gasped, for it was so foreign.

  Aelfwynn had never given much thought to her own lips, but well did she know their shape, their plump softness. His suited him, merciless and grave, and yet as he pressed them to hers, there was...something else. A hint of give that made that wildfire low in her belly ignite.

  And there was his beard, besides, and the prickle of those hairs against her face should have been horrible. Instead of setting her to squirming against him, as if she had been dunked in a cauldron and set to boil, something that was not, she discovered, horrible at all.

  He made a low noise, a growling, humming sort of thing, and the wonder of it was that she could feel it in his mouth and hear it with her ears. And more, feel the shivering heat of it in every part of her he had touched.

  Deep inside her, the fires she could not seem to keep from burning blazed high.

  And then he licked her.

  She pulled back in surprise and he laughed, his mouth chasing hers.

  “You licked me,” she accused him.

  “Lick me back, woman,” he rumbled, and then claimed her mouth again.

  Her mind reeled. In all the sinful things Aelfwynn had witnessed out of the corner of her eye in too many halls to count, or with the whole of her eyes if no one was watching her too closely, she had never thought what she was witnessing was...tongues. Licking.

  But Thorbrand knew what he was about. He did not wait for her to catch up to him, he merely licked his way into her mouth, and somehow, she felt the strength to meet this bizarre incursion with her own.

  And she felt herself...boil over.

  It was a pure shock, new sensations exploding inside of her. Every time their tongues touched it was as if she were a glowing hot iron in a smith’s forge, and while surely that should have terrified her, it did not.

  For, though this might shame her later, it felt too good.

  Thorbrand did something with his hand, moving her head so that she was lost in a dark, twisting heat. And everything was the slide of his lips, the touch of his tongue, the way he captured her and claimed her and took her again and again.

  And yet still, she knew enough to know that this was not the act itself. This would not rid her of her maidenhead. She was not in the proper position, for one thing, as she had been before—waiting for him to mount her. That was the thing her mother had warned her against, for far different reasons than her priests had. And for another, while Aelfwynn wore far fewer garments than she should have, than was at all right or proper, she wore them.

  She understood something new and shocking about herself then.

  If this was sin, then she was a sinner in truth, for she would have done anything to keep kissing Thorbrand forever.

  Instead, his hand moved. He pulled back. Then held her apart from him when she would have tried to kiss him all the more.

  “It was only a small favor, Aelfwynn,” he said, mildly enough.

  And she could not tell if she was distressed or angered at the dark amusement she could hear laced into his voice and could see too well in the gleaming darkness of his gaze. And the longer she gazed at him, she became aware once more that his eyes were not the monstrous black of her imagination as befit a rampaging Northman, but a dark blue midnight.

  For some reason, that made her shudder all the more.

  “But I wish...” Aelfwynn began, because she yearned. She knew not what she yearned for, perhaps, but she was certain it began with his mouth on hers yet again.

  “Aelfwynn. We have been over this.” He did not laugh, yet she could sense it, filling the tent all around them. “It is not what you wish. It is what I wish. And now I bid you rest. There are many days of travel ahead.”

  Thorbrand wrapped his arms around her as he had the night before. He settled deeper into the furs and pulled one over her, too, covering them both. And then, as though he somehow did not see that she glared at him, he merely closed his eyes.

  Moments later, he began to snore.

  Aelfwynn told herself she could not possibly fall asleep. That she was altered by what had happened here. That he might as well have reached inside her, rummaged about, and rearranged her insides. Her skin no longer fit and between her legs was a slippery ache, and she thought it possible she might have caught the fever. All of this, she knew with certainty, was his fault.

  And yet he snored.

  She lay there, fuming. Certain that she would remain so, glaring futilely at the hint of firelight against the entrance to the tent, until dawn.

  When instead she found that when she woke, she had slept deep.

  And so the journey went.

  Every day the same. The men woke at dawn or before. They all broke their fast with the provisions they had brought with them for this journey, took down their camp as soon as all had eaten, and were then on their way. Aelfwynn quenched her thirst with handfuls of snow, more plentiful as they went north, every time they stopped. Better that than putting her mouth on the drinking pouch Thorbrand carried. It felt to her too much like more kissing. Leif and Ulfric took turns hunting and never returned empty-handed, though the offerings ranged from game fowl to other small forest creatures, depending on where they stopped. They rode all day, and each night, after they’d eaten, Thorbrand took her to his tent and eased away the pain of the journey.

  Aelfwynn began to think of nothing at all but what occurred in the embrace of his furs. Not what lay before her. Not what she had left behind on that cold road. Only the way his hands moved over her flesh, making her...want things.

  She wanted to strip herself of the underdress and hose she always wore, because she wanted his hands on her flesh. She wanted her flesh on his. These thoughts were so shocking they truly did keep her up the first night she allowed them to take form, so certain was she that God would strike her down.

  Yet she lived.

  And she wanted. And could not find it in her to consider these things she wanted impure.

  Every night, when Thorbrand had finished rubbing her down so she felt limp and pliable, like wax, he rolled her on top of him and taught her more about kissing.

  Aelfwynn had seen a great many kisses in her lifetime. Formal kisses adorning her mother’s hand. Or her uncle’s ring. Mouths that were only a part of what touched in dark corners, one more strange, writhing sort of panic she little understood.

  Now she craved it.

  Sometimes Thorbrand kissed her lazily, merely toying with her, and she knew it. She could feel the way he smiled and teased her. And though she dared not ask, Aelfwynn knew he did so deliberately. He knew the fires in her. He liked to make her burn bright, stoking the flames for his entertainment. Sometimes she found herself rocking against him, because she could not seem to keep her body still, until that low laughter sounded in her ear.

  Did she hate it or desire it?

  Often, however, he was not lazy at all.

  And better, then, did she understand the talk of swords, for surely it was a duel that both of them must lose—or win. Nothing was enough. His tongue a weapon, his hands gripping her body, while they seemed to fight to get closer and closer to the mad need that burned unchecked within her.

  Still, Thorbrand always set her aside in the end, ordered her to sleep, and infuriated her by doing so with what she found to be indecent, insulting haste.

  “What i
f I do not wish to stop?” she asked on the third night. Recklessly.

  “You do not decide what happens here.” His dark eyes glittered. “I do.”

  “But you are a Northman. Renowned the world over for taking what you want. Why...?”

  But it occurred to her what it was she was asking him. What it was she wanted. Had she truly become so abandoned? In a mere three days?

  Thorbrand’s smile made her shiver, deep inside. “I have no desire to make you a martyr, Aelfwynn.”

  And that night it took her longer to fall asleep. Because she had always imagined that these things that happened between men and women would be a sacrifice, had she not? But if the kissing was any indication, it would be nothing of the sort.

  Aelfwynn found she had to think about that. And did, until his heat lulled her into her usual deep slumber.

  It was on the following day that something changed. Early in the morning, only a few hours into their ride, the pace slowed. She saw the men exchanged looks, and Leif belted something out in Irish. It sounded jovial enough that it had even Ulfric near enough to a smile.

  Thorbrand’s men rode on ahead, Leif now singing out the kind of song better suited to halls ripe with beer than the cold December countryside.

  “What has happened?” Aelfwynn asked, and as she did, it occurred to her to wonder when, exactly, she had become so comfortable sitting in the saddle like this, held in Thorbrand’s arms. He ofttimes rested one of his heavy hands on her leg as if it were his own. She had long since grown used to it, and to the comfort of his broad chest at her back.

  Not a sacrifice in sight, she chided herself.

  “We have passed the last of the Danish settlements north of the Five Boroughs with the Danelaw none the wiser,” Thorbrand told her, his voice a new kind of hard. “We are near Jorvik. And under the authority of our king.”

  “Jorvik?” Suddenly his hand on her thigh felt like a stone. “But I thought...”

  “That Jorvik was your mother’s, perhaps? Or your uncle’s, in her stead?” Thorbrand laughed loud enough that Aelfwynn half expected snow to fall from the branches of the trees all around them. “What did you imagine, princess? That while you prayed over Mercia, the rest of the world waited for you?”

  “Your king has taken York?”

  Thorbrand’s laugh was not the happy sort. “He took it this past June, as well you know. Ragnall indeed claims all of Northumbria and yet was forced to waste his time stamping out an insurrection in Jorvik, courtesy of the Christian Danes who preferred your mother’s gentle touch to his.”

  “My mother built a burh a year since my father died,” Aelfwynn retorted, stung as if he had attacked her. As if she must stand as the burhs did, fortified strongholds to withstand the raiding Danes from the east, Northmen like Thorbrand and his vicious king, and any else who might dare. “There was no gentleness about her, as those who would raid her kingdom learned to their peril.”

  “So did we all learn,” Thorbrand agreed, though his voice was rough. “My kin and I fought at Ragnall’s side on the Isle of Man, and named him king in time, but well do all those the Irish kings expelled from Dublin remember your mother’s handiwork in Chester.”

  Aelfwynn also remembered Chester, though she did not think it wise to tell the man who held her—who could crush her in any number of ways whenever he chose—that it was still a favorite tale sung in the halls of Mercia and Wessex. Aethelflaed, acting for Aelfwynn’s father because his long illness had taken hold of him, had ridden north to face the expelled Irish Northmen who had begged for land in Chester and then had risen against the city. Aethelflaed had fought outside the gates and then had drawn back inside, luring her enemies within. To their slaughter. The people of Chester too had aided in this victory, pouring beer from the walls and lobbing beehives to fend off the raiders.

  Only a girl of seven, Aelfwynn had not gone to Chester with her mother, but it had long been one of the tales she loved best. Was it not all that her mother had been? Cunning and brave. Seemingly foolhardy only to flip around and win.

  How she still missed her.

  “Better, I would think, to rejoice in your people’s more recent retaking of Dublin than mourn any long-ago lost battles in Chester,” Aelfwynn said in as politic a manner as she could manage when the subject was, as ever, the carnage wrought all over the earth by the endless fighting.

  “I have thought of little else these last two years,” Thorbrand rumbled at her. His hand seemed heavier and hotter then, but he did not slow the horse who carried them. Aelfwynn counted that as her own victory. “And rejoice in full. We sailed with Ragnall to Waterford. We fought for our king’s cousin Sitric at Cenn Fuait and our return to Dublin will be heralded through the ages. Only when this was done did we return to these shores and beat back Causantín mac Áeda and his Scots, though they refused to surrender. Little did it matter. On we marched to Jorvik and made it our own, no matter the machinations of your mother and her allies.”

  “Then you should worry little about whatever plots might have been conceived while she lived, if the city was so easily taken.”

  That was a mistake. She knew it when the words, brittle like the air around them, left her mouth. She knew it when she felt Thorbrand tense, if only slightly, as if he fought his own temper.

  “Do not worry, sweeting,” he said after some time, though his voice was a hard thing and the word he called her more a warning. “A wise man knows when to hunker down and wait for spring.”

  Then he spoke no more, though the threat lingered.

  Aelfwynn...fretted. Well did she know that had her mother lived, York would be under her control and with it much of southern Northumbria. And perhaps she might have slain Thorbrand’s king, the much-feared Ragnall. Who, with the rest of his wide-ranging and bloodthirsty family, claimed a common grandfather in Ivar the Boneless—whose bloody rampages were darker stories still sung as warnings to young Mercian men to better themselves in battle lest these savage foreigners smite them, too.

  Was that where Thorbrand was taking her? To Ragnall to offer her as a token of revenge against the woman who had nearly taken what he wished to claim for himself? But her mind shied away from thoughts of Northman-held cities and their vengeful kings. For she knew only one king well, and were it true that Ragnall had claimed York already, she knew her uncle Edward would take it ill indeed.

  Perhaps it was all for the best that she was not there in Mercia for him to blame.

  But then, that caught at her too. For she had traveled all over with her mother. She had been to Wessex and had seen what remained of her grandfather’s glory. Her mother had always claimed a great and abiding love for her brother and so she’d gone to him, then received him in turn. Yet most of Aelfwynn’s life had been spent in Mercia. In Tamworth, certainly, but she had come to love also the burhs that stretched like jewels across the land and yet could position Mercia—Edward, she corrected herself—to ward off the savage brutes east and north.

  It made her heart hurt to think that it was a certainty she might never see Mercia again. For surely she was a thrall now. A slave girl for Thorbrand to use as he pleased. To share with his men, if he fancied. To sell as he wished. Or have buried with him should he fall in battle, no matter the state of her own health.

  She could end up anywhere the Northmen sailed, and that lodged in her, a too-bright scar, to even imagine it. It was like losing her mother all over again.

  How had she allowed herself to think of kissing all these days instead of the situation she found herself in?

  It did her no good to think back to the summer or torture herself with what might have happened had her mother not died so suddenly. To recount her mother’s victories. It aided her not at all to remember the life she had often found on the verge of tedious. Particularly in Tamworth, where her mother’s court felt settled and her people therefore more interested in their game playing
than when they were under siege from yet another raid.

  She had already been old for a maiden, though her mother had laughed at that, for what could Aelfwynn’s age matter when she herself had done as she pleased and late into her life? My daughter comes from decent stock, I think, Aethelflaed had said dangerously the last time a man dared mention it. What should it matter when a daughter of mine takes her vows? A better question is what makes you think you might find favor in my eyes?

  Aelfwynn had always loved her mother, and deeply. Fiercely. But never more than in those moments when she, with a smile she did not bother to make docile, rendered the loud men all around her silent. Perhaps, she thought as they rode on through a gray day with low clouds that threatened more snow, it was only now, when there were no choices left for her to make, that she could give herself time to truly grieve.

  The loss of her mother. The loss of the life she had known. The loss of her, for what was she now? She might have lost her head where Thorbrand was concerned, but it did not change the facts. She knew he played a game. He had ends she could not see and that he did not share with her, as all men did. It was only a question of how much that game would hurt her, in the end.

  Aelfwynn did not let so much as a single tear fall. And not only because the cold wind already stung her face. She tugged the fur edge of her hood closer and kept her eyes dry, but let herself stop fighting in even the small ways she knew. Instead, while no one could see her and Thorbrand was a grim, silent force behind her who was not currently hurting her in any way, she allowed herself to simply feel.

  She had been late to leave maidenhood, it was true. Though her mother had hailed her as a woman when first she had her monthly courses, she knew better. She was a woman here. Now. This journey out of time, swift moving into no good future. Soon enough Thorbrand would show his true intent. Soon enough, she would know what was to become of her.

  But in the meantime, she breathed and did not cry and while it was no Chester, she counted herself the victor all the same.