by Josie Litton
Wolf waved away the slave attempting to refill his drinking horn. He'd drunk little this night and all but ignored the lavish feast. Neither food nor drink would satisfy the appetite raging within him.
“I've always thought,” he said, looking hard at Dragon, “that most of Odin and Frigg's problems come from interfering relatives.”
“And I,” Dragon shot back, “have always thought Odin doesn't appreciate Frigg enough. She is, after all, the most beautiful, most courageous, and most clever of women … of goddesses, that is.” He leaned back in his chair, still smiling, and added, “Maybe she's just too much for him.”
Cymbra frowned, finding all this talk of gods and goddesses difficult to follow. She gathered that Odin was supreme among the Norse deities, and she had been startled by the story of his death and rebirth with its obvious parallels to her own faith. But it seemed very odd for him to have a wife and for the two of them to have all-too human problems.
Then, too, she was struck by the exchange between Wolf and Dragon, redolent as it was of unspoken messages. She glanced from one brother to the other. Dragon appeared in high good humor although she felt beneath it the lingering pain of the wound responsible for his limp. She wondered what care he had received and if he would be willing to talk with her about it. But there was little time to think of that before she was caught by the hard intensity of Wolf's gaze.
A small shock ran through her. Throughout the feast she had deliberately kept her attention from him, focusing on anything and everything else in an effort to remain calm. Now, for the first time, she saw the mysterious hunger in him and the savage battle he was waging to contain it. A battle she also saw, all too clearly, that he was about to lose.
Wolf raised a hand. A servant materialized at his side. He gave instructions, and the man nodded before hurrying off. A moment later, Marta appeared.
“It is time, lady,” she said to Cymbra.
There certainly was no point asking time for what but Cymbra was tempted, just briefly. Pride rescued her. She'd already delayed as long as she possibly could, encouraging Dragon to tell story after story. Not that they weren't fascinating, but all she'd really managed to do was heighten Wolf's impatience. Now, she would have to face that.
Her throat was very dry as she stood. For an awful moment, she feared her legs were too weak to hold her. She took a deep breath, fighting for calm, and moved away from the table. The crowd saw her and raised a lusty cheer, thumping their drinking horns loudly on the tables. Their ribald comments made her cheeks burn.
She stumbled slightly and might have fallen had Wolf not reached out a hand to steady her. Their eyes met. She saw the raw lust still in his but beneath it something else, stronger even, more enduring, something that made her breath come just a little easier.
She moved away and Marta was there with several other women, hurrying her along. Behind her the music soared.
Iron lamps filled with tallow and set on long, pointed tips stuck into the floor cast eerie shadows over the walls of Wolf's lodge. Shapes were distorted and too large.
Cymbra shivered as she finished using the water brought for her to bathe and quickly dried herself
She could still hear the laughter and excitement of the crowd in the distance but inside this chamber of barbaric luxury it was very quiet. The silence of the women, the absence of any gentle banter or reassurance, reminded Cymbra how much she was a stranger among them.
The covers of the vast bed were turned down and sprinkled with the petals of wild roses. Sheaves of freshly cut barley were twined around the roughly hewn posts. Her clothes were taken away and she was left only in a diaphanous gown, not her own, embroidered at the hem and collar with ancient runic symbols.
The other women took their leave, casting hooded looks of speculation at her and at the bed. Marta remained to comb out her hair.
“The gown is a gift, my lady. I intended it for Kiirla but it is too fine now for that.”
“I don't understand. Why too fine?”
“She will not make as good a marriage as I had hoped.”
It took Cymbra a moment to understand what Marta was saying. When she did, she turned in her seat and looked up at the older woman. “You wanted Lord Wolf to marry your daughter.”
Marta shrugged. She continued brushing out Cymbra's hair. The flames of the tallow lamps continued to cast shadows. “I did and I didn't, lady. Certainly the honor would be great, but she is my daughter and I love her.”
When Cymbra said nothing more, waiting her out, Marta added, “You are young and far from home. Were your mother here, she could … warn you. Perhaps prepare you, so far as it is possible to prepare.”
She paused, came around in front of Cymbra, and leaned down so that their eyes met. Marta's were wide in apparent sincerity yet curiously flat.
“He will hurt you, lady. All the women he lies with say it. He is built more like a stallion than a man and he cares not what pain he inflicts.”
She straightened and resumed her brushing. “Why should he care? He is jarl and his word is law. No one will interfere with anything he does, not even if you scream loudly enough for all to hear.”
“That's enough!” Cymbra jumped up, wrestled the comb from Marta's hand, and tossed it onto the table. “You are done here. Go.”
The older woman's demeanor changed abruptly. She sneered at Cymbra. “Oh, yes, give orders, act the fine lady, but we all know what you are, nothing more than a thrall like Brita. If your brother weren't who he is, you'd have been taken already by every man here. The Lord Wolf has to marry you but he cares nothing for you. Nothing! You are less to him than dirt and that's how he will treat you.”
She flounced out the door and slammed it behind her. Cymbra stood frozen in place, her whole body trembling. Slowly, she sank down, her legs giving way beneath her, until she was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped around herself and her face buried against her knees.
Chapter SIX
WOLF SHUT THE DOOR FIRMLY BEHIND his noisy, boisterous escort. He shoved the iron bar in place across it lest the drunken revelers prove to have more enthusiasm than good sense. A few of the more persistent remained outside, calling encouragement and lewd suggestions, but he ignored them.
He turned, his silvery eyes scanning the chamber. When he failed to see his bride, his first thought was that she had fled. Anger was already surging through him when a faint movement drew his eyes to the woman huddled in the shadows.
“Odin's blood,” he muttered and started toward her. Cymbra looked up, the pale oval of her face framed in a torrent of silken hair, and pressed her lips tightly together. He needed no great sensitivity to know that she was fighting a desperate battle against raw fear.
“Cymbra,” he murmured, worry overtaking the hard, thrumming lust he would not have thought anything could supplant. Lifting her carefully, offering a silent prayer of thanks when she did not resist, he carried her to the bed and sat down with her on his lap.
For a time, he did nothing more, merely rocked her as gently as he would a child, had life offered him the opportunity to do such a thing. His big hands felt clumsy when he began to stroke her back but she relaxed a little under his touch, and that encouraged him.
Finally, she looked up, met his eyes bravely, and said, “I'm an idiot.”
Her statement so shocked him that he laughed, the sound itself a further shock. He was consumed with hunger for her, randier than he could remember being since boyhood. Such hot, driving need had nothing to do with laughter. Or did it? Thinking on it, perplexed, he squeezed her a little tighter. “No, you're not. It's natural to be nervous.”
That had to be it. She was a virgin bride confronted by a husband she hardly knew and had every reason to think was an enemy. She was bound to be frightened. But then, damn it, why hadn't Marta and the others said something to reassure her? They were all married women, Marta herself the widow of the very warrior who had trained the young Wolf. He'd sent them with her precisely so they'd do wh
atever it was women did under such circumstances. Distantly, he thought of Marta pushing her daughter his way a time or two, but he had never given that the remotest consideration. Perhaps she had, though, in which case …
“Did your mother ever speak to you of these things?” he asked gruffly.
Against his shoulder, Cymbra shook her head. “She died when I was born.”
“Your nurse?”
“Miriam never married. She doesn't … think much of men.”
She took a breath, steadying herself. “But you mustn't think me ignorant. I am a healer. The workings of the body are no mystery.”
“Perhaps not.” He didn't believe that for a moment. Despite whatever occasional kindness she'd shown the sick, he would have bet coin enough to build a dragon ship that she didn't have the remotest idea of what really passed between a man and a woman. Still, this didn't seem like the best time to tell her that. Better she discover it in the doing.
“That's good,” he crooned, stroking her hair, drawing her a little closer. She gave a small sigh and snuggled on his lap. He managed not to groan but it was a near thing.
“So much has happened …” she said.
Wolf lifted his eyes to the ceiling, fighting for control, praying for patience. Women seemed to need to talk under circumstances where any man would have the sense to keep his mouth shut, or find a better use for it.
All the same, she was his wife. He had made promises to her before Ulfrich and the others. And she had made him laugh. That had to count for something, so unusual was it. He tilted her chin up, requiring her to look at him. “Don't tell me you feel confused and frightened just because your entire life has been turned upside down and you find yourself in a situation where you never imagined you could possibly be?”
She blinked in surprise, which pleased him. He liked the idea of being as unexpected to her as she was to him. It righted the balance between them.
“Well, yes,” Cymbra said softly, “as a matter of fact that's exactly how I feel.”
“What an odd coincidence. So do I.”
She straightened up slightly and stared at him. “You do? How can that be?”
His reluctance to talk forgotten, he found himself doing exactly that. Ideas he had just barely thought, never spoken, took word. “No one around here talks about peace. Even my brother, who has wits beyond any man I've ever met, seems to think war is inevitable. But I got the notion things ought to be different, and try though I did, I couldn't ignore it. So here I am, a warrior turned would-be peacemaker. You have to admit that sounds a little odd, and as though it weren't enough, now I find myself married …” his eyes swept over the length of her, “to you.”
“What's wrong with being married to me?”
He started to laugh again but caught himself quickly. A man didn't want to do that kind of thing too often. “Let's just say you affect me strangely.”
She shrugged lightly. “Oh, well, as to that, you do the same to me.”
She shouldn't have said that. He'd been all right up until then, holding on to his self-control, mustering patience, trying his damnedest to give her whatever she seemed to need. But now …
He looked down again, his gaze drifting over pale, rose-hued skin clearly visible through the sheer fabric, sweetly delicate curves and long, perfectly formed limbs. His hands shook with the need to touch her … all of her … now, this instant, without any more of the maddening delay made suddenly intolerable by the knowledge that she desired him, too.
He fell back across the bed, drawing her with him. Cymbra gave a little gasp at their sudden change of position and tried to sit up. Wolf rolled atop her, covering her completely with his hard, lean body.
“Hush,” he murmured, his mouth tracing the delicate curve of her jaw, down her slender throat to the sweet hollow between her collarbones. Blood pounded in his veins. Hot, driving lust surged through him, making him heedless of all else. “Everything will be all right … let me …”
He ran out of words. If he'd tried to continue, he would have been reduced to grunts. Swiftly, holding his weight above her, he clasped her face between his hands and took her mouth, parting her lips for the hard, driving thrust of his tongue. He was going too fast, knew it, couldn't stop.
The touch, sight, scent of her, the breathless little gasps she gave, overwhelmed him. He'd held himself in check too long, wanted her too much, and his control was sizzling away like water on hot stone.
He grasped handfuls of the diaphanous gown and pulled it up, baring her exquisite legs, the nest of downy curls between her sleek thighs, the chalice of her hips, her tiny waist…. His vision blurred, a red mist moving over all. She twisted beneath him, pushing against his shoulders, and tore her mouth from his. “No, wait—”
He heard her but from a distance and against the great roar of his blood surging through him. The words were mere sounds, meaningless. The Wolf was not to be denied.
The delicate fabric tore as he yanked it over her head. Heedless, he tossed the remnants onto the floor and ran his hands over her in blatant, raw possession. “Mine,” he rasped, and pushed a heavily muscled thigh between her legs, forcing her open to him.
He was reaching to free the hard, throbbing length of his shaft from the fawn-soft trousers when awareness of what he was doing suddenly washed over him like an icy wave. He froze, staring down at her pale face and fear-wide eyes.
Shock knifed down his spine, so great as to cause the hair on the nape of his neck to rise. Never in his life had he lost control like this with a woman, and she his wife and a virgin. If ever gentle care was needed …
And he knew all that, understood it to the marrow of his bones, yet still had been swept away by lust unlike any he had ever known. Or at least had come very close to that.
Truth be told, for just a moment he would have given almost anything to be in bed with a practiced whore. The thought passed as quickly as it had come. As did the next, darker still, the wish that she really was only a captive, a slave of no account, even though he never used such women.
But she wasn't, and he wouldn't have wanted that for her under any circumstances, much less merely for the swift satisfaction of his savage need.
He pressed his forehead against the pillow beside her and groaned. She lay very still, small and fragile, so vulnerable against his vast strength. With a deep, shuddering breath, he forced himself to move to his side but he couldn't bear to let go of her entirely, and drew her into his arms.
She trembled and brought her legs tightly together but didn't try to pull away. Despite her fear, honor refused to let her forget that she had made promises to this man. She had accepted the blessing of the Church. She was his wife and there were things she simply couldn't shirk.
He was breathing very hard, his massive chest rising and falling rapidly. Tension radiated from him. Slowly, Cymbra lifted her head and dared a peek at her husband.
His eyes were closed but he certainly didn't look at peace. On the contrary, his features were tightly drawn, and a pulse beat in the hollow of his lean, burnished cheek. Her gaze swept lower, past the thick column of his neck and broad sweep of his shoulders, and a very strange sensation stirred within her.
The times she'd seen him bare-chested and the one glimpse by the pool had merely whetted her curiosity. Astonished though she was by her feelings, she was too inherently honest to deny them. Her gaze drifted down the long, muscled length of his torso to—
Cymbra's cheeks flamed. With some difficulty, she murmured, “I … uh … thought you didn't find me attractive.”
Wolf opened his eyes a slit, followed the direction of her gaze, and winced. “I told you that, didn't I?”
She nodded solemnly
“I lied.”
Cymbra sat up a little farther, acutely conscious of her nudity. She was blushing from head to toe and was grateful for the concealment her hair provided. “Why?”
He sighed, a deep rumbling she felt all along her body. “I thought it would make you
feel safer.”
Her last fear that Marta's horrible words might be true vanished. He was a proud, strong, even arrogant man bred in a violent world and accustomed to absolute obedience. But he had never hurt her, despite ample opportunity and—she admitted deep inside—at least some provocation.
And he was her husband.
Tentatively, she touched the tips of her fingers to his chest. He stared at her, not breathing. Emboldened by his stillness, she laid her palm against him. A frisson of shock pulsed through her at the sensation of rock hardness covered by warm, smooth skin.
“Cymbra …”
She heard the warning rasp in his voice, but far from being discouraged, it only emboldened her further. “It doesn't seem fair,” she murmured.
He fought for breath, a fascinating sight made all the more so when she noticed that his hands were clenched into fists digging into the bed. “What doesn't?”
“Your being dressed and my being … not.”
CYMBRA'S HEAD ARCHED BACK AGAINST THE PILLOWS, her hair spilling in disarray around her. Her body bowed as though drawn taut in the hands of a master archer. A delicate blue vein in her throat throbbed. She cried out, half sob, half scream, and dug her fingers into the massive shoulders of the man who loomed above her, a dark, powerful, naked presence dominating her with ruthless intensity.
His hands moved over her breasts, the callused thumbs rubbing against her distended nipples, filling her with a terrible, burning ache for something she could not define. She writhed helplessly when he suckled her, drawing hard, then laving each nipple with his tongue before his teeth closed on it, bringing her again to the very edge of pleasure-pain. Never had she imagined her body capable of such sensation—or such terrible need.
And he had only begun.
Wolf raised his head and looked with grim satisfaction at the beauty beneath him. Through the hot, surging roar of his hunger, he dimly thought that this was fairness, a redressing of the imbalance that had existed between them from the first moment he'd glimpsed her in the cell at Holyhood. He had not drawn a free breath since. Astonished as he was by her power over him, he also deeply resented it.
