Kidnapped by the Viking

by Caitlin Crews

  As if the very notion of any separation between them was unbearable.

  He put his mouth at her ear, working himself into the slick grasp of her body again and again.

  “If you wish to rant at me about the trials of this life of ours, you may do so only when we are joined thus,” he growled, fierce and hot. “If you wish to try to cut me, use your nails and no dagger. We will all play our parts in the future laid out for us, that is a certainty, but you and I? We will always meet here, Aelfwynn. We will always meet right here.”

  “Thorbrand...” she managed to say.

  But only that. Only his name.

  And then she was shattering all over again, sharper and wilder than before, and this time, he went with her.

  Until there was nothing but the joining.

  And the joy that was only theirs, and only this.

  Thorbrand held her there for some time, both of them lost the wildness of their breath and when he pulled out of her, she let out a soft sigh of disappointment. For then, again, they were two once more. She felt the cold of the day. The stretch in her thighs. The places she’d kicked against rocks and roots as she’d run, as she’d been shoved, making her feet feel tender. The way she melted still despite these things.

  He set her down gently and she busied herself pulling her hose back into place. Then smoothing down her dresses and trying her best to put her cloak to rights. Though she dared not run a hand over her hair, afraid of the damage she might find.

  Maybe part of her hoped she yet looked as wild as she felt.

  As wild as he’d made her.

  “You will marry me this day,” Thorbrand told her then as he fastened his trousers, his voice all command. “I will hear you say it.”

  “I will marry you,” she agreed. She did not have to consider it. “This day.”

  And it could have been an eternity that passed then, his midnight blue gaze hard on hers. The feeling of him still between her thighs. The longing that never left her. Always empty, then, yet always full.

  Joy, something in her whispered. Love.

  No one had told her she should anticipate either. They had told her to live up to their legends, and so she would, if not as they’d imagined. She would fight to love a wild and savage Northman and should they find themselves in Mercia again, she would not hide it.

  Aelfwynn did not intend to hide her true self again. Not ever.

  “I did not expect this,” Thorbrand said then, his voice quiet, but rough. He moved to wrap his hands around her shoulders, tilting her so that she had no choice but to meet his gaze. To lose herself in all that intent dark blue. Even if, given the choice, she would have done exactly this. “I did not expect you, Aelfwynn.”

  That hurt, as if he’d cut her in return, and she did not have it in her to hide it as she ought. To lower her gaze, to smile. To disappear again. “I apologize if I am a disappointment.”

  She ought to have been well used to the feeling, after her half year of pleasing no one as the potential new Lady of the Mercians. It was worse now. She had thought then only of surviving, yet with Thorbrand, she wanted so much more.

  So very much more, it made her breathless.

  But she had learned something very important in these woods today. She was not given to fighting with fists. She had other weapons, as she had always maintained. So too would she use them here, if she had to.

  That was a choice she could make, and happily.

  “You mistake me.” Thorbrand gripped her harder, though she thrilled to the touch. “I thought a Mercian princess nothing more than a task to complete. A vow made to my king, so there was a kind of honor in the task, though it came with no glory. But this I vowed to do for him, as I would do whatever he asked.”

  “You are loyal,” Aelfwynn said softly. “Most kings dream of your like, yet find instead men like those who abandoned me on that road.”

  He shook his head, his face grave. “I expected a shrew. A spoiled creature, no good for anything. I thought I would take this mewling chit to the cottage I had found and see how we would suit, only her and me. It would make no difference in the outcome, you understand. But before I set sail for the west, I needed to know if Aethelflaed’s daughter could tend a fire. Bake a simple loaf of bread. Produce ale to drink.”

  “And what if I had failed you?” She was not certain she wanted his answer.

  “If you could not do these simple tasks, I would still take you across the seas. But where we settled would be different. If you were useless, better I should take you to a village where our survival need not depend on what you could or could not do. But if you possessed even the most rudimentary skills, I would take you instead to the land I claimed as mine last summer.”

  She sniffed. “I hope I passed this...bride test.”

  “Aelfwynn.” Thorbrand made a sound that could have been a laugh, though his gaze was far too serious. “You do not heed me. It took me less than one day to forget entirely that there was any test at all.”

  She allowed herself a small sigh, and liked well how the heat of his hands made her feel warm when she knew she was not. “That is no small thing, I suppose.”

  “There is more,” he said in that same grave manner. “Living with you in that way, so far from the din of battle and the commands of kings... It reminded me that for all I dream of the glory that can be won with the swing of my sword, so too do I have other dreams.” He reached up and ran his hand over the wild hair she wore braided now, as if she was one of them. A Northman’s woman. This Northman’s woman. “A quiet life. The love of a good woman. Land that is ours to work as we will, and whatever sons you may give me.”

  “Thorbrand...” she whispered.

  “I have known nothing but shame for the want of such things,” he told her solemnly. “For I have fought in too many battles. They have marked me well. The Irish warrior who left me with scars all over my side took more from me that day.” He looked intense then. Tortured. She found her own fingers twitching as she thought of tracing over those scars like claws that raked down his side. His dark eyes blazed. “He killed my mother while I watched. I did nothing.”

  Aelfwynn made a low sound of sorrow, but he kept on.

  “And as I lay there, bloody and useless, he took down my father, too.” Thorbrand’s face looked harder, then. His gaze bleaker. “I saw the look in his eyes as he died and knew well his disappointment in me.”

  “I do not believe it.” Thorbrand’s eyes widened, no doubt at her temerity. But Aelfwynn shook her head then, as decisively as if she was a queen in truth though her voice was soft. “I do not. His wife was dead. His son injured, and badly. Maybe his true disappointment was in himself.”

  For a long while, Thorbrand stared at her as if she really had sunk her dagger in deep. He looked nothing short of thunderstruck.

  When he pulled in a breath, it sounded ragged to her ears. “I have carried this failure with me, Aelfwynn, always.”

  She slid her hands higher on his chest, and dared to place her palm over his heart. “Maybe it was never yours, Thorbrand.”

  He looked as if he were in pain. As if her hands on him were setting him alight. “I have given myself to these wars on behalf of our people, over and over, that I might right those wrongs in some way. It has shamed me deeply that I might want anything but the battles and the glory that might bring honor to my family as I could not do, then.” She shook her head again, but when she opened her mouth to speak, he stopped her. He gripped her that much tighter. He lowered that midnight gaze of his even closer. “Yet whether what you have suggested here is truth or a wish, I know well that I would walk away from all of it. I would do this happily for as long as we must stay away, and call it the better choice, because of you.”

  And Aelfwynn had spent long and lonely years learning how not to speak. How not to reveal herself. How to hide.

 
But this was Thorbrand, who thought himself a failure when the scars she’d seen on him suggested he had nearly died himself. He had offered her choices in that road. Not good choices, as he had said, but choices all the same. He had treated her tenderly when he did not have to. He planned to marry her. He had held her after she’d cut him with her dagger, and he had let her flail and fight until she could do no more, never crushing her or hurting her.

  Just as he had taken her maidenhead in that pool, making her feel as if she had been the one to gift it to him. Not ruining her in the way she’d understood ruin, all sobs and repentance and horror, but leaving her wanting more.

  And unless she was mistaken, he had, just now, given her a piece of himself he had never given another. He had made himself vulnerable in the telling. Aelfwynn knew, with a deep rush of feminine understanding, that if she did not comprehend and accept the gift he offered her here, she might never see it again.

  That was more than she could bear.

  Aelfwynn melted against him, and ordered herself, once and for all, to show that she was as brave and courageous as her mother had been. As she too had been, in her own way. But this mattered more to her than kingdoms in play or the whims of her uncle. Or Ragnall.

  This meant everything.

  This was Thorbrand’s heart, and she intended to cherish it. And him.

  She slid her arms up and around his neck, stretching up on her toes and forgetting how they ached, and she held his gaze as if her very life depended on it.

  For she knew well that it did.

  More important, so too did her heart and any possibility of happiness.

  “I told you once that I dreamed of peace,” she told him softly. “Far away from disputed borders and fortified burhs. Out of reach of kings and would-be queens. Where the only blood that signifies is that we will share when we make our daughters.”

  He smiled at that. “Will we have daughters then? I can tell you, sweeting, if the daughters we raise are like their mother, I will know I have the favor of the gods after all.”

  She found that she was smiling too. “I never wished to be a queen, Thorbrand, or even a great lady as my mother was. I can think of nothing I should love more than to be your wife. To bear you sons and daughters in turn. And...” She paused, searching his face, but how could she keep back pieces of herself when he had shared his with her? What kind of marriage would that be? Maybe others resigned themselves to what was practical. But Aelfwynn was not others, and she wanted more. She wanted everything. “And I will love you, as best I can, for as long as we are given.”

  And everything stilled. Her heart and breath. Him. The wood around them, even the sun above.

  “I will hold you to that, Aelfwynn,” Thorbrand told her. His voice was rough, though his touch was gentle. And the look in his eyes made tears form in hers. “And when Ragnall calls for us, I will remind him that we are kin. And I will ask of him—”

  “No,” Aelfwynn said fiercely. “That is not who you are. When your king calls, we will do as he bids. That is the vow you made and so it is our honor that is at stake. Our honor. And I will not have you stain it, Thorbrand. Not for anything.”

  “You are fierce, little Saxon, are you not?” But his voice was filled with something like wonder.

  “I was raised to believe that weaving peace is a woman’s sacred duty, not only to her family, new and old, but to God.” Aelfwynn thought of the women who had taught her, Mildrithe and Aethelflaed in their turn. Two such different women. Two markedly different places in the world, and each had known precisely where she belonged. Aelfwynn had always envied them that knowledge, but she felt it now. Here, in Thorbrand’s arms, at last. “How could I consider myself a good woman, much less a good wife, if I did not make certain to keep, woven tight and gleaming, my husband’s duty to his king?”

  “I do not deserve you,” he gritted out, and she heard a kind of pain in those words. She wanted to reel at that. At the notion this huge, hard man who she had once thought terrifying might truly believe the words he spoke.

  Then again, he truly believed he had failed his own parents.

  “But you do,” she replied swiftly, her voice still fierce and her gaze steady on his. “For so you claimed me in the middle of an old road and made me yours. Does a man deserve what he claims? Our kings would say they do, I think. And so must I.”

  “Sweeting,” Thorbrand said, his voice almost too rough then. Too deep. Yet it moved in her as if it was a part of her. As if he was. “Aelfwynn. I will make you a good husband, I promise you. Whether we till the land or sit high above your homeland, it will be the same. I promise you this. And more, I will love you. With my body, my sword, and my heart, and every blessing the gods have ever granted me. So do I swear here and now.”

  Aelfwynn reached over and pulled his dagger out, smiling when she saw his dark brows rise. But instead of swinging it in his direction, she shook back the sleeve of her cloak, and pricked herself on the inside of her wrist. Deep enough only to let a small droplet of blood rise against her pale skin.

  Then, holding his gaze, she fitted her wound to his.

  “Blood spells are a dangerous game,” Thorbrand warned her, though his gaze was warm. “What would your priests say?”

  “I don’t care,” she replied. She held their forearms together, then she gazed up at him. “I don’t want to wait for our daughters and sons to come, Thorbrand. The only blood that matters is ours. Here, now, we have made ourselves one.”

  “Aelfwynn,” he ground out. “I love you.”

  “As I love you, Thorbrand,” she whispered back.

  This time, he took her with him down to the ground. He laid upon his cloak, but settled her above and astride him. So that her cloak could keep them warm as, there on the forest floor with winter all around, he made her his wife.

  He showed her his love, as she showed him hers, their gazes locked together as if they had been blind until this moment.

  No hiding. No fighting.

  No wars or kings or games. Just the two of them made one, at last.

  They whispered words of forever as Aelfwynn took Thorbrand inside her once again. And then slowly, their fingers linked and their eyes full of only and ever each other, she married him in every way that mattered, there on the forest floor.

  With only winter as witness.

  And a love so bright it felt to them like spring.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ful oft wit beotedan þæt unc ne gedælde nemne deað ana, owiht elles.

  Very often we two vowed that we would not be parted except by death alone, nothing else.

  —from The Wife’s Lament,

  translated by Eleanor Parker

  But the magic they’d made together in the woods was only the first wedding that day.

  “Weddings require preparation,” Aelfwynn argued. They had dressed anew, and Thorbrand had yet lingered. He’d settled Aelfwynn before him and tended to her hair, combing it out with his fingers and then braiding it back so that no trace of wildness or the woods remained. “Negotiations between families take time.”

  “Sweeting.” He turned her to look at him again, his midnight gaze bright with laughter. “Our negotiations are well and truly concluded.”

  “It is winter. No one marries in winter—for how can the families make such a long trip when the weather—?”

  “Aelfwynn. If your family came to this wedding it would be a war.”

  She blinked at that, then took a deep, shaky breath. “Indeed. Indeed, it would.”

  And she knew his face so well it might as well have been carved into her heart. Yet still did she sigh a little at what she saw on it then, a tenderness she knew well was only hers.

  Only and ever hers.

  He smoothed a hand over the hair he had fixed to his liking, then smiled.

  And her worries eased.

&
nbsp; Because the wedding they would have today was for the world. For the benefit of kings. Their truth was here. In these cold woods so like the forest where they had met. Where wolves might howl and snow threaten, but Thorbrand would keep them safe. And she would weave love and laughter all around them, and make them whole.

  Over and over again, no matter what they were called to do.

  They made it back to the village while the sun was still high. Thorbrand marched Bjørn before him, so that all might know his misdeeds and witness his punishment as he led him back to face Ragnall’s harsh justice.

  But such justice was to remain the province of Ragnall and his men, for Aelfwynn was immediately taken in hand by the village women she had befriended the day before. They chattered to her of the mead they had prepared, the honey brought from Ragnall’s own stores, just as he had provided the beasts for feasting and sacrifice. And Aelfwynn wanted to find the customs they spoke of so easily horrifying unto her soul, but in truth, she did not. For had she not moved without thought in the woods earlier? Had she not performed what Thorbrand had called blood magic?

  She had listened to dour priests the whole of her life and none of her prayers had warded off the Northman she would marry this day. None of her piety had saved her, and her sacrifice—the sin her priests would have called a stain upon her soul—had brought her a greater joy than any she had ever known. More than simply joy, it had given her the purpose she had always desired. Thorbrand had seemed to her a demon sent to plague her at first, yet had become more dear to her than her own heart, and in so doing had answered all of her prayers. Each and every one, and then some. How could she think it anything but God’s will?

  Her spiritual concerns assuaged thus, she permitted the village women to treat her like one of them. They drew her a bath and spoke to her of what went on between a man and a woman, not simply in bed, but in life. The older woman from the day before met her gaze frankly, answering questions without waiting for Aelfwynn to ask them. The other women rinsed her with herb-scented water, then helped her dress in a new gown that announced to all that she was not the same woman who had come to this village. For she was to leave it again as Thorbrand’s wife.