by Betina Krahn
“Safe with you?” one asked, wide-eyed at finding herself in the renowned and feared battle-maiden’s arms. Aaren laughed and gave her hair a reassuring stroke.
“Yes, with me. You are always safe with me. I will protect you.”
Their little faces filled with relief and wonder, and she felt an odd pricking at the backs of her eyes. It was a warrior’s task to protect and a woman’s task to cradle and reassure. And she suddenly found herself overwhelmed by powerful, confusing urges to do both.
Jorund stood in the trees at the edge of the meadow watching Aaren with the children. He had quit the raucous merriment of the hall for the quieter pleasures of the company of the women and children. He needed relief from the constant strain of wanting and the growing resentment he felt toward Aaren. Day by day he grew more hot-blooded and irritable, watching her unholy pride rising between them like a wall, while he ached for the pleasures he knew they both wanted. Rika had loped along before him as he wandered past the cultivated fields to the nut grove, then had left him behind. He arrived just in time to hear children screaming and see them hurtling down the path toward him, crying that a wolf had tried to get them in the bee meadow.
When he rushed to the clearing, he discovered both of his she-wolves . . . one cuddling and reassuring two frightened children and the other sulking in the grass. He smiled, relieved, and leaned a shoulder against a tree trunk at the edge of the clearing, moved by the sight of Aaren’s glowing face and the dulcet tones she used with the children. When she laughed, his heart gave an odd lurch and his throat tightened. Her long, tapered hands gently brushed the children’s hair . . . her eyes twinkled as she set them on their feet, then got to hers . . . and she led them around and around in a ring game.
When they all fell down laughing, he watched her tumble with the children and absorbed the easy grace, the girlishness of her movements. He had never imagined seeing her like this. Or perhaps in his deepest heart, he had.
Noise from the path caused her to sit up and the children huddled close to her. Several harried women and a number of panting children ran into the meadow and stopped at the sight of her sitting on the ground with their little ones. The mothers hurried to take them from her and she explained awkwardly that it was Jorund’s wolf . . . it had only given the children a fright.
The women nodded wary thanks and scooped the little girls up in their arms. Aaren stood shifting from one foot to the other as they hurried away. The longing in her face was difficult for Jorund to watch. In those unguarded moments, as she turned away and dug at the clover stubble with her toe, he glimpsed a yearning he had not expected in her and a warmth, a softness in the heart of Aaren Serricksdotter. Together, they melted the ire he had been fighting for the last several days.
This was the woman he had glimpsed inside that tough warrior’s shell. This was the tenderness he craved. It was no longer just pleasure he wanted, or even conquest. He would not be satisfied until he had all of her: her fierce passion, her gentleness, her vulnerability, her strength. He wanted her body, her heart, her presence . . . he wanted her entire life, mingled with his.
One woman, Godfrey had said. And he had laughed. But now, one woman embodied everything he desired, the puzzle of a lifetime. And he was determined to have her.
He shoved off from the tree trunk and stepped out of the shadows.
Aaren heard the rustle of the grass behind her and whirled, bracing. The sight of him coming toward her with his golden hair shining in the sun, his shoulders swaying, his eyes alight with both promise and desire, took her breath. She wasn’t prepared to confront him just now. Her defenses were down . . . she had just allowed too many memories out, had just suffered a heart-tugging breach of her inner wall.
Scrambling to regain control, she backed away. When he stopped several feet from her, she paused and drew a calming breath. “What are you doing here, Borgerson?”
“I came to enjoy the afternoon . . . the sun. And I came to find you.”
“Me?” She swallowed hard. “B-but you don’t have your blade with you,” was all she could think to say.
“You are the most constant and predictable female I have ever known,” he said in a tone filled with good-humored reproach. “Most women change their minds at least a dozen times a day. But you always have just one thing—the same thing—on your mind.”
“As do you,” she said, feeling the irresistible pull of his gaze. He laughed with a deep, rolling sound that vibrated her fingertips.
“Fighting,” he charged, bending toward her from the waist.
“Pleasure,” she accused, copying his posture with a half smile. He was teasing her . . . she was teasing him. It seemed the most easy and natural thing in the world, almost as if they were old friends. He strode past her and gestured to the meadow around them.
“You know what this is?” When she shook her head, he looked around with a broadening grin. “This is the bee meadow. In the Spring Month it is covered with clover up to your knees. And those trees over there”—he pointed to a section of woods—“are where the bees have their hives. Bedria is our bee-woman and the brewer of the best mead in all the southern clans. Have you ever robbed bees, Aaren Serricksdotter?”
“Nej,” she said, shaking her head. “Once, Father Serrick found and robbed a honey-tree in our low thicket. I went along to help, and I watched them light on him until they almost covered him.” She shuddered. “He got only a sting or two, but it was a terrifying sight.”
“You? Terrified?”
“I confess . . . I am afraid of bees.” She reddened. “Of nothing else in all Midgard,” she protested quickly, then muttered, “only bees.” Then she frowned, recalling something she had heard. “They call you Honey-hunter. Then you must help Bedria with robbing her bees.”
He laughed wickedly and strolled closer. “Women do talk,” he said with an enigmatic smile. He paused before her with his hands on his waist and rocked back on one leg. “It seems strange to me that you should fear bees, Long-legs. Do you not know that bees and women are close kin?” His eyes were beginning to glow. Her breath came faster as she caught the first waft of heat radiating from his body.
“Kin?” she said, feeling that odd breathlessness that she knew to be the effect of his special woman-magic. When he nodded, not taking his gaze from hers, she had to jerk in a breath.
“There are but two kinds of creatures in all the world that make honey,” he said softly.
“Two?” The separate strands of her reason and feeling were melting together.
“Bees. And women.”
“Don’t be daft,” she said with a soft, distracted laugh. “Women don’t make honey.”
“Oh, but they do, Long-legs.” His eyes caressed her slowly and his big, languid body seemed to uncoil before her eyes, coming to life . . . reaching for her. “Shall I show you how?”
She couldn’t swallow, could scarcely breathe. She knew what he was going to do to her, had known it from the moment she saw him. And she wanted it, wanted to taste him, to feel his hard body against and around her. When he raised a hand to cup her chin and tilt her mouth up to him, she let her eyes drift closed, trapping the sight of his bronzed face, the sensuous fullness of his mouth in her mind. And suddenly he was cradling her against his body and laving her lips with his tongue.
He tasted like grain, salt, and honey—the things that sustained, seasoned, and sweetened life. And she opened to him, allowing him into her depths, yielding the tender, inner surfaces of her mouth to his slow, ravishing strokes. He swirled her tongue and coaxed it, teased it . . . tempting it to venture on its own. And she slowly began to fulfill the haunting wish-dream she had lived with day and night . . . exploring his firm, masterful lips and delving past them into the sweet, silken source of that potent word-stream that always engulfed her will and drowned her senses.
Torrents of warmth swirled through her, melting her sinews, softening her bones. Her knees went weak and she sagged against him, uttering a sound that
was part sigh, part gasp. He swayed, then braced and lifted his head. She could scarcely focus her eyes, but when she did, she saw that he was blinking, trying to gain control of his vision, too. He turned his head toward the trees, then suddenly released her and bent to sweep her legs from under her.
“What are you doing?” she squealed, flailing, then frantically clamping both arms around his neck as he cradled her in his arms.
“Carrying you,” he said, his breath labored, his eyes fierce. He struck off for the shelter of a nearby tree.
“Put me down—you can’t lift me—”
“I already have.” He laughed, though the strain in his face told of the effort it required.
She flushed and her jaw worked, but no sound came out. He was carrying her. He was probably the only man in the village who would attempt it . . . much less do it. It was a demonstration of his physical power, she realized dizzily, and of his sensual determination. He was treating her like a woman. And she liked it.
He set her back on her feet at the base of a tall birch, which had shed half of its leaves, and drew her into his arms. His breath came fast, his skin was hot . . . and his eyes had the intensity of lightning bolts.
“Do you know even a small part of how beautiful you are?” He took her face between his hands and poured a kiss over her mouth that was so gentle it made her ache. Behind that control, she could feel his power coiled, his desire reined and straining. “Perhaps it is better you don’t know.” He pushed her down to her knees, then to a seat on the leaf-blanket at the base of the tree and sank with her, beside her . . . connecting their mouths, pressing her onto her back, sliding his chest over hers.
“I have never made love to someone in armor before.” He paused with a throaty chuckle. “I think this will have to go, Long-legs, before we can meet properly.” His hand slid to her side and when she didn’t protest, his fingers quickly untied the lacings of her breastplate and pulled them completely out. She arched to allow him to draw the molded leather from beneath her, then sucked in breath as he settled his chest over her breasts once more. “So much better . . .” He ground against her sensitive nipples and massaged her soft mounds with his chest, then his fingers. And his mouth captured hers once again, trapping her helpless moan inside.
The dull ache of wanting she had lived with since he kissed her in the woods was now a fierce, driving hunger for the feel of him, for the weight of him on her . . . for the gentle, swirling pleasures he was working in the hardened tips of her breasts . . . and for the deeper, stronger claiming she sensed would follow. She filled her hands with his hard shoulders, his heavily layered back, his silky spun-gold hair, reveling in the textures of him and committing each sensation to the deepest well of her heart.
His mouth drifted across her face, down the side of her neck, caressing, teasing, nipping. Then her tunic slid up and he lowered his head to her aching breasts, nuzzling and then swirling their tips with his tongue. She gasped and went taut beneath him. The wet heat of his mouth flooded into her, and the gentle tugs of his suckles and nibbles reached all the way into her woman’s mound, exciting her so that she wanted to squirm, to press her warm, aching flesh against his hardness.
“Ummm.” He raised his mouth to her ear, setting it atingle with that sultry vibration. “You’re magnificent, Long-legs. So hard. So soft.” And she realized his hand was working the ties of her breeches . . . then peeling them back. She quivered as his hand glided down her belly and paused over her woman’s mound. For a moment, he kissed her deeply, letting his big hand rest on her, radiating heat into her most sensitive flesh, drawing her desire into her loins to meet his touch. She grew turgid with expectation, and when the kiss and the caress lengthened without deepening, she moved restlessly, a small but telling motion beneath his hand. He lifted his head and smiled into her half-focused eyes.
“Now, Long-legs.” His voice came like gently lapping waves. “Make honey for me.”
His fingers slid along the groove of her womanflesh and gently invaded those tender folds. She gasped and held her breath, concentrating on the shattering sensations of his fingers stroking her most sensitive parts. It was as if he reached into the core of her woman’s body with his very hands, caressing and stirring her. Then the whole world began to whirl softly, sensuously, as if directed by and in rhythm with his hand. Warmth surged, her body contracted . . . and she felt a liquid flow beginning in her womanflesh.
Hot and sweet. Honey.
She could scarcely breathe, her whole body was aflame, throbbing with a rising tension . . . simmering with a hot, mounting need for something she didn’t understand. She writhed, feeling unable to absorb another sensation and yet drinking in more . . . lost in the need in her blood and sinew . . . aching for release.
“Don’t fight it, Long-legs,” he murmured raggedly into her ear. “Let it take you. Let it wash through you . . . let it carry you.”
Don’t fight. His words lodged in her mind even as they rumbled through her tortured frame, freeing her responses. The storm in her blood was like the mounting rage of battle-fury: hot, wild, scintillant. Like living fire, it engulfed and consumed her, burning the dross of old anxieties and frustrations from her heart . . . purging the tensions that days of confrontations and denial of battle had accumulated in her blood. She arched into his hand, feeling her blood swelling in her veins, her muscles contracting, her nerves quivering . . . and suddenly the tension burst in her loins, exploding white-hot, like a pleasurable lightning blast through her senses . . . discharging them, making way for the pure, sweeping flood of release. She soared, clinging to his shoulders, shuddering as storm wave after storm wave of pleasure broke over her.
Don’t fight . . . lingered in her head as the maelstrom in her blood subsided. She raised her eyes to his, finding them heated to molten silver. “There is more, Aaren. Much more.”
More, she thought. Heat still swirled in her blood and desire eddied in her body, but the charge in her senses was dissipated enough for her wits to reassemble. In the comparative calm, that one word—more—began a chain of thinking. How much more? A heart-stopping thought burst through her mind. Had she crossed the boundary set by her enchantment? The very possibility sent an icy, sobering draft through her heated core. Not an hour ago, she had been scolding Miri and Marta . . .
As he bent to claim her mouth and gently slid the lower part of his body onto hers, she felt a violent contraction of fear in her stomach. Coldness seeped through her as she scrambled to recall what Serrick had said of the limits of their freedom. Mating, a man’s flesh-spear . . . a woman’s body absorbing it. Not yet, she thought frantically.
The sudden stiffness in her response made him look down at her. Seeing the tumult in her eyes, he made to reassure her with a kiss. It was a long, breath-stealing interval before she managed to drag her mouth from his.
“Fight me,” she whispered urgently. “It is not too late—you have not yet pierced me with your flesh-blade.” Her eyes were dark, luminous, like liquid amber, compelling. “Fight me, Jorund. So we can finish it.”
Her words cut through the steam in his senses, and he shifted them back and forth in his head, like hot coals he couldn’t bear to hold yet couldn’t seem to drop. Fight her . . . finish it. He didn’t want to think, but couldn’t keep his thoughts at bay.
“Don’t be daft, Long-legs.” He forced a sensual smile and undulated against her so that she quivered with involuntary pleasure. “You don’t want to fight me. You want to wrap your long, silky legs around me—”
“But I do want to fight you,” she said in a desperate hush. “And I need you to fight me. I cannot be with you until you defeat me in honorable battle.”
“Honorable?” He laughed harshly, grappling with the realization that she was serious . . . the fear and desperation mingled in her beautiful features were real.
“I have to fulfill the terms of the enchantment, Jorund. I have to be defeated in battle before I can be . . . mated.” She abruptly wriggled and pus
hed at his ribs to escape the wit-numbing impact of his body against her still-throbbing flesh. He started as if she had slapped him, and shifted his weight to the ground beside her.
“That cursed enchantment of yours. It has nothing to do with honor,” he declared, his face darkening as he watched her withdrawing from him. “It is but an old man’s dream . . . or his half-mad scheme. You have nothing to uphold, Aaren, for there was never an enchantment . . . or an Odin or a Freya to pronounce it on you!” She gasped and shoved him away from her as she struggled to sit up. He rolled back and thrust up on his powerful arms.
“You’re wrong, Jorund. It has everything to do with honor. There is an enchantment . . . and I am duty-bound, by blood and by my warrior’s oath, to uphold it. And whether you believe it or not, your father and his warriors and the rest of the village believe it.” Her eyes widened. “If I let you take me . . . if I go to your furs without fulfilling my duty, without upholding my sisters’ honor . . . they will despise me as weak and revile me, and Miri and Marta will have no rank, no future, no right to marry. And those would be just the first of the calamities to befall us if I defied the gods and the enchantment.”
Even as she spoke, the image of Hakon Freeholder’s cruel, narrow eyes and surly expression rose in her mind: “. . . got no fangs left . . .” She heard it again in her head and suddenly realized why it had haunted her so since that night by the campfire. Jorund had named her a she-wolf before the entire village. And she had seen, too well, the fate of she-wolves who allowed themselves to be tamed . . . who lost their will to fight . . . who lost the honor their fierceness inspired among warring men. She knew that Rika’s fate—derision and contempt—would be her own if she surrendered without an honorable fight.
