A Twist in Time

by Susan Squires

  She turned to him under the full moon of the vernal equinox and knew in her bones and her belly that something special was supposed to happen here, something bigger than her or even bigger than her and Galen together. The full moon, the tides, the earth’s axis that rotated through space, all those could be explained. But in their confluence, they became something more. She ached for completion and she knew what would complete her. Could something be bad that feels so right? Yes, if the universe lied to you, as men lied.

  God, she sounded like a loon, even to herself. The universe was not talking to her. Next she’d start believing in astrology or numerology, and she’d open up a shop that sold crystals and incense and tarot decks.

  But Galen was here, big and real in the cold March air of the vernal equinox under a full moon. She felt his physical presence, the essence of him clearly. This was real. This was right.

  “Lucy,” he whispered, and it was a plea or a prayer, maybe for deliverance. Whether from what would happen here or from the pain of resistance she didn’t know.

  He reached out with his good arm and drew her tight against his body. His chest was hard, his biceps were hard, and the ridge under the zipper of his jeans was very, very hard. It made her dizzy. The ache inside her made it difficult to think.

  “Lucy.” His lips had found her hair. Her frfeaxen hair. His hands ran over her back, down to cup her buttocks and lift her slightly against him, so her belly pressed against the ridge of his erection. She turned up her face and his mouth found hers, not gentle this time but hungry. She returned that kiss with all the need she’d been suppressing for the past days. His tongue searched her mouth, and she pressed her breasts into his chest as though they could get closer. Which they could. . . .

  His thoughts must have been tending the same way. He broke away and held her by the shoulders. The moon was bright enough so she could see how blue his eyes were.

  “You are cold. We go below.”

  He pulled her toward the hatch and the warm cabin where they could get naked and closer still. She wanted to melt into him. The dog was ahead of them. At the bottom of the ladder Galen reached up and simply lifted her down. Was he hurting his shoulder? You’d never know it by his expression. How selfish she was to be using his small strength this way. Did she have a choice? No. She’d made her choice when she drew him out into the moonlight. She wasn’t sure she could be careful of his wounds. She’d try. She’d try.

  He pushed her toward the aft cabin, leaving the dog staring after them. Galen turned and firmly shut the cabin door on him. Lucy heard him sigh and settle down in the passage. The only light in the room was the dim glow of the moon through the high ports on each side.

  Lucy knew what she wanted. She grabbed the bottom of both layers of her tees and pulled them over her head. He pulled off his Henley, surprisingly deft with an injured shoulder. His stitches were black across it. His hair streamed over his shoulders. She unclasped her bra and tossed it to the floor. Galen groaned and reached for her breasts. She wanted that. More than she had ever wanted anything. She moved closer to slip her hands across the hard muscle of his belly and unbutton his jeans. His hands cupped her breasts and his palms rubbed the nipples lightly. Sensation ripped straight to her core. She lifted her face to give him access to her lips, and he took her mouth in a kiss as thorough as the one up on the deck. She worked his zipper as she moaned into his mouth. She wanted him naked. She wanted to touch all of him. She’d wanted that for days. By the time he broke away to kick off his boots and push down his jeans, her body was screaming for gratification. She fumbled at her own jeans as she watched his cock spring free. She sucked in a breath. It was big and straight and thick. She’d never had a man with equipment like this. Could she even do this? She pushed off her own Nikes and jeans. He kicked his clothes away and moved back toward her, a beast coiled to spring.

  She reached for his erection, satisfied with his ragged breathing, and ran her hand along the shaft. It was rock hard under the silky skin and straining with need. He backed her the single step to the end of the bed. The edge pressed against the backs of her knees. He lowered her carefully onto it. He had that much control. But then he was on top of her, his body fitting over the length of hers as he braced above her on his elbows. His erection prodded at her entrance even as he kissed her thoroughly. The head of his cock must be drenched in her juices. But he didn’t thrust inside her. He raised himself on his good elbow and kneaded her breast gently with his other hand, leaning in to kiss her throat as softly as he could. But his breath was still ragged and his teeth nipped at her as though he could barely keep from devouring her. He made his way down to her breast. She thought she might burst. He was trying to make sure she was ready. But she didn’t want it gentle. She wanted it now, as fierce and demanding as she could get it.

  So she spread her legs under him and thrust her hips up a little, undulating against the head of his cock, showing it the way in.

  “Odin’s eye, Lucy,” he breathed, pulling his head up. He was throbbing at her entrance, still straining for control.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered, whether entreaty or command she couldn’t tell.

  He did. His lips were soft. The day’s stubble rasped against her chin. She opened to him, and he thrust his tongue inside her mouth in an echo of the thrusting they both wanted even more. He groaned again into her mouth, and she couldn’t wait any longer. She reached down, took the thick length of him in her hand, and pressed him down slightly to achieve the right angle.

  “Lucy,” he said, and this time her name was a capitulation and he pushed inside her with one powerful thrust.

  Filled. Right. True. Necessary.

  She reached to clutch his buttocks as the muscles in them bunched with each thrust. She wanted him as she had never wanted a man before, as she had never wanted anything. Thrusting to meet him, the friction rubbing at her clitoris, his big cock touched places inside her she’d never felt before. He slipped an arm under her shoulders as they rocked together and clutched her to his chest, his tongue still thrusting and questing inside her, his cock impaling her. They seemed to be melting together in the heat they generated into something entirely new, separate from what they had been, not to be separate from each other ever again.

  She felt it coming from a long way off, like a wave at sea, building momentum from somewhere deep and unseen, inexorable. Their bodies were slick with a light sheen of sweat, both of their chests heaving now as if there were not enough air in the world, let alone this tiny cabin. He withdrew until only the tip of his cock was inside her. He was trying to prolong it for her. Sweet. But wrong.

  “Galen,” she moaned.

  He pulled away from their kiss, his brows drawn together in concern. Could he possibly mistake that moan? How could she make him understand what she truly wanted? Needed.

  “Fuck me, Galen.”

  She’d never said that word in her life. But it must be Saxon all right. Because his eyes darkened and he thrust inside her, his eyes never leaving hers. And now they watched each other’s faces as the wave was there again, more urgent, more powerful for the pause. She saw his eyes glaze over.

  And then the wave crashed over her, drawing her under. Every muscle in her body contracted. Her eyes squeezed shut and a shriek, coiling up from her loins, was squeezed from her by the weight and the power of the wave. Through it all she felt Galen’s own orgasm take him. He didn’t scream, but a series of grunts matched the spurting she felt inside her. They were under the wave, no breath, no air, just the immense sensation squeezing them, squeezing them . . . until they popped to the surface.

  Bobbing on the subsiding sensation, she gasped for air, and Galen did the same. Galen looked into her eyes for a long moment, blinking, as she did the same. The moonlight through the line of ports near the ceiling was cool and kind, bathing them in a silver iridescence. There was a breeze inside the room, from somewhere, nowhere, because the ports and the doors were all shut. It cooled their sweat and felt . .
. comforting. That’s what it was. The room was filled with comfort and rightness.

  It was almost frightening.

  “What the hell was that?” she whispered. She had never had an orgasm like that.

  He gave a tiny, dazed shake of his head and swallowed, hard. “I know not, Lucy.” It had been different for him, too.

  He was still inside her and that felt right as well. Her breathing began to steady, as did his. The moonlight was just . . . moonlight. What had she been thinking? And there was no breeze in the room. How silly was that? It must just be that orgasm had unhinged her there for a minute. What an orgasm. She hadn’t known it could be like that. And that spooky feeling of rightness . . . well, that is just the lovely afterglow of sex.

  Isn’t it?

  “Lucy,” he breathed, and kissed her head, cradling it against his shoulder.

  Stitches! “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  “Nay, Lucy. I am okay. Very okay.” He lifted her chin. “Are you okay?” He looked contrite. “I was . . . I know not the word . . .” He switched to Latin. “Crude? Rough?”

  “You were wonderful. Just what I wanted.”

  “You are what I want also.” He kissed her hair again. “I like frfeaxen. You are beautiful.”

  She looked away. She wasn’t beautiful. Red hair and freckles and way more curves than were fashionable. “I bet you say that to all the women.”

  “Nay. The other women know they are beautiful. There is no need to say it.”

  Great time to remind her about all the other women in his life. And that they were beautiful.

  He must have felt her contract, in spirit if not in body. He put a finger under her chin and turned her face up to his so she could not help but look into his eyes. “You are the one for me. Do you not feel it? I want you, Lucy. The night wants us together. You know it is sooth.”

  God, but she needed that to be true. The night might be the only thing that wanted them together. He was from another time. And both their former lives were lost to them. What were they doing here, waiting on this boat, for what they did not know? He rolled to the side, keeping her with him, still inside her. She scanned his face, her doubt in her eyes.

  “This was always the thread of the Norns.” He said it solemnly. He meant their joining was preordained. That was his explanation for why it felt so right. Tragedy could be preordained, too, though. Maybe this was just the taste of what could be before it was all jerked away from her in some cruel twist of fate.

  “Do you believe in fate?” she asked.

  That look of shame flickered over his face, and the peace that had hung heavy in the air was torn a little more. What made him look like that? She wanted to help. Whatever he had done, he could get past it, and so could she. No matter how horrible. This was Eostre’s night. And wasn’t Easter all about forgiveness, at least for Christians? Lucy had felt the goodness in him. She wanted to be part of his healing. She knew very well that she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever been with. But she put her own feelings aside. She wanted to know all of him as she had known him physically in the last moments. She wanted to help him. Taking her courage in her hands as she took his face, she turned it up. A man like this would not give up the secrets of his soul easily.

  “Why do you look like that?”

  He shook his head. The look flashed across his face and was suppressed. “I do not understand you, Lucy.”

  “Don’t give me that. You understand.”

  He eased out of her. The peace in the room ebbed a little farther. He looked around, as though he felt it, too. He scooted up to sit against the teak headboard. “It is of no matter.”

  She felt the loss of his body inside hers so acutely it was almost pain. She wanted to sidle up under his good arm and curl against him. But she didn’t. She wanted the peace, the feeling of rightness again, but it had to be about more than just fantastic sex. It had to be about who she was, not just that she was close at hand. That was the only thing that could make up for not being the most beautiful woman he knew. And that meant it had to be about who he was, too. She looked at him. He swallowed. Would he bare himself to her in more than body?

  “Your will is as thick as a priest of the Christ Cult,” he complained.

  “Is it bad to want to know you?”

  He closed his eyes. “What is cannot be . . . otherwise.” His eyes opened. They were bleak.

  She wanted to comfort him, but such a man couldn’t bear that. So she said, “But the burden can be shared. Burden?” she asked in Latin.

  He looked away but not before she was sure he understood her.

  Another time, without the waft of sureness still hanging in the moonlight, she would have backed down. But not now, not when she had a dreadful feeling that there was only this night to bind them together and that this night was one of few they might have together.

  “Now or never, Galen Valgarssen. Whatever makes you look like that, I will always think you are mighty and smart and honorable. You might even have a sense of humor.” She didn’t stop to explain. He might not have gotten all of it. But he got the challenge and the gist. Pain flitted into his eyes again, and now she could not resist. She scooted up and curled beside him, head on his chest, listening to the thump of his heart and feeling the peace seep into her with his warmth. His arm slipped around her and held her tight against his side.

  “My mother was a mighty wicce,” he said above her after a moment. She heard it as a rumble low in his chest. “She was from the Old Ones of the west, though she lived among the Saxons. She served the goddess of horses, Epona. She speaks to horses. Nay, spoke,” he corrected himself. “And other beasts. She is dead now. Her kind always had only daughters. But she loved my father, a Viking warrior, against the law of her kind. On Sahmain night in the circle of stones he got her with a lytling to be the priest of Epona after her. But it was a boy. My brother, Eric. The kin of my mother thought he was a sign from God and he would be a mighty priest, perhaps the most mighty, to lead them against their enemies. But Eric died. My mother cursed the goddess. My father mourned him. Later, I was born.”

  He heaved in a breath. Lucy held hers. “My mother named me Galen in the words of my father. It means . . .” He searched for the English word, then said it in Latin.

  “We would say ‘bespelled.’ ”

  “Ja, bespelled. She hoped I would be mighty in drcræft like my brother.”

  “Drycraft?”

  He used the Latin.

  “Oh, magic. Your mother thought you’d have magic powers and take your brother’s place.” Boy, is that a lot to put on a kid.

  “But I have no magic. Beasts love me, but I do not speak to them as my mother did. I am not Eric. The magic died with him. Always I was not what they wanted. I saw it in their eyes. ”

  “Your . . . your parents were disappointed in you?”

  He heaved another breath. Her head rose on his chest and fell. “They loved me. They were good kin. But I knew. And wherever I went in the land around, all knew.”

  “How did you bear it?”

  “My father teached me to wield a weapon. I watched him bind the people together, Saxon and Danir, and learned from him. But I was unstill. When I had seventeen years, I went vikingr, first to trade up the Seine and then up the Volga to fight for the king there. In the language of the Volga, we are called Rus. The land we controlled, they called Russia. It was a hard time. I was put in a carcern in Kiev.”

  Carcern. Incarcerated. “Prison.”

  “Ja. I was gone many years. When I gewend to the Danelaw, my mother was dead, my father feeble. I labored for that part of the Danelaw that held my mother’s people and my father’s. At first Guthrum does not trust me. It is hard. I am half-Saxon. But I fight good. At last Guthrum takes my counsel. The scalds sing of my deeds. Yet still the songs tell of the one the Norns say will save his people, the one I am not. And will not be.”

  What a thing to live with. Belonging to neither people, living in the shadow o
f a dead brother, knowing people expected you to be magic and you weren’t . . . Her heart went out to him. What could she say? She had expected him to be ashamed of some terrible act of carnage. The scars on his body said he’d lived through many. But he was a product of his time. He was proud of fighting and killing for the king of the Danelaw.

  She had wanted to go back to a time when magic was possible. Galen certainly believed it was possible. He was ashamed he didn’t have any. Maybe there was no magic in the world, then or now. You couldn’t count on anything outside yourself to save you.

  “Being a good man is enough,” she said quietly. “There are too few of those.”

  “Nay, Lucy. Life is hard. Men need . . .” Here he had to ask in Latin the word for “hope.”

  “Men looked to me to make life better. To protect them. I could only fight like other men or help in little ways: a bridge, a new saddle for horse.” He had to ask the word for “saddle.” She could feel him getting impatient with himself for not knowing all the words. “They ask me to say the right of the matters they bring to me. So I say which thing is right.” He held her more tightly to his side. She made the leap in her mind. He could not protect his people with magic, or a woman. Was that why he had leaped so blithely from bed to bed, lingering in none? He wanted no responsibility. Yet he fought for Guthrum to unite the kingdom against the invasion only he foresaw coming from the Normans. He struggled to do what he could do, far more than most men could, always believing he was not enough. Was that not the definition of courage?

  She glanced up. His expression was so bleak. What comfort was there for such a man? And then she knew. “There are all kinds of magic, Galen Valgarssen. What we had here tonight is magic.” She scooted up to look him in the face, surer now. “You said the night wanted what happened here. Is that not magic? Is finding each other across a thousand years not magic?”