by Joanna Bell
Combat – even difficult combat – often stokes a man for more. More fighting, more food, more women. Deprivation strips a man away. I remember blinking my eyes, suddenly terrified that I was back in the woods and that Emma herself was just another one of the tea-visions.
But she wasn't a tea-vision, she was herself. Warm and soft and as real as the earth under my feet.
"Ragnar!" She exclaimed when I collapsed into her arms and buried my face in her sweet-smelling hair. "Ragnar, you're freezing! You're filthy. Are you hungry? Come with me. Come with me now, we'll get you warmed up and washed and fed."
The gothi said that without suffering, there can be no recompense. It's not that I ever doubted him, it's not that I did not know the truth of his words. It's that I didn't feel their truth until that moment with Emma, until she spread her warmth around me like a blanket and led me, stumbling and near-delirious with hunger, back to the roundhouse.
If anyone had seen us they would have thought, there goes the young Jarl Ragnar with his woman. They might have wondered where it was I led her. But I didn't lead Emma anywhere that day – she led me. First, she led me to the feasting hall where some of the other warriors from the early Yule rites sat already, also attended by their women and children, some of the youngest by their parents. And then she helped me to sit down at the table, as my body ached and creaked, and brought me a bowl of rabbit stew.
It sounds the simplest thing in the world, I know. But I swear when I saw the look of concern on her face, and smelled the stew, and felt Emma's arm around my shoulders, I nearly wept again for the gratitude that washed over me.
"Go slowly," she warned, concerned as if for a young child. "If you eat too fast you might get sick."
And so I bent down over my meal and spooned it into my mouth with shaking hands. I tried to heed her advice at first – to go slow – but it tasted so delicious and I was so hungry that I was soon wolfing it down, nodding because my mouth was too full to speak when a serving thrall asked me if I wanted more.
When I had consumed almost four bowls of the stew, and my belly finally felt full, Emma took me again and led me out of the feasting hall. I thought she was taking me back to the westerly roundhouse but she seemed to head towards the heavy gate in the western palisade. When she bid the guards open it and let us through, and pulled me out through them, I balked.
"It's hardly the time for a walk, Emma," I said, leaning down to kiss the top of her head and stopping in my tracks. She tried to pull me but even in my weakness she was no match for my strength.
"Just come with me, Ragnar. Stop being stubborn, come on."
"No, girl. Where are we going? I've had enough of these woods, and enough of the spirits that dwell within them. Take me back to the roundhouse and let me see what's under those furs."
She cocked her head at me and laughed. "I see the stew is already taking effect. But if you think I'm letting you lay a hand on me while you're caked in filth, you've got another thing –"
I pulled her against me, then. "Don't play such games with me, Emma. You forget I've seen the way you look at me when I take you into my arms. Do you think the other women are taking their warriors to the bathing roundhouse before –"
"I don't care what the other women are doing," she replied pertly. "I'm taking you to the hot-spring, because your hair is thick with dirt – I can see leaves in it, Ragnar – leaves! Besides, sometimes a little waiting isn't so bad."
"Mmm," I growled into her neck. "Eirik is probably already at his wife's side, and you see fit to punish me – to drag me out again into the snow where I have already –"
"Come on!" She called, and I went with her, because the truth was I simply enjoyed teasing Emma. I probably would have spent another night in the open winter air if she'd demanded it, helpless as I seemed to be when it came to denying her anything she wished.
At the springs, watching the steam rise off the dark water in the moonlight, Emma caught me hesitating. I'd already noticed she seemed peculiarly unafraid of the between-world beings, but it surprised even me to see her lack of fright there.
"What is it?" She asked, unlacing her wool tunic after laying her fur cape down.
"Aren't you scared?" I replied, gesturing to the spring and the surrounding area. "Do you know what kind of bad spirits are said to live in dark waters?"
Off came her tunic, and her fingers got to work on the layers of linen under-dresses. If she was pretending a lack of fear, she was doing it well. "Bad spirits?" She asked, chuckling. "Ragnar, it's a hot-spring. There aren't any spirits in it. You're not tripping balls anymore, are you? It's –"
"I'm not what?" I started. "I'm not tripping what –"
But I never did get to finish that sentence because that was the moment she managed to get her linens loose enough to pull over her head – which she did. And then she stood there in front of me, allowing the freezing wind to skim over her nakedness and the light from the full Yule moon to pick out the ripe swells of her breasts and the delicate bones of her shoulders before she stepped into the hot-spring and submerged herself with an ecstatic sigh.
Bad spirits or not, a half-moon of starvation and freezing and travel to liminal worlds or not, there is scarcely a stronger power on earth than the need of a man for a woman. A dark flower of lust bloomed in my loins at the sight of my girl and I began to wrestle with my own dressings, bellowing angrily at one point when I could not find the leather strap on one of my boots and then kicking it off in frustration.
When I lowered myself into the water – and Emma's outstretched arms – I let out a low moan of relief. But even as I moved to pull her into my lap, to pull her thighs around my body and guide myself into the place where she was warmer even than the water, she wriggled away, giggling.
"Not yet! Ragnar, not yet."
It was then I noticed that she had brought with her a small wooden vessel filled with the perfumed soap that was used in the bathing roundhouse, on the higher women.
"Jarl Eirik's camp woman – Hildy – will have you whipped if she sees you stole that," I told her, as she scooped some of it out and rubbed it between her palms. Not that I would have allowed anyone to lay a hand on her, as it is.
"I don't care," she whispered in my ear as she began to rub the soap into my neck and shoulders. "I want you clean. I want you clean and fed and smiling and happy."
Even as I had been making fun of her for wanting me prepared like a ham for the stew-pot, I knew what Emma was doing wasn't really about herself. She would have let me take her back to the roundhouse before we bathed in the hot-spring, if I'd insisted. I wouldn't have had to insist – all it would have taken was a well-placed hand, a certain kind of kiss. No. What Emma was doing was about me. I almost feared, as she lifted one of my arms to rub the soap into every inch, that I might get too used to such treatment.
"What is it?" She asked, seeing the expression on my face. "Why do you look worried all of a sudden? You know bad spirits don't exist, don't you Ragnar?"
"You're wrong about that," I replied, leaning my head back and closing my eyes as she ran her fingers over my scalp, washing the filth of the Yule rite out of my hair. "But no, it's not spirits that trouble me. It's you."
"Oh is it?" Emma smiled playfully, kissing me again on one cheek, and then the other. "What is it, Jarl? Do I touch you too roughly? Would you rather a different girl scrub the dirt out from under your fingernails? Five girls, maybe? Shall I go back to the camp and ask Hildy to –"
I reached up and smacked her bare ass when she briefly climbed out of the spring to fetch something that sat out of reach. "You've grown even bolder without me around this past half-moon," I commented when she shrieked and giggled and fell back into the water. "Haven't you, girl? What will my warriors say when they see how boldly you speak to me? You must be put back in your place – and I daresay, come the morning, that you will be."
Emma came closer to me, allowing her thighs to straddle me, although she still floated too far away to give me a
ny real satisfaction. "You can do whatever you want with me, Ragnar, when we get back to the roundhouse. But first, we must finish here."
And so that's what we did. It seemed to take a very long while – a few times I even found my head slipping back onto the cold rock as my lovely little foreigner pulled my limbs this way and that and made sure every part of me was clean.
"What have you done?" I chuckled sleepily when she announced that she was finished. "I'm as perfumed as a maid on her wedding night."
We didn't get fully dressed before racing back across the frozen ground to the westerly roundhouse, where a fire had been stoked high to warm the air for our arrival, and a small cask of ale and a plate of buttered bread set on a table. Not that either of us took any notice of any of those things.
I dropped Emma's wool tunic, which I had held loosely around my waist to run back to camp, to the floor and stepped towards her, taking her face in my hands and slipping my tongue between her lips as all the life-force in my body flowed to my center. Her linen under-dress, wet and transparent, clung to every single one of her curves, and I knew, feeling her finally fully against me, that it was not going to be long before I took my satisfaction.
Not that she tried to slow me – not anymore, not by then. She had missed me just as much as I'd missed her. Her body opened up under my touch, her muscles loosening and her mouth falling open when I pulled the under-dress off over her head and pulled her against me.
The frenzy was instantaneous, each of us like a predator getting that first taste of warm blood on its tongue. I was as thick and stiff against Emma's soft belly as I had ever been, aching to feel her slippery warmth around every inch. And she was no less needy, turning away from me almost at once, pushing her hips up and back, offering herself to me.
I remember putting one hand on her hip, and guiding myself between her slick folds with the other, each of us gasping when I thrust into her, and then instantly falling into a quick, desperate rhythm. It was like all the pain and suffering of the past days was coming to this point, all of it built up and held inside.
Emma was going to draw it out of me, though. I bent my body down over hers, letting my eyes roll back in my head at the feeling of her underneath me, the way her back arched with her eagerness to give herself to me.
"Ragnar!" She cried, as her knees threatened to buckle and her fingers clawed helplessly at the table's rough surface, seeking some purchase in the rough seas of my overwhelming need for her.
"Emma," I moaned into her back, squeezing one of her breasts as it bounced with my every thrust and sensing her closeness to the edge. "Emma, Emma, Emma..."
Her entire body stiffened and contorted under me when she came to her ending, as if she'd lost control of everything except the place deep inside where she pulsed around me, bringing me to an acute, agonized peak. I took her hips in my hands, knowing my final thrust was coming, and then burying myself into her with a ragged, howling groan as my thoughts fled my mind and bliss exploded out of me.
We stayed where we were for a few minutes, panting, letting our souls come to rest. And when it came time to stand we stumbled apart, laughing, and fell into our fur-laden bed.
Spent, I fell asleep before I could speak a word. Every part of me was empty, depleted, drained. And in that state Emma did her woman's work of finishing the rites of Yule for her man; laying me down to sleep so I could begin the process of rising again, stronger and wiser than before.
The next morning – if it could even be said to be morning when I finally awoke – I found that, almost as if by magic, part of my depletion had rebounded during the night. Emma lay in bed next to me, gazing at me with her eyes the color of a sun-dappled summer forest – a riot of green, brown, the odd flash of amber, moving shadows – and I could see that she had been awake for awhile.
"Have you eaten?" I asked slowly, in the midst of moving from the dream life to the waking life. "Why do you stay in bed with me, Emma? You should eat something, girl."
Soothed by food, warmth, cleanliness and mostly by Emma herself, I was no longer the poor wretch of the previous day. In fact I was at pains to reassure myself that I hadn't asked too much of her somehow, or relied too heavily on her for comfort. She saw it at once and reached out to stroke the hair off my brow.
"Shh," she said quietly. "Slow down, Ragnar. I saw Paige earlier this morning, she says the warriors – and the Jarls – who have been with the gothi for the early Yule are free now, until the feasting days begin in three night's time. You don't need to get up. And you don't need to make a show for me."
"Make a show for you?" I asked, genuinely confused. "What do you mean when you say that, Em?"
"I mean you don't have to make a big production of being busy and important if you're feeling guilty about last night."
She looked so delicious lying there in her linen under-dress, pulled open as it was at the neckline to expose the curve of one of her breasts, her skin like milk. It was difficult to concentrate on the conversation as my manhood stiffened further than it already was. "Guilty?" I asked, reaching out and pushing the fabric up over her legs. "What would I be –"
"I don't know," she told me, looking me seriously in the eyes. "Sometimes men feel uncomfortable if they let you take care of them. Sometimes they feel their masculinity has been questioned."
I smiled and kissed her soft lips, and then kissed them again as she opened herself for me, allowing me to spread her thighs and find the nub of flesh above her opening, the one that made her squirm whenever I touched it. "What kind of 'men' have you been spending your time with?" I asked. "Boys, maybe, if they worry about such things. No, it's not worries about my manhood, sweet Emma. It's worries about you – that somehow I asked too much of you, or that you found me so involved in the things I was missing that I forgot that you, too, had gone without. Either way," I rolled her over onto her back and positioned myself between her legs, "I'm going to make it up to you."
"Rag –"
She started to say my name but she didn't finish, because I pressed my tongue against the place that her hips were guiding me to, even if she hadn't quite realized it yet. Her voice melted into a high-pitched little sigh and her thighs fell the rest of the way open for me.
It's not that there was no rush inside me that morning – for there was always a rush inside me where Emma was concerned – but that I controlled it. I wasn't just going to finish her, I was going to near-finish her. Not once, or twice, or three times but many more. I was going to see her panting and begging, lost in her own desperation, before I mixed the pain of her need with the pleasure of its satisfaction and made her completely, utterly mine.
Her voice started out steady – high, yes, but even. After the first two times I brought her right to the edge and then backed away at the last second, barely able to look up at her face because I feared seeing how in need she was would destroy my promise to make her wait, some of that steadiness slipped. She began to roll her head from side to side, pausing every now and then to lift it and look down at me, her eyes pleading.
"Please, Ragnar. Please – please."
I enjoyed her begging. I enjoyed it so much I had to stop moving against the furs underneath me, lest I let myself go far too early.
And then I buried my head in her sweetness again, flicking my tongue up and over and around, going faster and firmer until she was flailing her arms, tearing at my hair and lifting her hips up off the bed. Again I pulled away, and that time removed her hands from herself when she reached down to finish what I wouldn't.
"No, Emma," I chided as she chewed her lip and clenched her fists. "No, not yet."
Finally, when I could hardly take it anymore than she could, after I'd wound her up like a tightly coiled rope, I finished her off. She seemed almost hesitant, suspicious that I was going to pull away again. When I didn't she leaned back on the furs, bucking her hips up to me in a frenzy and then screaming, loud and full-throated, when she slipped away into the white sea of sensation. And before the
pleasure had finished I pressed my thumb down where my tongue had been, determined to wring everything out of her, and moved up to push my thickness into her swollen, soaking sex.
It had been too much, witnessing her as I had. I spilled myself into her almost at once, moaning hoarsely and clutching the furs in my fists as Emma happily took my tongue between her lips and my essence into her belly.
Shall I say we spent the rest of the day as one does at Yuletide? That we shared a mid-day meal and then a late supper in the feasting hall with the warriors and with our friends? That Emma went with Paige to the woods to cut fresh boughs from the holly trees? We did none of it. We spent it in my roundhouse, naked and at ease, as if the fire beside the bed of furs were the sun and the roundhouse walls the bounds of the world and Emma and I the only people in it.
We lost count of the times we made love – only knowing that it seemed impossible to get enough of each other, and that as soon as one or both of us told ourselves surely, that was all there was, lust would spring up again like water from marshy ground.
And all the while, as Emma gave me her entire body over and over, as if nothing was too much for her if it meant pleasing me, I found myself attended by a strange but growing feeling that somehow, somewhere, part of the girl I was wrapped entirely up in was holding something back.
On the second morning after the end of the early Yule rites, as our bodies were sore and raw and spent and we lay next to each on the furs, laughing at what the people of the camp must have been thinking of the sounds that had been spilling out of the westerly roundhouse for the past two nights, I told Emma that I loved her.
It was not such a shocking thing, as far as I was concerned. Isn't that what happened with love? You found someone who gave you the feeling that you didn't want to be with anyone so much as you wanted to be with them, someone whose every utterance, every little movement and quirk and thought, was unspeakably fascinating to you, and that was love? It's how I had always heard it described. Before Emma I thought maybe I had loved a few girls. I'd missed some of them, when I wasn't around them. Others may have given me a tiny smidgen of the fascination I now felt for the bold little foreigner, even as I recalled my mother listening to my past descriptions of my feelings and shaking her head.
