by Lucy Monroe
Instinct told him the colors should be mixing, changing, growing stronger.
But the red around Neilina ebbed and flowed like a fast-moving tide, some spots so light they appeared pink, some gaps in the aura altogether. Her inability to trust, her fear for her future, both were fighting her successful merging with his soul despite what he'd been taught.
Would Neilina allow the joining of their bodies? They had no choice if their souls were going to merge, but she still had a choice. Though her barriers against him were too strong, even against her own desire to save herself and the others on her small craft, even the intimacy of sexual union would not accomplish a way across that cold mist without her truly wanting both his body and the outcome.
"Will you take me into your body?" he asked her bluntly.
"It will help our souls to join?"
"Only if you crave me as I crave you. Only if under all your fear and mistrust, you want our souls to join for this brief period."
Her body went stiff, as if his words hit something raw inside her. In Neilina's company, he understood that reaction only too well.
"I must want you?"
"Ja." There was no way around that. "The trust between guardians is usually enough to accomplish this joining. But you fear me."
"Not you." She looked away. "Your asmundr nature."
"We are one in the same and if we are to join, my beast must be welcome by your spirit."
"Sex will make that happen?" she asked with sarcastic disbelief.
"Not if you do not want it."
She stared at him then, unreadable emotion in the depths of her green gaze. "I do want you. I crave your touch like I have never craved another."
Haakon found it near impossible to hold back his gasp of surprise at the admission. "You've hid it well, warrior woman."
She shrugged. "My hate was stronger than my desire."
He said nothing about her claim she hated him. He had guessed that long ago and the fact she'd never said the words aloud did not make them less true.
"And now?"
"Now, even if your soul cannot merge with mine, I would not die without knowing your touch."
"You will not die."
"You have given me hope." It was another unlooked for admission.
He nodded. "I am glad."
"What about you?"
"What about me?" His brain wanted to hold no other thoughts than images of their bodies joined now that she'd admitted to craving him too.
"Do you want me?"
"Ja. More than air. More than the empty years of life before me."
She grimaced at the last, but desire flared hot and bright in her emerald gaze as well. That was the final bit of confirmation he needed that she would not be offering him her body only as payment to save her own life. She wanted him, even if it did not work.
Despite the dour situation they faced, something deep inside Haakon rejoiced.
"Well, are you going to do something?" she demanded.
And he almost laughed. She could have kissed him first. His powerful warrior-princess mate, but she wanted the homage paid to her of him making the first move.
And in this? He was only too happy to oblige the mate who denied their mating.
He leaned forward, slowly, in case she refused his kiss at the last second, but she took a deep breath and let it out, almost like she was girding herself for battle. Then she met him halfway, her lips pressing against his with untried desire, and unmistakable enthusiasm.
He could rest certain in the knowledge that no matter what else lay between them, there was also desire. Always had been. Always would be.
Carnal need he'd held in check for nearly a decade exploded and Haakon deepened the kiss, his tongue exploring the seam of her lips with obvious intent. She tasted like a new dawn, the sweetness of honey dripping warm in the sun…like his.
Her hands came up to his shoulders, grabbing hard, her fingernails digging into the leather of his tunic vest and she gasped. Her lips open, he now pressed inside, tasting his mate fully for the first time. Spicy and wild, her flavor enslaved him as surely as the magic shackles of folklore and he craved a taste of her most intimate depths, something only he would ever have.
She fisted her hands against his shoulders, and he expected to be shoved away, but she pressed harder into the kiss, like it wasn't enough. Her lips molded more firmly to his mouth, her tongue dueling with is for control of the kiss.
Part of him still disbelieving that Neilina not only allowed his touch, but so clearly craved it, Haakon slid his hand under her cloak. He caressed her side from her waist up to where her breasts swelled against her leather tunic. Insensible to the layers between them, he squeezed the curve, measuring her shape with his hand.
Perfect. For him.
Neilina moaned, pushing him backward until he landed on his back on the soft green grass, the warmth of the sky's light in this place of other making him prickle with sweat under his own layers. She landed on top of him, never allowing their kiss to stop.
She tunneled her fingers into in his long hair, holding so tight it would have hurt if he could have felt anything beyond the pleasure she was bringing him with her lips and the feel of her body against his.
He forced himself to remember why he was doing this, encouraging his tiger to go forward into the rapidly dispersing mists.
Her wolf surged forward, running toward the tiger.
He broke the kiss. "It's working."
"Aye." Her eyes met his, the message there not one of rejection, or the desire to stop. "If we stop though, they may well be lost in the mists of my distrust."
The admission must have cost her, but it increased his respect for the warrior woman meant to be his. Even as he knew he had to tell her the truth as he knew it.
Before he could say anything though, Neilina began to give him biting kisses along his jaw, derailing thought all together. "We will share our bodies completely. We will not risk the lives of those I care about because of my pride."
"We can at least try," he said, remembering what he had to tell her. "Our beasts will not be lost; they simply will not merge."
He said nothing about the truth that she would never couple with him if they were not in this place of other and she were not in such dire circumstances. Regardless of how much she might want him, or even tell herself she wanted this. There was a great chance she would regret sharing her body with him anon.
"You are my mate. I will not die without knowing this one joy. You will couple with me, Viking."
He would have laughed at her shouted demand, if his cock wasn't so hard it hurt, if every part of his being wasn't longing to do exactly that.
Before he could say anything else, she sat up and tore off her cloak, then with barely perceptible hesitation, she divested herself of her weapons. She climbed off of him to strip out of the rest of her clothes. Her movements were too efficient to be meant to entice, but each inch of skin exposed increased his craving for their joining.
He needed to feel her hot, swollen depths around his now painfully hard sex. He wanted to touch every bit of the beautiful body being revealed to him. The creamy curves of her breasts that would fill his hands, the beautiful dark curls hiding the mysteries of her sex, enticing nipples hard and berry dark.
There were scars too, from that terrible battle? Or something else?
Right now, he did not care.
Each mark meant only that she had survived, his warrior-princess.
"Do you find me too scarred to be pleasing?" she demanded, standing unashamedly naked before him.
He could not speak, his throat was too dry. So, he shook his head.
"Then take off your clothes, Haakon. This cannot happen if you remain covered."
He choked out a laugh as he did his best to peel his leather breeches down over his swollen member. Her eyes widened as Haakon revealed his sex. He didn't bother with his boots or trying to get his bottoms off all the way, but he yanked his tunic vest up over his
head and off along with the woolen undershirt beneath.
She came back over him, her thighs spread so she straddled his body, her honey wet nether lips kissing the head of his cock. The evidence of his need for her jutted up proudly, moisture leaking from his slit in anticipation of coming inside her, as he had dreamt of doing every single night for nearly ten years.
Showing no virginal reticence, she grabbed his cock and held it so she could lower herself, taking him inside her. Wet, hot, silk enveloped the head of his cock and it took all his immense self-control not to surge upwards and seat himself fully in her accommodating body.
Neilina stopped, her body poised to lower further, her face covered in concentration, tension filling her body. "It hurts. Why does it hurt? This isn't real. We're in the spirit realm. It shouldn't hurt."
"Were that true, then we should not feel the pleasure either."
She stared down at him, sweat beading on her forehead, her brow furrowed. "I do not like the pain."
Certainty washed over him. "You have been with no other man." He could no more hide the satisfaction that gave him than the pleasure he experienced at the joining of their bodies.
"Who else would I be with?" she demanded. "I have lived in solitude in the forest these many years." Neilina shook her head. "Arrogant Viking."
"I have never been inside another's body," he offered, feeling magnanimous and perhaps, just a tiny bit arrogant. Deny it all she might, she was his.
They might never meet in the world of men, but she always would be his.
This joining was her choice. They might not speak the words of claiming, may never give each other the claiming bite, but they would forevermore belong to one another, as they had done from their first meeting in this place.
Still, the pain creasing her beautiful face, could not be ignored. "We do not have to continue," he offered even as his beast roared disapproval. "Our souls will join now." He was sure of it.
She glared. "Think you I am some weak maiden to balk at a course simply because there is some pain."
"I do not want you to hurt," he told her baldly.
"It is part of it, or so I have heard."
Any advice her mother had given had happened so long ago, he was surprised Neilina remembered it.
Something must have shown on his face because an almost soft look came over her fierceness in that moment. "I spent years memorizing every conversation I ever had with my parents, the people of my tribe. I was utterly alone for nearly a century before I found Dìonach."
"You have not been alone for these past nine years."
He expected instant denial, but she gave a short jerk of her head. "I know."
That, at least, was something. Her first, and most likely only concession to their actually being mates.
His thoughts splintered again as she pressed down with her hips, taking him further inside.
But then she stopped. Her face stiff with pain, she remained immobile above him.
"I would take this pain from you," he told her.
She jerked her head. "No. This is my body, my gift to you, my pain."
CHAPTER SIX
D
id she have any idea what she was really saying? What she was offering him?
It was because they were in this place of other. That was why she offered him herself. And even if it was only for this moment out of time, Haakon would accept the gift that it was.
He reached up to cup her face. "Kamerat." His mate. His. As she leaned over him, her body embracing his, he could not help but claim her with words. "Du er min."
Rather than argue with him, as she usually did, Neilina's entire body shuddered and she pushed down with her hips, only to stop with a gasp. "I can't…I want…It's not working." She frowned, her eyes suspiciously shiny, but he was sure tears would never be allowed to fall. "Help me."
It was not a plea, but a demand.
And one he was only too happy to accede to.
He might have never been inside another woman, but he knew what was required to give one pleasure. His father had spoken to him freely on the topic, after Haakon had become a man according to the Viking Way, when he'd taken on his asmundr nature.
Reaching down, he brushed his thumb over the tiny nub at the top of her sex, releasing the scent of her pleasure between them, making his tiger growl for the claiming bite. Haakon ignored the beast, as he'd had to do for so many years when it came to this need and concentrated on building the pleasure between them.
Her body moved a little, her lovely breasts swaying, the nipples calling to his mouth. "You are so beautiful, kamerat."
"Don't call me that." She looked away, then sighed. "I am no beauty. I have scars on my body, a scar on my face."
Again, she was not arguing against him calling her mate, only beautiful. His tiger purred with pleasure at this tiny acknowledgement of their soul connection.
He gently pulled her head back around so their gazes met once again, hers filled with defiance, but under that? A vulnerability he would never accuse her of. "Your scars proclaim you to be warrior among our kind, strong enough to survive. That is beautiful."
"I needed to be strong enough to protect, but I wasn't."
"You are no griffin to defeat an asmundr, especially one gone Berserker, on your own." Haakon thought pleasure might give better comfort than his words and he cupped her breast, abrading her nipple with his thumb. "Your curves are perfect. This little nub looks so sweet. Is it, I wonder?"
Before she could answer, he leaned up and bent forward to take the sweet berry into his mouth. She gasped in pleasure and he mouthed the curve of her breast, shifting his lips over her heated flesh to taste the other turgid tip with the same enthusiasm. He continued to rub small circles on her clitoris, his fingers getting wet with her essence.
Neilina's body shifted little by little, taking his hard cock deeper inside her, as pleasure overcame pain.
Haakon laid back, bringing his fingers to his mouth. He flicked his tongue out and tasted her essence for her to see. Neilina's green eyes widened, the pupils expanding with shocked desire, making her gaze darken.
Fragrant with her passion, spicier than her mouth, the silky moisture on his fingers was fully and completely her. His kamerat. Neilina's flavor burst on his tongue and took over Haakon's senses.
Mine, his tiger roared inside him.
Mine, his soul shouted over the rapidly dispersing mist.
Mine, his Viking spirit claimed loudly, refusing any other circumstance.
He needed to give the claiming bite, craved it like nothing he had ever craved in his life. And his soul ached to receive it from her as well, but he had to stifle that need. He could not give into it. She would never forgive him if he did and that was something he would not live with. Residual hatred was bad enough, he would not engender any on his own account.
Her eyes heavy-lidded, Neilina's head tipped back as she moaned long and low. "Dinna stop, Viking."
"Not planning to." And if he found his own pleasure in the first time she'd called him Viking without it sounding like a curse word, he wasn't stupid enough to say so.
The tension drained out of Neilina's body as a different sense of urgency built in the air between them. Neilina canted her hips, causing his sex to press up into her body more and more. Suddenly he pressed irrevocably against her maidenhead and they both froze. Pain once again made her grimace.
Haakon could not countenance it, no matter that he knew there had to be a tearing for them to join completely. "We can stop," he offered a second time, this time from between gritted teeth, even as his hips tried of their own volition to surge upward.
Yet he managed to remain still beneath her. He was no untried boy, no matter what she said. He was a man, full grown, with years enough to learn to control his asmundr beast, much less the urges of his human body.
Neilina shifted a little, and cried out with pleasure as her clitoris rubbed against the calloused thumb tip he had returned to her sensitive nub. He
did his best to increase her pleasure by going back and forth over the swollen nub.
"Aye, Haakon. Dinna stop." She rocked against him, taking more of his engorged sex into her slick depths.
He kept touching her, letting her set the pace of penetration, no matter how hard that was.
She was tossing her head back and forth when she plunged downward, breaking through her virginal barrier and enveloping his sex until he pressed against the entrance to her womb with one thrust. She screamed, whether it was in pleasure, or pain, he could not tell, their souls were still rubbing alongside each other, not fully joined.
He grabbed her hips, stilling her. "Give it a minute."
She stared down at him, sweat now trickling down from her temple. "You think to tell me how to do this thing we've never done before?" she challenged.
"I think to save you more pain," he growled. "Deny it all you like. You are my mate and protecting you is at the core of my nature."
She turned her head, breaking their locked gazes.
"No," he insisted. "Look at me. We are doing this so that our souls may join to save you." He did not mention that she'd wanted it for herself, had acknowledged wanting him, not sure how true that would be on the morrow. "You cannot build new barriers."
She said nothing for a long moment, but then she nodded and let her turbulent green eyes meet his again, the message there inscrutable to him. "No barriers."
And suddenly it was gone, that wall that had held even to that moment between them. Red and green mixed together, streaks of each invading the other as their bodies rocked together in bliss, the glow around them going a rich brown color before flashing the purest white. Seemingly oblivious to how well their souls had merged, Neilina increased the pace, slapping his shoulder and demanding he move.
Giving himself freedom to do exactly that, Haakon took over their joining, though she rode him. He set a powerful pace, pulling her against him as he thrust upward. The scream she gave when she climaxed was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. He roared with the power of his beast as he came inside her body, their joining complete in this place of other.
