Conquests: an Anthology of Smoldering Viking Romance

by James, Elle

  “You might want to put down your daughter or you will shake out her brains,” Melite teased as she came to greet her brother with open arms.

  He laughed and put the girl onto his shoulders to properly hug his sister. “Ah, Melite, what a comforting sight you are. And where is—” He let go of her and looked around searchingly before he spotted Callinice standing next to a pillar. While he went to greet his wife with a kiss (far too ardently for Callinice’s weak body), Melite was able to look at the men her brother brought home. Two were known, and she greeted them with a wide smile, which they returned with words of reverence.

  “The domes of Constantinople might be the first thing for a returning soldier’s weary eyes to see, but the beauty of the Roman women is what makes a man truly feel at home, Kyria,” Philonas, one of her brother’s oldest friends, told her with a grin.

  Melite smiled politely. “Just wait until you see the feast I have had prepared for you. There are plenty of other things that will make you feel at home, my friend.”

  She turned toward her brother, waiting for him to introduce her to the other three men, when she caught the gaze of one of those strangers. He was young, maybe four or five years younger than her own twenty seven, but tall and broadly built, light-eyed and golden haired. A foreigner.

  Chrysion beamed as he approached them with fast steps. “Sister, let me introduce Arestes, my friend from the far-off Northlands. He serves in the Varangian force. The men under his command have taken out more pirates than any other squadron.”

  The foreigner bowed. “It’s an honor, Kyria.” His Greek was heavily accented—this was not a descendent of the Norsemen who came to Constantinople a hundred years before like the Varangians that made up such a large part of the palace guard. This was a man who had traveled far and fought many battles in his young life, judging by the scar rising above his collar.

  She wondered how far down that scar reached… “Welcome to our home, Arestes,” she said with a smile. “I noticed your accent. Are you from Varangia?”

  A grin appeared on his face. “I am, Kyria. From a country by name of Norvegr.” The country’s name sounded like a growl coming from his lips.

  “Arestes is a nobleman’s son, and he served the king of Kiev before he came into the service of our empire,” Philonas explained.

  A nobleman? She hardly heard the names of the other two men Chrysion introduced, though she still greeted them politely while she did her best not to stare too openly at the young Norseman. Just looking at him—his broad jaw, his blue eyes and light hair—made strange feelings rise inside of her.

  Struggling to recall her duty, she led their guests and newly returned master of the house into the dining room, where they attacked the first course as if it was a pirate-infested Mediterranean island.

  Melite, who was familiar with the behavior of sailors newly home, had already served clams, cheese, and bread onto her and Callinice’s plates, just to be on the safe side, and did her best to chat with her brother about their campaign while Chrysion ate heartily of octopus. While she picked the flesh out of her own clams with a little skewer, she let her gaze wander over the rest of her dinner guests. Before she even knew it, she was looking at the Varangian again.

  He definitely had the table manners of a barbarian. He broke his clams with his fingers, licked the juice from his hands instead of swiping it up with bread, ate whole handfuls of cheese, olives, and mullet roe, and washed everything down with wine before he had even swallowed. When the monokythron arrived, he didn’t even look at the fork next to his plate but kept using his fingers. Melite had heard the barbarians of the North thought forks were the work of the devil, but she really couldn’t say whether this man didn’t want to use one, or if he just didn’t know how.

  He did use his knife for the meat, and he complimented the fish sauce in which the kid and antelope had been cooked.

  “The Slavs of Kiev sadly don’t fancy fermented fish, Kyria,” he told her with a wide, wickedly handsome grin, wiping sauce from his stubbly chin. “In my homelands, we ferment the fish whole or eat them dried, and their taste is quite similar to this sauce. But I would never have thought of using this sauce with meat.”

  Melite smiled—his grin was contagious; it crept into her flesh and sent tingles down her spine. He might have been a barbarian, but who cared about table manners when a man’s smile made the sun rise in her dining room?

  “We might have more in common than is obvious on first glance, then,” she answered, and when he next licked the juice off his fingers, keeping his gaze on her, she couldn’t stop the blush that spread from her cheeks to her chest at the sight of his tongue caressing his wet fingers.

  For the rest of the dinner, she scarcely looked away from their Varangian guest. And he, in turn, kept casting her glances while eating and laughing with his brothers in arms.

  They ate and drank until late into the night. When their friend, Philonas, left to seek his bed, only Chrysion, Melite, and the Varangian remained. Callinice had gone hours before. Outside the open windows, the moon stood high above the domes and towers of the city.

  “You don’t have a place of your own, Arestes, do you?” Chrysion asked the young Norseman who had caught Melite’s eye so many times during this evening.

  “I have been assigned to the barracks of the garrison for my stay in the city,” he replied. He had emptied a good two jars of wine on his own, and still, there was no sign of drunkenness neither in his posture nor in his voice.

  That was more than could be said for her brother. He was leaning heavily against a pillar while his face distorted into a comical frown. “That’s far too far away to w-walk at this hour. Stay here. We have guest rooms.”

  Melite wasn’t sure if she imagined Arestes cast her another glance before he nodded at Chrysion. “You are too kind, my friend.”

  A little smirk snuck onto Melite’s face at that answer. “We will see how kind you will find it once you wake up tomorrow to the racket of five small children.”

  “Five? Are two of them your own, then?” Arestes asked while Melite motioned one of their slaves closer.

  “I have four children,” she said, smiling. “But only my two daughters live with me. My sons stay with my late husband’s brother, a veteran who can give them a proper military education.” Melite paused to instruct a slave to take Chrysion to his rooms.

  “You must miss them,” Arestes said in his rasping accent.

  Melite’s smile turned slightly rueful. “A Roman mother’s sons belong to the Empire, my friend.”

  An earnestness she had not yet seen appeared on Arestes’ face. “I am sure they will make you proud one day, Kyria.”

  Another slave arrived to lead Arestes to his rooms, and the Varangian bowed one last time to Melite before he walked away.

  Exhausted and confused by the warm feeling in her chest, Melite trailed slowly to her bed.

  *

  She awoke a few hours later and then was unable to fall asleep again. With a sigh, she got out of her bed and threw a palla over her shoulders to cover the tunic she wore to bed. Then she left her bedroom, barefoot, and walked toward the patio.

  Melite couldn’t see the moon from the lushly planted inner yard, but knew the sun would come up in a few short hours. She sighed as she drew the cool night air into her lungs. The days were getting hotter and hotter, and soon even the last lingering coolness of the early morning hours would disappear. With her eyes closed, she leaned against one of the columns and listened to the noises of the night: the call of the night birds, the chirruping of a cicada, the low hum of a male voice…

  That last noise made her open her eyes, and she frowned as she tried to catch the sound again. It came from close by. Now curious, she followed the humming to the other end of the patio and through a short hall into the humid warmth of the bathroom.

  She didn’t know which poor soul he had woken up to have the water heated, but Arestes was sitting in the sunken pool, faced away from the ent
rance. One of his naked, muscular arms laid languidly on the edge. His head was tilted backwards. And while she couldn’t see what his other hand was doing, she could very much see the muscles in his shoulders moving. The noises she heard hadn’t been humming, but low, rough moaning.

  Heat rose in Melite’s face. She wasn’t sure if it was because she had intruded on a very private scene, or because those rasping moans sent sparks through her body and between her legs.

  The prudent thing would be to leave him, and she slowly began to retreat. But just when she had set one foot over the threshold, her palla slipped from her head, and the soft noise of silk sliding over wool was enough to alert Arestes to her presence.

  With the reflexes of a soldier, he jumped up and turned.

  She managed to duck into the hallway before he could see her, but now that he was standing, his body was on full display. Bared of clothes, his shoulders looked even wider, his arms more powerful. Curls of golden hair covered a broad chest dripping with water. The scar she had noticed earlier ran from his neck down his chest, white and slightly luminescent in the dim light of the tallow lamps. It continued over taut muscles down to his navel, where another thin line of hair led to a bed of more curls between his legs where his sex jutted, long, thick and glistening, and still hard despite the sudden disruption.

  Melite’s mouth watered and her fingers started to itch. Never had she seen such a large, beautiful cock before.

  “Who is there?” he called, not loud enough to alert the slaves, but loud enough for anybody in the hallway to hear. The thick muscles of his thighs tightened as he made a move to leave the pool.

  In this moment, Melite decided that five years of celibacy had been enough. Prudence, propriety be damned. She was a widow—even if he did tell anybody, who would believe the words of a barbarian over those of a noble Roman lady?

  All those thoughts rushed through Melite’s head in a split second. She stepped into the bathroom again.

  Arestes’ eyes widened. “Kyria, I…”

  She cut him off with a motion of her hand, and while fixing his gaze with her own, she slowly let her silken palla slide to the floor. His eyebrows shot upwards, but when she started to walk towards him, the light blue of his eyes vanished as his pupils widened. Staring from black eyes, he swallowed.

  Melite smiled as she neared to the edge of the pool, though her mind was overflowing with doubts that came too late. Would he reject her? What if he laughed at her? After taking a deep breath to calm herself, she opened the lacings that held her tunic at her shoulders, allowing the soft wool to pool around her feet and revealing her voluptuous body.

  A low growl came from his throat. Rough hands reached to grasp her hips and pull her toward him, leaving her no room for doubt concerning his attraction.

  He pulled her in for a hungry kiss, and Melite couldn’t hold back a needy moan when his hard, thick sex pushed against her belly. His tongue thrust into her mouth so fiercely she smiled against his lips and chastised him with a tiny nip at his tongue.

  He growled into her mouth again, but pulled away obediently when she gently put her hand on his chest.

  Her lips felt wonderfully swollen, and she could feel her own sex pulsing with need, but she wanted to draw this out as long as possible. “You seem to have a bit of a head start, my friend…” she said, her voice deepening to a sultry whisper.

  A sound he must have liked because he drove his loins against her hips again.

  She licked her lips and ran her fingers over the scar covering his chest. “I know that those from the icy north have lava in their veins,” she whispered, “but try to bridle your youthful energy just for a few moments, and you will experience the bliss of a Roman bosom in its entirety…” She could feel him hesitate, but then he pulled back a little more, though his hands stayed at her hips, their grip even tightening a little, as though to keep her from running.

  As if she could now that her body was awakened and needful of Arestes’ beautiful length.

  “Sit down,” she whispered.

  With a slight narrowing of his eyes, he let go and did as he was told.

  A true soldier, after all, she thought with a smile, before she stepped downward, joining him in the pool.

  She straddled Arestes’ thighs and kissed him again, while her fingers ran down over his chest once more. His strong hands in turn found the mounds of her breasts, soft and large from feeding four hungry little babies in their time, and began to knead them so thoroughly that she had to stop the kiss just so she wouldn’t choke on her moan.

  His eyes were keenly trained on the flesh between his fingers, but after a few moments, he looked up into her eyes.

  “I have been thinking about this all night,” he confessed, and then he leaned forward to kiss her neck, to bite her tender skin.

  She gasped, but put her hand onto the back of his head when he tried to pull away. His tongue swiped over the abused spot, then one of his hands left her chest and started to trail over her soft belly.

  “Your image has followed me into my dreams, Kyria…” His warm tongue licked down over her chest, to the breast his hand abandoned. “The swing of your hips… The curve of your breasts underneath that red gown…” He growled again as he nipped the side of her chest, and Melite inadvertently thrust her hips forward, where they were met by his hand which now reached the black curls between her legs.

  “I have been dreaming of sucking your teat just like this…” His lips closed around the tip of her breast, and delicious suction followed, paired with just a hint of teeth. He stirred in the water, and she could feel the little waves dancing around her hidden folds, adding to the pulsation between her legs. Her fingers raked through his golden hair, and her moaning turned into whimpers as he teased her by letting his fingers dip just half an inch beneath her curls, and then pull back again.

  Only when he let go of her breast did he finally shoved his thick, calloused finger between her legs, where he unerringly found her nubbin and began to torment her with slow, circular movements.

  “I have dreamed of pushing up your gown, Kyria… Of making you quake and shiver under my touch…”

  His other hand left her chest, too, and grabbed her jaw, holding her in place as he kissed her roughly, possessively, in the same second as one of his thick fingers thrust into her slick, open entrance.

  “If you had not been the sister of a comrade I respect as much as Chrysion,” he growled against her lips, “I would have thrown you over that table right then and there,” his thumb brushed over her nubbin again, making her hips buck,” ripped that dress from your body,” he pushed his first finger into her, up to the second joint, and swallowed her shaky moan in a rough, but short, kiss, “and fucked you between the clams and olives until your cries of ecstasy became so loud that they’d even make the whores at the waterfront blush.” A second thick finger pushed into her, and she cried out with need and fell forward against his chest.

  The heat of the water, the crudeness of his words, the touch of his fingers between her folds made Melite’s head swim. Lord, he was good for somebody so young. But with a body and a face like that, he had surely never experienced any lack of willing bedmates.

  But even though the feeling of two of his fingers inside her seemed like heaven on earth, she straightened again. Now was her turn.

  Gently, she pushed away his hand from her lap. When he looked at with slight confusion in his eyes, she pulled his hand out of the water and lifted it to her lips, so she could slowly, deliberately, start to lick the traces of her own sex that had survived the warm water off his skin. Keenly aware of his gaze on her, she cast hers down to look at his sex, her thick lashes deliberately casting shadows over her eyes.

  A groan escaped his throat when she let one of his fingers slip between her lips, and she couldn’t help a grin as her other hand ran over the side of his body, down into the water, over the muscles of his thigh, and right between his legs to cradle his sack between her fingers. She sucked his
finger deeper into her mouth, let her tongue swirl around it as her thumb gently explored the skin over his heavy globes, until one of her fingers dipped behind them to rub over his taint. He cursed in a foreign language, and Melite pulled away from his now spit-slicked fingers and gave his balls a little tug, just enough to make him wince ever so slightly.

  She made a low tutting noise, and then she kissed his lips again with a smile. She could feel his grin form against her lips, and his hands started to run over her back, up and down and into the dips of her shoulder blades. The gentle caresses made her shiver, made her shoulders twitch—her back had always been one of the most sensitive parts of her body—but she still pushed backward into those strong, rough hands, whose callouses caught on the sensitive skin over her spine.

  When she pulled back, there was pure animalistic lust in his eyes. She’d not be able to keep up her little games for very much longer, she knew that; but she had always liked to test her limits, and those of other people.

  With a motion as dexterous as those of a lyrist, she wrapped her fingers around his thick, pulsating cock. Then she leaned towards him, pushed her breasts against his chest, and pressed her loins so close to his that he could feel her curls against the tip of his sex.

  She leaned in to his ear, licked her lips, and whispered, “You have travelled over such long distances, my young friend, but has this mighty sword ever been sheathed in a noble daughter of Rome? Have you ever felt the heat of flesh born and raised in a house descended from Augustus himself?”

  She squeezed the hot flesh of his cock between her fingers, then she started to slowly stroke up and down. “Since I set eyes on you, I have been wondering how your cock would feel like… How heavy it would be in my hand…” She squeezed again, and a broken moan came from Arestes’ lips. “How hot it would be, pushing against my skin…” She lowered herself slightly and let the tip of his cock run through her folds. “How hard it would be, plowing into my body…”

  She closed the last distance between their loins and then pushed down. His sex slipped into her, spreading her open, filling her more and more and more…