by Koko Brown
Unaware of her sudden downturn in mood, Eirik led them north toward the inlet. He then turned east, in the direction of the stables. Seeing she had trouble navigating the slippery pathway, he slowed his steps.
“Is that for us?” she asked, struggling to catch her breath in the cold air. Breathing became an afterthought, however, when they drew closer to the wooden sled sitting in front of the stable doors. Thoren stood waiting for them, trying to rein in a pair of harnessed geldings.
Grinning, he helped her into the sled and then settling in next to her. “How else are we going to enjoy the snow?” he asked, accepting the leather reins Thoren handed.
Reese grabbed the hood of her cloak as they flew over packed snow. Her laughter must have been infectious, because Eirik joined her as he drove them through a shallow valley and a forest recently harvested for its timber.
Fifteen minutes into their journey, he brought the sled around and stopped it short of a small rise overlooking the Sognafjord. “This is one of my favorite places in the world.” He nodded his head toward the cliff. “What do you think?”
So she could see over the top of the sled’s safety bar, Reese stood. “It’s breathtaking,” she whispered, taking in the vertical drop, the white cliffs rising high above the river below, and his settlement in the distance. It was postcard perfect.
“It makes me happy that you recognize the beauty of this place.” His voice had deepened to a husky pitch. He reached out and grabbed hold of her cloak and pulled until she fell in his lap. “I have a surprise for you,” he whispered against the hollow in her neck.
“This isn’t a surprise.” Her own voice had dropped a couple of octaves. “You woke me with it this morning,” Unable to deny him, Reese wrapped her arms around his neck. But she gasped when he flicked the lap blanket aside, revealing a large wicker basket.
“You planned a picnic!” she exclaimed when he drew back the linen covering and started pulling out a wine kidney, a slab of cheese, flatbread, dried dates, and several hunks of smoked meat.
“Only the best for Eirik Sigurdsson and his wench.” He winked as he popped a date into his mouth. Without warning, he leaned over and captured her lips. His mouth, sweetened by the dried fruit, tantalized her senses, and she could not summon a token resistance when he nudged her backward.
“I thought you were going to be a good boy.” Reese reined kisses down the column of his throat. Her thighs quivered as he fumbled with the hem of her woolen dress.
“I will be. I will be very, very good,” he murmured, offering sex in a caressing tone.
Despite the chill, Reese’s body blazed with feverish desire. And it didn’t abate even when he briefly exposed her sex to the elements, before covering her with his weight.
“Put me inside you.” He gripped her hair, his mouth locking with hers as her fingers circled the root of him. Reese, legs parting to receive him, guided him between the juncture of her thighs. When the head of his cock, brushed against her core, he rose up on his forearms, and propelled his hips forward, driving his cock home.
Mad for him, Reese moaned, wiggling on his rod fighting to send him deeper. “You’re good...ohh so good!”
Grunting, he rocked between her trembling thighs. He pinned her arms over her head, his face just above hers. He circled his hips, grinding his thick shaft against her. “I want to always be good to you, for you. I can be what you need. Always.”
During his change in position, the black tourmaline necklace fell through the opening of his tunic. Reese instantly stilled. The precious stone swung back and forth with each deep thrust, mocking her, reminding her that this beautiful thing they had was doomed. In an attempt to block out the dark omen, she squeezed her eyes shut.
Eirik, somehow sensing her distress, kissed one lid, then the other. “Whatever has caused you unrest, put it aside and think only about this place, this time, us.”
Reese wasn’t sure if it was his impassioned plea, heated kisses or the rhythmic plunge of his cock that made her head swim. Unsteadily, she anchored her heels into the small of his back and lifted her hips, meeting his downward thrusts, her body stretching to accommodate him.
“Take all of me.” He lay atop her now, forehead to forehead, his hands snaking around to cup her ass. More thrusts, more grinding. Another orgasm was slowly building. That dizzy intensity kept mounting until she was whimpering, bucking against him.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God!” Reese groaned.
“I want to be deep here...” he touched her mound, “...and here, as well,” he enunciated, his hand sliding up her body, stopping to rest over her heart.
Already there! Reese averted her face from his intense scrutiny less he see into her soul. Unfortunately, Eirik wasn’t going to suffer any of her usual evasiveness. He shifted to a sitting position and brought her with him.
Reese clung to his shoulders, her legs still locked around him, her thighs stretched wide to even deeper penetration.
“Please don’t,” she whispered when he cupped her chin in the curve of his fingers, and exerted just enough pressure she was forced to look at him.
“So beautiful and yet so stubborn.”
“It’s a two way street, Viking.” A touch of sulkiness colored her tone. “What’s holding you back?”
A smile quirked his lips, and a hint of teasing gleamed in his sky-blue eyes. “Did you have an Oona as well?”
“More like Clyde, Thomas, Shawn and Kareem.” Reese inwardly groaned. Loose lips just sunk her ship.
“Four fools have abused what I covet?” he asked, his deep voice velvet soft like the quiet before a very, very bad storm. “No wonder you hold your heart close.”
In all honesty, she rarely thought of those clowns over the years, so the after effects of several disastrous relationships no longer lingered. More pressing matters prevented her from wearing her heart on her sleeve. Like the fact that they were doomed.
Why did I have to go and fall in love with him?
Irritated with her present circumstances, Reese lashed out, “Why do you keep barking up this tree?” Without warning, she slid from his lap and stood up. Emotions at a fever pitch, Reese jumped from the sled and landed in a foot of snow. “Less you forgot, you have the upper hand.”
Huffing, puffing and wanting to knock Loki’s teeth in, Reese only made it about ten feet and then found herself flat on her back.
“Get off me,” she screamed. Reese, lashing out, swung her arms wildly. In the struggle, she lost both gloves. Still, he easily overpowered her by taking both her wrists and planted them over her head. When she gasped at the sudden contact of snow against her skin, he pummeled her mouth.
“We’re good at just this,” she panted between kisses. “Stop asking for more.”
His free hand snaked up her throat and then back down again. “I do not want to share you.”
“You’re hardly doing that now.”
“Do you not see?” He asked very deliberately, a hot look in his eyes. “I do not want to share your affections. I can chain you to me, but I cannot sway this,” he touched her temple, “nor this.” His hand settled against her heart.
For the longest they stared into each other’s eyes. As if already knowing her answer, he sighed.
“I am a patient man,” he rubbed his thumb against the rapidly beating pulse in her throat. “I will bide my time, fuck you senseless, until I have truly own you. All of you—your body...your heart...and your spirit.”
His words hit her like a Mack truck, slamming through her with all its force. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath as if she were suffocating, and said in a heated rush, “I’ll hold you to that promise.” Leaning into him, she pressed her mouth over his. She refused to say it aloud but she conveyed her desire and love through a kiss.
* * * * *
How quickly his life had changed. From that first morning on the shore of the bay his fate had been sealed. After having roamed the world plundering and taking pleasure with intemperance, scornful o
f love or any kind of permanent attachment, a mere slave had bewitched him.
Eirik stared at the crux of his present madness. Eyes at half mast, bottom lip trapped between her teeth, Reese moaned and writhed and flowed wet around him. He drove deep and deeper still, each stroke unchecked and merciless, fierce. He needed to put his mark on her. Wipe away any memory of all the men before him. He could not change that but he could be the last man she would ever be with.
With a single-minded purpose, his hands gripping her hips, he slammed into her so she couldn’t move, couldn’t get away. Like the marauder he was, he wanted to invade her, conquer her, make her his.
Powerless against his hot-blooded urgency, she whimpered and quivered helplessly.
He increased his momentum.
There was no rational thought, only a resolve to curb this insatiable craving for more than just physical gratification.
Long hardened to the concept of love, he’d initially called it other things. True, he couldn’t get enough of rutting between her thighs, and did so as often as possible. But it was so much more than that. More often than not he caught himself thinking about her or seeking her out to steal a caress or simply be in her presence.
And his time with her had been the best of his life, something he had not experienced since knee high to his grandfather’s knee. He was so content, he’d put off his men’s incessant questions regarding the spring raids. How could he make plans to leave Reese behind for an entire season?
Mood blackened, bordering on violent, he bunched up her skirts, nudged her legs apart. He briefly gazed at the dark curly hairs covering her mons and her pink cleft, and marveled at how his priorities as a warrior had changed. His desire to die on the battlefield and earning a place in Valhalla had waned, replaced instead by fucking himself to death in her sweet body.
“Eirik.” He recognized the pleading entreaty and moved to satisfy them both. His hands gripping her waist, he entered her and submerged himself to the hilt. Always wildly eager, she met him, her body swinging back and forth impatiently, whimpering in satisfaction with every thrust.
She flowed wet and fiery hot around him, and he adjusted his grip on her with a restless, volatile suddenness. Hands pinning her into place, so she couldn’t move, he rammed into her. Wanting to put his mark on her, he drove deep.
Attuned to her body, he felt the faint flutter that always preceded her release, and shifted closer. He moved by instinct, a savage awakening overwhelming his senses, each stroke driven by the entire force of his lower body.
He heard her first small cry and then the bite of her nails in his back. Sitting up, he pushed her knees up and back. The new position helped him prolong the release of his seed and augmented hers. In three stokes, she shattered around him.
If only her heart was as simple to vanquish as her body, Eirik mused as her breathless cries echoed around them. Framed in a blanket of snow, her brown skin dewy with sweat, she shuddered beneath him. She was the most beautiful woman, and unequivocal thief of his heart.
Growling, Eirik poured into her. As his heart pounded in his ears, he prayed to all the gods in Valhalla that another woman would not be his downfall.
Chapter Seventeen
In the days that followed, Reese was nowhere closer to obtaining the black tourmaline and her freedom, but her life was closer to bliss than misfortune. She and Eirik were getting along swimmingly, bumping uglies every chance they could get. When not making love, he’d personally shown her every inch of his estate and the adjoining settlement, pointing out with pride how none of it had existed a little over ten winters ago.
Often in the evenings, they rode in his sleigh along the cliffs of the fjord and watched the moon rise over the cliffs. During these times, when it was only the two of them, nothing of the outside world intruding on their contentment, they slowly let their guard down. Smiles and laughter came as easy as secret desires and unfulfilled dreams. On one of these rides Reese divulged her longing to be a comic artist.
“I would give anything to sketch this,” she breathed as they sat holding hands, gazing at the stars.
“What is sketch-ahn?”
“Sketching,” she corrected, “is transferring what you see into an image.”
His inquisitive expression melted into a frown.
Still holding his hand, Reese leaned forward. She dipped her index finger into the dust coating the sleigh and sketched a lady bug. “Sketch,” she enunciated as she topped the insect with a pair of antennas.
“You are pretty good.”
“This is child’s play compared to my graphic novel. The people I’ve shown it to say it’s good enough to publish.”
He frowned again. “Publeesh?”
“I could make money off my stories and drawings.”
“Could?” With the frown still lingering, he cocked his head. “So that means you do not.”
“No,” Reese murmured. “I allow self-doubt to sabotage anything I hold dear.”
“Like us,” he murmured, squeezing her hand.
If what they had wasn’t doomed, would she have set herself up for failure? Probably. Exhaling in a long slow breath, Reese sat back. “My lack of self-worth has more than contributed to a special brand of crazy that sent more than one man running for the hills.”
He leaned back as well, the shadow of a smile curling his lips. The moonlight caught in his pale blond hair turning it white. “Unfortunately for you, I am a mighty Viking. We never retreat.”
“Never?” she softly challenged.
He pressed his body against her, and like always heat infused her senses. “When will you realize I want forever?”
Like a schoolgirl with her first crush, Reese clung to him, wanting to touch him a dozen places at once. “How about showing me,” she whispered, soliciting sex.
He licked the curve of her bottom lip. “How deep do you want it?”
Reese wished she could say her relationship with the other slaves had progressed just as effortlessly. Seeing she’d regained Eirik’s favor, they were constantly pressing her for the promised change. Like yesterday afternoon when Magdal and Phee cornered her in the larder.
“How are your new sleeping quarters?” Magdal sneered as she sidled up beside her, Phee in tow.
“The master’s bed must be a big improvement from the floor.” Phee reached out and traced the red smocking along Reese’s bust line. One of two linen aprons Eirik had given her, the garment was pristine. A stark contrast to their stained gunny sack dresses. Reese felt more than a twinge of guilt, but she refused to be bullied.
“Look I don’t blame you two for being sore with me. I planted the seed for obtaining our freedom, and for all intents and purposes it looks as if I’ve abandoned you. Rest assured I haven’t.”
“She is with child,” Phee said, resting her hand on Magdal’s shoulder. “Your plan to secure as many sympathizers to our cause as we could went a little too well.”
Magdal must have read her mind because she lifted her chin. “Stig is the father of my child, but he does not have feelings for me...none that he has openly expressed,” Magdal glanced down and rubbed her belly. “But I already love this child and it does not sit well with me that he or she will be born a thrall.”
Reese glanced at Magdal with sympathy. “It doesn’t sit well with me either. This class system has to go. I promise—”
“REESE!”
Despite her heartbeat racing a mile a minute and her body’s involuntary pull, Reese stayed put. “I promise,” She stepped forward and took each woman’s hand, “I promise I am doing all I can to free us all. Even more so now with the baby—”
“REESE!”
“You better get out there afore he comes in here and drags you out.”
“Give me a little more time,” she spoke earnestly.
Phee glanced at Magdal who shrugged. “We have nothing but time.”
She pulled on the larder door, and crashed into Eirik. With the tourmaline and everyone’s freedom on
her mind, her gaze lifted to his great height and she smiled sweetly. “Looking for me?”
“Ja. Everywhere,” he admitted, blustering confidence and a lascivious smile.
It felt for a moment as if he’d touched her. And as heat flamed her senses, she said with obvious effort, “What did you want of me?”
“I want plenty,” he whispered with a flagrant familiarity, and her nipples hardened into twin peaks. “Come with me.”
He didn’t wait for her to accept (as if she wouldn’t). He took her hand in his and led her through the hall. Thighs growing slick in anticipation, Reese struggled to keep up with his long-legged stride. Instead of going to his bedchamber, he pulled her into a smaller room next to his. Nonplussed by the change in scenery, a man of his word he’d taken her in every room of his keep. Just last week, they’d enjoyed a wallbanger inside the garrison.
Unable to keep her hands to herself, she came around and wrapped her arms around his neck. “This is beginning to be a habit, and I like it...” Not getting the lusty Viking reaction she’d grown accustomed to, Reese stepped back. “What’s wrong?”
“We have visitors.” He pointed at the window overlooking the harbor.
Reese hurried over, and gasped at the sight of a half a dozen long ships cutting through the dark waters of the Sognafjord, heading toward the village. Manned with no less than fifty men each considering the number of oars working to propel them down the strait, they looked ominous with their red and white striped sails.
“Are we under attack?” she asked, eyeing the battle shields flanking the ships’ hulls.
“Worse...it’s my half-brother, Konugr Haakon,” Eirik muttered, his tone dripping with spite.
