Edin's embrace (12 page)

By the time he hoisted her up onto Dawnfire, his horse, she'd started to shiver, from shock as well as cold, he supposed, and her days and nights of hunger and fear and exposure. Indeed, he was beginning to feel the freshly sharpened wind himself. No sunny breeze that, but sneaking, cold fingers that seemed determined to tease beneath their wet clothing and tickled their bare ribs. Great black cumulus puffs formed in the sky to the north, and the sea was getting choppy. He nudged Dawnfire to a trot.

Edin couldn't have stayed on the horse without the Viking's help. He'd put her before him in his beautiful and foreign saddle, and kept his arms around her as the big horse went from a trot into an easy gallop. Her shivering became more and more violent as they rode along. It was difficult to believe she'd ever been dry or comfortable in her entire life. The wind pried viciously at her dripping clothes. She mindlessly huddled against the Viking's broad chest, welcoming his arms, and the sharing of his damp cloak.

Occasionally she slipped back into a moment of tearful sobbing. She was so miserable, and death had seemed so near. The iron-like water of the fjord was in sight all along their way, its surface moving with mesmerizing undercurrents beneath the murky sky.

The Viking didn't shake her and tell her to stop crying. He only held her closer, and sometimes made a noise in his throat that didn't seem at all cruel.

She'd supposed the journey would be long and was surprised when they started down into the steading valley before nightfall. Her whole body was jerking hard with cold, however, by the time the snorting horse came to a stop on the tree-shaded green before the longhouse. Laag ran out from the stable to take the stallion's reins. The Viking slid down, turned, and held his arms up for Edin. Every one of her muscles was in a spasm; her teeth clicked uncontrollably. She felt numb and stupid. There the Viking stood, his hands up to her, waiting . . . and all she could manage was to lean forward and simply fall toward him.

He caught her waist. Her toes touched the ground briefly; then he swept one arm beneath her legs and the other around her back and lifted her to his chest as if her weight were nothing to him. Thus he bore her into the longhouse.

The warmth of the hall didn't penetrate her sodden garments at all. She looked toward the longfire, but the Viking carried her right past it. Her jaw was clenched tight and clicking or she would have protested.

The women, who had been busy among their pots and preparations for the evening meal, stopped their work and gawked. Inga pressed through them and stood scowling. Sweyn came out of his wall cubby and leaned his wounded right shoulder against one of the throne posts of the jarl's chair. The fire threw his shadow huge on the wall behind him.

The jarl ignored them all, except Dessa, to whom he called in Saxon: "Bring fuel for the brazier in my chamber! And then meat broth! See that it's hot!"

The girl lurched into movement, not so much because he'd shouted at her, Edin thought, but because the man was
power.

Inside his chamber, he asked, "Can you stand?"

She couldn't form a word, but managed a strangled sound of assent. He let her slide to her feet —where she found she really couldn't stand after all, not without leaning against him. But he allowed that.

He was fumbling between them to unfasten her silver-buckled belt when Dessa scurried in with an arm load of small pieces of wood. She went directly to the bronze brazier and began to build up a little blaze that would very soon warm the thick-walled room. The Viking didn't wait for her to withdraw before, with a single violent movement, he drew off Edin's long, dripping dress and undershift. Dessa took one round-mouthed look, then scurried for the door. The Viking called after her, "Don't forget the broth!"

At the same time he reached for the toweling cloth; on his washstand and gathered Edin's hair in it, deftly wrapping it around her head so that only a few neck curls and a few limp and damp tendrils at her temples were left free.

She looked down at herself; she was naked —pale everywhere. Her damp flesh looked as pallid as wax. He lifted her again and thrust her beneath the blankets of his big feather bed.

Dessa returned as he was pulling off his own sodden trousers, the last of his clothing. She squeaked at the sight of his bare buttocks, and hastily put down the two large bowls of broth she'd brought.

As she disappeared out the door, he laughed, in that sharp, barking, humorless way he had. Then he shivered, grabbed a bowl of the broth and a spoon, and climbed into the bed beside Edin.

He propped her head with pillows, and said, "Open your mouth." His voice wasn't gentle, yet he wasn't being unkind.

Still, it was all she could do to obey; her jaws seemed frozen into rigidity. As he spooned the steaming liquid into her, the joints melted, little by little. Soon they worked as well as ever, though the rest of her was still convulsed. Her hunger pangs faded as the broth filled her empty stomach.

Through all this she hardly had time to consider the import of this tall bearded barbarian, this Viking, spoon-feeding her.

When she'd taken every last drop from the bowl, he got up to claim the other, which Dessa had left by the fire. "More?" he asked, turning with the second bowl. He was not aroused and so looked much less threatening than the other times she'd seen him naked. Nonetheless, he was strong-muscled and potent with power.

She answered his question with a shake of her head. She was too exhausted to eat any more. He tipped the broth into his mouth, drinking it down in long swallows. Then he was beside her in the bed again, taking her between his oversized arms and hard legs. She was so numb she could hardly feel, but then warmth seemed to focus wherever his skin touched hers — which was nearly everywhere, considering how tall he was, how brawny and broad-chested. The chill was slowly sucked from her marrow as she lay naked in his naked embrace.

Her eyes fell closed. Her face was pressed into his warm matted chest. She asked drowsily, "How did you find me?"

His voice rumbled. "Gunnhild, the widow of the man who died aboard the
Blood Wing
saw flocks of sea birds rise suspiciously and sent her son, Hrut, to peek over the cliffs near their steading. He saw you, and they sent word to me."

"I thought I was farther away." She must have zigzagged and traveled in circles in her wanderings.

"It would have made no difference; I'd have found you."

He would have stalked her with the patience and lack of emotion that marked him as a true predator. She would liked to have looked at his face just then, but she was too tired to move her head. Her eyelids seemed weighted. She heard him murmur, "You've been captured twice now. You fought well, Saxon — honor can ask nothing more from you in that —but it's time to admit defeat."

His voice was low. He wasn't threatening her for once. And she hadn't the least desire to argue with him. She was defeated. She had no chance of escaping him. He was too able and strong and intelligent.

Nor would she escape those who would own her after him.

Complete surrender to his use of her, however, would come in acts forced upon her long before it would come from her mind. He seemed to know this and, with that as his purpose, shifted her in his hold. Edin felt his lips against the unguarded skin of her shoulder, just above her left breast, which his vast right hand now gathered. She couldn't seem to lift her own hands to defend herself. She could no more move than she could open her eyes. She felt overcome, already ravished, and in want of comfort from . . . anyone.

Thoryn's mouth traveled down, enclosed the tip of her breast and drew on it. She felt a sensation, a pulling, as if his lips and tongue were pulling threads that led from her breast to the deepest nerves in her belly and thighs. He made her shamefully conscious of her body, and softly bewildered.

When he finished suckling, he licked her nipple, as if to soothe the flesh in case he'd drawn too hard. "You," he sighed, "with your green-gold morning eyes —you've become a great trial to me." He continued to hold her breast with his great hand. "Listen to me, Saxon, before you fall asleep. I want this to be well known to you: In this land there are laws, and the laws concerning thralls say that when one runs away he or she is punished with death."

Her eyelids fluttered open.

"You didn't know?" He was looking down at her, his expression very serious.

She shook her head, feeling her heart chugging up.

"You knew you weren't to leave the longhouse. No thrall-"

"I knew you would come after me; I knew you would be angry and if you caught me would probably . . . hurt me, but . . ."

"But not that I would deal you your death? No one told you that?"

She shook her head.

"My mother should have told you"

"I . . . mayhap she did, but I don't understand Norse, and ... I have let many things pass me by."

He grunted. "I should have seen to it myself. But it's as well that I didn't, because I think you would have run off anyway, and then I couldn't have used your ignorance as a reason to show you mercy," he explained in a calm, even way, which made the fury showing behind the calm that much more frightening. "I am going to show you mercy. But should you ever think of running away from me again. . . ."

She'd begun to shiver all over once more, and he gathered her and held her until it diminished and finally stopped. He embraced her until she fell asleep, a sleep full of sound and intensity and rushing event, all of which was distanced by a curious, ringing, liquid silence.

***

Inga still felt struck as if by lightning at the sight of Thoryn carrying the thrall into his chamber. She felt bewildered and afraid and all alone. She feared for her son and his passion for that woman.

Inga had good reason to dread passion. Passion could devour. Thoryn's passion for this Saxon was a threat to him, if only he knew. And a threat to Inga, because she understood too well the treacheries of passion.

Ah, yes, passion — that sumptuous love that made a person drunk. She'd longed for it, and believed in it while she had it, and envied it when it was lost to her. She'd
loved
Kirkyn; but Kirkyn's love for her had ended, just disappeared, and she'd had to go on with her passion alone. She'd had to bear a passion with the heart cut out of it.

Edin came to the surface of sleep many times, only to sink down again. Once she opened her eyes and saw that the light around her was faint and new. Morning light. She wished to turn onto her side, but found the effort too much trouble. It really wasn't worthwhile. She felt herself pulled under again. The undertow was so seductive she couldn't resist it.

The next time the currents threw her up, the light was quite bright. Noon. How she enjoyed this utter passivity! Nothing to disturb her floating. No need for her to fight the currents. Sleep, sleep, all she need do was sleep.

When at long last she surfaced completely, the light was dusky. She heard the birds' evening songs through the open window hole, and behind her half-closed eyelids she imagined their swift, planing flights.

She knew where she was —in the Viking's big ornate bed. She was alone in it and realized dimly that she'd been alone in it for some time. He'd been in it with her . . . when? It didn't matter, as long as he was gone now. She moved, stretched out a little —and found that her feet were wrapped with something.

"My lady?"

She turned her head on the pillow drowsily and saw a figure sitting forward in the Viking's carved chair. "Dessa?" she murmured.

"Yes, my lady." The girl got up and crossed the room. "You've slept the night and the day through. I must tell the master. He said to let him know right away when — "

"Dessa, wait!" Edin was wide awake at last.

The girl paused anxiously.

"I . . ." Edin searched for some way to detain her. "It seems just today I was brought back."

"It was yesterday, my lady."

"Did the Viking . . . stay with me last night?"

The girl blushed. "You don't remember?"

"No, nothing."

"The mistress brought him a trencher of food at dinnertime. He took it from her at the door. Then this morning he called me. He'd found blood on his legs" —another miserable blush —"and lifted the bedclothes to show me how your feet were cut. He bade me bathe and salve them and tie them up with cloth strips. Do they pain you, my lady?"

"No . . . no." It amazed Edin that she could have slept through so much. "You must have been very gentle, Dessa. Thank you."

The girl bowed her head over a pleased smile. "Well, they were mostly just scratches."

Edin suddenly felt a catch of hunger in her stomach, sharper than a thorn. "Has the dinner hour passed again?"

"They're just eating now."

"They're uncommonly quiet." She looked toward the door, straining to hear the usual braying male voices.

"They're listening to someone they call a
skald
, who wanders from place to place. He's come to tell stories at the feast."

"Feast?"

"Oh —you wouldn't know since you've been . . . away. There's a feast planned for the morrow. We've all been worked to the bone by the mistress these past three days preparing for it."

Speaking of Inga seemed to remind her of the Viking, and her anxiety to do what she'd been bidden returned. "I really must go and tell the master you're awake, my lady."

Edin saw the apprehension in her round, brown, childlike eyes. No doubt the girl would by punished if she didn't do what she was told. "Yes," Edin said, "you'd better go."

Edin waited with gnawing anxiety for the outcome of Dessa's message. Would the Viking have cut another stick to beat her with?

Would he ravish her now?

She sat up, holding the blankets to her breasts. Her hair fell around her as she looked about for her clothes in the darkening room. But there wasn't time. She heard a step in the rushes outside the door, then — there he was, framed in the doorway, a horn of ale in his hand. Briefly she heard the subdued clatter of dinner being served, and a n unfamiliar voice speaking in Norse —the story-teller, no doubt.

The Viking closed the door, she was alone with him again. She didn't know what to say, and he didn't help. He just stood there and looked at her, his hooded grey eyes appraising. He was so massive! Not only in height and weight, but in impact. His heavy square shoulders, his vastly muscled arms, that deep chest. He sampled his drink, drew a large mouthful, held it a moment as he continued to kook at her, then swallowed it in several installments.

She said, "I don't see my clothes anywhere."

He moved then, and went to light the lamp, saying, "Because I had them thrown on the midden."

She considered that, and as he set the lamp down, she said in a small voice, "But I have nothing else to wear."

He moved toward the bed. His hand took her shoulder. "Lie back." When she resisted, he added in a low, intense voice, "Must I fetch a switch? Is that what it will take to drive it in that you must obey me? I
own
you, Saxon."

She did as he wanted, and the movement made her empty stomach growl.

"What was that?" he said; and added without so much as a grin, "A bear? Do you have a bear in bed with you, woman?"

Before she could answer, he went back to the door and shouted, "Girl! A trencher of that stew! And ale— no, milk —a pitcher full!"

He said no more, only went to his chair and sat down. In a few minutes Dessa came hurrying in with the food. At a gesture from the Viking, she helped Edin sit up, and held the trencher while Edin ate from it. From time to time she passed Edin a goblet of milk or a slice of bread covered with a huge crumbly slab of cheese. At last Edin lay back against her pillows, saying, "No more."

The Viking got up silently to see exactly how much she'd put away. He leaned against the wall by the head of the bed, folded his arms, and nodded to Dessa, dismissing her.

As the girl gathered the pitcher, cup, and trencher, Edin said, "Thank you, Dessa."

The girl gave a little bob, and said in a sweet, soft voice, "Welcome, my lady." Then she was gone.

The Viking stood looking down at Edin. "My lady?" He blew down through his nostrils in contempt.

Edin felt too vulnerable to quarrel. "It's merely what she's used to calling me. You mustn't blame her for-"

"Aye, the minds of thralls are deeper than the waters of the Jimjefjord, which, as all Norsemen know, has no bottom."

He turned away, using his back to dispose of the subject. He went to stand over the little brazier. His hair, yellow and loose to his shoulders, gleamed in the light. His back to her, he asked, "Are you better?"

There was no sense in lying; he was as shrewd and intelligent as he was bold and brawny. She answered, "I could get up and help with the serving."

He half-turned to look at her. "With no clothes? I'm the only one you'll serve naked, Saxon."

She swallowed, mortified to the very core.

He seemed ill at ease. "I've waited patiently for you to wake. Remember that I didn't beat you for running away. Instead, I've seen to your care and your rest. Now I want to be repaid for my lenience. Will you yield to me?"

Panic throbbed in her throat.

He came back to the bedside, reaching to finger a strand of her hair. "I'm asking you, Saxon, when I have no need to ask. And I will have an answer: Will you yield to me?"

How could she deny him? She couldn't fight a man his size. And the brutal lesson her brief bid for freedom had taught her was that she needed him. Though she feared his coldness, he was strong, and if she acquiesced to his desires, and pleased him, he would keep her safe. It was time, finally, for fear to give way to the more demanding need to survive.

"Really," she said at last, "what choice do I have?"

He dropped the strand of hair and folded his arms over his chest again. "You have the same choices you had before: You can yield or you can struggle. If you choose to struggle, I can't promise to show you consideration."

If she chose to resist him, he would merely overpower her with his superior size and strength and cunning. He would do whatever he must to gain his victory.

He would hurt her.

"You — " she swallowed —"you will show me consideration if I yield?"

"I will," he said formally, staring down at her over his folded arms.

"You won't hurt me?"

"There is one wound I must deal you, for it cannot be helped; but you will suffer less if you lie easy beneath me."

For a moment more she sat iron-locked by her chastity and caution. He was demanding her willful assent, her expressed concession to surrender herself in advance of all he meant to subject her to. She looked down at her hands which played nervously on the quilt — and in the end said the only thing she could say with a Viking standing over her, dragon-sized, and with no hesitation in his purpose. "I will yield to you, Thoryn Kirkynsson."

He turned away and began to undress directly. Her heart thumped up; she felt herself suddenly grow weak. What had she agreed to? She stared as he pulled off his tunic. He was built on such a large scale! He looked so powerful, so aloof, so entirely self-assured. His footwear came off next, after which she slid down in the bed and closed her eyes, so she wouldn't have to see him take off his trousers.

She felt the blankets lift, felt a draught of cool air, and then felt his hands on her, his legs. Immediately she knew that his desire was hard.

He lifted her chin and kissed her throat. At least his beard was soft and the scent of him was pleasant. His kiss trailed up the line of her jaw, until he opened her mouth with his lips.

She made a sound. He lifted his head and said with stinging impatience, "You're not to be frightened."

Not to be frightened! So said this man muscled in iron, his mind hard with his determination, his desire so strong it was impossible to ignore! "That's easy enough for you to say, Viking," she whispered.

"Hm!" He abruptly threw back the blanket, exposing her. Her hands went ineffectually to her breasts, her sex. "Put your hands down," he scolded, but his voice was less demanding this time.

He couldn't know what he was asking! She felt her nakedness and her weakness too fully.

But she felt it more fully as he forced her hands to her sides. Her heart hammered at her ribs.

"You fear what you don't know. You find this new and difficult to accept, and so I will teach it to you unmistakably from the beginning." His eyes were hooded and uncompromising, and suddenly he pushed his hand between her legs. She let out a little gasp.

"This is part of what you're afraid of, is it not? Knowing that sooner or later I will touch you here. Now it's already done; now you can stop being afraid of that much." His tone was not exactly soothing, yet was as soothing as she could imagine from him. She took scant comfort in it, however, not with his hand pressed firmly where no hand had ever touched her before. She made no sound, but if a person could keen silently, she keened.

He leaned to take her bottom lip into his mouth, sucked it —how strange the things men wanted to do to women!—and then nipped her upper lip with his teeth. She didn't dare close her eyes again, and evidently their expression didn't please him. He said, "I could be old and deformed."

"With rotten teeth and not given to bathing much," she whispered, remembering that once he'd threatened to sell her to such a man.

He smiled thinly, drawing her even closer. His right hand was still between her clenched legs. Her thighs held his wrist tightly. "Loosen your legs," he said.

Oh, dear God, help me

Her god either didn't hear, or didn't care.

"Loosen your legs."

She obeyed shyly, miserably. Her hands struggled to keep from pushing at him.

"You may as well relax; I've only started. I mean to touch every part of you. The strangeness of it will pass." As he said this, his left arm beneath her shoulders lifted her up a little so that he could gather her mouth to his. This brought her breasts into contact with his hard chest. In a reflex, she wedged her hands up between them.

And yet there was nothing to separate his callused palm from her sex. The pressure was so intimate, so agonizing.

His kiss was thorough. By the time he finally lifted his head, she felt dazed and fiery. He laid her back and removed his hand from between her legs. He took her hands, one at a time, from his chest and this time pushed them beneath her. Now he was free to fondle her breasts and carefully examine them. She looked up at him beseechingly. Again and again she almost pulled her hands out to stop him, but remembering his threat to bind her, she didn't.

He lifted her chin and kissed her again; then cradled a breast in his hand and kissed that. Then, with his left arm still under her shoulders, his right hand delved between her legs again.

She turned her naked body into him with a little cry. Her left hand went to his upper arm before she could stop herself, but then just lay there, limp. With his thumb atop her pubis, he simply held her, cupped her, for a long moment.

Then he went back to her breasts. He pulled his left arm out from beneath her shoulders and half lay over her, holding himself on his elbows so that he could cup both her breasts at once and suckle them gently, first one and then the other. The sensation was curiously soothing. And she was stunned to realize what he was doing: He was easing her into accepting his touch, approaching her and then retreating, so that her fear would be overcome. This was the consideration he'd promised. This Viking, this barbarian, this savage, was keeping his word.

He bit at her nipples and moved her breasts as if to feel their weight, then said suddenly, "Kiss me."

It meant lifting her head a few scant inches, yet seemed the hardest thing she'd ever contemplated.

"I-I can't! I'm so afraid of you!"

"Yet you're finding me less bloodthirsty than you believed, aren't you?"

It was true, she'd expected to be humiliated at the very least. The very least.

"Kiss me"

She did it, timidly. Her obedience seemed to inflame him. He deepened what she'd begun so innocently, and plundered her mouth with his tongue. She was making little whimpering cries in her throat —yet struggling not to make them too loud. Tears welled up and spilled out her eyes. Did he know what a battle she was fighting to keep from kicking at him, from trying to push him away?

When he finished kissing her, she lay still, her mouth tasting of him. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing deeply as her tears continued to flow silently.

"Stop."

She opened her eyes. He was leaning up on his elbow, looking down at her.

He stroked her hair and lowered his head to touch his lips to the tip of her nose. "Stop crying. I haven't dealt you any injury yet. I'll hurt you only when I have to."

He massaged her breasts again lightly, and then stroked her underarms. She sobbed softly, but wrestled with these sobs. She struggled not to writhe away, not even as his hand drifted down to her waist, to her stomach, and again cupped that full-feeling, moist place between her legs. He began to press in firmly with the flats of his fingers, rhythmically, making her recoil at first, and then tremble. He took another kiss from her mouth, a soft kiss, which filled her with a softening distress.

"You see?" he whispered. "You won't find me such a hard master. Only a very thorough one."

A feeling built in her such as she'd never experienced before. Her legs moved restlessly. Her hips moved slightly up, against him, pressing the heat and dampness of her sex against his fingers.

As if he'd been waiting for this signal, his fingers burrowed and made her shudder with terrible sensation.

His touch left her yet again, left her feeling that odd restlessness as he gathered her in his arms, pulled her onto her side and felt her back and her buttocks, then pushed her back into the mattress so he might see the mounds of her breasts again. Possessiveness and pride of ownership were evident in his gaze. He bent over her and bit at them playfully, not hurting her. He lapped them with his tongue — then, as she suffered and moaned beneath him, he suddenly reached between her thighs again.

He opened her once more, and his fingertips fondled. As he touched one place, she sucked in breath. He paused, then gave that place a soft pinch with his thumb and forefinger, which made her gasp again. He continued, as if curious, touching her nowhere but there, until she was swept by a craze —to have him hold her hard, hard enough to hurt her.

She begged for mercy. "Please . . . stop!" Surprisingly, he did, but only to ease a finger inside her. "Oh, God!" She felt it was an outrage, an invasion that had to be endured because it couldn't be escaped. She rolled her head, wondering how long she could bear it —but then, as his finger eased deeper and moved within her, there came an acute sensation of anticipation. She made a wordless sound and placed her hand on his chest not to push, but to tangle her fingers in the wiry blond curls.

His finger settled into a circular motion. Her hand slid to his shoulder, then clutched. She didn't understand it. It was like a sudden loud chant of voices that wouldn't stop, that grew louder and more purposeful. The chanting had no beat, no rhythm, nothing but movement and sensation and fire.

Suddenly he withdrew his hand and rose up, spreading her thighs wide enough to give him clear access. Down between her pinked nipples lying erect on her heaving breasts, between the fork of her thighs, she saw his weapon. As he leaned forward, she whimpered at the first nudge of that hardness.

Panicked, she tried to roll away. But he had her by her shoulders. "I won't hurt you needlessly." He lay more of his weight atop her to still her writhing—and at the same time pushed into her an inch. She cried out. He said, "The worst will soon be over." She was so afraid. She was using her wrapped feet to try to move up in the bed, away from that threat of invasion.