Viking: Legends of the North: A Limited Edition Boxed Set (85 page)

“Is there anything else you’ll be needing, my lady?”

Seated at the foot of the huge bed, Zora nervously fingered the embroidered edge of her sleeve. She was tempted to ask Nellwyn for the impossible, that somehow the slave woman might whisk her magically away from what she knew now was inevitable, but instead she shook her head. Bathed, perfumed, and dressed in the sleeping gown she had hoped never to wear, Zora supposed she was ready, if only outwardly, for whatever was to come.

“No, Nellwyn, nothing.”

“Then I’ll leave you,” came the stiff response. “Good night, my lady.”

As Zora watched Nellwyn hurry out, she was not surprised that the slave woman hadn’t offered any words of reassurance as she had earlier that day. Nellwyn was clearly upset that Zora had deceived her.

Sighing, Zora imagined that everyone must despise her now for her part in the fire, but then again, any other woman in her predicament might have done the same thing! Telling herself defiantly that she didn’t care what Rurik’s retainers thought about her, she rose from the bed and went over to the chest that held her things.

It had been an awful moment when male slaves had borne it into the room and set it down with an all too final thud right next to Rurik’s. Hoping that these Varangians were fast builders so she might soon be able to retreat to her own long-house, Zora pulled a lightweight cloak from the chest and whirled it around her shoulders. She felt naked in this sleeping gown, the apricot color of her nipples plain to see through the filmy fabric, and she’d be damned if that was the first thing Rurik saw when he returned.

When was he going to return?
Zora wondered. Beset again by apprehension, she began to pace the room.

Would he take her at once and have done with it? Glancing at the bed that seemed to dominate the room, the thick headboard carved with grinning beasts and coiled serpents that to her appeared decidedly heathen, she felt a nervous rush of warmth in her stomach. It was too easy to conjure an image of them lying amid the soft furs mounded upon the mattress. She paced even faster.

Perhaps Rurik had found that there was more to be done than he had anticipated, she considered, clutching the ends of her cloak with trembling fingers. He had said he would return shortly, but he had left her hours ago. She imagined the supper that had been set up for them near the hearth had grown cold by now, which made no difference to her. She certainly had no appetite—

A sharp scraping sound from the main room caused her to gasp and she whirled, staring wide-eyed at the door. All the slaves had gone. It had to be Rurik.

Zora waited, her breath caught in her throat. But he did not enter. She wondered if she had only imagined the noise. Then she heard a dull thunk, and another. Her curiosity pricked, she hurried almost on tiptoe to the doorway and peeked outside.

Rurik was just rising from a bench, his boots lying at his feet. He must have sensed her standing there for he looked over at her and smiled. Smiled!

“Good evening, wife.”

“H-hello.” Flustered by the husky warmth in his voice that matched the heat in his eyes, Zora’s cheeks reddened.

What in heaven’s name was the matter with him? She had expected him to be angry, gruff, hostile. When Rurik continued to smile at her, his appreciative gaze wandering over her lazily as he unfastened his sword belt and lay it upon the bench, she grew all the more bewildered, her blush creeping up to her scalp.

“Your…your supper has grown cold.” Then she rolled her eyes. How inane she must sound, and what did she care if his food was no longer edible! To her surprise, he chuckled.

“I suppose it has.” He began to pull his tunic over his head, his voice muffled through the fabric. “Forgive my delay, but I thought it good for morale to share some ale with my men, especially after what happened tonight.”

“So that’s it,” muttered Zora, her suspicion confirmed when Rurik swayed slightly while freeing his arms from the sleeves. She could not help noticing how boyish he looked with his silvery blond hair rumpled about his handsome face, but there was nothing boyish about the powerful span of his chest now bared to her gaze, or the muscular definition of his abdomen…

“What?”

Zora started, embarrassed that she had been staring at him so blatantly. “You’re drunk.”

Rurik smiled at her again, and this time it held a taunting edge.

“Only a little, Princess, and for that, you might count yourself fortunate.”

His hands moved to the drawstring at his trousers, and Zora’s heart began to thump…hard. Thinking desperately that she might be able to distract him with some conversation, she left the doorway, and averting her eyes from him as he undid the knot at his waist, she went to stand by the table where their supper was waiting.

“Fortunate?” she queried lightly, although her fingers were shaking as she fussed with a linen napkin. Hearing movement and the sound of something being tossed to the floor, she didn’t dare look up. Yet she could sense that he no longer wore a stitch. “How so?”

Rurik knew exactly what she was doing, trying to delay what had tortured his dreams for weeks. He decided to humor her for a moment, if only because he could see from her flushed cheeks and her trembling hands just how nervous she was.

“Because I haven’t come to you angry, Zora, as I might have earlier this night. Ale is a most curious drink. It can either drive a man already pressed to his limit into acting recklessly, and perhaps ruthlessly, or it can calm him. Tonight for me, it seems the latter.”

When she still did not look at him, remaining silent as she anxiously chewed her lower lip, Rurik walked toward her.

His impatience to enfold her in his arms was mounting inside him like a fire burning ever hotter, just as his desire for her had been escalating since the first time he had felt her writhe in ecstasy beneath him. Yet unlike that night, tonight he would savor every tantalizing inch of her. Reaching out, he stroked the silken curve of her cheek, her musky rose scent inflaming his senses.

“Come, wife.”

Zora jumped and met his eyes, acutely aware that he was naked and fearing to glance down for what she might see. He was so close now that his smell of smoke and sweat made her nostrils flare, but she did not think it unpleasant. Far from it.

“What…what of your supper?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Wine, then,” she said distractedly as if she hadn’t heard the finality in his voice. “Let me pour you—”

“I have drunk enough .

“But—”

Within the blink of an eye he had taken her in his arms and swept her from her feet, startling Zora so completely that she could find no voice to protest as he carried her into the bedchamber. But when he lay her down upon the soft furs and covered her with his massive body, she came alive and began to struggle beneath him, striking his broad back with her balled fists.

“No, damn you! Stop! I don’t want you! I don’t want…this!”

“I think that you do.” He caught her wrists easily with one hand and drew her arms over her head. Touching his lips to hers, his warm breath scented with ale, he whispered, “Probably as much as I.”

“No, you’re wrong!” Zora jerked her head to one side, even as she shivered at the ticklish pressure of his mouth upon her throat. When he turned her chin back to face him, his fingers caressing the stubborn line of her jaw, she cried, “You may not have attacked me in Chernigov, but tonight that is what it will surely—”

His lips came down upon hers before she could finish, not a feather-light kiss this time but not rough, either…somewhere all too disconcertingly in between. His mouth seemed to mold to hers, and as he kissed her like he had all the time in the world, not rushing to force her lips open, Zora felt herself responding despite herself, the tension melting from her body.

It felt so wonderful…she could not deny it, and she soon found herself craving more. She heard him chuckle from deep in his throat when she parted her lips beneath his, but to her amazement, she didn’t care. All she wanted was an answer to the yearning that was building in some mysterious place inside her, and he gave it to her when his tongue delved into her mouth, his kiss growing possessive and increasingly demanding as if he could not get enough of the taste of her.

How long she was lost to the wet swirling wonder of his kiss she could not say, but when Rurik lifted his mouth from hers, she felt flushed all over and light-headed and grateful that she was lying down. Surely if she had been standing her legs would have collapsed beneath her! She sighed, awash in delicious chills as he first nibbled gently upon her bottom lip, then laved it with his tongue.

“You see, Zora?” he teased in a half whisper, not taunting or holding triumph but in a playful tone that secretly thrilled her. “It’s no terrible thing to surrender to desire. I promise that before I take you tonight, you will want me a hundred, no, a thousand times more. You will beg me to end your torment.”

“And you, Rurik,” Zora said softly when he lifted his head to stare into her eyes, his gaze darkened with passion in the golden lamplight. She did not understand why it was suddenly so important for her to know but she felt that she must ask. “Is that what you are doing tonight, surrendering at last to a desire that has caused you to send three concubines untouched from your bed?”

The change in him was lightning swift.

“Who told you that I sent them away?” he demanded, releasing her wrists to rest his weight on his forearms. “Semirah?”

Seeing the ire in Rurik’s eyes, Zora sensed he had wanted to hide this from her. But why? Could it really be as simple as what Nellwyn had said…that Rurik thought only of her? Perhaps she meant something to him after all. It could explain so much

“Answer me, Zora!”

“I…I chanced to overhear some slaves talking about Semirah and two other concubines during my walk this afternoon,” she lied, not wanting to bring any trouble down upon Nellwyn’s head. “But when they saw me, they grew quiet and hastened away.”

Rurik studied her face for what seemed the longest moment before muttering more to himself than her, “It doesn’t matter what you heard.” Then he rose from the bed and grabbing her by the forearms, he pulled her up so roughly to stand in front of him that Zora gasped.

“If you believe that you hold some sway over me, Princess, think again.” His voice was harsh as he wrenched the cloak from her shoulders and tossed it away. “Lust can blind a man for a time but once it is satisfied,
everything
will return to what it was before.”

Zora was easily convinced of his words for next he ripped the sleeping gown from her body with such force that it fell in gossamer shreds to the floor. Before she could cover herself, he yanked her hard against him, his hands almost cruel in their caress, but when he forced her chin up to face him, she saw in his eyes the same haunting turmoil she had glimpsed there only moments ago. Like a jolt it struck her that if anything, he was trying to convince himself.

His mouth found hers before she could draw another breath, his kiss savage and punishing as if he wanted to hurt her. His powerful arms held her so tightly that she feared he might crush her ribs…until she heard him groan raggedly and his embrace became not brutal but undeniably possessive.

His kiss changed, too, his lips still hard upon hers but no longer bruising, and soon she was completely lost in the wild passion of it, her arms winding around his neck to hold him tight. Time no longer held meaning, and when he tore his mouth from hers and knelt before her, she was so dazed she scarcely knew that he had done so until she felt him bury his face between her breasts, his breath a scorching flame over her heart.

“Woman…woman!” Rurik whispered fiercely, his fury at his weakness over Zora, at her for taunting him, vanished in the blazing heat of his desire.

Holding her like this, the woman he wanted above all others in his arms, he could not fight the feelings crashing in upon him and he wasn’t going to try. Afterward, Odin help him, he would regain his resolve, but for now, let him pretend that she hadn’t been taunting him. That she might care…