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he sucked in her breath. Her entire body stilled. He felt her fingers tighten and he groaned at the pleasure of it, all the while wondering what was in her mind, hoping that some part of her was responding to him.
“No,” she whispered.
“Aye,” he said, breathing hard now. He took her hand from his sex, clasped both her wrists in one of his hands, and jerked them over her head. “I would take you again, Zarabeth, because I am your husband and it pleases me to do so.” His fingers were between her thighs and sliding into her. She was still wet with him, and stretched, and his fingers probed and worked deeper into her.
She bucked her hips, and he laughed, deeply, fully. Then he released her hands suddenly and pulled her up to her knees. He lifted her then, widening her legs about his flanks, and came up into her even as he held her tightly against his chest. He found her mouth and probed deep with his tongue even as he worked deep inside her body.
He moaned, jerking as his release hit him, so quickly, nearly without warning, and he crushed her to him. He quieted finally, but he continued to kiss her shoulder, her throat, savoring the taste of her, the heat of her flesh, in his mind removing the evidence of the iron collar he’d forced her to wear. He rubbed his chest against her breasts, felt his heart pound anew at the feelings it brought to him. He knew he loved her, he accepted it now, praying that all the pain in their lives would ease with the passage of time, praying that the time would come when she would forgive him and forgive herself for being alive when Lotti was dead.
She was limp against him, her cheek pressed against his shoulder.
He felt her tears hot against his skin. He hugged her legs to his flanks and gently lowered her onto her back. He was still deep inside her, deeper now as he pushed forward. He balanced himself on his elbows above her. “Why do you cry? I didn’t hurt you, not this time, for you were still wet with me. Why, Zarabeth?”
She looked up at him. “It is too much, Magnus, and I cannot bear it.”
“And if I tell you I understand you, will you consent to believe me?”
She felt the force of his words pushing at the emptiness with which she’d filled herself. It frightened her. “I would that you would leave. Vikings kill and raid in the summer months. You have not had your fill of it.”
He went hard into her now, her words filling him, pulsing through him, heating his blood and his anger. Harder and harder he drove into her, until he again found his release. When he rolled off her, he said, “I will take my men and leave after the meeting of the thing. Wear your grief like a badge of pride, Zarabeth, flaunt it, and let all know that you suffer, that you grieve endlessly, and that all those around you must respect this, else you will turn on them. And when you weep with your self-pity, I would that you choke on it.”
21
Magnus and three of his men left four days later for the meeting of the thing, held near Kaupang in a valley belonging to King Harald Fairhair. They were riding, not going by the Sea Wind, for she was being repaired, her steering oar being replaced. Zarabeth saw him mount his stallion, Thorgell, a huge beast bred by Magnus’ father. The slave holding the reins abruptly dropped them at Magnus’ nod and Thorgell pranced to the side, then reared onto his hind legs. Magnus laughed and patted the great beast’s neck even as he clamped his thighs around the stallion’s belly. He looked magnificent in his thigh-length tunic of lavender wool over trousers of dark brown wool. Cross-gartered brown leather boots came to his knees. A wide leather belt studded with silver and gold was around his waist. His blond hair shone in the morning sunlight, and in that bright light his features were so clean and pure that it hurt Zarabeth to look at him.
She turned away, tired and depressed and already lonely, which was stupid, because she had wanted him to go, wanted more than anything to be left alone with her grief and with her emptiness.
He called out her name. She turned to see him riding toward her. In the next moment he had leaned down and pulled her up and was holding her against him. Thorgell danced to the side, and Magnus only laughed. He kissed her hard and released her. She stared after him until he was gone from her sight around the outjutting point of land.
She worked, and worked harder still, hoping to so exhaust herself that she would sleep at night. More often than not, she lay there staring up at the beamed roof into that muted half-light of the summer nights and wished for blankness.
On the third day, she came out of the longhouse at the shout from a slave. It was Helgi, accompanied by six men, and she was clearly upset.
“Ingunn is gone!”
Zarabeth stared at her, and she said again, “Ingunn is gone!”
“Come inside, Helgi.”
Helgi saw her sister, Eldrid, and turned quickly away, her hand on Zarabeth’s sleeve. “Sometime during last night, she ran away, that, or she was kidnapped. Have you seen her, Zarabeth? Have you heard anything?”
“Nay, nothing. Why would she leave her home?”
“Orm Ottarsson!” Helgi’s broad handsome face, flushed from her exertions, was now flushed with anger. “I knew she was lying when she assured her father she would obey him, I knew it because I know her. She wanted Orm and she refused to believe that he was an outlaw, a man without honor! By Thor, he’ll shame her and our family.”
“Where is your husband?” Zarabeth struck her hand to her forehead. “Oh, he is at the thing, as is Magnus.”
“Certainly Harald is at the thing! Ingunn waited, she isn’t a fool, though I would like to beat the girl until she weeps at my feet! Ah, Zarabeth, then you have neither heard nor seen anything of her?”
Zarabeth shook her head. “I’m sorry, Helgi. Here, drink some ale, it is newly brewed and cool.”
Zarabeth saw Helgi glance over at her sister once again, then immediately turn away. “Would you care to remain here, Helgi? We can send a messenger to your husband and to Magnus. He told me it was but a day’s ride away.”
“You’re a good girl, Zarabeth.” Helgi sighed, the harsh color leaving her face. “Nay, I will return home. Perhaps the stupid girl has come back, though I doubt it. I suppose what’s done is done.” She rose, again sighing deeply. As if it had just occurred to her, she smiled and said, “You are all right, Zarabeth?”
Zarabeth nodded, stiffening without conscious thought, awaiting the words she knew would come, and Helgi said, her voice cool and emotionless, “Time lessens the pain, you will see.”
Zarabeth looked into the older woman’s eyes—Magnus’ light blue eyes—and said what was in her heart: “Nay, I don’t believe that it will. There is too much of it, you see, and I am not strong enough to allow it to lessen.”
