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Then she smiled up at him, hit the sides of both her hands hard against the crooks of his elbows and he fell flat on top of her, driving the breath from her. She grabbed his ears and held him there, kissing his throat, his shoulders. Merrik laughed, he couldn’t help himself. He reared up again, still laughing.
“You forgot that I am very smart,” she said.
“I won’t forget that in the future. Now, answer me. Why did you do that?”
She didn’t say anything, just stared up at him in the dim light. He wanted to demand that she answer him, but that look of hers and the words she’d spoken flowed over him like balm, soothing and so soft and deep, and at the same time incredibly exciting. And her laughter, by all the gods, her laughter was wonderful. And she’d even knocked him down on her, she wanted to kiss him so very much, and he said, surprising himself even as the words came out of his mouth, “You won’t have to fell me again. I will allow you to do as you please with me.”
“Come back to me.” She knew exactly what she was asking. She’d thought about it for a very long time, truth be told, probably since he’d cared for her on board his longboat, at least thought about him as a man and not an enemy who would hurt her. No, she’d thought of him as a man, so very different from her, a man who was kind to her, whose hands were gentle, a man who would give her immense pleasure.
Her future had changed irrevocably that long-ago night when she and Taby had been taken, and the future that would come had no meaning to her yet, for it was shrouded in uncertainty, and in fear. She had become a realist and no longer believed like a credulous fool that there could exist a future that would be sweet and good. She had become a Christian because her uncle had demanded it of her, demanded it of all of them, but she never called on the Christian God to save her, to show her which path to take, which decision to make.
She knew she owed it to Taby to try to get back home, to learn who had betrayed them, to restore to him what he’d lost and to herself what she’d lost as well. But that was the future, and she was here, and she wasn’t at all certain that she even wanted to regain what she herself had lost, for there was Merrik now, and she wanted him.
She wanted something for herself now, and if Merrik was only willing she could have it. For just this one night she could have him. “Aye,” she said again, her voice harsh with her growing excitement, “come back to me, Merrik.”
He did, dipping his head down. Her hands again closed about his face, and her fingertips traced his brows, his nose, his jaw. He felt her warm breath fan upward as her breathing hitched. She wanted him. She truly wanted him. He felt at that moment as if Grunlige the Dane were naught but a gnat of a man in comparison to him.
“Come to me,” she said again, and this time when he touched her, he opened his mouth just a bit and let her learn the feel and texture of him. When his tongue touched hers, she quivered, but then again, so did he, so he couldn’t be certain who quivered first or the most, nor did he care. “Open your lips wider,” he said and felt the heat of her when she did.
“Laren.” He said her name, nothing else, just her name, and she responded to him fully and with no fear at all. She was eager for him and she was a virgin.
That stopped him, and he reared back just a bit. “ Listen to me a moment before I forget who I am and what I am and what you are.” Her eyes looked soft as his mother’s butter in the dim light. She looked eager for him and ever so willing. She wanted him and she’d told him she wanted him. He forced himself to look away from her then forced himself to say the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. “Do you want to be my whore?”
He’d purposely chosen the crudest word he could, to shock her, to make her draw back from him, to make her think, by all the gods, surely she couldn’t want this, surely. She had such pride, such arrogance, surely she wouldn’t want to give herself to a man who wasn’t her husband. She was probably some merchant’s daughter from the Rhineland or cobbler’s daughter from a village along the Seine in France, or perhaps even a local overlord’s daughter from the dull, hot plains of Cordoba, Spain, but she deserved more than he could give her, deserved more than to be a vessel for his lust.
All that arrogance and pride sounded in her voice as she said, “No, I will never be any man’s whore. I want you only for this night. I want you to teach me what I should know. I want to experience these feelings once in my life, ’twill suffice me. Actually, I am not even certain these feelings really exist. Perhaps they do but only to a certain point, just enough so that a woman would do anything for the man who makes her feel this way, and then the feelings stop and the man doesn’t. But it doesn’t matter. I want to know and I want you to be the one to teach me.”
Now she was giving him permission to take her. He who should have told her then that he could have forced her the moment he’d gotten her from Thrasco’s house, that there was naught she could do about anything. She was in his power and she always had been.
Instead, he said, “What if you want to have me again after this instruction I give you?”
She was shaking her head even as she said, “Even if it is possible that I might, I have more important things to consider in my life. No, just for tonight. I want you just this once, just so I may know why I feel this way about you, why you make me breathe more quickly when you’re near, and when you touch me, why I want to fling myself against you and kiss you and stroke you with my fingers and never stop.”
He wanted to strangle her and he wanted to make her take those words back, but not all of them, oh no, by all the gods, not all of them. He thought about kissing her and never stopping, and it didn’t seem such a bad idea. He decided in that instant he would give her such pleasure that she would forget those silly words of hers—after all, what could be more important than he—forget everything but him and how he would always make her feel.
Always.
Oh no, not that. That couldn’t be. He tried to calm himself. He wasn’t forcing her. Truth be told, he was succumbing to her. He almost laughed at himself for his justifications. A randy man would force himself to believe anything in order to get himself inside the woman.
She lurched up again and now she was nibbling at his earlobe, her hands in his hair, tugg
ing, kissing his chin, searching for his mouth, now kissing him, her tongue between his lips, probing, but not too deeply for it was still too new to her and she wasn’t certain what to do. But just the touch of her was too much.
“I love your mouth, Merrik. I’ve never thought of a man’s mouth like this, but with you, all I want to do is kiss you and touch your face.” And then she was kissing him again, her fingertips feathering his cheeks, his chin, smoothing his dark blond brows, kissing him once more after that and yet again until he was drowning in her, the feel of her, the heat of her, the taste of her.
He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted another woman, except perhaps for Gunnvor when he’d been twelve years old and she’d been a magnificent fourteen and she’d let him kiss her and fondle her and caress her and she’d taken his rod in her hands and stroked him until he’d spilled his seed not once but twice, and he would have killed every dragon in the world for her on that day.
But this was different, he was a man now, and Gunnvor was only a boy’s memory.
He was mad, he knew it in that moment, utterly mad, his judgment shattered, his reason flown to the four winds. Then he saw himself in his madness, saw her beyond the softness and yielding she was offering him. He saw the situation, and he saw Taby—all of it in one sharp moment—and he knew he would be beyond mad to take her. He drew a shuddering breath, even as her mouth kissed his, her tongue lightly touched his, making him shudder and heave with the pleasure of it.
But he wanted her, very badly. Just this once, aye, then he’d be free of her and her girl’s idealized lust for him and she would be free of him as well. That was what she had said.
Aye, he’d be free. He wouldn’t have her there in his mind, in his thoughts. His worry for her, his fear for her, would only be as Taby’s sister, nothing else.
His eyes were dark and intense with need and control. He kissed her hard and deep, his tongue going into her mouth with a man’s lust, and no gentleness. He felt her stiffen instantly at the assault, and he gentled immediately, furious with himself. He undressed her quickly, without care of her clothing, and when his clothes were off as well, when he was at last kissing her breasts, feeling them with his hands, holding them in his palms, trying desperately not to lose himself in their feel, their taste, he was forced to close his eyes at the joy she brought him, not just her breasts, but how her hands were on his chest, his arms, around his back, drawing him to her, moaning softly, not at all afraid of him. And kissing him. Even now her lips were nipping his shoulders, then licking where she’d nipped his flesh.
His hand went down to her flat belly, feeling her thinness, her still prominent pelvic bones, but not caring, for she was alive and that was all that mattered. His hand went lower until he was touching her woman’s flesh lightly with his fingertips, and to his immense delight, she shuddered. She wanted him, he knew it, and she trusted him, at least in this, the giving of her body to him.
