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Chapter Fourteen
“Never reproach another for his love: It happens often enough
That beauty ensnares with desire the wise. While the foolish remain unmoved.”
—The Eddic poemHavamal
Day Three, After: Devoted.
“You worked hard today.”
Kai took Eir’s calloused, scratched and scraped hands in his and tenderly rubbed the healing ointment into her skin.
She left their bed this morn earlier than he did for a change.
Usually, she loathed for him to separate their bodies, get up and get dressed for the day. More often than not, she detained him when he tried, fanning his desires, taking him slow, fast, deep, hard, and everything in between. She only allowed him to leave when he exhausted her to the point of unconsciousness. Or left her limbs so loose that she wasn’t fast enough to pounce on him to drag him back to bed when he finally rose from it.
Today had been the exception.
All the long day, she’d disappeared in the enclosed stone forge some distance away on the south end of the village. They made spears and arrows this day, hundreds of them. And Eir, being a master of the craft, served as head smithy to the rest of the men and women who were strong enough to help.
He raised one of her hands to his mouth and kissed each fingertip tenderly, peering into her eyes through his lashes, head bowed.
“Does it pain you?”
Her hands were a bloody mess. Full of splinters, raw cuts and worn callouses. But she didn’t seem to notice, her eyes focusing on his mouth instead.
“No,” she murmured, as if mesmerized. “Doesn’t hurt.”
He kissed the fingertips and palm of her other hand and brought both to his lips to breathe warmth into them, letting the ointment’s soothing heat spread throughout her ravaged flesh.
She sighed with pleasure despite her wounds, and placed her palms on either side of his face, holding him still where she wanted him.
He was sitting on their hayloft while she knelt straddling his thighs. They were still clothed, though she’d divested her leather armor. Usually, when they returned to the privacy of their barn at the end of the day, they made haste to shuck their trappings. Sometimes, they soaked in a hot bath first. More often, they fucked first because they couldn’t stand being apart for a moment longer, andthengot into the bath.
This night, however, Kai brooked no argument tending to Eir’s hands first. And Eir seemed content simply to look at him while he did it.
She looked at him as if he was a mystery she couldn’t solve. Something endlessly fascinating. Enthralling.
It made him want to shake his head in disbelief. To be the object of this woman’s unmitigated concentration and desire. Instead, he couldn’t help the small smile that hovered on the edge of his lips.
He was proud to please her. Ugly and scarred though he was, it seemed she couldn’t get enough of him. He was glad of it. Perhaps it was selfish, but he wanted her to remember him. Even after he was gone.
She didn’t speak for a long time as she stared at him, her gaze roving intensely over his face, lingering on each of his features one by one.
Finally, she said, “I want to know how you obtained each and every one of your scars. I want to understand all of the markings on your body.”
I want to know you, she didn’t say, but he nevertheless heard distinctly as if she’d spoken the words out loud.
“Show me,” she commanded.
There was a full moon tonight. Between the soapstone lamp in a corner of the hayloft and the bright moon, they had plenty of light to see by despite the depth of night.
Holding her eyes, Kai did as she bid. She moved off of his body to give him space to maneuver as he stripped off his trappings one by one. Until he was wholly naked before her, sitting upon the furs.
She was still dressed, just like the first night they’d spent together in the ice house at the base of the trolls’ mountain. While he was exposed in every way.
It still made his heart pound to offer himself like this to her, but his heart no longer feared to be hurt. Despite her coverings, he knew that she was just as naked as he, for the openness and adoration in her eyes. He was not merely an object to use for her pleasure, he knew. What they did together, every kiss, every touch and sigh…it was a connection of souls.
