God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) (11 page)

“Ah, shieldmaiden. You are wet with want. I need to taste you.” His tongue touched that small point on which her very sanity seemed to balance, and Brenna lost all control of her body and her mind.

She could not say what her body did, because her mind had become the night sky, filled with stars and empty of the world. All she knew was the perfect, consuming, encompassing release, which was all the pleasure she had ever felt, and all the pain, all the love and all the loss, all of life and all of death. All at once.

In the space of several heartbeats, it was over, and she slowly came back to herself, finding her body curled into a curve, rocking hard against Vali’s face, her hands pulling his hair. Her breath came hard, heavy, as if she’d finished a fight. Her body, indeed, felt much the same as it did after a battle.

As she relaxed, the touch of his tongue and scrape of his beard made her twitch, and he eased away and lifted his head, smiling.

His beard was wet. Even in the dim room, she could see the gleam of it in what was left of the fire’s glow. That was her.

“I make you this promise, Brenna mine. I will see to it that you know well that bliss. You will know love of body and mind and heart. I will love you with all that I have.” He put his hands on either side of her body and came up, pushing her back to the furs as he loomed over her. “But first, my love, I must cause you some pain. Not too much, I hope.”

He took her hand and brought it between them, until he held it over the wet heat of her sex. His sex was there, too, between her spread thighs. “Feel me, Brenna. Take hold. I want you to know me before I take you.”

He curled her hand around his length and groaned when she squeezed lightly and then moved her fingers over him. She had seen other men but had thought little of the sword they always carried. Some men seemed especially proud of their endowment and had, she’d supposed, cause to be, and others less so. Vali was one who could have been proud.

Her fingers arrived at the tip of him, which was much softer than the rest, and his skin seemed looser and moved over the tip smoothly. When, curious, she explored that difference, he groaned and covered her hand with his. “You will unman me. My need is great. Will you let me feel you now? I need the heat of you.”

Trying on a smile, she took her hand away. “Please. I want that, too.” She wasn’t sure whether she could survive another feeling like she’d had when his mouth was on her, but she thought she wouldn’t mind at all to die that way.

Breathing a long groan, he took her hand again and brought it back to his sex. “Hold me as I enter you. I want you to feel that with me.” Then he took his own hand away and hooked his arm around her thigh, bringing her leg around his waist. When he had her in the position he seemed to want her, he reached between them and took hold of himself and her hand.

His face hovered over hers, his hair dropping over them both. With his serious eyes locked on hers, he said, “Forgive me this, love. There is no other way.” Then he pushed himself against the soft, swollen tenderness of her sex—and she lost the ability to breathe.

This was different by far from anything else he’d done. This was an invasion into her body, an impalement. He pulled their hands from between them and propped himself up over her. “It’s better if I take your maidenhead quickly, and then the ease will come. I swear it, Brenna.”

His words made her anxious. It was stretch, not pain, she felt now—the pain was in her mind somewhere; it was that intrusion that had her wanting to flee him. But she took a deep breath and made herself loose and still. He saw that she had, and, with a nod, he thrust once, hard, his hips slamming into hers—

—and there was the physical pain, sharp enough to make her grunt and gasp. And yet, it was tolerable. Feeling the thick, hard mass of him inside her confused her, however. The pain was already easing; why was her instinct to push him off of her, out of her?

She looked up into Vali’s eyes, still locked on her. Each of his breaths came like it had been ripped from his chest, and she could feel his arms shaking at her sides. He flexed gently, moving only slightly inside her, and the feeling under the sting was pleasure, enough that her eyes rolled up.

“Ah, Brenna. Now you are mine.” His voice was even deeper than usual and harsh with strain.

That was it, her anxiety. He was claiming her. One thing her solitary life had afforded her was dominion over her body. Even when she had been a slave, no one had breached that boundary. And now she was his. Vali’s. No longer her own.

“And are you mine?” she asked, hopeful and fearful of his answer.

He stared down at her, his intent focus on the eye that vexed her so. Shy, she tried to turn away, but he shifted, coming down to his elbows and catching her head in his hands. He pulled her back to face him. His broad, rough thumb traced a light line over her right cheekbone, along the tender skin under her eye.

“I have been yours since you first slept at my side, Brenna,” he murmured and bent his head to kiss her gently. “I am bewitched.”

A frosty hand clutched at Brenna’s heart. There was no thing worse that she could have heard at that moment. With a whimper she couldn’t contain, she pushed at his heavy shoulders and fought to be freed. Her movements moved him inside her and made her body flare and seek, yet she fought on nonetheless.

But Vali would have none of it. Making his body stiff and somehow heavier, he resisted her and held her head firmly. When she stopped struggling and glared up at him, frantically trying to keep close her anger lest despair get its hold on her, he said, a smile playing on his lips, “By your heart, Brenna. Not your lovely eyes. By your spirit. And that is no ill thing. I see the woman that you are. I love you.”

Before she could make sense of those words, his mouth was on hers again. Then he began to flex his hips, rocking gently in and out of her. Pleasure overtook pain with every slide of his body in hers, and Brenna could make no sense of anything at all.

Brenna writhed and grunted, whimpered and arched with Vali’s every touch. Even as her mind’s doubt and confusion compelled her to question him, her body provided its own answers. He had imagined this—oh, how he had imagined this—but he had not done her justice. In her naïveté, she responded to him like a wanton. When she understood, what delights had they awaiting them?

The rigid naïf at the riverbank was gone. Now, as he rocked his body into hers, the doubting novice was gone as well. She was with him wholeheartedly, body and mind and spirit, forgetting herself as she had when he’d brought her release with his tongue, and she was the greatest gift he had ever known.

She had brought her other leg up and hooked it, too, around his waist, locking her ankles against the small of his back so that he could feel the firm muscles of her thighs pressing against his hips. Her hands clung to his back, her fingers digging in, their short nails scraping his skin. Her tongue moved with his as if she had always known their dance.

She was maiden-tight, her body clenched around his like a scabbard, and the heat of her seared him to his core. Every sensuous slide, like he moved through the thickest, freshest cream, brought him closer to his own bliss. But he would not release his need until she had felt another release of her own, until he knew that the pain he had caused her had been well and truly salved.

With each surge forward, he brought a bit more force, seeking her depths, her pleasure. When she tore her mouth from his and arched her neck, tipping her head far back with a sultry moan, he smiled and pressed his mouth to the pale skin she’d offered him. He could feel her pulse throbbing unstably against his tongue.

“Vali…please,” she gasped, her body writhing under his, her legs clamping around him. She had stopped saying that she didn’t understand. Now she was wide open to the sensations he could bring her.

He drew his knees up and pulled her up with him until he sat on his heels and she on his lap. She cried out—in surprise at first, and then in pleasure as she landed on his thighs. A groan ripped through him at the new depth, the hotter heat he found at the limit of her body. Holding her tightly to him, he dipped down and caught her breast in his mouth, between his teeth, suckling her as he drove his body into hers again and again. She let go of his back and clutched his head, her fingers catching his hair and pulling fiercely.

She arched backward, so sharply and suddenly that he lost her breast, and her own hips began to flex and rock. Her quiet moans became rutting grunts, and then she went completely still, as inflexible as iron, and her sex clamped around him so completely that she nearly pulled the climax from him.

But he would not spend in her, not yet. She would be his wife before he would. So he bit savagely down on his lip and waited for her to finish. The moment that he felt her body ease, he lifted her off of him. She gasped and clutched, fighting their separation, but he freed himself from her. Before he could take himself in hand, he spent, calling her name in a pained shout, covering her belly with his seed.

He laid her heaving, damp body back on the bed. With a light kiss to her lips, he turned the furs back and sat up.

She grabbed his wrist, her hand closing over his arm ring. “Please don’t go.”

He rested down again, leaning on his elbow at her side, and brushed tousled, fair hair from her face. “Brenna, it is my wish that I never sleep away from you again. I mean to go nowhere, except to your washbowl. I would clean what I spent on you.”

Looking down at her belly, she took a finger of her free hand and drew it through what he had left. With a small, lovely smile, she nodded, and he rose.

The room had gone to a dark chill, and the water in her pitcher was cold. He crossed to the hearth and stoked the remaining embers. When they caught to flame, he laid two small logs on, then went back and poured chilly water into the washbowl, and soaked a clean linen in it. After he wrung it out, he went back to the hearth to warm it, and he laid another, larger log down on the new fire.

Turning back to the bed, he saw Brenna watching him, the firelight glittering in her eyes.

“You are a kind man.”

He smiled and crossed the room to sit at her side on the bed. With the furs still turned back, he wiped her belly, sweeping lightly over her skin. She sighed and lay flat, opening herself to him.

Her belly clean, he returned to the washbowl and rinsed the cloth, wringing it out and bringing it back, this time without warming it first. He had taken her maidenhead; she would likely be glad of some gentle cool.

He pulled gently on her thigh, encouraging her to spread her legs, and then he washed her sex. She jumped and gasped as the cool touched her still-hot skin, and then let out a humming breath as he gave her relief.

There was blood on the linen. Only a little, but enough to make his heart hurt. “I am sorry I could not avoid causing you pain. On my life, I want never to cause you more.”

“It was not so much. The pleasure was great. There was so much pleasure, I thought I would die.”

He dropped the linen to the floor and lay at her side to claim her mouth. She was with him at once, knowing now how they fit, and after mere moments, they were both breathless, and he was stirring again to life. It was too soon to take her again, she needed time to recover, so he pulled away, rolling to his back and bringing her with him. He settled her head on his chest, her glorious hair draped over his arm.

She rested on him, her hand on his belly, stroking softly and keeping him stirred, and yawned prettily. He chuckled and kissed the crown of her head, letting his lips linger there.

“The sun is not yet risen. Sleep, my love. Rest with me.”

She sighed, and he felt her body relax utterly.

Vali had never known peace so rich in all his days. He had led a contented life, since he’d run from his father’s brutal grip. He had friends, he had honor, he had home and a place in the world. His fellow warriors were his family, his jarl was his father. But lying with this mesmerizing, solitary woman, he had never felt so quiet in his heart before. So full, so complete.

After a long moment, unsure if she were still awake, Vali murmured, “When you love me as I love you, I would make you my wife, Brenna.”

“I love you now, Vali.” Her voice was soft with comfort.

He turned her face up so that he could see her eyes. “Then marry me.”

She smiled that smile that was only his. “I became yours, and you mine, tonight. Of course I will marry you.”

~oOo~

“I will go with Orm and Viger to the town,” Brenna said and stood.

Vali stood, too. “I would that you would not.”

Mirkandi, the town that served as the hub among the three princedoms of western Estland, was likely to be dangerous for any raider. But the villagers now under their protection needed to trade in the town, now, before the winter set in, and later, during the sowing and reaping seasons, when their crops would grow and go to market. They could not hide in the castle like mice.

Vali knew this, of course. It had been his suggestion that they send a small party first and judge the stakes. A large party of raiders would seem to be a raid. But he had not intended for his woman to undertake the risk of that mission, shieldmaiden or not.

Brenna ignored him and slung her longsword on her back. She grabbed her furs from her seat and her shield from the wall, and she stalked toward the door. Orm and Viger watched her, then glanced at each other, then at Vali, then back at each other, and then followed Brenna.

“Brenna! Hold!” Vali took long, quick strides, passing Orm and Viger. Brenna had stopped only a few steps from the door; she did not turn to him until he had her arm in his grasp and pulled. Then, she gave him the full heat of her storied stare.

“Vali, do not. I am not your housemaid to sit quietly in a corner weaving your tunics.”

“I know that. But do not do this. We are to be wedded in less than two weeks’ time. I would have you live to see it.”

“I could say the same. You scout north, into Prince Toomas’s lands. Should his men come upon your party—”

“That is why you do this?”

She pulled her arm free of his and took the last steps to the door. “No. I do this because I am a warrior, just as you are, and I know my work.” Heaving the door open, she stalked out. After a brief, awkward hesitation, Orm and Viger went after her.

Angry and agitated, he stared at the closed door for a long time, and then he realized the true risk. Yanking the door back open, he ran through the anteroom and out into the castle grounds. Brenna had just mounted her steed, a mare she called Freya. He stopped at the horse’s side and held up his arms.

“Brenna.”

At first, she gave him that fierce warrior’s glare, and then she understood. With a tiny smile, she leaned over, holding her arms out to him, and he caught her. He pulled her off her mount and held her close. “I would not have you go without this,” he whispered against her cheek. “I love you, shieldmaiden.”

“And I you.”

If he never saw her again, at least those words would be the last they would hear of each other.

Reluctantly, he set her down, and she took her mount again, offering him a sincere smile and a pat of her hand over her heart. He returned the gesture and turned back to the castle. He could not bear to see her ride away.

Orm and Viger were mounted, waiting behind her, grinning at each other over the display of affection they’d just witnessed. He walked between their horses and snarled at them. “If she does not return, neither had you better.”

That cleaned the dirty smirks from their lecherous faces.

When he came back into the hall, Leif stood alone next to the long table. The others had dispersed.

“Where are Tord and Harald?” Vali hooked his axes through their belt rings and snatched his wolf pelt from the back of the chair that had become his. “I wish to be off.”

“They prepare and are collecting Jaan and Georg from the village. I would have them go with you. I think they will make fine warriors and are already our best allies. We should train them up, and they might guide you as they can.”

Vali nodded; he agreed. They would need to be ready for war when winter broke, and a warrior with a blade would fare better against a prince’s army than a farmer with a pitchfork.

As he headed toward the door again, Leif said, “Vali, a moment.”

Vali stopped and turned back, waiting.

Leif walked up to him and put his hands on his shoulders. He was almost as tall as Vali, and they stood near eye to eye. “We are allies and equals. In these weeks here, I’ve come to think of you as more than that—as a brother. Yes?”

Vali had nothing but admiration and respect for Leif. And affection, too, but he was wary now. “Yes. Brothers.”

Leif smiled. “Good. Then as a brother, please hear me. You and the God’s-Eye—”