God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) (23 page)

He walked over to the boys, all of whom backed away as if they were guilty of some transgression. Vali was big among his people; among the Estlanders he was nearly a giant. Even after all these months, many of the young ones tended to goggle up at him, perhaps expecting him to grab one up for a snack—especially those who had been on Ivan’s lands before.

“What do you get up to here?” he asked in the Estland tongue, glowering down at the boys, enjoying himself a bit at their expense.

One of the boys stepped forward, shaking back a mop of unkempt dark hair. Jakob was his name. “Sten called for us to carry a beam to him.”

The beam was far too large for the boys, all with skinny arms, to carry. Even four could not hope to do more than roll it—and Sten knew it, too. He’d been having his own fun with them, who tended to be in the way more than not.

Vali cocked a brow, not yet finished with his enjoyment. “Then you must do so. Why jape about here while a task is before you?”

“We…we cannot lift it.” That came from another boy, Nigul, smaller and younger than the first. Jakob punched him in the arm, making him yell and rub the spot.

“We can. We will.”

Vali laughed. “No, you will not.” He pushed them out of his way and lifted the beam on his own, setting it on his shoulder. All four boys looked up in awe and wonder.

“You’re very strong,” Nigul marveled. Vali looked down at the fair-haired child with clear blue eyes. He resembled Brenna. Vali wondered if his own son might have favored his mother. He closed his eyes until the thought and its ache passed on.

“And you should remember that I am. Go, now, and find real work to do.” The boys scampered off, and Vali carried the beam down to Sten’s building site.

As he set it down, he laughed. “You think we have too many healthy boys in the village? At least one of them would have broken a limb before they gave up their task.”

Sten stepped back from the post hole he was digging. “
Usch! Those boys are underfoot. I thought it would take them long to know it was hopeless, and I could get some work done while they tried.”

“Why pester you?”

“We are the foreigners, building our strange big houses, and Orm has already scared them away with his grumping.” Sten lifted his water skin and took a long drink. “We need to make real work for them. Where are their fathers?”

“Jakob’s father was in the village when Ivan attacked, and Andres’ father was lost when we retaliated. I think the other boys belong to our team on the coast.”

“Ah. Well, mothers, then. Someone to put them out of trouble.”

“I will find them work after the meal.” As she spoke, Brenna came up from behind and stood at Vali’s side.

When he lifted his arm, she tucked herself under it and wrapped her arms around his waist. He was encouraged that the tension of their morning had abated, but still they needed to clear that thrum from between them.

“I am glad to see you. I thought you’d be earlier.”

“One of the horses injured himself in his stall. I helped tend to him.”

“Badly hurt?”

“No. He opened his foreleg, but it’s closed now, and he’s not hobbled. But he was anxious, and he kicked Dan in the chest. He’ll be abed for a day or two. Olga is with him.”

Vali nodded at Sten and led his wife away. When they had a private distance from the busy work around them, he cupped his hand around her face. “Forgive me for this morning.”

“Let’s speak not of it.” She turned her head in his hand and kissed his palm. “It is forgotten.”

“No, Brenna. I mean to say this: When you are ready to bear my child inside you again, I will be ready, as well. I will wait and not bring it up again, in any way, until you do.”

Her eyes brimmed, and she gave him something like a smile—but not the bright beam that he had once so arrogantly expected to bring to her every day. “I know I ask too much. I want what you want. I’m not sure why I hesitate.”

“It doesn’t matter. What you ask is not too much. We will wait.”

“Thank you.” She raised up onto her toes, and he leaned down to meet her. Around them, as he kissed his wife, Vali heard the beginnings of the midday meal—the sounds of hammering and sawing ended, and people moved toward the center of the village, where the women had arrayed the food they’d prepared. The sounds of conversation changed from work to leisure.

He pulled back, his hands firmly on her bottom, cupping each firm, perfect mound. “Are you hungry?”

“I am not, but I will sit with you while you take your meal.”

The skause and bread smelled fine, and Vali was indeed hungry. But he had more pressing appetites. “Come to the river with me.”

“What is there?”

“Privacy. And a bank covered in moss and soft grasses, where I might lay you down and have my way.” When a stoniness came into her eyes, he added, “And then spill my seed there on the grass.”

Her expression softened. “The river is where we will find privacy?”

“As much as can be found between here and the castle—and if anyone comes upon us, would that be so terrible? To have our love seen that way?”

“Perhaps they could join us.” With that astounding sentence, Brenna pulled on his hand, leading him toward the river.

He held back and pulled her to face him. “Brenna?”

She laughed and then shook her head. “No. I wanted only to see that look on your face.”

Vali was relieved. The thought of sharing her, with man or woman, tightened his insides uncomfortably. But the thought of being seen excited him. She was generally private, unusually so for their people. He missed the bold days of her pregnancy, when she could barely contain herself, no matter the witness.

And when she wore dresses with skirts he could lift in a rush.

He kissed her hand. “To the river, wench. I mean to make you scream my name so all our friends will hear.”

Freya turned her head and gave Brenna’s hip a push, making her take a step to keep her balance.

“Hush, love. Be brave.” She rubbed the salve Olga had given her into the sore on the horse’s withers. Freya shifted her feet restlessly, and the skin under Brenna’s fingers twitched. The wound was wide and raw, and Freya would bear no saddle for the next few days. “I should have saddled you myself yesterday. I’m sorry.”

Vali stepped to the stall door and rested his heavy arms across the top. “How is she?”

“It looks worse, now that it’s clean. She must have been in pain yesterday, though she didn’t show it.” Finished with the salve, she stepped forward and rubbed her horse’s nose.

“She is well suited for her rider. Stoic and brave.”

Brenna smiled at her husband. Such a fine-looking man he was, especially when he grinned in that way, lighting up his blue eyes and showing the good man under the fierce warrior.

“I thought you had already ridden out.” He often rose before her, and he usually got an earlier start to the village. Brenna had been taking up some duties around the castle, helping with the weaving and other domestic needs the new village would have, so she left later in the day.

“I came back for you, wondering about Freya and whether she could be saddled.”

“I should not have let a boy tend her. My horse, my care.” They had been finding work for everyone old enough to do it, and they had put a few of the younger boys in the stable and out of trouble. The day before, she had allowed Jakob to saddle her horse. Before she’d mounted, she had checked the girth and the blanket, and all had seemed well. Freya had not complained at all.

But when Brenna had pulled the saddle and blanket from Freya’s back that night, she’d found an ugly, raw patch, sticky and coated in loose hair, just behind her withers. There had been a fold in the blanket, rubbing her raw all the day.

Now Jakob was hiding from Brenna. She had let him see her warrior face.

“Ride with me, then. My mount can carry us both.”

Vali had been riding the same horse, a huge bay, all the time they’d been in Estland, just as Brenna had, but he had never named his. Their people were much more likely to name their swords than their beasts. Yet Brenna felt an affinity for animals, an empathy. She saw them watching and listening. They were not tools. They were beings. They felt pain and knew joy.

And a horse was more than any other—she and Freya were a team. Brenna had let her down.

“Yes, I will.” She kissed her equine friend on the nose and left the stall. Before she let Vali take her arm and lead her out of the stable, she scooped up sweet grain and let Freya feed from her hand.

“You spoil that beast,” Vali muttered, but with affection.

“No. I respect her.”

When they were out on the grounds, Brenna mounted Vali’s horse, and Vali came up as soon as she kicked her foot free of the stirrup. Once he was settled, he pulled her back until her bottom rested firmly against him and she could feel the contours of his muscular thighs, as well as the resting ridge of his sex.

They had never ridden this way before, but there were no horses to spare, so Brenna’s choices were few. Not that she would have made another choice. To be so close to Vali, to feel his arms around her and the broad shield of his chest behind her, made her feel peaceful and content.

He kept the horse’s gait at a quick walk, and the rocking of their bodies against each other soon had Vali hard and Brenna wet. When he bent his head and kissed the skin just below her ear, she chuckled, though it became a moan as his tongue drew a wet line to her shoulder.

“We neglected to consider this complication.” She turned her head and nuzzled into his beard.

“I considered this. It is why I came back for you as I did.”

“What?”

“Leif offered to send his horse back with me so that you could ride. I declined. I wanted you where I have you now.”

He took the reins in one hand, and with his newly free hand reached under her leather top and linen tunic and pulled at the laces of her breeches.

“Vali, we cannot couple in the saddle.”

“Were you dressed as a woman, we most certainly could. With your gift tied up in breeches, I will have to content myself with your pleasure. And you will be in my debt.”

As he spoke, he opened her breeches and pushed his hand in, over her belly and between her legs. The rough skin of his fingers abraded her most tender flesh in a way she knew well and craved. She sighed and shifted, making way for him.

“So wet,” he breathed, the words dancing over her skin. “Touch yourself, Brenna.”

She had been resting on his shoulder, her eyes closed, giving over to his touch and the way it made her body clench and shudder. At his request—or perhaps it was a command—she opened her eyes and looked up. He was watching his hand in her breeches.

“What?” she asked.

With the hand that still held the reins, he pulled the tie that gathered her linen tunic over her shoulders. She no longer wore a smaller version of a man’s tunic. Vali had hated the way she bound her breasts under it, and he knew that when she wore a hangerock the clothing was cut so that she didn’t need to bind herself. He had spoken to Olga—after the fact, she’d learned he had—and her husband and her friend had conspired to have made for her what she wore now, a soft leather top that was modeled after the hangerock but cut short and split up the middle from the waist down. Under it, she wore a woven linen tunic with loose sleeves that was more like her sleeping shifts than any shirt she’d worn before.

The cut of the leather top rested just at the bottom of her breasts and was secured with lacing up the front and straps over her shoulders. She felt nearly indecent in it. She also felt beautiful. It was the perfect compromise between the comfort and practicality of men’s clothing and the grace of women’s.

Since she had taken to wearing it, other women had made similar designs for themselves. The village was full of women in breeches.

When her tunic was loosened, as Vali had just done, Brenna’s breasts were nearly free.

“Take your breasts in your hands, as you do in our bed.”

He punctuated that command by pushing his fingers into her. She made the odd, weak noise she made whenever he found a new peak of pleasure inside her, and she put her hands over his and pressed him hard to her.

“I want to see your breasts, wife. I want to see you make them tight with pleasure.”

Vali, being more experienced than she in matters of coupling, had always taken charge of theirs, and Brenna enjoyed that. She liked to relax and let him show her things she’d never known even about her own body. But after they had been able to be together this way again, when he wanted to try right away to get her with child again, she had not been able to be so relaxed.

She couldn’t explain, even to herself, why she was not yet ready to grow another child inside her. It had to do with more things than she understood—the uncertain timing of the ships’ return, the work of the village and all the changes that meant, and something greater and vaguer than either of those. She had carried a child and grown to love him while he was still inside her. She had carried the life and dreams he’d meant for her, and for Vali, for their family and their future.

And then one day, she’d woken and been alone in her body. Her son was gone, his body burned away, as if he’d never existed at all. All she had was the memory of her hopes and dreams for him, and the memory of his tiny body moving in hers.

The thought of another taking his place made her sad and afraid. But she didn’t understand why, so she couldn’t tell Vali. So she’d left him frustrated, with only frail reasons that teetered on shaky ground.

Dissatisfied with and perplexed by her resistance, he’d tried again and again to persuade her otherwise. Then he’d stopped trying to persuade her and had tried to catch her unawares, exploiting her desire for him and hoping she’d lose herself in it. Her fear was too great, however.

She’d grown wary, waiting for the end of his patience, despite his loving attention to her in all other ways. She’d taken his slowness to begin the build of their own house, always offering instead his assistance with other builds, as a sign that his feelings toward her were fading.

And then, two weeks ago, just when she’d thought she could see the end, he’d apologized and told her that he would honor her need and wait.

Since then, he had begun their house. And she had been able again to relax in his touch.

She opened her tunic and let the early summer air and sun warm her body. Then she cupped her hands around her breasts and closed her thumbs and fingers on her nipples.

Vali’s hand moved, coming out of her and focusing again on the small knot where all sensation seemed to concentrate. She flexed and arched as hot bolts of need pulsed through her. She could feel him, hard as iron against her back.

At her ear, her husband groaned. “I may need to take you after all.”

“How…” If he could think of a way, then she would not stop him. She had recently discovered a taste for coupling out of doors.

He pulled off the path and stopped his horse near a birch tree. Then he swung his leg over and brought her with him, landing on the ground with her in his arms.

Setting her down by the tree, he stared hard into her eyes and grabbed at her open breeches, yanking them down her hips. Then he dropped to his knees before her and buried his face between her legs. She arched backward, grabbing at his braid to keep her balance. His hands dug into her hips to hold her as well.

Nothing in the world felt the way his mouth on her sex felt—his beard, his tongue, even his breath, it all made her quiver and moan.

He spread her legs as far as he could, and then his hands eased up her belly and took hold of her breasts, doing himself what he had earlier, and so briefly, wanted her to do.

Her release came on her quickly, almost unexpectedly, when he bit down around her bud and danced his tongue over it. Caught in the barrage of sensation, she fell back and would have truly fallen except that they were so close to the tree. Her back hit the trunk, and Vali went on, undeterred, until she squealed and yanked on his hair, too sensitive to let him continue.

When he stood, his face glistened in the sunshine, and he grinned broadly, naughtily. Then while she still reeled, he grabbed her shoulder and spun her around to face the tree. He yanked her hips back and was inside her before she could take her next breath. She grunted harshly as his hips slammed against her bottom and he filled her. The sound he made had no human name.

This rough, feral mating—this was what she had been seeing all her life, in longhouses and raiding camps. She’d thought it ugly and crude, and it had made her cold to the very idea of physical love. Yet now, as Vali shoved her again and again into the birch bark, as it tore loose in her grasping hands, as they both grunted like wild boars, Brenna could think of nothing more beautiful. The feel of it—his body and her body, his need and hers, their love together, under a warm sun—was freedom itself.