Viking Passion (12 page)

“I thought of you constantly while I was
gone,” he told her, still pulling at the blanket. “I think I needed
to be apart from you in order to see you clearly. I have made a
decision about you.”

“What is it?” Her voice quavered. She had
begun to tremble with delicious, tantalizing expectation.

“I realized I have been wasting my most
precious possession. You, Lenora. I decided to forget what is past,
forget what was done to you against your will. You are beautiful,
so beautiful, and I have wanted you since the first time I saw you.
I believe you want me too. Lenora, my sweet, tell me you want
me.”

Lenora closed her eyes against the green
blaze in his. She sensed his mouth hovering just above her own.

“Yes,” she whispered, and she felt his mouth
take hers. Thought spun away and vanished until she was conscious
only of feeling, her physical perceptions suddenly sharpened to
exquisite sensitivity.

Erik continued to pull at the blanket until
she was almost completely naked. She felt first the warm air on her
skin, and then his hands, stroking along her shoulders. She
swallowed hard as his fingers slid lower with maddening slowness,
until they teased the sensitive tip of one breast. Then she felt
his lips and tongue.

She had never forgotten his hands and mouth
on her breasts on the night she had become his slave. Those
caresses had haunted her dreams, but she had not known until this
moment just how much she had longed to feel them again. A new,
wonderfully warm sensation began to spread over her. She gave into
it willingly.

He continued his exploration down the satiny
length of her body, his mouth following his sensitive hands over
abdomen and hip and thigh. Everywhere he touched her, her flesh
sprang into eager life under his skillful manipulations, aching,
yearning, hot with long-denied desire.

“Touch me,” he whispered. “Touch me, Lenora.
I want to feel your hands on me.”

She could barely speak. It was nearly
impossible to summon a coherent thought, or to concentrate on
anything but pleasure and warmth and Erik everywhere, touching her,
holding her.

“I don’t know what to do,” she gasped.

“It doesn’t matter. Just touch me and don’t
stop.” His mouth covered hers again, his tongue plunged into her,
and stars exploded in her brain. She grasped his head, her tense
fingers pulling his hair as she forced his mouth harder against
hers. Shyly at first, then with growing confidence, her hands
caressed his shoulders and lightly touched the scar on his left
shoulder and chest as she flirted with the feeling of his warm skin
beneath her fingertips. She traced the corded muscles in his arms
and neck and back, felt the straight column of his spine and the
firm, hard mounds of his buttocks. She felt as though, with
ever-increasing contact, he was more and more a part of her, as if
they were absorbing each other, magically blending and fusing
together.

He buried his face in her belly, and she was
dimly aware of his hands stroking her outer thighs once more, then
gliding around to separate them. She moaned when his long fingers
laced through the tangle of red-brown hair between her legs,
probing with delicate determination. As he pushed deeper she felt a
sudden twinge of pain. She cried out, twisting away from him,
striking his hand aside, just as he exclaimed in surprise and let
her go.

“We were wrong,” he said with an exultant
laugh. “All these months I’ve kept away from you, and now I find
that Snorri never touched you.”

“What are you saying?” She still felt between
her thighs an echo of the brief discomfort his fingers had
inflicted.

“I’m saying,” he told her, “that Snorri must
have planned from the beginning to give you to my father, and thus
he did not rape you. Your virginity was part of the gift. How angry
he must have been when Thorkell gave you to me instead of keeping
you for himself.” He drew her nearer, his lips meeting hers.

“I can’t.” Shocked at what he had told her,
Lenora began to fight him. “I’m afraid.”

“I won’t hurt you any more than is absolutely
necessary,” he promised. “It will be beautiful, my sweet Lenora.
Let me show you.”

He began kissing her again and whispering of
his delight in her, until she relaxed once more. Through long,
slow, magical moments his hands and mouth urged her to the edge of
something wonderful.

In the dim light of the oil lamp she saw his
tense face above her as he covered her body with his own. He took
her gently, easing her fears with tender words. In spite of his
care for her, there was an instant of sharp, tearing pain. Then she
and Erik were one and the moment’s cost to her no longer
mattered.

He had been right; it was beautiful,
incredibly, gloriously beautiful. He was cautious at first, moving
slowly, as if to spare her further discomfort. His lips claimed
hers again and again with infinite sweetness, but as she responded
with growing eagerness his self-control disappeared.

He moved faster, plunging deeper, and she
sensed his helplessness in the overwhelming tide of his own desire.
She knew that she, too, was lost.

She looked into his eyes and thought she was
drowning in the green, green sea. Waves lapped over her, softly,
gently, in the beginning. Then larger, more tumultuous waves came,
catching her up, tossing her back, ebbing and flowing over her,
surging, crashing, thundering in storm-tossed swells. She gasped
for air and gave herself to the sea. She felt it coming, felt its
inevitability, as the final, huge, unstoppable wave enveloped her
and spun her toward the sky in a dizzying spiral, flinging her
upward and out of herself into a thousand pieces of spindrift.

It seemed only an instant, and at the same
time long, long years, before she drifted slowly into the sea once
more and was borne safely to shore by gently rolling swells.

“Lenora.” Erik’s voice was soft as the summer
breeze swirling along the sand dunes at the sea’s edge. “Now you
are mine, my sweet, and only mine.”

“Yes.” Happy tears glittered on her long
lashes as he kissed her once more. “I am yours.”

Erik’s head rested on her breast, his
breathing quiet. She smoothed back his hair and he burrowed deeper
into her softness.

What of vengeance now? she asked herself. How
could she dream of harming Erik, or anyone he loved, after he had
brought her such joy, such beauty? How could she want to hurt
Thorkell or Freydis, who had both been fair and just to her? None
of them was responsible for what Snorri had done, and now Erik had
blurred the memory of that horror and replaced it with peace and
contentment.

Erik. In the light of the oil lamp she
wrapped her arms around the sleeping man and smiled at the shadows
on the wall.

“Lenora, you have done well. I am pleased
with you.”

“Thank you, Thorkell.” Lenora waited
expectantly, and at last Thorkell smiled at her.

“I will begin paying you now,” he said.
“Freydis tells me you have caused no trouble while I was away, and
you have done more than your share of work for her.”

“Will you pay me in Arab silver?”

Lenora knew such coins were acceptable almost
anywhere, although not for their face value. It was the purity of
their metal that was important, for payment in silver was by
weight. Every trader had his own scales, and purchasers short of
coin had been known to hack off a piece of a silver necklace or an
arm ring and throw it into the pan to balance the scales.

“Where will you hide your hoard, Lenora? Is
there any place that is safe for a slave?”

“In Erik’s house. I’ll hide it there.”

“That’s not wise. Anyone may take it while
you are elsewhere, and should Erik die, everything in his house
will be assumed to be his, nothing yours. No, I have a better
idea.”

“What is it?”

“I will write down your earnings and keep the
record with my accounts. Your silver will be safely hidden with my
own hoard. When you have earned enough to buy your freedom, I will
give you all of your coins. Should I die, your earnings will be
paid as one of my debts. Will you agree to that?”

“I will. Will Erik? Doesn’t my master have to
approve of this also?”

“I will speak to him.”

Erik began to teach her to read and write
Greek. He made her work on her Latin again, and continually tested
her on her counting.

“The more you know, the more useful to me you
are,” he told her.

These days Lenora seldom had time to spend
with the women, for Erik and Thorkell kept her busy. She learned to
make ink for them by mixing soot with vinegar or blood she had
brought from the kitchen, and she watched as Erik carefully trimmed
parchment leaves to the correct size. Parchment, which Thorkell
bought in Hedeby, was expensive. Every piece, no matter how small,
was used and then reused if possible. Lenora took the tiniest
scraps and slivers to practice writing her Greek and Latin
letters.

Each night they barred the wooden door of
Erik’s house and lay in each other’s arms. Lenora, who one
midsummer day had wondered about the attraction between men and
women, now found all her questions answered. Erik was a skillful
and demanding lover, taking as much delight in her pleasure as in
his own. The memory of Snorri’s brutal crimes against her family
was, if not entirely forgotten, at least set aside, and Lenora‘s
desire for revenge against the Norse ebbed to nothing as her
attachment to Erik grew.

She was devastated when he left to visit
Halfdan.

“Take me with you,” she begged.

“I want you to remain here. Thorkell needs
your help.”

“I’ll die without you.”

“Never. You will merely wait for my return,”
he said, one long hand stroking her in the places she liked best.
She moved against him with a sensuous purr.

“Don’t leave me behind,” she whispered. “You
know you’ll need a woman.”

“Then I’ll find one where I am.”

“If you do, I’ll find another man,” she
threatened.

“You dare not do that. Never forget, sweet
Lenora, that I am your master.” And then, to her mingled fury and
delight, he proved the truth of his statement.

* * *

The harvest was over and the winter storms
had begun before Snorri and his men returned. Once more the plunder
from his raids was piled before Thorkell in the great hall and
carefully divided. Lenora watched, pitying the wretched captives
who huddled to one side. She remembered too well her own
introduction to Thorkell‘s home.

Snorri had sailed to the west of England and
to Ireland, from where he had brought Thorkell a new slave. He led
her forward, a tall, gray-eyed woman with flaming red hair. She
stood quietly before Thorkell, showing no emotion when Snorri tore
off her saffron-dyed mantle to reveal a near-perfect body, barely
covered by a torn linen under-shift.

“This is Maura,” Snorri said. “She is fiery
enough to warm your bed for many a winter.”

From her position behind Thorkell’s chair,
Edwina stared coldly at the newcomer.

“I was angry that you and your men were not
here to help with the harvest, but now I am pleased,” Thorkell
said. “There is more profit here than from any of your previous
voyages. In the spring we will take a great baggage-train to Hedeby
and trade our goods for Arab silver. You are a good son, Snorri. I
am proud of you.”

Snorri flushed with pleasure.

Early the next morning, Lenora found Edwina
in the kitchen, weeping.

“I spent the night in the women’s quarters,”
she said in response to Lenora’s question. “Thorkell took his new
woman to bed last night.”

“What else did you expect?” Lenora asked.

“I thought he cared for me,” Edwina whined.
“He said he did. He gave me clothes and jewelry. But he’s angry
that I did not conceive. Now everyone will know what has happened.
I’m so ashamed.”

“He is the master and you are the slave,”
Lenora said, thinking of Erik.

“Don’t you think I know that? Oh, I’m so
unhappy. How will I ever get with child if he sleeps with her?
He’ll never marry me now.” She ran from the kitchen, sobbing
loudly.

Lenora recalled this conversation when Erik
returned a few days later. She watched him carefully for signs of
indifference as he sat beside her at the evening’s feast. He raised
his eyebrows in amusement at Thorkell’s red-haired slave, adorned
with heavy gold jewelry and a green silk caftan brought from the
Arab lands. Edwina, placed several seats away from Thorkell, looked
very unhappy and ate little.

Any concern Lenora had felt about Erik’s
interest in her was banished once they were alone in his house.

“How glad I am to be home with you,” he said.
He pulled her into his arms with urgent tenderness, holding her
close, her face buried in his throat. After a while, he
stirred.

“Take this off,” he murmured, unfastening the
brooches at her shoulders. “I want to touch you. I want nothing
between us.” He let her go only to remove his own garments.

As she dropped her woolen overdress and
pulled off her long-sleeved linen shift, letting it fall to the
floor, he moved against her again, his hands sliding down her arms
until his long fingers twined between her own and held her hands
against his naked thighs. She put her head on his shoulder, and his
lips set fire to the pulse in her throat.

Then they were pressed tightly together and
she could feel the whole hard, masculine length of him, shoulders
and breast and hip and thigh, bonded against her own joyfully
yielding body.

Her arms were about his neck as their lips
met at last. She felt like one who, dying of thirst, has been given
cool, perfect water in an exquisite silver goblet. She drank him in
greedily. She could not get enough of his mouth, which had suddenly
become essential to her continued existence. She moaned in grief
when he raised his head, barely aware that he had lifted her into
his arms and was carrying her to their bed. She clutched at him as
he laid her down, not wanting to let him go for a moment, pulling
him back to her, aching for the touch of his mouth again.