Enslaved by the Viking Page 8

  The command broke the spell, and she looked to see if anyone else had noticed their inappropriate exchange. The couple at the table had continued with their hushed conversation and the children seemed equally oblivious, with the exception of the boy who still watched her with lust shining in his eyes. He might have seen. The men from the field talked in their own hushed voices as they ate their supper.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There. Near the fire.’ He nodded to the far end of the hearth, nearest the door and opposite where the children sat at the single partition that presumably separated the couple’s chamber from the room.

  Though she trembled with confusion and now anger at his curt dismissal—another reminder of the slave she was—she set her bowl on the table and made her way there. He could have spoken in her own language and saved her the embarrassment of being ordered about in front of these people. But he hadn’t. Every time she began to think of him as a man, not simply her master, he found a way to remind her.

  She held the cloak tight around her as she made her way. The boy still watched her; she could feel his gaze on her, so she gave him her back when she sat. Eirik stayed at the table, talking with the couple.

  As she sat, she pondered what had just happened. Eirik desired her. That much was clear to her. But for some reason that desire made him angry. It was that anger that made him treat her so coldly, she was sure of it. She had no experience with men and their desire, so she didn’t know if that was a normal reaction, though it seemed that it couldn’t be. After all, her brother had got eight children on his wife and he didn’t seem particularly angry with her about it. She’d heard some of Alfred’s men carrying on with the female servants, and none of them seemed angry. On the contrary, often they would grin at each other across the great hall, thinking no one noticed their surreptitious glances. Could it be that, as a slave, he simply regarded her as too lowly to want to bed?

  Merewyn didn’t know what to make of this information, but she knew it was a key to him. Somehow it would be useful to figuring him out, and she needed to figure him out if she hoped to get home. The information was more than she’d had and it calmed her as she lay down and drifted off to sleep before the fire.

  Chapter Ten

  The house was dark when she awoke. Only the dampened light from the hearth lit the room. A movement from her side, too near for comfort, sent her heart fluttering in her chest. Merewyn’s first thought was of the boy, so she sat up quickly to ward off whatever he had planned.

  ‘It’s me.’ Eirik’s voice, so near and rough in the dark, calmed her heart while at the same time setting off a disturbing fluttering in her belly.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Sleeping.’

  ‘Are you not staying in the master’s bed?’ She was too groggy to stop the scathing reply before it escaped, as she looked around the small home. Everyone was asleep, littered like dolls across the living area. The master’s bed might have been too generous a description. It looked to be a simple wooden bench tucked behind that partition in the far corner of the room.

  ‘I wouldn’t rob them of their beds on the same day I bring news of their son’s death.’ His voice was softer than normal, but still too loud for the sleeping room.

  Arrogance, she thought as she watched him lay down on his fur and wrap it around himself. She still envied him the fur, and the reminder compelled her to scratch her belly where her rough dress irritated the tender skin. Then she recognised the darkness of sorrow lurking in his eyes just before they closed. The loss of those men bothered him.

  He could’ve demanded a bed. He hadn’t. Maybe arrogance had been too harsh.

  She chewed her bottom lip as she struggled with her strange need to connect with him. It was rooted in the same twisted sense of security he gave her. It was inexplicable, but she reasoned she would need to know him to convince him to return her. ‘It’s kind of you to bring gold to their families. My brother wouldn’t be so generous.’

  He grunted, leaving her wondering why she’d even attempted to reach out to him. He so obviously saw her as someone less than relevant to him. The reminder made her earlier carnal thoughts of him seem even more shameful. She shouldn’t entertain such depraved thoughts for a husband, much less a man who called her a slave and believed himself above her in every way. Something was obviously very wrong with her.

  But that door, once opened, couldn’t seem to be pushed closed again. She lay back down, remembering the sight of his muscled body and wondering anew what he would feel like beneath her hands.

  ‘Your brother is a fool.’

  Merewyn’s eyes snapped open. From his spot on the floor just feet away, his gaze pinioned hers. ‘You don’t know Alfred.’

  ‘It’s a foolish leader who doesn’t pay the family of a man who dies under his command. They have three younger sons. If I didn’t pay, they wouldn’t send them to fight with me.’

  She licked her lips as she pondered her reply. He’d never engaged in conversation with her before, so the fact that he did so now made her wary. His words seemed to bait her, but his eyes were blazing, though not with anger. When his heated gaze moved down to watch her tongue where it moved over her lips, she understood it was some remainder of his earlier lust that emblazoned them. This information did nothing to tame her heart, which had begun to pound wildly again. ‘Wouldn’t your father order them to send their sons?’

  ‘Every man here fights for his own gain, not because he follows orders. Is this how Alfred attains his warriors? Force?’ He had turned on his side to face her and raised himself up on an elbow. The blue of his eyes seemed unnaturally bright and his lips curled in a sneer.

  She opened her mouth to argue, but then realised he wasn’t far off the mark. The families considered it an honour to have their sons fight under Alfred’s command, or so she had thought. Was it possible that it was done under duress? ‘Our lands are under attack. How else can Alfred and the king protect us without a reliable congregation of warriors?’

  ‘If a warrior is worth his sword arm, he’ll want to fight to protect his land. Without that desire, that free will, he’s little more than a slave. A slave army has no chance of defeating one made up of warriors who are there by choice.’

  ‘I’m sure most of them are there by choice.’ What did it even matter to him? ‘But either way, it’s the way it’s done. That doesn’t make Alfred foolish.’

  ‘It’s only one of the reasons he’s a fool.’

  She wrenched her gaze from him to look at the wooden rafters of the ceiling. Anger was beginning to overpower the shameful desire, but it wasn’t making it go away. The warring emotions merged into one confusing mass of something she couldn’t name, but it was an energy she couldn’t overcome. ‘Why are you telling me this, Dane?’

  ‘You should understand why your brother is a foolish man.’

  ‘Why do you care what a slave understands?’

  Eirik didn’t answer. Aside from the occasional pop of wood as it burned in the hearth, the room was quiet until he was suddenly there, peering down at her. She pressed her back into the ground, away from the power he exuded. It caused her breath to stop altogether and then come faster. It didn’t help that she noticed how the shadows cast by the glowing embers caressed his face, hiding his eyes now and leaving only his mouth visible. The effect could have been sinister, but her frail heart chose to humanise him. To notice the softness of his bottom lip. The intriguing lines that framed those lips.

  The Viking god she had seen commanding the ship was gone. He was no longer a master. He was a man.

  ‘There were no lookouts posted along the beach. Someone should have seen our boats or at the least expected an attack with the heavy fog. But they barely closed the gates against us.’ His wintry breath caressed her cheek. How was that possible when they’d shared the same meal? He’d had ale. It should smell of
ale.

  ‘That’s hardly Alfred’s fault. He wasn’t there. The king had called him away.’ She couldn’t tear her focus from those lips. The top one was a bit too thin, but the lusher bottom one made up for it.

  ‘Is his home worth so little to him that he doesn’t leave it protected when he goes?’

  Merewyn had no answer to that. The Danes had never attacked them before, but she knew Alfred had had dealings with them in the past. Had he expected them not to attack? Had the men he’d left behind fallen lax in their duties? For the first time, she realised she had led a rather cossetted existence, insulated from the goings-on of war around her.

  ‘And you, girl.’ Her breath caught as his thumb blazed a trail across her cheekbone. ‘You shouldn’t have been allowed to go off on your own. Why didn’t someone walk with you? Anyone could have taken you.’

  She couldn’t look away from his lips. ‘H-he didn’t allow my walks. I went anyway.’

  Eirik went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘And his wife should never have given you away. You are a treasure worth keeping.’

  ‘I’m certain—’ Was she? ‘I’m certain he’ll be angry with her for that.’

  The thumb was still on her cheek and had moved up to caress the bruise. Or where the bruise had been. Merewyn had no way of knowing if it was still there. It didn’t hurt anymore. His voice had gentled when he spoke. ‘He allowed her to hit you. It wasn’t the first time, was it?’ When she didn’t answer, he continued, ‘Did he ever hurt you?’

  She shook her head nay, but couldn’t bring herself to voice a word to him as she fought the tears that stung the backs of her eyes. Alfred had never been physically violent with her, but he knew Blythe would occasionally raise her hand. He had never intervened.

  ‘What does any of this matter?’

  The corner of his mouth tilted up in a thoughtful smile. ‘I said your brother is a foolish man and you asked for an explanation.’

  ‘Well, you’ve more than explained yourself. It hardly matters. I’ll never see him again anyway, will I?’

  His gaze went to where his thumb touched her flesh. Merewyn didn’t know how she knew, since she couldn’t see his eyes clearly. The weight of it simply pressed there, heavy on her skin. ‘Why are you so angry? I saved you.’ He wasn’t touching her belly, but she felt tingles there with every stroke of that damned finger on her. To add to the confusing mix of her emotions, she couldn’t decide on his objective with this conversation. She almost thought he was teasing her, but the thought made no sense.

  ‘You took me. You didn’t have to. You could have left me.’ Merewyn jerked her head away, refusing to be a pawn in whatever game he was playing, and moved to rise.

  But he was on her, the weight of his body pushing her back down before she had barely moved. She shifted in a halfhearted attempt to dislodge him, but he was too heavy lying across her thighs, and her arms were like twigs pressed to the floor beneath the power of his hands.

  ‘I took you because I couldn’t leave you there.’ The words tore from his throat in a hoarse whisper. It was almost as if he hadn’t wanted them to come out, but they had anyway.

  This close his eyes had become visible again and they burned into her own. All humour was gone from his face. ‘Aye, you could have,’ she challenged.

  ‘Nay, she wanted you gone.’

  ‘It wasn’t your concern what happened to me. Why does a Viking raider concern himself with the well-being of a Saxon maiden anyway?’

  ‘Because she would have given you to someone else and I couldn’t bear the thought of another man having you.’

  The air grew heavy and thick between them in the stunned aftermath of that admission. Those words should have repulsed her. Should have made her more determined than ever to put distance between them. But the simple truth was that they didn’t. Nothing about him disgusted her as it should. Merewyn was helpless to stop the delicious tremor that his words had caused to work its way through her body.

  Eirik felt it. His body pressed down to hers, as if to dissuade a fight. When he did, she felt the firm press of his manhood against her hip. She thought of the men and children sleeping so close in the small space, but even thoughts of them couldn’t stop her body from responding to his desire. The blood thickened in her veins, causing her to feel strangely weighted, while a dull ache throbbed in that part of her that only he seemed to awaken. Her entire awareness became centred on that contact against her.

  ‘I’ll ask once more. Why are you so angry?’

  Merewyn was so confused about her feelings, she couldn’t have answered that question had she the slightest inclination to do so.

  ‘I think it’s because you don’t feel nearly as angry as you believe you should.’

  He was right to an extent. The fear was gone, but she didn’t know what to call the emotion that had replaced it. She shifted her hips. It was an unconscious move to dislodge him, or so she tried to convince herself. As soon as she’d done it, she knew it had been a mistake. She could see the wave of hunger roll through him. But it had rolled through her, too, and taken her sanity to leave a very wicked, and barely glimpsed, part of herself in its place. The wickedness delighted in the fact that that look was meant for her alone. That she was the sole recipient of such intense attention. He’d cast a spell that pushed her dangerously close to forgetting that she was his slave, forgetting that she was anything but his woman. The thought shocked her to her core, giving her the wherewithal to buck her hips while jerking her wrists from his hold.

  But he didn’t let go, and his lower body pressed tighter to hold her immobile. Once she was subdued, his hips moved in a slow circle, grinding his length against her. He watched her face closely as she unwittingly arched into him and her lips parted on a gasp she managed to quell. Even through the layers of clothing, she could feel the heat of him, and that wicked, foreign part of her sought it out. He dropped his head so she heard his breath harsh near her ear. It was as erratic as her own.

  Merewyn stifled a shudder when the touch of his nose stroked down along the column of her neck. He breathed in her scent, causing her to shiver when he exhaled, releasing the heat of his moist breath against her skin. Once, the coarse hair of his beard scraped along the sensitive flesh and made her insides twist with something close to anticipation. It was followed by the supple contours of his lips dragging across the tender flesh. Her body came alive with the need to feel that abrasion again, particularly when it was followed with the touch of his impossibly soft, warm lips to soothe the pain.

  Merewyn held her breath as he began the upstroke and bit her lip to stifle another gasp when the tip of his tongue touched her. He stopped when he reached the shell of her ear, and she felt his laboured breathing rasping against her.

  ‘Don’t tempt me, sweet girl,’ Eirik whispered, his lips moving against her, making her skin prickle with the touch.

  Then he was off her, leaving her to watch his back as he left the cottage. Merewyn stayed immobile, trembling at the shock of her own arousal, before she could gather her wits enough to pull her cloak back tight around her. He’d hardly done anything, really. Why, then, did she feel as if he’d practically taken her there in the middle of everyone?

  * * *

  Eirik stood outside in the cold for a long time, letting the chill seep into his bones to war with the heat he felt for the slave girl. It unnerved him how close he’d come to taking her. The desire had roared through his body, almost uncontrollable in its vehemence. Giving fire to it was the knowledge that the farmer’s boy was across the room. Eirik had seen the way he had watched the girl with lust on his face; even the two men from his own fields had looked at her throughout the trip with that flicker in their eyes. He had known an urge to make them know that she belonged to him. To take her before them with an animal’s lust to prove that he was her master.

  It was madness
. He had nothing to prove to them. They all knew she belonged to him. None would touch her because of it. Besides, she wasn’t a bed slave to be used at will. He wouldn’t, couldn’t use her in that manner.

  He sucked in a deep breath to calm himself and closed his eyes. Only, when he closed them he saw her own looking back at him, dark and wide in their longing. Aye, he recognised the longing within them. Though fear lurked in those obsidian depths, he saw his own need reflected back at him. She recognised the dark lust within him, and it called to her woman’s core. He wasn’t sure if it was born from a slave’s need to please a master or a woman’s need to service her man.

  It didn’t matter. Those needs were two sides of the same blade. Whether she admitted it or not, she wanted to satisfy the demon urges. As he released the breath he’d been holding and opened his eyes to watch the cloud of steam dissipate, he knew now that the night would soon come when he would ask her to submit to him.

  The shame and anger that accompanied those needs had shadowed him for too long. No matter how he tried to shove them down, they were there to bind him and sap his strength. His warning to her had come too late. She’d reached that part of him, and it wouldn’t leave until it had been appeased. Eirik needed to fight it, to face it down, but he feared the only way to do that was through the girl.

  He only hoped that when the time came, she told him nay.

  Chapter Eleven

  Their moment on the floor of the cottage might have never happened. Merewyn wouldn’t have been sure that it had been more than a dream except that her heart stopped briefly when she awoke and her eyes were immediately pulled to him. He didn’t return her gaze, didn’t even look her way. Her heart, at least, hadn’t forgotten it happened, even though he seemed unwilling to acknowledge her.

  She had no idea what to say to him. Probably nothing would be said about it and they would continue as they were. Even if she had lain with him, she knew their roles would simply continue as slave and master, and the thought filled her with a heaviness that threatened to crush her. So she got to her feet and tried to push the memory out of her mind as if it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. Life would continue.