Enthralled: Viking Lore, Book 1 (12 page)

A blush was creeping
from her neck to her face despite the cool water all around them. She only
nodded.

“Here in the
Northlands, we don’t believe our gods want us to ignore our bodies and the
pleasures they can bring us.” Her eyes looked everywhere but at him as he
spoke. He was reminded yet again that even just his bare torso was probably a
foreign and shocking sight to her.

“You said that
sometimes even nuns would become pregnant, though, so you must be at least
somewhat aware of what goes on between men and women.”

She nodded again, yet
she pulled her hands from his and began fidgeting with her fingers. “But such
things are sinful,” she said quietly.

“Ja, and according to
those people, your parents, who weren’t devoted to holy life, were also sinful.
But as I told you before, we don’t view things that way here. Of course, we are
still governed by the rules and customs of our community. We are not the
savages some of your monks make us out to be. Yet we believe that bodily
pleasures, and the union between two people who care for one another, are
natural and good.”

“Why are you telling me
this? What does this have to do with me being a thrall?” she blurted out.
Clearly she’d never had a frank conversation about such matters before.

He paused and chose his
words carefully. “Because while free men and women of the Northlands get to
choose how and with whom they share their bodily pleasures, thralls cannot.
Thralls must do as they are ordered. Some people treat thralls with dignity and
respect. Others do not.”

He watched as
understanding seeped through her embarrassment.

“Thralls have no
ability to choose. And you find the use of thralls, either for labor or
for…intimacy…to be dishonorable,” she said slowly

“That is why I
shouldn’t have kissed you,” he replied, his voice low.

“But why
did
you?”

He felt like he could
drown in her depthless, dark eyes. If he did, he would die a happy man.

“Because I wanted
to…and because I wanted
you
.” His voice sounded gravelly to his own
ears, but he couldn’t muster aught other than the truth at the moment. Not with
her standing before him, all but naked to his gaze in her wet, transparent
shift, her eyes wide and searching him.

She visibly swallowed,
her slim throat bobbing. He cursed himself silently yet again. Had he
frightened her away? Had he shredded the delicate web of intimacy and trust
that had been building between them?

“And…and what if I said
I wanted you
to
kiss me again?” she breathed.

Before his mind could
reiterate all the reasons why he shouldn’t, his body acted. He closed the
distance between them in one step and his mouth descended on hers.

Where she found such
bold words, Laurel would never know. Abbess Hilda would have strapped her to
the chair and dunked her until she was blue for words like that—and to a Viking
heathen, no less.

But Abbess Hilda and
all her strictness about sin and denial held no weight in this foreign land.
Though Laurel still didn’t understand the strange ways of Eirik and his people,
the more distance she gained from Whitby Abbey, the less she felt bound to the
old rules that had restricted her life.

The memory of her first
kiss with Eirik had crept into her mind as she lay restless in his bed each
night. His scent, of pine and salt and skin, hovered in the air around her as
he drilled her on his language. And the feel of his warm, rough, large hands on
her belly, brushing the undersides of her breasts and coming dangerously close
to her most private spot—

How could she want the
touch of a Viking barbarian? How could a savage man stir such base, sinful
desires deep within her? Yet here she was, asking him to kiss her again.

Before she had time to
regret her words, he moved so quickly that she inhaled in surprise. His hard
body collided with her. The skin of his bare chest was warm compared to the
lake water in which they stood.

He lowered his head and
captured the gasp on her lips. His hands wound around her back, pulling her
firmly against him. His body was rigid, hard, yet his lips were soft on hers.

There was too much to
take in all at once. Her head swirled as her body yielded to the flood of
sensation. One of his hands rose to the back of her head, tangling in her damp
hair. The other dropped to her lower back, molding to the inward curve and
pulling her snugly against him.

Her breasts tingled
where they came in contact with the taut skin of his chest. Below the
waterline, she could feel his hard manhood pressing against her. She knew it
meant that he was aroused, yet that didn’t frighten her for some reason.
Instead of wanting to pull back, to fend him off, she longed to be even closer
to him. She wanted to feel his desire, for her own was coursing hotly through
her limbs, delicious yet uncomfortably urgent.

Her hands found his
shoulders. The muscle
s
beneath her fingers
were corded and tense, yet his mouth was still soft, gentle. She let her
fingertips trail from his shoulders to his neck. His thick golden hair was damp
and clung to his skin. As she entwined her fingers in it, a noise that sounded
almost like a growl came from deep in his throat.

He tilted his head,
melding their mouths together more firmly. She leaned into him, greedy for more
contact. He made another noise that sounded half-hungry, half-pained. His
tongue brushed her lips, asking for entrance, yet his body under her hands was
pulled tighter than a bowstring. She realized vaguely that he was fighting for
control, forcing himself to go slow for her benefit.

She parted her lips,
remembering their first kiss and the liquid heat his tongue had brought. This
time was no different. Nay, it was different, for the heat was already lapping
at her. As his tongue entered her mouth and swirled with hers, instead of the
lazy, slow-spreading warmth, she was hit with a jolt of white-hot lightening
that singed her everywhere.

His tongue was so wet
and hot. It caressed her, teased her, slowly explored her. It was only her
mouth, but his motions implied something else far more intimate, something she
didn’t fully understand. Yet her body responded on its own, seeming to
instinctively know the same carnal language he spoke.

Without realizing what
she was doing, she moved her hips against his underneath the waterline. She
pressed herself into that hard column of his manhood, which strained against
his linen pants. She could feel it pulse. Needing relief and needing more of
the torturous sensation at the same time, she rubbed the part of her that
throbbed and ached against that ridge of rock-hard flesh.

He said something that
sounded like a curse against her mouth. His hands turned into talons, his
fingers sinking into her hair and the skin of her lower back. He met her
pressing hips with his own, grinding his manhood along the mound just above the
crux of her legs. She heard a whimpering moan and realized the sound had come
from her own lips. Even as the ache grew between her legs, so too did the
desire to make it more intense.

He ripped away the hand
on her lower back, and she would have lost her balance had he not kept his grip
on her nape, steadying her and keeping their mouths fused together. Before she
could mourn the loss of the hand on her back, however, he found her waist. His
thumb strummed along her ribs, inching upward. She wasn’t sure where he was going
until his thumb traced the underside of her breast and she inhaled sharply.

His thumb played there
for a long moment. She leaned into him, hoping he understood her bodily
reaction to his touch better than she did. She didn’t know what she wanted, but
she knew she needed more.

Finally, his hand rose
to cup her breast. Through the thin, wet material of her shift, she could feel
each exquisite callus on his warm palm. One in particular rested right over her
already-hard nipple. She arched into his hand with a moan. Even the slight
movement of her nipple against his hand sent more bolts of heat through her. It
was as if a fiery trail led from her breasts to the crux of her legs, for hot
sensation seemed to shoot between them.

He broke their kiss,
leaving her panting and dazed. But she couldn’t form the words to ask for his
lips never to leave hers again. Her lips were swollen from his kisses and the
soft scratch of his golden stubble. His taste lingered on her tongue.

His mouth fell on her
neck, and she arched her head backward to give him more access. He nibbled and
sucked his way lower to brush kisses and flicks of his tongue along her
collarbone. His nose trailed lower still to meet with the line of her shift as
it cut across her chest. But he didn’t stop there. She felt a hot breath
against her breast, and then before she could comprehend what he was doing, his
tongue flicked across her nipple.

The wet linen may as
well have not been there. She gasped and jerked involuntarily as his tongue
circled slowly, torturously, around her nipple. Her head fell back on another
gasp and moan as his hand and tongue completely overpowered her. She was lost
in a sea of sensation, drowning in fiery sin.

That thought brought
another gasp to her lips, but it wasn’t wrought of pleasure.

Something in the air
shifted between them. Eirik’s head snapped up and he dropped his hand from her
breast as if he’d been burned.

He took a step back
from her, raking his hands through his disheveled hair. “I shouldn’t have…I
shouldn’t have done that.”

“Nor should I have,”
Laurel breathed, feeling as if she’d been doused in icy water.

“You are my thrall,”
Eirik said, but he sounded like he was trying to remind himself of what that
meant.

“Do not blame
yourself,” she replied, feeling her cheeks heat with embarrassment. “I asked
you to kiss me.” It was hard to say the words out loud—far harder than it had
been for her to make such a bold, wanton request of him in the first place.

She lowered her eyes
away from his rapidly rising and falling chest. How could she give herself over
so completely to such base desires? Was Abbess Hilda right about her? Was her
very existence a sin, the result of her parents’ lasciviousness? Perhaps she
had inherited their sin after all—for hadn’t she wanted more of the deliciously
wrong sensations that Eirik induced in her? Wouldn’t she have kept going down
that path? Might she end up just like her parents?

“Nei, it matters not
that you asked. I should not have allowed myself to…to be overcome by my desire
for you.” His eyes looked everywhere but at her.

Confusion mixed with
embarrassment, swamping her. He clearly desired her, and he admitted as much.
Even though it shouldn’t, the declaration made her stomach flutter. Yet he said
it didn’t matter that she’d let her own desire be known?

“You think that because
I am a thrall, my wants and requests don’t matter?”

“Laurel, you can’t
consent to such things by your very existence,” he said, his voice tight with
what must be his own shame.

“My
existence
? I
was not born a thrall. I was made one by Grimar—and by
you
.” It was as
if all the passion between them from a moment ago was turning into hot anger.

She might as well have
slapped him, for he recoiled, his eyes wide and vivid blue. “You need not
remind me,” he bit out.

“Just because I have
been made a thrall doesn’t erase my free will. Not all of my desires and
actions are coerced simply because I am your
slave
!”

Anger she hadn’t known
still simmered in her heart bubbled over now. She had plowed forward, doing
little more than shed a few tears at the news that she had been made a slave by
these barbarians. Yet she wasn’t just scared or sad to learn that her fate was
to serve a Viking—she boiled with unspoken, unspent rage that her life was
being taken away from her. Freedom, something she’d barely even tasted in all
her nineteen years, was snatched from her—forever. She couldn’t even
feel
something for Eirik, couldn’t even desire him, without that freedom being taken
away.

She stood there panting
before him. His eyes sliced through her, unrelenting.

“I will not touch you
like that again while you are my thrall,” he said in a low voice.

Though she knew his
reasons, knew he valued his honor above all else, his vow still felt like a
blow. She took a staggering step back but managed to right herself.

She should be happy.
They had treaded into dangerous waters with their first kiss. Yet she’d
convinced herself a moment ago that she could give in to her desire, that no
harm could come from another kiss.

They’d gone too far.
Nay, she admitted deep within herself, the truth was that
she’d
gone too
far in letting herself believe that she could want this Viking warrior, that
she could protect herself from her own sinful desires, and that their
attraction could be shared without her position as his thrall interfering.

She waded out of the
water and onto the shoreline, her eyes downcast. She snatched her dress off the
rock she’d left it on and hastily donned it over her wet shift. She heard
splashing behind her as Eirik emerged from the lake, but she didn’t look up as
she fastened the shoulder straps to the brooches on her chest.

He dressed faster than
she, but he waited at the faint trail that led back toward the village through
the meadow and the woods. Once she’d shoved her feet into her leather boots,
she went to his side. Though he’d held her hand the entire trip to the lake, he
simply turned and began walking along the path.

She followed without a
word. Her chest pinched, and she told herself that she was hardening her heart
to her own desire for the kind, honorable Viking before her, yet somewhere
inside she knew the truth.

She wanted him. And she
couldn’t have him.

Grimar let the pine
branches fall back into place before Eirik and the thrall girl turned toward
him. It had been surprisingly easy to follow them from Eirik’s hut to this
secluded mountain lake. He’d kept an eye on Eirik’s hut for several days, yet
both his cousin and the thrall rarely left except for their basic necessities.

Rumors were already
swirling that Eirik was treating the girl like a freewoman—letting her keep
that long, dark veil of hair, dressing her in the garb of those who were far
above her in station. Grimar spat on the forest floor.

Some even said that
mayhap his cousin was bedding the girl. Knowing Eirik’s ridiculous code of
honor, Grimar very much doubted that he’d lain with her yet, but it was obvious
that he was captivated by the utlending girl. And that long, passionate kiss
they’d just shared in the water revealed Eirik’s weakness—he wanted her, even if
he tried to deny himself the benefits of having her as his thrall.

Grimar frowned. Eirik
was growing careless when it came to the girl. Normally, Eirik, like all good
warriors, would have brought more than the seax at his belt and certainly would
have swept the area before taking a swim exposed and unguarded. Grimar probably
could have stabbed him in the back a few moments ago, so lost were they in
their embrace.

Of course, Grimar
reminded himself bitterly, he couldn’t simply bury his seax in his cousin’s back
and be done with the competition for the Jarlship. Nei, his father insisted
that he had to wait. He had to be patient.

His father’s voice rang
in his head and he longed to spit again. The path to the Jarlship had been far
easier for Gunvald. Grimar’s uncle Arud had simply met with Gunvald’s blade
while raiding in a neighboring village. Gunvald had been the obvious choice for
the next Jarl, especially because no one knew he’d slain his own brother.

All these years later,
Grimar couldn’t just take up his father’s mantle. He had to compete with his
honor-bound cousin. Grimar didn’t understand why so many in the village spoke
so highly of Eirik. It was a Viking’s way to take what he wanted, when he
wanted it, by any means necessary. Eirik’s sense of honor and duty made him
weak. But Grimar wasn’t afraid to fulfill the Northmen’s destiny.