Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
T he noises in the Norsemen village were different from the ones in her old village, and it always took Agnes a moment to remember where she was upon waking up. Then she recognized her new environment by the rhythmic wooshing of the windmill, the neighing of the horses, the guttural sounds of the Norse language. It was as different from the noises of her native place as if she had actually gone to a distant land.
But this morning it was different again. All she could hear were shouts and crackling sounds, the origin of which she could not identify. What was going on? And how had the unusual activity not woken her up before?
Because she’d been exhausted, that was why.
It had taken her a long time to fall asleep the night before. Time and time again she had relived the moment when she had made Magnus explode in pleasure. It had been one of the most satisfying experiences in her life but now she was wondering. Would he not think her unforgivably brazen? Worse, would he now hope to use her in other ways? It would make sense for him to think that there was little harm in bedding a woman who had been so willing to offer him release when he’d not asked for anything. Would he turn into a lecher and pounce on her?
No, the man sleeping with his body curled up so protectively around her would never take advantage of her. He had promised he would not, and feminine instinct told her he would hold on to his promise. What had happened in the cave changed nothing.
Or at least, she hoped it did not. But the reality might not be so simple.
A spine-chilling scream had her shooting to her feet. What was going on this morning?
Agnes hastily put her dress on and walked out of the door, where she immediately understood the reason for the commotion. One of the huts over on the other side of the village was on fire. Dear God, what had happened? Were they under attack? Should she take a weapon? Thankfully, being a blacksmith, Magnus had plenty of instruments lying around. She grabbed a fearsome pair of pliers and headed straight out.
As she drew nearer to the crowd assembled by the mill, the roof of the hut gave out, and the whole thing collapsed on itself in a shower of sparks. Shock caused Agnes to skid to a halt. Dear God, had there been someone inside? As if in answer to her question, two men exited the cloud of smoke, holding a third one between them. Wolf and Sigurd, carrying Bjorn, whose clothes appeared singed. All three were coughing and stumbling but they were alive. She could only hope no one else was left to retrieve.
“What happened?” she asked a woman who was watching the events unfold with wide eyes.
“Dunne’s hut caught fire earlier that morning. We don’t know how it happened, as Dunne herself was not in. Thankfully, the men were able to contain the fire and it did not spread anywhere. And now that Bjorn is out, there will be no casualties either.”
Agnes’ heartbeat slowed down as relief spread through her. This was an accident, nothing more. The loss of the hut was a pity but no one had been hurt and no attackers were coming. She could relax.
Before she could ask any more questions Magnus appeared in front of her. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to be injured.
“Are you all right?” she asked nonetheless. She needed to know he was not hurt.
“Yes. I will need a good wash though.”
He rubbed at his red-rimmed eyes, which would be stinging badly because of the smoke, and looked at his body in consternation. Agnes could only agree he needed a wash. His hair was matted with sweat, his cheeks streaked with soot, his clothes filthy. It was all she could do not to gape. Clean, he was impressive enough. With black marks all over his skin, he was awe-inspiring, like a savage warrior on campaign.
“I’ll go to the river now.” Even his voice had gone rougher.
“Why don’t you use the tub you found for me the other day? It should be big enough for you.”
Three days ago Magnus had surprised her by hauling an enormous wooden basin into the forge, an old trough he’d cleaned and sanded. When she’d asked him about it, he’d replied that he wanted her to be able to wash with warm water. Unable to resist the offer, she had taken the first tub-bath of her life that very morning. The pleasure of lingering in warm water had been indescribable. She wasn’t sure she would ever bear to wash in cold rivers ever again.
“It would be more comfortable and that way I will be able to help wash your hair and back.”
The way Magnus stilled made her realize what she had just said. It had sounded so intimate, an offer only a wife would make. The woman she had been talking to gave a cough and hastened away, as embarrassed as if she and Magnus had started undressing one another in front of her.
“You would do that?” he asked, his eyes never leaving hers. She knew what he meant. After what had happened the day before, did she trust him not to overstep boundaries?
Yes, she did.
“I would.”
Without a word he took her by the hand and led her to the forge. Even if she had wanted to retract her offer, she couldn’t have. Her wild blacksmith was holding her too tightly.
Even with the fire roaring, it took forever, or so it seemed to Magnus, to heat up the bucket of water he’d placed at the center of the furnace. In the end, he didn’t have the patience to wait until a second bucket was heated so he emptied the water he and Agnes had drawn from the well into the tub along with the hot one he’d just added. Cool water was better anyway. It might help him keep some control over his senses. Because he was fast regretting agreeing to her proposition. Well, not regretting it, but wondering how he was going to stop himself from demanding more than a wash once she put her perfect, wicked hands on him.
He hadn’t been able to resist his need to be touched in the cave, when he’d been fully dressed, so what chances did he have now?
“Could you turn around while I get in the tub?” he asked, not sure why he was doing it. It was not as if he minded her seeing his naked body, or his hardness. It was not even as if it would be the first time she’d seen it. But she turned around without comment and busied herself with stoking the fire behind her.
When he was settled, with his legs dangling over the rim of the tub and his erection hidden under his cupped hands, he called out to her. “I’m ready.”
Agnes moved so quietly he had not realized she’d come to the tub until he heard her voice in his ear.
“Shall we start with your back?”
He closed his eyes, as anticipation seared his every nerve ending.
Taking his silence for agreement, Agnes gathered his hair to place it over one shoulder, to give her access to his back. As she did so, her knuckles grazed his neck. A shiver descended all the way to his toes. She wet her hands before scooping some of the soap from the earthenware pot he’d brought from his hut. In a moment she would start. Then it would be too late. Perhaps it already was. He should have pointed out that he could wash on his own. He should have made her leave while she still could. But he merely nodded and bent forward to allow her to lather his shoulders and spine. When her hands, small and slick with soap, landed on his skin, he could not prevent another shiver. This was going to be torture.
And he would relish every moment of it.
As Agnes rubbed and circled his flesh, a groan built in his chest, and he could do nothing to stop it from escaping his lips. It came out like an animalistic snarl. The rhythm of her stroking faltered and he tensed in turn. Was she going to flee, frightened by his reaction?
Heart pounding, cock throbbing, he waited.
Eventually, she resumed her ministrations and he allowed himself to breathe again.
“What happened with the hut exactly? How did it catch on fire?”
That she was only asking to break through the tension of the moment was obvious, but he indulged her. Talking might help him keep the worst of his lust in check, and it was only normal that she should wonder what had happened.
“I’m not sure. All I know is that I saw the beginnings of the fire while I was at the back of the forge. I called to a few men but we could not extinguish it. Dunne arrived when the flames had already spread to the roof. The hut was beyond saving at that point, so she urged us not to put ourselves in danger. We simply ensured the fire did not spread to the other huts, or even more importantly, the mill. Fortunately, it was not a windy day.”
It would have been a disaster otherwise.
“But if she didn’t want anyone to try and save the hut, how did Bjorn end up trapped inside?” Agnes asked, moving the wet hair to his other shoulder.
“Because all of a sudden Dunne’s daughter ran into the inferno, crying that she wanted to save her cat.” Magnus remembered the horror on everyone’s face when Dawn had escaped her mother’s grasp. There had been no need to do anything, however, because Bjorn had moved before anyone else could react. Quick as a flash, he’d rushed after the little girl. The door had collapsed just after him, blocking their retreat. For a moment it had looked as if all was lost.
The hands at his back stopped and he heard an intake of breath. “She didn’t!”
“I’m afraid she did, but Bjorn was able to lift her out of the window. Both of them are well, as is the cat,” he reassured her. “Wolf and Sigurd hacked a hole through the wall just in time to get Bjorn out.”
Silence followed his declaration. Then slender fingers slid down his spine, before stopping just above the water surface, and dangerously close to his loins.
“Shall I continue?” Agnes rasped when he didn’t react.
Yes. No ! Please.
“I... I think it might be better to use a cloth to rub at my face and hands,” he said in lieu of an answer. “The soot will come more easily that way.”
That, and the fact that he could not imagine feeling her bare hands gliding over his chest. Because this time, she would be facing him and she would see the hunger in his eyes. He was too weak to put an end to the moment, but he could at least put a barrier between their skins, flimsy as it was.
“You’re right, I should have thought.” Agnes sounded as breathless as he was. “Let me go get one from your hut.”
Alone in the rapidly cooling water, Magnus tried to calm down the beating of his heart. Or rather, the pulsing in his groin. That was as excruciating, as delicious as he had feared. What had possessed him to accept Agnes’ offer? Come to that, what had possessed her to offer such an intimate thing as to wash him? The woman was full of surprises. Shy as she appeared at first glance, she had agreed to his suggestion that they should sleep next to one another mere days after having met him. In the cave, she had behaved with the most disconcerting brazenness, even though she had been new to such caresses. And now she was running her hands all over his body as if it were the normal thing to do. Didn’t she know where this could end?
Where it would end if he had his say?
No. It wouldn’t lead anywhere. Officially, he was here to wash the soot away, and that was all he would do if it killed him. She had washed the only part of his body he didn’t have access to. The rest, he could bloody well wash by himself, starting with his hair. He could not risk having her hands anywhere near his throbbing member, because then he would lose his mind and make her do what he had already made her do back in the cave, when he should have asked why she was afraid of bats instead of using her to slake the lust raging in his blood. Anything but that.
One moment of folly might be forgiven, two would establish him as a despicable lecher who thought nothing of using innocent women for his selfish pleasure.
That sealed it. When she came back with the cloth, he would tell her he would finish washing on his own. Nothing would happen today.
With decision, he plunged his soapy head under the water.
Agnes clutched the piece of cloth tight against her chest as if by doing so she could prevent her heart from exploding. Touching Magnus’ back, even if she had tried to keep her gestures brisk and efficient, had been heavenly. His skin had been so smooth, the muscles underneath so taut, vibrant with power. How would she cope with touching the rest of him?
With touching the part she had already stroked once and was desperate to stroke again? She had not missed how he had kept his hands in his lap while she washed him, so as to hide his member from view.
Had he been hard? Had he simply wanted to avoid her seeing anything she wasn’t supposed to see? She had been unable to think of anything else until she’d asked him about the fire.
Shouldn’t she give him the cloth and leave him to finish his bath alone? Yes. Would she be able to? She wasn’t sure. In any case, she needed to go now. She could not leave him to wait for her indefinitely.
When she entered the forge again, Agnes thought for a moment that Magnus had finished his ablutions without her and left. It would make sense, considering how long she had taken to build up the courage to get back to him. The water would be cold by now, and who liked to linger in a too small, no longer warm tub? Then she saw the long legs draped over the rim. No wonder she had not seen his head and neck. They were submerged under water. Dread spiked through her, like hundreds of ice shards piercing her skin all at once. Had he fallen asleep and drowned while she was getting the cloth? Dear God, no!
She rushed to him, hoping not to be too late.
“Magnus!”
Kneeling on the floor, she put her hands into the water to lift him up. At the exact same time, he resurfaced of his own accord. What happened next was inevitable.
Their lips met, his warm and wet from the water, hers cold and stiff from the fear she had just experienced.
It was not a kiss, precisely, more an accidental collision of lips, but she knew instantly it would become a kiss. And maybe more. As soon as they touched, she was seized by the irresistible urge to let Magnus take what he wanted from her.
And take it he did.
Thinking she deserved to experience at least some of the things men and women could share together, even if she didn’t mean to marry, Agnes had kissed a boy from her village some years ago, and it had been nice enough. This was not nice. It was hot, it was fiery, it was scandalous, it was... well, like Magnus himself, wild.
The relief of knowing he had not drowned, the pleasure his touch created within her, the thrill of being in the proximity of a naked man, everything conspired to make her melt.
His wet hands grabbed the back of her neck at the same time as he raised himself up to a sitting up position in order to devour her more fully. She moaned, and had to place her palms on his slippery shoulders to steady herself. The kiss deepened, and he started to use his tongue was well as his lips, massaging hers, transforming her into a liquid mass of limbs. She felt as if she were floating in a tub of warm water herself.
“Agnes—”
“I thought you’d drowned,” she cried out as soon as he freed her mouth.
“I didn’t. But we shouldn’t?—”
She cut him short by deepening the kiss even further, bringing her teeth into it to nibble at his lower lip. She didn’t want to hear he regretted kissing her, she especially didn’t want to hear that they should stop. Because she most decidedly disagreed. They should carry on. For a moment she thought she’d won. He seemed to surrender, and tightened his hold over the back of her neck. Then he wrenched himself away from her with a grunt that could have been one of despair or frustration.
“Wait, Agnes,” he said again, holding her at arms’ length. No matter how much she wanted to, there was no way she would manage to come closer now. He was just too strong.
“Magnus,” was all she could answer.
“If you don’t stop, I will do something I’m not sure you want me to do.”
Right this moment she could not think of a single thing he could do to her that wouldn’t be welcomed, but she knew to what he was referring. “Like yesterday in the cave you mean?” she breathed.
His blue eyes caught fire. “No. Nothing like that. In the cave you gave me pleasure. It was all about me. Today it would be all about you. If you don’t go now, I will put my hands on you, my face and my mouth and my tongue between your legs. I will devour you. I won’t stop until I've seen you explode in release, heard you scream my name and made you beg for more. You’re a woman, you can give me your pleasure over and over again. And I will make you do it, whether you want it or not.”
It was a good thing Agnes was already kneeling, because she might well have dissolved to the floor in a puddle of need otherwise.
Today it would be all about you. I will devour you.
How did he think that she wouldn’t want that? Perhaps she was not supposed to feel this way, but how could she stop herself? Had he threatened to take her, she might have taken fright. But he had not. He had talked about pleasuring her with his hands, his mouth, his tongue. None of these could make her with child so she had nothing to fear. And with fear gone, all that was left was desire.
The desire to feel what other women allowed themselves to feel when they wanted a man.
With other men, resisting the temptation had not been an issue. They had not stirred her, whether in body or in soul, so it had been easy to stick to her resolve not to let anyone get too close to her physically, much less emotionally.
With Magnus... With him everything was different. New. Exciting.
Scary.
She felt ill-equipped to face it, or even simply make sense of it. It was hard to understand why that might be. Or maybe it was not so hard. The blacksmith was not only shockingly handsome, but he was also unlike any of the men she had met, or more pointedly, he was unlike the men she had known all her life. How could she have felt any attraction toward friends she had seen covered in mud a dozen times? There was nothing enticing about someone she still remembered as a pimply youth. As to wanting to kiss someone she’d seen kiss all her friends in turn, it was unthinkable.
But she had only met Magnus as a grown woman, he didn’t have a single pimple on his face, he had not kissed anyone she knew, and they had never fallen into a bog together. He was also a Norseman, as different from what she knew as could be conceived. No wonder she was intrigued.
More than intrigued.
And so now she wondered if she had not made a mistake in going so far from her village. The familiar environment was exactly what she needed to help her keep her unwise impulses on a tight leash. Here, away from all she knew, left to her own device, she was afraid her inner demons would run riot.
How was she going to resist what she felt when nothing or no one was here to stop her?
Alone in a new place, in a handsome stranger’s house, she felt as vulnerable as a solitary flame struggling to burn bright once it had been taken out into the wind blowing outside. How long would she be able to resist in the new conditions? She might well be destroyed. Yes... Except she had now met a man who made his living from fanning flames and transforming them into infernos hot enough to melt metal. He did not destroy fire, he mastered it. Under his expert coaxing, the little fragile flame she was had the potential to grow invincible. It was an irresistible thought.
“You need to go now, Agnes, because I’m telling you, you do not know what you’re dealing with. I’m a hair’s breadth from taking what I want from you, and it is more than you are prepared to give, this much I can guarantee.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be.”
“Of you? Never.”
This was not in question. She had seen enough of him to know that, contrary to what he thought, he would never force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. He would never take more than she was prepared to give. No, if she was afraid, and admittedly, right now, she was, it was of her, of her inability to stick to her resolve never to get close to a man.
All of a sudden he stood up in a rush of sluicing water. Overawed, Agnes watched the man standing proud in front of her. The Norse god, she should perhaps say. On his broad shoulders his wet hair traced intricate patterns. She could not help but stare at them. It was like a secret message etched on his bare skin, written only for her. But what was it telling her?
Keep out ?
Or come here if you dare ?
Dare she?
She allowed her gaze to wander over him. Every inch of his body was sheer masculine perfection, from the strong chest and flat stomach to the proud length jutting between the two thickest thighs she had ever seen. My... Wild did not begin to describe him. By comparison she felt as fragile as a kitten.
“This is me,” he said, gesturing at himself. “Still unafraid? Still sure you could take me in all my potency? Be careful. I work with fire and I don’t want you to get burned. I feel I might be just as dangerous to you as my furnace is to me.”
“You are not dangerous.” Hadn’t she just been thinking he knew how to handle fire, tame it even? She had nothing to fear from him.
“Right now that’s exactly now I feel. You know what I’m capable of, what I made you do in that cave. It is nothing compared to what I want to make you do now.”
As if to illustrate the point, he gave a growl deep in his throat. In that moment he looked more than wild, he looked just as he’d said, dangerous. Not to her physical integrity, she was still convinced he would not hurt her, but to her heart. She might trust he would not damage her bodily envelope but she was not so certain he would not reach what was hidden inside her, the soft parts she had never exposed to the world. With him, those parts were not as well-protected as she’d wished, as they’d been so far.
Because she was small and shy, people assumed she had no backbone. The opposite was actually true. Unassuming as she was, Agnes was all backbone, she’d had to be, because there had been no other choice, no one else would have looked after her. But after years of strain, her protection had become brittle. It felt as if might snap at any moment. It should have worried her, and it did. But perhaps it needn’t do. Hadn’t she just met a blacksmith equipped with all the tools needed to forge her a new one if need be?
Magnus might be the only man capable both of shattering the determination holding her upright and then putting her back together even stronger than before.
Happier.
He wrapped a hand around the rod that had shown no sign of flagging during their discussion. The gesture was at once crude, frightening, and arousing as hell. Under her fascinated gaze, he started to stroke himself.
“Agnes. See what you do to me. You drive me mad.” The voice was raw, and the strokes soon became punishing. This was nothing like the timid caresses she had given him in the cave. Unable to look away, she stared, willing him to bring his pleasure in the manner he was used to, suspecting it would be much more satisfying to watch than when she had done it. This would be uncompromisingly masculine. Perfect. A grunt escaped his lips and he threw his head back, breaking eye contact. The muscles and sinews on his neck twisted and corded, betraying immense strength.
Agnes forgot to breathe.
“Go, now, or I swear I’ll?—”
There was such anguish in his voice that this time she took fright. He was no longer worried for her, but for his own sanity.
Not waiting until he erupted, she turned and fled.