Chapter 1 #3
“Please check on my sons. I will retire soon.”
Eventually, they concede, but I know if I’m gone too long, they will seek me out.
I do as I suggested and enter the small chapel, which my mother spent a lot of time in when I was a child. I thought she was doing so to honor our God, but I now know it was to be alone and find peace not within the Lord, but peace within herself.
The chapel is simple, as I requested the ostentatious relics to be donated to the monastery. They have better use for it. I walk down the narrow aisle and come to kneel in the first pew. Interlacing my hands, I peer at the large wooden crucifix behind the white altar and say my prayers.
However, my prayers are not that most would speak because they are not filled with penance or love.
“I hate you,” I whisper, glaring at the sign of salvation. “You have done nothing but take from me. Now you punish my son? I have been your faithful servant, and this is my reward? How can you be merciful when you allow me to suffer this way?”
I wear a gold crucifix around my neck for all to see. But beneath my bodice, I wear the relic that holds more meaning to me than this Christian God. Reaching beneath the high collar of my gown, I cradle the Mjolnir pendant. I have never taken the necklace off.
It has always given me peace.
“Oh, my Queen, forgive me. I did not know you were here.”
I do not recognize this voice. And when I turn over my shoulder, I also do not recognize the face of a young man who must fight for Prince Ludwig.
When he attempts to leave, I quickly stand. “What is your name?”
“My name, my Queen?”
I am not his queen, but the fact that he calls me it has me wondering why.
When he sees I am waiting, he wets his full lips. “I am Jethro. Prince Ludwig sent me to protect Lord Gunter.”
“It seems the Lord does need protecting.”
Jethro attempts to conceal his smile, but I cannot deny that he is handsome. He is tall with long blond hair and eyes the color of the sky. I think of the blond hair of another, of a man who also has my heart.
Ulf the Bloody.
My heart aches once more for all the things I want but cannot have.
The last I heard, Ulf was in Ireland with my faithful friend Aedan. How I miss both terribly. I miss a lot of things.
I miss the old Emeline, the woman who didn’t bend to the will of a kingdom that has taken so much. Emeline killed those who wronged her because she is who she once was.
This Emeline has the world upon her shoulders. And this Emeline is drained of the spirit that made her me.
“I will leave you to prayer.”
“Come here, Jethro.”
He looks at me, eyes wide, but knows better than to disobey an order. So he walks toward me. I step out from behind the pew, and when he approaches me, he bows in servitude.
“I am not your queen, yet you still bow?”
“I bow because your beauty brings me to my knees, my Queen.”
Sweet words are wasted on me, but when I think about Loki, and how the only man who can help him is nowhere to be seen, an anger washes over me, one which is sure to ruin me come morrow. I have been faithful to Skarth, and for what purpose?
Has he returned to me?
No, he has not.
I do not know how to teach Loki the ways of the Vikings because I am not one. I fear for him immensely, and for that, I not only hate the Lord, but I hate Skarth the Godless as well.
He abandoned his family.
He abandoned me.
I am holding on to a ghost, a memory of the man I loved because that’s all Skarth will ever be.
A memory.
“You wish to anger me, hugrekki?”
A startled gasp escapes me as I’ve not heard his voice in so long. But now he decides to speak? He speaks because he knows what I plan on doing to spite him. If I had known this, I would have done so much sooner.
“Let us make the most of it, then.”
Before Jethro can ask what I mean, I lift the hem of my dress, exposing my bare womanhood to him. I don’t allow him to speak, for I need his mouth for other purposes. Gripping his long hair, I press his face to the junction of my thighs and make clear what I want as I thrust my hips.
His beard scratches me just how I like, just how Skarth’s once did, but he can burn in the burrows of hell for all I care.
Spreading my legs wider, I never let go of Jethro’s hair, which I use as reins to control the way he licks and sucks me. He is rather talented with his tongue, and as he grips my inner thighs, sure to leave bruises, I relish the feel of being wanted without an ulterior motive.
Men can engage in sex for pleasure, but we women cannot, as we are seen merely for men’s pleasure and to carry their seed.
This fact has me almost suffocating Jethro between my legs because this is sex without attachment. Something which a woman cannot do, especially when that woman is a queen. However, I can bed whomever I want because I cannot have the one I want.
As I feel my orgasm approaching, I wonder if this may be the cure for my ailment of a broken heart. Sex without feeling is what most men do. It is time for us women to fuck like men.
“Allow me to bury my cock inside you, my Queen,” Jethro says as he pulls away, his face slathered in my arousal. “I wish to serve you in every way that I can.”
“Hugrekki, you will not!”
And this is the reason I yank Jethro up by his hair and drag him over to the altar, where I bend over it and expose my arse to him. He enters my sex swiftly, and I gasp at the intrusion because it’s been so long.
He is well endowed, but Skarth was always more man than I could handle—in more ways than one. Nevertheless, I enjoy the feel of a man inside me and lose myself to the depravities I commit in this place of worship as I peer up at the crucifix in front of me.
Jethro is not gentle, but I want more. I am used to more, for not only was Skarth a passionate lover, but Ulf was as well. I remember the time we loved one another equally. I don’t think I ever felt more loved than at that moment.
“Are you all right, ástin mín?”
I nod, moaning when I feel Skarth’s lips trail down the middle of my back. He grips my hips, and I feel him align his manhood against me.
Ulf smiles as he gently coaxes me to arch my head back. When I do, he slips his thumb into my mouth, hissing when I circle the tip with my tongue. He grips his manhood and moves his hand up and down, focusing on my mouth.
I suck him deeper, my cheeks hollowing.
While doing this, Skarth circles my entrance, and as he inhales, he pushes into me in one thrust. I exhale on his inhale as his size takes my breath away. But he doesn’t allow me to catch my breath as he moves inside me.
I moan around Ulf’s thumb, rocking backward and forward with the speed of Skarth’s thrusts. Ulf is still pleasuring himself, but as I watch the way his big hand wraps around his manhood, I realize I want to be the one to please him—but with my mouth.
Placing my hand over his, I draw him forward and soon replace his thumb with his member. He groans the moment he hits the back of my throat. Skarth and Ulf then begin to work in harmony, their movements perfecting the other as they work my body from the front and back.
I am between both men, surrendering to this wicked ecstasy because for the first time, I don’t have to choose.
Ulf grips my cheeks, and I take all that he gives, trying my best to please him with my mouth as he increases the tempo of his strokes. Skarth does the same.
Gripping Ulf’s upper thighs, I arch my back, opening myself up to Skarth. A guttural growl leaves him as he punishes me with delicious, brutal strokes. He bends down and bites the side of my throat.
Both men smother me as they are everywhere. I don’t know where I start and they end.
I stroke Ulf as I can’t take him all in, and when he pulsates against my tongue, I know he is close to climaxing. A string of Norse spills from him, which excites me further.
I never dreamed I would be the desire of two ruthless Vikings. That they would risk heaven and earth to save me. Most would look at this act as ghastly and immoral, but I have never felt closer to Skarth and Ulf than I do right now.
Skarth pumps his hips wildly. Tears leak from my eyes as I gag on Ulf’s throbbing member. He attempts to pull out, but I hold on tight because I want both men to finish inside me.
For the next few glorious minutes, I rock between Ulf and Skarth, feeling nothing but love and devotion as they own my body, my mind, and my soul. Skarth circles his hips, hitting me deeply, while Ulf plunges into me fiercely.
The familiar coil begins to unwind low in my belly, and when Skarth and Ulf begin speaking Norse, I close my eyes because I want to savor this moment for the rest of my days.
I don’t know what they’re saying, but it does sound like they have come to accept that no matter how hard we fight, we are connected, and nothing will ever change that.
Only because of this memory, and not because of Jethro, do I crash into pleasure with a sated moan.
Jethro is grunting, but he’s served his purpose.
“You may go.” I’m being rather cruel, as he still has not finished.
“My Queen?” he pants, his movements ceasing.
“Are you hard of hearing?” I maneuver out of his clutches, thankful we are no longer one, but when I turn around and see the sly smile on his lips, I know I have made a grave mistake. “What have you done?”
“I served you, my Queen,” he replies, his red erect cock only underlining the error of my ways. “You were fucked…in every possible way…you Viking whore.”
He lunges for his dagger, but I read his motives and elbow him in the nose. Blood spurts from the break, but it merely fuels the bloodlust that has remained in a darkened slumber until now.
Springing for the dagger on the floor, I deliver the punishment he deserves as I sever his cock in one swift motion. His eyes widen, before a guttural scream is born from his lips, lips which I slice off before cutting out his tongue.