Chapter six #2
Baldur hides nothing from me. It will be the same for you. Eventually.
I sighed, blinking back into awareness long enough to realize I had been staring off into space.
Arik regarded me with an amused smirk and pressed another kiss to my palm, as if we hadn’t been discussing something that deeply upset him. “Done with your private conversation?”
“What about your brother?” I asked, unable to help myself.
Arik sighed and released my hand. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
His tone was weary. Not angry, but resigned, as though he’d known this moment would come.
“Don’t you think I should know what we’re facing?” I asked, irritation rising up in the place of concern. “I’m on your side, whatever happened. I just want to understand.”
Arik swallowed, and I watched the bob of his throat as he nodded once.
“My father is a tyrant. He cares more for power and status than ruling well, and I watched him humiliate my mother for years. Endured his beatings and displeasure for defending her. But my hatred for Edvard is…” He paused, his eyes darkening. “It’s more personal.”
“Personal?”
I felt something flood the bridge that made tears prick my eyes, though Arik’s face gave none of it away. Such terrible sadness. Intense guilt.
“There was a girl. An indenture, like you. This was before I left for Ironholm. And I loved her. Or, whatever a sixteen-year-old thinks is love, that’s what I felt for her.”
I tried to ignore the ridiculous pang of jealousy, hoping it came from Idunn rather than me. “And your father didn’t approve?”
Arik laughed darkly. “My father didn’t give a damn.
He is a champion philanderer, if you hadn’t noticed.
Happy to let me ‘sow my wild oats,’ as he put it.
After I went to Ironholm, I wrote to her.
Often. At that point, I knew that nothing would happen between us—Baldur had made that clear—but Edvard was jealous.
Not because he wanted her, I think, but because she didn’t want him. ”
I ached to reach for him, but I wasn’t sure if he’d want my touch while discussing something so difficult. “What happened?”
He swallowed, his voice hollow. “She died two years after I went to Ironholm. Because of Edvard. And my father…” He shook his head, and something along our mental bridge snapped tight, like a door slamming shut.
“I begged my father right then and there to end the practice of indenture. But my father claimed that the death of one thrall whore was not worth his time.”
I understood his hatred of the word. When Arik had told me of his other dalliances before bonding Baldur, I hadn’t felt this kind of guilt or hollow rage in him. And I knew that, for some reason, he blamed himself for this girl’s death.
It wasn’t the whole story, but it was enough for tonight.
I sat up on my knees and reached for him, my fingers grazing the edge of the tattoos etched into the sides of his scalp. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Arik shook his head, his beard rough between my hands.
“I knew what could happen. I was too na?ve—too fucking foolish—to protect her.” He pressed his forehead to mine, his voice a quiet vow across my mind.
I will not make the same mistake with you, Kjaere.
I will not let my father or my brother or anyone in this godsdamned world take you from me.
I traced the line of his jaw with trembling fingers, feeling the weight of his gaze—of his words—on me.
“You won’t lose me.” I pressed my lips gently to his, a whisper of a kiss.
His hands moved to my waist and gripped me tightly as I tried to pull back, his lips finding mine again, hesitant. Once. Twice.
The third deepened into something more needy. Insistent. I felt heat rise in me at the rightness of it. He groaned against my lips, and I wondered how he had become so dear to me so quickly. So essential to my existence.
How could such a man have been raised alongside the cruelty he had experienced?
Arik had never pushed me to bed him. Had insisted that I make the first move.
That I set the pace. I thought of Branka and the haunted look she got from time to time.
Of my own experience hiding from Henrik after a drunken night and praying I wouldn’t have to slip poison into his drink.
How blessed I was that the Hearthmother or the Norns or whatever higher power watched over the drage had seen fit to make Arik my mate.
As if he sensed these thoughts, Arik pulled away, his mind roiling with conflict. “We don’t have to—“
I silenced him with another kiss. I’m alright.
I let my fingers trace his shoulders, feeling the ruined edges of the tattoo that Einar had destroyed with his lashing.
The dragons’ presence pulsed through the bond as I moved, lifting one knee over him until I was straddling him, slowing the pace of the kiss. What do you need, Arik?
His tongue swept over mine, swallowing my gasp. This. Arik’s hands practically burned as they moved gently over my thighs. My hips. The curve of my stomach. You.
I’m yours. I dug my fingers into his shoulders to anchor him as Idunn and Baldur intertwined over the bridge between us in a dance of light and scales and endless stars. They will not take me from you.
Arik didn’t reply with words as he broke the kiss, his eyes intent on mine as he slid his hands higher up my waist. He burned a trail of fire over my cool skin as he lifted the nightgown above my hips, and he growled with need when he felt me bare and wanting between my legs.
I will die a thousand deaths before I let them try, he vowed, dropping his mouth to suck on a peaked nipple over the fabric of the nightgown.
I gasped, letting my head fall back as pleasure licked up my spine at the sensation. Arik pressed kisses, warm and wet, from my breast, up over my collarbones to the base of my throat.
You are mine, Kjaere. Mine until the darkness consumes this world and the next.
Yours. I rocked against him, my center throbbing with the need for friction.
But this wasn’t about our pleasure, although I already knew we would both have that.
It was about connection. About a vow he desperately needed me to make.
About his barely spoken fear that, like his first love, he would lose me. I’m yours, Arik.
His desperation seemed to ease as he slipped inside me, the base of him rocking against my center at the perfect angle.
I cried out, not wanting to stifle my sounds because I needed him to know what he did to me.
To know how much I wanted and needed this.
To know that I was utterly and completely his.
He slowed, his kisses growing languid as he captured my lips. We rocked together like two ships tossed by a gentle sea, our joining somehow both desperate and tender. Question and reassurance. Blazing fire and smoldering coals.
And as pleasure found me, I decided that I would be quite happy to die like this, held by my mate as he showed me without words exactly how he felt about me.