Chapter 22
They reached the village just after the sun had been swallowed by the horizon.
The huts wrapped in their blankets of snow, the fields stretching as far as the eye could see, everything glowed blue in the rapidly fading light.
Everything except the thinnest branches at the top of the trees, stark black against the purplish sky.
Sven took in a deep inhale of crisp air scented with smoke and headed straight to his hut, Gulltoppr’s hooves crunching the fresh layer of snow underneath.
When he closed the door behind him, he knew a familiar moment of panic.
Eahlswith was here for now, but what of tomorrow?
She was carrying his child and she’d said she loved him, but they had not exchanged any promises, not really talked of the future.
Would she ask to leave in the morning? Worse, would she disappear during the night?
In spite of everything, he still felt that she could flee at any moment, like she had many times. They had already been there, in a place he thought safe, only to have to watch her walk away. What could he do to persuade her to stay?
Will you marry me, Alva?
The question was burning his lips but asking it might frighten her away. He knew all too well that he had to proceed with caution with her.
“Please say you will stay here with me, with our child. Please.” He placed his forehead against hers, seized by sudden inspiration. “If you agree, I swear I will only ever call you Eahlswith, not Alva.”
She chuckled, far from impressed by this promise. “It is no more than what you should have done from the moment I asked you to.”
“I will look after our child.”
“I know you will. You love children. It makes no doubt that you would look after your own.”
Damnation, this was not going well. How could he prove to her that he wanted her?
“All right, then I… I promise I will never fuck you ever again!” he erupted.
She stilled. This she had definitely not seen coming. In truth, neither had he. Where had that come from? Would he even be able to hold on to that promise? Did he want to? No, and most decidedly no.
“This has to be the most ridiculous of all the promises you’ve ever made. Why would I ever agree to such terms?” she said before he could ask her to forget what he’d said.
“So you can see that I want you, not your body. You, not the pleasure I can get on my own or with others. You. Only you. Forever you.”
“Listen, Sven, I know you want me. You said you loved me and I believe you, so I will stay with you.” She threw him what he could only describe as a naughty look, one who set fire to his brain, his heart and his loins.
“And I don’t think I want a life in which you never fuck me.
I don’t think I would survive the frustration. ”
No. He wouldn’t either. “So tell me, how can I convince you to make you stay this time? What do you want?”
“Marry me. Raise this child with me. Give me others, in time.”
Relief almost brought him to his knees. She was not leaving. She would finally be his.
“I will marry you,” he growled. “Tomorrow if you like.”
“No. Tomorrow we’ll go into town and tell Osbert about our wedding and this child I’m carrying. Then we’ll go to my house to get the comb you gave me the other day. I cannot be parted from it.” She smiled. “But there is one thing I’d like you to do before all that. Right now in fact.”
“What is it?” Anything. He would do anything for her.
She lifted herself onto her toes and brought her lips to his ear. Then she said the most scandalous, arousing, delicious words he had ever heard in his life. “Fuck me, Heimdallr.”
Need exploded in his skull and fire sparked through his cock. His Alva wanted him to fuck her? He would do that and more.
From the way he lifted her into his arms Eahlswith understood that her crude words had pushed Sven straight past all restraint.
Tonight she would have the wild lover she’d had the first night in his hut, not the tender one she’d enjoyed in her house.
Good. Because she was desperate for him and she wanted this lovemaking to be wild.
“Take your clothes off,” he said, his voice reduced to a growl. “I fear if I do it, I’ll only tear everything apart.”
As tempting as that sounded, at the moment she had no other clothes, so she forced herself to be reasonable. “Very well. But you take yours off at the same time. I want you naked.”
There was no need to tell him twice. Sven stood before her, in all his masculine glory before she had even disposed of her shift.
There it was. The chiseled chest she had admired that first night in the summer.
The arm ring on his right bicep that added mystery and allure to his already perfect body.
The shaft jutting from its nest of gold curls.
Oh, that shaft… so hard, so smooth, so ready for her.
Her mouth started to water.
“I want to taste you.”
He said the words she’d meant to say before she could open her mouth.
Eahlswith knew he was a master at pleasuring her so she didn’t find the will to refuse.
Besides, there would be time to taste him later.
She threw her shift to the floor and lay flat on her back, offering herself.
In the next heartbeat Sven was over her, his mouth at her nipple, his hand at her core, ready to make her forget her own name.
“Yes, yes,” she rasped. That was what she needed, what she had missed so much.
After one last flick of his tongue, he slowly started his descent down her stomach, teasing her navel and kissing her inner thighs as he settled himself in readiness.
Spreading her legs wide, he started to lick her with deadly intent, leaving no place untouched.
Eahlswith’s fingers buried themselves into his luscious hair.
She didn’t know if she was trying to stop him or urge him on.
When he slid a finger past her folds and into the slippery wetness waiting for him, she knew the answer.
She was too close already. She needed a respite if she didn’t want to explode before they’d even begun.
“Don’t!” she whimpered. “Please, stop, I want to come with you inside me. I want to feel you when I—”
“You will feel me, I swear. I’ll make you come again later, when I’m deep inside you. Twice more if I can,” he growled, resuming his wicked licks. His finger had not stopped teasing her for a moment. “But give me your pleasure first.”
A moment later, she did. There was no choice. She could no more have stopped the sensations building inside her from cresting than she could have stopped the tide coming in and the waves crashing ashore on the beach.
Her back bowed and she let out a keening noise that resembled nothing she had ever heard.
“Thank you, my love, that was perfection,” Sven murmured into her ear. “Now, for that fucking you asked.”
It was when he lifted her up to position her on her hands and knees that she remembered there was something she wanted to explore.
Tonight seemed the perfect night for it, if she found the courage.
As she felt him enter her slowly, savoring every glorious inch, she knew that with this man, she would be brave enough.
“Sven, there is something I would like to…”
“Anything. Just say the word.”
He retreated before plunging in again. Eahlswith gasped.
Forget courage, how would she find the strength to talk when so many heavenly sensations assaulted her body?
She wanted to let Sven take her to dizzying heights of pleasure and not do a thing.
But she also knew she would regret it if she didn’t speak out now.
There would never be a better moment. This was not a discussion she imagined having at the dinner table one night.
“You asked me once where I wanted you to take me. I had no idea what you meant at the time. Now I think I do,” she rasped. “And I…”
“You’re intrigued,” he supplied when she faltered.
Yes. That was one way of putting it. “When you rubbed against me that night, it felt amazing, like nothing I’d ever felt. And I’m wondering if…” How could she be more explicit? Fortunately she didn’t have to.
“Alva, you only have to ask.”
Before she could even open her mouth, she felt his thumb brush against the entrance offered to him by their scandalous position. He circled around it in time with his thrusts.
And it did feel amazing, just like she remembered. She let out a long, lust-filled moan that should, by rights, have embarrassed her. It only made her wilder. With this man, she could be scandalous, knowing he would be ten times more wicked.
“Is that good?” She moaned, giving him the answer he needed. “I know you can enjoy this possession,” he purred in her ear, the very embodiment of temptation, “but I will need to prepare you first.”
“How?” she managed to ask. Wasn’t that what he was doing right now?
“I have chamomile oil in the hut. We can use that to make sure you’re nice and slick for me.”
Oh, she already was, she could tell from the ease with which he was sliding in and out of her that her body was ready for him.
But, of course, they were talking about him entering a different place.
This was all new to her but Sven seemed to know what was best so she was only too happy to let him decide what was needed.
“Yes.”
After one last languorous thrust he withdrew and left the pallet.
Eahlswith almost screamed. How dare he leave now, when her whole body was quivering with need?
Before she could voice out loud her frustration, he had knelt behind her again and filled her in one effortless stroke.
Ah. Yes, that was better. This was where he belonged.
A moment later something cool and slippery slid over her puckered entrance.
The oil. When Sven’s thumb touched her again, it felt different than it had a moment ago.
It was smoother, somehow and this time, the naughty finger slipped right in, pushing past the tight ring of muscles he’d only brushed before.