Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SIGRID
“The fuck was that for?” Bastian demanded to know, rubbing his jaw.
“You told the king we didn’t fuck. He didn’t know until you caved like a godsdamned Saxon shield wall.” I punctuated the statement by slamming him against the door, but when I took another swing, he caught my fist and shoved me back.
“I’m aware he didn’t know! He’s hiding something, something important, and he’s not going to give it away unless I make him slip, which he’s more likely to do when he thinks he has us cornered and powerless.”
I shouted my frustration at these games upon games and swung at him again, but it was a sloppy, angry punch he easily avoided.
Of course, he’d been aware of his father’s deceptions.
I would’ve seen it if I’d been less focused on his fucking feelings.
I’d been angry at the way the king was treating him, livid that Bastian had been just taking it.
The people I cared about had only ever been used against me. It was a weakness I couldn’t afford while those very people were still in danger. Being distracted by him would doom one of my brothers, and I’d suffered too much to protect them to risk it all on a Saxon prince.
His eyes flared with panic as he finally got a good look at the blood that coated my bodice and zeroed in on the tear in the fabric where the arrow had pierced.
This time when I punched him, he took the blow on the shoulder, letting it carry him straight back onto the bed, but he used the momentum to pull me down on top of him. Our hips collided, and my thighs instinctively parted to straddle his big body.
Yes. This is what I need.
He lifted one hand to trail his fingers over the bloody mess of my dress. “Sigrid, this needs stitches.”
Not what I need.
I grabbed a knife from the side of the bed and pressed it to his throat, but he ignored me and put his hands on my hips, holding me there as he ground up against me.
“Where the fuck were you?” he growled in a rough voice. He sounded deliciously like he was losing control.
Gods, I want him.
“None of your godsdamned business,” I snarled back.
He leaned up as though he’d kiss me, so I snapped my teeth in warning. He didn’t seem to understand what prowled inside me, the razor’s edge that stood between violence and lust. I longed to open his throat and ride his cock as his heart pounded its last.
His eyes flashed with want, and he claimed my lips in a searing open-mouthed kiss.
I bit his bottom lip, but he only groaned and bucked his hips against me again.
I tasted his blood—an aphrodisiac to my very soul, an offering he willingly gave to my darkest instincts.
My core throbbed with need, slick and ready for what he invited.
He broke the kiss to look at me with desire practically glowing in his cerulean eyes. “I have a right to know where my wife was…”
He was baiting me. Rather than run from my anger, he fed it, dumping fuel into the flames like he wanted to burn along with me.
And it worked. I smoldered with the need to fuck him into oblivion, to pour out my anger with teeth and nails and glorious release.
Even as I imagined the sound he’d make when I sunk my teeth into his hard cock again, the lust-addled part of my mind asked why he was baiting me.
He obviously wanted me, but there was always another layer with him, always a sly plan.
What did I really even know about him…and how much of what I saw was the truth?
I had to grit my teeth to say, “We’re not doing that tonight, Saxon.”
He cocked a suggestive brow and rolled his hips again, and I could’ve wept from wanting him. Because no matter what devious games he might’ve been playing or how he might’ve been trying to manipulate me, there was fundamental truth in the spine-melting need I felt for him.
“You want to see another dawn? Tonight you’re going to tell me a story.”
“A story?” Amusement lifted his full lips, but I was deadly serious.
I pulled back, glowering down at him. “You’re going to tell me who your father sent to you in pieces.”
That killed his smile and reined in my desire. I wanted to hurt him, but not with my words.
He’d made reference to it casually at our wedding, then moved on, but I needed to understand the real dynamics. Was there any chance he was still loyal to his father? Could I trust him?
His touch fell from my hips, and I yearned for more even as I slid to my feet and crossed to a chair a safer distance from his strong hands and soft lips.
He sat on the edge of the bed, eyeing me warily. “My mother.”
The way he said it was so detached, and his expression so neutral, that for a fleeting moment, I didn’t understand that he was answering my demand. After all the horrors I’d had a hand in, my heart still pounded in shock.
“After other punishments lost their luster, and I began to turn from boy to man, he realized what leverage he had over me. By then, my mother had been sent from court to a house in the mountains. She’d been unable to bear him another child, though I suspect she may have prevented it.
He kept her alive and let me see her just enough that he could use our bond to keep me in line.
” He looked me in the eye. “He sent my mother to me in pieces, if I didn’t comply well enough for his liking or disappointed him.
After the first few times, she took her own life to spare me the horror of it. ”
How different our fathers were and yet how alike.
There was no manipulation in the bleak devastation on his face, no chance he was faking the mix of shame and guilt so deeply etched on his brow.
“Then killing him won’t be avenging only my brother.” There was a vow in my words that wasn’t spoken aloud, but the gods would’ve heard it all the same.
I will avenge her.
The promise came from the depths of my berserker soul, not from the reasoning, human part of me. It made no sense that I wanted to carve out the king’s heart and offer it to this man to even the scales. My sorrow served no purpose, but my anger could.
His eyes widened and brimmed with awe.
I should go and cut the king’s heart out tonight. Bastian shouldn’t have to live another moment knowing that motherfucker still breathes.
I had no right to feel such things about someone who didn’t belong to me, someone I’d vowed to kill, but my berserker didn’t live by reason nor by rules. She’d claimed him even if I hadn’t. I would’ve fought her if I could’ve reached her.
Could the revelation itself be manipulation? Why was he so willing to be vulnerable if not to forge a bond he thought might influence me?
I missed the simplicity of my brothers. There were no games with Thorin nor Talon. They were as ruthlessly straightforward as could be. I never had to wonder about their motives.
“Sigrid, please let me stitch that,” he said, studying the darkness on my dress that kept growing.
“I can do it myself,” I said, using the knife I’d held to his throat to cut the bodice and underlayers of the ruined gown.
He rose from the bed and retrieved a tin from a wooden cabinet. Then he set it down in front of me and put his hands over mine. “You can. But you don’t have to. I guarantee I’ve stitched more wounds than you, and I’ll do a better job…and we both know it hurts less when someone else does it.”
He was right of course, but when I nodded, it had nothing to do with wanting to avoid pain and everything to do with the intensity in his expression. From the look of him, nothing had ever mattered more.
I peeled the blood-soaked silk down, leaving me naked from the waist up.
My nipples pebbled under the hunger of his gaze, but he quickly shifted his attention to my wound.
He retrieved a bowl of clean water and a cloth, then wiped the blood away from the cut that was almost perfectly in the center of my chest, over my breastbone.
“This will sting,” he said with quiet urgency as he held the needle over a flame.
Then he lifted a bottle of whisky to pour it over the cut.
I clenched my fists against the burning pain.
He looked at my hands and said, “You can hold on to me if it helps. This part will hurt.”
I smirked, thinking he was confusing me for a Saxon lady and not a warrior who’d been stitching up wounds since childhood…but then I caught the embers of lust still burning in his blue eyes.
He was close enough that he could’ve taken my nipple in his mouth, close enough that I reached out and snatched his balls in my grip over his pants. “I think I will hold on to you. You’d better make sure it doesn’t hurt, or I might have to…squeeze.”
He let out a breath when I gripped his balls harder, but the look in his eyes was a mixture of determination and desire. His cock was already hard.
With a steady hand, he held up the needle and started to stitch the two sides of the cut together with quick, precise movements. It didn’t hurt that bad, but when he next pushed the needle through, I winced and squeezed him a little tighter, eliciting a matching wince from him.
Still, his hand was steady, his gaze perfectly focused, as he completed another stitch. And his cock was rock-hard.
“I think it needs one more stitch,” I said, when he moved to tie off the thread.
He nodded solemnly, placing one more flawless stitch at the end of the row, his neck straining with tension as I squeezed even harder, but his touch was light. The look he gave me was of complete submission, an utter willingness to endure whatever I deemed necessary.
It was the most erotically charged moment of my life, akin to holding a life in my hands, but like he was offering it up to me willingly, as though it had belonged to me all along.
He held up the whisky bottle again to warn me of his intentions, but I only laughed and adjusted my grip. “Ready when you are.”
We inhaled deeply at the same time, both bracing for the pain, but it was his breath that crashed out of him when I gripped him like a vise. I barely felt the burn over the raging desire that had taken hold once more.
I tugged his pants down in one swift move before dropping to my knees and taking his cock in my mouth.
I didn’t release my hold on his balls, so his guttural groan was equal parts pleasure and pain.
He offered me his pain willingly, but I wanted to take his pleasure by force, to bend his basest instincts to my will.
I took him in my throat, choking on his girth with each stroke, but reveling in the power I had over him. He closed his eyes and tilted his head up to the ceiling. The muscles in his neck and shoulders strained like he was containing a mighty roar, clinging to that last tendril of control.
I took it from him.
When his hips began to buck, I released his balls and sunk my teeth into his cock, tearing the roar from his throat. He bellowed to the ceiling, erupting with pleasure in my mouth.
I relaxed my jaw, swallowing his seed greedily as I coaxed every last tremor of pleasure out of him.
He panted silently for long moments with his eyes closed. Without opening them, he said, “Did you kill me? I think I might be dead.” His gravelly voice sounded as though he’d been screaming for hours and not seconds.
I stood and took him by the jaw to plant a tender kiss on his swollen bottom lip. His eyes flew open, and the look of awe sent an unfamiliar thrill down my spine.
He led me over to the tub, gently removing the tattered pieces of my clothes until I stood naked in the warm water. When he poured from a jug, warmth cascaded over my naked skin to wash away all the blood and grime from the day.
With a cloth, he gently cleaned me, stroking over my breasts and down my stomach until he parted my thighs with a gentle nudge and washed so tenderly, I dug my nails into his shoulders.
He helped me step from the tub, then lowered to his knees in front of me, just as he’d done when he stripped my wedding dress off.
His expression smoldered as he parted me with his thumbs and gazed upon my nakedness. “Am I restricted to my hands once more…or will my queen permit me a taste?”
I’d never wanted to be anyone’s queen, had never coveted my father’s throne. But the reverence he showed me felt somehow essential, like I’d only been living a partial life without his worship.
In answer, I threaded my fingers into his dark hair and pressed him to my core. He devoured me with his tongue, using his hands and mouth as he groaned like he’d never tasted anything more delicious.
Ignoring the sting of my wound, I cupped my breasts, and he increased his pace, tipping me into mindless pleasure. I was just as loud as he had been, shamelessly moaning my release to the gods.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, looking up at me like I was a Valkyrie descended from the halls of Valhalla.
“And you’re dangerous,” I said, recognizing just how much trouble I was in. He was a complication I couldn’t afford.
“Only to your enemies,” he said, nuzzling his face against my thigh. “I serve at the pleasure of my queen.”
He guided me over to the bed, and like he had the night before, he tucked me under the covers. But this time, when he turned for the chaise on the other side of the room, I patted the enormous bed. “Stay with me.”