Chapter 14
Henrik
My cock had gotten as hard, I thought, as it had ever been. I took half a step back and shrugged the crimson robe from my shoulders.
On loan to me from Bruno, the robe—he had told me—of a leo, it brought a certain very special, very welcome kind of Roman ceremony to the proceedings.
Perhaps it didn’t differ much from the traditional long shirts worn by the Sons of Odin when breaking in their bed thralls, but I couldn’t help but appreciate the magisterial hue of its heavy fabric, and the way it slid gracefully to the floor.
Standing naked in this initiation cell, with this lovely girl, produced in me a surge of animal dominance that I hadn’t anticipated.
I felt my cock twitch in the sheer aggression of my urgent lust for the young woman who had found our hidden cavern and, it seemed, felt irresistibly drawn to the rowing bench and then the bride saddle.
Who, it seemed, had had a v?lva’s prophetic vision without a Son of Odin present to discipline and to enjoy and to guide her to the tree.
I had messaged Sven the moment I heard Ilsa claim to have had a vision on the bride saddle.
He had confirmed that centuries ago the researchers of the brotherhood had debated whether a girl could have a true vision without a warrior present—as opposed to merely sighting the tree: one of them had claimed that a bed thrall of his had done so.
The idea, however, Sven had told me, had never received much attention.
I studied Ilsa Matthews’ lovely back, pert bottom cheeks, and slim thighs, so piquantly marked by the pink and red tracery left by the mastix.
The cuffs, collar, and belt set off the whole of her nubile beauty in a way I found strongly, exotically arousing.
The Sons of Odin bound girls with leather, certainly, when we wished to keep them from interfering with our pleasure—but not in this elegant, enduring way, whereby it seemed very clear a girl like Ilsa must find herself reminded from moment to moment of her body’s primary purpose as a vehicle of her master’s pleasure.
Such a brilliant, creative young woman, too, this one. If any new bed thrall could muster the unconscious mental acuity that produced the v?lur’s prophecies, it would be a girl like Ilsa Matthews. She might even have the capacity truly to understand what had befallen her.
It had undoubtedly felt supernatural to Ilsa, at least at first. As an academic archaeologist, though, she might also be able to grasp how a v?lva’s vision in truth represented only a quasi-magical psychological process.
The Sons of Odin had determined centuries ago that such prophetic scenes came from the submissive mind’s quasi-magical capacity to notice the subtlest details of the phenomena of the world around her.
Ilsa, having found a mosaic that depicted Yggdrasil, must have processed her memories into what she had seen in her mind’s eye.
I couldn’t wait to learn more, and to teach my new bed thrall in turn. The knowledge that such learning and teaching must come through disciplining her sweet body and then using it thoroughly to make my cock feel good added greatly to my eagerness, of course, but I could also feel something else.
Ilsa had captivated me as I had never been captivated before.
* * *
Ilsa
My forehead creased very hard. Wildly, irrationally, I thought of my aunt telling me not to frown so much, because I would get wrinkles. My aunt had never been chained naked between iron posts while a huge man with a Northern accent ran his hands over her body. I felt fairly confident about that.
His palms moved across my shoulders with a slow, assessing warmth, and I heard him make a low sound of approval that vibrated somewhere in my chest against my will.
“So soft,” he murmured. The words seemed addressed to himself, as though he had made an entry in a ledger.
His big hands traveled down my sides, tracing the narrowing of my waist, the flare of my hips, and the sound he made deepened into something that stripped away every remaining pretense that this was anything other than what it was.
“Beautiful. Everything I look for in a thrall.”
Thrall. Not columba. Not initiate. I noted the difference from Giovanna’s Latin vocabulary, and I felt my breath change as I wondered what it meant, and what if anything it had to do with his Nordic accent.
His right hand came around my hip and found the front of me, fondling the newly bare skin of my pussy with a frankness and a deliberateness that made my knees buckle, my feet straining against the ankle cuffs.
I heard myself make a mortifying, breathy sound as his fingers explored what Giovanna had prepared for him.
“Ah,” he said softly. “Very well done.”
He didn’t speak to me. He spoke about me, about the preparation of me for his use, the way a craftsman might admire another’s preliminary work before taking over the project.
The man’s fingers moved with a patient, evaluative thoroughness that made my hips rock forward helplessly, awakening the ache in my arms from the restraints binding me to the iron poles.
“So wet already. So ready for the reer.”
His lips were close to my ear, so the shudder that went through me at the sound of the Old Norse word for penis felt like the effect of the very vibration of his vocal cords. I felt my whole body go cold, and then flare with heat.
“You have been kept waiting, haven’t you? Made to want and not have. Your mistress is very skilled.”
I bit my lip and tried to think about the Younger Futhark. I tried to think about the mineral composition of volcanic stone. I tried to think about literally anything else but what his hand had begun to do.
I failed.
“Please,” I whispered. I hadn’t meant to say it.
“Please,” he repeated, tasting the word with all-too-obvious satisfaction. His fingers stopped moving, not withdrawing but simply pausing, which felt somehow worse. “You will have everything you need, columba. In good time.”
He withdrew his fingers. Both hands came to my bottom then, and I felt him part my cheeks with a slow, deliberate care that made heat surge into my face so violently I thought I might faint.
The air found the place Giovanna had prepared there, the tiny bud she had anointed and told me so much about.
I pressed my lips together into a tight line, breathing desperately through my nose.
His fingertip touched the little ring. Just once, just lightly, a single exploratory contact that seemed assessing, evaluative in its intention.
“Beautiful,” he said again, quietly. “Ready to receive a man. Your mistress has prepared you perfectly, lille en.” Little one.
Danish. Reer… cock… Old Norse. My mind raced, but I couldn’t find any intellectual purchase over the ideas roiling in my head.
“This sweet place, so soft and clean and ready.” His thumb traced a slow circle that made my whole body shudder. “Bellatrix Hestiaea knows her work.”
He stepped back. I heard him draw a slow breath, as if he had to force himself to take his time with me. The thought brought a fresh wave of heat to my face, and to my dismay down there as well.
“And these.” His hands moved to the backs of my thighs, and his fingertips traced the welts with a careful attention that was almost reverent.
I heard genuine appreciation in his voice, but something else as well—a connoisseur’s assessment.
“The mastix,” he said. “Roman. Clean lines. Very pretty.” A pause.
“The Viking punishment strap leaves a different sort of mark.”
My stomach flipped.
From the things Giovanna had said, I had felt certain that this ‘master’ must be an initiate of the Pretorian Guard she had told me about. A man descended, culturally at any rate, from the Roman legions with their Mithras cult and their drive to impose their idea of civilization on the world.
When this man had begun to speak, I had told myself that the Northern accent and the Nordic words that slipped through represented simply an accident of origin—the Guard was global, Giovanna had told me.
But the way he had noted the Roman origin of the mastix… He had said it as if making a comparison. He had said it the way a person says it who has a different tradition entirely, who stands outside the system looking in with the eye of a peer rather than a member.
And the way he had said the other thing… the Viking punishment strap. Those words had borne a tone that told of his familiarity with the thing he referred to… more, a preference for it, as a part of his own culture.
My throat tightened. The cavern. The ship.
The carvings in the limestone, the broad-shouldered warriors with their leather straps, their kneeling women, their bride saddles, and their rowing benches with iron rings.
The inscription in Younger Futhark in a Roman mosaic: an inscription that had never made sense to me as a product of a single tradition, that had always seemed like a meeting point, a seam between two different worlds.
It suddenly seemed clear to me that this master did not come from the Pretorian Guard, despite everything Giovanna had made me expect.
“The cavern,” I said. The words came out before I could stop them, and I heard my own voice with the same horror I always felt when my mouth produced something my brain hadn’t properly authorized. “At Capo Zafferano. The ship. You… who are you?”
His left arm came around my waist.
I had perhaps a half second of understanding what was about to happen before it happened.
He positioned my bottom with that arm, a single efficient adjustment that tilted my hips, drew my cheeks slightly apart, and presented the fullness of my bottom at exactly the angle he apparently required. Then his right hand came down.