He held out his arms to her. Kiri, as was her wont, studied him closely, his flowing black linen tunic with its billowing sleeves, his face that was like her papa’s, yet thinner and older. “You’re my grandfather?”
“Aye, I’m your grandfather. I am an old graybeard.”
“Will you let me stand in the light like you did? Will you let me look like a demon as you do?”
“Aye,” he said, and there was that same coldness in his voice, in the very presence of him, that made Chessa draw back. “I will let you stand in the sun if you like.”
Kiri slowly held out her arms to him.
Still, there was utter silence in that huge fortress. There were many men, women, and children standing about now, but they were saying nothing at all. Argana’s three boys were perfectly still and silent. Chessa watched Lord Varrick carry Kiri to the huge open shutters. He turned then and held her, facing them, the harsh sunlight streaming over both of them, sending their faces into shadows. Kiri’s head became a halo of spun gold.
22
CLEVE DISCOVERED WHEN darkness came that his wife was dangerous. She didn’t give him a chance, just jerked him into the small chamber Lord Varrick had offered to them, and pulled him down onto the box bed atop her. He’d never realized how a woman could tangle herself so completely with a man, but she did it. He was breathing hard, and she was biting his chin, kissing his ear, his jaw, all the while pulling madly at his clothes.
“Please, Cleve, now, hurry. I want you.”
“This is too much,” he said, eyes glittering in the soft dim light. “By the gods, I want you naked.” His hands were frantic on her clothes and she had to slap them away for she didn’t have that many gowns and he would surely rip this one.
But then, just as quickly, she didn’t care. He wanted her and what he wanted she would give him. She would take care of him. “Hurry,” she said, and didn’t know where that had come from, but it was deep inside her and she couldn’t wait for him to remove those brooches, to pull off her overtunic and her gown and untie her stockings. She just couldn’t wait. Her hands were on his trousers and now he was above her, looking down at her, seeing her clearly enough in the shadowy light, for even in this small chamber, there were shutters that were open to the moonlight streaming into the room.
“Chessa,” he said, and kissed her and kept kissing her, molding her to him, fitting his hands over her breasts, caressing them. He wanted to feel her naked flesh with his fingers. Her hands were wrapped around his back, kneading his flesh, pulling him close, drawing him toward her as if she wanted to consume him.
She lurched up, yanking hard at his trousers. “Hurry,” she said again. “Please, Cleve. Hurry.”
He knew she’d never known pleasure. How could she? He’d been a pig on their marriage night and she must have hated it, but she’d protected him, making the other men want to kill him because he was such a fine lover. Now it was she who was the frantic one, as urgent as he’d been. He didn’t know what to do. Then his own need swamped him and it didn’t matter. He jerked up her clothes, feeling her naked flesh beneath his hands, and his fingers were pushing apart her thighs and he felt her then, her dampness, her softness, her readiness for him and he couldn’t believe it. He groaned and mounted her. “Part your legs wider,” he said into her mouth, and she did, her hands on his buttocks.
“Hurry,” she said again, and he laughed even as he lifted her hips in his hand, stared down at her beautiful woman’s flesh and thrust forward, his head thrown back, his back arching, coming deep into her, filling her and letting the warmth of her fill him until he wanted to weep with the joy of it.
Ah, but that joy was mixed with a lust that drove him to the brink. He tried to pull back, but she pushed upward, drawing him deeper. He hadn’t hurt her this time, yet he’d felt the pull of her flesh when he’d come into her. She hadn’t been as ready for him as he’d believed, damn her, but now she was twisting and turning beneath him, arching upward, saying over and over, “Hurry, hurry.”
He didn’t want to hurry, but seeing her there beneath him, her eyes closed, her black hair strewn about her head, her mouth open, and the soft moans touched his soul.
“I want your pleasure,” he managed to say even as he knew it was nearly over for him. She was tight and small and she was moving beneath him, drawing him deeper into her even when he tried to pull out of her, just for a moment, just to get a hold on himself, so he wouldn’t—
He felt himself explode. It was that simple and that complete, his surrender to his need, his surrender to her. When he drove to his hilt into her, feeling his seed touch her womb, he moaned deep in his throat like a wild animal, like a man whose pleasure was so great he cared naught who heard him.
Surely he would die now. No man could exist beyond that pleasure, no mortal man, aye, it was over for him. He was flat on top of her, their sweating chests pressed together and he was breathing hard against her cheek, kissing her between breaths, still shoving into her, his legs heavy on hers.
“I won’t go to sleep,” he said, and managed to draw himself up on his elbows. “Chessa, speak to me.”
She smiled up at him. “You’re very deep inside me, Cleve. I love the feel of you, the strength of you. You’re smooth and hard and it pleases me.”
“Foolish words,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re saying, you’re just talking. Don’t you dare even hint to the men that I’m smooth and hard or anything else or I’ll strangle you. I see what you’ve done now. I should have known. You got no pleasure and you didn’t care. Damn you, Chessa, you just wanted to wring me out again, to take me and give me joy and not receive any for yourself. Well, that’s not the way of it. I won’t let you control me, not like you have every other damned man who’s been unfortunate enough to swim into your waters. I won’t ever again listen to your siren’s song. Damn you, I will make you scream.”
“But Cleve, it’s your pleasure that is important, your pleasure that gives me joy, your—” She sucked in her breath when she felt his mouth hot on her belly, his hands working over her flesh, touching her, smoothing her, the heels of his hands massaging her pelvic bones, squeezing her hips, drawing her ever upward. He was on his knees between her legs and he looked up at her then. He was frowning ferociously. “You damned woman, you will scream for me.”
He lowered his head and his mouth touched her. Her back arched and she gasped with the surprise of it. This was too much, she thought, her mind sharp with the pleasure of his tongue, the soft bite of his teeth. This was too much for a woman to bear. Surely he shouldn’t be doing this to her, surely he should be resting now, for there was much to be done. “I don’t know, Cleve,” she said, striving to find somewhere in her body that wasn’t pounding with urgency. She felt his tongue, his fingers sliding inside her, felt the dampness of herself and his seed and this felling pleasure that gave no mercy, no respite. She cried out, unable to help herself.
“Scream, damn you,” he said, lifting his head just a moment to look up at her face. The scar was livid in the dim light and he looked like a demon, hard and cold and she knew he would gain what he wanted. He was more beautiful than the carvings she’d seen of the Christian saints or the Viking gods. “Aye,” he said, seeing the change in her expression, and lowered his head again. His hands lifted her and she knew there was no hope for her now. He’d told her about a woman’s lust but she hadn’t really believed in it, not in feelings that seemed to make men animal-mad, that drove all their wits from them and left them panting and growling and helpless in their own cravings.
No, it couldn’t be the same, it couldn’t. She wouldn’t believe, no, it was his pleasure that was important, not hers, not that a woman’s pleasure existed anyway, but still—
She screamed. From one instant to the next, she was with herself, within her body, with him, then the next instant, she was wild and uncontrolled and crying out like an animal. She was mad and she was thrown into a frenzy she couldn’t begin to imagine. She didn’t car
e. She just wanted more. Her hands were frantic in his hair, on his shoulders, and she was keening, the feelings only making her wilder and wilder until suddenly she felt as if a soft rainfall had begun to fall on her and it was calming her, bringing her back into herself, not that she wanted the rainfall or being back into herself. No, she wanted more of that demented pleasure that was surely too great for a human to have to suffer.
“Cleve,” she said. “I will surely die from that.”
“Every night then,” he said, and he was grinning down at her, triumphant, satisfied, everything male and strong in him, everything dominant, sublimely content. “You scream well, Chessa. I like it. You respond to me well. I like that too. I suppose I knew it would be this way between us. But you will not lie to me again, Chessa. I will have your pleasure as well as my own. Do you understand me?”
She said in a small thin voice that made him smile, “Since it is so very nice then I suppose I must do as you wish.”
He gathered her into his arms and pulled her against his side. “In a few minutes we’ll do that again. You’ve been a wife far too long to have suffered from a husband’s neglect.”
“I can’t do that again, can I?”
He smiled at the utter bewilderment in her voice, at the sudden shyness, but he’d held her, caressed her with his mouth, moved his fingers inside her. He kissed her nose. “You thought you were so smart. You believed you could control me.” He kissed her ear. “I’ll make you do that as often as I wish to. You will have no say in the matter. I will say to you, ‘Chessa, I’m putting my mouth on you and you will scream.’ And then you will.” He kissed her jaw.
She was silent for the longest time, then whispered against his shoulder, “Do you promise, my lord?”
His hand, stroking over her buttocks, stilled. He eased his fingers between her thighs. She was wet with him, with herself, with their passion. She quivered as his fingers lightly stroked her. “Aye,” he said, “I promise.”
It was Chessa who fell asleep but moments later, leaving Cleve to smile up at the shaft of bright moonlight that came through the open shutters. The fresh night air was strange. In Norway it was simply too cold during most of the year to allow such a thing. The thick wooden planks of the longhouse had to overlap tightly to keep in heat. A window would be unthinkable. He looked up and saw the moon.
It moved him. He didn’t remember seeing the moon as a child when he’d slept in this fortress. He closed his eyes and there was his father, looking at him with his one golden eye and his one blue eye. His father, not his stepfather, not the man he’d feared so completely as a small boy, not the man he’d believed had ordered him murdered. There was so much here at Kinloch, too much, and Cleve still had no idea how to sort it all out. He prayed no fights would break out between the Malverne men and Lord Varrick’s men. But that was foolish. There’d been silence, just more deep, calm silence. Deadly frightening silence. Even the Malverne men, even Eller with his sensitive nose, hadn’t said more than three words all during the long evening.
His sister, Argana, was his father’s wife, and a mother of three boys. He remembered her as a girl, laughing and always in motion, always moving, picking him up in her arms and giving him great smacking kisses. But last evening, her silence had been absolute. And Cayman, thirty yet unwed, so beautiful she made a man ache just to look at her. Why hadn’t she married? Like Argana, she’d said very little even when Laren had tried with all her skald’s skills to learn more about her. He had very little memory of her as a child. Perhaps she’d always been silent, but he doubted it.
Kinloch was filled with an unearthly silence, and an eerie darkness that seemed to hiss through every corner of the huge hall, that shadowed around that profound light that his father brought into the fortress, keeping that light unto himself, keeping it from everything and everyone else. He pictured again Varrick holding Kiri in his arms, the bright light framing them together, making them one, that strange breeze that had lifted their hair, making them look otherworldly.
Chessa murmured in her sleep, her hand slipping down onto Cleve’s belly. He felt her hand move over his groin and grunted when she tangled her fingers in his hair. He kissed the top of her head, squeezed her closer to him because he couldn’t seem to help himself. She’d come so very close to him. He’d fought her, the gods knew he’d fought her, but it had done him no good, no good at all. And she’d become Kiri’s second papa. Chessa was smart. He was going to have to be careful of her. There was too much of her papa, King Sitric, in her.
Ragnor of York had been lucky to escape. He smiled at that. He wondered if Turella had removed the king finally, setting Ragnor nominally in his place, with her ruling, naturally.
Chessa’s hand tightened on him and he moaned deep within himself. He said as calmly as he was able, “Listen to me, Chessa. You’re my wife, but I won’t allow you to control me. I am myself. You will not dominate me, so you may forget your machinations.” He thought he heard her yawn. Aye, a close eye on this wife of his who was too smart and had as much ingenuity as he did, which was bothering, but he’d accepted her, as had his daughter. Kiri was sleeping with Laren and Merrik, a good punishment for them, he’d told Merrik, who’d wondered aloud to him how Cleve was ever going to know his bride again. And Laren, beautiful red-haired Laren, closer to him than these two sisters of his, took Kiri and asked her if she’d consider a skald for her third papa. Merrik had stared at the vaulted ceiling high above them and sighed.
There was so much Cleve had to learn. And there was his wife, whose hand was holding him, and he knew she was awake, for her breathing had quickened. He grinned and rolled over atop her.
“I did promise,” he said, and began kissing her. She was warm and willing. He expected that, but he knew it would take her time to accustom herself to the pleasure he would bring her every time they came together. When she finally cried out softly in his mouth, his fingers slick on her warm flesh, he felt in that instant free and whole and complete. It was frightening and it pleased him enormously. He said again, softly against her parted lips, “You won’t ever try to control me, Chessa. Don’t forget what I’ve said. You may try, it will give me amusement, but don’t forget I’m like no man you’ve met before in your life.”
She hugged him. The witch hugged him. He would have to be careful of her. And that seemed an interesting thing to do.
She would have killed Ragnor of York.
As for William of Normandy, Cleve was grateful William had never laid eyes on her. William wasn’t stupid like Ragnor.
Argana looked at Cleve closely. “Strange,” she said, “that when you were a small boy I never realized that your eyes were exactly like Varrick’s—one gold, one blue. Perhaps they weren’t then and changed over time.”
“I don’t know,” Cleve said. “I don’t remember ever looking at myself.”
“I believed our mother when she said you were the son of my father. But then he died a violent death, as most men do. Varrick killed him. I’ve never doubted that. And Varrick married our mother.”
“I know,” Cleve said. “I’m merely surprised that my father would then wed his wife’s daughter. It isn’t usually done. If you were Christians, I believe it would be forbidden.”
Argana, nearly as tall as Cleve, straight limbed, eyes as blue as the summer sky, dimples in her cheeks, didn’t smile. “Mother died. I was almost thirteen, nearly ready for a husband. Varrick didn’t touch me until I was fourteen, then he told me that he would bed me, to test my innocence, to see if I would respond to a man’s touch. He told me if I proved to be what he wished, he would wed me. I asked one of the women how I should behave. She told me exactly what to do. Varrick was pleased. Understand, Cleve, there was no one else. We are isolated, except for trading at Inverness and to the northward islands. The men naturally trade southward at York and enjoy themselves raiding Pict and Briton holdings. I had believed my eldest son, Athol, would be the Lord of Kinloch upon Varrick’s death. But you’re back, Cleve, and Va
rrick is more pleased than I’ve ever seen him. I mourned you for a very long time. I’m glad you’re alive even though my son is no longer the heir to Kinloch.”
He looked at her closely, heard the disappointment in her low musical voice, felt the pain she felt for her son. “I spent fifteen years in the Christian’s hell, Argana. Surely I didn’t deserve that. I was a boy of five and I was cast forth only to become a slave. Surely I deserve to have what now is rightfully mine. Athol is a fine boy, nay, he’s nearly a man. He is also my half brother. I pray he will feel no hatred for me, that he will recognize what is mine. But heed me, Argana, what is mine is mine. Surely you must agree with that. You’re my half sister.”
“Aye, it is a logical thing you say, but there is still Athol, nearly a man grown as you said, and now he has nothing. You don’t remember my father but I do. His passions ran deep and strong. He believed in his family, in his sons. Then he died, fighting outlaws, so it was said, but as I told you, I believe Varrick killed him.”
“Athol will make his own way, as most sons do. I would have had nothing if our brother had lived. Varrick told me last night that Ethar disappeared soon after I had gone, that all believed him to have fallen into the loch and the monsters drew him down into its depths and devoured him.”
“It is more likely that he was sucked into one of the caves that honeycomb the loch. I know not, but our mother died, then you were gone, and finally Ethar. There was Varrick, always Varrick. I soon realized that our mother lusted after him. She came to fear him. He was sometimes harsh with her. Of course, all of us fear him. It is what he wants. It is what pleases him. He is a strange man, his origins murky, cast in dark tales, but my mother took him and that was that.”
“Do you still fear him?”
She smiled then, her white teeth strong and straight. She was still a lovely woman, not of the same beauty as Cayman, but she seemed more real than Cayman, as if there were more substance to her, more sheer force and will. The lines on her face were from living, from suffering, aye, it made her more human, and thus more to be feared, perhaps, or to be studied, before Cleve came to a decision about her. He was nothing to her, merely a small boy who’d disappeared so many years before. He remembered adoring her when he’d been just a babe. Ah, how she’d made him laugh.