The Last Viking

  At first, she didn't think he'd heard her, but he reached around and undid the silk cords. She curled her arms around his shoulders, and he walked her to the built-in bedstead against the wall. In one fluid motion, he tumbled her to the bed furs, still imbedded in her.

  Every cell in her body tingled.

  For several long moments, he just lay on top of her, panting. When he raised himself on extended arms, he studied her face. "Did I hurt you?"

  She shook her head.

  "Am I too heavy?"

  She shook her head again.

  "Do you want me to stop?"

  Another shake of the head, this one rather vehement.

  "Why won't you talk to me, dearling?"

  She swallowed a nervous giggle. "I... can't."

  He raised an eyebrow. When understanding dawned, he grinned.

  So, he considers my overstimulation funny? "Why aren't you moving?" she grumbled.

  "The same reason as you," he clipped out. "I can't."

  His words excited her. And her inner folds spasmed around him.

  He groaned. "Betwixt the tingling and your pulsing, this will be a one-stroke coming if I move now."

  "I don't pulse."

  Another spasm.

  "You did that apurpose," he accused.

  This was embarrassing. "No, my body is just trying to accustom itself... to your... to... Oh, geez, you."

  "Oh," he said with sudden understanding. Then he broke into an arresting smile. "I can help you adapt to me, and take more."

  Take more? I... don't... think... so. "No, I don't...think... a-h-h-h-!"

  He arched his upper body back on one extended arm. With his hard penis motionless inside her, with his other hand he reached down between their bodies and began to strum the slickness, back and forth.

  She raised her hips up high, spreading her legs more. And wailed in one endless stream of "Oh, oh, oh, oh" at the intensity of the sensations convulsing through her in ever-widening spirals, and, to her amazement, her inner folds did expand.

  Rolf grew inside her. And he still wasn't moving, dam him. He waited for her to open her eyes before he gripped her head in both hands and said fervently, "I love you."

  "I love you, too."

  "Don't you dare cry now," he ordered as he began to move at last.

  At last, at last, at last, she thought as he pulled out almost all the way, then slammed in. Three or four or ten times, he pummeled her with his long strokes. She couldn't keep count. It wasn't very many, but her body was climaxing over and over and over each time he hit her pubic bone, and she was sobbing and screaming and hitting his shoulders each time he withdrew.

  He might have been making noises, as well. In fact, she was pretty sure he was. He threw his head back, the veins in his neck almost popping, and lunged in one last time, spurting hotly to her womb. And in the end, he did cry out, and she caught his cry with her open mouth.

  Oh, my God! Meredith thought just before she passed out.

  "Guđ minn góđpur! " Rolf said just before he passed out.

  Several minutes later, she awakened to feel Rolf's dead weight on her. It wasn't unpleasant.

  The low masculine exhale he released with excruciating slowness could have been of pain, or exquisite satisfaction. She was betting on the latter.

  He rolled over to his side and took her with him. Lifting her one leg over his hip, he remained inside her. Not hard, but not soft either. He kissed her tenderly, then savagely. Then he laughed with utter joy.

  She hid her fiery face in his neck, belatedly embarrassed over her uninhibited behavior.

  "Do you blush now, wanton witch? Odin's teeth, you do!" When he saw that she was unsure of herself and the propriety of her performance, he added with a tweak of her chin, "Methinks the anticipation proved too much for both of us, sweetling."

  Gritting his teeth, he eased himself out of her, and chuckled when her hands fluttered with involuntary distress at his disengaging too soon for her taste. "You are a greedy wench, and overeager," he teased, "but I wouldst try all your charms, and your garments impede my efforts."

  He murmured words of astonishment at what had just happened between them as he undid the shoulder broaches on her overgown and removed the gold-link belt. It was short work after that for him to maneuver her clothing off, but not too short, because he paused and whispered compliments to each body part he bared.

  Oh, he was a smooth lover, this Viking was, knowing instinctively what many modern men still didn't understand—that women need to feel good about their bodies to enjoy making love, even if their attractiveness is only in the eyes of their lovers.

  By the time she was naked, her entire body felt heated by his torrid, worshipful perusal. She couldn't stop herself from asking hopefully, "Again?"

  "And again and again and again," he promised, holding her down at his side when she would have leapt from the bed with mortification at having expressed her craving aloud. "But this time we'll go slow. This time will be for you, sweetling."

  And who was the last time for? But she decided to keep that revealing question to herself.

  "You must needs be punished first," he warned with silky eroticism as he trailed his fingertips from her knees to the joining of her thighs. She was lying flat on her back now, like a rag doll. "Hmmm. Mayhap your first penance—"

  "Penance?" she said breathlessly. "First?"

  He smiled. "—shall be honesty in the loveplay. You will tell me with words, as well as actions, what pleases you."

  And that's punishment? "You tricked me, Rolf. I never intended to marry you, or make love," she stormed. "Maybe you're the one who should be punished."

  "Hmmm." He tapped his chin with a forefinger as if seriously considering her reproach, then agreed too quickly, "All right. But later."

  His callused fingertips brushed over the tight curls between her legs and he sighed.

  A feeling of light-headedness flowed over her at that feathery caress. And Meredith thought there should be a dissertation written on the merits of calluses. And the carnal beauty of a man's sigh.

  "Drops of moisture from our first mating linger here," he pointed out huskily, "like morning mist on seaside grass. "

  Her eyes shot wide. Blood roared in her veins and her brain went blank at the seductive praise. She tried to roll over to hide herself, but he wouldn't allow that modesty.

  "Or wouldst you prefer I start here?" He placed his fingertips against her lips, and her neck arched for his kiss. But he was already skimming his fingertips lower, a straight tantalizing line from her chin, over her breast-bone, down her abdomen and waist, over her navel, to her thighs again. A violent shiver passed over her.

  His lips turned up appreciatively. "Where, Merry-Death? Where do you want my touch first?"

  With a soft mewling cry, she took his hands and led them to her breasts. Although he hadn't touched them since the anointing, the rose-hued nipples were still hardened into pebbles of arousal and the slightly paler aureoles were puffy with desire. She ached for him there.

  Instead, he nudged her legs apart and braced himself on outstretched arms. His erection pressed against her thigh and his hips pinned her against the bed furs, but a half-foot of space separated her breasts from his chest.

  "Caress me with them," he coaxed in a voice so thick she could barely comprehend his meaning. When understanding dawned, she wondered if she had the nerve.

  She did.

  With the support of her elbows, she bowed her back upward and moved her breasts, back and forth, across the bristly hairs on his chest. The magnitude of agonizing pleasure was so great it set off a chain reaction through her body. He couldn't help but feel the thudding of her heart and the quiver in her thighs. Rolf had been right when he'd insinuated one time that there was nothing more sensuous for a woman than the friction of bed furs at her back and her lover's chest hairs at her front.

  He made a hissing sound through his teeth. "Don't stop."

  Again and again, she s
wept her aching breasts across the abrasive hairs. When she dropped back, unable to stand the pressure building in her breasts for a different kind of succor, he raised himself to a kneeling position between her knees.

  "You were serious about punishing me," she said. "This is pure torture."

  "Ah, but have you not heard? There is no ecstasy without agony." With that enigmatic Norse philosophy, he lightly fingered her nipples. She whimpered at the surge of sensitivity lodged in their centers. By the time he lowered his mouth and touched the tip of his tongue to her left nipple, she was clutching the bed furs in her fists and stiffening her legs. He did the same to the other breast, then leaned back to study her again.

  "No," he said disapprovingly. "Relax." He forced her to unfist her hands and waited for her thighs to untense. Then he took her breasts, one after the other, into his mouth and suckled on her with a punishing rhythm.

  "I feel as if I'm caught in the eye of a hurricane," she confessed as waves of pleasure rippled out from the pumping of his open mouth encasing the whole of her nipple and aureole.

  "Yea, you shall be as a ship on the roiling seas," he said, laughing, "and I'll be the gale wind that brings you tribulation, and the greatest thrills."

  His words frightened her a bit, and she tried to push him off. She scratched his back. She flailed her legs.

  But he wouldn't stop. Then the hurricane broke, and she was hurtled into a frenzied climax under the onslaught of the tempest.

  When her vision cleared, she saw him sitting on his haunches between her outspread legs, watching her, and waiting.

  "You make me blush when you look at me," she protested weakly.

  "You make me tremble when you look at me," he countered hoarsely.

  Her cheeks burned under his all-seeing scrutiny, and she suspected that her "punishment" had barely begun. Although his whiskey eyes shimmered with passion and his ragged panting was a testament to his excitement, she sensed that the maddening man intended to torment her much, much more before he gave himself relief.

  He arranged himself on top of her, a flat weight of domination. His big hands framed her face, and he murmured against her lips, "And dost my lady favor kisses, as well?"

  "Yes." She smiled against his parted lips.

  At first, his kisses were slow and thoughtful. A tactile exploration of molding lips and gliding tongue. But soon the kisses took on the character of controlled aggression as he bit her bottom lip, then sucked it into his mouth for soothing. He tunneled his fingers in her hair and held her firm as he took her mouth with a savage fervor, prodding her lips open with his thrusting tongue. Wet and clinging, she succumbed to his forceful seduction.

  "I can't stand any more," she pleaded finally.

  He tore his mouth from hers, fighting for air. Sitting back on his haunches again, he surveyed her, then nodded his approval. "Be strong, my lady, for the invasion has scarce commenced."

  She paled but had no time to consider his implied threat, because he was already moving to another erotic territory. He hooked his arms under her knees and spread her legs wide and high with a rolled bed fur under her hips. Legs draped over his arms, she was open and vulnerable to his eyes and fingers and mouth.

  "I would taste the pearl of your arousal," he whispered, and even his breath against her there caused the distended bud to swell and unfold. He kissed it softly, and she bucked upward. From then on, she keened a continuous dirge of sweet agony as he plied that center of sensation, its surrounding slick folds, even inside her, with his tongue. Probing. Fluttering. Laving. Stabbing. Sucking. So abandoned was she that she didn't even realize when the rolled bed furs had been removed from under her hips or that Rolf was poised to enter her.

  "Tell me," he demanded huskily as he pressed a scorching kiss of possession against her mouth.

  "I love you."

  He drove into her, and it was he who cried out then as her body stretched and stretched to accommodate his size. "You feel like velvet fire licking at my staff," he gasped as he pulled out, then drove in again, long and slow and sinfully pleasurable.

  "And you feel like hot marble," she whispered back, surprised that she could play this game of sex talk.

  "I want to reach the heart of you," he ground out and plunged deeper.

  She gasped against the assault and compelled herself to relax and take more of him.

  "Your woman dew enoints me like molten lava," he told her as his long, slow strokes shortened into pummeling thrusts.

  She should have been embarrassed at his truthful words. But she could only focus on the increasing pressure between her legs. She spread her thighs wider and levered her hips high so that when he reared his neck back and battered into her one last time, she burst into a million shards of pleasure. Even when he buried his face against her neck and murmured, "I love you, Merry-Death," she continued to pulse around his limpness.

  She felt shattered, deliciously sated, and very much in love.

  Geirolf couldn't believe his good fortune. He'd always been a man favored with woman-luck, but this... this mind-splintering ecstasy his new wife had showed him... well, truly the gods had cast their gift of approval on him this day.

  He tickled her nose with the edge of a bed fur. She twitched but pretended to sleep. He moved the bed fur lower, tickling a pointed nipple, and her eyes flew open.

  "Mer-ry Dea-th," he drawled out. "I have a wonderful idea. "

  She moaned and rolled over to bury her face in the furs.

  He followed conforming his body to the back of her. They fit together very nicely.

  "Don't you want to hear my idea?" he purred, placing a palm against her stomach and hauling her back more tightly into the cradle of his hips.

  "Your ideas are too... punishing," she complained, but he knew she was more than pleased with his sexual torment. He knew he was. "How long did you let me sleep?"

  "Oh, a half hour or so."

  "A half hour!" she exclaimed and turned to gape at him with incredulity. "And you have ideas again so soon?"

  "Yea. It comes from being a Viking... and Creative ... and—"

  "Insatiable?"

  "That, too." He laughed and picked her up in his arms, carrying her out of the longhouse, into her keep, and up the stairs. Dog followed them. No doubt, Dog figured they were going to have a feast, or mayhap an orgy.

  She shrieked when she saw that it was still daylight, barely past the dinner hour. "Someone might see us running around naked," she chided him.

  "Nay, no one will dare to return till I give the work. I threatened to chop off the head of the first person who steps on this property without my consent."

  "You didn't," she said, drawing back slightly to peer at his face.

  That gave him his first full daylight glimpse of her breasts and womanly nest. He stumbled and almost swallowed his tongue.

  Seeing the direction of his gaze, Merry-Death clucked her reproval and tucked her pink-stained face back into his neck. 'Twas one of the things he cherished most about his new wife, her innate modesty contrasted with a sexuality that could blister his manroot at twenty paces.

  When he finally set her on her feet, Merry-Death peered up at him questioningly. How could she not know what was next on his carnal calendar?

  "Drekking," he informed her brightly.

  Toward morning, Rolf awakened her again. "I want to show you something," he whispered in her ear.

  "I've seen it five times already," she groaned into his chest.

  "Six times," he corrected her. "Didst thou forget the nude spear-throwing lesson?"

  "How could I forget?" She turned and looked up at him—her husband. And her heart swelled and overflowed with love for him. His hair was pulled back now in a braid. His firm lips were surprisingly softer from numerous aggressive kisses and slightly swollen. From the flames of the nearby hearth, which he must have recently stoked, she saw reflected in his amber eyes a fierce passion for her, and a soul-rending tenderness. Love. She saw love in his face, and for
that she felt blessed by all the gods, his and hers alike.

  She had capitulated to Rolf's seduction. She wasn't resigned to giving him up in a few short weeks, but this night had been too glorious for her to argue. Not now, anyway—

  "So what's this thing you want to show me?" she teased, putting her hands to his neck and pulling his head down for a kiss.

  "Sunrise," he murmured against her lips, "on the prow of a dragonship."

  "Naked?" she asked, nibbling his bottom lip.

  "Yea." He grinned. "And rocking."

  "Rocking?"

  "Um-hmmm," he answered, taking a few nibbles of her bottom lip, as well. "Did you not know that the prow of a ship dips and rises, dips and rises, in the open seas?"

  "But your ship isn't on the open seas."

  "Ah, you've not been listening to me, Merry-Death. Tsk-tsk. Did I not say we Vikings are creative?"

  Thea returned to the house the next day, and the wedding feast was held the following Saturday. Meredith insisted that it be a small affair—Thea, Mike, Sonja, the students, and a few SCA members they'd gotten to know. It was probably mean of her, but she'd balked at having Jillian or her parents present. And Jared was too far away to come.

  Meredith had harbored many doubts about their having a public celebration of their wedding. It was going to be very difficult to explain Rolf's disappearance in a few weeks. But she was glad now that she'd given in to his urging for a public wedding. The vows they'd exchanged just a few hours ago, on his longship had been beautiful, a memory to treasure forever.

  Short time ago, she'd gone into the house to get manchet bread. Now she stood leaning against post of one of the colorful, open-sided tents, watching the scene unfolding around her. Everyone was dressed in Viking or medieval costume. Musicians played authentic melodies on dulcimers, lyres, and pan-pipes.

  Rolf, splendidly attired in his lush black tunic and braies, the talisman belt sparkling in the sunshine, was demonstrating for Thea one of the dances done in his country. The young girl, who should have been more comfortable doing the macarena, or whatever the dance du jour, giggled and followed his steps with enthusiasm.

  Rolf had talked Meredith into signing papers to take over temporary guardianship of Thea, and the girl was already enrolled in the local junior high school. Meredith suspected he'd been so persistent because he feared for her state of mind when he left her behind.