He wanted to toss her on the bed and leave her as refuse, but the feel of her flesh, so warm beneath the sheer linen, the searing flame of her green eyes as they met his, the wild erratic pounding of her heart, that of a caged bird, all combined to sweep the logic from his mind.
She had betrayed him, but the thought meant nothing when the fever of deprivation was leaping from his body, fired by lap after tiny lap of a smoldering flame that encroached upon his limbs, born of a pulsing ache within his groin that grew and thundered like a drumbeat.
He was a fool. She wanted him dead. More than ever she despised him. He had punished her cruelly from the saddle of his mount. He had all but called her whore, and yet she would never know that his actions and words agonized him, twisting into his heart and soul. He wanted so much to believe her, but he couldn’t afford to. He was the king of Dubhlain, a man fighting for his tenuous hold on the land.
He wanted to lose himself within her, ease his pain within the warm and giving shelter of her body. Bury his face within the tangled and evocative web of black silk that curled about her in wild dishevelment, feel beneath his shaking fingers the luxurious softness of her flesh, the full, seductive, taunt of her breasts.
His need spiraled in his mind and became a throbbing in his head. He could not speak, because he would stutter out his desire, leave his soul naked before her and bleeding. But he knew she would not accept his caress.
By the thunder of Thor, she would accept him! he raged inwardly, his mouth tightening grimly. He was her husband, her king, her liege—and whatever else happened between them, he would not allow her to turn him away.
He tossed her on the bed, then strode across the floor to check the bolt on the heavy wood door. He turned back to her, making his intentions clear as he faced her with hard challenging eyes that hid the quivering uncertainty within him as he meticulously began removing his clothing, draping his mantle over a chair, his wide leather belt beside it.
Erin inhaled sharply, wedging her toes against the bedding and curling her feet beneath her, edging against the headboard in a rigid stance of defiance like a cornered, spitting and hissing cat.
“You will not!” she cried out. “You will not call me traitor and hint that I would gladly play whore and then think to take me like a possession to be used at your convenience! You will not—”
He continued to watch her. His boots clunked to the floor. His robe was strewn over his mantle.
Tears filled her eyes. He looked so wonderful to her. How often she missed just the mere sight of his nakedness, his warrior’s body, muscled like oak, lean and lithe and agile. The broad bronze shoulders. The powerful arms with their clear delineation of muscle and thin lines of blue veins hovering beneath the taut flesh.
I cannot let him touch me, she thought, because I will not be able to deny him … deny myself, and he will but think me ever more the harlot.
“If you come near me now, King of Dubhlain,” she said with the stilted dignity she could muster, “it will be rape.”
“I doubt that,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “But if that is your choice, wife, then it shall be rape,” he said softly.
He came to the bed slowly but surely, his bare feet silent upon the hard floor. He pulled her into his arms and pressed his lips against hers, undaunted by their stiffness. Her fists flailed against his back, but he ignored the blows. He held her still by her nape and the thick mane of ebony there, tangling his fingers into the silken feel. He prodded her mouth with his tongue, over and over, circling the shape of her lips, thrusting with more and more provocative force until she gasped and gave in to his overwhelming power.
A sob rose in her throat even as she felt the thrust of his tongue in her mouth, the intimate, poignantly missed touch of his hands on her. She must deny him! But despite her anger, he was taking her adrift in a sea of sensation, each tiny nuance of breath and quiver touched her to the soul, robbing her of all else but her need for him. Against her will, she was responding … giving in return.
She was stunned when he suddenly pulled away from her, watching her with eyes that had never resembled the roiling tempest of a storm at sea more. She was so startled by her sense of loss, and by those eyes that strangely seemed to combine fire fury and deadly blue pain, that she unwittingly murmured a confused “My lord?”
Color had begun to explode in his mind. Beautiful color, rainbow color. Soft, seductive mauves, pulsing heated reds that met and meshed with the lightning streaking down his middle, coiling in his groin, pulsing inside him like the oncoming tide of the sea. He shuddered inwardly anew with the wanting of her. It was stronger than anything he had ever felt for a woman; it was even stronger than his craving to conquer and rule his land.
But he couldn’t take her. She had called him rapist. He could not give her the satisfaction.
He blinked, and the storm was cleared from his eyes. He faced her from the shield of the steel Nordic blue of his eyes, and a mocking curve touched his sensuous lips tauntingly. “I’ve decided not to rape you, dear wife,” he informed her with soft mockery, as he rolled from the bed and stood staring out the window.
A slow freeze of new horror and humiliation settled over Erin. She had responded to his touch when all he had sought to do was prove his power. He had turned so easily from her. Thank God! She wanted him, but not this way! She wanted him loving her, trusting her.
Erin fought momentarily to diffuse that pain, but it was now difficult, as her rage was so intense that she could barely see. “You bastard,” she grated with a deathly quiet, drawing the sheets about herself like the tattered remnants of her dignity. “You Viking bastard! You will never touch me again! Ireland has laws, Lord Viking, and I will use those laws against you. I demand that you give me separate quarters while I seek a divorce! Then you will need not worry about my murderous qualities for I will not give a godly damn whether you live or not!”
She was stunned to see that he smiled as he turned from the window. “My lady wife, you are never downed, are you? But you are oft mistaken of your own power. You will not have a separate chamber, and were I to grant you such a concession, it would mean naught, for I would come to you—if I so desired. Nor will I in my own chamber, or my own bed—even if I do manage to control my rapist Viking tendencies—leave you be. You will seek no divorce. You speak of your Brehon laws, but you forget, they mean nothing to me—nor to anyone else, in our circumstance. Our marriage was one of alliance. And as I have told you, Irish, I am a Viking. I hold my own laws. What is mine, I keep. You will not leave this chamber until I say so.”
Erin clenched her teeth so tightly she feared they would snap. Each muscle in her body was rigid with her fury. “I will escape you,” she uttered desperately.
“Please, Irish,” he said quietly, “cease your threats. Your golden mail is being redesigned for you. Shackles and chains. If need be, you will spend your life within your golden armor, reminded of the mistakes of the past.” He awaited her reaction, saw none but her tightlipped anger, and stared out the window again.
It was all she could do to keep herself from hurtling after him again in a heated explosion of her rage. But it would be folly and she knew it. He didn’t issue his words as a threat, merely as a painful statement.
“Olaf,” Erin said, fighting for control to speak calmly and coolly rather than bursting into tears of tumult and frustration, “I cannot break the images in your mind, but I warn you of this. I did not seek to kill you, nor did I ever before seek escape. But you give me no leave, no room for anything but bitterness. I tell you again I did not intend to come against you. You should look to where the danger lies, for I was tricked.”
He turned back to her, but she could read no emotion from his features. He walked across the room to the bed and sat beside her, staring into her eyes.
He reached to touch her chin, but she jerked her head away. “I do not want you touching me,” she said stiffly.
He sighed softly. “I believe I have prov
en that you have no choice in the matter, Erin.”
“Then know that what you take is all that you receive, for while you label me a traitor, I will give you nothing.”
“You cannot give me what I could take—if I desired.”
“There is much, my lord, that I have given you. Love is not owned, it is received.”
“I am not a great believer in love, Irish. It is but a weakness that makes fools of men.”
He laughed lightly, the strain easing somewhat from his face. “And, Irish, you will not escape me. You can hate me morn, noon, and night, but you will still be my wife—my pregnant wife. But I will make this concession to you. I will accept your warnings that others may wish me harm. And I will seek to see if there is not some way to know if you might ever be believed.”
“You are magnanimous,” Erin said with cold sarcasm.
He laughed again and she was tempted to scratch at his eyes. But he caught her hands in advance, knowing the warning sizzle in her eyes. He pulled at her covers despite her rigid and angry protest. “The child is mine, Irish, as it is yours.” He touched her stomach very gently, rubbing his knuckles over it lightly. “There are changes in you,” he said softly, then his voice went hard again. “Which is another reason you should have been horsewhipped.”
Erin lowered her eyes, remaining stiff against his touch.
“Or did you, perhaps, seek to kill the child as it too is Viking?”
She raised her eyes to his, the emerald light in them flaming darkly. “Nay, Olaf, the child is mine. It will be Irish. Mergwin was born of a Viking sire, but, my lord, he is an Irishman.”
“It is not an equal world, Irish. The child will be mine.”
“Do you keep me here only because of the child, Lord Wolf? Am I a prisoner because you desire an heir? What happens when the child is born? Am I then set aside?”
“I keep you,” Olaf said, “because you are mine. And because you have pleased me, and will perhaps do so again. And yes, because I want my child. We shall see where we go from there.”
“We will live in misery. So what is left?”
He raised a brow and smiled, the mockery returning. “I did not see you suffer in misery from my proximity or touch today.”
Wrath flared within her again at the total injustice of it all. Her hand flashed out across his face so quickly that he had no time to deflect it and could only stare at her in stunned bemusement as she sat, proud even in her nakedness, railing against him. “Never again, Viking, fear not. Bind me, chain me, beat me, threaten me, take me, but I will give to you no more!”
With the ejaculation of her anger, she trembled within. She had to be a fool to strike and defy him when she had no proof of her own innocence and a sure knowledge that he carried out all threats when he believed them just. But she could give him no more. She had made herself vulnerable already and so she sat silently, awaiting his recourse.
He rubbed his cheek with narrowed eyes. “Erin, I do admire your courage.” His tone lowered again to warn her his admiration would only stretch so far. “But do not strike me again. I am the barbarian, remember, the one who practices cruelty.”
Erin looked away from him, wincing at his sarcasm. “You do practice cruelty, Olaf, far greater than any administered by whips or chains.”
“By all the fires of all conceivable hells!” Olaf exploded. “I face my own wife with my sword. And it is cruelty that I do not fall for your pretty excuses!”
He jumped out of the bed and began to dress, his fingers almost ripping the fabric of his clothing as he did so.
Erin didn’t reply. She closed her eyes and drew the covers around her again as a shield against her hopelessness.
When he spoke again he was quiet, cold and controlled once more. “You ask what is left between us now, wife. A wall. You despise me; I trust you no further than my own vision. But we are husband and wife, and I want my child that you carry. I will not be denied a part in its growth. Only a trusted few know that it was the queen of Dubhlain who caused the deaths of twelve men—I would not have the families of those dead seeking vengeance. Therefore you may have the run of this house. Do not leave it. You will not be warned again. And one more thing: Do not seek to turn from me, ever. You are my wife, and I will speak to you when and if I choose, and touch you—if and when I choose.” He was silent for a moment, his back to her. He sounded bleak when he spoke again. “I am a fool, Erin, for I still like to believe there is hope.”
He paused a moment, as if determined that she digest his words, then added, “If you would rise, Erin, the great hall awaits its king and queen.”
There was nothing else to do. She should be grateful. He might have chained her, or sent her to the dungeons, or repudiated her and their child. But nothing had actually changed except his feelings for her, and the terrible anger and bitterness she bore him.
Her fingers trembled as she quickly dressed, then adjusted her mantle. She glanced nervously to where he awaited her by the door.
He was fully dressed already, impatient, his mind on other affairs. Tall and golden and regal, her splendid warrior. The Wolf of Norway, arrogant, powerful, confident…
She fought tears as she remembered that he could also be tender only when he had wanted her. His possession.…
He stretched out an arm to her and she took it, feeling her lip begin to quiver. How different things could have been.…
“Olaf,” she addressed him coolly.
“Aye?”
“I obey you now, because you are the stronger.”
“I care not why you obey me or heed my warnings, only that you do so.”
She would not allow tears to rise to her eyes. As he opened the door, she swept by him coolly. They descended to the great hall in royal splendor—and in rigid misery.
Olaf stood beneath a full moon once more, his soul in torment. Neither he nor Erin had remained within the hall to dine. In his pain and fury, he had forgotten to tell her about the deaths of her brother Leith and Fennen mac Cormac.
Once in the hall, she had quickly ascertained that her brother wasn’t present, and she had broken into uncontrollable sobs.
Olaf had not been able to touch her. She would have rejected him, so Brice—a brother—comforted her for the brother lost, while he stood beneath the moon and tortured himself with longing and pain and uncertainty.
She had betrayed him! Or had she? The evidence was against her, and it hurt so very bitterly, because he had just learned to live again. He had just learned that he was to have a child. An heir.
Did she cry for her brother? Or for the mac Cormac? Did she wish that he had died rather than the Irish king? Olaf sighed deeply. He understood pain. He would respect hers. He would seek his night’s rest before the hearth.
CHAPTER
20
Longboats filled the coastline and harbor, sleek and magnificent, their dragon hulls and red and white sails billowing in the breeze. The scene was both awesome and beautiful.
As Olaf stood at the harbor within the Liffey to greet the Norsemen who came, the sharp wind whipped his golden hair and mantle about him. There was not, however, a Viking aboard any of the numerous ships who would think to mock the Wolf’s Irish dress, for his visage, even from the sea, was an indomitable one. Legs slightly parted, one knee crooked upon a rising ledge, he appeared as something legendary, a golden god. As men had often thought in battle, he seemed to be surrounded by an aura of light. Sigurd stood slightly to his right, and to his left, Gregory and Brice mac Aed.
But when the first visitor set his booted feet splashing into the water to rush ashore, the full and mobile mouth framed by the golden beard slashed into a wide grin. Visitor and king of Dubhlain met with shouts of delight and a shattering embrace. The two men finally parted and assessed one another openly.
It was the visitor who spoke first. He was a man almost of a height with the Wolf, a year or two older, more carefree of manner.
“So, brother Wolf, this is it! The fine city of
Dubhlain yours. Taking you from the sea and ending your days of going a-Viking!”
“Aye, Eric, this is it,” the Wolf returned. “Welcome to Ireland.”
“And a welcome from an Irishman it appears to be.” Eric laughed, his blue eyes a shade more gray than Olaf’s raking over his brother’s appearance.
“Nay, you’ll never convince the Irish of that,” Olaf said with a shrug. Especially my wife, he added silently.
Eric was already looking beyond Olaf, toward Sigurd. He clapped the red-haired giant soundly on the back. “Sigurd! You old battle-axe. Has this brother of mine taken you too from the seas?”
“We’ve made a fair trade, Eric. A fair trade. You will see for yourself,” Sigurd assured Eric with a broad smile.
“Give your men leave to come ashore, brother,” Olaf continued, “and we’ll hasten to the great hall. And if you would meet with Irishmen in friendship, I give you Gregory of Clonntairth and Brice mac Aed.”
The Irish princes looked at the Norwegian with staunch wariness, but the innate good nature of the Viking was difficult to resist. Once convinced that this was a contingent of Vikings offering no threat further than that of fascinated curiosity, Brice and Gregory stayed at the harbor with Sigurd to direct the landing of the Norse troops as Olaf and Eric climbed the sloping dun to the entrance of the walled city.
With the joyousness of greeting passed, Eric looked at his brother gravely. “I come, brother, with gifts from our father, the jarl. But above that, Olaf, I come to you with warnings.”
“Warnings?” Olaf inquired, startled. It had been but three weeks since he had returned from the north country and his battle with the Danes. Was he to spend his life fighting for his tenuous hold on this land?
“Aye, warnings,” Eric replied with a troubled shake of his head. “Not for the near future, brother. News travels quickly across the seas. I am aware that the Danes beneath Friggid the Bowlegs met a smashing defeat. Yet already more news comes to us. Friggid had returned to his homeland. Word goes out that he seeks men and that he promises them great riches—aye, he even promises them the city of Dubhlain—if they will follow him against you. It will take him time, Olaf, for brave men fear you. But you must take heed, and defend yourself well, for that Dane is half insane, and he cares not what he risks to kill you.”