Silk Dreams - Songs of the North 3 (14 page)

After the moments of madness when her body bucked with the strength of her release, she found his groin pressed against her hip, hard and relentless. The knot he'd just loosened began to build in her again, but there was no question of allowing him to fill her aching womb. It was one thing for him to show her the delights of the love couch, but quite another for her to let him take her virginity. Still, it wasn't right for her to take all the pleasure from their loving. She pushed against his shoulders and he rolled away from her.

“Trust me, Valdis,” he whispered. “I will not—”

“I know you won't,” she mouthed into his ear. “But you’ve given me joy and I need to return it.”

“Giving to you is better than taking from anyone else.” He traced slow circles around her taut nipples. “In pleasing you, I please myself.”

“
Ja,
I see that.” She nipped at his lower lip. “But you are not so pleased as I mean for you to be. Lie back and don't move.” She grinned wickedly at him. “If you can.”

He accepted her challenge with a raised brow and laced his fingers behind his head, daring her to do whatever she wished. She rose from the bed long enough to don her night shift, though the thin fabric was no barrier if he should decide not to honor his pledge to guard her maidenhead. Then she tugged off his leggings.

Valdis feasted her eyes on his long body, stretched out in the moonlight, his muscles rounded mounds, his nipples dark and phallus achingly erect. She'd seen statues of Frey and the wildly exaggerated erection in the mosaic in Damian's foyer, but Erik was the first real man she'd laid eyes on. A pearl of milky liquid formed at the tip of him.

“If all you're going to do is look, it's going to be a long night,” he said dryly.

Valdis swung a leg over him and settled on his groin at the base of his erection. She could feel his ballocks beneath her, the soft bag tightening at her nearness. Starting at the base, she ran one finger over the length of him. His phallus rose to her touch.

Erik's breathing quickened. “Now what?”

In answer, she leaned forward and kissed him. Then she gathered her hair in her hand and tossed its length up over his face. Slowly, she raised back up, drawing her hair across his chest, a thousand tiny fingers caressing him.

He gasped. “Did Chloe teach you that?”

“No, I made it up on my own.” A thrill ran through her belly at his pleasure. “You said no whore's tricks, remember? So you'll just have to put up with my fumbling.”

“Gladly.”

“No more words,” she ordered. With fingers and mouth, she explored him, acutely aware of every snatched breath and quivering muscle. When he groaned softly, she showed pity and took him in her hand. They fell into a galloping rhythm. Valdis discovered that if she leaned forward and ground her hips against him, she could also tease her exquisite point of pleasure almost beyond bearing. She raised her night shift so she could feel the hard length of him against her skin.

The pressure built inside her steadily, straining her to breaking. Then as she shattered again, Erik's ballocks tightened beneath her. He stiffened and she felt a rhythmic pulse on her belly as his seed spilled onto her.

Spent and gasping, he pulled her down to lay her head on his chest. She kissed the base of his sweat-dampened throat, tasting the saltiness of him. After a few moments, their breathing returned to normal and their hearts fell into rhythm, beating as one.

Erik finally rolled her off him slowly, as if he were loath to sever the connection between them. She feared he was leaving her as he groped in the dark for his discarded tunic. Instead, he returned to her side and used his garment to gently clean his seed from the smooth skin of her belly.

“I'm sorry—” he began.

“Hush,” she said with a finger to his lips. “No need for regrets between us.”

His smile flashed in the darkness. Then he settled beside her, molding his large body to her contours, his hand splayed possessively over her breast.

Valdis breathed deeply, the joy of their loving still draped over her like the gauzy canopy over her sleeping couch. Her body went slack and boneless. She'd never felt such peace. She fought to keep from drifting into drowsy delirium. Falling asleep now would mean disaster—a slow painful death for Erik and hideous disfigurement for her.

That thought alone conspired to keep her eyes open. She listened to Erik's deep, even breathing, certain that he slept. Other small sounds began to tickle her ear. She heard a dog bark in the distant stables, the hunting cry of an owl, the creak of her sleeping couch when she shifted her weight. A tingle of alarm fingered up her spine when she heard the twitter of a lark.

“Erik, please. You must wake,” she whispered urgently.

He raised his head from her pillow and focused his hooded gaze on her.

“I lied to you,” he slurred drowsily.

“What do you mean?”

“One night will not be enough.”

“It may be all we ever have if you don't leave right now.” She gathered his clothing, retrieving his leggings, his undergarment, the stockings and the linen strips he'd wind about his calves to hold them up. “You dare not delay.” She held out his leggings for him, but he grasped her wrist instead.

“What if I want more?” he asked. “What if I want us to leave together right now?”

“So now you're ready to surrender your honor for another night in my bed?” She pulled him to his feet. “I'm flattered, but I can't count myself worth breaking your oath over.”

Among the people of the North only murder was a worst crime than oath-breaking. And only slightly worse at that.

“It’s no flattery. I'm serious.”

“So am I. I know your pledge is precious to you. If you think I'll let you give up the one thing you hold dear, you need to think again.” She forced his tunic over his head. “We can't talk now. Please, Erik, it will be dawn soon. If you want to see me as noseless as Chloe, just keep dallying.”

That got him moving. He tugged up his leggings and finished dressing in surly silence. He stalked to the doorway, carrying his hobnail boots. Erik stopped at the threshold and turned back to face her.

Valdis padded over to him. She wanted this idyll to end in the sweetness of his mouth on hers once more. Instead he parted the neckline of her nightshift and bent his head down to grasp her nipple between his lips, suckling so hard, she nearly cried out as his teeth grazed her sensitive areola.

Blood pounded in her groin. In only a few moments, she was so hot and ready for him again, all rational thought fled from her mind. She'd lie down on the cool marble floor and spread her legs if he only gave the word.

But he didn't try to take her. He stood straight and looked down at her, determination blocking all tenderness from his features.

“I don't care what you say, Valdis, this is not over. Oath or no oath, I will find a way to have you.” He covered her mouth with his in a possessive kiss. “All of you.”

And then he was gone, disappearing into the last watch of the night with the silence of a wraith.

Valdis was seated beside Erik on one of the marble benches near the fountain. She shifted, edging away lest she accidentally brush against him. Being near him without being able to bed him was hellish enough. Touching him would be unbearable. She focused on the wax tablet on her lap. Under the guise of receiving instruction in the mystery of runes, she continued to teach him.

She peered at him from under her lashes. He seemed intent on the slate before him, his tongue clamped firmly between his teeth in concentration as he faithfully reproduced her work. She'd taught him how to mark the runes within two roughly parallel lines so they didn't wander all over the tablet, disordered and meaningless. His slashes writhed across the wax surface encased in a serpent's body, a pattern favored by many carvers of standing runestones.

When one of Damian's servants wandered into the courtyard, Erik leaned over and cast an appraising eye at her tablet.

“No, that's not right,” he said loudly in Greek for the servant's benefit. “You've formed the last symbol backwards. Try it again.”

There was nothing at all wrong with her writing, but she scraped away the offending slash and etched it again.

“Could you be any more heavy-handed?” she asked in Norse, mindful to keep her tone contrite since she was playing the recently chastised student.

“There was a time when you didn't complain of my hands, heavy or otherwise.”

Valdis bit her lower lip. His touch left her more fuzzy-headed than six bowls of the Christians' strong wine, but she dared not let herself conjure up the memory of that soul-shattering night. Nothing would be served by dwelling on what she couldn't have.

“Please, can we concentrate on the runes?” she asked. “Once I am in the harem, they may be the only way I can safely send a message.”

Erik grunted his reluctant assent and gouged another slash in the wax.

“Careful,” she warned. “Now you're the one who's turned a rune on its head.”

Erik glared at her as he smoothed out the soft wax to start over. Valdis wished it were that easy to start over in other things, as well.

“Your door was closed again last night,” he said softly.

So he had been there, after all. Even though she'd never caught sight of him, Valdis sensed his presence when she peeked from behind her billowy curtains into the shadows of the garden. She had been acutely aware of him. Her entire being strained toward him, but she reined herself back.

And she assuredly would not open her door.

“Has so much changed for you in so short a time?” he asked.

“Erik, it's too dangerous for us to be together. You must see that.”

“Only if we stay here,” he said. “It would be different if I were satisfied just to be your lover. I thought I could take you in small pieces, Valdis, but I can't.”

He covered her hand with his briefly, then released it. Valdis glanced around, mindful that Damian's other servants were constantly coming and going from the courtyard. He obviously had given orders that the two Nordic members of the household were to be under many watchful eyes during the day. It had always surprised Valdis that her door was unguarded at night. Perhaps Damian believed the nearness of his personal chamber and the warning of Chloe's disfigurement was enough to protect her purity.

But that wasn't what kept her door shut. Her recurring nightmare of Erik's ambush had returned, and her fear for him if they were caught together trebled.

“The first time we met, you begged me to steal you away. Now I'm of a mind to do it.” Erik leaned toward her, as if he might sweep her into his arms at any moment. “The world is wide. Surely there's a place somewhere in Midgard where we can be together.”

Little Loki scampered past, snapping his tiny jaws after a butterfly. Valdis scooped him into her arms and clutched the dog to her chest like a shield. The mongrel was barely recognizable as the same scruffy creature Valdis had befriended outside the Hippodrome. Loki had become a household favorite, fed choice tidbits from everyone's plate, bathed and trimmed and perfumed by one of the serving girls and petted and spoiled by everyone. He still hovered around Valdis as closely as any
seid
-woman’s familiar, but he'd yet to warm up to Erik. Loki bared his little white teeth and emitted a low growl at the big Northman.

“Where would we go?” Valdis asked as she grasped the dog's muzzle to silence him. “The North is barred to us. Suppose you did break your oath to the emperor and run off with a slave girl—would the world welcome us? No, the entire Byzantine Empire would close in on us like a snare around a pair of coneys. Then where shall we run? To the Bulgars? The Pechenegs? Mayhap there's a Caliphate in the Moorish lands willing to offend their Byzantine trading partners by taking us in.” She shook her head. “We cannot run.”

Erik studied the paving stones between his feet. “So what passed between us was nothing to you.”

It was everything,
she wanted to say. But she couldn't tell him so. It would only strengthen his resolve.

“It was just as you said. You promised me one night, and I accepted it.” She put the dog down and watched him sniff the ferns at the fountain's edge. “There's the end to it.”

“Then you care nothing for me at all.”

Valdis squeezed her eyes shut. How could she begin to catalog the feelings she had for this infuriatingly single-minded man? “Erik, after you were banished it took many months to find a place for yourself here among the Byzantines. Your oath to the emperor has given you a chance to reclaim your lost honor. Would you throw it away for a woman again?”

She was reminding him that he hadn't stopped at the murder of his own brother over a woman, his wayward wife. Rage roiled off him in palpable waves. Valdis trembled, but he seemed to master himself, even though he'd lain the tablet aside and ground one fist into the other palm.

“Sometimes even a man's honor can be held too dear. You rate yourself too humbly. You're not just some camp girl I enjoyed tumbling. The truth is I can't bear to think of you going to another,” he admitted.

Valdis shivered involuntarily. "I feel it too, bleak as a cold, dark tunnel. But my freedom lies at the end of that passage. Don't try to dissuade me from going through it.” She made the mistake of looking directly at him. “Once I'm free, who knows what might happen?”

It was the wrong thing to say. Erik wouldn't want her after she'd been with another man.

But surprisingly he seemed to take heart at her words. “Your courage shames me.
Ja,
where there's life, there's hope.” He fixed Valdis with a determined stare. “Do what you must, though it grates my soul. Only live, Valdis. At least that way, there's a chance for us.”

Finally, he understood. The frenzy of lust might feel like enough on a star-spangled night, but they must live in the world by morning. She hoped to spare his honor so that once she was free, they might find a way to be together with the blessing of society. She longed to melt into his arms, but Damian himself strode into the courtyard at that precise moment. They both stood in his presence.