Season of the Sun (Viking Era 1)

He pushed forward just a bit and felt her tense. “That is your badge of maidenhood, a bit of skin that I will tear. Just a moment of pain, Zarabeth, then there will be no more.”

“And then you will leave me?”

He smiled painfully, willfully misunderstanding her. “Aye, but I shall try to pleasure you before I do.”

He grasped her wrists in his hands and pulled them above her head. He was stretched his full length on top of her, and he looked at her closely as he pushed slowly forward. He felt the skin stretch. He felt her trying to pull away from him, her flesh flinching and tightening around him, and he kissed her. “Slowly, sweeting,” he said into her mouth. Then, suddenly, he reared back, and he looked into her eyes as he drove through her maidenhead and came to the mouth of her womb.

She cried out, unable to hold it in, and he covered her mouth with his. “No more,” he said again and again. “Hold still and become used to me.”

“It hurts,” she said, and he felt the wet of her tears on his face. “I didn’t think it would hurt like that.”

“I’m sorry for it. I wish I could have spared you that.” But there was no regret in his voice. On the contrary, his voice was filled to brimming with pride and satisfaction, and to Zarabeth’s ears, filled with a man’s triumph. She lay there silently, feeling him moving deep inside her. It was over now; he’d taken her; he’d won.

The pain was receding but she was still stretched to hold him. When he began to move, she felt the fullness of him, the slick hardness. It didn’t matter, she told herself as he moved within her, it didn’t matter. He had won, but she wouldn’t let it matter. When he was done with her, he would be tired of her and leave her alone. Her maidenhead was gone now and he had been gentle with her, and for that she was grateful, she supposed. She was glad she hadn’t fought him more than she had. It would have gained her naught but more pain. She felt nothing now save the stretching and fullness inside her and the revulsion for this man grunting over her, this man who was inside her body, who was doing to her precisely as he wished to do.

She listened to his breathing quicken, deepen. He moaned then, a raw deep sound, drawing back, and then he was pushing into her harder and harder still, and he was groaning wildly. Suddenly he froze over her, his head thrown back, and he gave a muted yell. She felt the wetness of him and knew that he had filled her with his man’s seed.

He grew quiet. She accepted his weight, for she had no choice. She felt incredibly tired, yet oddly relieved that it was over and it hadn’t been so horrible after all, this mating, this taking that men did of women’s bodies. And he hadn’t touched her, not really, not the part of her that was silently and wholly her.

He released her wrists and came up on his elbows to relieve her of his weight. He was still deep inside her, yet she didn’t feel so full of him now.

“Did I hurt you again?”

“Aye.” She saw too late that his additional sign of her innocence pleased him, and she wished she had lied.

“But you don’t hurt now, do you?”

She shook her head, closing her eyes against the intentness of his gaze, wondering what was in his mind now.

“In a moment I will give you pleasure. I truly wish you hadn’t had to suffer me before I could bring you to joy.”

Her eyes flew open. He smiled down at her, enjoying her utterly bewildered expression, her disbelief at his words. He dipped his head down to kiss her.

“You will see.”

Slowly he pulled himself out of her, feeling her flesh stretch more as he did so. But he didn’t regret it, no, not ever would he regret taking her and knowing that he was the only man to come into her body. He came up to his knees between her spread thighs. There was blood on her thighs and on his member. He sat back on his heels and stared at her. In the dim night light he could see her clearly; her white thighs, widespread now, their flesh so soft to his touch that it made his breath hitch, and the vivid red curls that covered her. It drew him, that red hair of hers, and he touched her now, very lightly, just to see his long fingers on her and to know that she was watching him as he looked at her. She drew in her breath and he raised his head. Her breasts drew him now, flesh as white and soft as her belly and thighs. And he thought: She should be lying beneath me as my wife, not my slave. But she wasn’t. He remembered that day when he had first seen her and he had known, actually known, that he would love her and only her and that she would be generous and warm and his. But she wasn’t. He had been wrong in everything, except in the feelings that persisted for her deep inside him. He closed his mind; he would not deal with those myriad feelings, at least not now. He wanted to bring her to pleasure, he wanted to hear her cries when she burst into her climax. He had to have this final dominance over her.

He came down on his side to lie beside her. He looked down at her gown, bunched at her waist, at her belly, at her breasts, pale in the dim night light. He watched his hand caress her belly, watched his fingers find her through the red curls that covered her. When his fingers touched her, he looked into her eyes and saw the beginning of awareness there, of surprise, and of fear. Fear of him? Although he had no intention of hurting her, he supposed he could not blame her. He smiled at her even as his fingers found their rhythm. Her eyes widened with shock, with embarrassment, and she jerked away from him.

She curled up, her back to him, and he saw the shaking of her shoulders.

“Nay,” he said. “Trust me, Zarabeth. Come, let me show you what it is to have a woman’s pleasure.”

She curled up more tightly and he felt near-pain in his loins at the sight of her buttocks and long white legs. He grasped her arm and pulled her onto her back again. “You will do as I tell you. You won’t pull away again.”

His words sent her over the edge. “You want to bring me pleasure, yet you play master to my slave with great enjoyment and ease. You want to dominate, Magnus, to subjugate, nothing more.”

He ignored the bitterness in her voice, acknowledged that she spoke the truth, and shook his head. “Hold still. I won’t tell you again.” He laid his palm flat on her belly even as he gave her the order. His other hand went down her, finding her, and again his fingers delved deep and sure, and began a movement that was slow, then fast, so light, then deep as the very feelings in her soul. She closed her eyes against the humiliation of it. He was touching her and looking at her face, wanting to see her expression, knowing that she hated this probing of her body, this final seal of his victory over her.

Then, suddenly, there was an answering deep inside her and she froze, not at first understanding. He sensed it and quickly deepened the rhythm of his fingers. “You begin to respond,” he said, and there was pleasure in his voice. He sounded proud of her, as if she were a dog performing tricks he told her to. Then, without warning, the answering changed, intensifying and fanning out as flames under a bellows, exploding into a pleasure so intense, so shattering, that she moaned with it and wanted to die because she had moaned. She was beyond humiliation now, for he was there watching and judging his efforts. She heard her own cries, soft and torn from her throat. The pleasure built inside her. She knew there was more, that there was something beyond the pressure and the fullness that was ever increasing now, and she knew too that she would be alone when it came to her. She never doubted that whatever it was would happen, for he was controlling her, not sharing with her. He was completely apart from her.

Magnus leaned over her, his warm breath on her cheek, encou

raging her, telling her to lift her hips, to move against his fingers, to kiss him, yea, to kiss him and let her tongue touch his. And he watched her, watched her closely, and he saw when she could no longer control it, could no longer hold back from him or from herself. When her pleasure came, he kissed her deeply and took her cries into his mouth, deeper still, into his soul.

“ ’Twas well done of you,” he said when her breathing calmed a bit. “To have a woman cry out with pleasure makes a man feel quite proud of himself.”

She felt desolate. She looked up at him, saying nothing, and saw the anger build in his eyes.