She felt him against her hip. She knew a man’s lust drove him beyond his own best intentions, beyond thought, for she’d seen it in Einar and other men as well, and Rorik as well, although not this time. She wanted to touch his man’s flesh, but when her fingers found him, and she drew in her breath at the wonder of how he felt, he gently pushed them away. “No, sweeting. Not this time. No, don’t look uncertain. Your touch is miraculous and it moves me far too much. I am not content to wait for that pleasure, but I will.”
He parted her thighs and eased himself between them, then rose to his knees, parting her legs impossibly wide, and wider still, placing them over his own thighs. She didn’t pull back, either her mind or her body. She waited, relishing the pulsing warmth deep in her belly. He looked at her and there was hunger in his eyes and a knowledge that she knew he would give her and soon. When he still didn’t come into her, she lifted her hips. He smiled as he lowered his mouth to her.
When she screamed her release, Rorik breathed in deeply, the clean sea air and her scent filling his nostrils. He continued to stroke her with his tongue, widen her with his fingers, and delve deep, feeling her smallness and how she accommodated to him. When he thrust into her, sinking high and deep, and she again lifted her hips to bring him deeper, he felt the tremors in her body and closed his eyes, feeling the power in her, the need, and that need was for him. He kissed her mouth and knew she tasted herself on him and he reveled in that too because he heard the soft keening from deep in her throat, felt the gentle spasms squeeze him, draw on him, pull him deeper into her, holding him so tightly he knew he couldn’t bear it much longer. He heaved himself into her to his hilt and felt her soft flesh hold him tightly. When he felt his own release overtaking him, he eased his hand between them to find her.
He shouted his climax to the clean sky, his throat working madly, no thought in his mind to his men who probably heard his cries. All of it went upward, to the brilliant stars that studded the darkness, then he covered her mouth with his when she again came to pleasure.
“I pleased you,” he said, a man’s satisfaction deepening his voice, as he eased his weight off her. She tried to hold him, but he kissed her and pulled away. “I wish you to remain round and soft for me. If I continue to lie on you, you will become as flat as the blankets.”
She laughed, her breath warm and soft against his shoulder. “I much enjoyed that, my lord. Aye, you satisfied me enough.”
“Are you certain, Mirana? Do you swear you did not howl like a madwoman just to please me, that you did not feign your release with me, that you only pretended to enjoy my mouth on you?”
She hit his arm and felt the deep muscles flex beneath her palm. She looked away from him, her lashes hiding her eyes. She whispered, her voice meek and submissive. “Ah, ’tis the truth, Rorik. I didn’t wish to disappoint you. I wanted you to feel proud of yourself and your prowess. I pretended and prayed it would be sufficient. Did I succeed?”
He laughed against her mouth, forcing her face upward to him. “I will never let you go. Never.” And he kissed her again. When he entered her but moments later, she was surprised to feel the building warmth in her belly. She had felt so languid, so without any desire to move, but she welcomed him and his man’s sex deep inside her, and moaned in his mouth even as he pressed himself against her belly. This time, it was she who found him and touched him, drawing him deeper into her, caressing him until he moaned and heaved over her.
“There is no other man like you,” she said against his throat, licking his flesh, then lightly kissing him, then licking him again and again, tasting him, taking all of him into her body and her mind.
32
THEY WERE SO close to home, so very close, not more than a day away. Mirana stared at the gathering storm clouds, shivering from the sudden chill wind as she watched them roil overhead, gathering thicker and thicker, knitting the sky into blackness. The sun had been shining brightly just that morning, not more than two hours before, sparkling off the water in its brightness, the air warm, filled with the tangy sea salt and the scent of the dozen herring the men had caught.
She shivered again, drawing her cloak more closely around her. It was a queen’s cloak and she hated it. She fingered the soft royal blue wool, and wished she could throw it over the side of the longboat. It was the only piece of clothing she had brought with her. Hormuze had wanted to give her much more, for, he’d said, the clothes had been made for her, and Sira was too large, after all, but Mirana hadn’t wanted to wear any reminders of her time at Clontarf. She didn’t want to be reminded of her few hours as the queen of Ireland, a position she prayed Sira would enjoy. She wondered how Sira had reacted when she’d awakened and seen Hormuze and her dark brown hair. Would she believe she looked coarse? That memory made her smile, but just for a moment.
The cloak, despite its black memories, felt quite warm. She would give it to Entti, she thought, once they’d returned home. To Hawkfell Island. She looked toward Rorik, who was speaking to each of his men, then shouting to Hafter, who was captaining the other longboat. He’d told her he’d brought the flat-bottomed longboats because he’d known he would need them to navigate on the shallow river Liffey. The warships were steeper, curving up higher on the sides, and sat deeper in the water. The warships would have fared much better in the storm that was surely coming.
All the men were readying the longboats and themselves for the storm, their movements efficient, no time wasted in talk.
She saw that Rorik was now frowning. He knew the storm would be bad. She wondered if he would take them ashore for the duration of it even as she remembered her own adventure with Entti when the storm had burst upon them. It seemed a lifetime ago. She said her question aloud to Gunleik.
“Nay,” Gunleik said, shaking his head, even as he spat upon his finger and held it up into the wind. “This area is more dangerous than the storm. There are rocks just below the surface and dangerous currents. We cannot land here. We must ride out the storm just beyond the breakers. Rorik is pulling us closer right now, but he must take it slowly. It is a pity that we are here when the storm will strike, but the gods willed it so.”
“I do not approve the gods’ will in this case,” Mirana said tartly. “I know of no evil we’ve committed.”
Indeed, Mirana doubted the gods would waste their time on such a consideration as the exact location of two longboats, but she didn’t remark upon it. She looked toward the other longboat, just to their stern, not ten feet away. Einar was still bound, doubtless still lying on the planking. She wondered, briefly, if he were frightened. With the storm, he might drown with the water flooding into the longboat, and he must realize that. She rather hoped he would. She knew and now accepted that Rorik would take Einar back to Norway, to his father, who would call together a meeting of the thing, and that would bring together all the Thanes and lesser nobles, even King Harald, and Einar would be judged. She knew too that Rorik would demand that he fight Einar to the death. And thus it would end. She wanted that ending more than anything.
Sometimes she wanted to strike her husband for his endless honor. She would have preferred sticking a knife in Einar’s ribs. Rorik had said calmly, though Mirana had heard the banked rage in his voice, “I should prefer to kill him slowly, with my bare hands, but I should also like to see the man who killed so many of our family and our people stand before us and be judged. I will kill him, Mirana, but in a fight that will be fair.”
“You speak of justice, Rorik, but it is a cold thing, many times a thing apart from men and women. It perhaps satisfies the mind, but never the soul. Thus, my lord, I believe you are really doing this for your father and mother, aren’t you?”
He was surprised, his eyes narrowing on her face. “How can you know me so well?”
“I pray that I will come to know you in every way a woman can know a man. Can I not now know some of what is in your mind, in your heart even now? Aye, I believe you want to help your parents forget their hatred. You want them to look forward, to recognize and cherish what they still have, what they will have in the future. You want them to face their enemy and see that Einar is only a man, a cruel man, a man who deserves death for what he did, and he will get it.”
“Aye,” he said only, and kissed her.
“I would go with you to this meeting of all the Thanes,” she said, but he hadn’t replied, merely kissed her again, and walked to the stern of the longboat to speak to Kron.
She raised her face now to the roiling black clouds overhead. A raindrop hit her forehead. She heard one of the men shout. It was beginning. She huddled in her cloak.
She heard Rorik’s voice over the loud slamming waves against the sides of the longboats, calm and steady, and knew all the men responded to him and were calmed by him. But would it be enough?
All of them were soaked. She had spent the past hours scooping water out of the bottom of the longboat in a leather water pouch, little enough to do when all the men were nearly beyond exhaustion, their minds closed against the growing pain in their bodies. Gunleik had been seized with violent back spasms that morning and had soon run out his strength, and thus wasn’t at the oars. He, like Mirana, was trying to scoop water out of the longboat before it swamped.
She felt her stomach rise in her throat when the longboat slammed down into a deep trough, burrowing deep and deeper still, sloughing through it, making it seem as if they would touch the bottom of the sea itself, yet staying intact, a miracle, Mirana thought, and briefly closed her eyes in prayer.