9th Century
I am in the Jarl's roundhouse, alone now after the servant girl who had come in with an armful of fresh logs with which to stoke the fire has left. Gudry and Anja bathed me again after the feast, and I am now dressed in another silk tunic. At the back, it dips so low I feel the breeze on the top of my buttocks when I move, and at the front the fabric has been wound around a thin necklace of hammered gold around my neck. If I so much as lean the wrong way, my breasts will fall out. It's garments like the one I am wearing right now for which the term 'side-boob' was invented. I smile, very briefly, thinking of the term – thinking of the world of cars and shopping malls and celebrity tabloids for sale at grocery store checkouts. And then I look around again, and see where I am, and think about who will be coming for me soon.
Eirik. The Jarl. A sharp-toothed frisson of anticipation runs the length of my body at the thought of him. He is on his way to see me. Where is he? An hour away? Twenty minutes? Twenty seconds? And when he gets here, what will happen?
I am standing, walking around the roundhouse, nervously picking up objects and putting them back down again. The bed has been piled even higher with furs tonight, some of them silver-grey and tipped with white, others as black as the night sky. I gaze down at them, trying to get a handle on how I feel.
How do I feel? I don't know, I can't tell. I'm wound up tightly, I feel that. I feel a thrum of energy running under my skin, a certain tremble that threatens to seize my fingers as I hold them out in front of me and watch the firelight flickering between them.
Am I afraid? Yes, I think I am afraid. But then, the natural follow-up question – do I not want to see the Jarl? I cannot answer yes to that one. So how is it that I am both afraid and filled with a jumpy kind of longing? How is it that the thought of one of his big, rough hands on my body both thrills and intimidates me?
As I'm wrestling with these questions, aware that I might not have the time to ponder for long, the leather flap door opens and there he suddenly is.
I look up at him, at first because the simple act of him entering the roundhouse has drawn my attention and then because I can't look away. I have never seen a man like the Jarl before, and by that I don't mean I have never seen a man dressed in leather and furs or a man who wears his hair long and braided, with the braids near the front pulled tightly away from his face – although it's true, I hadn't seen a man like that before I met the Jarl. But it isn't what Eirik wears that draws my attention the way a burning torch draws moths to its light, and it isn't his hair or even his great height and breadth. It's something else, some inherent quality, a kind of purely male mastery that I have realized, after spending time with the Vikings, is not often to be found in modern men.
"Paige," he says, not moving from where he is standing in front of the doorway. "Are you warm girl? I told Hildy to send someone to build up the fire – did she do it?"
"Y-yes," I respond, my voice a whisper.
The Jarl unties a leather strap at his waist, unwinding it once, twice, and then setting his sword aside with a clatter. He is big, the kind of big that would make most men his size unwieldy, but instead of lumbering or stomping, Eirik moves like a panther – swift and powerful even in the smallest movements.
I am still standing up. The Jarl slides one of those rough-skinned hands, that I was thinking of not five minutes ago, around my neck and tilts my head up to him, rubbing his thumb over my chin and studying my eyes. Then he lies down on the bed of furs and reaches for a slice of apple on the wooden plate that has been left for him, should he get hungry in the night. I stay where I am, as if frozen to the spot.
"You're afraid."
"Yes," I reply, awkwardly resting my arms stiffly against my sides as I develop a sudden consciousness of their existence.
"It's as it is," Eirik says calmly, swallowing the apple as I try to decipher what he means. "You seem more afraid than most, though. Most, you can see behind their eyes that they want the thing they fear. You I'm not so sure. Maybe you prefer other girls, like yourself?"
I do a double-take at that comment. Have I just been asked if I'm a lesbian? In the 9th century?
"I, uh –" I start. "I –"
Eirik laughs. "You Angles are such funny people. Some men are born wanting men, and some women are born wanting women. What use is there in pretending it doesn't occur? As it is, girl, am I describing you accurately? Does your center grow soft and wet only at the thought of another's center doing the same?"
I shake my head no, just a little, and mumble the word 'no.'
"What was that?" The Jarl asks, his eyes demanding a clearer, louder answer.
"No," I say again, louder.
He reaches out, then, and caresses my ankle, slipping his fingers up over my calf until my knees feel as if they might just give way. "I'm teasing you, girl. You think I couldn't smell the hunger on you the other night?"
My cheeks begin to burn. They burn even brighter when I look down to see that the leather wrapped around his thighs has fallen open. As soon as I see it I turn away, as if my eyeballs might be scorched by the sight. I can feel my heartbeat pounding in my throat.
Eirik chuckles, utterly at ease with himself and his own arousal. "What is it?" He asks, and we both know he knows perfectly well what it is. "I don't believe you've never seen a man in such a state before. Besides, it's you who caused it. I'd be willing to guess that if I was to slip my hand up under that tunic, you'd be as slippery as a sun-warmed oyster."
As he speaks, the Jarl pulls me down onto the furs and does the thing he's talking about – slipping his hand up under my tunic. I don't breath at all as he pushes the silk out of the way, watching my eyes closely for a reaction.
It happens automatically, the second I feel his fingers on my sex, sliding between my lips. I reach down and push his hand away, even as a strange little sigh escapes my mouth, and then I look up, suddenly fearful when I realize what I've just done.
But the Jarl isn't angry, or even slightly upset. He's looking at his finger, shiny with my wetness, and then at me. "You're not afraid of me, girl. You're afraid of yourself. You've no need to worry, Paige with the pink cheeks. It's as I said – I won't rape you. You can relax, let yourself lie easy on the furs."
What does he mean when he says I'm afraid of myself? I don't know. I also don't know that I can trust him not to force himself on me, even as I'm not at all sure that he isn't the only thing I want.
"No," he says, his voice a low rumble, "I won't take you against your will."
The Jarl's eyes slide down from my own. The thin fabric of my tunic has slipped, half-revealing one of my breasts. I exhale quietly as he runs his thumb over it and the nipple pebbles under his touch.
"Beautiful," he murmurs, leaning in unexpectedly and closing his mouth around it.
I gasp loudly, shocked, almost undone by the syrup-thick sweetness of the sensation.
"There," the Jarl whispers, drawing me into his mouth. "There you go, girl."
Things are moving fast inside me. Thoughts, desires, it's all suddenly sped up, like a roller coaster rushing down the slope after a long, slow climb. Maybe not thoughts – I'm not thinking. Eirik pulls my tunic the rest of the way off my breast and takes it in his hand and my hands sink into his hair as I pull him into me.
"Oh my God," I breathe, reaching, grabbing desperately at him.
And then he stops, his hands tight on my wrists. He's laughing. I'm not laughing – I'm lying on my back, breathless, not entirely sure of what just happened. I can't think. I don't feel like I can breathe. Eirik looks down at me, his eyes a deep, stormy blue.
"I told myself I'd be soft with you, girl. A man knows how to be soft with a maid, how to take his time. And I'll take my time with you. But you make it difficult when you reach for me like that, when you look at me as you are right now, with all the things you need from me written all over your pretty face."
He's not kidding, either, about it being difficult. Even his voice sounds different – slower, deeper. He's holding back. An ache between my legs, one that I'm only just now dimly aware of, makes itself known. How can that be? If I 'fear' anything it's specifically that – the pain. Although I only saw him for less than a second, Eirik's manhood is of similar proportion to the man himself. How can I want something at the same time that I fear it? I don't know. I don't know. But I do.
I open my mouth like I'm doing everything else tonight – out of instinct, not consciousness. The decision is never made, my lips fall open for him because there is nothing else that could happen. And when they do, he slips his tongue between them and tightens his grip on my breast, squeezing and caressing until my body sings. When he stops, I'm panting.
There are no more words left in me. Whatever the time was for words is over. I reach up to my throat as the Jarls' eyes bore into me, and pull the top of the tunic out of the gold necklace, revealing my breasts completely. I see something in his eyes, then. A naked, animal thing. And when I see it, at the same moment I know in my heart that it won't be denied, there is no part of me that wants anything other than to indulge it.
"It's too much now, girl," Eirik says, grasping the tunic in his hands and yanking it the rest of the way off. He moves on top of me, pushing my thighs apart with one hand and I realize it's going to happen. Right now.
"Wait," I gasp. "Eirik. Please. Wait."
Why am I asking him to wait? I don't know. He doesn't either. He growls and buries the fingers of one hand in the fur, before balling it into a tight fist.
"Don't ask me to wait. Don't reveal yourself that way and then ask me to wait, girl."
"But I don't know what to do!" I say. "I don't know – I don't want to do the wrong thing – I"
Everything is heightened at this moment. Even as I'm terrified of doing something wrong, or stupid, my body is opening itself up, blooming for him. I don't want him to wait. He's right – it isn't him I fear, it's myself. As it always is.
It's all erased, though, my mind cleared utterly of anything except the Jarl, when he wraps his hand around himself and guides his full length into me not one second later. My back arches up off the furs and I suck air in, in, in to my lungs, scrabbling at the furs, at him, my eyes tearing up with the pain even as I want it – all of it.
Eirik holds me, puts his hands on either side of my face, forces me to look at him. And that alone brings me back to myself, calms me. I open my mouth for his tongue as he begins to move in and out of me and he gives it to me.
"I haven't been with a woman since that night," he breathes, propping himself up on his forearms and sinking into me over and over. "I chose – I wanted it to be you, Paige. Does it hurt, girl? Does it hurt? I don't mean to hurt you but you're so wet, my sweet one, so wet and tight around me. Voss...voss!"
I don't know what 'voss' means but the way he says it it sounds like he's swearing. Pain radiates out from my center as the Jarl takes me, but I make no move to stop him, I don't cringe away. Why? Because he's becoming incoherent. His breath is coming faster. His mouth hangs open and his eyes darken and nothing I have ever experienced in my life has been as good as this, as good as this man in this state. When he puts a hand on my belly and holds me down, fucking me harder, I curl my body up to him even as I'm still not entirely convinced any of this is physically possible.
"Paige. Oh, girl. I'm almost there. You've almost got me there. I'll put my baby inside you and you'll be mine. Is that what you want? Do you want –"
"Yes," I whimper, not thinking at all, just feeling, just reacting. It's not that I don't mean it, though. I do. An entire lifetime of messaging, years of sex ed, of lectures and warnings and it's gone in an instant. It's so gone I'm not even giving permission, I'm begging. "Yes. Eirik, please. Please..."
"Voss," he growls, moving faster. It's now that I start to feel it. A little tickle, a little something inside, a spot he's hitting. I angle my hips up.
"Look at me, girl. Look at –"
He takes my chin in one hand and turns my head towards him just in time for me to catch his face melting into a grimace of pleasure as he slams himself into me again and holds himself inside this time, his body rigid. I strain up to him, force my body open, starving for what he's giving me.
I watch the Jarl as I take all of him, I see the way the urgency melts away. He reaches down between our bodies and pulls himself out of me gently. I'm sore, out of breath, oddly restless.
As he collapses onto the furs beside me, catching his breath, I surmise that it must have happened – he must have come. Just the thought of it sends a shiver through my sex. And with the shiver comes another sensation – wetness, warmth. I slip my hand between my legs and draw my fingers across my thigh, looking for proof.
Eirik is watching me intently. When he sees what I'm doing he laughs. "Are you making a point?"
I catch his eye, confused. "What? No – I was just, uh, I was just checking to see if, um –"
He flattens one of his palms on my belly and leans in to kiss my mouth. "You really are an innocent, aren't you? Not anymore, I've taken care of that – but the look on your face, one would think you'd never pleased a man before. You seem to think of it as some difficult thing."
"I haven't pleased a man before," I reply, squirming on the bed of furs as what I think is bemusement – do I really have the power to please a man like the Jarl? – turns as if by some earthy alchemy into an even deeper desire. I wanted him before, even before he was inside me, but it was a chaotic wanting. Looking at my fingers, feeling the evidence of his pleasure, knowing I caused it – it's too much. I roll towards him and bury my face in his warm chest, hooking one of my legs over his hip. He grins.
"Come dawn, girl, you'll be weeping tears of my essence."
It takes me a few seconds to figure out what he's saying, but when I do, when I realize he's just told me he's going to spend the entire night filling me with his cum, a hot flush of lust seizes me and I wrap my arms around the Jarl, pulling him to me even as the painful throbbing between my legs has yet to die down.
I see that he's almost ready again, but instead of pushing me open again – something I'm dying to feel once more – he pulls away, easily holding me down on the furs with one hand.
"Eirik –" I sigh, impatient.
He pushes himself down, kissing my breasts, then my belly. "Mmm," he murmurs, going lower still. "I like the sound of my name on your lips, Paige. I think I will give up being Jarl and stay here with you for the rest of my days if you promise to never stop speaking my name in that way."
I've never been the girl who caused this kind of response. I've looked at other girls enviously, wondered how it felt to inspire such carnality in men, but never even seriously considered that I might have the same power. And now that I'm tasting it for the first time I am utterly intoxicated. A tiny sigh from me and Eirik growls, opening his lips against my bare thigh like he's just barely controlling the urge to devour me. And all I want is more of that – more of him, more of his need.
"Eirik," I whisper as he slides his arms under my ass and beings me up to his mouth. I'm about to say it again when he bends his head – his stubble prickly on my thighs – and suddenly I'm moaning like an animal, digging my fingers into the solid flesh of his shoulders. White hot bliss radiates out from the spot where his warm, wet tongue slips over my clit and everything that was diffuse is suddenly focused, concentrated.
"Oh my God," I whimper, my eyes rolling back into my head. It's way too much. Nothing I've ever done to myself has felt like this perfect, slippery pressure. I push my fingers into the Jarl's hair, unthinking, and pull him against me as my thighs quiver.
"Eirik," I cry out as he hesitates for a brief moment at exactly the right time, letting my orgasm build and build before pushing his tongue over me again and not stopping even as I beg and scream and claw at his shoulders.
And then my mind is blank. I don't hear the sounds I make, there is no consciousness of anything except the pleasure spooling out from my very center, coming and coming and coming until I'm a sweaty, half-giggling, half-panting mess on the Jarl's bed of furs.
When I regain the ability to speak – and who knows how long it's been – one minute? Ten? I shake my head, disbelieving. My body is limp, wrung out. And when I open my eyes, there he is, looking at me.
"How did you do that?" I whisper softly, because speaking any louder is going to take effort and I don't even feel I have the strength to move a single finger at this moment.
Eirik smiles and settles down next to me, sweetly unable to keep his hands off my body. "Sometimes it just happens that way, girl. Sometimes two souls are both at exactly the right place. I had an idea it would be like this, though."
"Did you?" I ask, looking down and then right back up again when I see he is completely hard. "Wait – um –"
"Do you want to do something about that?"
Yes. Yes I want to do something about it. It's new to me, this need to satisfy, and it warms my belly even as I haven't quite come down from what Eirik just did to me. Perhaps his comment about me weeping tears of his cum by the morning was a simple truth instead of a figure of speech?
"Are you afraid of it?" He asks, as I eye but don't touch his rigid cock.
I shake my head. "No. I – uh, no. It's just –"
"Here," he says, taking my hand in his and guiding it down, using his own fingers to wrap mine around his length. And when he feels me, his eyes close and he exhales heavily. It's like a drug, that reaction. All I want is more of it.
Tentatively, I slide my grip down, and then up again. The Jarl's hips jerk forward, pushing himself harder into my grip. "Like this?" I ask.
"You're killing me," he responds, moaning quietly. "The way you ask so sweetly, the look in your eyes – you really don't know, do you? You don't ask to make a show of your innocence, you ask because you really don't – ohh," he stops, looking down, watching my hand around him, "ohhh. Paige. You're going to finish me again, girl, and too soon once more."
"It's not too soon," I insist, leaning in and kissing Eirik's cheek, his temple, his neck, filled with a desperate urge to please, to take care of him in this one way. "It's not too soon. I – I want you to."
He grimaces. "Don't say such things, girl. You only guarantee it."
But he's stiffening in my hand, a brand new sensation for me, and clear liquid is leaking out, running down over the head of him, over my fingers. He's moving quicker, too, and so I move quicker.
The Jarl's eyes consume my body as he gets closer. They linger on my breasts as they bounce and move with the intensity of our rocking movements, and on my bare belly, my lips before he opens his mouth against them, pushing his tongue in deep, deep. There's aggression there now, and I find myself wanting nothing more than to fan its flames, to push it higher and higher.
"Voss," Eirik groans, pushing two fingers between my legs. "Paige, voss! Paige, Paige –"
The thought pops into my head as the Jarl gnashes his teeth with lust, slipping his fingers into me, palming my sex like it belongs to him, that nothing could be better than this. Nothing could be better than him like this. He grabs my wrist tightly, controlling my hand's movements when he begins to come and I look down, watching it, watching him spill himself all over my hand, my belly, the furs. He keeps holding on tight, too, until he's wrung every last drop out of himself, and then he looks down at my white hand and lets go quickly.
"I'm sorry, girl, I didn't realize –"
"Don't be sorry," I sigh, starry-eyed, totally drunk.
I roll over onto my back and look at the roof of the longhouse – the trunks of young trees arranged laid out around a small hole at the center, to let the smoke from the fire escape, and then the gaps filled in with mud and straw. What's happening to me? I almost ask the question out loud. I'm warm, relaxed, as content as I have ever been in my life. I can't look at Eirik either, even as I feel him there next to me, his jewel-like blue eyes still focused only on me. I'm afraid to look at him. He picks up on it immediately, and with such accuracy I wonder for a moment if he's some kind of mind-reader.
"Why do you look away, girl? Are you frightened?"
I nod, and am shocked to feel tears spring to my eyes. They're not sad tears, though – in fact they're unlike any tears I have ever experienced before. The Jarl runs his fingers tenderly over my cheek.
"What is it that frightens you?"
And even though I have a strong feeling he knows what's happening in my heart better than I do, I respond anyway. "It feels like I might drown," I tell him. "Right now, if I look at you, it feels like I might lose myself. I'm sorry, I'm babbling, I don't even know what I'm talking about."
"Oh but you do," Eirik says, pulling me back against him and holding me tight. "You said it yourself – you might drown. You don't know enough yet to know that there is nothing sweeter in life than drowning in another person."
I roll back over so I can look him in the eyes. "That just makes it scarier."
I'm telling the truth. Lying there naked in the Jarl's arms, with his wetness still slick on my thighs and the fire warming us both, it feels like it wouldn't take any effort at all to let go, to drift off into whatever it is that's happening between us and forget all about 2016, as if I had lived my whole life in the past and the whole of my life in the future had been nothing more than a dream.
I fall asleep with Eirik's body curled around me, a dull ache between my legs and the feeling in my heart that things are not anything like as simple as it feels to be in his arms.