“Merrik,” she said, and clasped his back to bring him even deeper. He couldn’t hold back, though he wanted to. Once, then again, he came deeply into her, then nearly withdrew until he was shuddering with the frenzy of his need, then he was heaving over her, crying out, his arms stiff as he held himself over her, and she said his name again and again, accepting him, taking all of him, and he didn’t want it to stop, ever.
They lay close, her right leg over his belly, her cheek against his heart, her hair damp from her urgency, fanned out over his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head, tightening his arms around her. “You give me passion,” he said. “I wish I could have seen your face when you reached your pleasure.”
Her knee moved downward just a bit until she covered his groin. The scent of him was rich and dark in the night air, filling her nostrils, and her scent was mixed with his.
“Cease your movement or I will take you again. You must be sore from me, Laren.”
She leaned up a bit and kissed his chest, his shoulder, his throat. She sucked at the pulse in his neck, then kissed his mouth. “It was a man who struck Erik.”
He stilled. She came up onto her side, her fingers smoothing the hair on his chest, lightly stroking him.
“How do you know this?”
“I remembered that he stood over me, smiling in triumph. I wasn’t completely unconscious. He stood there, Merrik, saying nothing, just smiling. He didn’t try to help me, he did nothing save smile that loathsome smile. It’s just that I can’t see his face, yet I know he was pleased that I was there, pleased because I would be blamed for killing Erik and none would suspect him. I cannot be certain that he did murder Erik, but it does seem likely, does it not?”
“You are certain?”
“Aye.”
He cursed then, soft and long, and she felt the tension coming into his body and hated it. She should have waited to tell him, but now it was too late.
“Oleg and I learned very little today talking to each of our people. But you know something, Laren, I have been thinking that this man must have followed you up the trail to the point. Perhaps he meant to kill you, but when Erik came, he waited to see what would happen. All knew my brother wanted you. When you escaped my brother, he struck Erik down. When he saw you unconscious on the path, he knew he’d won. You would be blamed.”
“There is but one man who would do that.”
“Aye. But we must be certain, very certain.”
She kissed him again, unable to stop herself, and that kiss led to another and yet another and her hands were soon wild on him, stroking her palms over his chest, downward to his belly and into the thick hair at his groin. When she touched him, she breathed in and said into his mouth, “The way you feel, Merrik, ’tis nothing I could have ever imagined.”
“Nor I,” he said. “Nor I.”
19
DEGLIN GULPED DOWNhis ale and wiped his hand across his mouth. “It’s hot out here,” he said as he poured himself another cup from the barrel beside him. He frowned as he looked up to see three women washing clothing in the big wooden tub set on wooden planks beneath a full-branched oak tree. “Aye, it’s as hot as she is, the cold bitch.”
“As who is?” Oleg asked, looking toward the women.
“That bitch, Laren. I tell you, Oleg, she is nothing, nothing at all.” He drank down more of the ale. “She bewitched Merrik, then whored for him. Aye, she pretended she was hot for him, as hot as that damned sun baking my flesh.”
Oleg merely nodded, keeping his head down, sipping only at his cup of ale. He didn’t want Deglin to see his growing rage. He wanted him to keep talking. Deglin had already drunk a good half dozen cups of the strong ale. At least now he was speaking of Laren. Oleg kept his features carefully blank. He waited. He suddenly had a clear memory of Laren lying over Merrik’s thighs while his friend cleaned the blood from the welts on her back. He wondered if Merrik could have possibly imagined that this thin pathetic girl would become his wife. He listened to Deglin speak of the worthlessness of both Laren and Taby, how they’d taken over, how they’d turned Merrik against him, how they deserved retribution, aye, and he would see that there was punishment for the bitch. The summer sun was warm on Oleg’s head, the breeze soft and sweet, filled with the scents of the ripening barley just beyond. He didn’t think it was too hot. He felt his skin warming and flexed his shoulders. He looked at Deglin then and drew back at the stark anger he saw on the man’s face, aye, and there was more. There was misery, deep pain that Oleg refused to see, misery he didn’t want to acknowledge or to understand. No, he wanted to take Deglin’s skinny neck between his two hands and squeeze the wretched life from him, but he didn’t. He sat there and listened and nodded and tried to look thoughtful from drink, a silly look, he knew.
Deglin, restless, his fingers fisting then relaxing, continued, his voice as bitter as the frigid winds of the winter solstice, “Aye, she’s a bitch and she should die. Look what she did to Erik and all have absolved her and just because she claims she is Rollo’s niece! By all the gods, it is madness to believe her, naught but a slave she is, and Merrik found her in Kiev. A slave, and that little brother of hers is probably her own child, a bastard and a slave.”
“You don’t believe she’s Rollo’s niece?”
Deglin spat on a pile of bones then kicked them. “She is a liar, and now she has won. Merrik has proven himself a weakling, easily led and gullible, not the man I believed him to be, not that he ever showed he was as brave as his poor brother, aye, he failed all of us, taking that viper to wed. I will leave. I should have gone with Thoragasson. He begged me to go with him, but I said I had to remain with Merrik, that I owed my loyalty to his family.”
Oleg wanted to tell him that all knew Thoragasson had decided he didn’t want him. If he couldn’t have Laren, he didn’t want to settle for Deglin. Thoragasson had said, his voice as cold as the Vestfold winter, “The man’s lowness offends me. I have to suffer my own daughter’s pettiness, Deglin’s I do not.” Oleg had wanted to tell him that Deglin should wed Letta and let them berate each other, but he’d been smart enough to keep quiet. Oleg said now, “Erik wanted the girl Laren very badly. It is obvious he followed her up the path to the peak. Did she strike him to protect herself? She says not. Even if she did strike him, why it would be to defend herself, would it not?”
Deglin suddenly looked austere, and it sat strangely on him since he was so drunk he could scarcely stand. “She is a slave. Erik could have raped her until his manhood rotted off. It was his right.”
Oleg just shrugged. “It matters not, for Merrik believes she didn’t kill Erik; most of the people believe her for she is Rollo’s niece and thus a lie wouldn’t be in her nature.”
“Ha! She killed Erik because she knew she had Merrik. Erik would never have set aside Sarla, so she had no choice but to kill the man who stood master of Malverne before Merrik. Aye, she wanted Malverne and now she’s won.”
“But she was unconscious. She’d knocked herself out hitting her head against a rock. I myself saw the lump on the back of her head.”
“Aye, she was unconscious, but that was after she’d struck Erik. She was running, panicked and heedless, to escape her crime.”
