Judith, unfortunately, completely misread the situation. Her dark eyes blazed with pain and fury combined. In the next heartbeat, she reached to her belt, fumbling for her knife.
“No, it’s not what you think!” Ylva cried out, scrambling back to a sitting position. “Don’t!”
Judith didn’t appear to have heard her. “I will not have you endure what I endured,” she screamed. “I will die first!”
There was no time to react before she launched herself at Ulf.
Fortunately, he had not been on his back and his reflexes were finely honed, better than those of a clumsy, desperate woman’s. He twisted to the side, and the blade that should have pierced his chest merely grazed his arm.
“No!” Ylva screamed, scuttling backward. “Oh, no, don’t kill him! Don’t kill her!”
She didn’t know what she was saying or who she was talking to, had no idea who she was most afraid for. All she knew was that this was a nightmare. Judith was too blinded by her recent ordeal to see reason and stop before she had hurt the man she saw as an aggressor, and Ulf was so strong he could hurt her friend without meaning to. They would never get out of this unscathed. And it was all her fault.
“Stop!” she cried again.
Thankfully, then, they did stop. Judith found herself lying on her stomach, with both her wrists imprisoned in an iron hold. Ulf had disarmed her and was doing his best to restrain her without crushing her. There was a red slash on his right arm, just where his arm ring would be if he wore it on this side. Damnation, what Ylva had feared had come to pass. He’d been cut. Mercifully, though, Judith appeared unharmed.
“You’re hurt,” she started, placing a hand on Ulf’s shoulder. “You need?—”
“’Tis nothing, just a scratch.” He nodded to Judith, who was whimpering but seemed to have exhausted all her strength. “Talk to her. She’s petrified.”
Yes. Petrified by what she thought would happen to her, and horrified by what she’d seen—or thought she’d seen.
“Don’t touch me, you beast, let me go!” she was saying, her voice little more than a sob. “I will not—not?—”
“No, you won’t,” Ylva said gently, sending a pleading look at Ulf, who released her friend and moved away from the pallet. “No one is going to hurt you. I swear.” But the assurance had little effect on Judith. There was only one thing that would help calm her nerves. Ulf needed to leave. “Will you go out, leave us a moment? Please?”
“I’m naked,” he whispered. “And apparently, everyone is waiting outside.”
Oh dear, he did have a point. He could not leave the hut like this, but she needed to talk to her friend in private, calm her fears, explain what had really happened, assure her she would not be attacked again. She could not do that while he was near. Judith was too shocked. Curled up in a ball, she had hidden her face in her hands and was mumbling to herself.
“Very well.” Ulf sighed, reaching to the braies he had discarded the evening before. “I will just tell everyone I was at the river this morning—oh, and that I just caught my arm on a nail, or something,” he added, glancing at the bleeding cut on his arm.
“Yes. Thank you.” Her own voice wobbled, because she was humbled by his understanding. Another man might well have taken offence at being mistaken for a rapist, attacked, and then sent away from his own house half-naked.
“Will you be all right with her?” he asked before opening the door.
“Yes.”
“What did he do to you?”Judith hissed, glaring in the direction of the door where Ulf had just disappeared.
Everything I never knew I wanted.
“Nothing I didn’t agree to, I swear. It’s not what you imagined.”
“I don’t have to imagine anything, I saw it all! He was holding you down, he was…hard, he was naked and he?—”
“Yes,” Ylva hurried to agree. She didn’t need to be reminded what she and Ulf had been about to do. She remembered it all too well. The memory of him naked, hard and poised above her, ready to give her pleasure, was something she would never forget as long as she lived. “What you saw was not what… What I mean is, he was not about to take me, much less against my will.”
“Oh?”
Judith was glowering. She clearly didn’t believe her. Ylva swallowed, because she wasn’t sure she would find the strength to say out loud what was needed to convince her friend that Ulf had not been about to force her.
“He wanted to give me pleasure. With his mouth.”
“Oh.” This time the word was little more than a breath.
“Yes. And he never did anything other than pleasure me last night.”
