Page 79 of A Tale of Two Vikings

“If I should get you with child, I would offer for you. If you refuse, then you must let me acknowledge my child and be a part of the babe’s life.”

“You ask much.”

“Nay, Helga, you are the one who asks much.”

“Why would you be willing to make this compromise?”

“Because I want you so bad my teeth hurt and my loins ache. I have never wanted a woman as much as I want you.” And because my cock is so hard it hurts and must soon find a sheath. And because you are driving me eye-rolling barmy. And because I keep picturing candles. And because I want to see for myself if you have turned into a raisin down there.

He could tell that his words pleased her. Good thing he’d kept his coarser thoughts to himself. “Besides,” he said with a grin, “Toste wants me to.”

She grinned back at him. “Been talking to your dead brother again, have you?”

“Yea. All the time.” He reached across the table and took one of her hands in his. Just that gesture gave him a thrill, so besotted was he. When he laced the fingers of her hand in one of his and their wrists pressed against each other, he had to close his eyes against the intense emotion he felt. He could not imagine the outcome of this strange pact they were making, but it felt right. “Will I come to you tonight, or will you come to me?” he asked in a voice raw with need.

“I will come to you.”

And so their fate was sealed.

When a man loves a woman…

Vagn had told Helga that he was a full-grown man who was too old for games, but he felt like a youthling now. And games were beginning to hold way too much appeal. Sex games, that is.

He swept the stale rushes from his bedchamber and replaced them with new fragrant ones. He put clean linens on the mattress and shook out the bed furs. An extra candle burned on a low table. A warm fire burned in the small hearth. All this he did himself, wanting to please Helga with these intimate courtesies.

As for himself, he bathed, shaved off his facial hairs and braided war braids on either side of his face. A man needed his hair off his face when leaning over a woman. Then he donned clean garments.

He looked down at his hands as he waited for her and saw that they trembled. The sight pulled him up short.

Was the trembling from excessive arousal? After all, it had been almost a year since he’d lain with a woman, thanks to his and Toste’s forced celibacy as Jomsvikings.

Or was he suddenly nervous about his talents in the bedsport? That could not be. He’d been making love for fifteen and more years, and his expertise had never failed him.

Then it must be Helga who turned him into a jittery halfling. Scary prospect, that. No woman had ever had such an effect on him. It made him feel vulnerable and lacking in his usual self-confidence. Like a needy milksop, for the love of Frigg! Good thing his old friend Bolthor the Skald was no longer in this world. He would compose a horrible poem about Vagn’s present dilemma…something like “When Viking Men Lose Their Swagger.”

It was unacceptable, he decided, slamming his cup of ale down on the table and causing the candle flame to flicker. I am Vagn Ivarsson. I do not humble myself for anyone. Not even a woman for whom my lust is high.

He undid his belt and jerked his tunic over his head, tossing it to the floor and no doubt mussing his hair in the process. He did not care. He was angry with himself. Next he sat down on the bed and pulled off his half-boots and short hose, pitching them across the chamber to land hither and yon. He was about to shimmy out of his braies when he heard her soft knock on the door. He stopped in mid-shimmy, unsure whether to take them off or not. But Helga took that decision out of his hands by entering without waiting for his response to her knock. He yanked the breeches back up.

Before she even looked at him, she turned and made sure the door was locked so they would not be disturbed. Smart thinking. At least someone in this room was thinking with the right body part.

She wore the same blue cloak she’d worn to his chamber afore, but she was not nude underneath as she’d been then. He saw that when she dropped the cloak. She was covered from neck to wrist to ankles by a thin linen bed rail. The shift was plain, but Helga was not. Her blond hair hung loose about her back and shoulders and chest.

Her wide blue eyes took in his state of undress. He saw fear there and in the clenching of her fists at her sides.

In that moment, Vagn forgot his misgivings over his own seeming vulnerabilities. “Helga,” was all he could manage to say.

As if given a cue, she flew at him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and burying her face in the crook of his neck. “I thought this would be easy,” she confessed.

So did I. “It will be.” I hope.

At first, he just held her tightly against him with one arm around her waist and the other hand up under her hair, kneading her nape. He kissed the top of her fragrant head and murmured nothing words to soothe her.

Helga was tall, only a half-head shorter than he. So, with her on tiptoe, they stood breast to bare chest, belly to belly, thigh to thigh, woman-place to manpart. It seemed they fit perfectly together.

In that instant, Vagn realized something important. All his experience in bedsport, all the charm acquired during years of dealing with women—none of it mattered. This joining with Helga was special…different. He couldn’t say how or why. It just was. In some ways, he would be as much a virgin as Helga. He thought he heard Toste laughing in his head at that outlandish notion.

Helga raised her head finally and looked at him.