A Viking's Peace: Futuristic Science Fiction Romance (Vikings in Space Book 1) (10 page)

“I told him we’re in a relationship.”

“He told me that he’d break my kneecaps if I hurt you.”

It was her turn to laugh. “I’d like to see him try.”

Reinn stepped closer, sweeping her into his arms. “If I hurt you, I’d let him.”

9

Her first look at Reinn’s farm was, unfortunately, in the dark. The party had gone late into the night, long after the sun had set on the longest day of the year. Now they were alone, and Reinn was hurrying her through the beautiful living space.

“Hold on, I want to see this place I’m going to call home,” she murmured, tugging on his arm.

“You’ll have your entire life to explore. There’s a kitchen and a fireplace and a bunch of places to sit. None of them are nearly as interesting as the bedroom, I promise.” He leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth.

“You didn’t get enough this afternoon?” She shifted, trying to catch his lips, but he moved too quickly.

“I told you. I have gifts and oil and a hot springs bath. I’m going to make love to you until dawn. Then we shall take a nap, and do it all over again.” He kissed his way down her neck. “And tomorrow you can set about making this house our home.”

“Until dawn?” she breathed, tipping her head back as he reached the pulse point in the hollow of her collarbone. “You aren’t tired?”

He pressed his hips into her belly, and her sex pulsed as the thick length of his erection made itself known between them. “Do I feel tired?”

“Hmmm, I’m not sure.” She shrieked as he hoisted her over his shoulder and stalked through the single story farmhouse. She vaguely noticed a large dining space between the common room and the kitchen, and then they were heading down a hallway. Dim lights lit up as they moved through each space, then faded away again, a clever motion-sensor energy conservation device that Ashleigh would have wanted to ask more about if she didn’t think she might get spanked for it.

Reinn’s hands were hot, possessive brands on her hip and thigh. Ashleigh clung to his back as he moved them purposefully to his room.
Their room
. Sweetness and light, she couldn’t wrap her head around that.
 

It had been a long time since she’d had a place of her own, and even then it had been her mother’s home, not hers.

He set her down more gently than she expected. None of the bed tossing of earlier. This time they stood together in the middle of a large bedroom with a wall of windows, that when Reinn turned her slowly, wrapping himself around her from behind, she realized she was actually looking at sliding doors. And on the other side was what looked like a natural hot spring pool that overlooked the lake, surrounded by solar lights.

“Oh,” she said, a single word infused with wonder.

“I built the house around this bath,” he said quietly.
 

“It’s beautiful.”

“Even more so through your eyes.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice the stack of gifts on the bed.”

She blinked in that direction, then laughed. “I was wondering why you didn’t toss me down somewhere flat.” The bed was more like the one at the inn in the city, a tall four poster bed, made from heavy dark wood and draped in raw canvas drapes. Private, intimate, and entirely masculine. A bed built for sex.

A nervous shiver worked its way through her body. So much of their connection was physical, and she’d agreed to marry him anyway. She was out of her mind.

“Open them.” He nudged her forward. Four boxes lay stacked two-high. The first one held another amber bottle of oil. She glanced back at Reinn over her shoulder, and the sight of him lazily undressing behind her stole her breath. “Keep going,” he said, his voice rough and raspy.

She licked her lips as she opened the larger box beneath the oil. A dark purple dress, shot through with gold thread. “Wow,” she whispered.

“I like the one you’re wearing just as much. It touches me that I didn’t need to ask you to don the clothes of my people.”

The next small box was light as air, and she opened it with great curiosity. Inside lay a simple leather necklace with a bone pendant. Reinn leaned over her and took it from her fingers, bringing it up to her neck. “I made this for you. It will look beautiful when you are wearing nothing else.”

Before she could open the final box, Reinn started to undress her. “I’m not done,” she laughed.

“Trust me, I’m helping.”

She let her hands fall to her side as he took a creative approach to removing her dress, starting with a thorough exploration of her breasts. Her head tipped back against his shoulder as he gently teased her nipples before pulling the garment over her head. He kissed the bare skin at her neck, then tugged her loose shift down her body instead of up.

Ashleigh groaned as her breasts popped free and Reinn left her arms trapped in the confines of her underdress stuck at her waist. He snagged the bottle of oil and poured some in his other hand, just enough to make his skin glisten.

“I’ve wanted to do this for weeks,” he growled. “Watching you across the room, all straight-laced and proper. I was the only person in the room who knew just how hot you could get underneath that uniform, Lieutenant. The way you ground your ass against me that first night…do you know how tempted I was to drag you into a dark corner and fuck you senseless?”

“I would have let you,” she whispered, cheeks burning.

“People would have heard you.” His voice worked its way under her skin and heated her from the inside out. “You can’t keep quiet when I’m fucking you.”

She couldn’t keep quiet now, and all he had inside her at the moment were whispered filthy promises.

“Let it out,
min elskede
. I love the sounds you make. Maybe even enough to let others hear them.”

She froze. He was still making lazy circles around her breasts, and for a minute she thought he didn’t feel her reaction, but then he kissed her neck. “I said maybe. I don’t want to share you.”

“I can’t imagine wanting anyone else in our bed, Reinn.” She twisted her face into his neck, wanting to touch him. She craved his solidity, a reassurance that this was real and forever.

“I feel the same way,
min elskede
, I promise. But if you ever do…” He rolled his palm over one nipple, then the other. “I’d find a way to make it happen in a way that made us both happy. I know you like to watch.”

She closed her eyes. She hadn’t known that about herself until she’d arrived here, but watching people together from the circle of Reinn’s arms had been one of the most erotic experiences of her life.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. His words and his touch and the memory of all of their love-making from the afternoon all fuelled her desire and she found herself writhing against his hand as he worked his way down her body. The shift fell to the floor, baring the rest of her, and then she was in his arms and he was perching her on the foot of the bed.

She clung to his neck as he spread her legs, her forehead pressed against his shoulder. They watched together as he drizzled oil on his cock.

“I promised to show you how I touch myself,” he said, and she wondered if it was possible to orgasm based on auditory stimulation alone. A tremor wracked her body.

He gripped himself firmly, sliding his hand up and down his swollen shaft. She was captivated by the slick oil and how it highlighted the topography of his skin. Blood vessels skimming under the surface. The subtle fold of his foreskin stretched behind the thick plum head. The dark slit at the very end that she wanted to get her mouth on again.
 

She slipped her hands away from him, cupping her breasts and pinching her nipples before leaning back on one hand to touch herself the same way he was.

He hissed when her fingers started making a wet, juicy sound as she rubbed her clit faster, and then he leaned into her, reaching past to shove the boxes to the ground.

“I need you,” he ground out.

“The fourth present,” she gasped as he climbed onto the bed, moving her bodily to the middle of the mattress.

“It’s a robe.”

“Nice,” she whispered. “I like—”

He cut off her words with a kiss. She splayed her hands wide on his shoulders as he moved on top of her, loving the play of muscles as he took charge. His weight settled in all the right places as he deepened the kiss, fucking her mouth with his tongue, and she gave herself over to him completely, her limbs loosely twining around his body. She could feel his erection, thick and hard against the top of her mound, and she wanted to beg him for it.

Fuck me
, she wanted to say, but he was still kissing her and touching her and that oil was spinning her slowly out of her mind. Her nipples tingled and her sex pulsed, and everywhere in between was hot and primed for whatever he wanted to do with her. To her.

And then he was sliding into her, ever so slowly, and his oil-slicked shaft spread that irresistible, addictive heat from the inside out.

“Reinn,” she whispered against his cheek, her voice stolen by the Viking sex gods, and he gathered her in his arms as he started thrusting, fucking her hard and slow and so thoroughly she thought she might cry.

They’d made love all afternoon, but she already couldn’t remember it feeling like this. So full. So complete. So simple and perfect and yet still impossible to believe this was really happening to her.

He whispered her name in return, then louder, and that triggered the return of her voice. His next thrust had her yelling something incomprehensible, and as he pounded deeper, she wrapped herself harder around him and let loose a chant of appreciation that would definitely make her blush should he remind her of it afterward.

Her orgasm ripped through her, taking them both by surprise.

Reinn held himself deep inside her as she spasmed around him, then slowly licked his way into her mouth, a sensual kiss that told her he wanted her to shatter all over again for him.
Oh god
, she thought, but then he was moving again and before her first orgasm ebbed, another was looming on the horizon. She felt herself slip toward it and gave in as his movements grew jerkier, more primal. They came together, him grunting into her neck and her screaming his name.

She held him tight, and when he tried to move she protested vocally.

“I’m heavy,
min elskede
.”

“You sound tired. And you make a wonderful blanket.”

He chuckled. “You won’t think so once the endorphins wear off.”

“Always the scientist, my Viking.” She released him enough for him to roll beside her, then she followed, tucking into his side.

— —
 

Reinn thought Ashleigh had fallen asleep curled against him. They’d lain like that for almost an hour. At some point he’d pressed the button by the head of his bed to turn the lights off, but when the first pale light of dawn cracked over the horizon, his beautiful betrothed rolled onto her back. He tried to resist the urge to palm her bared breast, but when she murmured something about the hot spring bath, he gave in.

“You feel like a soak?” He took a deep, growly breath at the perfect feeling of her nipple against the inside of his hand.

She arched her back. “And more, if you keep that up.”

With a regretful final squeeze, he rolled her toward the far side of the bed. “Come on.”

He slid the floor to ceiling glass panel door open, the cool early summer night a bracing change from the warmth of Ashleigh’s embrace.
 
He clenched his fists at his side, which earned him an appreciative hum. “What?” he turned and held out his hand.

She took it, stepping outside with a shiver. “You’re a beautiful man. I love it when you flex all your muscles like that.”

“I didn’t flex anything. It’s just cold out here.” He patted her on the bottom as she stepped toward the small pool fed by the natural spring under his property. “Get in there.”

She climbed up, pausing to look back at him. With her long, willowy limbs, balanced delicately on the rock edge of the pool, she looked just like
Rán
. He admitted as much and she laughed. “The sea witch?”

He grunted, and climbed in, pulling her down onto his lap in the warm mineral-infused water. “I was thinking more about how she was the mother of nine daughters.”

She smiled and arched her head back, dipping it into the water before sliding back against his body. “Is that your plan for me? Fill me with babies, make me forget my dreams of soaring through the stars?”

His arms tightened around her. “We have spaceships. I’ll never hold you back from your dreams.”

She shook her head. “I had it wrong, Reinn. My dreams weren’t of space adventures, plural. My dream was at the end of a space adventure. This is right where I want to be.”

“There will be backlash.”

She shrugged. “And we’ll survive it. I’m two light-years away from where the drama will mostly be anyway. Everyone here doesn’t find this nearly as scandalous as the FedNat brass will.”

Like their fancy ships couldn’t get here a hell of a lot faster than that if they wanted to. “I worry.”

“How can you worry with a sunrise like that?” She turned his face gently and pressed her cheek against his. “We’re going to be just fine.”

“When you arrived, I was so worried. That this whole mission was a disaster waiting to happen. And inside…I haven’t felt this alive in a long time. Alive, but at peace, too.” He squeezed her hips. “I’ll move mountains to keep you, Ashleigh.”

“You won’t need to, my Viking, but that’s really sweet.”

He wanted to protest that he wasn’t
sweet
, but then she was kissing him and grinding in his lap, and it didn’t matter anymore.

EPILOGUE

Nine months later

“Is it weird to be packing up your uniform for good?”

“Nope.” Ashleigh leaned over the table and poured more mead into Navena’s mug. Her friend had just returned to Midgard, this time for a social visit.

After the initial three month mission, most of the FedNat cells had rotated out. Ashleigh’s team had left, but she’d stayed. The last six months she’d served as a liaison officer for the overall mission, working mostly in the city, travelling around her new home planet as needed. She was as much a diplomat for Midgard as Earth in the talks as the two worlds forged a tighter connection.