Bride of Grendel 2: Night of the Bear Man: A Viking Lore Erotic Tale (Viking Lore Erotic Tales Book 3)

Bride of Grendel 2:

Night of the Bear Man

Viking Lore Erotic Tales

vol. 3

by

Gwynn Jones

              Sigrun stared into the pool at her feet. It was not murky
—
she could see the stone steps disappearing into the water, crystal clear, for several feet. But then it became dark, inky black. The submarine entrance to this subterranean lair was so deep beneath the surface, no light from above penetrated the mouth of the cave that opened to this pool. She slipped out of her dress, allowing it to drop to the floor. Completely bare, she stepped into the water, relishing the chill for a moment as the cold water lapped at her thighs, and then dove in.

              The first time she had plunged through these waters, she had thought she would drown. The dark, the cold, the impossibly deep descent and the impossibly long underwater swim were beyond anything any normal human should have been able to survive. She had gathered later that she was the only one of the monster Grendel's would-be guests ever to have made it to his hall alive. Now she gave it no thought. She swam easily through the deeps, to and from the surface or, as now, remaining below for as long as she wanted. She wasn't exactly sure how she managed it. She didn't breathe the water, she didn't think
—
but she didn't seem to be holding her breath, either. Somehow, it just didn't matter.

              She emerged from the cave into the open waters. Here a faint light shone out from the hall. She paused, enjoying the feel of her long hair floating in a cloud around her head, waiting for the sea beasts to arrive. They frequented the waters around the cave, great serpentine sea dragons with long, twisting limbs. At first sight they were terrifying: huge creatures with sharp teeth snapping at one another, twisting and twining in elaborate knots of coiled, writhing altercation. Now they seemed playful. When they separated out from one another
—
which was rare and brief
—
they did not seem quite so enormous. Though the jaws of any one of them were large enough to bite a man in half. She smiled as three of her favorites surged towards her from out of a bank of seaweed below.

              They separated from one another long enough to wrap her in their coils, sliding around her and nipping softly at her hair before entwining her in their knot. It was a delicious feeling, this cool, snaky embrace. These dragons moved too quickly
—
streaming, rippling things
—
and were too often too intricately interwoven for Sigrun to get a clear sense of their anatomy. When she became part of one of their knots, she knew only that they twined their limbs around her own, twisting around her waist, her hips, her neck, arms and legs. They held her completely immobile, and yet the sensation was one of constant motion as their bodies slid over and around hers. A tail wrapped around her neck. Soft, feathery fins rippled against her breasts, tickling her nipples. Her arms and legs were outspread; coils twined around her loins. Her dragons carried her through the water, pulling her even deeper down, where tiny glowing fishes lit up the dark like glittering fairy lights.

              She was never entirely sure what it was
—
a tail, a tentacle?
—
that penetrated her on these swims, but did it matter? Her beasts liked to probe every inch of her, including her in their intimate knot. She suspected that they also liked to please her, liked to feel how her body shuddered and arched in their coils when they touched the right spots. Whatever the appendage, it was small enough at the tip, squirming and teasing its way between her lips with only the slightest tickle. But within a few inches it grew wider, and it was always eager to push deeper. Sigrun supposed that somehow, surely, she must be able to breathe underwater, since she could not otherwise see how she could gasp and pant as she must when the dragons fucked her as they did. But it was something she only ever considered after the fact. While it was happening, she only felt the huge, surging thing between her legs, rippling its way inside her. It didn't thrust so much as pulse, and that pulsing pressure, plunging ever deeper and stretching her ever wider, brought on massive, humming waves of orgasm.

              Just when she was sure she could take no more, sure that she couldn't possibly come any harder or be filled any fuller, another tendril began its assault
—
gentle but insistent
—
on her ass. Just like the first, it slipped inside like the slimmest, most flexible of fingers. The tentacle wedged in her pussy remained exactly where it was, throbbing and pulsing, deep and thick, even as the second bore its way into that second hole, so much smaller and tighter than the amply-filled other. How could she take so much, from both sides, at once? And yet she thrilled at it.

              This was usually the point when, her entire body alight with the friction of the sea beasts, she exploded. She was sure she must be imagining it, but the final orgasm made her feel as though lightning were shooting out of her, blazing out into the surrounding waters in a flash of brilliant light, a pulse of sexual energy so strong that it created shock waves. The dragons flew apart, instantly releasing her from their grasp. Then they returned again within a few moments, playfully twisting and nipping at her hair, caressing and nudging her back upwards toward the surface, or toward the mouth of the cave. Both spent and energized, she swam through the water with strong, easy strokes, often breaking through to feel the fresh air on her face, to see the sky and the sun above her. Swimming to shore brought her into the shadows of the dark, rugged cliffs that ringed the water and were almost always shrouded in a foreboding mist, but at the center of the lake the sun blazed through clear and warm.

              Sometimes she did swim to shore and climbed up the rocks, taking long walks in the surrounding wilderness. She felt a strange freedom in the stark openness of the wind-blasted moors. Then there was the deep, eerie hush of the forest, thick with twisted trees whose tangled limbs made it almost completely impassable. These were the sorts of woods that held deep secrets, and she often felt that if she only stayed for long enough, the trees might begin to share them with her. She loved these explorations. She stashed clothes in choice nooks and crevices in the rocks to have handy in such cases. Or, when she was feeling impish, she walked naked, with nothing but her hair to cover her. She was unlikely to be seen by anyone, anyway. And she generally stayed away from the human settlement, from Hrothgar's mighty and ill-starred mead hall. She had no desire to go back to that place. But she knew that Grendel still visited it. Grendel had taken to visiting it with troubling frequency.

              This time she stopped only briefly at the surface, treading water for a minute or two and enjoying the early morning light, before diving back down below. She had caught sight of Grendel coming down the cliff face and wanted to be ready for him when he returned to the cave. Some way beneath the surface she caught hold of a passing sea dragon and let it pull her swiftly down to the glowing entrance to Grendel's lair. She gave the beast a pat as she let go, swam up through the opening and emerged from the pool into the subterranean hall. She stepped out, gathering her clothes up from the floor where she had left them, and walked over to the fire blazing in the massive hearth at the far side of the room.

              She stared into the flames. The hearth was enormous, easily ten feet wide and nearly as high, flanked by elaborately carved stone posts. A twisting, knotted dragon adorned the arch that spanned the top of the hearth. The whole thing was large enough to be a gateway, and the effect was heightened by the fact that the hearth was so deep, the back wall of the fireplace was obscured in shadows. The flames blazed high, orange and blue in the front, though they seemed almost blueish green farther back. The fire never needed replenishing. It just burned.

              This was one of the many mysteries of Grendel's lair. It was an awesome space, a finely wrought work of architecture laced with intricate carvings, a labyrinth of rooms and passages opening off of the main hall and winding deep into the earth. She had thought that there might be some passage upward, some interior way out to the cliff tops above, but she had yet to find it. All of the passages seemed to go downwards, instead. At first she had explored only as far as she dared, afraid of becoming lost, but eventually, as the halls became familiar, she suspected that she had followed every passage to its end and seen it all.

              She had stumbled upon caverns completely lined with glittering gems and crystals, vapor caves with hot springs, and great vaults with glowing phosphorescent pools. She had discovered treasure chambers filled with gold, jewels, and weapons. She had found rooms whose walls were covered with inscrutable runes. This was an ancient place, and it must once have housed many more inhabitants than it did now. Grendel could not have been the architect of such wonders
—
could he?

              Grendel. The monster. For more than ten years he had terrorized Heorot, the great hall of the mighty Hrothgar. That king who had enjoyed a long warrior's career of resounding successes, who had subjugated all the territories within his reach, had been brought low at the very moment he had thought to celebrate his triumphs and live out his remaining days in peace and prosperity. Hrothgar was reduced to human sacrifice to keep the monster at bay. Every year at the winter solstice, he allowed Grendel to take his queen. And every spring he remarried, so there would be a new queen to sacrifice come winter. Sigrun had been one of those queens. But unlike all the others, who had apparently died of fright or cold or drowning before they ever reached Grendel's cave, she had survived. She had survived and thrived.

              She shivered at the memory of the first time Grendel had taken her, how the touch of his tongue had set her on fire, how she'd been certain that his enormous, monstrous cock would kill her, yet she had wanted it so badly, all the same. That first time had transformed her, she knew it. And every time her sweet monster took her, every time she took him into her, felt his thick, huge shaft inside her, filling her and transfixing her, she felt herself opening up further. It was like her orgasms opened her to another world, another state of being. How she had survived, how she could respond this way, how her sex could be so monstrous itself to consume a cock so terrifyingly huge as Grendel's, remained a mystery to her. But when he slid it into her, burying it to the hilt, allowing her to writhe against it or pounding her with his thrusts, it was sheer bliss.

              Grendel's grudge against Heorot was something of a mystery, too. Sigrun guessed now that those who had suggested it was a matter of location — that Hrothgar had simply built his hall in an unlucky, monster-ridden spot
—
were correct. But she thought, additionally, that it was a matter of protection. Grendel was no wandering moor stalker who slept in the woods; he dwelt in this remarkable hall, and Sigrun suspected that it was his duty, real or imagined, to protect it. Hrothgar had built too close to someone else's citadel.

              Luckily for Hrothgar, Grendel had gotten distracted by his fixation on the king's wives. Now that he had finally enjoyed a successful bride theft, however, his fixation on Heorot had returned to one of unadulterated animosity. Sigrun had done nothing to dissuade him. What did she care whether Grendel destroyed Heorot? She had nothing but scorn for the king who had been so cowardly as to force innocent maidens to pay with their blood for his security. 

              Now she was beginning to have doubts. Grendel had changed since he'd begun attacking Heorot indiscriminately. For years, following his first wave of bloody attacks, he had spared the lives of Hrothgar's warriors, had only killed his queens, and unintentionally, at that. Now he killed the men, and many at a time. Any who dared sleep in the main hall risked their lives. At least Grendel limited himself to this small rule. And yet she wondered if it would have been better if he had not. Hrothgar, stubborn old fool that he was, insisted on staying. Grendel's attacks should have driven him out long ago, but he refused to leave. He retreated to his outbuildings, leaving his bravest to dare to face the beast. And so his bravest died, one after another. And Grendel developed an ever stronger taste for blood.

              She did not know whether she could reason with him, if she tried. She knew that Grendel was a creature with intelligence, even capable of speech, but he was a creature of very few words. She wondered how long he had lived alone in this place. She looked at the craftsmanship and knowledge that had gone into producing everything that she had found in Grendel's lair, and she wondered if he had once been more like those who had created these things.

              There was a huge sword mounted on the wall beside the hearth; it was clearly a masterpiece of weaponry, and the hilt was minutely, intricately decorated with images of the great flood that had almost wiped out all of giant kind. She'd heard songs about it as a child, how the great Allfather Odin had killed the primordial frost giant Ymir, and the flow of his blood had drowned nearly all of his kin. The survivors never forgot the slaughter, and this was the first source of the longstanding enmity between gods and giants. Was this sword a work of giant craft? Was this hall?

              She had tried asking Grendel about it all, but he had met her queries with grunts and shrugs. Either he did not know, or he had no desire to tell her. When she looked into his glittering eyes, she knew that she would be unwise to assume that it was the first possibility. But what did it matter what the reason was, if he persisted in not divulging anything? She might not have minded her ignorance, or his ravaging of Heorot, if she hadn't begun to worry that Grendel's bloodlust was changing him, making him more monstrous, and making him dangerous to her as well.