Loki's Daughters (20 page)

She wanted to flee. She wanted to stay.

"Go on," he yelled. "Get out of here."

She saw in his face that same look she had seen once before, of a love long lost, tangled with something darker, more frightening. Lust. Arienh scrambled to her feet and ran, shaking away her fuzzy thoughts.

She ran to her sister, who sat on the ground beside the naked blond giant, leaning over him. Egil, sprawled on his back on the path with Birgit's flaming red curls spilling down over his chest, reached up to trace his broad fingers over Birgit's cheek.

"Birgit?" Arienh called. Her voice seemed like a distant echo in a canyon, lost in the raging blood that still pounded in her ears.

"Aye," came the quiet response, another echoing sound.

"Are you all right?"

"Aye, 'twas only a little fall."

"Let's go home."

"Not so fast, my pretty girl," said Egil as he grasped her arm. I won't let you go until you tell me where our clothes are."

Once more, mischief decorated Birgit’s face as she pointed upward at the huge oak that grew near the stream. Garments of all sorts, from tunics to boots, stretched and sagged all about its upper branches.

Egil gave a great hoot of laughter. "I begin to appreciate your wicked mind, girl."

Had Birgit already admitted her part in the plot to the Viking?

For a moment after he released his prize, Birgit merely sat, staring senselessly at him. Then, freed of the spell, she jumped up, away from him and scurried off with Arienh down the dirt path till they reached their cottage. Safely there, Arienh looked back. Nude men climbed the oak tree, scrambling along its branches for their garments. Chagrined women wandered toward their cottages.

Everything was unraveling.

Ronan watched her skitter away. Sitting in the soft bed of old leaves, he dragged great gulps of air into his lungs to clear his head of the cloud of passion. He could have done it, so easily.

Could have? Nay, he almost could not stop it. She had inflamed him so suddenly that he had nearly let passion take control. But even though she had responded to him, she hadn’t really understood. It still would have been wrong.

He had never been out of control before. He shuddered at the force of that primal drive that had so nearly overtaken him. Perhaps he was, after all, that very dangerous predator she so feared. He’d never had any sympathy with men who took women against their will, yet now he had an inkling of the power that was involved.

And now she knew, too. He wouldn’t be surprised if she wouldn’t let him near her again.

Ronan stood, feeling a sudden, almost painful stiffness in his body from neck to toes, but the heat of his passion was slowly cooling. He walked out into the path, hearing the chuckling laughter of victorious men. He hoped none of them laughed because they had carried it too far. None of them seemed quite as shaken as he felt, and he hoped that wasn’t why.

They laughed and slapped each other on the back, while women hurried away toward their cottages. Already, Tanni and Olav climbed up into the big oak tree and unsnagged breeches and jerkins. Boots and belts tumbled all the way to the ground, but lighter smocks merely caught again on lower branches.

"You didn’t-"Egil asked him tentatively.

"Of course not," he snapped back. "I hope no one else did."

"I doubt it. But you were the only one who headed for the bushes. I don’t think I’d have enough control to do that."

"That’ll teach then," said Bjorn. It was the first time Ronan had seen that man grin.

Ronan didn’t share Bjorn's mirth, at all. But he promised himself he would bridle his passion carefully. However much he might desire her, his first duty was to protect her, even if that meant protecting her from himself. He would never force her against her will, or even trick her.

But now she understood exactly what it was and where it all would lead. And whatever she gave willingly, he intended to take.

***

Arienh lay on her bed in the darkness, unable to sleep. Ronan's kisses still burned her flesh. An aching hung in her throat, and deeper longing, deep inside her that she recognized as the very root of passion.

She had seen couples making love before, and had thought she understood it all quite well. But natural as it was, as interesting as it was, she had always wondered what was so compelling. Now she was beginning to understand. Now she realized she had ached with desire for him, from the first day he had come to her valley.

Once again, she flopped her restless body over on her side, and saw that Birgit sat at the edge of her own bed, staring at the banked hearth fire.

"Are you sure you're all right, Birgit?"

"Nay, I am all right."

"You don't look so."

"But I am. It is just-"

"Does Liam sleep?"

"Aye."

Arienh threw back her blankets and rose, crossing the hard-packed dirt floor to sit beside her sister.

"What is it?"

Birgit sighed. "I think they tell us the truth, Arienh, that they will not hurt us. They could have, any number of times, so far. They could just take us if they wanted, couldn't they?"

"Aye. Then what disturbs you?"

Birgit's eyes held a wistful longing. "He is amorous enough now. But when he learns the truth about me, he will change his mind. He will not want me."

"But isn't that what you want? Why not just tell him, then?"

"He wants Liam."

"Liam?"

"He said so. The men of his kind take the boys and raise them, even if they are not kin, so that they learn how to be men. I told him to stay away from Liam, but if he learns how helpless I am, he will take him from me. Arienh, he is right. I cannot give Liam what he needs. Without you, I could not do it at all. And he will know it."

Through all the terrible things that happened to her, Birgit had never cried. Now the tears flooded her eyes and poured down her cheeks.

Arienh held Birgit's head to her chest and stroked the red curls. "We won't let him, dear. He will not know."

Birgit was right. The Vikings would not harm them, not in the ways that others had harmed them. Despite that heady desire she had seen in Ronan's eyes, she had known he wouldn't harm her. Its intensity had frightened her, yet he had let her go when he saw her fear. She could only guess what it had cost him.

It was not at all what she had expected from a Viking.

She was caught in a terrible tangle, fearing, yet drawn to him, yearning, desiring, yet raging. Worse, the Vikings were going to win, and she was helpless to stop it.

Yet she could not give up. She remembered once again the boy who had come from nowhere and yanked her away from certain capture, perhaps death. The boy who had taught her by his deed never to give up. Ronan.

How often she had fantasized that he would grow up and come back, yet somehow in her dreams he was no longer a Viking. The man in her imagination had had light, straight hair, but still those wondrous blue eyes. He would not have been as big as these men, for the boy she remembered had been slight. But she had never been able to quite picture the face. Now, it was as if Ronan's face had been there, all along.

It had been a false dream.

Aye, everything was definitely unraveling.

***

Arienh rose before dawn to move the stones and wait for spring's first day, setting out in the brittle, cold night before the first twilight streaks crossed the horizon.

It was the day when the sun would rise over the pointer stone, to mark the day midway between midwinter, and midsummer, the day when day and night were equal. Those markers of the seasons were like affirmations to her that life could go on, even when things seemed darkest, when her people seemed destined for extinction.

Today, the marker of the first of spring, represented the waxing of new life, of hope. She had to be there.

A nearly full moon, close to setting, traced a silver path leading up the valley. Arienh followed the path to the little plateau where the ring of stones had awaited daybreak since long before any living man remembered. Nothing had ever been written down of those distant folk who had left the stones on the plateau overlooking the sea. They were not even Celts, her great-grandfather had said, but she felt the kinship with them all the same. They were her people, who had longed then as she did now to understand and predict the world in which they lived.

Climbing up onto the plateau, she recalled the last time she had been here, the day Ronan had taken her sheep from her. As he had taken everything else.

He waited for her. She was not surprised, although she had hoped he might forget to come. Ronan rose from the pallet of furs and blankets spread within the circle on the damp new grass. A corona of fading moonlight outlined his magnificent form against the black night sky.

Arienh forced herself to look away, wishing she could avoid acknowledging his presence. She drew her woolen cloak closer about her neck to ward off the chill and stood directly across from the pointer stone. Every year since she had become the counter of days, she had come and stood in this spot. Yet now it was so different, for the Viking came to stand beside her, silently placing his blanket around her shoulders. She was cold enough that she did not resist his invasion of her sacred place. He could not belong here, yet somehow, he did.

Heart pounding, she waited, the Viking beside her, as the first grey streaks appeared in the east. A dim line grew below it, growing paling, charging the air with the sort of energy it held before a storm. The deep midnight gloom faded to eerie, expectant twilight as long ribbons of red fused into the darker purple.

Yellow light breached the horizon.

"There," she said, her voice barely a whisper that shattered the silence.

His hand gripped her shoulder as if he, too, felt the magnificence of the moment. The glowing golden line brightened to a bulge of light and merged into a globe as it rose over the pointer stone and broke free of the earth to join the sky. A new dawn, new life, as surely as the birth of a child.

His arm came around her waist beneath the blanket, drawing her against his side. Her own arm found its way about him, taking in his pure, solid strength, a strength they shared beneath the heavy blanket as dawn took on life, light, sound.

Somewhere, far down the valley, a young lamb bleated and its mother bawled back. The chitter of a tit, and honks from the faraway estuary as ducks and geese awakened. Slowly, the grey of twilight brightened into a brilliant, pale morning. His eyes were brighter blue than the sky, deeper than the vast majesty of the passing night. The tip of his smallest finger caressed over her lips and back, pleading.

Perhaps she had come here to see him, rather than to move the stones and wait for the arrival of spring. Perhaps...

She didn't know. She knew only the warmth of his body as he held her, the tender ecstasy of their lips where they joined. Knew only the wanting, desiring, aching need that kept her in his arms. She had not slept the night for thinking of him, remembering his brazen, blazing touch, wanting, needing it again.

It was a need he had awakened in her from the night of their first meeting, that had grown and stretched its bounds to the point of bursting. A need born of knowing, seeing, learning. A touch caused it to grow; a kiss, to expand dangerously. Every thought that slipped past the barriers she had erected pushed her closer to the brink of explosion.