Victoria's Demon Lover (21 page)

     He did not want to stop.  His
voice was honey persuasion. “We cannot.  There are guards at each
intersection.  You remember Publius comes tonight to visit Cestius.  That is
how I was able to get away from the barracks.”  He tried to press her to kneel
on the cushions.  “I volunteered to cover the evening watch.  I go on at
midnight.  It has to be now.”

     Victoria made Alana resist. 
“But they will search this room, looking for me.  We cannot be here together when
they do,” she said.  It was true.

     “You have to work tonight?” he
sounded so disappointed.

     Good idea.  “Yes, he wants me to
serve the wine.”

     Marcus’ face darkened.  “Serve
the wine.  That is euphemism for…”

     “No,” she quickly amended. 
“Really.  Just serve the wine.  Antonia is for Publius tonight.”

     “That pig,” Marcus spat.  He
did not like the senator.  He grumbled as he ran his hands up and down her
smooth arms and finally took her hands.  “I go on at midnight.  Remember.”  He
drew her in and kissed her so softly.  His eyes were big and dark in the dimly
lit room.  She saw his love there.  Changing this moment in time brought out a
variety of possibilities now.  She could close her eyes as he nibbled the edge
of her jaw near her ear and see herself on his farm.  He had bought her from Cestius
when he retired.  He had saved every piece of silver for seven years to be able
to afford her.  By then she was almost twenty five and Cestius has chosen a new
favorite from the younger girls.  Her price was high, but not so high that a
determined soldier could not buy her.  She saw herself milking a goat, picking
olives.  She felt him press himself inside her every night and telling her how
precious she was to him.  She heard him tell stories from the battlefield and
saw herself gasp.  He would laugh softly and draw her onto his lap and kiss her
head.  “Those days are over,” he would whisper in her ear.  He would lay her
down in the thick green grass of his pastures and love her with long slow
strokes and tender kisses.

     Victoria felt a great relief
as he ducked out the door and she listened to his sandals as they slapped the
stone to the edge of the corridor and down the marble stairs.  She sighed with
relief and she was alone when the servants opened the door and said, “Time to
serve the wine, Alana.”

     She went to Torgal next.  She
sat in a long house in the late autumn.  The wedding preparations were noisy.  She
was sixteen and her name was Danica.  She was nearly six feet tall and had the
sturdy bones of a Norseman’s daughter.  Her blonde hair was plaited and hung
long past her hips.  She was dressed in a fine embroidered frock, covered with
an apron for this hard work.  Guests from all over the country had come and
were stacked like cordwood in the corners of the house.  There was hardly a
place to walk from one end to the other.  The men spent a lot of time outdoors
unless the weather was bad.  Her mother had wanted her to be married in the
spring, but her betrothed wanted to go a-viking in the spring.  He wanted her
good and pregnant by then.

     Hamund.  She hated him.  She
gritted her teeth thinking of him and clenched her fists whenever he walked by. 
Her mother adored the brute and never stopped talking about how handsome he was
or how rich.  Her mother wanted to be friends with his mother, who was an
important elder in the village.  Danica scrubbed a little too hard on the iron
pot she was cleaning with sand. 
She should marry him, then
, Danica
seethed.  Ever since her father had been killed last season there had been a
concerted effort by everyone on her family to get her married off.  Hamund had
agreed as long as the south pasture and the stone barn there were included in
the bride price.  Those lands were bordered his own and would allow him to
double the size of his herd.

     Danica turned the pot and
started on the other side.  Torgal would be coming to the wedding.  She
clenched her fist.  He would have to see her being given away to another man. 
She wondered how he could bear it.  She could not.  She had asked him to carry
her away last week.  She had met him at the well, and with her brothers and
mother scowling from the doorway, she had asked him to take her.  Begged him to
take her.

     He watered his horse with sad
blue eyes and the droop of his broad shoulders told her his answer before his
mouth did.  She cried then, hoping her tears would convince him, but they did
not.  He took the reins of his mount, and with a friendly wave to her brothers,
led him away into the forest.

     She hated her mother.  She
hated her brothers.  The pot was clean, now.  Scrubbed so hard it had begun to
shine on two places near the bottom.  She scrubbed it some more as she glared
at them.  Five brothers.  This wedding would not have happened were her father
still alive.  She had been his pride and joy. She spent winters on his knee and
learned early how he like his bread buttered and how much spice to put in his
mead.  She did grieve for him.  But now she hated him too for not giving her to
Torgal before he died.  Torgal had asked for her.  Her father had said he would
think about it.

     “Now he is dead,” she said
aloud and a distant cousin looked up from her embroidery.  Danica amended the
murderous look on her face and explained, politely, “Father.  He is dead.  What
a shame he could not be here tomorrow.”  Her cousin smiled in agreement and
turned back to her sewing.  Danica put the pot down and went outside.  It was
too hot in there with all those bodies and the cooking fires getting the roasted
meats ready for her wedding feast.

     Torgal would be outside with
the other young men.  One of the ale barrels had been put outside for them and
they stood around the tap with their wooden mugs in their fine embroidered clothes
and told lies about their prowess.  Fighting and whoring.  Their voiced quieted
as she approached them.  Polite eyes followed her movements.  When she was
close enough she greeted them each in order of their social standing, starting
with the son of the chieftain.  She tried not to rest her eyes on Torgal more
than on the other men.  He held his face stiffly impassive.  Danica knew that
meant she should say nothing unseemly and she did not.  She thanked them for
coming to her wedding.  She put an edge on the last word and made sure Torgal
was the last man she looked at before returned to the longhouse and its
oppressive atmosphere within.

     “I hate them all,” she
grumbled later that night as she washed her arms and legs from a small tub of
warm water. 
He will allow me to be married to that brute and not try for me
at all.
  She put down the wet cloth and fought the screaming tears that
were right on the edge.  
I will not cry
, she promised
.  Even if it
means I must snarl my vows in Hamund’s face.

    
She picked up the cloth
again.  She heard a clack at the shutter.  She frowned and went to the window. 
She did not push it open but peered through the crack.  There he was.  Torgal. 
The sun set early this time of year. It was almost too dark to see him, but
there was no mistaking the bright blond hair.  Torgal was vain of his hair and
tonight he had it brushed and braided and tied with bits of red wool.  She
smiled and her anger faded as it did whenever she set eyes on him.  He was so
beautiful.  He was tall and well-muscled which was common for the young men of
her village, but he had straight white teeth, which was a rarity.

     She opened the shutter just a
little so he could tell that she recognized him.  He looked to the right and
left before signaling for her to open wider.  She pushed the shutters open and
smiled down at him.  He looked around again and tossed up a small stone, then
fled.

     She picked the stone from the
floor and unwrapped the leaves that were tied around it.  The runic letters
said for her to meet him in the building behind the well where the winter
fodder was stored.  She quickly crumpled the leaves into dust and ground them
into the wood floor with the ball of her foot.  She put away her bathing things
and put on her simple brown smock and tied it around her waist with a sash.

     As soon as it was dark enough,
she told her mother she was going to the outhouse and ran as fast as she could
to the shed.

     He grabbed her as she came
around the posts that supported the slanted roof.  He kissed her hard and she
clutched at him with all her strength.  Victoria felt the surge of emotion as a
thrill in her throat and a seizing up in her belly.  She entered Danica’s body
at that point and took over control of her arms and legs.   When Torgal pulled
back to look at her, she looked into his eyes for Jack and Marcus.  They were
icy blue instead of brown.  The jaw was stronger, the teeth straighter.  But
the arms that held her tightly felt familiar, like her favorite bathrobe on
Sunday mornings.  She lifted her mouth for him and the kiss sent shivers of
pleasure down her neck and across her arms and into every part of her body. 
This was Marcus with his gentle touch and Jack with his strong arms and intense
eyes.  Torgal had a wildness that neither of her other lovers had cultivated. 
The other two lived comfortably among society in their own ways, but Torgal had
a whiff of the wild man of the woods.  His eyes flashed like wolf eyes and reminded
Victoria of her demon.

     He kissed her now and growled
low in his throat. “Danica, you cannot marry that dolt.”

     Her lips smiled beneath his
lips and she agreed with a muffled, “yes” and kissed him harder.  She pulled
him closer against his body and felt his hard cock like a metal rod against her
middle.  One hand left his neck where she had been twining his long hair and
slid down to grasp it.  The kisses continued, but now he writhed with her hand
on him and his mouth became hot as he panted.  He pushed her away.  “We
cannot,” he gasped.  “Woman, put your hand down.”

     “No,” she flashed her eyes at
him.  “If you will not carry me away from this wedding, then you will carry me
away on your cock.  Now.  Hamund will not have my maidenhead.”

     A strong hand took hers from
his rigid cock and lifted it up to cover her breasts.  He pressed his hips
harder into her and groaned.

     She continued, “I will not
submit to Hamund.  I will tear at his back and kick at his balls if he tries to
mount me.  I will bite his cheek and rip his hair.  He will not enter my body. 
Only you shall have me.  Only you.”  Danica gave small demonstrations of each
of these defenses as she spoke them and on the words, ‘enter my body’ Torgal
crushed her against him and kissed her hard.  She opened her mouth and took his
tongue and his cock hardened further.  She bent her knees with her arms on his
neck and brought him down into the mound of straw in the shelter. Victoria
tried to stop her.  She planted the images of the dire consequences of this
rash act in her head.  The fires of lust were upon this young virgin.  The
thoughts that they might be discovered and punished did nothing but fan those
flames into an inferno of desire for this man.  Victoria was overcome with Danica’s
passion and felt pushed around helplessly inside her body.

     When Torgal’s cock entered her
and broke the thin membrane that proved Danica’s maidenhood Victoria felt a
huge wave of pleasure and pain.  She arched her back and cried out as Danica
did, she met his thrusts with her own and the waves and waves of pleasure broke
over her in unending crashes of warm contentment.  Torgal’s caresses and
murmurs of love carried her through the encounter with a blissful heat that
seemed to steam the chilly autumn night.

     This lovemaking was short and
passionate.  He finished quickly as he was young and the circumstances of their
coupling did not lend itself to long slow strokes.  Danica’s eyes glittered
with triumph and Victoria felt her mind tell her that now Torgal must take her
away.  Now that he had her, she was his and he could not hand her over to her
brothers to be given to their neighbor.  She thought she had won.

     But Victoria knew what this
girl did not.  She saw the men leave the longhouse.  She saw them head toward
the fodder-house.  There were eight of them.  Her brothers and Hamund and Hamund’s
brothers.

    Torgal and Danica were still
joined together when they burst in.  Victoria cursed.  She was supposed to have
prevented this.  In the back of her head she heard her demon murmur that
nothing could have prevented this.  She resisted him but the scene unfolded
nonetheless.  The brothers put their hands on Torgal’s shoulders and pulled him
off of Danica, his dripping cock testified against him before multiple
witnesses.  Danica was like a screeching cat, all claws and teeth.  She came up
out of the straw and flung herself at her brothers, her hair flying about her
face and her brown dress crumpled and tripping her legs as she tried to scratch
their eyes out.  They caught her easily and pinned her arms behind her.  Both
lovers were marched to the longhouse and Victoria fled.

     Back in her bed she turned
stricken eyes on Mr. Magnus and Jasper.  “I failed Torgal.  He is taken again.”

     Jasper grabbed at her arm,
“You must go back, then.”

     She reached for the glass of
water on the table and Jasper handed it to her.  “Go back,” he repeated.

     “Can I stop her?”  Victoria
drank the water and remembered Danica’s fierce determination.  There was no
stopping that woman.  She would have Torgal’s dick inside her no matter that
Odin or Thor would come crashing from the heavens to stop her.  She smiled a
little.  Danica’s fierce determination was something she wished she had in this
life.

     Mr. Magnus prompted her.  “It
is possible that it is not the act itself that must be stopped, but something
else.  The consequences, perhaps.  It was not the coupling that killed him.”