Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) (11 page)

And he’d learned that guilt was a constant companion to grief.

Now, he wasn’t sure he knew how to grieve any other way than alone.

The love that had grown in him for Olga was different. She looked nothing like Toril; his wife had been tall and fair, like the greater share of their people. Like Leif himself. Still, at first knowing, Olga had not seemed not greatly different: a quiet woman, strong in her way, who understood her role.

But at the heart, they were profoundly different. Loss and grief, trial and tribulation, seemed to make Olga stronger, not weaker, like iron forged in fire. Her spine didn’t break under a heavy burden; it bent and learned to carry the weight. This slip of a woman, her back so narrow he could almost span it with a single spread hand, held inside her the fortitude of a band of fierce raiders.

His love for her held him with that kind of strength. He wanted to take her home to Geitland, to bring her brothers along—her brothers who were of an age to be his children—and make a family. He wanted that with a consuming urgency.

He groaned into her mouth, and she laughed lightly and pulled away. With her eyes on his, she pushed on his shoulders, and he did her bidding and lay back, shifting to stretch out on his bed.

Still wearing her sleeping gown, Olga crawled onto the bed and over him, settling her knees at his hips. This was a position they knew well. He was too big for her body; she could not take him completely in, and they had found ways to be and move that allowed them to be lost in each other without her being hurt.

She liked to be on top, in control, at first, and she had found that if she rested on his thighs, his depth was no greater than she could enjoy. And he had found that the downward pull and pressure on him in this way added a new dimension to his own enjoyment.

Often, at the end of things, she wanted him to take over. Leif liked this as well. It was difficult to be passive while Olga found her pleasure. The sight of her seeking it would well undo a less patient man.

There was something different in the sight of her atop him now, however. Something in her eyes. Staring down at him, she loosened the ribbon at the neck of her gown and pulled the filmy linen over her head, baring her wonderful body to his gaze. Thin as she was, she had a womanly shape, with hips that swelled gracefully from a slender waist, and small, round breasts with tiny dark dots for nipples. The mound of her sex was covered with dark wisps of silk curls, and the rest of her body was nearly hairless.

She bore the scars of past hurts and pains, but those, too, made her beautiful, made her strength shine from her moon-pale skin.

What Leif loved best about her shape, though, were her collarbones, those perfect, elegant arches across the top of her chest. From shoulder to shoulder they showed, and he often, when they were alone like this, drew his finger over their graceful shape.

He did so now, and Olga smiled down at him, a mysterious smirk. She rose up and took hold of him, making him steady so that she could sheath his sex inside hers.

She was silky-wet, and he groaned as her beautiful body accepted him, her most sensitive flesh sliding over his. He shut his eyes so that he could focus on only that—the perfect heat of her most intimate embrace.

“Open your eyes, Leif.”

Smiling, he did as he was bid. Then she shocked him utterly. As her hips began to flex on him, picking up their beat, she brought her hands to her chest and cupped her breasts. She had never touched herself before, not that he had seen, and now, as she smiled down at him, the corner of her mouth turned up in a wry curl, her own fingers played with those little peaks.

Of their own volition, his hands left her thighs, wanting to join hers, to feel her hands moving on her own body, but she shook her head.

“The effort is mine, tonight,
jah
?” she said.

Leif heard a hint of strain in her words and knew that she was exciting herself. Gods. The sight of her, the knowledge of what she was making herself feel, how she was using her hands and his sex to give herself pleasure, how she knew that what she was doing gave him great pleasure, too—Leif struggled to control his body’s desperate race to completion. He was nearly ill with desire, with the need to move with her, to fulfill them both, but his every flex and writhe, she met with resistance. She wanted him to give over to her.

So he lay and watched her, and he suffered a swirling bath of exquisite sensation.

He was woozy by the time the change in her happened, when she left behind intent and seduction and focused entirely inward, on her own driving need for release. He loved this moment, when her eyes and mind lost focus and her body gained it, when every part of her moved toward the same goal.

Her eyes clamped shut, her brow drawing down. Her teeth came down on the pillow of her bottom lip. Her hands dropped from her breasts and latched onto his forearms. Her breath became loud and erratic, and her hips picked up a new rhythm, faster and less practiced.

Seizing his moment, as violent need racked his own body, Leif sat up and swept his arms around her. His sex heaved inside her, and they both gasped. Olga’s eyes flew open, and Leif locked them with his. “Stay with me,” he said, hearing the grit of painful need in his voice. “Look at me. Olga, heed me.
Ma armastan sind
.
Armastan sind kogu südamest.
”

She went still in his hold, and Leif could have wept—he was so close. She was so close. But it had been his words that had stilled her.

He hoped he’d said them right. He’d meant to use her own language to tell her, for the first time, that he loved her, and he knew those words. But the second sentence, that he loved her with his whole heart—in the extremity of his need, he could only hope he hadn’t missed a word or a sound and said something terrible instead.

Then she smiled and fed her fingers into his hair—the touch pulled a little; traces of dried blood yet lingered from the battle earlier in the day. In his life, this was the way of things—battle and blood, love and sex, life and death mingled together in equal measure.

“
Ja ma armastan sind. Ma ei suuda sinuta elada.
”

He didn’t think that was literally true, that she couldn’t live without him. She was too strong to break under any pressure. But he believed the sentiment behind those words, and he believed that she loved him as he loved her. And he believed that they would be together, she and her brothers would be with him. They would come with him and make a family in Geitland.

His heart would know ease, and so would hers. He would see to it that her life was one of comfort and peace.

Staring into each other’s eyes, they picked up their rhythm and found completion together.

They were no longer boys, her brothers.

Anton, with sixteen years, was a full head taller than Olga, at least. His shoulders had grown square and strong, and he had a light dust of dark hair under his nose. Even Kalju was taller than she, though only just, and his jaw had begun to sharpen and his nose widen, changing his face from that of a child.

Olga had been saddened to learn of their father’s death, but he had died in the fight, and she knew that would have given him a satisfaction unfamiliar to him since their mother had gone into the earth. The grief she held in her heart was softened by that knowledge. Her brothers had been right to put him in earth he’d known, in his home. A wretched home it was, yes, but the only he’d ever had.

There was still much of the boy in Kalju. He goggled at everything he saw, in the castle and beyond it. The big raiders, with their braided hair and beards, the massive swords and shields everywhere, the stony grey opulence of this castle, so different from and greater than anything they’d known before, the ampleness of the food and drink, of warmth and good cheer—Olga’s youngest brother was impressed by it all.

Anton, however, had grown hard as he’d grown tall. He was quiet around the raiders, suspicious, and at every turn, he pulled Kalju back from his eagerness. Olga thought Anton felt suspicion even toward her. She had found him glaring at her while she spoke or laughed with her friends, and his greatest suspicion seemed focused on Leif above all the others.

The years since they had been together as a family had made a great distance between her and Anton. He was much changed, and she didn’t know him as she once had. She supposed she was changed as well. It was the way of things: the tides of life shifted sands, smoothed some edges and made others.

But Kalju was still Kalju, despite the squaring of his jaw. Olga believed that Anton held the credit for that. He had protected their little brother, left him his innocence.

His own innocence, however, seemed long gone. The impish boy he’d been was no more.

She had asked Leif to keep their relationship private yet longer, until Anton could be made comfortable with the changes in his life.

When she’d asked, they had been walking together beyond the castle walls, along a path dusted in the fresh green of the first days of summer. He had looked up toward the blue sky of the western horizon, where the sea lay, and sighed, but he had agreed.

She knew the weight of that sigh. His ships were coming soon. Now that the weather had broken, those ships would arrive at any time, and she was meant to go with him when they sailed away again. She wanted that, a life with him, wherever it was, more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. She loved her golden giant with all her heart and spirit.

But she could not leave her brothers behind.

Leif didn’t want her to. He wanted to bring them back to his homeland as well, to make a family together.

Anton would never go, not as he felt now. Olga could not go without her brothers. They had lost father and mother. Their older brother had been lost to them out in the great world. But Anton and Kalju had been returned to her, and she to them; she would never leave them again.

She had to make Anton see, to make him trust.

~oOo~

Anton stood in the doorway, watching the men training in the hall. Olga came up behind him and touched his arm. He jumped and turned.

“Why not join them? Your friends learn to fight now, too.”

Weeks had passed since the taking of Ivan’s lands. At the raiders’ suggestion, the surviving villagers from both holdings had agreed to come together and rebuild here, doubling the size of the inland village. Some of the raiders had elected to stay on as settlers—even Brenna and Vali, though that was not widely known. Vali had begun to build their house without much fuss or attention, as if he were simply erecting another building in the town.

Olga knew that Leif was deeply troubled by their friends’ decision, though he was not surprised. He most certainly would not consider staying himself.

His ships hadn’t yet arrived, and that was a good thing, in Olga’s estimation. Anton was still wary of the raiders and of Leif. Even as his friends from his home were here, in this castle, training for war with lifelong warriors, Anton stood on the edge, watching.

In answer to her question, Anton shook his head. “They bring war here. Death and blood. I want no part.”

“Death and blood is part of all life, and war was here before the raiders. You look for cause to keep yourself apart, when everyone else comes together. Why?”

“Their ways are not our ways. They are changing us.” He waved angrily at the hall. “Our women wear breeches now. And wield swords!”

That had shocked her at first, as well, but by now she had grown used to warrior women. Anton was right; the raiders had changed them. “A woman who can fight is one a man need not protect. And breeches are just coverings in a different shape. The changes are for the better, brother. We are healthier, better fed, happier. We are stronger. I was there when they came from the sea, and I thought them monsters, too. They did monstrous things. But they are men and women, like any other. Some are worse than others, some are better than most. They didn’t simply wrest our home from us. They made a home with us. If we’re changing, so are they.”

Her brother scoffed and turned from the door. “There is something more they want. Anyone with power wants more. There is a game at play, and we are simply the pieces to be moved. You will see.”

Olga had six years more than Anton, and she had done much of his raising, but he spoke to her now as if he were a learned man and she a simpleminded girl. Her irritation stifled her speech, and before she could think of a likely retort, he had turned and stalked off. She watched him go, angry and offended, then turned back to the doorway.

Leif stood in the hall, not far off, golden and gleaming, his bare chest damp and heaving from his training exertions. He faced her, and his expression told her that she needn’t wonder how much of her exchange with her brother he had heard.

His deep blue eyes were sad. He had heard enough.

~oOo~

“Which house will be ours?” Kalju asked a few days later, when they were all in the village, the men and strong boys constructing houses and stables and the women preparing the midday meal. Olga’s youngest brother had come for fresh water skins to bring to thirsty builders.

Olga sank a skin into the water barrel, focusing on the simple task as if it took her undivided attention. She didn’t know how to answer Kalju’s question. She didn’t want a house here, not without Leif. Thus one had not been started. But the new village was half finished. They had made a peace with Toomas, and they had been able to work freely on remaking what winter and battle had destroyed.

If Anton had been invested in these changes, it would have been he who’d wondered about their house, and long before.

But he had elected to make himself useful by hunting in the woods. Solitary work. He wasn’t interested in a house, or a village, that the raiders had helped build.

“Vali works on it now.”

Olga turned at Brenna’s voice and saw her friend smiling at Kalju. Brenna’s gaze shifted to Olga, and she gave a slight, conspiratorial cock of her head. Aside from Leif, only Brenna knew that Olga hoped—no, planned,
meant
—to sail with Leif and bring her brothers, too. Only Brenna knew that the plan now hinged on Anton. It was a plan Olga meant to keep secret until she could be sure that Anton was ready to agree. He was too suspicious to hear it yet.

Olga didn’t think even Vali knew. Leif and Brenna both had seemed to keep that confidence tight.

And Brenna and Vali had not spoken widely of their plan to stay here and settle. That Vali was building Olga’s house rather than his and Brenna’s own—longhouse though it was—made a story that served many purposes.

But they were running out of time. As Olga wiped sweat from her brow on this warm, sunny day, she knew their time could be counted in days. Soon, she would have to talk to Anton, whether he had warmed to the raiders or not.

Could she really watch Leif sail away from her if her brother would not leave?

She had left them once. She had not chosen it, but she had left, when they had most needed her. She couldn’t choose to do so now.

Kalju turned and gaped at the big house the big man was building. “But it’s so big.”

Brenna nodded. “Olga’s work is important. She makes people well. She needs a big space.”

Her words had been broken as she’d spoken in a tongue she still struggled with, but she’d done well, and Olga was proud of her.

“Why don’t you help him?” she added, smiling as she said it, and Olga smiled, too. Vali didn’t much like people helping him unless he’d asked for it directly. He would grumble, but he’d find something for the boy to do.

Kalju hooked the skins over his shoulder and trotted off to be a help. Brenna stood at Olga’s side and watched him go. “The ships are tardy already, Olga. You should speak to them.”

“
Jah
, I should. I must. But I know already what Anton will say, and it will break my heart.”

“He is a man grown. Kalju also. In our world and in yours, they might both have been wedded by now. Can you not go without them?”

Brenna had chosen to leave her family. Olga had been taken from hers. Her friend could not understand how that had been, to know she was needed, to know she was wanted, to know where she belonged, and to have no choice to make it right. Now she had a choice. She couldn’t abandon them again. Not even if they had all been old and grey.

“I cannot.”

She felt Brenna’s hand squeeze hers. “Leif will understand.”

Olga knew he would. She would break his heart as she broke her own, but he would understand and love her still. That was the kind of love, the kind of life, she would give up when she watched him sail away.

And it would be her choice. As sailing would be his.

Oh, how she wished he would stay.

~oOo~

She opened her door that night, and Leif stood waiting, his posture straight and centered in the doorway. He had stopped knocking weeks before, and yet tonight he waited for her to bid him enter. When she smiled and stepped back, making way for him, he stood still.

“I saw you speaking in earnest with your brother tonight. It didn’t seem a happy talk.”

It had not been. “Come in, Leif. Sit with me.”

For another moment, he didn’t move, and his eyes remained locked with hers. Then he blinked and stepped in. He glanced at her bed, and Olga thought that he would sit there, but he turned from it suddenly and sat on her single chair, near her little fireplace, which held no fire; her room had no need of its heat now.