Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) (25 page)

“I’m not really hungry,” he shook his head.

“From where I am standing, it looks like you’ve been hungry your whole life,” she curled her lip in scolding, “always standing back and making sure others are fed before feeding yourself. It wouldn’t hurt you to put on a few pounds, and you can start with this bowl of vegetables and broth.”

She had no idea how true that was. It was a struggle making sure his brother and sister were fed, even before their mother died; afterward he went without eating many a time just so Finn didn’t go hungry. It wasn’t until he’d undertaken his council apprenticeship things starting to improve for their family, but by that point habits were already formed and Vilnjar found he needed very little food or sleep to get through the day.

He stared at the bowl cupped in her hands, watching the soft white pillars of moisture rise into the cold. Food was the last thing on his mind, but he reached out to accept her gift and for a long time he just held it in his hands, grateful for the warmth seeping through his gloves.

A crooked smile tugged at Frigga’s lips. “Food is for warming the belly, not the hands,” she insisted. “Eat.”

There was no arguing with such a command, and he yielded with a nod of his head before she turned her back to him and walked to the pot to ladle another bowl for herself. She rejoined him, watching him lift the edge of the bowl to his lips. He sipped the fragrant, watery broth, it smelled faintly of boiled onion and he saw thin chunks of potato floating near the edge. The air cooled it enough that it wasn’t scalding to the tongue, and he drank deep. Frigga nodded approval before squatting, sitting and silently ordering him to do the same with little more than a nod to the empty space on the ground beside her.

He had never spent so much time on the back of a horse. Aching joints and muscles he hadn’t even been aware of cracked and popped as he lowered himself carefully onto the frozen ground. Soup sloshed out over his gloved fingers, momentarily burning through the leather. He hissed and cursed under his breath, and Frigga snickered into her shoulder before blowing across the steam to cool her own supper.

They just sat together, sipping at the broth in their bowls and not speaking while the others hunkered down in front of the fire to do the same, but there was enough distance between them and the others to talk without prying ears. They said nothing for a long time, not even after their bowls were empty and Frigga laid hers on the ground in front of her and stared into the fire.

Several times he found himself looking over at her, memorizing every curve in her face until he could draw her immediately to mind by simply closing his eyes. The soft sharpness of her chin, the way her nose dipped slightly upward at the end and how her long, dark lashes lay atop her cheeks when she blinked. He had been studying her that way for days, every time they were together. While she worked, while she listened, while they took lunch together during their short breaks from metalwork and storytelling.

It was Vilnjar who finally spoke, nudging his chin into his shoulder and asking, “Why did you come with me, Frigga?”

“You mean aside from the fact you still haven’t finished telling me the story you started? I want to know what happened to Jora Dragonslayer.”

He chuckled, laying his half-empty bowl on the ground next to hers and drawing his legs up. Wrapping his arms around them, he laid his head atop his knees and stared over at her. “My stories aren’t that great.”

“You sell yourself short.” There was a hint of sadness in her voice when she said that, her eyes closing for a moment as if she were thinking of how to phrase her next words. “The night you came to Dunvarak with the Light of Madra, you were the first one I saw. Standing behind them, feeling out of place and like you did not belong. I thought to myself, ‘now there is a man who has forgotten his worth. Maybe I should show him.’”

“Worth,” he said softly, as if he’d forgotten the very meaning of the word.

“See,” she tilted her head to look over at him, the golden glow of the fire drawing out the honeyed highlights of her hair. “You do not believe that I could possibly care for you, even though I’ve just told you.”

“No,” he confessed. “I couldn’t even imagine why someone like you would show such kindness to someone like me.”

“Someone like you.” When she shook her head, the gold braids of her hair jostled against her shoulders. “All my life I have waited for someone like you to come along.”

Even hearing her say it didn’t make him believe. He kept waiting for the punchline, for her to throw her head back and laugh before admitting she was only having a go at him to gauge his reaction. But she didn’t laugh. Instead she grew solemn, pursing her lips together until they were two thin, white lines of sadness.

“When I was young…”

“You’re still young,” he interrupted.

“Not so young as I look,” she raised an eyebrow.

“How old are you? Seventeen? Eighteen?”

“Two and twenty.” She quirked an eyebrow, watching him with unspoken satisfaction. “Now are you going to let me tell you my story? Or do you not wish to hear it?”

“Please,” he yielded shamefully, “go on.”

“When I was younger there was a boy in Dunvarak I thought I would die without. His name was Erik and we had always known each other, even when we were children. He adored me.” She paused, watching his face as if waiting for him to react, and though he felt and instant surge of jealousy at the thought of someone else adoring her more than he did, he didn’t let it show. “Even my father approved of him and would have consented to our union if only he’d been given the chance. But the chance never came. Erik went out hunting with his father one morning and neither of them ever returned.”

“What happened to them?”

She drew a deep breath in through her nose, the nostrils flaring wide. “A big storm rolled in shortly after they left and trapped them beyond the walls for weeks. Hodon sent a party out to look for them once the storm passed, but by then it was too late. Both Erik and his father were lost.” She took a moment, her stare lingering on the fire. He swore there were unshed tears in her eyes, making them look glassy and even more distant. “I was devastated. I could not imagine my life or my future no matter how hard I tried, and I longed for Llorveth to claim my soul and commit me to the Hunting Grounds where Eric surely waited for me.”

“I am glad he did not,” Vilnjar muttered.

A momentary twitch of gladness worked at her mouth, and then she went on. “Yovenna came to me months later, and when she saw I was still crippled by my own grief she told me that though my heart was broken, one day a wolf would come and fill the emptiness I felt inside me. I would know him when I saw him and I would love him with every part of myself before he even spoke to me because I was to be his mate.”

The chills that danced across the surface of his skin were unlike any he’d ever felt before. His heart felt like it skipped a beat inside his chest, and it was all he could do to keep from gasping.

“So, you see, I was waiting for you the night you came to Dunvarak with the Light of Madra. The moment I saw you, I knew it was you Yovenna spoke of. I watched you that night,” she went on. “I watched you watching me. Even when you thought I wasn’t looking, I watched. I saw the way you were with your brother, how you looked after him and his mate, and I knew you spent your whole life looking after others.” Turning her eyes to meet with his, her face grew serious, her mouth tight with certainty as she said, “I think now it is time you had someone to look after you, Vilnjar.”

She reached her hand out and laid it over his, fingers curling around fingers just before she squeezed. Her touch sent strange tingles through his whole body, tightening and tensing him from the inside out. He didn’t know what to say, and didn’t realize until she turned a coy look over her shoulder he was supposed to get up and follow when she rose and started toward the tent he’d set up several feet away from the fire’s edge. She bent and ducked between the flaps, disappearing inside while he just stared after her feeling insecure and uncertain about whether following was the right thing to do.

He’d never been one to rashly rush into any situation, unlike his brother who’d probably bedded at least half the young women in Dunvarak without even asking their names. Without the possibility of a mate bond, Vilnjar preferred to take his time, making sure he at least felt a fond connection to a woman before inviting her into his bed. In his lifetime, there were only three, and it took him months and months with each one of them to work up the courage to finally go through with it.

He’d only known Frigga a week, and yet it felt like so much longer.

“Don’t just sit there.” The hard leather toe of a boot nudged into the small of his back, and when he turned to look over his shoulder he saw Logren regarding him with knowing eyes.

The other man didn’t need to say another word; Vilnjar understood his meaning. A woman like Frigga waited for no man, but the simple fact that everyone would know where he’d gone if he got up was enough to make his face feel like it was on fire.

Rising slowly, his legs felt heavy. When he bent to pick up their bowls, Logren cleared his throat. Furrowing his brow as Vilnjar looked back at him, he made a desperate face that brought an incorrigible grin to the other man’s lips. With a defeated sigh, he walked toward the tent like a man who’d been sentenced to death, earning a boisterous chuckle from Logren that made him feel even more ridiculous.

He hesitated at the opening, reaching up with an unsteady hand to pull the flap away and duck inside.

“Frigga,” he started, but she reached for him before he’d even stepped through the opening and tugged him into the darkness. Her warm body was instantly flush with his, and before he could utter another syllable her mouth was on his, soft lips parting, her dominating tongue pushing between his teeth.

She was already stripping the fur cloak from his shoulder, deft fingers working the brooch at the neck, hands shoving it away before she began fumbling with the ties of his shirt. Even though the look in her eye told him exactly what awaited him inside the tent, she still caught him by surprise, her aggressive kisses igniting an insatiable longing for more than just her lips.

Every time their skin touched, he felt their hearts beating as one, escalating to a dangerous pace until he swore it felt like it might explode inside his chest.

Gently gripping her shoulders in his hands, he held her against him, unable to stop himself from kissing her even when she started to pull away to finish taking off his shirt. He didn’t feel the cold air when she withdrew, only the absence of her heat. Tugging the layers of soft-spun fabric away from his skin and tossing his shirt somewhere behind her, she untucked her own shirt and lifted it away from her body. In the dim orange glow from the fire beyond their tent, her silhouette alone made every part of him burn.

He lifted a gentle, curious hand toward her, but she came into him again, more aggressively than before. The warm, soft mounds of her bare breasts pressed into his chest, her hungry mouth fed from his. The animal inside him did more than just stir, it rose to the surface, answering her aggression with eager, bruising fingers that gripped and squeezed her hips, yanking her body against his until she could feel how much he wanted her.

She gasped when they came together, a soft flutter of anxious breath passing from her lips to his when she shoved him back clumsily and fell in above him. Perched on her hands, the loose waves of her honey colored hair danced across his face, tickling his nose, along his cheeks when he moved through them, rising upward to find her mouth again as she straddled his hips.

Caught in the moment, the rest of their clothes were quickly lost, and as he rolled into her, pinning her on her back and rising above her, it never once crossed his mind he was doing something so unlike him it would change the man he was forever. All that mattered was Frigga, the single beating of two hearts, the rising heat of their union, the wholeness of knowing a part of him—missing since the day he was born—finally returned.

Before her, he was nothing; inside her, he was all things.

The women who came before her were just warmth and comfort, release from the natural tensions that built up inside a man, but she was so much more than that. Together they experienced every part of each other. Physical pleasure, emotional elation. Everything she felt, he felt. The aching desperation of his absence from her when he began to lift away, the anticipation of his body returning to hers when he descended to reclaim her.

Her heart fluttered, her stomach quivered against his, the heat of her breath rushed across his face and through the loose locks of his hair dangling above her. She lifted her hand to hold them away, her eyes searching for his in the darkness, and in their soft shine he saw forever.

There was no longer life before Frigga, no memory of breath before she lifted into his kiss and quickened his docile heart with her fire.

The unbridled excitement of their first coming together brought on quick release, but the rapture of his ultimate pleasure gave her release too, their bodies shuddering and stiffening and then melting together as the frigid air cooled the sweat slicking their naked skin.

He started to roll away from her, a flood of emotions surging through him that bordered on guilt and shame over knowing another’s body before he knew hers. If only he’d waited, he thought, they could have experienced first bliss together, but she had not waited either, and he immediately found himself curious about the man who’d lain with her before him. Was it the boy she’d spoken of, the one she loved with all her heart, who claimed the part of her that should have been his?

As if to quell the quickening of his jealous heart, Frigga brought her arm up to stop him from moving away from her. She nuzzled the tip of her nose across his before slowly tasting his lips. The height of her emotions still flowed through him, a storm of bliss and joy mingled with the overwhelming heartache of the bond they now shared.

All other bonds melted away, the jealousy he felt with it, as he realized there would be no other for her, no one else but him until the day they died.