Conquered From Within Ch 01

This story is set in a fictional Northumbria, northern England, during the era of Viking raids. There are probably many historical inaccuracies because I did not bother to do my research. It's my first time writing, so I'm not sure what it should be categorized as. I just wanted to write. Let me know what you think.

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The eyes of the massive northmen fell upon her as soon as they strode into the room.

Amelina found herself wishing she had not decided to stand behind her father in a show of support. The Danes might be promising to stop their raids down the coast in exchange for a levy of gold, but everyone knew they were a savage race, and now that she was seeing one for the first time, she thought them all the more savage.

"Harold Ulfson," her father called, greeting their leader who had stopped a few paces before him, surrounded by his men. "Hail."

"Æthelred," the Dane said, acknowledging her father. "You're a wiser man than your neighbors to the south."

Her father gave a curt nod, and she was proud of him for staring the heathens down. "We have the gold you've requested."

Demanded, more like. But the heathen leader grinned in satisfaction. "Lay it out then."

As the heavy price they'd extracted was laid at their feet, Amelina felt the northman next to their leader staring at her. Savage braids ran through his flaxen hair, in stark contrast to his ruddy beard. As their gaze met, a shock went through her to find eyes as blue as ice. An uncomfortable tension built up, but she could not tear her eyes away.

Suddenly the northman smiled at her, breaking the spell, and she hurriedly dropped her eyes. It must have been his imposing strangeness that had led her to break propriety so -- she had been raised better than to stare at men. As she gazed fixedly at the floor, she saw him casually nudge the heathen leader from the corners of her vision and say something in their harsh native tongue. Harald conferred with him for a moment, then addressed her father.

"Æthelred. We'll lower the tax by two marks if you give that woman to my nephew."

Her heart began to race. Harald was pointing right at her.

"That is my eldest daughter," her father said stiffly, "She is already promised to another."

The gaze of the blue-eyed man beside Harald swept over her again, from the hem of her dress up to her face, and her back straightened as she shot him a defiant glare. Did he think all things in Northumbria were so easily plundered?

"If you would like the hand of one of my other daughters," her father continued, "that could be arranged. There are Danes occupying East Anglia, and if we were to receive your pledge to support us..."

"Ay, stop your blathering," the Dane cut in rudely. "Æthelred, this is a solid share of gold. But my men are hungry. Let's discuss matters over a good meal."

They had not planned to feed the heathens. But at the deferential nod her father gave, one of the maids went scurrying off to inform the kitchens.

They would feed them.

---

Amelina dined in her own chamber, away from the men, and was glad for it. It had been a terrible day. To have the Danes right at one's door, extorting gold out of Northumbria in exchange for being spared from their axes -- it was a humiliating fate. The filthy heathens were a plague upon the land. When she finished her meal, she took the cross from her necklace into her hand and prayed for God to send them back to the frozen wastes from whence they came.

She had moved to sit beside the fire and was idly spinning wool when the door to her chamber opened. Her maidservant Enfleda was probably bringing water for her evening wash. But when the wooden bar slid shut, barring the door from within, she turned to look. The golden-haired northman who had been ogling her stood before it, a massive presence in his leathers and furs.

Amelina screamed and leapt to her feet.

"No need for alarm, lady," he said, his words bearing a clipped northern accent.

His words did nothing to reassure her. A wild panic was rising in her chest, and her voice rose with it. "What did you do to my guards?"

"Hush." He crossed the room in a few quick steps. "Your guards are fine. Gold takes care of everything."

"You can't be in here," she insisted, stumbling backwards. "I'm engaged to be wed."

"Very well -- that's just what I came to discuss." He caught her by the arm as she tried to dart away.

"You can't," she protested, his firm grip on her arm indicating that he very much could. When she tried to twist away, she found herself held fast. "Please," she begged. "Let me go!"

"Calm down, lass. I won't hurt you." The man spoke like he was gentling a horse. "Easy."

Amelina regained her breath. The man carried no weapon. There could be no good reason why he was in her room, but he did not seem want to do her imminent harm.

"Whatever business you have with me, it can wait til morning," she tried to reason with him. "I'm betrothed,"

The northman grinned. "Who is he?"

"A... a lord," she stammered. "Of Strathclyde."

"So you like northerners." Strathclyde was the kingdom just to their north, nowhere as far as the northern wastes of the Danes. But this man seemed pleased by her answer. "What's his name?"

"Um..." Amelina grasped about for the name of her betrothed, and found it stubbornly elusive. They were all strange names, with never enough vowels.

"You don't even know his name?" the northman asked in amusement.

"Dyfnwal!" She recalled it with a gasp of relief. "Lord Dyfnwal."

The Dane laughed. "Horrible! Sounds like a sneeze."

Despite the terror of her situation, Amelina had to suppress a smile. She had thought so herself.

The man missed nothing. "You've no love for that man," he told her as his blue eyes searched her face. "Have you even met him?"

"Let me go, please."

His grip tightened instead, and he pulled her closer. "He's a scrawny Engliskr, built like a plucked chicken, that your lord father decided to wed you off to with no say in the matter, isn't he? You'd have a better time with me."

She took a deep breath to tell him no, and caught the heady scent of him -- leather, fur, smoke, and something sweet and earthy. He could not be as filthy as she supposed, not while smelling like that. As she struggled to process the shock of his proximity, his lips descended to hers.

Lord, she had never kissed a man like this, all full beard and firm lips. She tried to push him away and found herself pressing futilely against his chest.

He pulled back to look at her.

Oh, she should not have stared at him earlier. He'd been on her trail since that moment. His ice blue eyes were as cold and as deep as the ocean over which he had came. Her heart thudded in her chest.

He tugged her close and kissed her again.

When he finally pulled away, her breath was racing away from her, fast and shallow. She made a quick decision. "Ask for my hand then! If my father gives it to you, I will obey."

The man smiled and kissed her again. "Beautiful."

His beard smelled like smoke. She was losing herself to the sensation of kissing him when his tongue ran over the seam of her lips. She whimpered and pulled away. "We're not wed yet! Please don't--"

He raised his eyebrows. "What's a wedding but the promise you could give me tonight?"

Oh, the heathen nerve, to speak such blasphemy. "The Danes might--"

"I know that's what you Engliskr call us, but I'm not a Dane, lass."

"What?" she asked stupidly. Everyone knew these pillaging northmen were Danes.

"I hail from Norvegr -- the northern way. Much farther than Danmork, where the men are brown and small." He grinned. "I'm a Viking, lass. From the vík. The bay."

She tested the unfamiliar word on her tongue. "Viking."

"Aye." He began maneuvering her backwards. "Now you know more about me than Sniffenwal. And we have the rest of the night to learn each other."

"Stop!" she protested as he pressed her back towards the bed. "You can't simply have me like this tonight! My father will--"

"Your father let me, girl."

The blood drained from her face as she understood.

"Two marks was not enough for old Æthelred. But four marks -- aye, he'd sell ye for four marks of gold."

Panic began to rise up in Amelina's breast as she understood that there was no one to save her, no one to come to her aid. She had been bartered and sold like a mare, simply another item exchanged to pay the Danegeld.

"No, no, no," she protested, struggling vainly against her fate. "No!"

Suddenly she lurched free. The northman had let her go. She ran to the other side of the room, putting the bed between them. Her heart was pounding like a drum, and she did not know whether it was from fear or from fury. A few drinks into dinner and her father had sold her to this heathen, given her over to him to use as he pleased.

"It'll be good, lass," he tried to reassure her. "Better than you know."

"No," she repeated stubbornly, though her heart was trying to escape from her chest. If he would have her, he would have her, but she would not go willingly.

He looked at her for a moment, then began to strip off his layers. First his furs, then his belt. "I won't hurt you," he told her as his belt hit the floor. "And I won't force you. But give me the night to try and change your mind."

She stared in uncomprehending shock as the strange man in her room shrugged off his tunic. Golden hair cascaded down over a powerful chest, and he had shoulders wider than she had ever seen. A scar ran across his upper arm. When he saw her watching him, he tugged his trousers down with a thumb, revealing lines of muscle that disappeared into skin that was pale in places the sun had never seen.

Their eyes met when he looked up, and a jolt went through her. It was hard to breathe.

He crawled onto her bed, kneeling on her furs, and beckoned to her with a finger. "Mey," he called her. "Spend tonight with me, and if you don't give yourself up willingly by the end, I'll let you leave as a maiden in the morning."

"You'd let me leave a maiden?"

He looked like a wild beast crouching on her bed. "I would've already had you by now if I wanted to force you."

That was undoubtedly true. He could've overpowered her easily. So she drew nearer to the bed, trying to understand. "You want me... willing?"

His blue eyes sparkled. "I want you eager."

From all she'd heard, a woman's role was to simply submit to her husband and bear his desires as best as she could. But the composure he had made her think he was used to women being eager for him.

"What do you mean?" she asked, feeling herself to be quite naive.

He beckoned to her with a finger. "Mey, kom hér," and he did not have to translate for her to know what that meant. "I can speak better with my tongue."

It was a devilish grin he had on his face.

"Kom hér," he repeated. "One night, and if you don't like me I'll give you back to that Engliskr. I'd rather keep the gold than have a woman who's cold."

She had only seen her husband-to-be once, when her father had welcome his family at the banquet that sealed their alliance if the fragile truce they had achieved with the northmen by paying the Danegeld ever broke. Lord Dyfnwal was a slight young man with a pinched face, and if he ever met this Viking on the field, he would surely not be the one to return. Now that she had seen the sheer size of these northmen, she doubted even the combined forces of East Anglia and Northumbria could stand against them. Yet despite their savage strength, this one appeared to be giving her something resembling a choice...

He waited patiently for her to make up her mind, resting back on his haunches like a wolf in repose.

Summoning all her courage, she crept onto the bed.

For the first time in her life, she was in the same bed with a man, and he did nothing for a moment but run his eyes over her. Then he drew closer. When he reached up and brushed a hand over her face, she suppressed a tremor at the feeling of his touch. His fingers were hard and callused. It was said the northmen came in small boats they rowed themselves, hand by hand over the icy seas. She believed it now.

He said something to her in his native tongue then, and the harsh words of the northmen sounded fairer the way he said them. His hand ran over her hair as he spoke to her softly and slowly, like he was gentling a mare. When he leaned in and kissed her, she let him.

His lips were warm and firm, yet gentle. As she relaxed against him, he moved closer, and his tongue traced over the seam of her lips again. She parted them for him this time. His tongue entering her mouth, tasting her, and the sensation made her stomach drop and her blood rush hot through her veins. When she tentatively brushed her tongue against his, he drew back and smiled against her lips.

"Aye. Like that," he urged, his voice low and husky.

He kissed her again, deeply exploring her. The languid sensation made her head swim. His hands had been working through her hair, and she felt her hair fall loose about her shoulders as he pulled out the clasps and pins, letting them fall haphazardly to the bed.

Oh, she was being undone by this. The furtive, chaste kisses she had shared beneath the garden wall with the stableboy once were nothing in comparison. His hands trailed up her waist, then over her breasts, and a dull, heavy ache pooled between her legs.

Suddenly he lifted her and pulled her up onto his lap. She braced herself against his bare chest, finding herself straddling him. Beneath her was the firm length of his thighs, and between them, the firm length of... She rose to her knees, rising up off of him.

"You said you wouldn't..."

He took his hands off of her, raising them in a gesture of surrender as he looked up at her with sparkling blue eyes. "Tell me to stop and I'll stop. But I swear you'll not find a single Engliskr willing to give it to you the way we give it to our women back in the north country. Don't you want to know what it's like?"

The low light of the fire sparkled over the long golden hair spilling freely over his chest, and full beard was streaked with red, she could see from this close. She had never known a man quite like this. "Like what?" she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

He pulled her down to meet his lips again, and as he kissed her, his hand slid up her thigh. When he brushed his thumb over the crux of her sex, she bucked against him.

"Like this," he whispered. "Just my hand. Nothing more."

Her legs trembled as his hand slid up beneath her skirts. She wished to draw them closed, but they were splayed around him, and she could not pull away as his hand slid up into the secret inner reaches of her thighs.

"Oh!" She cried out as his fingers slipped over the place no man but her husband should touch.

He let out a sharp exhale. "Oh, Freya. You're as wet as the sea for me."

Her face burned as she felt her sinful wetness slip over his hand. She should tell him to stop, she should pull away, but his light touch both sated and inflamed a rising, restless pleasure, and she dropped her head to his shoulder, unable to bear the shame of it.

"So good," he whispered. "You're so good."

As she panted against his neck, she recalled a cat she had seen once, mewling in heat as she begged to be rutted. She gave a whimper at the realization that she was no different. In the quick span of a few moments, this heathen had reduced her to a shivering animal, lost in the grip of a lust she had never known.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her, laying her back on the bed as if she weighed nothing. Her skirts fell about her waist, exposing her to him, and she thought that he would take her now. She had neither the will nor strength to fight him.

He pushed her skirts back fully to the waist, kneeling between her parted legs, and she caught a glimpse of him boldly staring at her open sex. Her hands flew up to cover her flushed face.

"Beautiful," he muttered, his fingers still running over her sex that was as liquid as if she'd wet herself.

When she thought she couldn't bear it anymore, the fingers running over her disappeared. The northman shifted his weight, parting her bare thighs wider for him, and she prayed it would be over quick.

A wet, burning pressure stroked up the slit of her sex. Her legs tried to clamp closed, but his hands held them back. Yet if his hands were on his legs, what was...

She looked down and shrieked when she found his head between her legs. He grinned at her, then ran his tongue up the length of her dripping sex again.

Oh, it was disgusting, she had never heard of such a thing, it was an abomination before God and man, but he held her legs tightly as she tried to writhe away, and she could only scream as he did it again.

He laughed as her screams died away into desperate gasps. "Do you like it?"

She could not answer. His tongue flickered over her, teasing her with light, building pressure, and she could only twist her hands in the blankets of the bed and shudder beneath him. The hot, powerful feelings rushing over her were surely driving her mad, for she felt about ready to jump out of her skin. An itching, boiling pressure was building up between her lewdly parted legs, and she was sure she was about to humiliate herself in the most abject of ways, perhaps relieving herself on his face. But he did not relent.

He shifted his weight so her leg was pinned beneath his arm, then brought his hand to her again, probing at her entrance, testing her maidenhood. There was a slight stretch, then something slipped within her.

She cried out again as the man's finger twisted up into her, opening her up for the first time in her life. His face was buried in her slit, his tongue lashing over her, his beard drowning in her profuse emissions...

The pressure built to an unbearable high. "Stop!" she sobbed. "Please!"

He did not listen. His hot tongue tortured her as he thrust his finger deep into her, taking her with his hand, and all of a sudden the pressure broke in a blinding wave. She screamed. Every muscle in her body was trying to escape the borders of her skin. Oh, he was breaking her open. Unimaginable depths of hot, rushing pleasure was pouring out from the secret depths of her, and if this was what it meant to sin, heaven itself could not compare. The moment itself stretched into a timeless infinity, then broke into shuddering waves, like ripples spreading out from a rock thrown into a pond.

When she came back to herself, he was leaning over her, wiping his soaking beard off with his hand. A smile played in his beautiful blue eyes. "How was that, lass."

She did not know how to answer. Nothing made sense. Her shattered world would have to reconfigure itself. The warm rush of pleasure still thrummed in her veins, and the insistent tug of it drew her towards him.

"What was that?" she asked weakly.

He raised his eyebrows. "You've never been brought to completion?"

Completion. That described it. She stared at him, not understanding how such experiences could exist and remain fully unknown to her.

"Even by yourself?" He regarded her quizzically.

When she shook her head, he gave a full-bodied laugh. "You Engliskr are as frigid as fish."

"It is a sin! To touch anyone... down there," she protested, feeling the strange need to explain herself to him.

"Who said it's a sin?"

"The Lord..."

"Did he, now?" The Viking smiled at her. "Then your Lord is frigid too."

She made a small noise of protest as he hauled her up to a sitting position. There was a wet spot on the quilt on the spot where he had debauched her, and it grew wetter still when she sat up.

He threw his tunic beneath her, and she watched in numb shock as he began undoing the laces of his trousers.