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The scent of sex and faint smoke from the guttering candle beside the bed furs filled the air, along with panting breaths and soft, quiet laughs. Athelstan turned on his side, watching as beside him Ragnar rocked his hips in slow, languid motions, nuzzling his wife’s flushed lips and whispering something only she could hear. Whatever it was, it made her smile in a way that seemed to melt away the fierce demeanor she wore like a cloak, revealing the breathtakingly beautiful woman behind the warrior.
For a little while now Athelstan had been joining the pair in their bed, and of everything he’d seen them do – and everything they’d done to him – he thought the kisses they shared fascinated and aroused him the most. He liked to watch them, the way sometimes he’d get a glimpse of a soft, damp tongue sweeping into Lagertha’s mouth, the way they seemed to enjoy it almost as much as the sex they had so often. Athelstan wondered what it felt like, that they did it so often.
Ragnar’s oh-so-blue gaze slid over to him, then, as if he could hear Athelstan’s curious thoughts. A smile twitched the Viking’s lips at one corner, a thing that never failed to make Athelstan’s stomach clench with want. It was such a wicked look, one that said this was a man who was up to no good and had no regrets about it.
“Stop thinking so loudly, priest,” he teased, lifting one brow. “Tell me what is rattling about in your head over there.”
Athelstan lifted one shoulder, shifting a little closer, drawn to the heat of them. “Why do you kiss so much?”
Lagertha let out a little yelp of laughter, reaching one slim hand out to toy with his curls. “Sweet priest, sometimes I feel as though we’ve brought a babe to our bed.”
Ragnar frowned, though, and looked like he was thinking very hard. For an uneducated heathen, Ragnar Lothbrok spent a lot of time thinking. Athelstan saw him, all the time, sitting on that cliff staring out over the water. Just thinking. No one seemed to find it strange and it made Athelstan wonder if perhaps his impressions of the north men as mindless giants was a premature assumption.
Athelstan shifted closer still, teeth catching his lower lip. “What does it feel like?” he asked in a breathless whisper.
Ragnar let out a groan, then. “Lagertha…have you never kissed the priest?”
She blinked, pushing up onto one elbow. “I don’t think so…have you?”
Athelstan could have told them the answer was no. No one had. And he was beginning to wish someone would. “Isn’t it messy?” He would think so. Tongues and teeth and lips all bumping against each other, slippery and warm…and yet something told him it must not be, because otherwise why would they spend so much time doing it?
Ragnar chuckled, easing from between Lagertha’s thighs and kneeling up on the furs. He held out one hand. “Come here, priest.”
Athelstan was tempted to remind the Viking that he did have a name, but decided this wasn’t the time for petty details. Ragnar could call him anything he wanted if he would just promise to give him a little kiss – just so he could see for himself what it was all about.
So he took Ragnar’s hand and let him pull him up to his knees, so they faced each other. For her part, Lagertha grinned and turned to face them, head propped in one hand, watching intently.
“It can be messy, yes, to answer your question. Sometimes that is the entire point.” Ragnar winked at Lagertha then, with another wicked grin, then turned his focus back on Athelstan. “Messy is a good thing, priest, most of the time.”
“When isn’t it?”
Ragnar shook his head. “Why don’t we concern ourselves with the good, not the bad?”
That sounded like a wonderful idea, and Athelstan nodded, heart thumping hard. “Alright. I don’t…how…” He sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair. He felt foolish. “Now what?”
“Now you take a breath, priest.” But then Ragnar’s big, long-fingered hand came up to his cheek, rough fingertips stroking along his jaw and Athelstan wanted to cry foul because he could not possibly be expected to breathe with this man touching him that way. Ragnar’s fingers travelled up a bit and when they touched his mouth, Athelstan inhaled sharply. Ragnar’s eyes flared with heat, the same heat that pooled low in Athelstan’s belly. “I fear we’ve been remiss. How have we had such a beautiful mouth in our bed for so long and let it go to waste?”
Lagertha let out a husky, sensual laugh. “I would not exactly say we’ve let his mouth go to waste, husband.”
Athelstan’s cheeks flushed, mind spinning with flashes of memory. His mouth had indeed done things recently that he had never, ever imagined were even possible, let alone that he would be doing. He pushed the thoughts aside. He did not like to think of the things he’d done in combination with his previous life – reconciling the two was too difficult yet.
“That is true.” Ragnar smiled, as if sensing that Athelstan was anxious. He probably did sense it, the man was incredibly astute for a Viking. “Have you never kissed anyone, priest?”
Athelstan thought about it. “I kissed Gyda’s elbow the other day when she fell and scraped it. Abbot Cuthbert kissed my cheek once when I managed to save one of the Gospels from a spilled wine bottle, he was so grateful…”
Ragnar laughed softly and pressed his fingers to Athelstan’s mouth to silence him. “That is not the kind of kissing I mean. I think that is a no, then. Don’t you think, wife?”
Lagertha nodded. “Such a shame. Teach him well, Ragnar. I wonder if your teachings will mean he will kiss like you.” She grinned and bit her lip in obvious delight at the thought. “I hope so. I do so like the way you kiss.”
That was obvious, Athelstan thought. Ragnar must kiss like the very devil, a thought which both shocked and aroused him. Before he could get too deep into the mental and spiritual squirming that was about to ensue, Ragnar dragged his attention back to the matter at hand with a single brush of his lips against Athelstan’s own. He hadn’t even noticed Ragnar moving in so close.
It was…brief. Too brief to really wrap his mind around it, and he frowned when the Viking pulled back. He started to ask if that was it when Ragnar’s hand slid from his cheek into his hair and gently – so gently – tilted his face up. It was as though his entire world had narrowed down to a pair of sky blue eyes and an impish, seductive smile.
Dear God in Heaven, help him. Except Athelstan was very sure that God was, as Lagertha had put it, looking the other way at the moment.
“Do you remember last night, priest?” Ragnar’s voice was a low, rough breath against Athelstan’s lips.
He nodded. How could he have forgotten? “Yes…”
“And you remember how you followed my every command? Obeying down to the smallest detail?”
Athelstan was suddenly very grateful he was on his knees already, because they went weak at the reminder. “Yes,” he whispered, heart pounding so hard he was sure it would wake the children. Although, to be fair, they slept through some very loud things…
“Good.” Ragnar leaned in a fraction of an inch, his vivid gaze flicking between Athelstan’s mouth and his eyes. “Do that again. Except it will be my tongue and my mouth giving the commands.”
He had no idea what that even meant, but as usual Ragnar did not bother to explain or wait for Athelstan to ask any questions, the bossy oaf simply went ahead and kissed him then. Oh…it was glorious.
Ragnar’s mouth was very warm, his beard and overgrowth scratchy but not unpleasantly so…just as it was other places. His lips were softer than Athelstan had imagined. He’d somehow assumed they were as hard as the rest of the man, but they gave so nicely and seemed almost to shape themselves to Athelstan’s, nudging and coaxing.
It was then that Athelstan understood what Ragnar said. His mouth would give the commands. It was doing so now, he realized. The subtle nudging of the Viking’s lips, the faint brush of the tip of Ragnar’s tongue along the bottom curve of his lip…Athelstan tried to ignore the rapid racing of his heart and pay attention to the quiet, almost whispered requests from his master’s mouth.
The brush of his tongue came again, this time along the seam of his lips and Athelstan shuddered, obediently parting his lips. And then immediately jerked back when Ragnar’s tongue swept inside. He panted softly, peering up at Ragnar anxiously. “I…I’m sorry. It’s very…shocking.”
Lagertha laughed beside them, reaching out to skim her slim fingers along his bare thigh. “Ragnar might not, but I recall my first kiss, priest, and you are right. It is shocking.” To Ragnar, she admonished. “Do not rush him so, husband.”
Ragnar let out a long-suffering sigh. “Do you think you could do better?”
She grinned. “Probably, but I am enjoying this far too much to stop you now. Go on, then. Show him how it is done.”
Athelstan swallowed hard, gaze flicking between the two. He got the feeling this was becoming a bit of a competition, but whether he was the prize or the game itself, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps both.
“Shut up, wife. I am busy kissing our priest.” Ragnar’s voice was full of the exasperation and great affection Athelstan knew he felt for Lagertha. It was one of the things that endeared the man to him. It was impossible to think him an unfeeling criminal when he indulged and adored his wife so.
In truth, Athelstan sometimes found his heart thumping extra hard when he would catch a similar tone in Ragnar’s voice when talking to him. He did not dare examine what those feelings might mean. Not now. Not yet. Some other day, perhaps.
He had no time to think right now, after all. He was busy. Or would be if Ragnar would stop sniping at his wife and get around to the kissing lessons he’d barely begun.
“Kiss him,” she breathed.
Athelstan’s heart leapt at the soft command. Lagertha watched with a heated gaze as Ragnar obeyed her, bending his head to take Athelstan’s mouth in another kiss. He was lightheaded with the knowledge that he was being kissed…by a man. By a heathen. The second was more important than the first, he thought, since kissing anyone certainly was not on the very short list of allowable affectionate interactions.
There was nothing really affectionate about this, though. It was…more. Ragnar was a man of sometimes violent passions and Athelstan had seen and felt them unleash many times over the recent weeks. He could feel those passions now, straining at the leash Ragnar held them by. That he restrained himself at all made Athelstan’s heart pound in a way he could not explain. It made him feel…cared for. Cherished, almost.
It was foolishness, he knew, but there it was. He had never felt so safe as he did then in Ragnar’s hands. And at the same time he felt in delicious danger of being completely and irrevocably consumed by him as well.
Ragnar’s mouth seemed made for this. The same way it was made for those wicked smiles he so frequently unleashed, the boyish charm so few could resist. When Ragnar Lothbrok wanted something, you had better hope he didn’t unleash one of those smiles on you. Unless, of course, what he wanted involved pleasure and nakedness and then one would ache with breath caught in lungs for the twitch of his lips that was almost always a precursor to the crooking of his finger in silent beckoning.
And then Athelstan’s thoughts spun out from under him as though he were caught in a whirlpool and Ragnar was his God of the sea, both the center of and the source of the maelstrom within.
Athelstan wanted to push away, to beg him to stop, to say that he’d changed his mind and no longer wanted this lesson. The drag of Ragnar’s tongue frightened him, deep in his soul place. The scrape of his teeth sent shivers of both desire and danger down Athelstan’s spine.
Or maybe that was Lagertha’s dancing fingers, because the next thing he knew she was behind him, up against his back, her breath in his ear. Oh god…Athelstan melted back against her, and in turn submitted even further to Ragnar’s kiss. He wondered fuzzily if this had been her intention. If she’d seen him beginning to panic and taken action.
God help him, they were not nearly as unintelligent as he’d first assumed.
Her breasts were soft mounds against his naked back, and he could feel her nipples hard and pressed to his shoulder blades. Ragnar’s tongue glided deep and Lagertha’s hands came around to stroke over his sweat-damp flesh and he felt so utterly consumed. There was reverence in their touch, in the way they handled him. Ragnar’s hands cupping his face so gently while his mouth steadily devoured him; Lagertha’s lips a gentle brush against his nape as she slid one hand down his stomach to stroke him in slow, tight motions.
It was as though he had not just achieved the mind-bending release with them that he had just a handful of minutes earlier. His body did not seem to care, greedy thing. It craved more. He craved more.
And they gave it, moments later drawing him down to the furs, one on either side now, and when Ragnar’s mouth went away, before Athelstan could protest Lagertha was there to offer hers. And back and forth, with various detours by both down his body, between his thighs, everywhere…he could not focus on anything except one truth that stunned him in the middle of it all.
He belonged to them. Not as their slave, but just…as theirs.
He had sworn his life, his body, his soul to God before he’d ever really know what it was to live. And now…God had brought him here. Maybe he didn’t ‘look the other way’. Maybe God knew. Athelstan didn’t know. What he did know was he would never go back. He would never leave them.
In the end he was where life, fate, God, the Gods…whatever you named it, he was where he ought to be. That was true, he felt it in his bones. And when he rode Ragnar’s cock to completion with Lagertha’s taste on his tongue whilst she rode her husband’s wicked mouth to the same end Athelstan decided that kissing – while fun – was not his favorite thing in this crazy new world he now called his own. His favorite thing was love. Love lived here and so did he. Forever.
End.