Page 19 of Loving the Blacksmith
Dare she?
She allowed her gaze to wander over him. Every inch of his body was sheer masculine perfection, from the strong chest and flat stomach to the proud length jutting between the two thickest thighs she had ever seen. My... Wild did not begin to describe him. By comparison she felt as fragile as a kitten.
“This is me,” he said, gesturing at himself. “Still unafraid? Still sure you could take me in all my potency? Be careful. I work with fire and I don’t want you to get burned. I feel I might be just as dangerous to you as my furnace is to me.”
“You are not dangerous.” Hadn’t she just been thinking he knew how to handle fire, tame it even? She had nothing to fear from him.
“Right now that’s exactly now I feel. You know what I’m capable of, what I made you do in that cave. It is nothing compared to what I want to make you do now.”
As if to illustrate the point, he gave a growl deep in his throat. In that moment he looked more than wild, he looked just as he’d said, dangerous. Not to her physical integrity, she was still convinced he would not hurt her, but to her heart. She might trust he would not damage her bodily envelope but she was not so certain he would not reach what was hidden inside her, the soft parts she had never exposed to the world. With him, those parts were not as well-protected as she’d wished, as they’d been so far.
Because she was small and shy, people assumed she had no backbone. The opposite was actually true. Unassuming as she was, Agnes was all backbone, she’d had to be, because there had been no other choice, no one else would have looked after her. But after years of strain, her protection had become brittle. It felt as if might snap at any moment. It should have worriedher, and it did. But perhaps it needn’t do. Hadn’t she just met a blacksmith equipped with all the tools needed to forge her a new one if need be?
Magnus might be the only man capable both of shattering the determination holding her upright and then putting her back together even stronger than before.
Happier.
He wrapped a hand around the rod that had shown no sign of flagging during their discussion. The gesture was at once crude, frightening, and arousing as hell. Under her fascinated gaze, he started to stroke himself.
“Agnes. See what you do to me. You drive me mad.” The voice was raw, and the strokes soon became punishing. This was nothing like the timid caresses she had given him in the cave. Unable to look away, she stared, willing him to bring his pleasure in the manner he was used to, suspecting it would be much more satisfying to watch than when she had done it. This would be uncompromisingly masculine. Perfect. A grunt escaped his lips and he threw his head back, breaking eye contact. The muscles and sinews on his neck twisted and corded, betraying immense strength.
Agnes forgot to breathe.
“Go, now, or I swear I’ll?—”
There was such anguish in his voice that this time she took fright. He was no longer worried for her, but for his own sanity.
Not waiting until he erupted, she turned and fled.
CHAPTER SEVEN
That night, Magnus pretended he had a sword to finish and spent the night at the forge. He doubted Agnes had swallowed the lie but it mattered not. The important thing was that it allowed him to stay away from her and the pallet they had shared for two nights. He could not risk a repeat of the afternoon’s events, when he had frightened poor Agnes to death, first by making her think he’d drowned, then by threatening to eat her whole and finally by stroking himself in front of her with unrestrained ferocity. The release he had forced out of his overstrung body once she’d left had caused him to collapse to his knees in the icy water.
After an agitated night, he was up at the crack of dawn, as usual. Though he was famished, he didn’t dare go back home in case he saw Agnes. He feared seeing the condemnation in her eyes, he feared even more seeing desire because he would not be able to resist it. He would tumble her into the pallet and caution be damned. So instead he went to Wolf’s hut. The Icelander would be up as well and, in exchange for a piece of bread and some cheese, Magnus would offer to help him with the fence. It was the best solution for now.
As he’d expected, his friend was only too glad to accept his help.
“Steinar and Torsten have become veritable terrors. I need something to stop them from destroying our vegetables and terrorizing the chickens,” he told Magnus, the softening in his eyes at the mention of his sons belying the words. Despite the boys’ undeniable boisterousness, he would not be without them for the world. “And seeing as Merewen is going to give me another little scamp in the new year, I’d better take my precautions now.”
Magnus slapped him on the shoulder. He hadn’t known about this new pregnancy and he was delighted for his friend. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you, even though in truth, you have no reason to congratulate me. My part in the whole affair was easy, and more pleasurable than words can express. Merewen will be the one doing the hard part.” A shadow passed over the Icelander’s face. The birth of his second son had been difficult and it had taken his wife a while to recover from it. Wolf had been nothing like his usual self during the long weeks she’d spent lying in bed, building up her strength again. “I wish such joy for me did not come at such a high price for her.”
Magnus didn’t have any children, but he thought he understood what his friend meant exactly. Men were powerless when it came to childbirth. All their supposed physical superiority counted for nothing. Women were the ones possessed with the true force. They alone gave life, their babies were literally wrenched from their bodies. As Wolf said, men’s part in the process was pitiful. They could only watch and try not to go mad when the women they loved suffered agony. Not to mention that a happy deliverance could not be guaranteed.
All in all, a birth was a tense moment, and he could understand his friend’s ambivalent feelings.
“Come,” he told him. “Let us ensure the food needed to feed your family this winter is not destroyed by two little blond monsters. That much, at least, we can do.”
It took them all morning to finish the fence but by the end of it, Magnus was confident even a charging bull would not have presented any threat to it. The chickens and the leeks were safe from Steinar and Torsten. After partaking of a hearty stew prepared by Merewen, he decided to go and see Björn. He was only stalling, and he knew he would eventually have to go back home and face Agnes, but he could not bring himself to do it just yet. Besides, he wanted to see how his friend fared after his ordeal of the previous day.
To his surprise, he found him in bed. That was unlike him. Björn was more active than most. Had he been more seriously injured than he’d thought?
“How are you doing?” Magnus asked, sitting on the stool by the pallet where his bare-chested friend lay. There was a bandage wrapped around his left bicep and the skin above it appeared burned but, as far as he could see, that was the extent of the damage. He’d been lucky. And yet he was grimacing, like a man in pain.
“I’m fine.”
He didn’t look fine. He didn’t even sound fine. “I’ve never seen you lying in bed during the day. You cannot be fine.”
