Chapter 5: The Valkyrie's Obsession
Astrid’s laugh was a low, hungry thing that vibrated through the furs and into Caius’s bones. “Oh, no you don’t,” she purred, her hips already moving in a slow, inexorable circle that drew a ragged gasp from him. “The night is young, my little prince. And I intend to see just how deep this well of yours goes.”
She moved with a predator’s grace, rolling him onto his back and straddling his hips without ever breaking the connection between them. The look in her eyes was no longer one of soft wonder, but of fierce, joyous conquest. Her powerful thighs clenched around his slender frame, pinning him in place.
“You’re going to ruin me,” she moaned, her head falling back as she began to ride him in earnest, her body taking what it wanted with a practiced, devastating rhythm. The longhouse seemed to hold its breath around them, the firelight dancing over the carvings of warriors and beasts on the walls, as if they too were watching. “Go on. Do it. Break me with this glorious curse.”
Caius could only cling to her, his hands splayed against the hard muscle of her lower back. His mind, so often a whirlwind of anxiety and book-learned caution, had gone utterly, blissfully silent. There was only this: the slick, hot clutch of her, the smell of their sweat and her wild, alpine scent, the sight of her magnificent body moving above him.
He felt a familiar, impossible pressure building again, a tide that refused to be held back for long. “Astrid, I… I can’t…”
“Yes, you can,” she growled, leaning forward to brace her hands on either side of his head, her hair a golden curtain around them. Her pace became frantic, punishing. “Give it to me. All of it. I want to feel so full of you I slosh when I walk.”
The crude command, delivered with such absolute authority, shattered what little control he had left. His back arched off the furs as a second, seemingly impossible wave crashed through him. It was just as potent, just as voluminous as the first. Astrid cried out, a sharp, guttural sound of triumph as her own body convulsed around him, milking every last drop.
She collapsed atop him, her full weight a comforting burden. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their harsh, shared breathing.
Then she pushed herself up, a wild, reckless energy in her eyes. “Again.”
It became a feverish pilgrimage through her home. He found himself pressed up against the rough-hewn timber of a support post, Astrid’s back to his chest as she reached behind to grip his thighs, guiding his thrusts with raw, demanding grunts. The post groaned in sympathy.
Later, he was on his knees before her as she sat on the edge of a heavy oak table, her legs hooked over his shoulders. She threw a tankard of mead across the room in a fit of ecstasy, the clay shattering against the hearthstone. “By the gods, right there! Don’t you dare stop!”
He didn’t. He couldn’t. The curse, or blessing, or whatever it was, had taken full control. It was a perpetual engine of need, and Astrid was its eager, insatiable fuel.
Sweat-slick and trembling, they stumbled towards the large, wooden tub used for bathing. Astrid practically fell into it, pulling him down on top of her. The water sloshed over the sides, dousing the nearby rushes. Her wings, usually folded tight and invisible against her back, burst forth in a shower of shimmering, ethereal light, unfurling to their full, impossible span. They draped over the sides of the tub, feathers trembling with each of his thrusts.
“Look what you’ve done,” she panted, her eyes wide with a kind of religious fervor as she gazed at her own manifested wings. “You’ve unmade me. I’m just… a thing for you to fill. Your thing.” She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, her voice breaking into a sob of pure pleasure. “Your perfect, princely bull.”
The words should have been absurd. But in the steam-filled air, with her wings glowing and her body accepting him with a greed that defied physics, they felt like the only truth in the world.
When he spilled into her for what felt like the fifth time, the sensation was less a sharp peak and more a continuous, rolling eruption. Astrid’s howl shook the rafters. Her wings beat once, a powerful gust that sent bathwater spraying across the room and made the fire in the hearth spit and hiss.
They lay in the cooling water, entangled and utterly spent. Astrid’s belly was visibly, tautly rounded, a clear testament to the night’s exertions. She ran a hand over it, a look of profound, smug satisfaction on her face.
“The other girls,” she slurred, her voice heavy with exhaustion and fulfillment, “are going to be so jealous.”