"I hear a heaviness to your breathing, Hytham. Does your wound still trouble you?"
A hot and hungry breath left Eivor's mouth as she repeated her earlier words to the man underneath her, his expression one of tenacious pain and an anxious tinge that hadn't left his face since they'd arrived back to the Bureau.
His words then were about prolonged stresses exhausting him, something the Vikingr was no stranger to, and this was not yet a prolonged stress in her world.
He had given her a gift today, and Eivor always repaid a kindness.
Hytham winked at her, telling the Vikingr to wait and to watch as his pace picked up and his legs took him to the cliff's edge and over.
Eivor waited, and watched, for all of two seconds before her face turned to one of fear and concern when it was clear that the foreigner she'd escorted up the hill was a madman through and through.
She yelled his name as he disappeared from view, the only thing left of where he'd been now a distant visage of the Mercia's foggy forest.
Again, Eivor yelled for him while she followed his path to the edge, looking over and downwards to see that Hytham was alive and… relatively well, standing upright at the base.
"You see! My faith proved stronger than my fear!"
His words denounced him as overconfident, where Eivor was quick to spell out that his only savior was the soft collection of soil at the bottom, but the man's tone turned warm and bidding when he spoke.
"Eivor, I have not seen this side of you before! Do not feed your fear, conquer it!"
He had seen nary an inkling of the Vikingr, scarcely speaking to her since their introduction in Norway, and Eivor was adamant to show him.
A plunge, literally, metaphorically, inching closer to where fears lied. At the edge, at face with Hytham at the end of their journey back to Raventhorpe, it would've all meant nothing if she did not take this leap of faith.
"What are you doing…?" Hytham asked quietly while Eivor put her hands on his shoulders, giving her the slightest pause.
The Vikingr thought it a stupid question.
"You're a learned man. I am sure you can fathom my intentions." Eivor answered in that bleak jesting tone, planting her kiss on his lips.
Hytham did not reciprocate. He was much too concerned with what this truly meant, to have the adopted sister of one of his brothers in the Hidden Ones crave him so boldly.
"This is… We have not courted properly. What if we are seen?" The Assassin posited, honestly driven by these thoughts.
"This is how we court where I'm from. Embrace it. Lean into your faith, right?" She threw his words back at him, her hands crawling like snakes to his throat and upwards his jaw.
Hytham was silent for what felt like the longest of moments, searching Eivor's eyes for her joke. He chuckled when he thought he found it, and the Vikingr chuckled along with him.
The laughter quickly died down, not a single thing had changed, and Hytham was acutely aware of how Eivor's gaze had not changed from her hawkeyed drink of his face, even when she laughed.
He'd known she was a character of will, the tool used by leaders to accomplish goals, by any means necessary, like Basim with their superiors. To be in someone like that's sights was a horribly humbling experience.
Earlier, he'd spoken to say that he noted a shadow of suspicion in her eyes when he and his mentor arrived with Sigurd in Fornburg.
Eivor hadn't the heart to tell him then that he was only half-right, that she had drunk and staving off the bloodlust of the kills she'd garnered earlier that day to save her crew, and that the only thing on her mind when she met him was… him, for a moment.
Now she clasped his head in her hands, and kissed him again, deeply, drawn out and passionate, so much so that Hytham relented in his confusing desire and lengthy abstinence to allow himself this reprieve with someone so fascinating.
It was consent everlasting, at least for Eivor. Whatever occurred now, she felt it her right to him, his back pressing into the diamond-shaped parchment shelves of the newly constructed Bureau as the Vikingr exerted her will.
His hands, shaking and anxious and uncertain in how to proceed, rested deftly at her lower back all the while until Eivor reached her own hand back to guide his touch under her leather tunic and over her shapely rump hidden beneath.
A self-fulfilling prophecy to be had, for the more Hytham felt her, the more bold Eivor became in her lust, pulling her lips from his mouth to taste of his neck flesh.
The man gasped in horror and excitement as he felt the Vikingr's teeth gnash gently at his skin, hands gripping tighter on the woman's rear to holdfast against the grunt of pain that was drowning at the back of his throat.
When the attraction grew greater, and Eivor was once again willing to push this further, Hytham waited and watched her as she pulled his tunic upwards to get at his chest.
It caught on his gear, exposing only his stomach and the very bottom inches of his chest, much to the Vikingr's frustration to have something as simple as clothing get in the way of her conquest.
But it did not deter her.
"Undo it." Eivor commanded quickly of her subject as her knees buckled to allow her the stature needed to lower her mouth down to his stomach.
It was a command Hytham was quick to obey but slow to accomplish, fumbling with the buckles to his things as he endured the horrid licks and smooches that Eivor showered his body in.
She was well hidden beneath his draping tunic, the fabric released by the Vikingr when she deemed it prudent to not only taste of his abdominals, but to feel and massage them with her hands as well.
The Assassin groaned quietly as he shut his eyes, opening them to see one of Raventhorpe's numerous settlers walking past from outside and getting an entire view of the situation at hand before hurrying off.
Eivor had her fill of the slow work, raising her head to glare at Hytham as her hand unsheathed a very sharp dagger that was soon pointed in his very frightened direction. It only served to assist him in his goal, yet ruined his equipment for further use.
Freed now of the shackles Eivor had seen fit to free him from, Hytham found himself half-naked and at a very loving Vikingr's mercy.
Whatever romantic notion the woman had meant to display had become this abomination of lustful domination, forcing the man's pants downwards to his ankles before hurriedly leading him to his thin bedding in the corner of the single room.
It was certainly a hazard, almost tripping in his injured and barely recovered state, the frame of his bed creaking under his fallen weight as Eivor worked on undressing herself.
Hytham waited and watched once more. He took in the woman's dark and violent beauty as her full breasts clung pertly to her body, the discolored scars marking the land of her canvas with memories of battles past.
She was overtly clean for even Vikingr standards, and that hinted smell of lavender Hytham was now sure he'd inhaled was evidence that Eivor had bathed shortly before coming to meet him, the Bureau's construction nearing completion.
He did not mean to conflate her cleanliness with planning to ambush him in this abode, but the timing was coincidental. Regardless, he was more than grateful for her hygiene.
The smell was more pleasing as she climbed atop him, the normally imposing warrior with more sharp edges than an armory elevated to her basest form, in all her glory over all his shame.
She made him feel like there was poetry behind the wild dance of carnal pleasure, like he was something more than just a blade in the night with every kiss and nip and huff of torrid enjoyment she drew from his body. If there was ever need of a skald to put his words into song...
The Vikingr sat up, hands reaching down but never letting the Assassin's gaze leave hers.
Hytham drew a sharp breath when he felt himself buried within Eivor, inch by inch, until nothing but warmth encompassed his very being, their hips together as the last boundary was broken in their union.
She hummed in that low scratch of a voice she possessed, rolling her hips pleasantly to Hytham's eternal dismay, wincing and releasing the tension in his calves when he realized he'd been seconds from cramping himself in the strain.
"Allow yourself this gift, Hytham… Enjoy this…" Eivor dropped the hunger from her face, watching the young man under her struggle to accept his fate.
She was right, as she usually was. The deed was far from over, but the threshold of return had been broken. All that was left was to reach up and relish Eivor's breasts as she rode him with certainty to a rhythm he could not hear.
The woman was a sight, Hytham lost in the swirl of her tattoos before the portrait disappeared between his body and hers when she demanded wordlessly that he suckle on her breast.
Hytham did so diligently. His hands drifted once more from her smooth back down to her round cheeks to give her the encouragement that she need not be tender with him in the form of a smack, half timid.
"Ha… We'll make a Vikingr out of you yet, Hytham…" Eivor lauded his efforts, understanding, wrists resting beside either side of his head to anchor herself to the man as her pace picked up.
His knees raised, his hands taking hold of her hips, his mouth wet and circled round one of her nipples, Hytham was engulfed in the heat of their passion. Seconds turned to minutes, moments into eons, he hardly recalled when he sought out the other breast to share the love with.
Eivor hitched in her breath, skipped in her rhythm, and suddenly paused for the briefest of moments. A harsh exhale marked how she would resume her frantic hump of his body, bowing her head down to kiss hungrily at Hytham's forehead, intermixed with Nordic curses and praises to Odin.
Something about it all brought Hytham inches from his own finish, a fact that was not lost on Eivor as she began to recover,
She could feel him struggling with those thoughts in his head. He did not wish to let loose within her, but Eivor was the answer to every doubt he held, to every concern he let accompany his mind about the risks of doing what the last half hour had led up to.
Once again, the voice of reason came in Eivor, grasping his head between her hands and kissing him tenderly, awash with bliss and plentiful love to share in his final moments.
"Call it a leap of faith… Trust me… It's so much better if you just let go…" Eivor assured him quietly, punctuating her warm words with a smooch.
Hytham understood, and gave in, a release to congratulate her efforts in constructing this Bureau, in drawing out a side from Hytham that he simply had no idea existed in himself.
Eivor allowed him a few moments to collect himself, the young man panting and wincing as the adrenaline began to wear off. Both had been satisfied in their joining, and both deserved a rest now.
"I hear a heaviness to your breathing, Hytham. Does your wound still trouble you?" The Vikingr asked coyly, sliding down beside him on the small bed barely fit to hold a single person, cuddling atop his bicep.
No. It did not still trouble him...