Amaurus shook his head in disbelief. Was he seeing things? Apparitions? Phantoms?

A beautiful young woman had materialized, as if from thin air, at the edge of the forest.

In an attempt to clear his warrior's far-reaching gaze, he rubbed his eyes.

The beautiful young woman remained, standing as he stood, apart from the assemblage at the first line of oaks. And like him, she too watched the couples leap over a small campfire after saying their handfasting vows.

His cock noted her presence with a keen show of interest.

Some men likened their male appendage to a scepter, others to a staff. His comparison was less grandiose. Like a divining rod, his cock responded to a female with a jerk and a thrust, seeking out moisture beneath the surface.

Down dowser, not yet.

Reason came first. From his vantage point, he could see everyone in the crowd. Yet somehow he had missed the beautiful young woman's arrival. Where was the logic there?

As Amaurus pondered a solution, a plume of billowing white ash blew into his lungs, making him cough and...

Temporarily obscuring his vision.

Of course. The bonfire. The sooty air had masked her entrance. Camouflaged by the smoke, she had escaped his notice.

The beauty had his full attention now.

For centuries, conquering explorers of all persuasions had invaded this isle's coast. People being people, a certain amount of intermingling took place. Rumor had it that the so-called Black Irish, who inhabited isolated villages such as this one, were the descendants of pairings between pale local women and dark-complexioned sailors from far-off lands such as Phoenicia and Iberia.

His own arrival had been a more recent event.

As a young lad, he had lost his beloved dam to disease. On her deathbed, she had given him her only possession of any real value...two gold earrings engraved with a rose in each...and told him to use them as he saw fit to make his way in the world. Though his belly had often gone empty, he refused to part with the keepsakes. Holding on tight to his only reminder of his mother, he stowed away on a trading galley. Many days later, the vessel's sea captain had discovered him napping up on deck. A splash later and he was swimming for shore.

Ireland had been his home ever since. Despite making a life here, he had always felt apart from everyone else. He sensed this young woman felt apart from everyone else too.

He corrected himself. Rather, others must make her feel apart.

The Irish tolerated his race. Meaning they disliked Ethiopians no more and no less than the next foreigner.

Everyone hated Vikings.

There were exceptions, of course. In this contrary and complicated country, there were always exceptions. On the east coast, in Dubh Linn, Vikings and native women handfasted, even wed.

This was not Dubh Linn. Here, in this small and provincial fishing village, darker skin and hair reigned.

Pale issues of local women were always a result of rape. These blameless individuals were either ostracized or enslaved. Usually both. No half measures for the Irish.

This young woman was past fair into Viking. And unlike the typical Celtic squat and sturdy body builds, she was Norse tall and reed graceful. Her skin shone pearl radiant under the full moon. Her flaxen hair seemed to trap its light.

When she undulated toward the forest, his expression tightened. His cock followed suit. Allah be praised! How her rounded hips swayed under the unbleached linen of her knee-length léine. How shapely her exposed arms and legs.

Their bareness hinted at her background.

Had this female belonged to a family of wealth and privilege, she would have worn a colorfully dyed and decoratively embroidered sleeveless outer léine. A plain inner tunic would have covered her from neck to ankle, from shoulder to wrist. A wide hide belt, mayhap embedded with jewels, would have encircled her waist. A female of lesser circumstances, such as a slave, would wear a plain tunic that skimmed the knee to allow for ease of movement. A serviceable string belt would hold the tools of her labor.

Was the poorly garbed woman who undulated toward the trees a slave then?

Likely, with her Viking blood.

The argumentative Irish fought within their clans. They fought their neighboring clans. They fought outsiders, every foreigner known to man. No jest, they would fight their own reflection in a pool of sunlit water if the sun ever shone here, which it most certainly never did, not in this gloomy land. With all the killings in Ireland, the populace dwindled, leaving no one to plow the fields.

Hence the country's need of slaves.

Most everyone who landed here ended up clamped in chains at one time or another. And he would know, having once worn metal bracelets himself.

Slaves came in all colors. Places of origin. Ages, genders, and creeds. Even St. Patrick had been a slave. Captured as a young boy during a raiding party to Wales, he had herded sheep here until his early manhood. That was the Irish. Enslaving a man one year, canonizing him the next.

As to the female in question...she continued her walk toward the thick copse of trees, the close fit of her belt cinching a trim waist. Her léine gaped at the sides, offering him a glimpse of pale breasts that her stately carriage held high. As she wiggled and undulated, their small weight and dainty size shifted hardly a'tall. Although he had not tasted the wild-growing fruit's juicy succulence since boyhood, he knew...knew...her flesh would taste the same as the melons native to his homeland of Ethiopia.

Sweet. How sweet her dainty breasts would taste in his eager mouth.

He strained to see her nipples. Alas and alack, she was simply too far away for him to get a bead on them.

A realization occurred to him. Though garbed poorly, she carried no urn or basket and labored in no discernable task that would point to servitude. Seemingly she came and went as she would.

She was not a slave.

Her free woman status could not have pleased him more. As slaves had no right of consent, he steered clear of them. Just thinking someone could claim ownership of such an unusual and free creature twisted his gut in knots.

Suddenly she looked over her shoulder at him and boldly winked. "Shall we play?"

Despite his precautions, she knew he watched her. Still, confident she could not see his face clearly enough to later identify him, not while he wore the helm, he nodded in agreement, a hard jerk of arousal.

When she entered the trees at a graceful lope, an animal's smooth running stride, he went after her. With the seasoned expertise of a huntsman, he kept his pursuit several paces behind, maintaining a measured distance as he would with four-legged game.

Save no game hunted for sport had ever held such allure for him.

Her tight buttocks lifted and fell with her fleet-footed steps. Each half of her posterior was a separate and lush entity, the splendid swell of the whole tantalizing him. And her spine! Straight as an archer's arrow. Her frame was wide at the shoulders and curved to a seductive indentation at the lower back. A remarkably physical specimen, she strode through the woods like a wild forest creature, with no extraneous movement to slow her down.

Someday, he vowed, they would play this game again. Only next time, he would first strip her bare. Then he would chase after her, done for the sport of it, for the sake of the hunt, for the chance to seize the trophy and truss her.

But that was next time.

He frowned. Next time?

He never had anything but a first time with a woman. A one and only time. Multiple ruts, aye, but all in the space of a single evening.

Thinking about that nubile body of hers, he let the contradiction go.

Her breasts. He would suckle at the nipples, bruise them with the diligence of a hard mouthing. He would follow that up with a few sharp bites, then grind the tips with the clamp of his teeth. Sting them a mite and then soothe them more, his tongue curled around the ends. He would finish by kissing away the fiery sting he had inflicted.

Purposefully inflicted.

Due to his perverse nature, he would never wed. Why inflict himself on someone he loved? What others had done to him in his early years, he now felt an almost unbearable need to perpetuate on others. Only unlike his experience, he never took advantage of his bedmates, never took a woman against her will. He confined his attentions to partners who understood and enjoyed...and consented to...a journey to the darker side of passion.

As this woman had asked, "Shall we play?" so he would.

First he would disrobe her to the skin. Easily accomplished, as she was only one thin layer of linen removed from nudity now. Next he would roam her naked flesh. Cup her small breasts, knead her flat belly, comb his hand through her fleece, which would undoubtedly be as fair as flax. Stroke her loins, which, optimistically, would be as wet as rain. Caress her buttocks, which he knew at a glance would be as supple as a glove and bound to fit him the same. Pinch her elongated nipples until they were red as a rose.

The ache in his stones grew as sharp as that blossom's thorn.

Another breeze blew up, this time bringing with it the scent of his beautiful game. He sniffed the air, and his erect member lanced mightily, the head moistened with precum.

Soon. He would take her soon. Otherwise he might just lose his bounty on the trail. The front of his trews stretched taut over his bulge.

Hoping to ease the ache, he rubbed his erection, then cradled his heavy stones.

Ah, but he hurt. A good hurt. A hurt that came of being alive. After the carnage of death had surrounded him, for weeks, for months, for years...since his boyhood...the hurt of his arousal reassured him that he had not yet lost his humanity to numbness. That he could still feel something, even dark carnality, reassured him.

He rutted where and when he would, at his own discretion, to prove he was no longer a slave, and he killed when and where he must in order to remain free. 'Twas either them or him, he reasoned. A lesson learned in youth, like mixing pain with pleasure on the furs, and one he studied as a man.

Eventide ruled this corner of the world, especially in the forest. Under the full moon, the female's near-white hair shone beacon bright. Her tresses led him to her. But when she stopped at the edge of a small clearing in the thicket, he frowned.

Why had she halted here?