[To be titled viking story]

TWENTY-ONE

I was too new to be known as the girl stuck in the tree. 

"Alright, I'm going to climb up there and bring you down. I don't want to hear a damn complaint out of you." For his stern words, I felt the tone was more joking than serious. "You have to do what I tell you."

"Agreed. Just get me down!" I felt anxious. I needed to get out of the tree. 

He started climbing up the tree like be belonged in one. Very quickly he was holding onto the tree from around me. 

"Now," he said unnecessarily close to my ear. I could feel his breath on my ear. "I need you to turn around and wrap yourself around me."

I threw him a dirty look over my shoulder. It would've been easier to just hold onto his back.

But I wasn't allowed to complain. He might have left me in the damn tree over night to teach me a lesson. 

"Hurry up. It's a long way down by yourself." I could feel the mocking tone in his voice. It wasn't fair.  

Very carefully, and very slowly, I managed to turn around and look at him. I was terrified that we were going to fall if I turned too quickly. 

I looked down to see he wasn't even on my branch. He had his feet secured on other branches so that the one I was on happened to be at his calves. 

Gods he is tall, I manage to think before the ground had my stomach heaving. 

He shook his head. "None of that. Look at me."

I couldn't look away from the ground. It felt as though if I had looked away that I would've fallen. 

"Kat." He said sternly, demanding my attention. My eyes flickered to him for a second. His head was lower than mine, but not by much. I couldn't look at him long. I had to look back at the ground. 

"I'm growing tired of this." I think he said more to himself than to me.

In an instant, he lifted himself up just a bit more and took complete command of my attention by pressing his lips to mine. 

Shock is the first thing I felt. I had only ever been kissed by Svarti before. Anything before that, I didn't count. It was a different life. Leif didn't back from the kiss, instead demanding more. 

The thoughts I had when I had fought him came back with even more intensity. He completely distracted me from what had been happening. 

What had been happening? Why was I near a tree?

It didn't matter. I stepped away from the tree and exchanged the hard roughness of the tree for a grip on Leif. 

I grabbed onto his shirt and made him kiss me more intensely. His lips were warm, soft and welcoming. 

Then he pulled away from me. "As much as I'd like to continue, min kjæreste, we should get out of this tree." 

He didn't wait for a reply. Very quickly, and mostly catching me in a hormonal phase, he brought my skirt up to facilitate wrapping my legs around his waist.