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It’s not the first time he’s been to bed with them, and Athelstan is certain it will not be the last.
The first had threatened to be an awkward entanglement of limbs, until Lagertha had urged him to lie still--as still as he could manage--while she and Ragnar ran hands and mouths along his neck down to his torso, and then lower. Lagertha’s curtain of fair hair had brushed across him first, and then that slight teasing was replaced by Ragnar’s tongue.
After he shut his eyes tight and saw stars--and oh, was that what his vows had been keeping from him for so long--he’d opened them to see Lagertha knelt above him, her lips twisted into a ferocious snarl of pleasure as Ragnar pounded into her from behind.
Ragnar had smiled at him, when he saw him watching, and promised him he’d share.
I am not yours to share, husband, and I would have the priest even if you did not allow it, she hissed, moving her body up and around and pushing Ragnar backward, until she had mounted him. They moaned in tandem, and Athelstan was content to watch, having been sated for the first time in his life only minutes before.
That was how it had begun.
And at least it was a delicious kind of hell.
Early on he would beg God for forgiveness after every instance, after every time Ragnar and Lagertha had drawn his lust from his heart and brought it to the surface, pooling like blood across his body until he thought he might drown in it without their hands to pull him to safety. He prayed to his God, still, with unwavering faithfulness, but ceased in pleading for forgiveness. If God had brought him here to these strange lands to love, then love he would, and unabashedly.
He loved Lagertha on his mouth and on his cock and his mouth on Ragnar’s--and Ragnar’s on his, in return--but then there were darker temptations that went unspoken. Those, Athelstan found shame in.
But Ragnar and Lagertha seemed to know everything.
.....
Athelstan lies on a pile of furs, divested of clothing--they are all divested of their clothing, have been since the children went to bed--curled upon his side, while Lagertha kneels in front of him, her hands tangled in his hair. His tonsure has finally grown in in its entirety, and she gives his curls one firm tug. He raises himself up and rests on his elbow, so he can look up at her, used now to how she might demand his attention.
“How about this, priest?” Lagertha asks, and smooths his hair back from his forehead. Athelstan trails wet lips and tongue along the curve of her waist, down to strong hips.
He feels rather than sees Ragnar behind him, sliding a finger down the jutting bones of his spine and lower, until it’s circling around his entrance.
Athelstan has heard about this act—sodomy, brimstone and fire hot and vicious over Sodom and Gomorrha—and it’s what he’s dreamed of for endless nights now. Taking Ragnar inside him, as Lagertha does, writhing and twisting and clawing from the pleasure it brings him.
(God is with him even here, and he need not fear the flames of hell with such vicious warriors beside him.)
There is only the slightest hesitation, and Lagertha’s gaze on him is searching.
But when Ragnar’s finger circles him again, he arches into the touch before he realizes it, and so he nods his consent, and continues to seek some further sweet taste of the shieldmaiden above him. His own fingers graze through coarse blonde curls, a heady down at her very apex, and then lower, where he knows from practice that he can make her moan and rock, while his tongue traces her navel.
A gasp, then, when Ragnar pushes a finger into him with a low and wicked chuckle, and he cannot tend to Lagertha any longer. She seems to understand, though, and cradles his head in her hands, as she leans over him, traces his lips with her tongue. Their mouths are familiar friends, and she is gentle with him as Ragnar moves his finger inside of him, and Athelstan gasps again.
“Move like this, lamb,” Lagertha murmurs, and she guides him until he is on his hands and knees. Ragnar does not withdraw, only adds another fingers and begins to stretch him, and Athelstan goes wide-eyed but does not recoil, and Lagertha--from where she sits in front of him--nods her approval.
“How is this?” asks Ragnar, from behind him. Athelstan does not know how to answer or what he is even asking, but then Ragnar removes his fingers and plunges them back in, hard and ruthless and Ragnar, and Athelstan groans loud and low while his eyes roll shut.
“I think he likes it,” he hears Lagertha laugh.
More thrusting of fingers, and it burns and it is almost unpleasant, but he knows that Ragnar would not hurt him, and Lagertha certainly would not allow her husband to hurt him. There is the sharpest edge of pleasure there, and it increases his desire--he thrusts back against Ragnar and opens his eyes.
Lagertha lies before him, her hands creeping up her own thighs--she’s teasing herself, and Athelstan knows how well she likes to be teased. She’s watching him with intensity. His hands would join hers if they could, if he were not already bracing himself on them, and struggling not to wriggle his hips back and--
Ragnar’s fingers curl and Athelstan can feel the movement of every joint. A sound like a sob escapes him because he has never felt that before. A scissoring motion, and the slightest painful stretch, but Athelstan grits his teeth and is rewarded with another curl of Ragnar’s fingers. This time his arms collapse from under him and he is left on knees and chest and hands splayed out beneath him. The angle of his body shifts and it’s even better than before. He watches Lagertha’s fingers slide through her own slippery wetness and throw her head back, and Athelstan licks his lips at the sight.
“Ragnar,” he groans, because he does not know the words in their language for what he wants next. “Ragnar,” again, and he hopes the desperate, ragged corners of his voice are enough to convey his desire.
The fingers inside him still, and Ragnar and Lagertha must be having a silent exchange that he cannot see--but he can see Lagertha nod, as her slicked-up fingers trail upwards to her breasts and begin to tease at her own nipples. Then the warmth inside him vanishes, and Athelstan begins to keen, squirming hips and buttocks back to seek what he has lost and found he craves like breathing.
And then oh there, Ragnar presses against him--Ragnar’s cock--and Athelstan begins to tremble. It’s larger than any two fingers, and perhaps they ought to have tried three, first. Lagertha is wild and fierce and takes it with abandonment, but he is meek and afraid, and perhaps he is not suited for this.
But she must see his fear--she is a mother first and foremost, after all--and kisses him hard and bites his lips. He thinks he might taste blood.
(They are a hard people, and they will make him hard too, with every time he comes apart at the seams by their pulling of their calloused fingertips.)
“Athelstan,” she says his name with love, gives it to him in the meeting and parting and meeting again of their lips. “Would you like my husband to fuck you?”
“Yes,” he gasps, and means it, as Ragnar’s hands secure themselves in a harsh grip upon his hips. “Yes.”
As Lagertha begins to give him tender kisses along his jaw, he knows she is trying to distract him from the painful pressure of Ragnar pressing in. He bites down on his lower lip to keep from crying out, and now he knows he tastes blood.
It would feel invasive and terrifying if it were anyone but Ragnar, Ragnar who loves him, but even that cannot take away the pain of muscle stretching more than it ever has before. He can hear the man behind him mutter a string of curses as he holds Athelstan’s hips so hard he knows they will be marred by purple bruises come morning.
“Relax,” Lagertha tells him, and he struggles to obey. Ragnar slips inside a little more.
It is a battle, but Ragnar and Lagertha have never not emerged from one of those without victory. This time Athelstan is with them, as Ragnar pauses when he is buried in him to the hilt, and Athelstan spends moments trying to adjust. The stretch no longer stings, and Athelstan is the first to move--a hesitant rock and a moan of pleasure, and Ragnar takes that as invitation to thrust once, and then twice when Athelstan moans again.
He can’t stop crying out, as Ragnar builds a rhythm, one not dissimilar to the one he fucks his wife with. Lagertha is touching herself truly now, middle finger slid inside of her, while thumb and index finger toy with that spot that makes her shudder and grind herself harder against her hand.
Athelstan begins to gasp and sob as Ragnar takes him deeper and more roughly, and his cock begins to ache, untouched, and while there are bright lights of pleasure flashing every time he closes his eyes and Ragnar’s cock inside of him feels all too right and wrong all at once--he will not find release like this.
“Ragnar!” A command from Lagertha, sharp and ringing even as she rubs herself, and there is shining sweetness that Athelstan can see, glinting off of the insides of her thighs.
But Ragnar seems to understand something, and through his forceful grunts he manages a hearty laugh.
“You want me to touch you?” he asks Athelstan.
On any other day, Athelstan knows he might be forced to beg for it, but he also knows that to day is different, because this is new and fragile and they would not have him broken into pieces.
“Please touch me,” he keens, and though Ragnar will not make him beg for it now, he would like to beg only a little. It makes the heat inside him coil tighter, and as Ragnar takes him firm in hand he gives a low cry and nearly comes unsprung from that alone.
Ragnar strokes him, and he is not gentle, but Athelstan does not want gentle. Lagertha smiles at them both, and they know she is not sated, not just yet, but she has paused to watch.
A thumb over the tip of his cock, a smear of precome, and he slides easier in Ragnar’s grasp, and faster too.
He comes with a cry to his own God and his knees fall from under him. His whole body quivers from it, and Ragnar withdraws again. This time, he does not return.
“Did you like that, Athelstan?”
Ragnar moves to his side, and Athelstan can see his satisfied smirk and the curve of his cock beneath his belly, still hard and upright. Athelstan can only nod, and blearily, but he receives a tender kiss upon his brow for his effort.
“Did you hurt him?” Lagertha asks her husband, and the lust is sapped from her voice, replaced by concern. “What did you do to the little lamb? I urged you to be gentle.”
It’s like the beginning of one of their infamous fights--Athelstan has seen enough of them by now to recognize the signs. Ragnar laughs again, carelessly. “Come here,” he says to her, but Lagertha will not budge. She runs a soothing hand down Athelstan’s back, and he would try to smile to assure her that he is alright, but he doesn’t think the muscles in his face are working properly.
Athelstan can feel Ragnar’s release dripping down his thighs, and he would smile at his lovers, if he only could.
He watches them fight with fists, though a sleep borne of exhaustion threatens to claim him next, until Lagertha throws Ragnar down beside him. She straddles him, sinks down, and begins a steady rocking upon him. When she falls forward, she reaches for Ragnar’s hand, and then Athelstan’s, and they lie together like that for awhile.
Athelstan breathes them in, and he is happy.