by Jolie Mathis
Just as she had done, once before.
From beneath those lashes, he glanced about the room.
Shadows darkened the skin beneath his eyes. He lifted a hand to rub the bridge of his nose.
"These are your chambers, are they not?" He flashed a smile. Isabel glimpsed his white, even teeth. "They smell like you. That is how I know."
Isabel did not so much as blink in response. Eventually his smile faded to bleak neutrality. Lips pursed, he lowered his gaze and found interest in some item near his feet. Her belongings. Unlike the bower belowstairs, her chamber had been left untouched.
Like a nervous bird, Isabel shifted on her roost, her eyes narrowed. He had no right to touch her things.
From a woven basket he lifted a styli. Between his long, blunt-tipped fingers he rolled the delicate instrument, the ivory snow-white against his dark skin. Again he peered into the basket, this time with clear expectancy. The faintest of smiles turned his lip as he retrieved her wax tablet.
Only yesterday she'd written a bit of verse. Not even a verse, just a silly batch of words she'd intended to share with Godric when he grew old enough to understand; to laugh and to see she wasn't the remote, too-old-for-her-days young woman the rest of Calldarington surely saw when they looked at Isabel, youngest daughter of Aldrith, princess of Norsex.
The Dane smoothed his fingertips over her words. Words intended only for her son.
"Put it down." Her voice arose no louder than a rustle of reeds. He looked up.
"As you wish." He returned the styli and tablet to the basket, and stood.
Isabel's heart nearly tore free from her breast. Surely she had angered him. Her gaze veered upward over an endless span of rough-hewn leather boots to thighs surely the thickness of Offa's dykes. Behind him, his shadow blackened the tapestries on the wall.
Slowly he lifted a hand and beckoned. "Come hither." With each word his neck corded powerfully. He moved toward her curtained haven, his boots making nary a sound. For one so large, he moved with unnerving grace. He bent to peer beneath the bed curtains. A strand of hair slid across his cheek. "I would see your wound in the light and tend to its dressing."
"I think not," Isabel whispered.
He lifted his knee, and half knelt upon the bed. The mattress tilted.
"I will not allow you to touch me. Never again," she warned. Her heart slammed against her ribs. She pressed so hard against the post she expected it to splinter against her spine.
Over time, she had found some small comfort in the lack of memories of the assault. Would she be able to retain her sanity if he were to attack her again, here and now, as she endured awake and fully aware?
He leaned toward her, eclipsing the fire's light. "If I intended to do you harm, I would have already done so." Surely his voice, his eyes, cast spells, for she almost believed.
She sprang off the bed. Her damp skirts tangled thickly between her legs. Frantic, her gaze swept the room. A weapon! Though her mother's jeweled dagger lay sheathed in Isabel's trunk, she would never be able to uncover it quickly enough. She saw nothing else. A low moan escaped her throat. From beside the hearth she snatched up a narrow log and whirled.
"Stand away!" She wielded the weapon, however paltry, between them as if it were a sword as worthy as his own. Her shredded sleeve dangled like ribbons from her shoulder. "You may stand larger and stronger than I, but this time I will fight. This time I will watch your every filthy sin with my eyes wide open."
He stood exactly where he had been when she'd leapt from the bed. The hilt of his sword glimmered at his hip. "I lose patience with you, little one. Put the stick down."
Her laugh rang harsh. "Is that what you believe? That simply because you order me to surrender, I shall? Nay. This time I have a voice. This time I protest."
Measured steps carried him forward. "My dispute is not with you, but with Ranulf." He stopped, an arm's reach from her.
"Nay, your dispute is with me." Fury cut through her veins. Mistakenly she had assumed that once they were alone, face-to-face, his assault of her person two winters ago would be at the forefront of both their minds. Had she been so inconsequential a victim? Isabel tightened her grip on the branch and waggled it threateningly.
Apparently her display of force impressed him not, for his expression remained the same. But oh, how she wanted to intimidate him, just as he intimidated her.
Boldly, insanely, she tapped the branch at the center of his breastplate. Tap.
Her teeth clenched as tight as a mollusk, she demanded, "What of my dispute with you?" Tap tap tap.
If Isabel had expected surprise or shame from her attacker in the face of confrontation, Thorleksson gave her neither.
Instead, the Danish warlord glared at the tip of her scrawny weapon, his nostrils flared with annoyance. "I bid you, what dispute have you with me, prior to this day?"
Isabel's mouth fell open. "Knave! Dare you pretend not to know?"
He paced a half circle along the perimeter of her weapon's reach. "I know I saved your life." Slowly, he unfastened his leather baldric.
"Only to destroy it," Isabel cried, her eyes fixed on his hands as, carefully, he set the sword aside. Would he also remove his jerkin? His tunic and braies? She swallowed, nearly ill from the thought of a large, naked, and hairy man pursuing her around the chamber. Despite her claims of bravery, she retreated from him until her backside jolted against a wooden cabinet.
He made no effort to remove any of his garments. For the time being, words continued to be his weapon of choice. "As I said, I saved your life. In return you spared mine."
He moved closer. Isabel clutched her makeshift cudgel, raised it between them. His eyes denounced her as strongly as his words. "There are no debts. I owe you naught."
"Nay. Methinks you owe me"—she churned the branch in his face—"you owe me that which can never be repaid!"
Anger darkened his features. "You cannot deny my valid claim to vengeance. You saw. I was imprisoned. Beaten unjustly."
"Unjustly," Isabel spat. "So I too once believed! But I was a stupid girl. You deserved each and every lash laid upon your back."
He leaned toward her, the gleam in his eye no longer merely dangerous, but murderous.
"Beast!" She swung. The branch swooshed through the air. Thorleksson stepped back. Her weapon missed his neck by a fingertip. He expelled air through his teeth.
He gritted, "Reveal to me, Princess, why your opinion of me hath changed so greatly since you saw fit to set me free from your brother's pit."
Did he think she did not know of his affront against her? Must she say the words? With a curl of her lip she hissed, "Perchance, do you think, it was the realization of your foul transgression against me?"
"Obstinate woman." He shook his head. His dark hair shone like polished jet. "You argue in regress. I intended you no harm. I did not know you were his sister. I did not expect to ever see you again. In truth, I believed you to be a peasant until this very day."
Isabel felt her face go hot and numb, in alternating waves. Rage pricked along her spine. No woman deserved rape, regardless of her status in life. "Would that have stopped you? If you had known who I was?"
"No," he exclaimed with a guttural shout. "You expect me to order my men back to the ships and sail away, simply because I have learned you are that wretch's sister? Nei! Nothing will stop me from achieving my due vengeance."
His vengeance? Was his attack on her as she lay senseless beside the river so meaningless he could not even recognize it as the foremost source of her bitterness? How like a man to think only of himself.
But... Isabel cautioned herself. If the memory of his attack upon her remained so distant from his mind, or so commonplace as to be unworthy of recall, perhaps Godric could somehow be protected. Perhaps the Dane would never even suspect the boy was his son and she could—
The moment of distraction nearly cost her everything. Thorleksson pounced. Isabel reacted, swung. Along the length of her arms she f
elt the snag. Contact!
The chamber quaked with—
"Fiskislor fyrir heila!" Fish guts for brains? Surely the most vile of Norse curses. Isabel shrank back against the cabinet, so hard it rocked on its corners. Against her breast she clutched her now highly esteemed, mightily worthy weapon.
A streak of blood surfaced upon his cheek. The Norseman lifted a hand, and touched the wound. He stared at his fingertips. His gaze shifted to her.
In a voice flinty with wrath he growled, "Are you so appalled to see me bleed?"
Isabel snapped her mouth shut.
Apparently unafraid of another injurious blow from her most exalted death-stick, he again advanced.
A cruel smile bent his lips. "Didst thou expect green bile to spill from my veins? Or perchance vaporous poison?"
"Barbarian!"
"Barbarian?" His face grew tight. He jabbed one long, accusing finger between her breasts. A flush arose to her cheeks. " 'Tis you who swing a club in my face as I attempt to converse with you with the utmost diplomacy."
She swung. His arm a blur of movement, he caught the stick in one hand. Their gazes met, as solid a bridge between them as the branch to which they both held fast.
"I am a man, Isabel. No monster."
One hard tug undermined her balance. Isabel fell forward against the hard wall of his body. His arm closed as tightly as a shield-rim at her waist. Unbidden heat raced up her legs, shot through her arms and blazed along her fingertips. With one hand beneath her chin he forced her gaze up. Eyes brim-full of savage emotion stared down at her.
"I am a man" he murmured. "Flesh and blood."
His head dipped. Isabel recoiled with a gasp.
He stared into her eyes, fiercely intent. She did not understand. Had never expected—
Panic hummed in her ears. She stared into his eyes, too transfixed to struggle, too breathless to scream.
Thorleksson's expression grew hard. His hand snaked up the back of her neck, into her hair. His mouth fell upon hers.
All around, the world imploded into darkness, Isabel aware only of the predatory insistence of his lips, the faint tang of salt as he bit her bottom lip. In the distance, waves crashed upon Calldarington's shores, then rolled softly into the sea. The sound merged with, became lost in the sound of their mingled breath, the crush of his leather against her gunna. She shoved against his shoulders, but he did not release her. His body, rigid against her, radiated all things masculine and powerful.
For one absurd moment, she yearned to wrap herself around him, to breathe his very strength into her lungs.
Innocent. He is innocent. Angel.
His tongue parted her lips, boldly intimate, boldly possessive.
He could not be innocent.
"Beast!" Isabel wrenched away. In that same moment she silenced the voice of the unsuspecting girl-Isabel whom she no longer granted audience.
Kol cursed, and pressed a hand to his mouth. Only when she saw the blood trickle from beneath did she realize she'd bitten him.
"Ply me not with the kisses of a swain." With the back of her hand she wiped her mouth, as if pestilence danced across her lips. "If you seek to attack, then do it like the beast you are."
His arm shot out. She attempted an escape, but he captured her by the nape. "At... your... invitation."
Slowly he lifted her, until her face hovered in front of his. Her toes dangled above the floor.
He scowled. "Wiggle wiggle, little bug."
"Oh!" Isabel gasped, her entire body gone numb with shock. The beast could read. 'Twas the verse she'd written upon the tablet for Godric. To hear him speak the words, so foolish, yet drawn straight and earnestly from her heart, was a trespass she could not abide.
He growled the next line. "How you seem to like the mud."
"Shut your mouth!" Like a cat held by its ruff, Isabel swung her claws. "The words—are not—for you to say."
The room spun about and all at once she felt the softness of the bed beneath her back. She felt his hands, his weight as he climbed atop to straddle her belly. To think, for even a moment, she had thought him innocent.
She thrashed. "How easy it was to draw forth your true nature."
"True nature?" Flushed, he glared down at her. "I have done nothing but defend myself against your vicious attacks and spoken affronts." He intercepted the vengeful talon of her hand. "I believe 'tis you, fair Princess, who hath proven to be the barbarian."
Isabel wrenched her arm free.
"Devil." She shoved her palm against his lips, but he wrenched his face aside. She snatched a handful of his hair and yanked. Reprisal came instantly. He wrapped a fist in her hair and, with steady tension, pulled upward until she lay taut beneath him.
A knock sounded at the door.
Rasping for breath, Isabel felt the rise and fall of his chest against her breast, as erratic as her own.
"Enter," he commanded, his teeth set in a white line. She tightened her grip on his hair and felt an immediate, retaliatory tug.
Vekell entered, carrying a bucket and a neatly folded bundle of cloth.
"As you requested, my lord. Warm water and linen—" The man halted midstep. His eyes grew large, seeing them thus entangled. "Ahem." In apparent reverence, he diverted his gaze.
Isabel looked upward and saw what the warrior must have seen: Kol's hair strewn in dark disarray. Blood streaked his cheek and lip.
Despite the danger of her position, a smile found its way to her lips. To have humiliated him so, and before one of his officers. Even if he killed her now, she would die tolerably content.
"Put it down, then go," Kol ordered with a sharp tilt of his head.
Above her he felt hot and heavy and excruciatingly vital. She could feel the blood course beneath his skin where she gripped his forearms.
"You are certain you require no assistance?" Vekell queried. He slid a hand over his mouth to conceal what she felt sure was a smile.
"Leave us," the man above her growled.
The warrior did as his lord bid him to do. Without another word or glance, he departed, securing the door behind him. Wood snapped on the hearth. Shadows frolicked on the walls.
"Dare you smile!" In one rapid movement, he arced his arm upward and pried her grip from his hair.
"Get off!" Isabel bent her knees and kicked, however obliquely, at his leather-bound calves. Her torn sleeve twisted around her arm, damp and tight. He sank to a position between her thighs. Too easily he subdued her flailing limbs and drew her hands above her head until they met, pinned beneath one of his own. Stretched like a miscreant upon a torture-room rack, Isabel could only stare at the ceiling, her mind wildly searching for the means to escape. Against her thighs, her stomach, she felt his heat, the rigid flex of his muscles.
"Know that you have forced my hand," he muttered. A metallic hiss signaled the entrance of another contender into their melee.
"Nay!" Her heart did its best to tear its way from her breast. The Dane lifted a long knife. Isabel's throat constricted. The blade glinted in the light.
"Animal," she choked. "God will curse you for your sins."
For a moment he stilled. Then, rotating the knife, he brushed his knuckles over her cheek. "I'm afraid someone else already tended to that matter."
Deftly he inserted the blade into the neck of her tunic. Isabel turned her cheek against the bed as cool metal whispered against her naked skin. Despite her valiant promise to watch, to remember, she gave in to cowardice and closed her eyes. The sound of renting cloth cut the silence.
Like honey, warm air spread onto the still-damp skin of her arm, her shoulder, and to her horror, one breast. Beneath him she writhed with renewed vigor, desperate to be free.
He grasped her arm.
"Ow," she yelled. She had forgotten her wounds.
"Be still." His utterance rang hoarse.
She did not know how, but in some way she seemed to have hurt him. Perhaps he had fallen on his own blade? She wriggled more fiercely.
<
br /> "I command you to cease."
Something hard, but oddly pliant, pressed against the inside of her thigh—
"Oh." Realization made Isabel's entire body go hot, as if stricken by a sudden ague. Just as she mustered the strength to fight—
He pushed up and away. She lifted onto one elbow and watched him stalk toward the wall, one hand staved into his hair. Viciously he cursed. Her or the tapestry of The Great Flood, she was not certain.
Pivoting, he stormed past, toward a wooden chest, and threw open its lid. With stony intent, he peered inside. Almost at once, impatience shattered his features. From inside he grabbed an armful of clothing, and hurled the misshapen bundle at her. "Black Hell! Put something on."
She sat up, but made no move to touch the garments. She did not understand. If lust had ruled his actions a moment ago, why did he turn his eyes from her now? She smothered the little voice that had attempted to squeak out a claim of his innocence.
His blue eyes flashed. "Did it ever occur to you that two winters ago this—" He jabbed his finger at the center of his jerkin. "This animal, this barbarian as you call me, came to Calldarington as a guest? Because he was invited?"
"Invited," she scoffed. "Do you truly expect me to believe that?"
His eyes descended to where her hand covered her breast. Darkness hollowed the place beneath his cheekbones, and for a moment she believed what she saw was not lust, but yearning.
A wall, built deep inside her heart, threatened to give way. Impossible. A flush bloomed upward from her breasts, to heat her neck and face.
He stood, his legs braced wide. "Of course you would not believe." He swirled a hand in the air. "Barely a word spoken between us but already you know, verily, I speak only lies and treachery."
She forced an expression of scorn. "What sort of fool would have invited a Norse mercenary here, when there was no need?"
"What sort of fool?" the Dane repeated in a low voice.
"Yes, fool." Her chin jutted out in defiance.
"Dare you call me a fool?" He clamped his mouth shut on the word. "The fool who bade me come to Norsex—"