by Josie Litton
Having had that particular question answered, Cymbra decided to try another. “Just where is here?”
He looked surprised that she didn't know. “It has no name. It's just a spot Wolf likes, with good anchorage and hunting.”
“Do you live near here?”
He might have answered but just then one of the men called out. Wolf and the rest of the hunting party were returning.
Rabbits it was, skinned, gutted, sliced up, and deposited in the pot. Cymbra wondered why they just didn't skewer them for roasting over the fire, but when the dish was ready and she took a taste, she understood. Olaf would have been king of any kitchen.
By the time the meal was over, the long summer twilight had settled over the land. Cymbra watched the gulls and petrels fly to their rests. A thin sliver of moon shone against the pale sky. The breeze picked up a little but it was still pleasantly cool.
The men were settling themselves for sleep, talking quietly among themselves. With a little start, she realized that she was more aware of their feelings than she had been before. Despite the close quarters of the boat, they had kept themselves very much apart from her, not acknowledging her existence by so much as a glance. Her conversation with Olaf, brief though it had been, had relaxed the barriers between them just a little. Instinctively, she took refuge behind the sheltering walls of her mind, but not before she felt the men's mingled contentment and anticipation as they thought of home.
A sense of melancholy rippled through her, a longing for all that she had taken for granted and might well have lost forever.
Being on the edge of tears all the time was very tiresome.
Wolf stood. He dusted the sand off himself and held out a large, sinewy hand. “Come.”
Cymbra's throat closed. She considered refusing, but what would be the point? They both knew he need make only the slightest effort to force her obedience. She took a deep breath, fighting for calm, and stood, but wouldn't give him her hand. He looked at her chidingly but didn't insist. Instead, he began walking up the beach. Fighting the urge to comment on his nature, his parentage, and his grasp of the most basic courtesies, Cymbra plodded along behind him. Her bare feet sank into the damp sand. Keeping the cloak closed around her was awkward and keeping up with his long strides was even more difficult.
Wolf didn't spare her so much as a glance. He kept going until they were a good quarter-mile from the beach. When he finally did stop, it was with so little warning that Cymbra ran straight into his back.
She might as well have gone into a wall. Her breath left her in a rush and with it went her restraint. She glared at him. “Is there some point to this?”
He looked tempted to laugh but instead took something from a sack he was carrying, placed it in her hand, and pointed at a clearing beyond the nearby trees. “I thought you might like a bath.”
A bath? They were in the wilderness with no sign of even the smallest habitation, and he was talking about a bath? The possibility tantalized but she quailed inwardly at the thought of submerging herself in the icy runoff of a glacier. “I don't really—”
“A hot mineral bath.” His hand on her shoulder, he directed her gaze to the wisps of steam rising between moss-draped rocks. When she moved closer, she saw that the rocks framed a small pool simmering gently with the earth's inner fire.
A bath. A real, hot, luxurious bath.
With soap. At least she thought that was what the small block he'd handed her was supposed to be. Though it was far from her own lovely honeysuckle and lavender soaps, she held it like a precious gem.
“Thank you,” she said, “a bath would be wonderful. I won't be long.”
“Take as much time as you like.” Wolf flopped down on the ground nearby, stretched out on one side, and propped his head in his palm. The position gave him an unfettered view of the pool.
Cymbra's hand tightened on the soap as she fought the urge to hurl it at him. “I should have known.”
“Known what?” he inquired mildly.
“That you wouldn't do something just to be kind.”
“A bath isn't kind?”
“It isn't if I'm expected to take it in front of you.”
He raised an eyebrow in seeming bewilderment. “Why would it bother you to take a bath in front of me?”
He was toying with her but she refused to let him see how much that troubled her. “Why? Because it's immodest and improper. No decent woman would do such a thing. Surely, Viking women don't—”
“We Norse are much more sensible about such things. We enjoy our bodies and aren't burdened by absurd feelings of shame.”
“How very nice for you.” Determined to return to the beach, Cymbra began to go around him. The clasp of a powerful hand around her ankle stopped her.
She had not even seen him move, yet he had reached beneath her cloak and caught her before she could even guess his intent. His fingers were long and warm. She could feel the callused tips moving lightly over her skin.
“Let me go.”
“No.” He tugged gently, forcing her to move closer. His hand slid up her leg, over the slender calf to the back of her knee and slightly higher.
Cymbra froze. No one had ever touched her like that. She was shocked, stunned, and afraid. Not of him, although she was sure that would come. No, her fear was of herself and her response to him. Beneath his hand, following the path of his touch, pleasure exploded through her. A moan rose in her throat. She bit down hard on her lower lip, fighting to suppress the sound, and failed.
Chapter FOUR
WOLF WAS ON HIS FEET INSTANTLY. HE grabbed hold of Cymbra and shook her lightly. “Stop that. You've made yourself bleed.”
Tiny droplets of crimson shone on her lower lip. She seemed unaware of the small hurt and was staring at him in bewilderment.
Anger, not at her but at himself for provoking the situation, made his voice hard. “Go take that bath. You need it.”
Stubbornly, Cymbra shook her head. She was very pale but she faced him unflinchingly. “No, I won't.”
Wolf knew only one answer to such defiance: punishment. His word was absolute among his people, proof of their understanding that disobedience was but one step from chaos, the monster always lurking just beyond the edges of a man's hearth, waiting to devour the unwary, the unlucky, and the just plain foolish. In a world where strength ruled, he had never hesitated to enforce his will. Until now.
Instantly wary but curious, he tried a different approach. “Your fears are misplaced, lady.”
He glanced at the glorious tumble of her chestnut hair, resisted the urge to stroke it, and said, “I prefer my women to be blond.”
Taking a step back, he shifted his gaze to her chest. “As well as somewhat better endowed.”
Irrepressible Loki would be slack-jawed with awe. A masterful liar, the god of mischief was said to appreciate the skill wherever he found it, even in humans. Truly, he would wrangle Wolf's admission to Valhalla for this alone.
The look of amazement on Cymbra's lovely face almost made him burst out laughing, a tendency he was experiencing all too often in her presence and one out of keeping with his stern, harsh life. He just barely managed to maintain a look of utter sincerity. “Men do have varying tastes, you know.”
She acknowledged this with a small nod although she still looked thoroughly perplexed. Cautiously, as though testing unknown waters, she asked, “You don't find me attractive?”
He was hard-pressed not to break down in mirth. No doubt all her life people had told her how beautiful she was. Her stunning appearance must have shaded every encounter she had ever had. He doubted that anyone, at any time, had ever treated her as just another person.
“Oh, you're not ugly or anything,” he assured her, and felt Loki on his shoulder chuckling and urging him on. “It's just as I said, different men have different tastes in women.”
Cymbra thought that over. She had very little knowledge of men and their tastes. She knew only that every man she'd ever known,
with the sole exception of her brother, stuttered and stammered through their dealings with her—when they were capable of speech at all. Not even old Brother Chilton had been immune.
She hated being set apart and treated so differently, made so continually aware of how she looked and the effect it had on people. She had wanted so very badly to be ordinary
And now she was? At least to this man?
She looked at him narrowly trying to sense any duplicity but he merely returned her gaze innocently and gestured again toward the pool. “It's getting late. I would like to get back to the beach sometime tonight.”
Cymbra flushed hotly. Moments before, she had stood beneath his hand, riveted by pleasure so intense as to make her cry out. And now he was telling her very plainly that she was nothing more to him than a nuisance.
Fine. At least she would be a clean nuisance.
Her nerve almost failed her when she reached the rim of the pool, but she kept her back to Wolf, took a deep breath, dropped the ermine cloak, and plunged into the water. The shock of it made her yelp.
“Are you all right?” Not waiting for an answer, he was already coming toward her.
Quickly she held up a hand to fend him off. “I'm fine; it's just a little hot.”
More than a little, but after the initial shock, the heat seeping through her was incredibly relaxing. She felt the strain of the days at sea, with all the attendant fear about her fate, melting away.
Delighted, and considerably more confident since she'd noted that the mineral-laden froth of the water effectively concealed her, she laughed.
“This is wonderful. I'd heard about baths like this but never experienced one before.” With a happy smile, she reached out for the soap beside the pool and began to lather it over her bare arms and shoulders.
Wolf stifled a groan. The glimpse he'd had of her slender, tapered back, high, rounded buttocks, and glorious legs just visible behind the swaying curtain of her magnificent hair had pushed him right over the edge. He was achingly hard, his blood pounding hot and thick, his body demanding relief.
He flopped back down on the ground, stared at the thick bulge in his trousers, and muttered, “Stay down, you damn fool.”
“What's that?” Cymbra called.
Wolf rolled over, wincing as he did so, but he forced himself to smile. A man stupid enough to let a woman know her power over him might as well put his cock on a leash and invite her to lead him about by it.
“Nothing.” Taking deep breaths between his teeth, he silently berated his joyfully heedless member, that part of him disconnected from all thought, reason, and common sense.
When no amount of reprimand had the slightest effect, he forced himself to focus on the most mundane, boring thoughts he could muster—recalling the tedious, seemingly endless merchant accounts he had to go over periodically, going down them item by item, summoning mind-numbing detail until slowly, resentfully, his body quieted.
Only then did he look at Cymbra again. She had finished washing her hair and was preparing to leave the pool. Wolf silently blessed the impulse that had made him bring along a drying cloth for her even when he was tempted to leave it behind. Rather than risk yet more humiliation, he averted his gaze while she emerged, dried off quickly, and wrapped the ermine cloak around her.
“I'm done,” she said softly. “Thank you. It was wonderful.”
“I'm glad you liked it,” Wolf muttered. Never mind the agony of frustration he suffered, she'd had a nice bath. There had to be some fairness in this. At the very least, he could damn well get clean.
“Sit down,” he said. When she looked puzzled, he stood and stripped off his tunic. “It's my turn.”
Cymbra's eyes opened very wide. In the dim twilight he couldn't be absolutely sure but he thought she blushed. Good, she deserved to be discomfited. Her calm, serene air was immensely annoying to him. He wanted her as hot and straining, as mindless and needful as she had made him. But he wasn't going to get it, not now at least, not if his plan was to work as smoothly as he wished.
“I'll go back to the beach,” she said, turning to do so.
“Sit down,” he repeated implacably. To his astonishment, he added, “It's getting dark. You could trip and fall, or lose your way.”
Why was he explaining his orders to her? Frustrated at his inability to control himself where she was concerned, Wolf yanked off the rest of his clothes and dived into the water.
Cymbra gave a faint gasp and sank to the ground. The quicksilver glimpse she had of him before she averted her eyes burned into her memory. His shoulders were magnificent, sculpted of taut muscle; his back broad and sharply narrowing to his waist and hard buttocks; his legs long, corded with sinew, the whole of him formed so beautifully as to steal her breath away and overwhelm her with soul-shattering yearning.
It wasn't fair. She hadn't meant to look at him. It had happened just by accident, as though her body had developed a will of its own. A will that was expressing itself in all sorts of shocking ways. Her nipples ached, and there was a dampness beneath the curls at her cleft that owed nothing to the bath. Her thighs felt unaccountably heavy and weak, as though they would fall open at the slightest urging.
Sweet heaven, what was wrong with her? Was she so base that the mere sight of a man's naked form could fill her with such hot, urgent yearning?
Well, not the mere sight. In all fairness, there was nothing mere about Wolf Hakonson.
Shocked at the waywardness of her thoughts, Cymbra was horrified by a sudden, unexpected urge to giggle. Her well-ordered defenses, the fruit of desperate need and a lifetime of effort, were collapsing around her.
She was helpless to contain her emotions or protect herself from them in any way. She should have been repelled and frightened, but instead she felt positively giddy, as though she stood on the top of a great precipice, about to launch herself into space.
What a temptation it was to find out if she really could fly.
But, of course, she couldn't. If she was so foolish as to forget that for a moment, she and her wayward emotions would be crushed on the unforgiving rocks of reality.
Determined to remember that at all costs, she concentrated on looking anywhere and everywhere but at the pool. This part of the northlands—whatever part it was— had some aspects in common with Essex, but she noted there were far more fir trees with only a few birch and none of the oak and chestnut she knew.
The difference gave the surrounding forests a darker and rather more ominous appearance in the fading light. Still, they were quite lovely in many respects, and if she could only concentrate on them entirely, she could ignore what was going on only a few yards from where she sat.
Unfortunately, she couldn't shut off her hearing as easily as she averted her eyes. She was vividly aware of every splash of water, every sound of movement, imagining Wolf running the soap over himself, washing that magnificent body, rising from the pond, imagining—
It was fortunate that the air was cooling so rapidly, otherwise she would have been unbearably hot in the ermine cloak.
“Ready to go?” She looked up. He was standing right beside her, dressed again in his tunic and trousers.
Droplets of water clung to his thick, ebony hair. He looked very aloof and stern, very watchful.
Piqued by his ability to hide his emotions when hers felt rubbed raw, Cymbra took the hand he offered with a calm she did not feel. Lean, hard fingers closed around hers, evoking a deep shiver of pleasure. She ignored it stalwartly, stood, and, with a nod as regal as any queen's, tried to pull her hand free. Instinctively, his hold tightened. He looked surprised by his reaction and released her immediately. But he still wasn't above having the last word.
“Don't get too far ahead,” he said pleasantly. “These woods are full of wolves.”
Wolves, sharks, Vikings, what difference did it make? She was tempted to ask but thought better of it. Still, she didn't precisely go racing off without him. They returned to the beach together.
> The men were already asleep around the fire, or discreetly pretending to be. Wolf lay down and pointed to the place next to him. When Cymbra didn't spring to obey, he merely shrugged and rolled over. Soon he, too, appeared to sleep.
She hesitated, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with fatigue and just slightly ridiculous. Her captor had made it absolutely clear how he felt about her. Whatever he intended, he was hardly likely to be overcome with lust at this late date.
Telling herself that the sting she felt wasn't from her battered pride, Cymbra finally stretched out on the still-warm sand. Her last thought was of the phantom motion of the dragon ship gently rocking her to sleep.
TWO MORE DAYS THEY SAILED, FIRST EAST INTO THE rising sun, then north. The land changed as craggy hills appeared and pressed in close to the shore. A few farms were scattered along the narrow band of flat ground beside the water, their fields stretching up the hillsides.
Once, Cymbra saw a gaggle of children come running through a field of golden barley, waving to them, their brown legs churning over the rich, black earth. The men waved back and the children's happy shouts were heard far out across the water. After that, it seemed as though the mood on board was at once lighter and more tense as the men counted down the hours to home.
Cymbra slept poorly that night, and the next day anxiety gripped her. She sat in the bow, watching the passing shore for any sign of their destination. Toward midday, they approached a cluster of islands and shoals that at first glance appeared to be impenetrable. Wolf took the rudder and the men rowed more slowly as they carefully made their way through a narrow channel strewn with huge boulders on either side.
The channel opened up suddenly into a large bay of deep blue water perfectly reflecting the sheltering hills that rose above it. At the far end of the bay, protected by both land and sea, was a sizable settlement.
Several hundred small and medium-sized buildings were clustered close together, smoke rising from the peaks of their thatched roofs. In between were lanes filled with carts, people, and animals. Within the town, several large, open areas apparently served as marketplaces. Farther out, three large stone piers reached into the bay. From the one closest to the town, the shore had been faced in stones so as to create a continuous dockage for shallow-draft vessels. Above the town, commanding a sweeping view out over the bay, was a hill fort surrounded by an earthen berm dotted with watchtowers. The whole created the impression of a bustling, prosperous trading settlement well protected by nature but far from dependent on it for its defenses.