Ice Maiden

by Debra Lee Brown

  “Why?” she whispered, as she looked at him.

  Rollo said nothing and, after a moment, the small measure of warmth that had glassed his eyes, was abruptly gone.

  Rika drew a calming breath and strode from the hall, forcing herself to slow, measured steps. She’d had enough. More than enough.

  There must be another way.

  Mayhap she’d take MacInnes at his word. Ride back to Gellis Bay on the morrow and seek his help in freeing her brother. She must think. Clear her head. Temper her roiling emotions.

  A chill shot through her as she made her way down the drafty corridor past the kitchen. Her feet stopped of their own accord before the bathhouse door.

  A sauna.

  Ja, that was exactly what she needed.

  She’d cleanse her body and her mind of the events of the past few days.

  A comforting warmth drew her in as she opened the heavy door and stepped across the threshold. Rollo had constructed the bathhouse as an addition to the castle. ’Twas similar in style to the one on Fair Isle, but larger, boasting three separate chambers.

  The fires were lit each day. Wood fires. A luxury Rollo could well afford, given the castle’s proximity to the forest and so much timber.

  With relish, she dispensed with the uncomfortably tight gown and shift Catherine had loaned her, dropping them purposefully onto the packed dirt floor.

  She stepped into the smallest of the chambers and a cloud of fragrant steam engulfed her. Before settling onto the wide, padded bench, she slid the privacy bolt into place across the door. Not that she expected company.

  A vision of Grant, naked and sweating, flashed across her mind.

  “You must forget him.”

  She tossed the ladle aside and poured the entire bucket of herb-laced water over the bed of white-hot stones. The water hissed and spit and sputtered, throwing up a shield of aromatic steam. “Ah.” She breathed deep and sank languidly onto the bench.

  She must accept the fact that Grant’s usefulness to her was at an end. True, he’d gotten them this far, but he’d ne’er secure the dowry. Not now. Her father was toying with him—enjoying turning Grant away from her.

  It didn’t matter. She didn’t care. She couldn’t. She’d seen how Grant had looked at Catherine’s daughters.

  “Would that I were half as fair,” she whispered.

  “Would that ye were half as patient.”

  She nearly jumped from the bench. The sauna door banged shut. “Who’s there? What do you mean by—” She sucked in a breath as Grant stepped naked out of the steam and knelt before her. In a flash she drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, shielding herself from his roving eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  “I fancied a sweat. Ye might have waited for me.”

  “How did you get in here? I bolted the door.”

  He smiled. “It slides from both sides. Did ye no notice?”

  She hadn’t, and it annoyed her. He had surprised her twice now bathing, and that was two times too many. “Go away. I wish to be alone.”

  “Ye lie.”

  His hand edged across the bench to her foot. Her pulse quickened as his fingers slid over her ankle.

  “What do you want from me? Isn’t it enough that you and my father and that shrewish bitch humiliate me in front of my own kinsmen?”

  His smile faded. “I was no party to that woman’s ill behavior.”

  “Ha!” She jerked her foot from his gentle grasp and fought to maintain her composure. “You delighted in it.”

  “Nay.” His gaze slid over her body.

  “Don’t look at me!”

  She willed herself rise from the bench and leave. Why, oh why, did her body not respond to her mind’s command? The moist heat, the intensity of Grant’s gaze, her nakedness—all fueled her discomfort.

  “Ye are more beautiful than any woman I have ever seen.”

  Her heart stopped.

  Unwillingly she met his gaze. “Do not mock me.”

  “I would never do that, Rika.” The sincerity in his voice disarmed her.

  Hot tears stung her eyes. Why did he torment her?

  She bit her lip and fought desperately to control the tempest of emotions whirling inside her.

  Oh, what she would give to be able to trust him. Just this once. To believe his words. Rely on his strength to bolster her own.

  Never in her life had she sought help or comfort from a man. Never had she felt the need that ached inside her, shaking the very tenets of her existence.

  She gazed into his eyes and instantly realized her mistake. Should Grant reach for her now, she’d abandon her convictions and fling herself into his arms.

  Nay, she must not. She could not.

  The dowry. She must focus on the dowry.

  “My coin,” she said abruptly. “I must have it. When will you ask my father to—”

  “Your dowry matters not a whit.”

  Of course it mattered. It meant everything. If she could not get her hands on it—

  He moved closer—so close the damp hair on his chest grazed her knees. Beads of perspiration dripped from his face onto her bare thighs. “Ye think to protect yourself by claiming it. That with the silver gone, no man would want ye.”

  Her breathing grew labored. Steam swirled up around them, curling her hair and heating her skin to near burning. Why did he look at her with such hunger?

  “No man would,” she heard herself say.

  His eyes held hers in their steely grip as he peeled her hands from her knees. Slowly, with purpose, he removed the hammered bracelets from her wrists and cast them to the floor.

  Why did she not stop him?

  Sparks shot through her as his lips brushed across the scarred pulse points at each wrist.

  “You’re wrong,” he whispered, and drew her into his arms.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The passion in her eyes was his undoing.

  George eased Rika back onto the bench and kissed her. He told himself ’twas purely physical, this burning, the hunger, the overpowering need to possess her.

  “Nay, we should not.” Her arms twined around him defeating her feeble protest.

  “Why not?” He kissed her again before she could answer. Oh, she felt good in his arms.

  “S-someone might come in.”

  “Let them. We’re marrit, are we no?”

  She looked at him, her face a radiant fusion of desire and fear, and in that moment he knew at long last he’d melted the ice maiden’s stringent resolve.

  Perspiration sheened her burning skin. His hands glided over ribs and rounded hip. Slowly he ran his tongue across her throat, tracing her scar from ear to chin.

  She closed her eyes and drew breath.

  “So salty,” he breathed, “so hot.” He moved atop her, their bodies melding in wet, silken heat.

  She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him close. Her response fueled his desire.

  “Slow,” he whispered between kisses, fighting for control. He was so hard he thought he would burst. His manhood pulsed against her thigh in excruciating anticipation.

  “Love me,” she whispered.

  His heart stopped.

  Her lashes fluttered open and what he read in her eyes mirrored his own confused emotions. Nay, he told himself, it could not be. It must not be. ’Twas lust he felt, nothing more.

  Steam infused with a heady tinge of juniper blazed into his lungs. He lost himself in her eyes, the feel of her hands roving his body, and gave himself up to the moment.

  “I would pleasure ye beyond your wildest imaginings.” His mouth sought hers in a violent kiss, designed to drive this unbidden tenderness from his heart.

  He was an animal, a predator, and she his prey. The fierceness of her response thrilled him, but made him wonder who was stalking whom.

  She writhed under him, her breasts thrusting upward toward his mouth. He indulged her need and his hunger. She moaned softly as he suckled each nipple hard.r />
  “Oh, George,” she breathed, and the sound of his Christian name on her lips spurred him on.

  He tasted his way across each rib, over the soft flat plane of her belly. When his tongue blazed a salty path to her sex, she gasped.

  “Spread your legs,” he said.

  She looked at him, her eyes glassed with desire, her face suffused with heat. After a moment, she obeyed, and he plundered the slick, salty heat of her like an animal gone mad.

  “George!” she cried out, and bucked beneath him.

  His hands closed over her hips to still her. He continued even as she begged him to stop. In a frenzy, he swept her with him to the brink of madness. When her protestations turned to cries of pleasure, he drove her over the edge.

  A second later he buried himself inside her, his loins burning for release. They came together in a blaze of passion and heat. Their tongues mated in wild abandon, mimicking their fierce coupling.

  There was no going back.

  He closed his eyes and, somewhere at the edge of his awareness, heard himself cry her name.

  “Look at me,” she commanded.

  He willed his eyes open. His name spilled from her lips. That, and the raw emotion he read in her face drove him to his own ecstasy.

  Later—how much later he did not know—he pulled Rika up with him and sat her across his lap. “There’s something I meant to tell ye, but I got…distracted.”

  “What?” She lay languidly in his arms, looking at him through a veil of white-gold lashes.

  How could he have ever thought her anything less than beautiful? “Your dowry—the silver.”

  “What?” Her whole body went rigid. She gripped his neck so tight he thought she might crush the life from him.

  He eased her arms away and smiled. “I have it. Your father’s promised it to me on the morrow.”

  She screeched with sheer joy and wrapped herself around him like one of the serpents that had graced their bridal cup. Her reaction was like a dull blow to his gut.

  The coin meant much to her. More than he’d hoped. Why did this surprise him? From the beginning she had said ’twas all she wanted from him. They had a bargain. He had met his part of it, and she hers.

  Why then, did he feel this emptiness?

  She peppered his face with tiny kisses. He pushed his confused emotions aside and succumbed to her affection. The feel of her naked body twisting atop his rekindled the fire in his loins.

  Lust.

  That was all there was between them. All there ever could be.

  He kissed her hard and pulled her down on top of him, hell-bent on proving it to himself.

  Rika woke with a start, her heart pounding. “Where am I? What is this place?” She sat up in the dark, blinking at the glow of a wood fire, confused by her surroundings.

  Ah, of course. She remembered now.

  Late that night, after their lovemaking and when all were finally abed, Grant had carried her from the sauna to their shared bedchamber. Only this night, he refused to sleep on the floor.

  “You’re dreaming,” he murmured sleepily, then drew her down beside him, fitting her tight against his nude body.

  The man ran hot as a smith’s brazier.

  Though she was already overwarm, he pulled another fur coverlet over them both and brushed a kiss across her earlobe. “Go back to sleep.”

  His hand closed gently over hers, their fingers intertwined. She lay there in the comfortable harbor of his body until his breathing slowed.

  He was asleep.

  She, on the other hand, was wide-awake.

  Firelight bathed the chamber in a cozy glow and flickered red-gold off the hammered metal of their wedding bands. She drew Grant’s hand to her breast and held it there.

  He was not at all what she had expected. Lawmaker had read Grant’s character true from the first, from the moment they found him washed up on the beach. The old man was gifted that way. God, how she missed him.

  Would that he had been her father and not Rollo.

  Grant had surprised her every step of their journey together. Few men in her life had his integrity. Lawmaker was one. Her brother, Gunnar, another.

  And no man, save Grant, had made her feel so cherished, so wanted—even if it was only for a night.

  The first time he made love to her in their bridal bed on Fair Isle, she’d thought it all chance. That his passion for her, his tenderness, was a result of too much mead.

  But tonight in the sauna he’d had all his wits about him. She had not known it could be this way between a man and a woman—that she could feel the things she felt this night.

  An aching need for intimacy. The joy of pleasuring and being pleasured. Passion. Mutual surrender.

  Love.

  For she did love him.

  And the fruit of that realization was fear.

  She turned in his arms so she might look at him in the firelight. He barely stirred. Ne’er had she seen him so at peace. His tousled hair spilled gold across the pillow. She reached out and brushed the thin braid at his temple away from his face.

  How could she have let down her guard? Love was the most dangerous of emotions. Not because it muddled a woman’s thinking, as she’d once believed—but because it proved exactly the opposite.

  It lent a clarity of purpose she was wholly unprepared for.

  She listened to his breathing, watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, drew his scent into her lungs, and knew she would do anything he asked of her.

  “Dangerous,” she whispered, and traced a finger along his lower lip. He twitched.

  And if he asked nothing?

  What then?

  Of what consequence was her love?

  Here in his own world—her father’s world—Grant seemed too much like Rollo, and that saddened her. He was far too casual, detached, unmoved.

  Oh, she had moved him this night, and he her. But all men responded to such pleasures of the flesh. Grant didn’t truly care for her. How could he?

  She’d forced him to marriage as a way to buy his freedom. A bargain between two strangers, nothing more. Why, the man had been bound for his own wedding when Rika snared him for her own purpose. Even now, his bride waited for him in Wick.

  Rika’s throat constricted.

  A bride—a virgin—bred for a Scottish laird, and to Grant’s specific tastes. Biddable, demure. Small and delicate, like Catherine’s young daughters.

  Rika’s gaze lit on her scarred wrists.

  She asked herself again, of what consequence was her love for George Grant? It served only to distract her from that which mattered most.

  Gunnar’s freedom.

  She’d set out to bring her brother home, and do this she would. Beyond that, she could not think. There was nothing left for her on Fair Isle. Not now. Gunnar would take his place as jarl, and all would be as it once was.

  Only she was changed.

  Grant had changed her.

  He opened his eyes, and a lazy smile curled at the edge of his mouth. Her chest tightened. “What are ye doing?” he whispered.

  “Looking at you.”

  He drew her into his arms, and she gave herself up to his gentle lovemaking. This one night she would pretend that he loved her. That he was her husband and she his wife, and that there was no tomorrow.

  George rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in the pillow. Rika’s pillow. “Mmm.” It smelled of her.

  Light streamed in from beneath the window cover and splashed across the timber floor of their bedchamber. He’d overslept. No matter. It had been the first night in weeks he’d truly slept.

  Since the last time he’d lain with her.

  “Rika,” he said, but knew she wasn’t there. He edged a toe to the other side of the bed and felt only the cool linen sheet. She always did rise early.

  He threw off the fur coverlet. The chill morning air shocked him fully awake. God, he felt good.

  And then he remembered.

  Who he was, and why
he was here—and why he must leave.

  He slid the pillow over his face, blocking out the light, and again breathed her fragrance and the lingering scent of their lovemaking.

  ’Twas useless to try to make sense of his feelings. Honestly, he didn’t know what he felt. He caught himself wondering what things were possible should his clan, his king, and the Sinclairs all come to think him dead.

  That he should have such a thought made his gut twist in shame. What had she done to him that he would think, even for a second, to shirk his obligations?

  He launched the pillow across the room and rolled onto his side. And then he saw it, lying there on the chest by the bed.

  Her wedding band.

  Ten minutes later he was dressed and standing before her in her father’s stable. She was dressed in her traveling clothes—her brother’s clothes, he had come to understand.

  “Your ring,” he said, and offered it to her.

  “Ye…left it.”

  The stiffness of her demeanor puzzled him. Just hours ago, in his arms, she’d been so affectionate—nay, more than that. She’d exuded a tenderness, a guileless passion, and something more. Something that had stunned him.

  Love.

  Aye, he was certain of it.

  But this morning, he was not so sure. How could he be? No woman had ever loved him before. Women obeyed him, feared him even. Aye, as they should.

  Shouldn’t they?

  He didn’t know anymore. One thing he was sure of—no woman in the whole of his life had ever looked at him the way Rika had last night.

  Watching her now, he read nothing in those cool blue eyes. They were dead. Lifeless. What had happened to so change her? Suddenly he felt ridiculous. A rush of heat flushed his face.

  She glanced at the ring in his open palm and shrugged. “I meant to leave it. It’s usefulness to me is finished.”

  Her words stung more sharply than any wound he’d e’er suffered. His eyes widened before he could hide his reaction. “Oh.” His fist closed over the ring, and he stuffed it awkwardly into the pocket of his breeks.

  Ottar passed him, lugging a saddle. George looked past Rika into the dimly lit stalls and saw Erik and Leif readying their horses. “Where are they off to?”