by Ingrid Hahn
The way he placed the cloak about her shoulders—so gently—was enough to drive anyone mad. Foul demon. Why couldn’t he have been rough and vulgar and…and, oh, all around horrible to her?
He turned her and brought the ends of the cloak to meet about her chin. The sides of his fingers grazed her chin. The touch was unexpected. And sort of…secret, in a delicious sort of way. Something between them that neither would acknowledge, but each were intensely aware of.
Alodie shivered again, but this time, not because she was cold. Avoiding his eyes lest he catch sight of what she herself didn’t want to allow, she looked down to the garment. The green was the shade of new shoots and the wool was as heavy as it looked. It was certain to be warm.
Fine things weren’t for the likes of her, so it was just as well she’d never wanted them. This cloak was far and away the best item she’d ever possessed. Truth be told, she liked it already.
She swallowed. He was studying her and she could no longer keep her gaze averted. “My thanks,” she whispered.
The only response came as a slight nod. This time, he looked away, grabbed a cloak for himself, and swung it around his shoulders, batting his tangled hair out from under the collar. He called Hrolf back to collect and distribute the remaining items.
While the young man went about his duty, the demon leader reached out a hand to her. Without thinking, she reached back. He took her fingers gently between his own. “Sit. You’ll need more water.”
He helped her down, then sat beside her. He drew another draught of the sweet, clear spring water. She took the cup he offered and drank deeply. He stayed close, watching her.
Alodie took a breath, set the drinking vessel aside, and gently licked the last drops away.
The demon leader’s gaze fell to her lips. Alodie’s mouth parted. Warmth unfurled in her belly. Her breathing deepened. A sort of deceptive quiet fell between them. Deceptive because it was anything but silent and still. It was the same taut hush of a rope strained to its breaking point.
She looked away. Not because she didn’t want him to kiss her. Because…because… Oh God help her, but she dared not give it a name.
When one of the men came and the demon was distracted answering questions and giving directions, she felt for the prayer beads in her pouch. The last time she’d touched them, she’d been safe in the service of the princess. If she’d been told then what was to come, she’d never have believed the person reporting the tale. The beads were there. They’d survived the storm.
But she didn’t take them out.
It would be so easy to believe that God had forsaken her. But God didn’t work that way. He didn’t turn His back on His people. He didn’t abandon those in greatest need.
Was her punishment, for sharing her body with the blacksmith without the benefit of marriage, deepening? Having been stolen from her home should have been enough. Having the Devil work his way into her body, making her feel unspeakable things for a demon—that was far too high a price to pay.
She bowed her head. She used to soothe herself by dismissing it as having happened only once. But she should never have discounted how grave a sin she’d committed.
This…thing here…he was a demon. A demon. She stroked the edge of the cloak. It would be a terrible mistake to forget what he was and carelessly start thinking of him, nor any of them, as a man—no matter what the unclothed forms sprawled like flotsam behind her might suggest to a benighted observer.
But nobody there on the ship last night could deny the one who sat beside her was possessed of a heart. What she’d witnessed, she’d caught only through flashes of lightning.
It’d been enough.
That evening, they ate an animal the men had stolen from someone else’s snare. Afterward, Alodie’s belly was warm with fresh food. The meat had been gamy, but it’d been a far sight better than what she’d had to endure aboard ship, and would no doubt soon suffer again.
Night fell upon the world. The men bedded down approximately where they’d eaten, drunk on whatever barrels had been brought in the cart of supplies. At least they’d dressed.
Nudity in the normal way of things made little impression upon her. But there was a limit to how much flopping male flesh she wanted to endure. They were strong, yes, and enough above well fed to not have to worry about being called lean, but their flaccid manhoods weren’t half as interesting as they thought they were. The delight they took in pissing contests and waving their penises in each other’s faces, then laughing uproariously, held no charm.
The leader of the demons opened his new cloak, spread it next to the dying fire, then withdrew his sword. He studied it for a long interval before laying it down. Alodie took her half. He took his. They were again side by side, staring up at the stars.
The summer night air was pleasantly cool. They weren’t touching, so his warmth couldn’t have reached her. There must have been something wrong with her, for it seemed as if it did.
Alodie spoke, choosing each word with care to avoid mistakes. She needed him to understand one important question. “Why did you take me?”
No answer came. She dared a look, turning her head to peer over at him. He was in profile.
“Am I a prize? Or do you want me so you can extort a ransom?”
The demon had been so specific when he came. He’d wanted the princess and the princess alone, and had since proved his words had been no kind of tactic. She’d thought about it endlessly and still she’d not devised any ideas beyond her original speculations.
“I suppose you could say you’re a prize. Of sorts.” His voice was hollow.
“There is something you’re not telling me.”
He rolled over, putting his back to her. “Go to sleep, princess.”
She scowled, ruffled at being commanded. “I want to know everything. I deserve as much.”
“True. Go to sleep.”
She wanted to stomp her foot down on his hand and make the man scream in agony. Anything to get a reaction out of him. He was too calm. Reserved, almost. No. Not reserved. Resigned. That was it. Resigned. And resigned was not what a demon should have been.
Chapter Thirteen
Thorvald’s Determination
Thorvald woke at dawn. No sooner had he cracked open his eyes than the princess came into his vision. Waking up next to her made him soften with tenderness. A feeling he had no experience with and didn’t know how to handle. It was just…there.
She’d curled toward him in her sleep. And sometime during the night, he’d turned to her too. Her face was close. She slept peacefully, lashes long and curling, mouth parted ever so slightly.
His morning erection wanted nothing more than swift relief. She gave a little sigh and, the gods help him, it did nothing but inspire visions of sexual delight. How many ways could he invent to elicit such sounds himself? And what would it take to coax a stronger reaction from her?
Many of his kind had little tolerance for tempering their impulses. What they wanted, they took. Thorvald had more practice than most in self-denial. He should be able to quell his urges and forget he ever thought about pressing their bare bodies together in the heat of passion.
Desperate to think of something else, anything else, he pushed to his feet and crossed the rocky sand in long strides, scanning the environs. He started a little when he realized what he’d been doing. Looking for Sigurd. The hole in Thorvald opened, gaping and breathing out an icy wind. He rubbed his throat, trying to ease the tightness.
The two ships sat on the beach, lolling to one side like defeated beasts, and the last tide had washed up some of what the storm had ripped from their stores. He found the sail master and nudged him awake with his toe. “How long until we’re ready to set out again?”
The sail master snorted awake. “Eh?”
Thorvald didn’t mask his impatience this time, snapping like an angry
wolf. “How long until you make us ready to sail again?”
“Th-three days?” The sail master was small and lean, with mousy features, a nearsighted squint, and a shiny bald pate reddened from the long days under the sun. Below the surface was a mind for nothing except how to build fast ships that could sail open water. “Perhaps four?”
Thorvald allowed himself to raise his eyes back up the beach to where the princess sat by the fire. He’d told Sigurd he’d not do anything stupid.
And giant’s feet, but Thorvald wanted nothing more than to do something very, very stupid. Thrust his way into oblivion with the last woman he should ever touch. Sigurd wouldn’t be fighting urges this way. There were plenty of females in the world and many of them would be happy to engage in a vigorous rut. Sigurd would have been the first to tell Thorvald that he didn’t need this one.
His still-stiff cock begged to differ.
Four days was an unthinkably long time. There might be an opportunity to be alone with the woman. Could he trust himself not to kiss her if she looked at him like she’d done yesterday? He could envision himself whispering the question in her ear. If she said yes and offered her lips…
“You have two.” He looked back to the sail master. “Wake the men and set them to work. I will accept no delays.”
A light breeze ran through Thorvald’s unbound hair. A bit of yellow among the wreckage caught his eye and tightness squeezed his lungs. He wandered down to the shoreline, kicking men just enough to rudely awaken them without hurting them (too much), as he went to investigate. It was there all right. Tight in a ball, dirty and darker than it had been before, but unmistakable. Sigurd’s shirt. He’d loved that color, the yellow dyed into the wool with skins of onions.
Thorvald plucked a small comb from among the debris. Taken by the storm and returned by the sea. The object had been Sigurd’s. After a rinse in fresh water, Thorvald would use it to tame his hair, then offer it to the princess.
The conversation he and Sigurd had had over the princess replayed in his head as he stared at the small item.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Nothing can tempt me away from my land.”
“You should have rested with a woman before we left.”
Sex hadn’t been Sigurd’s answer to everything. But as he’d always said, “It didn’t hurt…unless that’s what the couple liked.”
Thorvald smiled at the same moment he was awash in fresh anguish. How many times could this blade slash open his heart?
Seeing the shirt and taking the comb put a finality to Sigurd’s death that hadn’t been there before. The sea was returning a few of the things they’d lost—things it had taken. Sigurd wasn’t going to be one of them.
If Thorvald closed his eyes, he could almost see the great hand of Ran rising from the churning waters of the storm to close her fingers around Sigurd. She’d wanted him. Thorvald couldn’t blame her. Sigurd would be an ornament in her banquet hall, as beautiful as any piece of gold or silver. With his long pale locks, forceful features, and brawny warrior’s build, he’d sit in a place of honor at her table.
Thorvald pressed a fist against the aching hollow of his chest. Did Ran need Sigurd in the depths more than Thorvald needed Sigurd here with him in the realm of men?
The grief was never going to go away, but the freshness would fade and the intensity abate. But part of Thorvald was gone. Hacked away as ruthlessly as men split boards from oak. Sigurd had been a part of him. Physically. The emptiness was real. Something was missing and it had been filled with cold lead.
He could do nothing about it. Absolutely nothing, and that was perhaps the most maddening thing. Being powerless under the jarl was something he’d dealt with his entire life.
This was different. Bigger. Heavier. Sigurd was dead. Dead. Lost to the depths of the unforgiving waters. And three others besides. Four who would never receive proper burial and never see Valhalla.
Thorvald was trading the princess to regain his family lands, but Sigurd wouldn’t be there to see them realize all their hopes. Years of dreams. Gone.
Under those conditions, what Thorvald was doing assumed a greater significance. He owed it to Sigurd’s memory to see this through. Whatever temporary berserking forces were upon him—driving him to want the princess for himself—he would master them. He was still in control of himself. Nothing mattered as much as seeing this through to the end. Nothing.
Chapter Fourteen
Keeping His Distance
From first light to last, the men worked hard with little complaint. The unyielding rigidity of Thorvald’s drive fed their innate warrior’s instincts to emerge victorious from battle—battle of any kind—no matter the odds. If there was a challenge to rise to, they rose to it. The storm hadn’t killed them. Repairing the ships quickly wouldn’t either.
Thorvald kept close to the princess while maintaining strict aloofness. He didn’t speak to her unless it was necessary.
What constituted necessary, however, was a muddy area. Little kindnesses kept creeping into his behavior. He’d admonish himself not to show her favor again. Then he’d find himself thinking, just this last one, then no more.
It wasn’t as if he were picking her posies like a moon-struck halfwit or showing off by slaying bears in her name.
He found he possessed a strange sense of her. The little flick of her tongue upon her lip when she was still thirsty and needed more fresh water. The round-eyed way she’d deny hunger after she’d eaten, but needed more food to fill her belly.
Midmorning on the second day, she was resting in the shade of a lush young coastal oak tree, her attention on the ground.
He wasn’t too far away—on the periphery of the men so he could see and hear them, but not so far as to make the princess feel in any way she was forgotten. He put his mind back on the rope in his hands. The lost mast would soon be replaced, then the sail would need to be rigged. Beside him was the walrus hide they’d need for the shroud, halyard, and stay, which had come through the storm.
He didn’t need to know what she was studying as she sat there, hugging her knees to her chest, and staring fixedly. He needed to attend to the rope. And his men. And…anything but her, so long as she didn’t move.
His gaze strayed back. Still she watched. What was on the ground that could absorb her so thoroughly? She wasn’t simply staring at the ground for no reason. There was something there that interested her. He could see it in her expression.
When the rope was wound, he cast his gaze around for something else he could help with. The sail master had everything under control and the men were absorbed in their work.
Thorvald brushed his hands together, skin slightly reddened from working with the rough-textured rope. He glanced back at her. She absently tucked a stray lock of hair behind one ear, still looking downward, fingers curling elegantly.
He gritted his teeth and plodded toward her. He didn’t have to do this. He could stay away if he wanted to—really stay away—leaving her to her own devices while still keeping her under strict watch.
When he crouched down beside her, she started and blinked at him in surprise. He held her gaze briefly. Neither spoke.
A beautiful dark line ringed her gray irises. Shifting his focus minutely, his own reflection in the curved surface appeared. What did she see when she looked at him? Her tormentor, no doubt. Or worse. Likely he didn’t want to know.
Thorvald looked down. It took him no time to see it. On the ground sliding over tiny rocks collected in the dirt and green shoots was a tiny snail, no bigger than a child’s fingernail. Two perfect brown stripes followed the swirl right to the center of the shell, which gleamed as if it had been polished. A glimmering, gossamer ribbon trailed out behind it, about the length of a cat’s body, tip to tail.
Lifted by a light breeze, the lock she’d tucked behind her ear fell free again. He only had
to reach out and he could have twirled the gently curling end around his finger. Then he could have moved up and gently stroked the back of his hand against her creamy skin, learning its texture. It would have been so different from the rope.
His hands were made for many things in life—hard work, mostly, and what he could do was no small point of pride—but above all, they seemed to have been made for worshiping her with his touch. His male instincts bubbled to the surface.
She spoke. “It’s so small, but does what it does so effectively.”
Taken aback, Thorvald grappled with her words. Surely she wasn’t talking about his—
“It’s gone so far in such a short amount of time.”
“Oh.” He gave his head a little shake. “Yes. The snail.”
He returned his attention to the determined creature. The significance of its journey suddenly speared his thoughts. He pushed to his feet, frowning down upon the princess. Was she merely staring at the snail to pass the time? Or was the tiny thing giving her dangerous ideas?
Her quiet obedience all the rest of the day confirmed his suspicion. It was the same sensation of being in the forest when an animal was near. He was far too experienced a hunter to ignore his gut. She was planning something, and trying to put him off his guard.
For now, he played along. Mentally, he’d already raised his weapon to strike down whatever she might do, the way he would in preparation for whatever might appear in the trees or underbrush.
…
It was the evening of the second day and the ships had been readied. The sail master nodded a final approval as he came to stand beside Thorvald as the sun set over the trees behind them. “We’ll be ready in the morning.”
“So we will. Well done.”
Men were beginning to collapse on the beach by the fires. After all that work, they’d eat heartily, sleep like freshly cleaned carcasses, and be ready to push to sea by dawn.