Chapter Six
She gasped and set a steadying hand on his thigh. His leg tensed under her palm. Fury sparked his eyes. Despite his snarled insult, she was alive. Hungry. Aware of everything. His unrelenting hold on her wrist. Her knees in the dirt and her face tilted to his.
Rurik’s smoldering gaze devoured her jostling breasts. She felt their heaviness and a yearning to be touched.
She licked her lips, her mouth an agonizing hand’s breadth from his.
Rurik’s husky laugh was wicked. “You want this.”
“I...”
He fisted a hand in her hair, and Rurik covered her mouth with his. She sagged against him, sparks sizzling under her skin. His kiss was ruthless. Rurik’s mouth took and took and took, slanting over hers, stealing her breath.
Her heart pounded. Wetness slicked between her legs. She squirmed against him, hot and needy. She tried to touch Rurik, but the Viking manacled both her wrists and forced them to her sides.
He said a ferocious, “You don’t get to touch me” against her mouth.
She answered by arching her body into his.
Rurik groaned. The cradle of her hips mashed between his legs. Seeking. Rubbing. Grinding. He kissed her hard and she kissed him back, measure for measure. She opened her mouth to him, deepening the kiss, tasting Rurik and liking the stunned hiss in his throat when she did.
The hands gripping her wrists squeezed, and as suddenly as the kiss began, it ended.
Rurik pushed her away. “Go take your bath.” Anger and lust warred on his face.
She swayed on her knees, not trusting herself to stand. Her lungs couldn’t get enough air. She collected herself before clambering to her feet, clutching the soap to her navel like a talisman.
Rurik turned his head as if he couldn’t bear the sight of her. That hurt most of all.
Without a word, she turned and splashed deep into the Cailly River. Cold pricked her skin. She scrubbed from head to toe, trying to wash away her confusion and the Viking. One sniff of her forearm proved that didn’t work. His honeyed soap lingered on her skin.
Rurik sat on the log and watched her, the torch’s flame scant light between them. The river sapped her heat, but she made a game of swimming against the current and letting it take her. Her teeth chattered. All ten fingertips resembled raisins.
The water kept her safe... From the Viking’s lust? Or her own?
Words ran sing-song in her head. Go home. Go home. Go safely home.
“Safira.” Rurik’s voice called from the riverbank. “Time to get out.”
He was holding up her cloak like a drying linen. The thoughtfulness touched her all the way to her icy toes. She sloshed ashore, a trio of frogs hopping to make way for her. Rurik turned his head as she walked into her cloak.
She returned his soap, mumbling, “I’m sorry I used so much.”
“I have another one.” His footsteps were quiet behind her.
They were stiff. Uncertain. At least she was. With Rurik, it was hard to tell. While she dried off, he crouched by his leather bag, giving her his back. Was this gift of privacy an act of kindness? Or him coldly ignoring her?
She walked to the log and got dressed fast. Settling her cloak on her shoulders, she announced, “I’m ready.”
Near her feet, two indents dipped in the soil...where she’d kneeled before the Viking and brazenly kissed him.
She’d bought a reprieve from the Viking’s attentions, but what was she going to do about her wanton self?
* * *
Rurik stood up, the wool cloth in hand. Safira tied on her cloak, regal as a queen. The rags she wore could be fine robes. Did she come from a royal house? He could believe it. She faced him with the utmost confidence. No hand wringing. No stuttering. She’d been bred to believe in her value. He’d fought hard for his.
He jutted his chin at the log. “Sit down.”
Water-spiked lashes fringed Safira’s eyes. She looked at the long strips. “What are those for?”
“For you.” Conversation was an effort. He wasn’t feeling charitable.
She was cagey, her feet shifting on damp leaves. “I won’t be tied up.”
He shook his head, unrolling the wool. “You don’t get a say in that.”
“Viking, please...”
He went down on one knee by the log. Safira paced a short path along the riverbank, holding the frayed ends of her cloak together. He unraveled one cloth and worked on another, comforted in the knowledge she wouldn’t try to run. She didn’t need to.
“Come.” He patted the log.
“Because you give the orders and I follow them, no?” she seethed.
He grinned at her show of spirit. “Because that’s how trust works.”
The pacing stopped.
“Trust?” She bored holes into his profile, her wary study bouncing from his face to the last strip unraveling in his hands. Safira plopped down in front of him. “I thought trust worked when both sides honored their agreement.”
“You’re right.” He picked up an earthen jar he’d set by the log. “When a man gives his word, he should honor it.”
He removed the cork with a soft pop. Jet-black hair hung in heavy ropes around her curious face. Safira hugged herself, her lips tinged blue from too much time in the water.
“You are not tying me up?”
“No.” He dipped one finger inside the jar and stirred the mix of beeswax and oils. Beside them mist spread across the river’s surface. The goddess Frigga was busy tonight, spinning vaporous threads over the Cailly.
The line of Safira’s throat moved with a delicate swallow. “What you said about keeping your word... Does that mean you are staying with me tonight?”
“Yes.”
“What about your widow?”
It was laughable, all the shades he found in Safira’s accented-voice, as if sound and color painted her words. Sensual, bold, and knowing one moment. Maidenly, soft, and sheltered the next.
“There will be other widows.” The unguent stirred, he eyed her legs. “Lift your skirt.”
Safira slammed her hem down her calves, her knuckles going white. “Why?”
“Because I need to check the sores on your knees and wrap them. Otherwise you won’t be able to ride.”
“You knew the saddle rubbed my skin raw even though I said nothing of it.” Faint surprise tinged her voice.
“I paid attention.”
Owlish eyes absorbed him. Her lips parted, and they were on dangerous ground again. The things her plush mouth made him think...
He rested his forearm on his thigh, the tip of his finger glossy with oil. “Can we get going? We have a hard day’s ride tomorrow, and I would like to get some sleep.”
Safira’s white-knuckle hold on her skirt relaxed. “Because letting you do that is trust.”
“It is.”
A sizeable act of trust. Proof he meant no harm despite her insult before she’d cleaned up in the river. Safira was quiet, dragging the torn hem above her knees. She stopped midthigh. A determined hold. As if she’d defend that boundary with her life. He touched the crook of her knee. Down-soft hair on her legs brushed his fingertips.
His throat dried. “Open your legs to me.”
She spread them wide enough for him to see sores on her skin. “I did not expect this...kindness from you.”
“I take the job of protector seriously.” The words, meant to be humorous, failed.
Goosebumps beaded her skin. The trail led to her frayed hem and the dark cavern between her legs. He glimpsed a black thatch. Lust jolted him. She wore no loin cloth to cover her most private place. It was summer. Many women didn’t. His brain didn’t assemble that fact when she’d undressed earlier, but it did now. She would ride and walk and talk with him with little more than a single layer of wool between them. He didn’t have to see her naked. He was done in by the mere thought of it.
Safira clamped the skirt dipping between her legs. “The sores, Viking. You have something to heal them.”
Taking a deep breath, he went to work. The wounds were as he suspected. Skin had been rubbed raw, the spots the size of thumbprints inside her knees. One was dark as a ripe red berry. Not once today had the maid complained. He dabbed the salve on bloodied flesh with the gentlest touch and wound the cloth around her knee.
“When I saw the strips, I thought you planned to use them for another purpose.” Safira’s Frankish accent was thick.
He tied off the bandage and looked up.
“Especially after what I said to you,” she murmured.
Wet hair left sodden spots on her tunic. Cloth clung to her body, and the sweet nib of her nipples poked against wool. She had no idea the temptation she presented. He dipped two fingers in the jar, a powerful need to take care of her.
“Your insult is forgotten,” he said gruffly.
She watched his fingers rubbing her knee. “You are rare among men. I admit that I need you.”
Three small words, Safira’s I need you, bore down like boulders on his back. If his head tilted up, their faces would be inches from each other. He craved her...her smell, the feel of her, to put his mouth on hers and not stop. It was pure turbulent lust. Their first kiss had shaken him, and he was hungry for another.
What he didn’t understand was the ardent need to protect Safira.
Why this woman?
Headstrong. Full of contempt for Vikings. And a temper. She was far above him in birth. Had never labored a day in her life and probably didn’t know how...at least until someone stole her. Her thrall’s existence, for however long she’d been one, must have taught her valuable, humbling lessons, because one day with Safira and he would add to her traits.
Insightful. Full of wit. And passionate.
This last quality played on his senses the most. She was fire to his ice. Her soul-deep stare when pleading for the Saxon had stayed with him, and there was the matter of truth and lies. Safira held fast to deception to save her life; he held fast to deception to build a new one.
She was fiercely loyal to someone. Who?