She didn’t sleep that night, and the instant Ragnar stirred, she was determined to have it out with him.
Ragnar had other ideas.
And, okay, so she was quickly persuaded to hold the questions. It was only after they made love that she realized in a heart-stopping moment that spontaneity was the enemy of condoms. What if she was pregnant?
Turning her face from Ragnar, she sighed as she thought things through. Sensing the change in her mood, he was instantly concerned. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
“No. Of course not. You’re the most incredible lover, but you’re also a temporary visitor to the island, and however many times I try telling myself that I can do casual and enjoy it for what it is”—her smile turned twisted—“I can’t. I don’t want to. I want more of you. I want all of you. And I know that’s just greedy—”
“Who says it is?” Ragnar stared fiercely into her eyes.
Placing her hands flat against his chest, she stopped him from kissing her. “Not before you come clean with me. You don’t belong in these times. You’re a time traveler. I don’t know how that happened or even why you’re here, but I do know that I’m an independent female, rooted firmly in the twenty-first century.”
“Which century?” Ragnar’s voice was quiet and intense.
“The twenty-first, when heating is powered by the wind, and water is collected in huge reservoirs and fed by pipes into every home on the island. This is the twenty-first century. Proof positive for you has to be me calling one of my brothers on the mainland so I can’t only speak to them, but see them, right here on my phone when I make a video call.”
Ragnar frowned. “Video call.”
She speed-dialed her brother Jamie.
“What type of magic is this?” Ragnar demanded, starting back when her brother appeared on the screen. With sleep-tousled hair and bleary eyes, Jamie was clearly surprised to see her.
“Could you do me a favor?” she asked. “Poke your phone out of the window to show a friend of mine the London street outside your apartment.”
“It’s pretty noisy outside,” Jamie complained. “If he’s thinking of coming to live in London, I can think of better areas. Depending on budget, of course.”
“Just do it Jamie. Please?”
When Jamie had done as she asked, Ragnar stared fixedly at the mash-up of traffic and pedestrians, together with a few brave cyclists weaving in and out of the mass of vehicles. When Jamie turned the phone and a sweeping panoramic view appeared, a couple of London buses made their appearance.
“What are those big red things?” Ragnar demanded. “Are they siege weapons?”
“Have you been partying?” Jamie asked Isla with concern.
“No, Ragnar,” she explained. “The red buses are a harmless form of transport, available to anyone who can afford the fare.”
“Isla?” Jamie pressed. “Are you okay? I don’t like the sound of this. What’s going on? Who’s that with you?”
“Allow me to introduce Ragnar Rask—my very own Viking.”
There were so many excellent series featuring Vikings on the TV that Jamie accepted her explanation without question. “I suppose you are quite close to Scandinavia up there,” he mused out loud. “Or is Ragnar an actor?”
“No. He’s a genuine Viking.”
“Some museum or other, I gather?”
“You gather wrong. Ragnar is paying a visit from the Dark Ages.”
“Yeah, yeah. What did you have to drink last night? You’re not growing weed up there, are you? I warned you that you’d get bored on the island.”
“I’m not bored, and I’m not growing weed. One last question. Can you please tell us what year this this?”
“Are you serious?”
“Perfectly serious. Please confirm the year.”
“Twenty twenty-two, the last time I looked. Why?”
“Definitely not eight hundred A.D., or any year up to approximately eleven hundred A.D.?”
“Not unless you’re into reenactment. Are you going to tell me what is this about? Only, it’s rather early for truth or dare—”
“Nope. That’s it. Thanks Jamie.”
“Hey, ring me back when your head’s on straight. Okay?”
“My head is exactly where it ought to be, but will do. Love you.” She cut the line with a wistful grin. Having brothers could be a pain sometimes, but she wouldn’t be without them for the world.
Ragnar seemed bemused. “You’re telling me that I’m a time traveler, and this is the twenty-first century?”
She nodded. “I think you might have sailed off the grid at some point. Can you remember anything unusual happening during the voyage?”
Ragnar’s lips pressed down as he considered this, which gave her the chance to study him. Hot as hell with sharp black stubble coating his jaw, his thick tawny hair fell in wild profusion, dropping into his eyes and catching on his stubble. Just the sight of his powerful shoulders was enough to make her weak.
He was such a turn-on with that torso that looked as if it might have been sculpted by Michelangelo. With the addition of copious ink. She was growing to love tattoos and wanted nothing more than to taste him, all of him, especially the part that pleasured her, but she also had to learn about him, as much as she could.
“Anything unusual?” Ragnar reflected out loud. “The boat was becalmed. I fell asleep. When I woke, the mist had covered me. I couldn’t see farther than a hand in front of my nose. I couldn’t steer by the sun or the stars, so I allowed the boat to drift as I waited for the weather to change.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I beached on the island, and now I’m here.”
“There has to be more you can remember. There must be something. Think back.”
Ragnar shook his head, but she couldn’t leave it there. What about the magic she was supposed to have? The Sight, Morag had called it. Could she see what had happened to Ragnar, or maybe hypnotize him back into the past? She’d never been one for mumbo jumbo, being of a practical bent, believing myth and legend were nothing more than engaging stories to tell around a fireside at night, but when all else failed, what did she have to lose by giving that elusive sixth sense a try?
They had both fallen silent, so there was nothing outwardly odd about Isla closing her eyes and focusing her mind solely on Ragnar. As her breathing steadied, a great sense of peace came over her and with it, the conviction that Ragnar was different and special. The more she relaxed into the seeing, the more she became convinced Ragnar Rask was far more than he appeared. If what she’d seen was true, he was living proof of some existence beyond this life. Not only had Ragnar been a king back in his own time, but he had been a great and trusted ruler.
The rest of the tale that came to her in the vision was even more incredible. Fighting a battle against overwhelming odds, Ragnar had driven his sword through the heart of the leader of the marauding Rus, only to be crushed by a falling horse. He’d saved his people, but Ragnar was so deeply unconscious, they’d thought him dead. Carried off the field of battle on a litter, he was washed and clothed in all his finery before being honored with a Viking funeral. He should have been consumed by flames as his boat floated out to sea, but a dramatic change in the weather had saved him. Driving rain and a deep and impenetrable mist had put out the fire, and carried his vessel from Scandinavia in the Dark Ages to a small island in Scotland in the twenty-first century. How the time slip had occurred remained a mystery, and perhaps it always would.
She came to with a great inhalation of breath.
“Isla?” Ragnar’s voice reached through the mist to bring her out of the trance. “Isla! Are you all right?”
She opened her eyes to focus on Ragnar, and as the complexities of other dimensions fell away, the sight of him, brazenly male and unmistakably real, was unbelievably reassuring and completed her transfer into the here and now. Shocked as she was by her ability to travel through space and time and see as Morag had promised she would, Isla knew instinctively that there was no time to lose before leading Ragnar back into his story.
“The fire?” she pressed, reminding him about the blackened timbers. “Do you remember anything about that? Or the hole in the timbers? Though that could have happened when you came close to shore. There’s a reef of treacherous rocks out there that has to be treated with caution—”
“I remember I was dead.”
“You were dead?” Shock and shivers gripped her spine. “Could you repeat that?” She had to be sure that what she’d seen in her trance tallied with Ragnar’s version of events.
“My people thought me killed in battle and sent me out to sea. The ship was doused in oil and then flaming arrows were shot into the timber,” he explained. “It is a great honor to be granted a Viking funeral.”
“You were their king.”
“I was,” he confirmed.
She cared less that he was a king than that Ragnar had survived. Fire, heat, and the impossibility of survival, she’d see all these things. Rendered comatose by a brain injury in battle, Ragnar had been unable to move, and yet he remained fully aware of everything that was happening to him. Without modern brain scan technology to confirm that, in fact, Ragnar was very much alive, he had been as good as dead the moment he was placed on that death ship.
“The weather denied me a hero’s death.”
“Thank goodness!” she exclaimed, relieved to see Ragnar’s lips curve in a smile. “You were incapable of moving, and if it hadn’t rained…” Her voice tailed away as she refused to consider the most horrific of possibilities.
“I could only watch as the flames guttered and went out,” he revealed.
“Fate was kind to you.”
“Fate is never kind,” Ragnar argued, staring deep into her eyes. “Fate is mischievous and unpredictable.”
“But kind in this instance,” she insisted, reaching out to him. “Not only are you alive, but your boat survived and brought you to me.”
Ragnar’s attitude changed and he stiffened, as if suddenly remembering waking up to find his boat on fire, and then realizing the horror of being stretched out on his own funeral pyre. “I played no part in arriving here. When I woke, I was more concerned to get back to my people, but then the mist came down and, as you say, it brought me to you. There’s no guarantee I can return that way.”
“But you still want to return.”
The stab of pain that statement provoked was swift and deep, but Ragnar was quick to reassure her. “You will come with me, of course.”
What? Leave here to travel back in time, deserting her brothers, her friends, and everyone who believed in her? “I can’t,” she said.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” Ragnar demanded. “Does this mean nothing to you?” His eyes darkened with passion as he embraced her.
She wanted nothing more than to stay with him, but she needed more than sex. If she had fallen in love with Ragnar Rask, who else was to blame but Isla? “This means everything to me,” she admitted. “You mean everything to me. And of course, I want you to stay. If that makes me weak, then where you’re concerned, I’m weak.”
“There is nothing weak about you, which is why I shall take you back as my queen.”
“If you can even get back,” Isla mused with a frown. “And if you do, will your people accept you? They sent you out to sea on a flaming boat, thinking you were dead, soon to be consumed by fire. Do you intend to return alive, and with a woman as different from your countrymen as could be?”
“Not so different. You are comparable to many a shield maiden I’ve—”
“Thank you.” She held up her hand, palm flat. “That’s enough. I don’t want to hear about other women. I don’t doubt their courage. They would have to be exceptional to spend any time with you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“This is all about how things will suit you in the future, without considering that I have a life I enjoy right here.”
“I will not leave you,” Ragnar stated fiercely. “Where I go, you go.”
When he dragged her close, she was in no mood to argue. For now.