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.
“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?”
“They?” Rika said. “You mean we. We’re leaving. All of us. Within the hour.”
“So soon?” He would have thought they’d tarry at least another day.
“I will not spend another night under my father’s roof.” Her lips thinned to a hard line.
“But, your father. What must he thi—”
“I told him you had urgent business.”
“Business? What bu—”
“In Wick.”
He stopped breathing. Her gaze was so cold, her expression so hard, he could scarce believe she was the same woman who had cried his name in ecstasy just hours before.
“That is where you wish to go, is it not?” She arched a white-gold brow at him.
“Aye, but—”
“And I have affairs of my own to deal with.” She knelt beside the pile of saddlebags at her feet and pulled a small chest from under them.
“The silver,” he said, recognizing the chest Rollo had shown him last night just after Rika had fled the hall.
“Precisely. It was waiting for us this morn in the hall. She lifted the lid and ran her hand over the coins. Only then did her eyes show signs of life. She smiled, and George felt suddenly sick.
“So,” he said, “our bargain is concluded.”
“Ja.”
Just like that. So simple. She looked at him, waiting, and for a moment he could have sworn she wanted him to protest. His head spun. The words left his lips before he could bite them back. “And…last night?”
She held his gaze, and he knew—twas by sheer will alone. He could see her grinding her teeth behind lips swollen from his kisses.
“Last night was…” Color tinged her cheeks. “I thought I owed it you, is all. You secured my dowry, and I was…grateful.” She closed the lid of the silver chest and rose, hefting it with her.
“You’re saying ye did it for the coin?”
“Ja.”
His gut roiled. When she turned toward their mounts, he grabbed her arm. “But ye didna know about it before, when we—” he whispered so that the youths would not hear “—made love.”
For a second their eyes met, then she pulled away. “How much longer?” she called to Ottar.
The youth peeked over one of the geldings. “Nearly ready. Your father’s provided us another mount.” He nodded at a black mare. “To replace the one Ingolf stole.”
“Good,” Rika said.
George stood there, stunned. The bloody woman acted as if there was nothing between them. As if he was a stranger she had hired to transact some dirty business for her.
Aye, that’s exactly what he was.
She lifted the silver chest onto the mare’s well-padded back. Ottar secured it tight. “There,” she said, and turned to address him. “Are you ready, Grant?”
He nodded, not knowing what else to say.
“Well then, you’ll wish to bid my father goodbye, no doubt. At least make a show of it. Go ahead. We’ll wait for you here.”
“Ye dinna wish to say goodbye to him?”
Rika snorted. “Good riddance, you mean?” She patted the silver chest. “I have what I want. There is nothing more to say.”
Aye, that was more than clear.
He left her there in the stable and returned to their chamber to gather his few possessions. He felt dirty. Used. Like a tavern wench who’d not yet grown used to her trade.
A short time later, the five of them sat mounted in the courtyard, awaiting their host’s farewell.
Rollo stood on the castle steps with the dour Catherine. George knew their departure pleased her. Her daughters huddled behind her, shivering. Christ, ’twas cold. George raised a hand in farewell.
The Norseman nodded. His gaze strayed to Rika—his daughter, whether he believed it or nay. Her face showed the strain of the past few days. She would not look at him.
Mayhap if George had told her about Fritha and Lawmaker, she’d understand, even forgive, her father’s monstrous behavior. Without a word, she drew herself up in the saddle, head high, and kicked her mount to action.
Nay, she would never forgive, nor did she want to understand.
Rollo watched her until she rode out of sight. His arm slipped from Catherine’s shoulder and, at the last, George read the pain in his eyes.
“Farewell,” George called to him.
“And to you, Grant.”
George reined his mount into line behind Ottar and the others, and met the Norseman’s gaze once more.
“Take care of her, won’t you?” Rollo said.
George smiled bitterly. “Aye, I will—if she’ll let me.”
With but an hour of daylight to spare, Rika reined her mount to a halt just beyond the great wood. George pulled up beside her. The weather had been mercifully mild. Cold and clear with but a light wind blowing off the sea.
George cupped his hands and blew hot breath into them. “Why have ye stopped?” he asked her.
“We’re here,” Rika said.
Ottar shot her a puzzled glance. “Where?”
“The crossroads.” She nodded to the path leading north back to Tom MacInnes’s house. George strained his eyes and thought he could almost see the whitewashed structure hugging the cliffs.
So this was it then.
Rika pointed east to a faint path meandering up and over the moors. “There lies Wick, or so the chart says.”
“You would leave us, truly?” Ottar said. “After all…” The youth’s face clouded. “After everything?”
Leif and Erik looked hard at Rika, as if she would intervene. George knew she would not.
“Our bargain is concluded,” she said. Her voice had that familiar hard edge to it. Good God, the woman was cold as ice.
“But—” One stony look from Rika and Ottar’s mouth snapped shut.
“Grant’s bride awaits him in Wick.” She tipped her chin at George. “Does she not?”
Their eyes locked, his searching, hers icy.
“Aye, she does.” He pulled the rolled chart from his saddlebag and unfurled it. “Two days’ ride, methinks. No more.”
Leif and Erik nudged their mounts in close, straining to see the map.
Erik snaked his hand between them and ran it over the parchment. A stubby finger lingered on the jagged coastline near Dunnet Head.
“A day at most,” Leif murmured.
George frowned. “A day to where? MacInnes’s house is but an hour—”
Erik snatched his hand back, and Rika shot him a look that would freeze water. The youths exchanged loaded glances. What the devil was going on here?
“I will see ye all safe to MacInnes’s house,” George said, “before I take my leave.”
“You shall do nothing of the kind.” Rika turned her mount away from him. “It’s just down the hill. Besides, it will be far easier to explain your absence to MacInnes now, without you, than for you to take your leave of us in his presence.”
“Rika’s right,” Erik said.
Ottar nudged his gelding closer. “But why do you have to go at all? Why not come back to Fair Isle with us?”
“Ottar, that’s enough,” Rika said. “Grant has a life of his own. A clan. A bride. Is that not true?” She arched a brow at him.
’Twas the second time she’d asked him that. She knew the answer, so why did she ask? George met her frigid gaze, searching for a sign. Did she wish him to stay? Was that it? She pursed her lips and tipped her chin at him.
Nay, she wanted him gone.
And he was daft not to want to go.
“But you’re married,” Ottar said. “And with Lawmaker dead, there is no elder to speak the words to undo the bond.”
Rika snorted. “It matters not. I shall never wed again, so I need not the divorce. As for Grant—” she looked him up and down as she had that first day in the courtyard “—it was never a proper Christian marriage, and therefore does not exist.”
“Just like that,” George said.
“Ja, just like that.”
Her arrogance and easy dismissal of him proved too much. “Fine. I’ll be gone then.” He rolled the chart and thrust it at her. “Give this to MacInnes. I’ve no need of it. I know where I’m going.”
She handed the parchment to Ottar who stuffed it into a half-full saddlebag. “Good. Well then, Grant. I bid you farewell—and Godspeed. I am certain your…bride…will be pleased to see you.”
“Aye, that she will.” He reined his mount east, then pulled him up short, remembering something. He fished it out of the small leather bag tied at his waist and weighed it in his hand before tossing it to her.
She caught it, and when she realized what it was, her face turned to stone.
“The brooch,” George said. “Your morgen gifu.”
“I told you, I do not—”
“Take it. In payment for last night.”
Her eyes burned into him like white-hot daggers. By God, she was cold-blooded. A man could break himself against the rock that was her heart.
She kicked the black mare into a gallop and rode north across the moor, her white-gold hair flaming out behind her catching the last rays of the setting sun.
Ottar raised a hand in farewell, his boyish face twisted in sorrow. Erik and Leif bid him goodbye and Godspeed.
George turned away from them, away from her, and spurred his mount east toward Wick.