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.