She stood and walked to the stream to wash her face and to drink, then returned to her captive. “Today you walk, Viking, or you die,” she told him sharply. She lifted her sword over him, smiling as she assumed he must be certain she meant to bring it down upon him. But then she carefully slit the length of leather that held him to the tree. His arms fell in front of him and he sat for several seconds, allowing life to seep back into him. Erin placed her sword against his neck. “Up,” she told him. “Walk to the stream. You may wash your face and drink water—but no tricks. As I have warned you, I am talented with a sword. Give me the slightest cause and you will begin to lose your extremities one by one.”
He staggered as he attempted to rise, but Erin could immediately see that the night had given him greater strength. Forewarned, she kept the point of her sword firmly against his spine as she followed him to the stream. She allowed him to drink only a mouthful of water, then dug her sword up against his ribs. “Enough. Up.”
He rose, teetering still.
“Head straight toward my horse, and don’t turn a hair. Remember, Wolf, you are my prisoner. Now move!”
Having him obey her commands made the joy of victory race through her blood. But as they approached the tethered animal, Erin was still very aware that she couldn’t let down her guard for an instant.
When she reached her mare, Erin untied the tethering rein from a branch, and a startled morning bird suddenly flew from the tree, squawking like a demon of hell. The mare bolted, rearing and neighing in skittish panic, and Erin was forced to drop her sword and turn her strength to the reins to calm and hold the mare.
It was her complete undoing. The second her back was turned, the rock-muscled arms of her captive came around her, his bound wrists about her waist, squeezing tightly.
“Your prisoner?” the Wolf snarled. “I think not, Irish bitch.”
She was barely breathing, half paralyzed with terror, but fully aware that somehow she had to fight him. For a moment she held perfectly still, aware of the fierce male body pressed to hers, aware of the scent, the heavy breathing, the suffocating strength.
His beard brushed her cheek as he lowered his head and whispered a spine-chilling command against her ear. “Now you will move.”
Erin twisted her head to sink her teeth into his shoulder as she kicked backward furiously, hoping to hit his injured leg. His agonized groan was a sign of her success, but she was still imprisoned by his bound arms, and as he staggered with pain, she staggered along with him until together they fell to the earth.
She was beneath him, panting desperately for breath. For several seconds they both merely lay there, trying just to breathe and gather their resources. Then he twisted, ignoring the slight pain under his arm, to bring himself around so that he could stare into her eyes. Shocking blue met deepest emerald. And more than anything else, both pairs of eyes registered an incredulous surprise that the owners should be in such positions.
Olaf was weak and torn. Erin was staggered and helpless from his weight. Like opponents in a ring they watched one another, still drawing desperately for breath.
Erin attempted the first move, as Olaf, whose eyes were still bleary, continually shook his head to clear his vision. When his lids fell, she dove desperately to escape from his arms.
She’d almost succeeded but he let out a biting growl and dug his fingers into her hair, the wound under his arm no longer paining him. Erin screamed at the wrenching pain and fell back beneath him, then brought her nails raking across his face. He swore furiously and pressed an elbow deep into her ribs. Erin gritted her teeth together from the pain and desperately struck at him, fists pummeling furiously and feet flying. He jerked his arms up from around her while swearing again, then brought his folded fingers down and backhanded her hard across the face.
The blow was stunning. Her head reeled with the sharp agony and she lay still, her eyes closed as she fought the tears and waited—waited to feel his death blow, or the barbaric revenge that he would exact.
Nothing came. Slowly she opened her eyes. He lay a foot away from her, staring at her tiredly as he panted for breath. For countless moments their eyes locked.
She fought a scream of terror as he rolled toward her again. Dazed and paralyzed by her terror, her body refused to function. He brought his bound arms around her again. She began to struggle against him, certain that he meant to crush her within his grasp. But he didn’t. He laid his weight atop hers and went still again, breathing deeply. Panic again filled her in new waves as she felt him against her, the steel strength of his chest, the muscled heat of his legs, the iron clamp of his arms. Even the easy brush of his beard against her throat and cheek was terrifying and threatening. He was not hurting her, yet he frightened her far more than if he were. The golden aura she had sensed about him was unleashed and she was held by a power both mercilessly strong and mercilessly male. Never before had she been more aware of a man. Never before had she been so powerless, or more acutely aware of the weakness of her sex. And the power of his.
She gasped for breath as shivers seized her. All manner of horror swept through her mind. Surely he would kill her. Perhaps rape her first. Torture her. She fought a scream as she waited.…
Finally he pulled his arms up over her head again and rolled away from her. She realized blankly that he had just been holding her still and immobile while gathering his strength. She swallowed sickly. Now he would tear her to pieces.
But though his eyes remained upon her, irritated and watchful, he made no move toward her. He struggled to his feet and returned to the bubbling cool water where he lay again to drink deeply and then cleanse the mud from his face and hair, his task made difficult by his bound hands.
Erin attempted to rise, but the blackness that rushed to meet her sent her sprawling again, struggling for consciousness. By the time she cleared her head of the debilitating mists, he stood over her, water dripping from his beard upon her face.
“Have you more food?” he demanded.
She continued to stare at him, but he nudged her ribs with his foot and she winced at the pain. It surprised her that he spoke in her tongue, especially since she had been ridiculing him in his own, but she didn’t dwell upon it. She closed her eyes, and then rose slowly to her feet.
“In my saddlebags,” she told him tonelessly.
He looped his fingers through her hair and aimed her toward the now docilely grazing mare. When they neared the animal he shoved her. Without turning around Erin dug into the leather satchels with trembling fingers.
When she turned to offer him the bread and dried meat she carried, her eyes widened with amazement and she dropped her forced offerings. His eyes were closed, his features drawn and tense with strain as he held his hands before him, the muscles of his arms bulging, the veins blue from his strength as he clenched his fingers tightly and pulled. The leather thongs that bound him snapped and fell to the earth.
He opened his eyes, glanced at Erin and then at the food on the ground. “Pick it up,” he told her tonelessly, still in her own language.
Quaking in uncontrollable shudders, Erin stooped to obey. He stared at her as he wolfed the food down where he stood, first the bread, then the meat. Erin returned his stare but didn’t move a muscle.
But then his freed hand shot out to clamp around her wrist and in panic she brought a knee up hard, brushing his wound and striking his groin. He grunted loud in pain, and his eyes narrowed while his teeth ground down so hard that she could hear their grating. But he didn’t release her. He gave her arm a savage wrench and dragged her along with him back to the water’s edge. He sat, and she was pulled beside him to watch as he ripped the fabric from his wounded thigh.
It was a long, deep gash. Erin saw a pulse tick hard within his cheek below the threads of his beard. He was in great pain, and she attempted to avert her eyes from both his face and the wound.
He placed a hand around her chin and jerked her face back to his. “You will clean it,” he comm
anded, his voice still toneless but rasping and harsh.
“No,” she murmured, feeling ill and queasy again.
His fingers tightened around her chin, hard and biting. “Do it.”
Erin swallowed and ripped away the hem of her tunic. She wet it in the cold water, then paused.
His eyes were like glittering hard diamonds, his jaw was again clenched. “Do it,” he repeated.
Her eyes lowered from his and she gingerly touched his ravaged flesh. Then she too gritted her teeth and began to scrub the wound.
Nothing more than a groan, quickly choked off, escaped him. His face turned white, but he let no more evidence of the agony the thorough cleansing caused him come to his lips.
Erin was biting her own lips and trembling as she finished the task. Touching him, she felt his warm flesh. She was aware of the golden hair that flourished on the leg, of the hard strength of the sinewed limb, of the panted breathing of the man who braced himself against his pain. She swayed a second herself, clamped her teeth hard, and glanced at his face. For a second his eyes remained closed, then they opened, the startling, sapphire blue denoting no emotion.
“It should be burned and closed.” Why she opened her mouth to speak, she didn’t know. The words had simply come out.
He nodded and closed his eyes once more. She thought he intended to ignore her, but he rose and began to search the ground.
Erin again thought of flight. But his eyes riveted to her just as she bunched her muscles to spring into a desperate run, causing her to hesitate—just a second too long. He limped to her side with the agony of his haste clearly apparent in his eyes. And then, instead of running, she was sent sprawling into the water.
She was ignored once more as he discovered the flint he sought. Moving painfully, he gathered kindling. With deliberate care he created a fire upon the bank, then moved across it once more to retrieve Erin’s sword from the brush where it had fallen.
Only then did he turn back to Erin, limping determinedly to draw her from the water. He gripped her wrist as he heated her sword in the flames, then forced the sword into her hands as he dragged them both down. “Now!” he hissed to her.
Her hand was shaking. His grip around her wrist tightened. “Now—and let your hand be sure,” he warned.
She brought the heated metal against his thigh, feeling faint as she smelled the burning flesh. This time he did scream out. He released his hold on her and fell backward in his agony, fists clenching the earth.
Erin was immobilized for an instant as her heart cried out for the pain he was enduring. But then alert reasoning flashed into her mind. He was the enemy, and she had been a fool not to kill him. She jumped back and skirted around his prone form to run. She could reach her horse.
He twisted his body and grabbed her leg, his face portraying the agony his effort caused him, but he was determined. He pulled her leg sharply, causing her to fall.
Pure panic raced through Erin’s veins. With every ounce of her own estimable strength, she brought her elbow down hard into his wound. He rolled onto his back, but his hold did not ease, as she sprawled on the earth beside him.
His eyes, she saw, were closed against his pain. He was barely conscious. She jerked her leg furiously, but to no avail. He turned toward her and his eyes opened. He clasped her wrist so tightly that she cried out, certain that her bones would snap beneath his strength. But he knew when to stop, how to deliver pain without inflicting permanent damage. He stared at her and grated, “Irish bitch! I have much to repay you for. Don’t nurture the vengeance that might fall upon you. You are my prisoner. In my power.”
How could he endure his pain to remain conscious and speak? Erin wondered bitterly. She had so injured and angered him now that she was more certain than ever that he would kill her or torture her slowly. She was cornered, but being cornered gave her an absurd bravado.
“Never, Viking. I will never be in your power,” she hissed. “The Irish will find you … my father will find us … and you will become food for the rats—” She broke off with a scream as he wrenched her wrist.
“Shut up!” he commanded, rolling his weight on top of her with a sudden fury and gasping at the renewed pain of his thigh wound with the effort. His face was a strained and chilling mask as he placed his hands on either side of her face, and she fought tears as she realized he could crush her skull, the delicate bones of her cheeks, if he so desired. She winced and held still, staring into the hypnotizing blue of his eyes. “Shut up,” he repeated in a growl. “Bitch, you do sorely push the benevolence of the gods!”
In mounting terror, Erin held her peace. She met his sharp stare as long as she could, and then, despite her will to show him no fear, she closed her eyes against the power of his, wincing at his painful hold.
Slowly it eased. For several moments Erin kept her eyes tightly clenched, too frozen with her fear even to shiver. But she felt nothing, no blow to body, no touch of cruelty or revenge. There was only the shift of his weight upon hers, one that even more securely pinioned her.
Moments passed, and unable to bear further suspense, Erin tentatively opened her eyes—and realized the cause of her safety. The Wolf was not inhuman. Pain on top of injury had finally taken its rightful toll. He had passed out atop her.
For several seconds she barely breathed, but his head on her shoulder didn’t move. His arms were on either side of her, his torso over the length of her, his legs sprawled over hers, so that his limbs created a steel band of imprisonment. She had to move him to move herself.
Hating each second that his heat pressed her to the ground, Erin forced herself to wait. The sun-blond hair tickled her chin, the breadth of his chest crushed against her breasts, and his thighs were hard against hers, absurdly intimate. Had he raped her, he would not have fallen any differently.
That thought made her panic, and she decided she had waited long enough. She gingerly attempted to edge from beneath him, watching his right arm as she tried to gently lift it. The muscled bicep began to move at her careful touch and she held her breath, even more carefully sliding her leg from beneath his. By rolling slowly to her stomach she discovered that she could more easily escape from his weight.
Erin had her body half freed from its prison of flesh and muscle when she chanced to notice a shift against herself. She quickly turned her face and shifted her eyes toward the head of the captor, only to scream aloud when she saw that his face was now twisted to hers, his eyes open and staring sharply as his hand clamped around her waist and the small of her back. Her scream became a choked yelp of pain and indignity as his hand moved from her only to descend swiftly and fiercely upon the rounded padding of her buttocks. Tears she could not prevent glazed her eyes. She would have rather endured another blow to the jaw than this humiliation, which reduced her to the status of nothing more than a troublesome child.
But even as her mind reeled against the assault, it ceased, and she found herself swept beneath him again, staring into his eyes, with her own threatening to spill over and her lips trembling despite her best efforts. He spoke tiredly as he held her.
“Girl, I haven’t yet the strength to move. You do so again, and I will break your leg. Your bones would snap easily—and such a feat is also one I can also accomplish with one hand and little energy.”
He stared at her long before he resumed his position and rested his head upon her shoulder and breast.
As tears fell silently down her cheeks, she noted dismally that the dawn had not as yet fully broken. She lay in rigid, silent misery until the need for rest which the Wolf so craved overwhelmed her too and she dozed into the escape and oblivion of a restless sleep.
Olaf saw a glorious building. It was the great hall of Valhalla, shrouded in mist as the hall of the gods should be. It was resplendent, as only such a place should be. The glimmering chalices were inlaid with precious glass, the warriors and their ladies were gowned in silks, they laughed and they feasted and the men raised great drinking horns to their lips
. But Olaf didn’t stop to drink with his comrades. He hurried along the hall, seeking out the doors that rose in mist as he floated along. Grenilde … she would be waiting. And she was, with her eyes of the sky that offered heaven, dazzling in her welcome, her arms outstretched wrapping him in them.
He held her, feeling part of the love she had given him, a knowledge of that gentle time. It was not the wild beauty of body craving body, rather the peace and tenderness of souls that reached out. Just holding … touching.…
In the misted dusk between sleep and wakefulness, it was a spell of tranquility. He smiled as he held her, and he shifted slightly, feeling the caress of her hair against his cheek, the supple warmth of her curved woman’s body. He trailed his knuckles down her cheek, stroked the soft column of her throat with his thumb, savored the firm and heavy feel of her breast within his palm. She stirred, sighing in a soft whimper, moving closer against him.
His eyes opened and pain riddled through him from the glare of the sun overhead. But a deeper agony ripped through his soul at the loss of his dream. He gazed with his jaw tightening at the woman he held. The hair that teased his bearded chin was not the gold of the sun, but the ebony of the night. The long, lithe limbs that entwined with his were not Grenilde’s, nor was the delicate face that appeared deceptively sweet and innocent in sleep. He cozened to his side the Irish bitch who was so eager to see him castrated and torn asunder.
She sighed softly again, as if comfortable and content, and twisted more closely to him, her breast filling the palm he held upon it. She nuzzled against his shoulder with the tender instincts of a kitten, and he realized with both dry humor and bitter pain that she cherished dreams of her own.
Erin was not dreaming as Olaf had been. She was coming from pleasant dusk, slowly awakening. It was instinct she responded to. She nestled against a warmth and unyielding strength that was yet secure and comforting. It gave more warmth to her stiff and chilled body than even the rays of the sun, and all that she felt was light and pleasant and stirring, until her eyes flashed open with sudden alarm and she stared into those blue-ice eyes of the Wolf.