“Will it work for your purposes?”
Hulda pretended to measure the little inlet with her eyes. It would allow her to stay near him. “Ja.” She drew her gaze from the water and looked at him. Here in the flesh after all her memories of him, all her imaginings. The sunlight turned his skin golden. His eyes held hesitancy, and a gleam of what might be daring. “Do you offer it to me? Over the objections of your people?”
He appeared to think on that, though he must have considered it all the night long before rowing out to her.
To her.
“Aye, but there will need to be a sworn agreement. Between ye and me. That none o’ your men will cause harm to me or mine.”
“I will not harm you, Quarrie MacMurtray.” She faced him fully now, the sea and all it carried at her back. She was a tall woman; only four fingers or so separated them in height. It allowed her to gaze straight into his eyes.
“Or mine.”
“Or yours.” Was there anything to which she would not agree in order to remain near him? But ja, her young crew—her friends—relied upon her.
She tossed her head. “There will have to be promises between us.” Promises as there had been in some past she could not quite recall.
“Promises,” he repeated.
“Sacred ones,” she told him.
His eyebrows lifted. “Can that be, when I doubt very much we believe in the same gods?”
“I meant sacred to you and me.” Hulda pressed a hand to her heart. “I will trust in you, Quarrie MacMurtray.”
He drew a breath that expanded his chest. A new light appeared in his eyes. “And I in ye.”
“I will not betray you—that is my promise. If you afford me and my crew room here upon your land, I will be your watch hundr and raise nei weapons against you or yours.”
“And I will no’ betray ye, and will keep my own fro’ raising a blade to ye and yours.”
“Ja, so. It is a promise given. Shall we then seal it?”
Any such agreement in the worlds either of them knew would be affirmed with a gripping of hands, palm to palm or more likely forearm to forearm, weaponless.
Instead, Hulda stepped into his arms.
As natural as breathing the action was, and as impossible to prevent as the waves striding to the shore. She had wanted this since the last time she’d touched him. The last time she’d kissed him. She felt awakened by the desire, more alive than she had ever been.
Their mouths met, both open and reaching. His essence, his being, flooded upon her even his lips molded to hers with an inexpressible hunger, and the taste of him poured into her.
She had wanted this, precisely this, all her life.
He made a sound in his throat—desire, perhaps it was, or claiming. Because ja, he claimed all of her in that kiss, from the damp skin inside her boots to the thinnest strand of hair on the top of her head.
She wound her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his. He felt good, hard, right, and somehow familiar. His hair, wild and tangled, twined between her fingers. She coaxed and wooed his tongue with hers, and drew it into her mouth.
Never had she kissed a man so or dreamed she might, a message that she wanted him inside her. But no one could see them here save the gulls and the sun and the gods, whatever of the last may look upon them.
“Hulda, lass,” he marveled when at last their lips parted and they breathed raggedly.
Was she a lass? Of late, since Jute’s death, she had not felt like one. But she washislass, ja. She was his.
From the distance of a mere breath, she gazed into his eyes. A true hazel, for they carried flecks of gold also, and brown. Thick brown lashes. Freckles beneath the tan of his skin. She liked the strength of his nose, and the reddish hair on his jaw, and the way his brows lifted over those steady eyes.
Perfect, was her man.
“It is a promise,” she told him. “Given and sworn.”
