Page 38 of Lord of Fire and Ice

What did any of it matter?

She was always surrounded by a crowd of people, but Katla was so alone it made her chest ache.

She heard the click of the latch but didn’t look up. She knew who it was. No one else would be so bold as to enter her chamber without permission.

Lamplight flickered to life, sending his long shadow wavering against the back wall.

“What do you want, son of Ulf?”

“You.”

Katla swiped her eyes with her forearm and sat up. She blew her nose loudly into a small square of cloth and crumpled it in her hand. She turned to face him. He looked at her with an intensity that should have scared her. Instead, it made her breath catch and her nipples perk to aching hardness.

“I won’t free you simply because you bed me,” she warned.

“I’m not asking to be freed,” he said, his voice husky with desire. “But I do intend to bed you.”

Chapter 13

Her nose was red from weeping. Her eyes glittered with tears that still threatened to spill over her lower lids. Her lips were puffy.

She wasn’t even pretty at the moment.

But she was the real Katla. Not the smiling, laughing Katla he’d warmed to that morning, but real nonetheless. Her carefully crafted mask of dutiful leadership had been stripped away and replaced by a vulnerable honesty.

Her deep unhappiness tugged at his heart, though he had no idea why it should claw at him so. She was his owner, the one who kept the iron collar on his throat, but despite everything, Brandr ached to make things right for her.

If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect she’d witched him. Whatever the reason, his soul was drawn to hers, and he’d never wanted a woman more than he wanted the one before him now.

He approached the bed but made no move to touch her.

“I saw your shoulders tremble in the great hall, and I knew you wept,” he said softly, finally lifting a hand to graze a knuckle over her still-damp cheek. “And…I couldn’t help but come to you.”

Her moss-green eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and she worried her lower lip, clearly unsure what to do.

“You’ll have to call for help if you try to send me away. I won’t leave willingly,” he finished, hoping the threat of a brawl would make her decide in his favor.

She opened her eyes and met his steady gaze. Her chest heaved twice, and her lips parted softly. Her chin began to quiver again.

“I won’t send you away.”

She extended a hand to him. He bent over it and brushed his lips across her knuckles as he’d seen the courtiers in Byzantium do to their empress. Then he turned her hand palm up and pressed a kiss on the soft center.

He heard her shuddering breath, but he was in no hurry. She wasn’t going to send him away. He had all the time in the world. He was determined to love this woman with toe-curling slowness.

“Will you tell me why you were crying?”

She shook her head.

“Later, mayhap,” he suggested.

“No.”

“We’ll see.” He cupped her cheeks and kissed her forehead. Then he raised her to her feet. “Let’s get you ready for bed, then.”

She blinked at him in surprise. After their desperate, hurried joining on the cliff top, she obviously wasn’t expecting restraint from him.

That was all right. He was wise in the way of women. At least, when it came to bed play. There were a hundred ways he could surprise her.