Page 22 of To Find a Viking Treasure (Norse #2)

B randr’s fingers slackened on the buckle. Head bent, his gaze rose to hers. “You don’t want your freedom?”

“I do,” she insisted. “Yet, I question why you’ve pushed for it more than I have.” She eyed the dead Viking, his body pummeled by the waterfall. “Actually, I’ve a good many questions.”

“Such as.”

Water beaded on Sestra’s cheeks and spiked her cinnamon lashes.

She raised a shaky hand and swiped wet curls off her forehead.

She’d faced her fear and gone deeper and farther in the water than he’d expected.

Pride made him want to believe he had a hand in that, but she deserved the honor.

By her direct stare, Sestra’s courage came with the brash need to dig into places he’d rather keep buried.

“What did you say to me last night? Those foreign words when you were inside me? What do they mean?” She rattled off her questions, her arms spreading in supplication.

“And why the change this morning? We kiss and all of a sudden you push me away? I vow you’re more inconstant than a skittish virgin. ”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“And you’re short on answers,” she said tersely.

Water skipped over rocks, its cheery gurgle a contrast to the drenched, angry woman standing before him thigh-deep in the stream.He finished unclasping the buckle and let the leather straps hang loose.

“You really want to know now ?” he asked, hands on his hips.

“Yes. Now.” She smirked. “It’s only water.”

He balked at having his words tossed back at him. Glaring at her wasn’t working. Despite the water, Sestra upraised chin told him no way would she back down. For her courage alone he wanted to kiss her.

“Go ahead. By my count, you’ve got one left.”

Her brown eyes rounded. “The fearless Viking hides behind his game of three questions,”she said, head shaking slowly. “No wonder you’re alone.”

High cliffs shadowed Sestra. Root tendrils sprouted from the cliff behind her, a reminder of yesterday, and her brave bid for life.

Much had passed between them on this unfulfilled quest. By her firm tone, she meant to lash out at him, but the jab barely nicked the hard wall he kept around his heart.

He was alone by design until a certain flame-haired thrall got under his skin this summer.

If she could face her fear of water, he could face down a single, probing question.

Body tensing, he braced for the blow. “Your one question…what is it?”

Her mouth rounded. “Is talking to me so awful?”

He hesitated. Talking wasn’t bad, as long as they never shared words of depth or spoke of the future. Both were things he couldn’t give.

Seconds passed, measured by fiery emotions flickering in her eyes. “I was mistaken. You owe me nothing.” She pivoted fast, clutching sodden skirts and pushing into rushing water speeding past her hips.

“Sestra, stop!” He lunged for her and grabbed her shoulders. “Do you have a death wish?”

The falls drummed. Wraiths of swirling mist danced across the pool. Her reckless march brought them steps away from a steep drop. The pool darkened to the deepest blues where the stream bed plummeted.

“Keep your treasured secrets,” she said, trying to wrench free. “I don’t need them and I don’t need you.”

He flinched. The tip of her red braid floated in the stream between them, a lifeline he wanted to hold fast and not let go.

His nature was neither kind nor open, but he brought her to this, led and coaxed and prodded her along as if her freedom was his.

The stony wall inside him crumbled. He should’ve kept her in safer, knee-deep water.

No. He should’ve hied off for Gotland instead of vowing to watch over her. Sestra needed a better man than him.

“Ask me anything,” he said, hands firm on her shoulders. “I’m not letting go until you do.”

Shadows swarmed overhead from a hundred ravens darkening the sky.

Her back to the cliff, he sat her on a round boulder.

Sestra’s mist-dampened face tipped high.

Gone was the saucy thrall, replaced by a bold maid with a mouth he wanted to devour.

She stared at him as if she would out-wait him.

In the game of patience, he could tarry long past the first frost if she wanted.

His flame-haired temptress had no idea what she bargained for.

Sestra’s life vein bounced against freckled skin at the base of her throat. The throbbing slowed until her shoulders eased.

“Why is my freedom so important to you?”

Her even voice asked the same question she’d asked moments ago, one he’d ignored.

“I don’t know.”

“Give me something better than that,” she said, her brown eyes flashing. “You owe me the truth.”

His lips clamped at the much-deserved challenge. Ravens roosted on the cliff. Their beady yellow-black stares were all-seeing and all-knowing. Of all the questions she could’ve asked, this one tested him dearly.

He stepped back, holding her gaze. His thumbs hooked the dangling leather straps and Jormungand slid free.

“Hold this.” He laid his sword safe in its leather hilt in the crook of her arms.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ll see.” Grasping handfuls of his tunic, he pulled the black wool from his body and turned, giving her full view of his back.

She inhaled sharply. Muscles knotting in the cold, he stared at bright blue skies, ready for the worst. It’d been a long time since he’d seen his back reflected on polished silver and longer still since another laid eyes on him there.

Water splashed behind him. Sestra’s toes banged his heels, and her breath fanned his bare skin.

“What is this?” Her hands skimmed above his right shoulder blade. “Are they letters?”

“A tattoo. In Persian,” he said, keeping his voice level. “It says I am a bahadur , a fighter who belongs to Hassan ibn Dawla.”

She gasped. “A slave?”

His vision hazed on the cliff wall. “For most of my life.”

Flesh pebbled under her curious hand. He shuddered, held captive by waves of pleasure flowing over skin hungry for touch.

Sestra’s fingers traced a spot numbed from burns near his shoulder.

She needed to touch, to learn, and read him.

He understood this. His back told tales far better than words, yet her gentle discovery was carnal agony.

Eyes shuttered, unfathomable humiliation washed over him. Thralls were a way of life for Vikings, but male slaves were of the bottom order. Some masters valued them, others deigned them the lowest kind, unworthy of respect. He’d kept the despised secret long buried.

Sestra’s fingertips explored the dark lettering.

Each light caress connecting him to a dark and evil time.

Where she touched, he’d lost much feeling.

Burns marked the tattoo, his frustrated effort to blot history.

He opened his eyes and scowled at stones underfoot.

Time and persistent water smoothed the river rocks, giving them their shape.

Part of him still fought the truth of what he was.

He couldn’t take back the past and mold it into what he wanted it to be.

Perhaps he wasn’t as wise as he thought. Nor were his rough edges smooth.

He never let people see his back. When women tried to remove his tunic, he’d divert them with pleasure. If they persisted, he’d pull away, speaking rudely or abruptly leaving their beds. The women who sought him for bed sport begged for coarse sex, a thing he was happy to oblige.

Sestra traced long scars twisting along his spine. The lashes. The last sign of his old life.

“I thought you were Viking,” she said.

“I am. Born of a Viking mother and father in Trondheim.” Skin hot, he tucked his tunic under his arm and splashed his face.

The icy water felt good. “My father died in a raid when I was a babe.” He turned around, giving full attention to unraveling his tunic.

“My mother hated the sight of me…it was my earliest memory.”

“Did she beat you?”

“No,” he said, laughing harshly. “She sold me instead.”

Sestra’s brown eyes glistened with tears.

“Don’t pity me.” He slid both arms into his tunic. “I was better off. Sold to Egil, a Viking shipbuilder of Estland.”

“It’s not pity.”

His ire fed him, made him charge headlong into the tale. “There were two things Egil loved most. Building ships and his wife, Grete. When I came along, both treated me like a son. I lacked for nothing showered in their love.”

He hesitated at the word love passing his lips. The admission oddly stripped him as much as it made his spine straighten. He had been loved. He was capable of giving and receiving love.

“Why did you leave?”

“It wasn’t by choice.” He jerked the tunic over his head. “I was big and newly bearded when Egil and I went with others to trade in the south. A storm hit, knocked us off course. I washed ashore on the Abbasid Caliphate. Slave traders found me and took me to Sousse.”

“And Egil?”

Metal bands could be crushing his ribs from the pain of spilling his past. His whole body ached.

The blurred past flashed before his eyes.

Egil holding onto splintered wood, waves crashing over his hoary head.

The old man fought hard to survive, but one of the waves swallowed Egil. The Viking never surfaced.

He swallowed hard. “Lost at sea.”

“Boats and water. They steal everything good.” Sestra’s pale, freckled hand touched his wrist, curving over his leather arm brace.

“Your reasoning needs much work.” A grin formed a split-second before faltering. “Boats aren’t bad.”

“I know.” Her chin dipped. She squeezed his arm and let go to hug Jormungand tightly to her chest.

“Like you, water has been at the crux of my misery.”

Standing in cold water, he felt nothing. Not the stones underfoot. Not the hunger from meager provisions. He stared at the rushing falls, looking but not seeing. His own body drifted feather-like into a dream world above and to view himself and Sestra.

“What happened at Sousse?” she asked softly.