Page 27 of To Find a Viking Treasure (Norse #2)

S oft cloth brushed her thighs. “Wake up.”

Thick eiderdown dipped from Brandr’s body seated by hers.

Tangy smells of heavenly sex mingled with earthly smoke. Sestra squinted at sharp daylight. The longhouse door and every shutter had been thrown open.

Brandr caressed her hip. “You’ll want to put your clothes on.”

Sitting up, she wiped her eyes. Her tangled hair tickled her back. Air touched her skin everywhere save the pile of clothes in her lap. Her boots sat at the end of the bed. She grabbed those first.

“I must tend to my needs,” she said slipping on her boots.

She hastily gartered the boots and ran out into blinding sunshine to take care of her body’s needs behind a line of trees beside the longhouse. The yard was empty save the broken cauldron. Rye stalks bowed under a breeze blowing off the Fyris River.

Finger combing her hair, she strolled naked into the longhouse. Passing through the lintel, she announced, “I see why Vikings are unbothered with showing their bodies.” Light laughter bubbled up. “It’s freeing.”

Brandr leaned by an open shutter. “If you’re not careful, you’ll give Lord Hakan’s men a free display of your charms.”

Hips swaying, she strolled to the bed. His grey eyes burned, following her the way cats traced birds. She hitched a foot on the bed and retied her boots.

“We go from Persian words of love to this cool greeting. You’re a fickle one, Viking.” She made sure to give him full view of every freckle.

A muscle ticked on his jaw. “We need to be ready.”

She took her time tying her other boot, but her efforts were for naught.

Brandr turned away, surveying the forest and river.

Sighing, she yanked her underdress on fast. She wanted to tempt her grey-eyed bahadur, not get caught naked by other men.

She pulled on her tunic and sat on the bed.

The gentle creak must’ve been too much. Brandr’s head swiveled around fast, his features tense until his gaze caught her fully dressed.

“Is our readiness your only concern?” She separated three sections of hair. “Or is something else bothering you?”

He checked outside the shutter where birds flew past before giving her his full attention. Arms crossed tightly, his hands rested on his ribs with both thumbs on his biceps.

Her stomach rumbled. “Please tell me we get to eat first.”

“I’ll check the traps in a moment.”

Neck prickling, she forgot the braid and hugged her knees. He was ready to leave. Jormungand hung by the door next to the bag with all his belongings, the rolled up sleeping fur, and the humble hoard—a tidy row for a man who liked order and could leave in an instant.

She wound long russet threads around her fingers and snapped them off her hem. “But there’s something you want to say first.”

The toe of his boot kicked a dirt clod. Whatever was on his mind had to be excruciating. The beast was tightly coiled. Lines framed the flat line of his mouth as if what he wanted to bite back what he was about to say.

“I love you, Sestra. With all my heart—”

She inhaled fast and sprang off the bed. “I love you, too.” She sprinted across the longhouse. Pushing up on her toes, she flung her arms around his neck and rained kisses on his face. New whiskers scraped her lips, the abrasion perfect as she spoke against his jaw, “I’m ready to go to Gotland.”

Brandr’s body stiffened against her. Her mouth stilled skin tasting of river water. He didn’t yield to the moment and fold her into his arms.

Firm hands gripped her arms. “You’re not going with me.”

“Why not?”

Pain flashed in his grey eyes. “Because I have nothing to give.”

“What?” Her heels hit the ground.

Stale silence hung between them as she digested his words.

Brandr’s Adams apple bobbled and he had the grace to look away.

Little by little her arms slid free of him, though her body could be whiplashed.

One moment he said the most perfect words, and in the next, he crushed her.

She could be back in the island stream for the numbness in her legs.

“That,” he said, jabbing his chin at the measly row of things by the door. “Is all I have to offer.”

“You have everything to offer me…you are everything.”

Shoulders rounding forward, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. “Look around you. I can’t give you a place to live.” His gaze bounced off the rafters overhead. “Not even an empty longhouse.”

“Do you think that matters to me?”

“Winter’s coming,” he said, every inch a hard Viking. “It will matter when the best shelter I provide matches what we had on the island.”

“I don’t understand, your shipbuilding on Gotland, won’t that be enough?”

Fingertips digging into his arms, Brandr stared past the open door, and a new higher wall wedged itself around him.

A raven landed on the cauldron shard resting on ashes.

The quiet unnerved her more than the clamor of a raid.

No matter what Brandr’s answer was, she’d lost the man she loved before he was even hers to claim.

“There is a… requirement .”

She swallowed the dryness in her throat. “You mean a woman.”

The skin tightened around his eyes. “Yes.”

“Is this what you want?”

Brandr turned, his silver eyes pinning her. “No. I want you.”

Her knees buckled but she caught herself, setting a hand over her belly. Why did he have to say beautiful words on one hand and ugly words on the other? He was gutting her one simple statement at a time. Brandr was never fluid with words, but she deserved more than this.

“I don’t understand,” she said raising an imploring hand. “Please explain yourself better.”

“It’s simple. I have no land. No means to take care of you save my sword. I’d sell it but where would we be if I had no weapon to defend you?”

“We would make do.”

“With battles rising like the tides these days? Not a chance,” he scoffed. “Until the question of who sits on the throne is settled, more trouble such as what we faced on the island will come.”

“But—”

“In the best of times a man should never be without his weapons,” he snapped.

Her breath raced. “You’d rather have security and be with the wrong woman than be with me?”

He leaned a shoulder against the shutter, his eyes a touch mocking. “Didn’t you tell Ella it’s better to have security with a wealthy master than forge a life on your own?”

“You heard me?”

“I’ve heard a good many things you’ve said.”

“That’s not fair!” But, it was true. She’d said that and spouted similar words all summer long.

“Is it unfair because you’re a woman? Because you were born a slave? What makes life fair for the likes of us?”

Chin dipping, she wrapped both arms around her waist. Scalding tears stung her eyes, threatening to spill. “I’m not that woman anymore. Because of you.”

“No. Because of you.”

She raised her head to meet sharp, all-seeing eyes. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. Brandr knew what it was to claw his way back from dark, degraded places. He was on his way to making a better place for himself when this thing between them happened.

“You changed, became stronger, became a woman of courage all on your own,” he went on. “ You did that, Sestra. No one can lay claim to your bravery, your will…those were gifts you gave yourself.”

She leaned a shoulder on the shutter facing him, and her head slumped against solid wood.

Wind riffled through long grass where sheep once roamed.

She’d visited Lord Hakan’s farm when it thrived this past summer, and in the blink of an eye, lives were changed.

These troubled times stole the farm of a worthy chieftain yet offered her a way out of lifelong enslavement. Nothing here was fair.

Freedom tasted bland in her mouth if she couldn’t be with Brandr.

She stared at the lonely fields outside, hot, churning bile roiling in her stomach. “Tell me about her.”

“Sestra,” he chided.

“Do you love her?”

Her eyes bored into him. Primal emotions pushed her. No matter how painful, she wanted details. She’d gambled on hope and lost again. This was what happens when she spoke her deepest wishes aloud.

“No.” His mouth clamped a hard line as if refusing to give more, but her furious glare must’ve prodded the stubborn warrior.

Sighing, he explained, “Last spring, Hakan bid me to stay at his ringed fort near Paviken, on Gotland. He was taking his last voyage before settling in to farm here.”

“The voyage that brought me to Uppsala.”

“Yes,” he said, eyeing the fields. “If I’d been with him, all would be different, wouldn’t it?”

“It’s like a test.”

The small line slanted hard between his brows. “One I’ve failed.”

“You’ve wanted to build ships like Egil for a long time, haven’t you?” she asked quietly.

“Yes. Thought about it every day when I trudged through ibn Dawla’s fight yard.”

“What happened last spring?”

“I ran into Grete, Egil’s widow in Paviken. She was overjoyed to see me.”

Her body jerked off the shutter. “She doesn’t expect you to serve her as slave again? Not after all you’ve been through?”

“No. She welcomed me to her home. Treated me like a son. I shared what had happened in the years since I last saw her. We both shed tears of sadness over Egil, but she’d long since remarried. To another shipbuilder.”

Sestra stared past the open shutters at the fields, folding her arms on the bottom frame. Brandr’s feet shifted the subtle sound loud in the cavernous longhouse. In her side vision, he stood beside her, his hand gripping the wooden frame near her elbow.

“Grete’s husband is long in years but he has a daughter—”

“Of course he does.” She rolled her eyes, and Brandr waited.

A gentle breeze blew wisps of hair across her face, and she saw green fields through a haze of red. If survival was a need, love was pure want. His tale of wants and needs poured salt on a new wound; one she suspected would never fully heal.

“He asked if I’d consider marrying her,” he finished.