Erik’s hand was on the door frame, but he paused, glancing back at her. She stood there in his shirt, looking small and fierce and utterly out of place in his rough cabin. Water still dripped from her hair onto the dark wood floor. Her bare feet looked impossibly delicate against the scarred planks.
And despite everything—despite the hatred in her eyes, despite the ghost of her brother standing between them, despite the fact that this marriage was a political chain around both their necks—he felt something shift in his chest.
This is goin’ tae be a disaster.
“Ye should rest,” he said, his voice rougher than intended. “We’ll be at harbor soon, and then ye’ll see yer new home.”
“Me prison, ye mean.”
“Call it what ye like.” He held her gaze for one more moment, memorizing the defiant tilt of her chin, the storm in her eyes. “But make nay mistake, lass. Once we reach Skye, ye’ll be under me protection. And I protect what’s mine.”
“I’m nae yers.”
“Nae yet.” The words came out before he could stop them, carrying a weight he hadn’t intended. “But ye will be. In two days, before God and the crown, ye’ll speak vows that bind ye tae me. And when ye dae…” He paused, something fierce and possessive rising in his chest. “When ye dae, there’ll be nae power in Scotland or beyond that can take ye from me.”
Then he was gone, climbing back up to the deck and leaving her alone in his cabin, wrapped in his shirt, with the taste of the sea still bitter on her tongue and the memory of his breath in her lungs.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Me jarl, we’ll make landfall within the hour.”
Erik turned from where he’d been watching the gray smudge of Skye grow solid against the horizon. Aksel stood at his shoulder, steady as the stones that made up their castle walls, his face betraying nothing of the chaos they’d just survived.
“The lass?” Erik asked, keeping his voice low enough that only Aksel could hear.
“Still below. Hasnae moved since ye left her.” Aksel’s pale eyes flickered with something that might have been amusement. “Though I heard her retchin’ intae the basin a few moments past.”
Erik’s jaw tightened. He’d left her alone in his cabin, wrapped in his shirt like a half-drowned sprite, looking furious and frightened in equal measure. The memory of her bare legs, theway the linen had clung to curves he had no business noticing, the defiant tilt of her chin even as she’d trembled from cold and shock…
Nae. Dinnae go there.
“Send someone tae check on her,” he said, his voice rougher than intended. “Make sure she’s...presentable.”
“Presentable.” Aksel’s mouth twitched. “Fer the men?”
“Aye.”
“Or fer ye?”
Erik’s silence stretched long enough that the men at the far end of the deck suddenly found their knots fascinating.
Aksel merely raised one eyebrow, unimpressed. “Go on then. Glower at me. We both ken ye’ll answer the question eventually.”
“Just dae it, will ye,” Erik muttered, turning back to the approaching isle.
Skye had been his burden since he was fifteen years old, since the night Highlanders had come in the dark and taken everything. His parents. His aunt. His childhood. Left him with nothing but a sobbin’ five-year-old cousin, a burning need forvengeance, and the bitter understanding that mercy was a luxury neither Norsemen nor Scots could afford.
He’d made Skye strong through blood and steel. Through raids that kept their coffers full and their enemies wary. Through a reputation that preceded him like winter storms—brutal, unforgiving, and impossible to ignore.
The Wolf of Skye.
And now he was bringing home a Highland bride. A woman whose brother he’d killed in battle. A woman who looked at him like he was the monster in every story her clan had told around their fires.
“Me jarl.” One of his men—Bjorn, young and too eager—approached with the caution of a man walking on ice. “The lady requests… that is, she wishes tae ken if…”
“Spit it out, lad.”
“She wants her clothes back, me jarl. Says she willnae come above deck in naught but yer shirt.”
