“Do you really think that people want to hear about the days and weeks and months that we spent camping out in the wilderness, trying to evade detection? Do you think they want to know that I lived as a farmhand? What kind of confidence will that instill in them?”
“Plenty. You are truly a man of the people. You fought for them. You have lived for them so strongly up until this point. And I think that you should talk about it. This is what you have me for. Whether you realize it or not. It isn’t just about royal protocol. You need somebody to make you human.”
“I don’t want to be human. Humans are weak. They are weak and they are susceptible to cold, to fear and to hunger. Exhaustion and hopelessness. A symbol cannot experience any of those things. I would rather that they saw me as a warrior.”
“Does it have less to do with how people want to see you and more to do with what you want? Because you don’t want to feel those things anymore?”
“If you think that you can trick me into some sort of sharing moment, you will find yourself disappointed.”
“If you don’t want to share with me, then you don’t have to.”
“You sound like a kindergarten teacher.”
“You’re acting a little bit like a kindergartner.”
Her gaze went steely. There was something about that challenge that ignited a flame inside of Ragnar. What he wanted to do was close the distance between them and push her up against the bookcase. He wanted to bring his mouth down on hers. She was being insolent. A brat.
One thing he could not recall was the last time a woman—anyone—had challenged him. Not outside of a life-or-death situation, at least. And so it created this bonfire of adrenalineinside of him that left him breathless and trembling with the intensity of it, yet also gave him no immediate relief.
Because what he truly wanted, he could not have.
“I will go to your ball. And I will dance with you,” he said, moving toward her, his heart raging now. He felt dangerously close to being out of control, and that was not something he had experienced in a very long time. He didn’t like how raw it made him feel. How precarious. How much it reminded him of…
Of something he didn’t want to know about.
“But I will not be manipulated into sharing. I will not be manipulated—”
“And why are you so convinced that I am manipulative? What is it that makes you think I’m trying to trick you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Except that I have watched you. I have watched you play your father, and I am not convinced that you aren’t playing me.”
“And what makes you feel that you would be vulnerable to that?”
He growled and moved toward her, trapping her between his arms, pressed against the bookcase. He glared down at her. “I told you. I’m not sharing my feelings.”
She smelled like the field that he had found her in. Like spring, fresh and new. Like the kind of tender hope he himself could not recall ever experiencing. She was devastating to him, and it made him want to beat his chest. It made him want to start a war.
It made him…
She reached up and touched his face, and he drew back. It broke the spell.
“Do not,” he said.
“Ragnar,” she said, her voice steady. “What are you afraid of?”
He laughed. “I’m not afraid of anything. Are you? But perhaps you should be.”
“I’m not impressed by dark muttering. I’m not impressed by the way that you deflect constantly. You’ve turned it back around to me, when we were talking about you.”
“I did not choose to talk about me. You did.”
“Maybe I’m not thinking clearly. But it seems to me that there is something,” she said gently, slowly. He didn’t like it.
“There is nothing,” he said.
And he felt like he needed to claim control of the situation. Felt like he had no choice. “The only thing it’s bringing up, is this.”
And then he closed the distance between them, and claimed her mouth with his.
