Feeling it was control of a kind. It was a type of power.
As if a door inside of herself had been opened up for the first time, as if she could suddenly feel everything. And it wasn’t all contained inside of her. Wasn’t a private, secret thing that she could never share with another person. She wanted to share it with him. To make him feel what she did.
Which was maybe a bit of a lofty goal for a woman who had until recently never kissed a man.
But she was hungry. Maybe some people would think that this was Stockholm syndrome. But she didn’t think that she was very susceptible.
If so, she might have had different feelings about her father. She certainly didn’t.
Time had never made her look more fondly upon him regarding the things he was trying to manipulate her into.
It had never made her warm to the idea of marrying a stranger.
Ragnar was different. Yes, he had taken her captive, but when she said what she wanted he listened. He might initially be dismissive. He didn’t know how to deal with people.
He might sometimes be insulting, but he didn’t have any friends.
It had nothing to do with respect for her, and she actually believed that now. Now that she had gotten to know him just a little bit better.
Now that you’ve seen him in his underwear and you’ve decided that he’s so hot you don’t want to keep your hands to yourself anymore?
Even if that was the case, she wasn’t going to question it. It was an experience that she was hungry for.
She wanted to indulge her appetites. The way that she had seen him indulge himself with those hors d’oeuvres that she had prepared for the party tonight.
Neither of them had had very many nice things in their lives.
Even when he spoke about his past lovers he didn’t make it sound fun. He made it sound ruthlessly efficient, like everything else he did. As matter-of-fact as eating a bowl of stew, which was not the way that she wanted to imagine sex.
Maybe she would find that she was the one who was wrong about the whole thing.
Maybe.
But her entire life had been marked by being both sheltered and unprotected. Sheltered from anything that she might want, from the kinds of normal mistakes and experiences that other people were able to have. While also being set up to marry a man who wouldn’t treat her well. A man she didn’t want.
Any protection that she had received had been about what her father wanted, and not actually about her.
So if she made a mistake now, if she slept with Ragnar, and got hurt, if it made things difficult when it was time for her to leave, that was a consequence that she was willing to accept. Because it was her consequence. Because it was her right to make those mistakes.
He wasn’t pressuring her. It was her decision.
She felt his presence when he entered the room, and she turned sharply, just as he stepped fully through the doorway of the antechamber to the ballroom. That black suit that he had tried on the other day now fit his muscular body to perfection.
That broad chest, narrow waist and the thoroughly muscular thighs were still visible, his appearance only just on the correct side of civilized.
His blond hair was slicked back off of his forehead, shaved tightly at the sides. His beard expertly trimmed. His blue eyes were as arresting as they had been the first time she’d seen him. And it was interesting to feel the subtle shift in her response to him. Now when her heartbeat picked up it wasn’t fight-or-flight.
It was desire.
She recognized that. Purely. Absolutely.
His eyes skimmed over her curves, and she felt that look like a brand. He was difficult to read. Nearly emotionless. But the heat in his blue gaze didn’t lie. The intensity. Especially now that she recognized the difference inside of her, she could see it in his gaze.
It wasn’t simply the triumph of a conqueror closing in on his conquest. It was desire. Just like her own. A mirror into the deepest parts of herself, all fathomless blue.
“You know the goddess Freya?”
She shook her head.
