Page 134 of The Outlaw Viking

Was she halfwitted? Did she truly expect him to welcome her back into his loving arms as if naught had transpired?

He stepped aside as she reached for him, moving back into the room. She followed and saw Blanche’s naked form in his bed for the first time.

She gasped and clamped a hand over her mouth in horror, staring up at him through wounded, accusing eyes.

How dare she accuse him? Even if he had not actually touched a hair on Blanche’s winsome flesh, how bloody dare she reproach him?

Blanche sat up and shot a contemptuous, triumphant look at Rain. She let the bed linens fall down to her waist, exposing her full breasts proudly. “Send the bitch away,” the slut cajoled. “Come back to bed, sweetling.”

“Shut up.”

Blanche whimpered at his harsh words, and Rain looked up at him hopefully.

“What do you want?” he demanded of Rain, pulling on a pair of braies.

“You,” she said in a low voice, darting a look at Blanche, then back to him in question. “You.”

“Never.”

“Why?”

“How can you ask? I would never take Steven’s leavings, and I understand that is just what you are. The servants say he left several days ago, no doubt anticipating my release. Did your lover refuse to take you with him?”

“He was never ray lover. Never,” Rain said vehemently.

For the first time in days, Selik felt hope rise like water within his parched soul. He put his hands on both her arras, noting how she winced. Did his touch repulse her now? “What do you mean? Are you saying you were not with Gravely willingly?”

Rain hesitated and her eyes pleaded with him oddly. Selik felt all his hopes die.

“Get out,” he demanded, turning away from her.

“Selik, it wasn’t the way you think,” she pleaded, moaning as if he had kicked her in the stomach.

“How was it?” he snapped, turning on her with barely controlled rage. At that moment, he could have strangled her with no regrets for all the soul-searing pain she had caused him.

Her shoulders slumped and tears slipped from her eyes. She would not answer, and that was all the answer he needed.

“I love you, Selik,” she finally said.

“I hate you. I never want to see you again,” he declared icily, digging his fingernails into his palms. “Never.”

“Can’t you just trust me, Selik?” she begged. “Can’t you remember our love, and just trust?”

Her soft sobs tore at his breaking heart, but he could not surrender to her traitorous kind of love. With determination, he walked to the bed and slipped under the linens with Blanche, turning his face away from Rain. For a very long time, he heard Rain standing near the door, crying raggedly.

When the door finally opened and closed with a dull thud, he shoved Blanche away from him with distaste and ordered her to leave his chamber. Whining and then cursing, she left the room with a slam of the door. Selik sat up in bed then, putting both hands to his face.

And he cried for all he had lost.

Chapter Twenty-one

Two days later, Selik awakened from a drunken stupor and knew he could not go on without Rain. It did not matter if she had been with Steven of Gravely, or Lucifer himself. He loved her and could not live without her by his side.

Trust in her.

“God, if love of Rain does not kill me, You will with this bloody, infernal, never-ending badgering,” Selik muttered as he walked carefully, liked an aged cripple, to the doorway and yelled to a passing servant for bathwater. His own voice seemed to rattle inside his head, and he put both hands to his ears to hold in his loose brains.

Loose brains is right, my boy. Did I not tell you to trust in love, and what did you do? Reject the best thing in life I ever gave you, that’s what. And by the way, I do not care for your mentioning Lucifer in My presence.