Page 22 of The Outlaw Viking

He had plaited his long hair into a single braid which hung down his back, like her own darker blond one. He held a conical leather helmet in his hands and shifted impatiently from foot to foot as Ubbi led the saddled Fury toward him.

He was everything violent and dark that the logical, pacifist side of her brain hated in a man. And he was everything sinfully seductive and soulfully magnetic that the hormone-humming, completely illogical side of her brain yearned to have, if only for this interlude in time.

Without thinking, she leaned toward him, yearning to touch his sun-warmed skin, until she noticed the edges of his lips turned up in a knowing grin. She jerked back abruptly.

“Have you changed your mind so soon? Do you now want to…make sex?”

“No, I do not.” In a New York minute, sweetheart.

“Really? You were looking at me like a winter-starved cat suddenly given a bowl of cream.”

“You overestimate yourself.” Lapping? Now that presents some interesting possibilities.

“Mayhap we can discuss this later when I—”

His words were cut off as a handful of his men rode up on horseback and waited for his orders.

“Take care of Tykir and the other injured men whilst I am gone.” The silky seduction had disappeared from his voice, replaced with cold command.

She agreed, glancing toward the only “hospital” tent remaining. Then Selik’s words sank in, and her eyes shot anxiously back to him. “You’re leaving us?”

He nodded. “We must needs hide the mountain trail better. And bring back food if we can find a living animal unwise enough to still linger near this camp. Otherwise, we will all shrink to skin and bones from hunger.”

His cool eyes swept her body, as if judging her skin and bones, weighing her critically from head to toe and back again, with exaggerated emphasis on her size.

She thought she saw a flicker of appreciation in his eyes, and she blushed. Good Lord! Thirty years old and he has me as flustered as a fifteen-year-old virgin.

“Be here when I come back,” he ordered in a low, husky voice.

“And where would I go?” she snapped testily, as annoyed with herself as with him for rising so quickly to his seductive bait. “You will come back, won’t you?”

“Are you missing me already, wench?”

Save him, a voice inside her said once again.

Rain couldn’t say for sure if it was her own inner voice speaking or some supernatural being. But she didn’t like it.

“Why did you jump?” Selik asked softly as he stepped closer, so close she could smell the leather of his armored vest and his own distinctive masculine scent. His warm breath caressed her face as he leaned even closer and whispered, “Could it be I make you nervous?”

“No. I think God just talked to me,” she whispered in awe, “and it surprised me.”

“I heard naught.” His eyes shot upward to the sky before lowering to regard her skeptically. “Does God talk to you often?”

She shook her head. “No, he never did until I came here to…”

“…to save me,” he finished for her, shaking his head ruefully. An almost imperceptible flicker of hope sparked in his eyes, then died. “Why do you persist in this foolish story of yours? I no longer believe in God, and He certainly holds me in disfavor.”

“You’re a Christian?” she asked in surprise.

“Nay. Oh, I was at one time. Leastways, Archbishop Hrothweard baptized me in the Roman church in Jorvik, like many Norsemen who practice Christianity with one hand and the old religions with the other. But I believe in naught anymore, not even myself. In fact, I am a nithing.”

“A nithing?” Rain shuddered at the utter self-contempt in his flat voice.

Selik shrugged. “A most offensive person. ’Tis the supreme insult for any man, Viking or Saxon. A person beyond redemption.”

Rain shook her head forcefully. “Now that is where you are wrong, Selik. I’m not exactly certain why God sent me here, but I do know one thing for sure. God believes you are redeemable.”

For just a second, Rain saw hope flash in his silvery eyes, but the light died out almost immediately to its usual dull gray bleakness. And Rain knew she had her work cut out for her.