Lord of Rage & Primal Instincts (12 page)

Osborn had given her that comfort. Wiped her tears. Breena knew that now. He’d soothed the ache in her heart. If only for a few moments.

Avenge.

Only she could not be truly consoled. Not until the need planted in her consciousness had been relieved.

For the first time, Breena felt uncertain around him. Not sure how to act or where to look. Something in their uneasy relationship had changed in the night while she slept. She twisted her hands, then quickly thrust them behind her back.

“I’ve been to the village,” he told her.

“I can see that,” she replied, eyeing the packages.

His eyes narrowed, and his gaze scanned her face, brushed over her every feature. He rubbed his hand along the back of his neck, a gesture she’d seen often enough now to know something heavy weighed upon him.

“I think I found a place where you can go,” he finally told her, his gaze dropping.

“Go?”

“There’s a woman in the village. She fell last winter and has trouble taking care of her home now. You’d have the entire second floor to yourself, and a little spending money.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You can’t continue to stay here, Breena,” he told her with a shrug. “It’s not right. Not a woman with three men.”

Breena made a scoffing sound in the back of her throat. “Are you actually going to talk to me about appearances? Propriety?”

He tugged loose the rope that held his hair in place, freeing the strands. There was her Osborn. Wild and untamed. “I’m trying to do what’s right for you.”

She marched toward him. Breena wasn’t about to let him get away with making decisions for her. “By sending me away? We had a deal.”

Breena watched him swallow. Then his gaze turned to hers. “You cried last night, Breena. You cried in my arms.” His voice sounded raspy and strained.

A lump formed in her throat. The warrior who’d tried not to care about her worried for her. A lot.

“This isn’t good for you. You’re not meant for this life.”

And she was not meant for him, he was saying.

“I don’t want to see you grow cynical and so consumed with vengeance nothing will ever be right for you again.”

“I’m consumed with vengeance now.”

“And it will eat away at you until there’s nothing left but hate. I don’t want you to end up like…me.”

Breena shook her head. “I can’t turn it off. My parents are dead. I saw them die. There was so much blood.” She covered her face with her hands. “I didn’t even get to bury their bodies. Something calls out to me. I can’t let it go.”

“How do you know this? Your memory—”

“My memory came back,” she interrupted.

S
HE MET HIS GAZE
,
AND WHAT
he saw in those green depths made him pause. Made his breath hold and his chest constrict.

“Last night I put myself in a dreamhaze. I went back to the night my parents…” She swallowed. “I went back to the night my parents died. I saw the blood. Their blood. The wounds to their bodies.”

Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes filled with tears he knew she fought not to shed. “So you see, I do know the pain of losing something. Someone.”

He understood that pain.
Lived
it.

“I know that I can’t do anything with my life until I somehow fix this. Vindicate the memory of my family. Keep helping me, Osborn. Please,” she urged.

Osborn had left the village with plans and so much anticipation. He wanted Breena to follow a different path than the one he’d followed all his life. He was tired. Tired of his own pain and regret and thirst for a revenge he’d had to put off to raise his brothers. The weariness seeped down to his bones, and the little emotion he had left inside ached.

He didn’t want Breena to feel this way. To carry the burden of avenging the dead alone. To live what he lived.

He rubbed his hand at the throbbing muscles bunched at the base of his neck. He didn’t understand until this moment how much like him she actually was. She’d always burn with her need to make right what had happened to her family, because he always burned. “I’ll help you.”

Breena squeezed her eyes tight and her shoulders slumped with relief. “Thank you.”

He doubted she’d be thanking him for long.

T
HE REST OF THE AFTERNOON
they spent in training, and Breena didn’t utter one complaint about pains or aches or stiffening muscles. She had survived. She’d convinced Osborn to continue helping her and she was grateful. Her magic had drawn her to the man who’d teach her how to fight who or what had killed her parents.

She’d have to dream her past again. Her body began to shake at the idea of revisiting that night of death, but it was the only way she could find the truth. Would Osborn hold her again tonight?

That evening the boys showed her how they prepared dinner while Osborn closed himself away in the storeroom off the side of the tiny kitchen.

“I can’t believe we’re having to show a girl how to make us dinner,” Bernt grumbled, but it was all in good-natured fun.

“Yes, I thought you would
want
to cook for us,” Torben added, and they all laughed.

“I’ll just show you how to dance in exchange.”

Two matching horrified expressions crossed their faces.

Osborn opened the door of the storeroom, and stuck his head out. A faint smile crossed his features when he saw her. “Breena, come here.”

There it was. An order for her to move toward him. She’d almost begun to miss them. Almost. But she was too curious about what exactly Osborn had been doing in that tiny space. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and moved toward where Osborn waited.

“I, uh…” he began, and stopped.

Was Osborn nervous? Breena hid a smile and angled her head inside the place Osborn had kept himself so busy. The store area was small to be sure; four of these
rooms would fit inside her bedchamber at Elden. The walls stretched bare and there was nothing on the floor except a tiny blue rug, the color of the blue flowers that grew around the cottage. Not the kind a man would choose for himself, but exactly what a man would buy for a woman. Now she knew what had been inside one of those mysterious packages.

“Nothing much will fit in here but a mattress, but it will be private and all yours, Breena. If you want it.”

Osborn’s voice was solemn, and she knew he offered her more than just a tiny space inside his cottage. He was offering a place in his life. She nodded her head. “I do want it.”

“I have something else for you.” There was that smile again. Who knew her
berserker
warrior was such a gift giver? He came back carrying a small package. She hadn’t noticed this one earlier today. She untied the twine and the rough cloth fell away to reveal two glass bottles containing mysterious liquids.

“It’s shampoo and soap,” he told her.

Breena would have expected cleaning oil for her sword or a new knife, not something so distinctly feminine. She quickly popped off the cork, and inhaled the delicious scent of vanilla and alluring spices.

“Thought you might tire of smelling like a man.”

She replaced the cork, and hugged his gifts tight to her chest. “I can’t wait to use these. Tonight.”

Heat and hunger for her sharpened the features of his face. She lifted up on the tips of her toes, and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” And there was a promise in his voice that made her stomach quiver.

After dinner, she raced to the small clear spring not too far from the cabin. It wasn’t the lake, but it was cer
tainly private. A fact she’d announced to all the
berserker
men earlier. The spring was hers.

She grabbed the washbasin and filled it with the clean spring water warmed by the sun and wet her hair. At home, she’d always used the floral soaps and scents her mother preferred, but what Osborn had chosen suited her infinitely better. She popped the lid and breathed in deeply of the scent he’d purchased for her. The soft sweet smell of the vanilla combined with the zest of faraway places. This was what Osborn liked, and she poured a small amount in her hand, and cleaned her hair. Did he view her as sweet with a touch of spice?

She ran the soap over her breasts, and the tips puckered. Her nipples did the same when Osborn kissed and licked her there. Breena ran the soap over her skin the way he caressed her breasts. She slipped a soapy finger between her thighs, touched where Osborn had kissed with his lips. Licked with his tongue. She gasped as she imagined him doing that again. Of her licking and kissing him.

Breena wanted that again. And more. He’d barred her from his dreams. Would he still?

O
SBORN HADN’T MEANT
to spy on her bath. He’d only needed to grab more firewood, but then he heard Breena’s gasp. The
berserker
in him roused, and he raced to ensure her safety. But Breena’s cry wasn’t that of a woman frightened, but of her deep arousal.

How much agony did one man have to endure? He leaned against the trunk of a tree, forcing his body to relax. Minutes passed, and she rounded the corner, stopping when she spotted him. Her cheeks were flushed, her bottom lip fuller. A fine sheen of water filmed her
skin, and she wore only a towel held together loosely over her breasts.

Her face reddened further, and he knew. Knew that when she’d gasped earlier, she’d been caressing herself and thinking of him.

He had an answer to his earlier question. Apparently a man had to endure a lot of agony.

“Osborn, the soap you bought for me was…wonderful.”

Her voice was husky, like a woman not yet fulfilled. He imagined her sighing to him in those low tones as he drove into her.

She’s not yours.

Breena was loved and protected for another, certainly never a man like him. He was once destined to be something better than he was, an Ursan warrior. With all the honor and distinction that rank held. All he could offer her now was a legacy of shame and a life filled with the need for vengeance

Breena’s own steps were aimed squarely at that same path. He’d tried to dissuade her earlier.

Try harder.

But how could he when she was reaching out to him? Lifting her shoulder right under his nose? “It smells different on my skin than it does in the bottle.”

The scent of the soaps he’d bought smelled good, but Breena the woman smelled better. He was so close. Too close. He could nip at her shoulder. Run his tongue along that tantalizing curve of her back.

“I have a favor to ask.”

Gods, anything…if he could just keep breathing in her scent. Prolong the torture by imaging how he could curve his hand around her hip, drawing her backward to cup his erection.

She took a deep breath. “I have to go back to dream of my past, to the night of the siege.”

He shook his head, and she gripped his biceps. Hard.

“There’s still more to learn about that night. I couldn’t continue after, well, you know how you found me.”

Crying in her sleep.

“When I put myself in a dream, I always envision a door and then I walk right through it in my mind. There’s only ever been your door in my mind.

A possessive satisfaction settled into his chest.

“But last night there were two doors. My past and, next to it, yours.” Osborn stiffened.

“They have to be side by side for a reason. I think it’s because when I go through your door to be with you…nothing frightens me.”

“It should.
I
should frighten you.” What he wanted to do to her body, what he wanted from her, that should all frighten her.

“But it doesn’t.” She ran her fingers along his jaw. “You would never hurt me. I’ve known that for a while.”

He didn’t know it. In fact, she could almost count on him hurting her. It was inevitable. His past. His decisions.
Those
would hurt her. When his brothers were ready, he’d leave this cottage and seek those who killed his family. His plans were not those of a man who would make life easy for a woman. He gripped her fingers to still her touch.

“Remember how we are together in my dreams?” she asked, refusing to let him push her hand away. “How perfect?”

He could make love to her in that fantasy world she created as they slept. His cock hardened at the thought. Yes. He could caress every part of her body. Brand her
with his touch. Drive into her as his body demanded. And he could hold her.

Yet no matter how amazing their coupling would be in the dream, Osborn knew he would wonder and crave the real thing until he was mad.

“Those dreams were lies,” he told her, his teeth clenched.

“Aren’t you even curious?”

Hell, yes, he was curious. Curious if she’d meet his gaze when he joined his body with hers. Ached to learn the feel of her softness as she welcomed him into her. Dying to know—

“Lies,” he said again. Just to stay sane.

Her hand dropped and her expression turned sad. “If it makes you feel any better, sometimes those lies I shared with you were the only thing I really looked forward to.” Breena turned on her heel and walked away from him

The blood pounded in his head. Those dreams were the only thing that brought anything even approaching happiness into his life. Until he found her sleeping in his bed.

All she wanted was to dream with him.
Be
with him in a dream. How could he refuse?

He reached for her shoulder, his fingers curving into her skin. “I’ll do it.”

B
ERNT HAD GIVEN UP HIS
bed for Breena. He and Osborn would begin building a new frame for him the next day. It was a tight fit in the storeroom, but after some shifting and one banged-in corner, the bed finally sat in the storeroom for Breena’s use.

She kissed both their cheeks. “Thank you so much,” she told them, her voice as happy as if Osborn had be
stowed on her the rarest of jewels. Somewhere out in one of the realms there was a man who would be giving Breena gifts with gems and gowns and all the things women liked.

But she was his for now.

Breena quickly dressed the bed in warm blankets and pelts. They wouldn’t be sleeping before the fire, and she’d need more coverings to keep warm. There also wasn’t nearly the kind of room for the two of them on Bernt’s old bed. Breena lifted the blankets and crawled to the edge of the bed, which was pushed up against the wall.