Mathis, Jolie (5 page)

But... Isabel cautioned herself. If the memory of his attack upon her remained so distant from his mind, or so commonplace as to be unworthy of recall, perhaps Godric could somehow be protected. Perhaps the Dane would never even suspect the boy was his son and she could—

The moment of distraction nearly cost her everything. Thorleksson pounced. Isabel reacted, swung. Along the length of her arms she felt the snag. Contact!

The chamber quaked with—

"Fiskislor fyrir heila!"
Fish guts for brains? Surely the most vile of Norse curses. Isabel shrank back against the cabinet, so hard it rocked on its corners. Against her breast she clutched her now highly esteemed, mightily worthy weapon.

A streak of blood surfaced upon his cheek. The Norseman lifted a hand, and touched the wound. He stared at his fingertips. His gaze shifted to her.

In a voice flinty with wrath he growled, "Are you so appalled to see me bleed?"

Isabel snapped her mouth shut.

Apparently unafraid of another injurious blow from her most exalted death-stick, he again advanced.

A cruel smile bent his lips. "Didst thou expect green bile to spill from my veins? Or perchance vaporous poison?"

"Barbarian!"

"Barbarian?" His face grew tight. He jabbed one long, accusing finger between her breasts. A flush arose to her cheeks. " 'Tis
you
who swing a club in
my
face as I attempt to converse with you with the utmost diplomacy."

She swung. His arm a blur of movement, he caught the stick in one hand. Their gazes met, as solid a bridge between them as the branch to which they both held fast.

"I am a man, Isabel. No monster."

One hard tug undermined her balance. Isabel fell forward against the hard wall of his body. His arm closed as tightly as a shield-rim at her waist. Unbidden heat raced up her legs, shot through her arms and blazed along her fingertips. With one hand beneath her chin he forced her gaze up. Eyes brim-full of savage emotion stared down at her.

"I am a man" he murmured. "Flesh and blood."

His head dipped. Isabel recoiled with a gasp.

He stared into her eyes, fiercely intent. She did not understand. Had never expected—

Panic hummed in her ears. She stared into his eyes, too transfixed to struggle, too breathless to scream.

Thorleksson's expression grew hard. His hand snaked up the back of her neck, into her hair. His mouth fell upon hers.

All around, the world imploded into darkness, Isabel aware only of the predatory insistence of his lips, the faint tang of salt as he bit her bottom lip. In the distance, waves crashed upon Calldarington's shores, then rolled softly into the sea. The sound merged with, became lost in the sound of their mingled breath, the crush of his leather against her gunna. She shoved against his shoulders, but he did not release her. His body, rigid against her, radiated all things masculine and powerful.

For one absurd moment, she yearned to wrap herself around him, to breathe his very strength into her lungs.

Innocent. He is innocent. Angel.

His tongue parted her lips, boldly intimate, boldly possessive.

He could not be innocent.

"Beast!" Isabel wrenched away. In that same moment she silenced the voice of the unsuspecting girl-Isabel whom she no longer granted audience.

Kol cursed, and pressed a hand to his mouth. Only when she saw the blood trickle from beneath did she realize she'd bitten him.

"Ply me not with the kisses of a swain." With the back of her hand she wiped her mouth, as if pestilence danced across her lips. "If you seek to attack, then do it like the beast you are."

His arm shot out. She attempted an escape, but he captured her by the nape.
"At... your... invitation."

Slowly he lifted her, until her face hovered in front of his. Her toes dangled above the floor.

He scowled. "Wiggle wiggle, little bug."

"Oh!" Isabel gasped, her entire body gone numb with shock. The beast could read. 'Twas the verse she'd written upon the tablet for Godric. To hear him speak the words, so foolish, yet drawn straight and earnestly from her heart, was a trespass she could not abide.

He growled the next line. "How you seem to like the mud."

"Shut your mouth!" Like a cat held by its ruff, Isabel swung her claws. "The words—are not—for you to say."

The room spun about and all at once she felt the softness of the bed beneath her back. She felt his hands, his weight as he climbed atop to straddle her belly. To think, for even a moment, she had thought him innocent.

She thrashed. "How easy it was to draw forth your true nature."

"True nature?" Flushed, he glared down at her. "I have done nothing but defend myself against your vicious attacks and spoken affronts." He intercepted the vengeful talon of her hand. "I believe 'tis you, fair Princess, who hath proven to be the barbarian."

Isabel wrenched her arm free.

"Devil." She shoved her palm against his lips, but he wrenched his face aside. She snatched a handful of his hair and yanked. Reprisal came instantly. He wrapped a fist in her hair and, with steady tension, pulled upward until she lay taut beneath him.

A knock sounded at the door.

Rasping for breath, Isabel felt the rise and fall of his chest against her breast, as erratic as her own.

"Enter," he commanded, his teeth set in a white line. She tightened her grip on his hair and felt an immediate, retaliatory tug.

Vekell entered, carrying a bucket and a neatly folded bundle of cloth.

"As you requested, my lord. Warm water and linen—" The man halted midstep. His eyes grew large, seeing them thus entangled. "Ahem." In apparent reverence, he diverted his gaze.

Isabel looked upward and saw what the warrior must have seen: Kol's hair strewn in dark disarray. Blood streaked his cheek and lip.

Despite the danger of her position, a smile found its way to her lips. To have humiliated him so, and before one of his officers. Even if he killed her now, she would die tolerably content.

"Put it down, then go," Kol ordered with a sharp tilt of his head.

Above her he felt hot and heavy and excruciatingly vital. She could
feel
the blood course beneath his skin where she gripped his forearms.

"You are certain you require no assistance?" Vekell queried. He slid a hand over his mouth to conceal what she felt sure was a smile.

"Leave us," the man above her growled.

The warrior did as his lord bid him to do. Without another word or glance, he departed, securing the door behind him. Wood snapped on the hearth. Shadows frolicked on the walls.

"Dare you smile!" In one rapid movement, he arced his arm upward and pried her grip from his hair.

"Get off!" Isabel bent her knees and kicked, however obliquely, at his leather-bound calves. Her torn sleeve twisted around her arm, damp and tight. He sank to a position between her thighs. Too easily he subdued her flailing limbs and drew her hands above her head until they met, pinned beneath one of his own. Stretched like a miscreant upon a torture-room rack, Isabel could only stare at the ceiling, her mind wildly searching for the means to escape. Against her thighs, her stomach, she felt his heat, the rigid flex of his muscles.

"Know that you have forced my hand," he muttered. A metallic hiss signaled the entrance of another contender into their melee.

"Nay!" Her heart did its best to tear its way from her breast. The Dane lifted a long knife. Isabel's throat constricted. The blade glinted in the light.

"Animal," she choked. "God will curse you for your sins."

For a moment he stilled. Then, rotating the knife, he brushed his knuckles over her cheek. "I'm afraid someone else already tended to that matter."

Deftly he inserted the blade into the neck of her tunic. Isabel turned her cheek against the bed as cool metal whispered against her naked skin. Despite her valiant promise to watch, to remember, she gave in to cowardice and closed her eyes. The sound of renting cloth cut the silence.

Like honey, warm air spread onto the still-damp skin of her arm, her shoulder, and to her horror, one breast. Beneath him she writhed with renewed vigor, desperate to be free.

He grasped her arm.

"Ow," she yelled. She had forgotten her wounds.

"Be still." His utterance rang hoarse.

She did not know how, but in some way she seemed to have hurt him. Perhaps he had fallen on his own blade? She wriggled more fiercely.

"I command you to cease."

Something hard, but oddly pliant, pressed against the inside of her thigh—

"Oh." Realization made Isabel's entire body go hot, as if stricken by a sudden ague. Just as she mustered the strength to fight—

He pushed up and away. She lifted onto one elbow and watched him stalk toward the wall, one hand staved into his hair. Viciously he cursed. Her or the tapestry of The Great Flood, she was not certain.

Pivoting, he stormed past, toward a wooden chest, and threw open its lid. With stony intent, he peered inside. Almost at once, impatience shattered his features. From inside he grabbed an armful of clothing, and hurled the misshapen bundle at her. "Black Hell! Put something on."

She sat up, but made no move to touch the garments. She did not understand. If lust had ruled his actions a moment ago, why did he turn his eyes from her now? She smothered the little voice that had attempted to squeak out a claim of his innocence.

His blue eyes flashed. "Did it ever occur to you that two winters ago this—" He jabbed his finger at the center of his jerkin. "This
animal,
this barbarian as you call me, came to Calldarington as a guest? Because he was invited?"

"Invited," she scoffed. "Do you truly expect me to believe that?"

His eyes descended to where her hand covered her breast. Darkness hollowed the place beneath his cheekbones, and for a moment she believed what she saw was not lust, but yearning.

A wall, built deep inside her heart, threatened to give way. Impossible. A flush bloomed upward from her breasts, to heat her neck and face.

He stood, his legs braced wide. "Of course you would not believe." He swirled a hand in the air. "Barely a word spoken between us but already you know, verily, I speak only lies and treachery."

She forced an expression of scorn. "What sort of fool would have invited a Norse mercenary here, when there was no need?"

"What sort of fool?" the Dane repeated in a low voice.

"Yes,
fool."
Her chin jutted out in defiance.

"Dare you call
me
a fool?" He clamped his mouth shut on the word. "The fool who bade me come to Norsex—"

"Yes?" she demanded.

His next words, though spoken softly, cut like a blade. "Why, Isabel, if you must know, 'twas the king himself."

With a sharp laugh she challenged his claim. "My brother despises outsiders, especially Northmen, and would never have invited you, let alone an army of raiders, into the kingdom."

His blue eyes darkened. Smoldered. "'Tis not your brother of whom I speak."

Not her brother?

Isabel's mouth snapped shut with a click.
Her father.

At this, the Dane grinned darkly and turned on his heel. As he crossed to the door, he hooked the heel of his boot against the edge of the water bucket and tipped it onto its side. Liquid spread like molten amber across the floor to dampen the tips of her once-scarlet slippers. From the table he lifted the linen Vekell had brought into the room and tossed it in a high arc. The bundle landed in her lap.

"Cleanse and bind your wound. No doubt the ditch surrounding this burh swarms with the vilest pestilence."

Isabel looked down at the sodden shreds of her clothing and sniffed. Heavens, she did smell foul.
But he had kissed her still.

Shadows hid his eyes. She saw only his lips as they moved. "The salve you spread upon my back... use it if you have it still."

"Wait!" Isabel commanded, unease sharpening her tone. "My son. When will he be returned to me?"

Kol's long fingers clasped the edge of the door. Beyond him she saw the shoulder of a warrior who apparently had been posted to guard her door, but Kol moved to shield her from any outward view. "Until you wish to divulge Ranulf's whereabouts, you and I have no further cause to speak. Until that time, you may consider the boy... well, you may consider him to be mine."

As the door closed, the blood drained from Isabel's face.

Invited. He had been
invited,
damn her to Hell.

Angrily, Kol stripped to his braies and stood before the fire, allowing its heat to cauterize the rush of blood and emotion still raging, unchecked, through his body.

In the distance, waves crashed against Calldarington's shoreline. Even now, the wooden floor seemed to move beneath his feet, in cadence with the ocean.

Slowly his breathing returned to normal. So long ago, he had taken command of his anger, harnessed its energy to work for his benefit alone.

So what had just happened?

"Bolvadur s
é
h
ú
n,"
he muttered. He had simply wanted to tend her wound. To dress her in dry, warm clothing. Instead he had allowed himself to be provoked, and he had become exactly what she had called him. A barbarian.

Remembering the insanely fierce surge of desire he'd experienced for the perplexing young woman from his past, he rubbed his palm against his forehead.

Alone. Alone.
It was best he remain alone. He and his silent companions. Even now they danced on the wall, shades doing their very best to haunt him. Always there— in reality or as creations of his frozen conscience, he knew not—those remnants of souls he had sent into the afterlife. He had never attempted to make peace with them. Why trouble himself, when more would be added to their ranks? As was his custom, he ignored them. To acknowledge them in any way would make them real.

Instead he turned his attention to the mundane. He perused Ranulf's chambers. He had slept in better. He had slept in worse. The bed was large enough for his frame, and that was all that truly mattered. Sleep and seclusion were the only two luxuries he insisted upon for himself and his demons.