Chapter Eight
HE HAD THANKED HER. He had thanked her for the cake.
She had been thinking about that ever since, along with the vision of his body, covered only by those tight black boxer briefs that he’d been wearing.
She was extremely distracted. Even as she got her hair and makeup done, and was zipped into the gold gown that she had chosen for tonight.
She had been thinking about him far too much.
But it was okay, actually. Because she had made a decision about tonight.
Tonight was important. And she was going to sparkle, build connections and keep him on track for the whole of the celebration, and then she was going to seduce him.
Because she wanted him.
Because she felt they both deserved…
Were they friends?
It was the word that she had come up with when they had spoken.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever had friends either. The nuns were the closest thing. And they had been tasked with taking care of her, and also had very little in common with her in some ways.
It had been a contemplative life. But sometimes it had been fun, and sometimes they’d had deep conversation.
Yes. In the three years that she had been there it had definitely been something like friendship.
So maybe this could be too. Maybe they didn’t have to be at odds.
Maybe she could learn physical things from him, so that when she went out into the real world, none of it would be shocking. Perhaps it would be easier. She would know how to deal with men. How to be normal.
Preferable to going out into the world as a twenty-one-year-old virgin, she supposed.
She clung to the idea of a life opened up. Of a life where she made her own choices.
And in the meantime, where she could make her present situation all the more pleasant.
Where she could learn about herself.
She had done that thoughtfully, internally on the Isle of Skye.
Maybe it was time to do it physically.
Her makeup had been done expertly, in that way where it took quite a few products and skill to accomplish a natural look.
And her hair had been left curly and wild as she had come to prefer it.
She felt like herself. And that was interesting. To feel at home in her skin in this sort of dress, when that had never been true back in Cape Blanco.
The plan for them was that they would arrive thirty minutes after the guests. Wherein they would be presented to those in attendance. Fashionably late.
Her stomach fluttered. Not because of the entrance they were going to make soon, but because soon she was going to see Ragnar.
It was amazing what that did to her. How it made her feel. How in this short span of time he had gotten beneath her skin. He had found the power to affect her body.
The first time she had seen him, riding on that horse, the thunderous hoofbeats sending terror streaking through her, her reaction to him had been pure adrenaline.
But now? It was still adrenaline, she supposed. But it was something deep. Something more. Something nice.
It was…attraction. Need. This luxurious, wonderful feeling that she had been prepared to never, ever feel, in defiance of the life that her father had laid out for her.
As a way to maintain control.
And now she didn’t want that. She didn’t need it. Not in that way.
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.
“No.”
“She is the goddess of love, beauty. Sex. But also war and gold.”
“That seems a strange combination of things.”
“Not really. For what do we fight wars over except love, sex and gold?”
She had never thought about that before.
Gold, yes. Greed. That was the biggest reason she could think of for war.
But throughout time, and in small ways, every day she supposed people did wage battle for love and sex.
Need, erotic need, was something she was currently fighting a battle inside of herself about.
“Freya rules Fólkvangr. A heavenly field where many soldiers who die in battle go.”
“I thought that in Norse mythology they went to Valhalla?”
“Some do. But there is a different path. Some in my culture think that it’s soldiers who are loved that go to Freya. Because she saves a space for their wives.”
“Oh.”
“You look like her. Freya.”
She laughed. “That can’t be. I’m hardly a Scandinavian beauty.”
“Your lack of blond hair doesn’t make you less a beauty. Freya herself is brave and bold. Clever. As a goddess must be. There is also sadness in her. I would say that you are definitely Freya. All that gold.”
It was the most deeply beautiful thing anyone had ever said to her. And she felt seen in a way that she hadn’t expected to be seen by him.
She would’ve said that they were different. Entirely. But they weren’t.
They were two people who had been deeply isolated in different ways throughout their lives.
And the only time in his life when he’d had a family he couldn’t even remember.
He was a warrior, yes, but he must’ve spent a significant amount of time in his own mind. Thinking. Making a declaration like that proved it to her.
“I didn’t think you believed in the divine,” she commented.
“I never have.”
Then he reached his arm out and she took hold of it. He didn’t say that he did now. Or that he was changing his way of thinking, and yet it felt like he had paid her a glorious compliment all the same.
Maybe this was just her shifting and twisting the moment to make it into something undeniable. So that when she kissed him after the ball tonight, she could justify it.
I don’t have to justify anything.
No. She decided that she didn’t. She decided that she didn’t have to have any reason other than the fact that she wanted it.
Because she was entitled to that.
After everything, surely she was entitled to that.
They walked through the double doors of the ballroom, and the scene below took Fern’s breath away. The room was full, and decorated gloriously. There were fresh flowers strung across all the surfaces, bright pinks and purples that were set off beautifully by the black walls and gold trimmings.