Chapter Eleven
HIS EYES WENT DARK. And she could see that he wasn’t going to argue. Wasn’t going to resist.
Instead he crossed the space between them and pulled her into his arms. “What is it you want exactly?”
“You,” she said, moving her hand down to cup his arousal. “I don’t need you to be on guard. I only need you to be Ragnar.”
She could see him fighting a battle inside of himself. She could see that he wanted what she was offering. That he wanted to surrender to her. To his need.
She could also see that he was desperate to hang onto that guarded component of himself.
It wasn’t just a sense of self-protection. It was more than that. It wasn’t only about being there for his country. The way that he had depersonalized himself was essential to his survival, and she could see that in the tortured lines of his face.
She craved his surrender. But she did not crave his destruction.
He was strong. He had cultivated that strength over years of being the man his country needed. Of being the man those around him needed. A myth. A legend.
And yet there was more to it.
She sensed it now; she just couldn’t figure out exactly what it was.
But he was a man with razor wire around his heart, and she had identified that from the beginning.
When he had accused her of manipulating him, it had been coming from a place of self-preservation. But why?
Yes, there were so many reasons in his past, but she didn’t think that they were the reasons that he had given her.
She didn’t think he was lying. But she did think that he was an incomplete man. A man missing pieces of his past, a man who didn’t know how to embrace the future. Not apart from duty and honor.
Slowly, she reached out and put her hand on his chest. A short growl escaped his lips, and then she reached up and touched his face. Stroked his cheekbone, down his jaw. “You don’t have to fight a war right now. Just be mine.”
She was wearing a pair of purple high heels, and matching underwear, and she watched as his gaze darkened. As desire propelled him forward.
“Ragnar,” she said. “All you have to be with me is you.”
It was as if he lost control entirely then. His growl was deeper, more feral, more sustained as he reached out and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her up against him and kissing her with all the ferocity of a man on the front lines of the battlefield.
He claimed her. Forced her lips open then thrust his tongue deep. There was an honesty to this that soothed something inside of her.
But perhaps it had always been that way with him.
Because he might be a man who didn’t know himself, he might be a man who didn’t know how to explain all of the things he’d been through or all of the things that he believed in, thought and felt, but he was a man of integrity.
A man who did exactly what he said he was going to do. A man to be proud of.
She had never been proud of any of the men she had ever known. She found them selfish. Manipulative. Diabolical.
Men who sowed lies and acted like they might grow something other than a poisoned crop.
But not Ragnar.
He was a man who had survived. A man who had fought, all for the good of others, and never for the good of himself. It made her want to worship him. To give him everything. All of herself.
It made her want to fling herself upon his altar and worship.
So she did. With her lips, her tongue. She offered him supplication in the form of her neck exposed for him, to kiss, to bite. In the form of kisses that she spread across his chest, as she worked to remove his clothes, as she dropped to her knees and took him deep into her mouth.
As she gave him all of the evidence of her longing.
All of her desire.
She needed him.
And she wanted him to know that.
Thinking about the isolation that he had lived in filled her with despair.
Who had ever been here for this man? If anyone ever had, he couldn’t even remember it. So she had to build new memories for him. Feelings of warmth. Of connection. Of family.
You can’t leave him.
She pushed that thought aside. She continued to pleasure him with her mouth, her tongue, her hands.
As she drove him to the brink, took him to the edge.
As she gave to him, wholly and completely.
“Fern,” he growled, his hands in her hair. He was trying to stop her from finishing it this way.
But she would not be stopped.
He had said it himself. She was a warrior. Maybe of another variety than him, but made from the same mettle all the same.
And so she continued. Sucking him in deep until his hips arched forward, until he surrendered. Until he gave her the victory that she craved, on a hoarse cry, spilling himself down her throat.
And now she knew what it was like to win in battle. Because this time, she truly had.
He let out a long, ragged breath, releasing his hold.
She stood up, and took his hand, leading him over to the bed. She stripped off all of her remaining clothes, and got beneath the blankets beside him, stroking his chest with her fingertips.
“There will be more,” he said, an iron promise in his voice.
“I know. But there doesn’t need to be right this second.”
“You are a handful,” he said.
“Yes. I’ve been told that. Every tutor that I ever had despaired of me.
Because my mind was always several steps ahead, and I thought most of what I was being taught was stupid.
I’m all for diplomacy, as you know. But what I’m not all for is empty manners that might be pretty on the surface, but serve nothing and no one beneath. ”
“No. You don’t strike me as someone who takes kindly to dishonesty.”
“I’m not. That’s why I got irritated when you said I was manipulative.”
“You are not dishonest,” he said. “I misspoke. It was only that I thought you might get me to change in some way, and for a while I was resisting that.”
“And are you still resisting it?”
He looked up at the ceiling. “I suppose I’ve never had to change around other people.
I was tasked with growing myself into a leader, and I did.
Inflexibility was a hallmark of the good that I was doing, and so change feels like the mortal enemy of that.
But you are right. It was a different time.
Different than when I was growing up. And my job is now different.
What I wanted was for you to teach me how to put on a performance.
I didn’t want you to truly change me. But I’m learning things from you, Fern. Whether I set out to do so or not.”
“Oh, that must bother you so.”
“It doesn’t bother me. Not anymore. Not now, anyway. Perhaps tomorrow it will.”
“I do think that we both grew up quite lonely. I was surrounded by people, but they didn’t know me. They didn’t care for me. Not as I was.”
“They only saw what they could make you into.”
“Yes. But still, I… You grew up with no one. Did no one ever care if you were hungry? Cold?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“I wonder if that’s why you don’t know how to show any sort of care or compassion to yourself. Because nobody ever showed it to you. No one taught you that it mattered. If you were comfortable. If you felt good or bad or scared or upset…”
“I’ve never been afraid.”
“Never?”
“No. To tell you the truth, I have always assumed that whatever happened that day in the palace frightened me so much it was like a fire had been held to the part of myself that once was able to feel fear, and scalded away all of the nerve endings. Left it completely dead. I have felt vigilance. A deep sense of protectiveness for my people. But not fear. Not for my own self. Not for much of anything. It is a gift.”
“Is it? Even when it prevents you from feeling everything else?”
“I don’t feel anything else. Or rather, I don’t miss what I don’t feel. How can you, when you have no idea what to expect?”
That must be because he didn’t have any context for himself. He didn’t remember the first eight years of his life, and she couldn’t imagine what that would do to somebody. How badly that might impact you.
There were things that she wished she couldn’t remember from her childhood. But it was different to having a whole swath of yourself entirely erased.
“Just because you don’t know it doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Like eating cake. You might not have known that you were missing out, but you were.”
“And yet, it isn’t an important thing. If I had never had it, I would not miss it.”
“But doesn’t it bother you? Knowing that there is so much out there that you haven’t experienced?”
“No. It does bother you, though, doesn’t it?”
There was deep compassion in his eyes, nothing dismissive. It was entirely different from all the times before when they had talked about what she wanted from life. And the great irony was, she didn’t feel like she wanted it any longer. Not in the same way.
Yes, there were things that she was curious about. There was the potential for a life that she might enjoy out there, but it was only a possibility. It wasn’t real. Not in the same way that he was. Not in the same way that this was.
“I think it bothered me so much because I felt like I didn’t get to choose,” she said.
The truth of that rang inside of her like a bell. So clear, so bright. “I felt like because I didn’t have a say in my own future that it seemed unfair. That there was such a big wide world out there and I would never get to explore it. I don’t feel that same urgency now.”
She didn’t feel like the walls were closing in. She didn’t feel like every step was laid out before her before she ever got a chance to choose it.
She wanted to stay with him. He had agreed to let her go.
Maybe she was just a contrarian.
She didn’t think so.
It was like what he’d said. Initially, she had been determined to come out of this without changing. Then she had begun to open herself up to the idea of living while she was here.
But living meant changing. It meant growing in understanding. Of herself, of what she wanted. Of who she was.
It meant being affected.