Chapter 8 #2
To Merewen’s surprise—and utter delight, Wolf started to laugh.
His was a sunny laugh that somehow did not match his fearsome appearance.
One expected a man of his stature to growl, roar, or bark, not laugh with such mirth.
So far she had only seen him laugh with her, and she liked that.
It was as if only she could coax certain emotions from him, ranging from amusement to desire.
Rather than show how his laugh affected her, she waved the pliers in her hand.
“Don’t you start reminding me what you like about women,” she warned, eyes narrowing. “I am armed, remember?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He tried to look duly chastened. Failed. The man would never look anything other than commanding and self-assured. “Do your worst.”
Merewen took a deep breath and placed a palm on Wolf’s shoulder.
As soon as her fingers touched the taut, smooth skin she knew her ability to keep a steady hand would be tested to the very limit.
How could a man feel so soft, smell so good, be so strong?
She already knew Wolf was the most handsome man she had ever set eyes upon but now she was forced to admit that he was also the most compelling.
What a dramatic turn her life had taken in just a few days!
After years of seemingly never-ending boredom, here she was, tending to a man who could, if she allowed it, be her husband before the afternoon was over.
In just over a week she had been kidnapped, sold—and bought—as a slave, taken to a place she didn’t know, and offered marriage by a stranger. Quite a change from her normal routine.
It was not all bad, though. There had been some interesting new developments.
Not only had her dreams finally allowed her to experience the release she had craved all these years, but she had now seen a naked man in the flesh instead of in her imagination and she had been a hair’s breadth away from being kissed.
As if that was not enough, she could be bedded before the day was out, and by a man capable of making her scream in pleasure.
Out of the blue, Wolf’s comment about being forced to endure flooding after years of complaining about the lack of rain came back to her.
This was so appropriate an image for how she felt right now that she knew without a doubt he had been referring to the contrast between his life before they met and now.
But did he mean it as a good thing? She could not be sure.
“You’re going to have a mighty bruise,” she whispered, contemplating the scratched flesh. The whole shoulder blade was red.
“I can already feel it forming,” Wolf grumbled under his breath. “A plank… Who would have thought of using such a weapon? What next, I wonder? A ladle?”
“There wasn’t much else lying around and it inflicted enough damage,” Merewen pointed out, removing another splinter. “I would say it wasn’t such a bad idea, if not very noble.”
“Yes, well, when there aren’t weapons around a warrior uses his fists, not whatever is ‘lying around,’ as you say. That is the reaction of a coward.”
She smiled to herself, amused by this side of him she had not seen before. Wolf sounded rather like a petulant child, but she thought it prudent not to mention it. A warrior probably wouldn’t like that any more than he liked to fight with kitchen implements.
One by one the shards were removed. Finally Merewen smoothed her fingers over the round shoulder and hard shoulder blade, telling herself that she needed to feel for any hair-sized splinters she might have missed.
Perforce, she had to keep her touch light so as to feel the slightest disruption on his skin and it only added to the intimacy of the moment.
She started. Intimacy? What was she thinking about!
This was not an intimate, loving act. She was only removing splinters.
It only affected her because the man she was tending to was so impossibly attractive and it was the first time she had touched anyone thus, she told herself sternly.
To him it would feel perfunctory, a way of ensuring she had completed her task successfully, nothing more.
She had to stop being such a fool.
Wolf gritted his teeth.
Thankfully Merewen could not see his face from where she was for she would have taken fright.
He was sure his eyes had gone ablaze with the desire raging in his body and, of course, lower down, she would see something else, something altogether frightening for a virgin.
He was hard enough to hammer nails, and little wonder!
She was caressing him all over, and her breath was coming in short, ragged bursts in his ear, an impossibly evocative sound.
Her touch was so careful he could tell she was not trying to provoke him in any way and yet nothing had ever felt so unbearably, so deliciously arousing.
He would not be able to withstand much more of the sensual torture.
It had been bad enough when she had extracted the shards with her soft, small hand gripping at his shoulder but now that she was feeling her way around for stray ones, it was pure torment.
It had to stop or he would turn around, march her to the pallet and show her just how unbearable it was to have someone trace their fingers over your bare skin. He would not stop until she begged him to put an end to the torture, which he would do with unforgivable roughness.
“Enough!” he growled.
“Wait, I think there’s still—”
“No, that’s enough!” he repeated, standing up so abruptly that the stool he had been sitting upon was overturned.
Merewen stood in front of him, eyes wide, mouth open.
Heat flooded his veins. By the gods! Was it because he was half-naked or because he’d reared up like a stallion catching scent of a female that she appeared smaller, more delicate than usual?
Whatever it was, it made her even more irresistible, her petiteness the perfect match to his strength.
“I need to wash off the—”
He cut her off with a raised hand. “You don’t. I can do that myself.”
He took the cloth she had prepared, dipped it in the lukewarm water and started to wash himself with brusque gestures, almost relishing the thousand stings piercing his flesh when the rough fabric hit the places where a splinter had been removed.
Anything to steer his mind away from temptation and blood from his aching groin.
“Thank you.”
He swiveled around slowly. Merewen was standing in the middle of the room, looking at her feet. Had he heard right? Had she just thanked him unprompted?
“What did you say?”
She wrung her hands together, clearly thinking he was making her repeat the words to make her pay for not having thanked him earlier. He was not, only he had been so lost in his own, lewd thoughts he wanted to be sure he had not imagined the words.
“I thanked you for protecting me. It will have hurt.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” he said slowly, putting the bloodied cloth back in the water. “Anyone would have done the same.”
“No, they would not, and you know it,” she murmured, still refusing to meet his eye. “Not after… everything that happened, or rather, didn’t happen.”
Perhaps she was right. Most men he knew would not have wanted to protect a woman who had refused their offer of marriage and pushed them away when they’d wanted to kiss her. They might well have enjoyed seeing her receive punishment for the humiliation.
But he was not most men.
“I hope you don’t think I could stand by idly while you were in danger of being hurt?”
“No. And I am thanking you for more than that. It would have been unbearable for me to be bought by someone else at the market. You saved me from a dire fate. No doubt the other men present that day would have made me understand just what being a slave meant. But you… didn’t. You never mistreated me.”
Heat flared inside his chest. “I would never do that.”
“Yes, I know that now. But I can still thank you for it.”
Wolf looked at Merewen from under heavy-lidded eyes.
He would never have imagined hearing such a heartfelt apology from the proud, self-assured Saxon.
Did it mean what he thought it meant? Could he dare hope she was considering accepting his offer?
He took a step toward her, then another, and saw her swallow hard.
His groin instantly responded, wrenching a frustrated groan out of him.
He cursed under his breath. He’d only just managed to regain mastery over his heated senses and here he was again, hard as granite!
“You don’t need to thank me for not hurting you or for protecting you from blows never intended for you,” he said, taking her hand in his.
“Or, even worse, for not using you as a slave or for not raping you. It was never my intention to do so. You know what my intentions are with regards to you. They haven’t changed. ”
And they would never change. He meant to marry her, and even if he could not make her his wife he still would not let her go.
He would sprout wings and a beak before he gave this woman up.
Slowly, he lifted her hand and kissed the inside of her palm, inhaling the delicious smell of flowers that seemed to follow her everywhere.
No, he would never be able to forget her, she was already too ingrained in his life. Too many things would remind him of her now. Every time he smelled flowers, cut wood, ate bread, walked into the hut, he would smell her, hear her, taste her, see her.
Crave her.
“And now it’s my turn to thank you,” he said slowly.
“It’s nothing,” she answered in a hoarse voice that sent shards of longing through his spine. She was definitely not indifferent to him as a man, whatever she felt about him as a potential husband. Another encouraging sign… “As you said, you could not have reached over to your shoulder blade.”