Chapter 41
Forty-One
It was dark outside the round window when I jolted awake.
The room was empty, the ship quiet, and I pushed at the furs I’d been wrapped in to swing my shaking legs over the edge. My heart raced into my throat when the table chattered, a cup on it dangerously close to keeling over. When the table rumbled demandingly a second time, I forced myself to stand.
“I’m coming,” I mumbled as I made my way over.
The cup was cold, but the soup in there was still good. I was mid-gulp when the door flew open and Darcke barged in, instantly making the room smaller and making my still-frozen limbs twitch with the urge to slip around him and escape out into the night.
“Good. You’re awake,” he said in that lethally low voice. “How are you doing?”
I set down the cup on the table. “Fine. I—”
“Even better.” Darcke stormed up to me so quickly that the table dug into my back when I recoiled. “Now I can yell at you for being an absolute fucking idiot martyr without feeling guilty. What were you thinking, throwing yourself at him without a fucking weapon?”
“Maybe you can give her some grace? She saved your lives doing what she did.” Kilia’s voice came from outside the room, but I only had time to glimpse his and Ilse’s faces before the door between us slammed shut.
I grimaced when the window followed, its shutters closing tightly, as if I might try to crawl out of it otherwise, leaving us only in the light from one candle standing by the edge of Darcke’s bed.
Perfect. His ship was also angry with me.
The table dug harder into my back, and I stuck my tongue out at the wood.
“Very fucking mature,” Darcke barked.
“And what about ‘fucking idiot martyr’ makes you an elder?” I taunted.
I was tired and still cold, and I really didn’t want to deal with his mood swings. I would have tried to get around him, but I had a feeling the door would not open even though there wasn’t a lock.
“At least I’m telling you what the fuck I think.” Darcke leaned his hands on the table on either side of me so I had to bend my back over the wood to continue meeting his eyes. “Not just acting on my first stupid instinct.”
“No, you just let a cave fall down on you so I won’t get hurt. Tell me, how is your back?”
“A lot better than your ass will be if you continue trying to die for me,” Darcke hissed, his face hovering right above mine. “I have no issue bending you over my lap and beating some fucking sense into you.”
My stomach surged, and he felt it from the dangerous grin spreading across his face.
“You really know how to woo a girl with sweet words,” I got out.
Darcke wetted his lips. “This is nothing, heir. I can get a lot fucking dirtier.”
I pinned him with a glare when his rage rolled through me, but the fingers I’d furled around the edge of the table loosened when the bitter taste of fear followed. It wound around us like a violent wave trying to bring us down into the depths of the sea.
“You were scared,” I said, my voice coming out softer than I’d meant.
“Scared that you’d lost your fucking mind.”
I felt another rush of panic, one he was working hard to hide.
Pressing a finger into his chest, I whispered, “That’s not it, second.”
Because it wasn’t. Beneath that fury there was something even more dangerous—something we’d danced around for weeks now, joking and teasing and pretending it didn’t exist. My mind snapped back to the moment beneath the ice—to the collar around his neck, to my silent vow.
I’m going to free you.
Darcke’s eyes were wild, almost as dark as the war paint and tattoos around them. He was losing control, his patience with me ready to snap at any second. When I shifted, I accidentally arched my back into him, and my lips parted at the hardness pressing into my leg.
Our eyes dropped at the same time, and when they met again: static.
It was like being struck by lightning, the way his eyes heated. The air around us ignited, hotter than any flame or fire or sun I’d ever experienced. In the distance more doors shut, the hushed conversation that had leaked through the cracks in the walls muting until everything fell silent.
His legs trapped me against the table as he spread them, and an unbidden moan slipped past my lips when he pressed himself against me, the hard length of him starting an ache so deep I doubted it would ever leave my core.
“If that’s not it, then what, heir?” His breath fanned over my chest, and the hair on the back of my neck rose in response, thrills of desperate need running down my back.
You were scared I was going to die before you could kiss me.
You wanted to know what I felt about you before you couldn’t ask.
You were desperately, furiously, impossibly terrified of being alone again after you’d found someone who reminded you of yourself.
But I didn’t say that.
“You tell me,” I said instead.
When his hand trailed up my arm before cradling the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair as he angled it back, I stopped breathing.
A small voice in the back of my mind whispered to me to stop—that I needed to end this now.
But another also awoke—the one I’d heard right before finding my sword, when I’d realized who the real enemy was.
And if I was going to do that—if I was going to risk it all to win everything?
What did other stupid rules matter? I wasn’t going to Valhalla anyway. I’d been marked for Hel. So why not give them something to cheer about when I showed up?
Darcke went entirely still when something within me shifted.
His hungry eyes narrowed. “What was that?”
My eyes went between his as I listened to our hearts pound in sync.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
“That was me giving in,” I whispered.
Darcke shook his head, but his hand slid farther into my hair, the other one settling on my hip, roughly dragging me against his hard body.
“You shouldn’t do that,” he said, his voice thick with such intensity I arched my back farther, more of my body brushing against his
“I know,” I said.
He angled my head back, his eyes on my lips. “We shouldn’t want this.”
“I know.”
He flattened his hand against my back, merging our bodies entirely, his lips not even an inch away. “It’s against the rules. We vowed not to do this.”
“I know.”
He shamelessly pressed his cock against me. “We should leave this room.”
“I know.” I slid my hands over his muscular arms like I’d wanted to for a while now, weaving them into his hair and tugging him so close his lips brushed mine. “But I’m not going to.”
A groan resounded in his heaving chest, and for the first time since I met this stupidly attractive, lethal, insanely impossible Viking warrior, his resolve snapped.
“Fuck it.”
He lifted me at the same time I reached for him, and our lips crashed together as he slammed me down on the table.
The hand on my back moved to shove my legs apart and he stepped in between them, crushing my chest against his own.
His mouth was hot on mine, and he dragged my head back by my hair to deepen the kiss.
I moaned into his mouth when his chest rumbled with a groan, and he hauled me closer, fusing us together so hard I would have bruises later. Heat pooled in my core, setting my entire body aflame.
“I need more.” I pulled at his hair, wrapping my legs around his back and using his hardness to relieve some of the burning want that consumed me worse than anything else I’d ever felt.
“I’ll give you everything you fucking want,” he growled, moving to my neck and pressing lazy hot kisses there that made me tighten my grip on his hair to get him back up to my lips. “You only need to ask and it’s yours.”
Darcke captured my whimper with his mouth, his tongue playfully dancing with mine until I couldn’t think about anything else but this—him. Us.
I slid my hands beneath his shirt and explored the corded muscles I’d admired so many times. Somehow his tunic disappeared, and it was his turn to moan when I leaned forward and nipped at the scarred water rune on his chest, letting my tongue follow its outline until it was imprinted in my mind.
“Fucking Hel, Elvara.” His breathing was ragged, erratic, primal, and my core clenched until I had to shut my eyes at the look of desperate need on his face.
Hel was right. That was where we were going for doing this.
Darcke’s hands slid under my ass and he lifted me from the table, holding me against him until my face was level with his. “You sure you want this?”
I rocked against him, letting him feel the fire taking every rational thought and all willpower within me, and how I didn’t care.
“I want you,” I said. “I want this.”
He kissed me again, and my stomach hollowed and roared and roiled at the same time, because the way his tongue mapped my mouth, his lips covering every inch of my own, kissing from corner to corner, trailing more along my jaw, was with the desperation of a man drowning—knowing the end was near but refusing to believe it.
“I’m not a good man,” he warned me. “I’ve done bad things, and I will continue to do them. This. Us. Doesn’t change that.”
“I know.” I wrapped my legs tighter around his waist, letting my hands whisper over his wide shoulders. “I’m still sure.”
“I can’t say…” He swallowed hard, his eyes darkening for reasons I didn’t want to think about. “There are things you do not know.”
My fingers trailed his neck, and even though I couldn’t see the collar, hatred burned through me as I fisted his hair, forcing his eyes to mine.
“I do know,” I said hotly. “Still. Sure.”
He might not be able to tell me everything—that magical leash held his tongue—but even if he was behind the attacks, which I fucking doubted, given he’d nearly died today as well, I wasn’t sure I would have cared at this point.
We’d murdered his entire people.
Did we not deserve this? Did the king not deserve it?
His lips twitched, but whatever mirth I’d evoked in him couldn’t erase the waves of bottomless sorrow, the ones he desperately wanted gone.
I pressed my lips against his. He groaned again, and what I’d meant to be a gentle—loving—kiss shifted into an inferno of hot breath and colliding lips, hands in hair and my back driving up against the wall as he pressed me into it.
I wasn’t certain how we’d moved across the room, but I didn’t care when he thrust himself against me, lining up his hardness against my aching, needy center. Darcke moved to attack my neck, sucking and biting until I cried out.
His lips trailed over my hot skin until he reached my ear.
“You better be fucking sure,” he breathed as his hands slid under my shirt, whispering over my back, and I whimpered as I leaned my forehead on his shoulder. “Because there is nothing honorable about the way I plan to fuck you. I can’t promise the doors of Hel won’t bolt shut at the sight of us.”
I bit down on his bare shoulder. “Then we’ll find another realm.”
“Fuck,” he cursed, and his lethal grin shot right through my chest.
The floor planks creaked as they shifted beneath us, and Darcke went quiet—frozen. As steps sounded behind the wall he had me against, my face flushed, but Darcke pressed a finger against my lips when I started to tell him to set me down.
“Are you done fighting?” Kilia asked. “We’re almost at Nordoen, and something’s happening. There are too many ships moving about.”
I doubted we’d ever be done fighting. When Darcke pressed a heated kiss against the corner of my mouth, one of his hands sliding over my stomach to cup my breast, I showed him my teeth, although the need overtook the worry of being caught.
“Are you there?” Kilia sounded worried, and I stiffened at the same time as Darcke did.
“Yes,” Darcke said. “Unfortunately, so are you.”
I was impressed by his calm, especially when I could feel what I did to him.
“I think you should get up here.”
Darcke’s eyes lifted to the ceiling before capturing mine once more.
“We’ll be there shortly,” he barked. “Go up and get the ship ready for mooring.”
“But—”
“Go, or I’ll make her throw you off so you can swim to shore,” Darcke snarled.
Maybe I’d spoken too soon.
His head fell forward to rest against the wall, his chest still heaving as Kilia and whoever was with him walked up the stairs. I was ready for him to set me down, but his arms only tightened around me, his body pressing harder against mine.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Deciding whether I can make you come in two minutes.”
I didn’t doubt it. The way I was feeling, he might as well just breathe on me and set me off. But Kilia had sounded truly worried.
I forced a strained laugh. “We’ll have time later.”
“Will we?” There was doubt in his tone that I pretended not to hear.
“Yes,” I said confidently.
Because I am going to help you. Even if it’s the last thing I do.
“What am I supposed to do about this?” Darcke said as he rocked his hardness against me again, watching me as my eyes snapped shut and a moan escaped my lips.
“Maybe we could swim to cool down,” I teased.
“Water is not going to help me.” His lips lifted an inch. “But when I have my magic back, I’ll show you some of the skills I’ve honed over the years.”
A pang of jealousy shot through me at the thought of him with someone else, and his grin widened.
“So you can get your magic back?” I rushed out when he opened his mouth.
His mouth closed again, and a wince wove across his features as if I’d hurt him.
You’re not asking the right questions.
“Ah,” I said. “You can’t tell me, can you?”
Darcke only blinked as he set me down.
A different type of warmth flooded me when he reached for his shirt and got into it, picking up the swords we’d earned—I was glad someone had brought mine and apparently cleaned it—and pressed mine into my hands before he took the lead up the stairs.
When he opened the door and let the orange light of dawn trickle in, I set my jaw.
If he couldn’t tell me, I would have to find someone who could.