Free Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) by Susan Fanetti

he wouldn’t simply use her.
     
    “Olga, no. There is no future for me here. I won’t take you when I can’t make you mine.”
     
    She jerked her hand free of his hold. “Men! Always you speak of taking. What of giving?”
     
    Her burst of temper had shocked him. “What do you mean?”
     
    Rather than answer, she picked up one of his hands in both of hers. She turned his palm up and traced her fingers over the hard skin. That simple touch made his belly clench and swelled his sex to fullness.
     
    She bent her head and pressed to lips to the center of his palm, and Leif was nearly undone.
     
    “Olga,” he groaned.
     
    “No man has ever cared what I want. They have only taken what they want. Even you never think of what I want.”
     
    That was untrue and unfair. Hurt, he moved to pull his hand back, but she resisted, and he let her keep it. She turned her eyes up and searched his face, her brow furrowed. “It is true, Leif. You make choices for me, like any other man. Different choices, but they are yours, not mine. You think you are saving me from something—from disappointment or sadness, or loneliness, perhaps. But no one can be saved from these things. They are part of living. I am lonely now.”
     
    She let go of his hand and came even closer, laying her palms flat on his chest. He could feel the heat of her body, and he couldn’t resist resting his hands on her waist. Holding her. The span of her body at that point was so narrow that his fingers and thumbs nearly touched.
     
    “You say you won’t take me and leave me. This is my meaning: you speak always of taking and never of giving. But all that men have taken, they have never taken me . That is something that can be given only, never taken.”
     
    Her fingers slid into his tunic, where the fabric was split at the neckline, leaving a space of his chest bare. She seemed to give intent consideration to her fingertips playing through the hair there, and Leif closed his eyes and steeled his body against the urge to tremble under her touch.
     
    She spoke again, her voice low, almost distracted. “No man has ever asked me what I want. You’ve never asked me. Never have I had a chance before to want. Now I do. I want to give myself to you. I want you to give yourself to me. For the first time since I was a girl too young to know the way of things, I want to know this giving.”
     
    When she paused, her fingers and her words both, Leif opened his eyes and met hers searching his face. “Do you care?” she asked.
     
    “I care. Gods, yes, I care. But, Olga, soon I will sail from here and from you. I cannot stay.” In his mind, it always came back to that, and he had no better rebuttal. “I cannot.”
     
    “Have you never thought that I might leave?
     
    He had. Often. But she was so small, so delicate. “My home—it’s a harsh place. Only the strong thrive.”
     
    “You think my home is such an easy place? That I am so weak?”
     
    He knew her to be strong. On this very night, she had shown her strength. Enduring the life she’d had must have taken real fortitude. Yet he thought of her as fragile. Why? Because she was small and slight? Was the strength of her arms what mattered?
     
    No. The strength of her heart and her will mattered. Her courage.
     
    This world, her home, was nigh as harsh as his own. Only their little corner of it had, until this night, seemed different.
     
    Leif’s mind opened and became bright with the possibility. “You would leave with me?”
     
    “I think,” she said, her hands snaking up his chest and around his neck, as far as she could reach, “that if any would ask what I want, my answer would be that I want to be with you. Wherever you are.”
     
    His hands moved from her waist, smoothing over her back. Never before had he allowed himself to touch her in such a way, to feel her without resisting the impact of the touch. While they stared into each other’s eyes, his hands traveled up to her