Free Vanquished by the Viking by Joanne Rock Page B

not sense the fury was directed toward her.
    She’d weathered enough storms of temper with her father to know the difference. This man’s hands did not flex and curl with the need to lash out.
    “I did not follow you.” She pushed the hood back from her cloak and unfastened the brooch that held it closed at her neck. The garment was sodden and she would be warmer without the chilly length pressed against her. “I waited for you in one of the boats after my maid overheard one of your men say you might depart before morn.”
    He stalked closer, his shadow blocking out the moonlight and reminding her how large he was. She prayed she had not misjudged him. On second thought, she kept her wet cloak about her shoulders, suddenly less keen to drop any barrier between them.
    “You have no cause to think I will aid you.” His lowered voice intimidated her far more than when he’d shouted, and she wasn’t sure why. There was a tension between them, a thread of anxiety he seemed to feel as much as she. “You are not mine. I will not betray my brother to steal his promised bride.”
    Eva’s breath came faster. She shivered from the cold seeping through her cloak and from the chill in his voice.
    “You are not stealing me. I am demanding you show compassion toward a captive of war by taking me to the nearest settlement.” She would find shelter there, whether in a nobleman’s keep or a nunnery. “My father has allies in Cledemutha, a short journey to the west. No one needs to know who aided me when I fled.”
    “I will know.” He glared down at her from his imposing height, his words as intractable as his stance.
    Her mouth went dry. “You would leave me to walk to Cledemutha when you will surely pass the settlement on your way to...wherever it is you are going?”
    “You will not walk anywhere.” He gripped her elbow through her wet garments. “I am escorting you back to your father’s keep.”
    He urged her up the shore, but her first step was a stumble, her knee still unsteady from her fall. A string of foreign curses—well, they sounded like curses—flew from his lips as he hauled her closer, taking her weight by wrapping an arm around her waist. The heat of his body warmed her, the scent of leather and hearth fire rising from his tunic.
    “You are injured,” he observed. “Unfit to walk anywhere.”
    “And it is your fault for trying to leave without me.” She braced a hand on his chest to keep herself from leaning too heavily upon him and was dismayed to feel more heated sinew beneath her palm.
    Being caught in his arm was like settling into a bed next to wrapped hearthstones on a chilly winter’s eve.
    “I must get you home.” He hefted her higher against him then swept her legs out from under her so that he cradled her like a babe. “You are injured and chilled.”
    “Nay!” She wrenched hard away from him, surprising him so that he nearly lost his grip. But he recovered quickly, tightening his hold while she struggled. “By all that is holy, you cannot bring me back. I would sooner fling myself from the cliffs than wed your knave of a sibling and I swear I will do it. He cannot guard me every moment of the day and I know my own keep well enough to slip out at night when I wish.”
    Reinn slowed his step at that, his face close to hers while one broad hand palmed her thigh and the other gripped her forearm, his knuckles tucked against her breast. She had soaked his clothes as well as her own, but the dampness seemed to steam away from his skin, his body was so warm next to hers. She swallowed hard, confused by the onslaught of sensations when she needed to be focused on one goal.
    Escape from Gunnar Geirsson and any fate that included marriage to a soulless cur.
    She peered up into Reinn’s face, the sharp cheekbones and chiseled jaw unyielding. But she could swear there was something softer in his eyes, just as she had suspected that first day when he sat at his brother’s side in the great