Page 1 of Storm of Desire
Prologue
Norway,1872
She cameto him on a spring storm, one wickednight.
Haakon Haraldsson strode across the mountainous countryside, slinging his bow over his shoulder. Night was falling, and there'd be no game in this brewing gale. Time to return home before he was caught out. The storm kissed the coastline to the east and blustered inland, bringing with it lashings of lightning. Thick, fat raindrops began to spatterdown.
Perfect. Justperfect.
Haakon cursed, dragging the hood of his cloak over his head as he soldiered on. He'd spent most of the day out in the mountains, trying to linger as far from home as possible. At twenty, with his older sisters married off, his mother had turned her sights upon him, and he hadn't missed the insinuation when she'd invited her friend, Helga, and her daughter, Maria, to eat with them thatnight.
But it was one thing to avoid a mother's matrimonial intentions—quite another to freeze his ballsoff.
A jagged spear of lightning lit the world around him as he loped down the craggy mountainside. He thought he heard a roar, but perhaps it was only thunder, quick on the lightning's heels. Not far to go now. He could almost feel the heat of the fire in his mother's hearth, and smell the rich, gamey scent of the stew she'd been making. Something to warm him from the inside out in this wretched cold. Maria's attentionsnotwithstanding.
He was so caught up in imagining it that when he took a twist in the path, he almost plowed directly into a naked youngwoman.
A flash of golden skin seared hiseyeballs.
And then somehow he managed not to brace his hands against a part of her anatomy she'd surely slap him for touching. A violent lurch to avoid slamming into her sent him sprawling, and his hands bit the gravel of the path as he tumbled head over heels into the soft leafmulch.
Haakon froze, pushing himself off the loam and brushing off his hands. He slowly rolledover.
He was not imagininganything.
There was a nakedwoman.
A very wet, completely unclothed woman glaring down at him, gowned only in her hair. It clung in wet, serpentine streaks to her breasts, and though it appeared brown in that moment he had the feeling sunlight would paint it pure gold. His gaze followed the lengths of it, reaching her naval, andthen—
He squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn't entirely innocent. There'd been kisses, and heated touches, and the press of a woman's mouth, but Viksholm was distant enough from civilization and his mother watchful enough that he'd not yet had a woman of hisown.
Some stray thought tickled at his mind at the thought, but it wasn't working very swiftly in that moment. All he could picture was rosy nipples, and lips flushed pink, and curse him, but his cock was swelling in adamantneed.
What thehell?
"Are you insane?" he demanded, trying to avoid looking at her as he pushed himself to his feet. "What are you doing outhere?"
The woman scrambled away from him, crouching against a rock, one hand splayed over the granite and her expressionferal.
Haakon stopped abruptly, and tried to make himself look less intimidating.Think, you fool.Any woman out here on a stormy night—wearing no clothes—was likely in some sort ofdanger.
Her long blonde hair tangled over her breasts, thankfully shielding them from view. She bared her teeth athim.
"I mean you noharm."
Swinging his sodden fur cloak off his shoulders, he wrapped it around her bare body, trying to ease her raking nails away from his face. She hissed at him, but subsided when he drew the cloak around her nakedness and held his hands up in surrender, as if to say, "See?"
And then she looked up, a distant flash of lightning illuminating her amber-coloredeyes.
For Haakon, it was like an arrow to the chest. He felt breathless; lost. His entire destiny unfolded before him with a single glance and he knew,knewit revolved around this mysteriousstranger.
Fate had clearly contrived to keep him chaste for her, because the very idea of knowing another woman would have feltwrong.
Hell. He felt as though the lightning must have hithim.
"Harm?" she whispered, in a voice that sounded like a velvet-wrapped purr. "You would not wish to have harm in your heart, or I'd kill youmyself."
At any other time he might have snorted—he was a hunter, and a large man—but he was still feelingrattled.
