Page 8 of Storm of Desire
She'dtried.
And then they had put a bag over herhead.
Árdís puffed with indignation, shaking the hessian bag in her fist. "What were you thinking? You do realize I can transform into a creature that weighs seventons?"
Imagine the shock on their faces if one of them ended up sitting on her neck, the hessian bag over hersnout.
Groans littered the cobbled alley as two of the men curled into wretched shapes. Árdís looked into the eyes of the man who'd tried to throw a net overher.
"Andyou. I do not like nets," she hissed, letting a hint of thedrekishow in her eyes. Her hand fisted in the hessian sack. "And I do not care to be treated like this morning's catch. You have a debt to me now, and I am angry enough to take my payment inblood."
His face paled, then he turned and fled, the soles of his boots slapping the cobbles in a satisfactorymanner.
Árdís lowered the sack. That wasbetter.
"Should have... gone with the flowers," said the larger man at her feet, rolling slowly onto his hands and knees. He looked familiar somehow. A large bearded giant with a neatly trimmed brownbeard.
"Flowers?" she demanded, but he wasn't looking ather.
No, his gaze rested somewhere over hershoulder.
"Unfortunately, the net and the sack were just a distraction," said a voice husky withanger.
A voice that shivered down herspine.
A voice sheknew.
Fate laughed in her ear, even as a hand locked around her wrist. Árdís spun, but the enormous man behind her blocked her blow. And then the second one. She caught a flash of icy eyes, and then her back slammed into the nearest wall, his hands pinning her wrists to the building as he crushed her there with hisbody.
Haakon.
For a second she couldn't breathe, but it wasn't from the impact. She'd thought she'd never see himagain.
"Speaking of debts," Haakon said, his handsome face no longer that of the young man she'd once known, but carved from granite and fury. "I believe you owe me quite a large one. And I'm here to call itin."
2
Haakon,"his wifebreathed.
Shock flared in her amber eyes as she recognized him, and Haakon squeezed her wrists tightly to prevent her from escaping. He had her pinned to the nearest wall, but he'd seen the way she moved, and knew it was more likely surprise that momentarily stilled her, and not any sense ofweakness.
He'd spent years praying for thismoment.
And weeks obsessing over it, when he discovered the truth of herdeception.
He'd practiced what he would say to her, until he was fairly certain he would keep his composure, but the second he laid hands upon her, every word he'd intended to state fled, along with hiswits.
The storm was no longer solely in the skies, but within him. It lashed wildly within the cage of his ribs, and he could swear its lightning struck his charred heart, again and again, until he could barelybreathe.
You lied tome.
You leftme.
Was any of it everreal?
It was all he could do to choke the words down and stop the storm from erupting. And worse... he didn't know in that moment what he intended. Nothing was going right. In his head he'd planned this meticulously; a swift kidnapping, a cool interrogation, and then... then he'd walk away from her so she knew exactly how itfelt.
But right now, all he could think of was the taste of her treacherous mouth and how long it had been since he'd kissedher.
