Page 38 of Master of Storms
He met her gaze. “Perhaps I was staring at you because I like to look at you.”
Suddenly, she was a deer catching scent of the hunter. “If you use the word ‘beautiful’ I will know you’re lying—”
“Youarebeautiful.”
“I am most distinctlynot. And the least interesting thing about me is my appearance.”
He leaned closer. “What is beauty? You are savage and wild and untamable, and I’ve never wanted to touch a woman more in my life. You have the eyes of a falcon, so dark and bottomless. I love your eyes. I love the predatory look in them. I love the way you focus on something as if the world around that object ceases to exist.” He couldn’t help himself. He reached up and touched her lips, so softly it might have been more of an intention of a caress than an actual caress. “Your hair is like silk. It’s so straight and dark, and I want to bury my fists in it and rub my face against it. I want to breathe you in, like some mountain wind I can never catch. And your lips….” He did graze his fingers against them then. “Your lips are forbidden. They are temptation. They are torture, because I’ve had them on my skin once, but there’s the possibility I never will again. You are beautiful, Solveig, because you are unlike any other woman I’ve ever met.”
She blinked at him in shock. Just a moment of the real Solveig before her walls came crashing down. In an instant she was ice again. But he’d seen the heat. He’d seen a glimpse of a young woman, surprised to find herself desirable—and not merely for her body, but for all the qualities that made her what she was.
His breath caught. Was it vulnerability that insisted shekeepthose stone walls in place?
“I see,” she said slowly. “You want what you can’t have.”
I want you.
I’ve always wanted you.
But he didn’t say it, because she would not hear him. Only what she wanted to hear.
“I’ve always wanted what I can’t have. But you mistake me if you think that’s the reason I can’t look away from you.”
And then he pushed away from the stone and turned to survey the trampled grass within the center of the henge. This was madness. He didn’t even know why he was bothering to… what? Charm her?
It was as if some part of him couldn’t resist her challenge.
“There’s no sign the gates have been opened again.” The familiar buzzing of the portal set his teeth on edge, but its song hadn’t changed from the night they fought to rescue Ishtar from her pursuers. “We have to assume those elves we ran afoul of in Iceland were Tyndyr and his little cohort.”
Soft footsteps stalked him. “One task checked off our list then. Gate is currently closed, and your watchers are in place.”
“As promised,” he pointed out.
“I wanted to see it for my own eyes.”She stared wistfully to the south.
He followed her gaze toward the mountains. “We’re not far from your home. And we need to take shelter tonight. If you wanted—”
“No.” Instantly, she was steel again. “Duty first. We head north.” Solveig glanced toward the darkening sky. “And we’d best leave now, before that storm hits, or else we’re going to have to take shelter somewhere along the way, and the others will be waiting for us at the edge ofZilittuterritory.”
Marduk let his hands drop to his trousers, though he paused there. “You, me, and a little hunting cabin in the hills? Sounds like fun. Just remember… I did offer to let you stay in yourownbed.”
“Really?” She offered him a sweet smile as she started undoing the buttons down the middle of her shirt. It gaped open, revealing a slash of olive skin all the way to her navel. “It sounds like you’ll have a cold ass, because you’ll be on the floor, Marduk.”
He sighed and turned around. “I should never have told you I was attracted to you.”
A smoky laugh assailed him from behind. “Oh, I knew you were attracted to me. And this isn’t torture, Marduk. Not yet. I told you… I haven’t even started.”
Her shirt hit him in the middle of the back, and then heat spilled over him from behind as she shifted into the sleek, scaled beast.
Marduk caught her shirt before it hit the ground and lifted it to his face. It smelled like her.
And he was hard again, a fact he was fairly certain she was aware of, considering the evildreki-like smile she bestowed upon him before she took to the skies.
8
Then
Marduk brokethe surface of the river, flinging his head back and raking water from his eyes as he strode toward shore. The mountain stream was bitterly cold. He’d found it on one of his solitary hikes, and since then, whenever the air at Harald’s court became too choking, he slipped away to find some peace.
