He understood that. He was drawn to her. He wanted her as he had never wanted a woman, not because he had not spilled his seed of late, not because he was dependent on her. That was abhorrent to him still. He needed Lucy in such a deep way that . . .
It was if some foreign thing possessed him, growing inside him and straightening his cock. Even now, as he watched her reach to place a dish in a high cupboard, the curve of her breast made a drumbeat in his loins. He had desired many women in his life. But this was something else, growing more urgent, more insistent every moment. He needed to make love to Lucy. He needed to protect her. Claim her. Something inside him said that if he did, everything would be all right.
As he watched her silhouette, he saw her nipples peak again. She was aware of him. Her eyes slid to his. He saw both lust and fear there, echoes of the unfamiliar emotions circling inside him. She stared at him, and he could not look away.
He sucked in a breath, almost a gasp. A thought chased itself around inside his head. This was no ordinary lust. It felt like a force on its own, apart from him. Was she a wicce indeed? Did she bespell him? He barely suppressed an outraged laugh. Not what his mother wanted for him when she named him Galen, meaning “bespelled one.”
This spell was making him lose his way. He belonged in another time. Lucy was only a means to an end. Contentment was a trap. He must go back as soon as he could to a time when he had value that he might fulfill whatever destiny he had left.
Or maybe he had a new destiny. To be imprisoned by this Brad and his friends, tortured as in Kiev. Only a fearful outline of Galen’s destiny was visible, as though a beast approached through mist. The threads of the Norns, who wove men’s destiny, had been broken by Lucy’s time machine and might never be put right again.
He shook himself. All men had fear. But men of value pushed down their fear and acted. His action now was to learn the language and get back to strength.
He jerked his gaze away from her witch green eyes. He mustn’t lose his soul to her.
He stood abruptly. “I must sleep.”
She blinked, as though coming to herself. “Yes. Of course. Rest well.” She turned away, her blush creeping up her throat into her face. It made him want to kiss away her embarrassment.
And mayhaps to lose himself forever.
He stumbled aft and shut the cabin door, fumbled at his jeans, pulled his shirt over his head with his left hand and down his injured shoulder, and struggled out of his jeans and boxers. His erection, hard as an oak staff, sprang free. He eased himself down, naked on the bed, on his back so not even the blankets could touch his rod and aggravate his condition. The throb in his shoulder and thigh was pale in comparison to the tight beat of need in his loins. He was sweating, Loki take him, just at the thought of Lucy in the next room, practically outside the door, blushing, wanting him.
He thought of other things. Guthrum’s son. The battle. It didn’t matter. Lucy fought her way into his brain—the way her naked breasts moved beneath the green shirt this morning, the way her lips opened to his on the deck in the wind for all to see.
He groaned.
There was nothing for it. He grabbed his rod and jerked at himself without mercy until his loins contracted and he spurted hot semen across his belly. That would keep him from losing his soul to the green-eyed witch.
But all it did was make him miserable. An emptiness crept into his belly as though he had desecrated his destiny.
Saturday
Lucy was out of the shower and dressed by the time Galen got up. She’d been so relieved last night when he went to bed early and removed the temptation to march over to where he sat and kiss him again that she hadn’t even tried to disinfect his wounds.
And if relief left her feeling bereft, well, at least she’d won the battle with herself. She had won, hadn’t she? Then why did it feel like a devastating loss? She’d tossed her pepper spray into the nightstand drawer in disgust. Not only would she probably not resist if he came into her bed, but he obviously wasn’t going to come. And he didn’t.
Now he came out of the aft cabin like a tousled Norse god, naked and glowering, and marched into the head with a grunt of “good morning.” He carried a batch of clothes under one arm. His genitals were full, if not fully erect.
Lucy blew out a breath and tried turning her attention to the sizzling bacon whose smell was no doubt what had brought him out of his lair. That probably didn’t conceal her blush. Damn her fair coloring. And damn the feeling that seeing him naked and rising put between her legs. She was almost in pain, so suddenly that it seemed that someone had just flipped a switch. Great. How was she going to deal with this constant response to him?
The head flushed. The shower started. Her imagination kicked into high gear. This was just untenable.
She realized that the stitches on his thigh had been slightly red. Probably from the irritation of rubbing on his jeans. She sighed. Okay. She’d cut some bandages for his thigh and give him the Betadine and the hydrogen peroxide solution. He was well enough to take care of himself at this point. She gathered materials, waited until she heard the shower shut off, then opened the door a crack and thrust the supplies into the steam.
“Bandages for your thigh.” She cleared her throat to get the gravel out of her voice. “You can tend your wounds yourself today.”
Did his hands have to brush against hers as he took the supplies?
“Thonc . . . Thanks, Lucy,” he growled, then cleared his throat. They seemed to be afflicted with the same problem this morning.
Lucy snatched back her hand and shut the door with a bang. A month until she heard from Jake? Well, more than three weeks. She was stuck here with Galen until then. And after? There must be some way out of this predicament.
Galen’s progress was truly amazing. Agatha Christie’s phrase “mind like a bacon slicer” occurred to Lucy. He remembered all the words she had taught him with very little repetition. He seemed to be able to use them almost immediately in sentences. He had gotten the hang of using Latin roots to understand the meaning of many English words. His accent was still pronounced, but he was pretty much talking in whole sentences without a lot of stopping to figure out words anymore. She swept the crumbs from their sandwiches off the chart and rolled it up. They had hardly used it all morning as he progressed faster and faster.
“Enough for now.”
He sat back. The ports had condensation on the inside. Probably from the heat he and Lucy generated between them. If only her attraction to him would fade as fast as his language progressed. She kept what distance she could in the close quarters, but she couldn’t stop her blushes, or the feeling between her legs. She couldn’t not look at him, or smell his sweet, clean man-scent after his shower. And the cords and blue sweater he’d put on were . . .
Well, she wasn’t going to think about how they made him look.
And he wasn’t helping, either. The heat in his blue eyes when he looked at her, the fact that he couldn’t keep them off her as he repeated her words . . . Well, the whole lesson had been torture. Breakfast was torture. Lunch was torture. She was practically squirming in her seat with the desire to kiss him, feel his soft lips and his hard muscle. Squirming only made things worse.
“Do you feel up to a walk?” she asked.
He looked as relieved as she felt when he answered “Ja. Walk is good.”
Jackets were taken from lockers. She got her bag, just in case. “I saw a trail along the bay when we drove out yesterday.” He wrote “yesterday” with lots of g’s.