If he couldn’t go back, he’d be devastated. Indeed, so much stood between them conversation was like shouting across a chasm that grew wider by the hour.
When they got back to the boat, she could see he was tired. She showed him how to work the DVD recorder, so he could listen to words, and she put in a copy of The Searchers from Jake’s collection. A cowboy movie wouldn’t overwhelm Galen with dialogue at least. The dog plopped down at his feet with a sigh. She went out to make dinner.
This was the most domestic she’d been for four days in a row in forever. At least since her father died. At home her fridge was filled with Lean Cuisine dinners and pre-washed vegetable packs. Why cook for one? But this . . . it seemed . . . peaceful. At least when she wasn’t thinking about Galen’s dilemma, or whether Brad and Casey would find them. That underlying core of . . . rightness was growing. Was she getting sentimental? Was she . . . ?
Hell, she didn’t know what was happening to her anymore.
She took a bowl in to Galen. It was a stew, but homemade this time.
“Right kind of you, little lady,” he said in a perfect John Wayne drawl. The guy did have an ear for accents. His accent had been growing less pronounced as he listened to her speak.
She laughed. “You are dangerous.”
“What means this?” He looked askance.
“Uh . . . something or someone who gives others fear that something bad will happen.”
“Ahhh. Plihtlic.”
She considered. It sounded like “plight.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I am dangerous.” He looked up at her, his bowl forgotten. “You are dangerous.”
“Me?” she asked with a half laugh. “I am sooooo not dangerous.”
His gaze roved over her face. “I like laughter. Your laughter.”
He said it without an “f” sound in it and who knew how he thought it was spelled, but she knew what he meant. She felt herself blushing. “Laughter is always good.” She got her own bowl and sat beside him. The dog begged shamelessly, nosing her bowl and licking his lips. “You go away,” she ordered. Her words fell on oblivious ears. “You have food in the galley. Free feeding means your bowl, not mine. Now go away.” Nothing.
“Go.” Galen flicked a finger. To her astonishment, the dog went to the other side of the bed and lay down.
“Boy, you do have a way with dogs.”
He nodded. “It has always been so.” And then the look of shame flickered across his face. His expression went flat to hide it, and he turned to his stew. But he was still thinking about something. She could see a muscle work in his jaw.
How she wanted to know what caused that look. How she wanted to relieve whatever pained him so. She wanted to reach out to him, touch his shoulder. The feeling was almost overwhelming. It didn’t feel natural. She was losing herself. Or at least her self-control.
They grew silent, pretending to eat without thinking or feeling. What a lie. When she heard his spoon scrape against the bowl, she rose. He handed it to her and their eyes met and Lucy felt as though she were falling a long ways into icy blue waters that burned they were so cold. It took all she had to jerk away and hurry out the door.
Odin’s eye. What was he going to do?
She was a wicce and she had ensnared his soul. And it felt right. That was the worst of it. He wasn’t sure he cared to keep his soul, if giving it to her would make him feel thus. He was glad Egil’s axe had found his flesh, because only his wounds could possibly make her feel safe around him. And he wanted her around him. All the time.
So, what was he going to do?
He could feel she wanted him in spite of this Brad. But he couldn’t be her lapdog, dependent on her, answering to her beck and call, because she was more powerful than he in this time. He could have no value to her except what pleasure his body could provide her.
He grimaced to himself. When had that stopped his frolicking in bed with a winsome widow, or even a married woman whose husband was vikingr and who needed the services of a man? They took their pleasure of each other in bed and were done with it.
Mayhaps he could do the same with Lucy and be done with it. Once he had plunged himself inside her and loosed his seed, then she would not have this hold on him.
He knew then that she had been right. Danir did lie. He was lying to himself. If he bedded her, he would be lost. He began to throb as thoughts of bedding her had their usual effect.
He could hear her moving about in the little place for cooking food. He’d just shut the door. There was no use releasing his seed himself. He’d already proved that did not help. He’d have to just wait out his violent erection.
He felt the moon rise.
Could you feel the moon rise? But he did. Moonlight bathed the cabin through the small, high windows. It twisted inside him, a cold fire. His loins throbbed almost painfully inside his tight breeches. He rose from the bed against his will and went to the small passageway. A feeling of incredible urgency washed over him. Something was required of him. Something immediate and real. Things were wrong, somehow, and he had to set them right. He saw Lucy, standing in the moonlight, frozen, staring at the hatch. His gaze moved to the hatch and was caught, too.
The lights in the boat fizzled and went out. They were bathed in darkness. Galen’s gut trembled. Lucy must be trembling, too, because she dropped the pot she had been washing. It clattered to the floor. Galen knew that if he moved, he would race toward that hatch.
And his brain told him, whatever his heart and his loins were shouting, that he should not go out in the moonlight.
The lights in the cabin went out with a fizzle, leaving only the clear, pale moonlight streaming in through the ports. Lucy couldn’t get her breath. She was hurtling toward something that had been growing inside her, around her. It felt like destiny. She could refuse it. She had a choice. But she was standing on a precipice and everything would soon be very wrong if she made the wrong choice right here, right now. Her certainty was stark, as though illuminated by lightning.
But the sky had cleared. No storm, except the one inside her. So what had doused the lights? She felt Galen behind her. His physical presence overwhelmed the small space. Her thighs were wet and she throbbed, her pelvis aching. She didn’t know what to do. But she had to do something. She just stood there trembling until finally she couldn’t hold the pot in her hand.
It crashed. She held herself still for one long moment more. And then her head moved of its own accord. She turned to look at Galen. He shook, alternately flushing and going dead pale in the moonlight. His gaze jerked to hers.
Conflagration.
And she knew what she must do. It wasn’t what she’d thought.
She held out a hand. “Let’s go on deck.”
He looked alarmed, confused.
“You know it’s right.” She did. All would be well if they could but see the moon.
A taut invisible line stretched between them. She saw him struggle. She smiled, hand still extended. He closed his eyes, took a breath. She moved to touch him. He flinched under her hand. She didn’t flinch. She expected the firestorm of feeling that shot through her. It was just a more intense version of what she’d felt each time she touched him since he’d fallen against her on a battlefield in 912. His eyelids fluttered and opened.
“I fight no more,” he whispered.
She opened the hatch. They climbed the ladder single file, the dog wriggling out ahead of them. The moon was rising over the bay to the east. It had cleared the horizon, golden from the pollution in the air. It shone in eerie serenity. Clouds still laced the sky. The moon would be obscured soon, but just now it was sure of itself, eternal. It spread that sureness to her.