Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes filled with tears he knew she fought not to shed. “So you see, I do know the pain of losing something. Someone.”
He understood that pain. Lived it.
“I know that I can’t do anything with my life until I somehow fix this. Vindicate the memory of my family. Keep helping me, Osborn. Please,” she urged.
Osborn had left the village with plans and so much anticipation. He wanted Breena to follow a different path than the one he’d followed all his life. He was tired. Tired of his own pain and regret and thirst for a revenge he’d had to put off to raise his brothers. The weariness seeped down to his bones, and the little emotion he had left inside ached.
He didn’t want Breena to feel this way. To carry the burden of avenging the dead alone. To live what he lived.
He rubbed his hand at the throbbing muscles bunched at the base of his neck. He didn’t understand until this moment how much like him she actually was. She’d always burn with her need to make right what had happened to her family, because he always burned. “I’ll help you.”
Breena squeezed her eyes tight and her shoulders slumped with relief. “Thank you.”
He doubted she’d be thanking him for long.
THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON they spent in training, and Breena didn’t utter one complaint about pains or aches or stiffening muscles. She had survived. She’d convinced Osborn to continue helping her and she was grateful. Her magic had drawn her to the man who’d teach her how to fight who or what had killed her parents.
She’d have to dream her past again. Her body began to shake at the idea of revisiting that night of death, but it was the only way she could find the truth. Would Osborn hold her again tonight?
That evening the boys showed her how they prepared dinner while Osborn closed himself away in the storeroom off the side of the tiny kitchen.
“I can’t believe we’re having to show a girl how to make us dinner,” Bernt grumbled, but it was all in good-natured fun.
“Yes, I thought you would want to cook for us,” Torben added, and they all laughed.
“I’ll just show you how to dance in exchange.”
Two matching horrified expressions crossed their faces.
Osborn opened the door of the storeroom, and stuck his head out. A faint smile crossed his features when he saw her. “Breena, come here.”
There it was. An order for her to move toward him. She’d almost begun to miss them. Almost. But she was too curious about what exactly Osborn had been doing in that tiny space. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and moved toward where Osborn waited.
“I, uh…” he began, and stopped.
Was Osborn nervous? Breena hid a smile and angled her head inside the place Osborn had kept himself so busy. The store area was small to be sure; four of these rooms would fit inside her bedchamber at Elden. The walls stretched bare and there was nothing on the floor except a tiny blue rug, the color of the blue flowers that grew around the cottage. Not the kind a man would choose for himself, but exactly what a man would buy for a woman. Now she knew what had been inside one of those mysterious packages.
“Nothing much will fit in here but a mattress, but it will be private and all yours, Breena. If you want it.”
Osborn’s voice was solemn, and she knew he offered her more than just a tiny space inside his cottage. He was offering a place in his life. She nodded her head. “I do want it.”
“I have something else for you.” There was that smile again. Who knew her berserker warrior was such a gift giver? He came back carrying a small package. She hadn’t noticed this one earlier today. She untied the twine and the rough cloth fell away to reveal two glass bottles containing mysterious liquids.
“It’s shampoo and soap,” he told her.
Breena would have expected cleaning oil for her sword or a new knife, not something so distinctly feminine. She quickly popped off the cork, and inhaled the delicious scent of vanilla and alluring spices.
“Thought you might tire of smelling like a man.”
She replaced the cork, and hugged his gifts tight to her chest. “I can’t wait to use these. Tonight.”
Heat and hunger for her sharpened the features of his face. She lifted up on the tips of her toes, and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” And there was a promise in his voice that made her stomach quiver.
After dinner, she raced to the small clear spring not too far from the cabin. It wasn’t the lake, but it was certainly private. A fact she’d announced to all the berserker men earlier. The spring was hers.
She grabbed the washbasin and filled it with the clean spring water warmed by the sun and wet her hair. At home, she’d always used the floral soaps and scents her mother preferred, but what Osborn had chosen suited her infinitely better. She popped the lid and breathed in deeply of the scent he’d purchased for her. The soft sweet smell of the vanilla combined with the zest of faraway places. This was what Osborn liked, and she poured a small amount in her hand, and cleaned her hair. Did he view her as sweet with a touch of spice?
She ran the soap over her breasts, and the tips puckered. Her nipples did the same when Osborn kissed and licked her there. Breena ran the soap over her skin the way he caressed her breasts. She slipped a soapy finger between her thighs, touched where Osborn had kissed with his lips. Licked with his tongue. She gasped as she imagined him doing that again. Of her licking and kissing him.
Breena wanted that again. And more. He’d barred her from his dreams. Would he still?
OSBORN HADN’T MEANT to spy on her bath. He’d only needed to grab more firewood, but then he heard Breena’s gasp. The berserker in him roused, and he raced to ensure her safety. But Breena’s cry wasn’t that of a woman frightened, but of her deep arousal.
How much agony did one man have to endure? He leaned against the trunk of a tree, forcing his body to relax. Minutes passed, and she rounded the corner, stopping when she spotted him. Her cheeks were flushed, her bottom lip fuller. A fine sheen of water filmed her skin, and she wore only a towel held together loosely over her breasts.
Her face reddened further, and he knew. Knew that when she’d gasped earlier, she’d been caressing herself and thinking of him.
He had an answer to his earlier question. Apparently a man had to endure a lot of agony.
“Osborn, the soap you bought for me was…wonderful.”
Her voice was husky, like a woman not yet fulfilled. He imagined her sighing to him in those low tones as he drove into her.
She’s not yours.
Breena was loved and protected for another, certainly never a man like him. He was once destined to be something better than he was, an Ursan warrior. With all the honor and distinction that rank held. All he could offer her now was a legacy of shame and a life filled with the need for vengeance
Breena’s own steps were aimed squarely at that same path. He’d tried to dissuade her earlier.
Try harder.
But how could he when she was reaching out to him? Lifting her shoulder right under his nose? “It smells different on my skin than it does in the bottle.”
The scent of the soaps he’d bought smelled good, but Breena the woman smelled better. He was so close. Too close. He could nip at her shoulder. Run his tongue along that tantalizing curve of her back.
“I have a favor to ask.”
Gods, anything…if he could just keep breathing in her scent. Prolong the torture by imaging how he could curve his hand around her hip, drawing her backward to cup his erection.
She took a deep breath. “I have to go back to dream of my past, to the night of the siege.”