“Would it hurt you to give them a smile? To say something more than just orders?” She rounded on this fuming man of hers. “Why are you so angry?”
Osborn stalked toward her, grabbed her hand and pushed it down between his legs. “This is why. Because all I can think of is shoving my cock into your mouth. Driving it into your body. Me on top. You on top. You on all fours like the beasts in the woods.” He dropped her hand. “Don’t be alone with me. Again.”
The warning had returned.
“Be ready to work after lunch,” he tossed at her as his long strides took him into the privacy of the woods.
Breena began to tremble. All those things, every word that she knew Osborn meant to sound as a threat…she desired them, too.
OSBORN HADN’T BEEN exaggerating when he’d told her to be prepared to work. Sweat ran down her temples and covered her back. He sparred with her, parrying and thrusting his sword. Expecting her to block his blade.
“You just died right then,” he told her as his stick touched her shoulder. “Again.”
She raised her stick, holding it in the position he’d taught her, but he powered through her defenses, his mock blade at her neck. “You’re dead.”
Breena shoved him away and whacked him across the legs with her stick. Then stopped and held her stick at a point just above his heart. “One plunge and you’d have taken your last breath.”
“True, if you’d awoken from the dead. But it was a good surprise attack. You need more.”
They bouted again and again with Breena losing every battle. “How do you expect to render justice with skills like this?” His voice was almost a taunt. He was trying to make her give up.
“My opponents won’t all be Ursan warriors with a thorn in their side.”
“Oh, it’s way bigger than a thorn,” he told her crudely.
She shoved him away. “Cool off, Osborn. Your temper is your own problem. Stop making this all my fault.”
Osborn dropped his stick. “Practice is over.”
“Good,” she called after him. Wishing she had something more cutting to say at her disposal. Breena wiped a tear from her cheek. Who knew she could cry out of sheer irritation? She marched back to the cabin, grabbed the soap he’d given her, hating the scent as she bathed. Breena quickly dressed, needing to get as far away from the cottage and its inhabitants as fast as she could.
Torben had showed her a path that led to the bushes where they gathered ripe berries. That sounded just as good as any place. Besides the bushes, she discovered several patches of wildflowers, and she reached down to pluck a petal from one, rubbing it between her fingers and releasing the sweet scent.
How long she waited there among the flowers she didn’t know, but she stiffened when she heard the footsteps she now recognized as Osborn’s. He rounded a tree, his hair still wet. Probably from a soaking in the lake. Her cheeks heated at the memory of what they’d last shared at the lake, and she faced the other way.
He crouched beside her, stretching his legs out in front of him. “I’ve never been in a situation such as this,” he told her after several moments of silence.
She expected this was Osborn’s attempt at an apology, and her anger dissipated. Breena had been instructed how to behave on every conceivable social situation. But her mother had definitely missed this one.
Osborn slid something big toward her, and she glanced his way. It was one of those mysterious packages he’d brought home with him after his trip into the village. “I, uh, got this for you.”
She loved gifts, and as surprising and perfect as Osborn’s first present to her was, Breena couldn’t wait to see what was inside this one. She pulled the end of the twine and smoothed the protective material away to reveal fine green fabric.
“It’s a cloak,” he told her. “The color reminded me of your eyes.”
Her throat tightened. Courtiers had said charming things to her over the years, but Osborn’s compliment was the most perfect. Because she knew it originated from his heart. Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them back. How could one man send her emotions and the reason for her tears careening from one extreme to another? And so quickly?
Breena spread the cloak around her. The fashions she wore at home in Elden were much more elaborate, with tiny embroidered flowers and crystals and other small gems sewn right into the designs. But this was far more beautiful to her than anything she’d ever worn in the past. “I love it,” she told him.
“There’s a matching gown.”
Breena reached for it, her fingers finding something round and hard instead. She plucked it out of the package to see a golden arm cuff in the shape of a snake. What an unusual adornment for jewelry. She’d never seen such a thing. Was this an Ursan custom?
“It reminded me of your first fight. How you defeated those snakelike scouts, and saved my life.”
Now it made sense. Breena slid the armband into place above her elbow. “I will never take this off,” she vowed to him. Just like her timepiece.
Possession quickly flowed into his brown eyes.
“Thank you,” she told him as she stood. Breena clutched the gown to her chest, twirling around with the fabric. “I will wear this gown the day I return home, Osborn. The day our house is restored, and my brother Nicolai is crowned king of Elden. That’s how much your gift means to me.”
“Elden?” he asked, the color draining from his face. All traces of possession faded from his eyes. His gaze narrowed, and his shoulders tensed. “Did you say Elden?”
Breena nodded slowly. “That’s my home. My father is—” she swallowed “—was king.”
Osborn sprang to his feet. Away from her. Something icy inched down her back, and she hugged the gown closer to her chest. Needing protection. Osborn no longer gazed upon her with desire and possession in his eyes, as the man she was growing to love. No, now he looked at her with something close to hate in his eyes.
“It all makes sense now,” he threw at her. His words biting and hard.
“What does?” she asked, marveling at the newest change.
“I should have known when Hagan told me of Elden’s fall so close to your arrival. He’d even mentioned the missing heirs. You. That is why you never told me where you were from. Elden. You knew what your people had done to mine.”
“What are you talking about?”
Osborn made a scoffing sound. “Oh, you might have a problem with your memory, Breena, but not me. I remember everything. Your father chose the time of his attack well. I’ll give him that. The Bärenjagd, when the warriors journeyed to our sacred bear lands. Our village was defenseless. It’s a time of truce,” he shouted, his voice anguished.
Breena didn’t know what to say, what to do. She sucked in her bottom lip, hoping he’d continue with his story. To release all that anger before she responded to him.
“Elden was our ally. Your father saw to that,” he accused. “We arrived to a massacre. And an ambush. I killed as many of your people as I could. Enjoyed watching your dead sizzle in the sunlight when it came. I taught you to fight. I brought you into my home, I shared—” He cut off his own words. “All this time you knew. You encouraged me to share my stories of the people your family killed.” He stalked toward her. “Your lies won’t protect you now.”
Breena shook her head, backing away from him. “That’s not it at all. Something inside me said not to mention Elden, some instinct.” The evasion sounded terrible even to her. “But I swear, Osborn, it’s not because of that. My father is an honorable king. He’s a diplomat, not a fighter.”
Osborn made a brutal sound. “Tell that to my mother. To my dead sister. I swore vengeance on you. On all of Elden. And I kept my hands off of you. Thinking you were something more than…Elden.”
The way he said her homeland packed a punch of bitterness and venom. His hands fisted at his sides, and he lunged at her.
Breena stumbled backward, her feet catching in the folds of fabric of her gown. She landed against a tree; the rough bark poked into her shoulder blades. She could go no farther. The man had taught her many techniques when in battle with an opponent bigger and larger than herself. He probably never expected her to use any of those on him. Breena cupped his cheek. Distracting him. “Osborn…”