“Then why did neither of us tell him?”
“Because it wasn’t necessary!” Bjorn threw up his hands, looking away. “It didn’t mean anything.”
I flinched, then tried to cover it by shifting my feet. Wasted effort because Bjorn’s eyes narrowed as he said, “What more is there to say?”
Everything.
It would be easier to shrug and say nothing than to admit the truth. Easier to leave the conversation as it stood and walk away, my pride intact.
Except that would be the act of a coward who’d rather lie and pretend than own the truth, and that wasn’t who I was. Or rather, that wasn’t who I wanted to be.
“It wasn’t nothing. Not—” My voice cracked, my chest painfully tight. “Not to me.” My eyes burned and though the last thing I wanted to do was cry, I could sooner have stopped my heart from beating than hold my tears in check, hot droplets rolling down my cheeks. “I wanted to do what we did. Wanted you.”
Bjorn went still, not even seeming to breathe.
I tried to suck in a breath to calm myself but my whole body shuddered. I was supposed to be a warrior. A leader. The woman who’d unite Skaland beneath the rule of a king. Yet I couldn’t get through a conversation without crying like a child. “I know you know this,” I said, struggling to speak without my breath catching on every word. “That you’re excusing my actions to spare me shame and make things easier for us both. I know I should feel grateful for that, but…”
“Freya.” His hands cupped my face, thumbs brushing away my tears, but I pushed him away because his touch would shatter what remained of my composure.
“I am married to Snorri.” The words came out in a rush of breath, and I squeezed my eyes shut. “He is your father, and while you might not always see eye-to-eye, I know you are loyal to him. Which means my behavior disrespected you both. You were trying to protect me, whereas I…I…”
Then Bjorn’s lips were on mine.
I gasped, my eyes snapping open as my back struck the wall of the ravine. His hands caught my wrists, holding them above my head even as his hips pressed hard against mine, holding me in place. “Bjorn—”
He silenced me, tongue delving into my mouth and stroking over mine, stoking the heat that had already ignited between my thighs. “I,” he whispered, biting at my jaw, then my throat. “I, I, I, Freya. You love that word because you relish taking the blame for everything, whether it is your fault or not.”
My eyes shifted left, looking down the ravine, because all it would take was one of the hunters or foragers seeing for us to be doomed. We needed to stop this. But as he ground against me, any thought of leaving evaporated.
“I came up with the plan. I kissed you first.” His mouth claimed mine, sucking and stroking and biting. “I touched your perfect breasts.” He pressed my left wrist against my right, gripping them both easily with one hand so that he could run the other up my side, his thumb rubbing over my peaked nipple.
His stubbled cheek brushed against mine, his breath tickling my ear as he said, “And don’t you dare tell me that it was respect for my father that you felt pressed between your thighs that night.”
It hadn’t been then. And it wasn’t now.
No, what I felt was the thick ridge of his hard cock pressing through his trousers as he lifted me with one arm, putting me back where I’d been that night in Fjalltindr. Desire throbbed at the apex of my thighs, and I ground against him, hunting the release I’d been denied before.
Bjorn groaned into my throat and released my wrists. Freed, I wrapped my arms around his neck, unfastening the tie holding his hair and then tangling my fingers into its silken lengths.
Why couldn’t I resist him? Why was I so cursedly weak?
Bjorn gripped my arse with one hand, holding me in place against him, his other hand cupping the side of my face. “Not burying my cock inside you that night almost broke me,” he growled. “I wanted you the moment I first set eyes on you. I wanted you in Fjalltindr. I want you now, and tomorrow, and all the tomorrows, Freya.”
His breath seared my skin as he said my name. As he said the words that had echoed through my darkest fantasies about my deepest desires. Not just one time but every time.
Gods, but I wanted this. Wanted him.
The crunch of footfalls on the forest floor split the silence and we both jerked away from each other, Bjorn casting his eyes upward. Neither of us spoke for a long time, then he muttered, “Was just a deer.”