Instead of a splash, my ears filled with a loud curse, and I whirled to find a man standing waist-deep in the fjord, rubbing at his cheek. Which I’d clearly struck with the fish.
“Was the fish hurt?” I demanded, searching for sign of the creature, concerned I’d killed it in my attempt to save it. “Did it swim away?”
The man ceased rubbing his face and gave me an incredulous stare. “What about me?”
I stopped looking for the fish and gave him a closer look, my face instantly warming. Even with an impact-reddened cheek, he was alarmingly attractive. Tall and broad of shoulder, he appeared to be only a handful of years older than my twenty years. His black hair was shaved on the sides, the rest pulled back in a short tail behind his tattooed head. He was all high cheekbones and chiseled lines, and while most men wore beards, he bore only the scruff of a few days’ absence from a razor. He wore no shirt, and water dripped off a naked torso corded with thick muscle, his sun-darkened skin marked with dozens of inky tattoos. A warrior, undoubtedly, and even without a weapon I suspected he was a significant threat.
Realizing that I hadn’t responded, I crossed my arms. “What sort of fool swims in the fjord when the ice has just broken up? Are you trying to freeze to death?” To emphasize my point, I jerked my chin at the thick slab of ice floating past him.
“That is not much of an apology.” He ignored the ice and moved toward the water’s edge. “And it seems I’m more at risk from flying fish than freezing.”
I took a wary step back, recognizing his faint accent. It was rare for Nordeland to raid this early in the spring, but not impossible, and I glanced up and down the fjord, looking for drakkar and men, but the water was empty. Moving my gaze to the far side of the fjord, I scanned the thick forest rising up the side of the mountain.
There.
Motion caught my eye, and I froze, searching for the source. But whatever it was had disappeared, likely nothing more than small game.
“I’m not a raider, if that’s your concern.” He stopped knee-deep in the water, his teeth bared in an amused grin. “Only a man in need of a bath.”
“So you say.” I cursed myself for leaving my knife on the cutting board. “You could be lying to me. Distracting me while your fellows move on my village to slaughter and pillage.”
He winced. “Fine, fine. You have caught me out.”
I tensed, ready to scream a warning to those within earshot, when he added, “My clansmen said to me, ‘You are not such a good fighter but you are very good-looking, so your task is to swim across the fjord to flirt with the beautiful woman throwing fish. With her distracted, we will be safe to attack.’？” He sighed. “It was my sole task, and already I have failed miserably.”
My cheeks flushed, but growing up with an older brother meant I could give as good as I got. “Of course you failed. You have as little talent for flirting as you do for fighting.”
He tilted back his head and laughed, the sound deep and rich, and despite all my intentions to remain on guard and wary, a smile worked its way onto my lips. Gods, but he was attractive—as though Baldur himself had escaped Hel’s grasp in the underworld and stood before me.
“You aim as well with words as you do with fish, woman,” he answered, his shoulders still shaking with mirth as he walked out of the water, soaked trousers clinging to the hard muscle of his legs and arse. “I am so wounded, I must remain on this side of the fjord forever, as my companions will never take me back.”
This close, I gained an appreciation for just how large he was, head and shoulders taller than me and twice my breadth, droplets of seawater rolling down his slick skin. I should tell him to go, to leave, for I was wed and this was my husband’s land, but instead I looked him up and down. “What makes you think I wish to keep you? You cannot fight. You cannot flirt. You cannot even catch fish when they are thrown right at you.”
He pressed a hand to the knotted muscles of his stomach, pretending to double over as he gasped, “A mortal blow.” Dropping to his knees before me, he looked up with a smirk, the sun illuminating eyes a shade of green like the first leaves of spring. “Before you finish me off, allow me to prove that I’m not entirely devoid of skills.”
If anyone saw us like this, there’d be Hel to pay if they told Vragi. And perhaps I deserved it, for I was a married woman. Married to a man I loathed with every bit of my being but whom I’d never be free of, no matter how much I wished otherwise. So I said, “What skills could you possibly have that I might be interested in?”