LITMIR.BIZ

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turned and went through the door to the bedroom, closing it quietly behind him.

      Hauk tossed his duffel on the bed and strode to the bathroom, pulling off his clothes as he went. He turned on the shower and stepped into the stall with the water running cold.

      It wasn’t cold enough. It could never be cold enough. The ice-crusted Sherynborn—the river that ran through the Vildelund at home—in dead of winter wouldn’t be cold enough.

      He stayed in there for a long time. It didn’t help, not in any measurable way. It didn’t cure him of the yearning that was eating him alive. But the beating of the cool water on his skin provided something of a distraction, at least.

      When he got out, he toweled dry and then he spent an hour on the dragon dials, a series of strenuous exercises consisting of slow, controlled movements combined with precise use of the breath. He’d learned the dials at his mother’s knee. There were, after all, some benefits to being born the bastard of a well-trained and highly skilled woman warrior. Fighting women took great pains to develop control and flexibility in order to make up for their lesser physical strength. A woman warrior sometime in the 17th century had created the discipline of the dials.

      All his life, the dials had served him well. They brought him physical exhaustion and mental clarity, always.

      But not tonight. Nothing seemed to help him tonight.

      He showered again—quickly this time—to wash off the sweat. Then he stood in the middle of the bedroom and stared at the shut door to the central living area and tried not to think how easy it would be to pull it open, to stride across the space between his room and hers.

      A knock and she would answer. She would open her arms to him. She had made that so very, very clear.

      Somehow, he kept his hand from reaching for the door. He climbed naked into the bed with thoughts that were scattered. Wild.

      He stared toward the window opposite the foot of the bed. He’d left the blinds open. The rain beat against the single wide pane, streaming down in glittering trails, like veils of liquid jewels. When the lightning speared through the sky, the room would flash as bright as day. He tried to concentrate on that, on the beauty of the storm.

      But he was not successful. Images of the woman kept haunting him. He arrived, constantly, at the point of thinking her name.

      He’d already deliberately disobeyed his king, left her to her own devices for this entire night. She might turn and run. He’d have to track her down, or it would not go well for him.

      But she’d said she wouldn’t run. And in his heart, he believed her.

      The chance she might flee was not the true problem here. His climbing from this bed and going to her—that was the problem.

      His own mind, usually a model of order and discipline, betrayed him now. It mattered not what orders he gave it, it would continue straying to forbidden thoughts of what it might be like, for just one night, to call her his love.

      He lay there and he stared into the darkness. He listened to the storm raging outside and he tried not to see her face, not to think her forbidden name.

      And in the end, it was as if all his efforts to deny her had only conjured her to come to him.

      There was a soft knock at the door.

      It fell to him to call out, Go away.

      But he said nothing. He lay there. Waiting.

      Slowly, the door opened and there she was in her big pink shirt.

      He sat up. And he said the word he’d vowed to himself that he would never say—her name, unadorned.

      ‘‘Elli.’’

      Chapter Eleven

      Elli.

      It was the first time, ever, that he’d called her by her given name alone. Her chest felt too small, suddenly, to hold her hungry heart.

      The light from the room behind her spilled in across the bed. The blankets covered him to the waist.

      He was… so beautiful and savage to her civilized eyes, with his broad smooth chest and the lightning-bolt tattoo slashing across it through a thicket of vines and dragons and swords. And his eyes… Oh, they were the saddest, loneliest eyes she’d ever seen.

      ‘‘Hauk, is it all right if I come in?’’ Even now, after he’d at last dared to call her Elli, she more or less expected him to send her away.

      But what she dreaded didn’t happen. Instead, he flicked on the lamp beside him and held out his hand.

      With a glad cry, she ran for the bed and scrambled up onto it, aiming straight for his arms. He wrapped them around her with an eagerness that warmed her to her soul. He stretched out on his back and she settled against him, cuddling close, with only his blankets and her big shirt between them now. She laid her head against his heart and noted with a surge of slightly silly joy that it seemed to beat right in time with hers.

      She felt his lips brush the crown of her head. And she snuggled even closer with a long, happy sigh.

      ‘‘Maybe I’ll never move,’’ she threatened tenderly. ‘‘I’ll just lie here, forever, holding on to you….’’

      Hauk made a low sound in his throat and kissed her hair again. Most important, he kept those warm strong arms around her. How absolutely lovely. To rest in his embrace, to feel his kiss in her hair, his heart beating a little fast like her own, but steady and true, too, under her ear.

      She spoke dreamily, without lifting her head. ‘‘Hauk, you probably won’t believe this, but I came in here to talk to you.’’

      ‘‘Ah,’’ he said. ‘‘To talk. Always a danger, when you want to talk.’’

      She faked an outraged cry and lightly punched his arm.

      He stroked her hair. ‘‘Go ahead then. Say what you came to say.’’

      She lifted her head. ‘‘I want to suggest something to you. And I want you to really think about it before you tell me it’s not possible….’’ He was looking at her. And she was looking back at him. And suddenly what she’d intended to say was the last thing on her mind. ‘‘Oh, Hauk…’’

      He said her name again, ‘‘Elli…’’ The sound thrilled her.

      With a hungry cry, she scooted up the glorious terrain of his big body to claim those beautiful lips.

      Lightning flashed and thunder rolled as her mouth touched his. Elli didn’t know or care which storm—the one outside or the sweeter, hotter one between them—had caused the bright pulsing behind her eyelids, the lovely, echoing, booming crash that seemed to shake her to the core. She kissed him harder, longer, deeper.

      And he didn’t hold back. He kissed her tenderly, passionately. He made her stomach hollow out and all her thoughts melt away to nothing but joy and a longing to be his. She rubbed herself against him, shamelessly eager, and she felt his response to her, knew that he was ready, so ready, to be hers.

      But then he was capturing her chin, making her look at him. ‘‘We are foolish, worse than foolish.’’

      She couldn’t argue fast enough. ‘‘Oh, no. That’s not so. Everything will work out. Just you wait and see.’’

      His fine mouth curved upward. ‘‘You are, truly, an American.’’

      She was so delighted to see his expression, she forgot to be irked at his superior tone. ‘‘Oh, Hauk. Look at that. I swear that’s a smile you’ve got on your mouth.’’

      ‘‘What man wouldn’t smile after kissing you?’’

      She touched his lips, so soft when the rest of him was anything but. So soft and so perfectly designed for kissing…

      ‘‘Oh,

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