Dream of Me/Believe in Me

sense, should—
    She'd hurt herself struggling against him, true enough. Her whole body ached, but now that she forced herself to think about it, he'd actually held her rather gently. Even when he tossed her down on the pallet, he'd already lowered her most of the way first.
    He'd torn off her clothes.
    Accidentally?
    Cymbra shook her head in amazement. She couldn't believe she was actually arguing with herself about the Viking's actions. Her situation could hardly be worse, yet here she was making excuses.
    Oh, yes, it could have been worse! He left. He didn't rape or brutalize me in any way.
    No, he'd just left her to freeze to death, naked in the hold of his ship. She was a raving fool to think anything of him but the worst. She was going to die horribly. If she had any sense at all, she would use whatever time she had left to pray.
    She tried, she really did, but the familiar, comforting words wouldn't come. It was hard enough just to keep from screaming. She pulled herself up far enough to crouch in a corner, shivering, trying very hard not to cry. She wanted to die with courage and before her mind was crushed by pain she could not bear.
    So deep was she in anguished reflection that Cymbra didn't hear the hatch open or the footsteps approaching. She had only the briefest moment to realize she was no longer alone before something very large and furry dropped over her.
    An animal.
    She screamed and started up, trying to shove it off.
    “Stop that,” Wolf said. He crouched beside her, clasping her flailing hands, his deep voice oddly soothing. “It's a cloak.” Patiently, as though she might still not understand, he added, “To keep you warm.” He paused, then said dryly, “And to protect your modesty.”
    A cloak. Not an animal. Slowly, Cymbra ran her fingers over the fur. She couldn't see very well, Wolf himself was little more than a very large, dark shape, but she could feel the luxurious warmth that enveloped her. She had never felt anything so enticingly soft. Fur it was, but not of any common sort.
    “Ermine,” he said as though he'd heard her thoughts. “From the lands of the Russka.”
    He'd brought her an ermine cloak.
    Truly, she didn't understand this man at all.
    “Thank you,” she said with dignity.
    He sighed, a long drawn-out sound of male endurance. “Listen to me.” He waited to make sure she was doing just that. He was very close; she could feel his heat, greater even than that of the cloak, and had a quick, shocking thought of being covered not by ermine but by that big, long, hard-muscled body.
    “Obey me and I will not hurt you.”
    Glad of the darkness that hid her fiery cheeks, Cymbra curled farther into the warmth of the cloak. With honesty, if not great sense, she said, “I'll try.”
    When he did not reply to what another man might have taken as less than full obeisance, she gathered her courage and looked at him directly. His eyes were really more silver than gray, at least in the filtered starlight. She had the odd sensation of having seen them before, somewhere, sometime. In a dream, perhaps.
    So softly as barely to stir the air, Cymbra murmured, “Who are you?”
    He rose, standing very tall and powerful above her, cast in shadow and stone. She felt those silvery eyestouching all along the length of her body. In the still darkness, broken only by the lapping of deep water against the hull of the dragon ship, his voice was like velvet drawn over granite. “Wolf Hakonson.”
    Cymbra gasped. Her senses reeled. Surely God could not be so cruel? Yet, even as she struggled not to believe, she knew the truth of it. Indeed, it all made a strange kind of sense. Who else could he be?
    Who but the most feared Viking ever to come out of the northlands? The man before whom even the Danes trembled. The mighty warlord known the length and breadth of England by the name he had earned in blood and fire—the Scourge of the Saxons.
    And she was his prisoner. Wrapped in ermine and still oddly unhurt, at that moment Cymbra knew herself truly to be beyond hope. She could think of only one more question to ask before fate closed around her.
    “Why?”

Chapter THREE

    T HE LADY CYMBRAS REACTION TO HIS NAME was most satisfying. Yet Wolf was disappointed all the same, wishing she wouldn't indulge in the ploy of pretended innocence. Somehow he'd expected better of her. But then, he had to remember that she was only a woman.
    He went down on his haunches beside her and, without thinking,