“How do I know that?” She eyed him wearily.
Leif quieted the anxious berserker. “You don’t. But I won’t.” He slowly reached out again and placed his palm against her forehead. “You are a little flushed, but I don’t think you have a fever.”
“I’m fine. I should be out of your hair soon. Irja says I’m recovering quickly.”
Leif ignored the stab of anxiety in his chest and the pacing berserker. “There’s no need to rush. You are welcome to stay as long as you’d like.” Something of his frustration must have crept into his voice. Naya peeked up from the screen with a puzzled expression.
Leif hurried his words. “We still don’t know who the man at the bus stop was.” He might not want to deal with the bond, but he needed to keep her close until he figured out a solution.
She blinked a few times. “Thanks, but I have clients I need to attend to.”
“What kind of clients?” He took a step closer, crowding her.
“Customers, for work.” Her tone implied he was slow-witted.
He refused to rise to the bait. “What kind of work?”
“Security stuff.”
So, she wasn’t going to share. He’d find out eventually. He always managed to charm answers out of women. He crouched down to her level.
She directed her full gaze on him. “What are you doing in that lab?” Her voice wobbled a little.
“Irja uses it to prepare medicine and other treatments.”
“What kind of treatments?”
He shrugged. “Whatever ailments my warriors bring her. It can be anything from an upset stomach to an open wound or a broken bone.”
“Why do you need such an elaborate setup if you treat only minor injuries?”
He studied her for a few seconds before answering. “You are very observant. Are you familiar with labs?”
“Don’t answer my question with a question. I know that game.”
Leif smiled. She did indeed. She was playing it right now. “Then ask me what you really want to know.”
“What makes you different from other humans?” Her dark-blue eyes remained steady.
The question took him by surprise. Both the directness of it and that she thought them human. “We are stronger and live longer, but are mainly the same as you.” He tucked a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear, turning the motion into a caress of her cheek.
She held very still. “And the wolverines in the alley?” she asked.
Through the själsfrände bond he could feel her heightened anxiety, her increased heart rate. He lowered his hand and leaned back a little to create more space between them. “Also different, but not the same as us.” The rapid pacing of her heart decreased. “At least that’s what we think. They are new creatures we haven’t seen before.” He stared at her mouth. The thumping of her heart picked up.
“How did you become different?” She licked her lips.
“It’s a very long story.” Compelled to touch her skin again, he raised his hand.
She leaned out of reach. “That’s what Irja said. She also said you would tell me the details.”
He doubted very much those were the words Irja had used, but he’d have to share some of their secrets to get Naya to trust him. “All you need to know for right now is that I will protect you, and so will my people.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “Your people?”
“I am the king of these Norse warriors.” He focused on her lips and leaned in slowly.
“Warriors?” She was annoyed, but her lips parted and her gaze locked on to his lips.
At her heated gaze his cock rose, impatient behind the restriction of his jeans. “Will you tell me what makes you different?” he asked, leaning closer.
“I don’t know,” she whispered before he claimed her lips with his own.
Through their bond he felt the lie in her words. She may not know all the details, but she knew more than she was sharing. He forgot about the importance of truth when she returned the kiss and his berserker howled with pleasure.
Her lips parted farther and he thrust his tongue into her velvety mouth.
Odin’s ravens, her lips fitted his perfectly. Heat rushed through his body. His cock stood at full attention.
The berserker egged him on. Mine, mine, mine.
She moaned in the back of her throat.
Sweat beaded on his forehead. He half rose, leaning over her.
The laptop slid slowly to the floor as he grabbed her ass to draw her closer. His hands fit perfectly around her surprisingly lush curves. A growl of pleasure from the berserker escaped through his mouth as she pushed up his shirt. He pulled her to the edge of the chair and pressed his cock against the sweet vee between her thighs.
It wasn’t enough. He was about to lift her when Harald burst through the door.
Growling, he turned toward his friend. The words scolding Harald for invading Naya’s bedroom died on his lips when he saw his stallare’s face.
Leif stood, pretending not to hear Naya’s disappointed sigh. Shielding her with his body, he tugged down his shirt. “What have you found?”
Harald seemed too preoccupied to notice what he’d interrupted. “Ulf got an email sent from Per’s phone. It’s a ransom demand.”
“A kidnapping?” This had never happened before.
Harald nodded. “We’re tracing the message, but emails from phones are hard to pin down.”
Naya snorted.
Leif and Harald turned toward her.
“It’s not hard.” She bent down to pick up her laptop. A frown marred her still-flushed face. “You just can’t do it with computer IPs. You have to use the encoded cell matrix in the message and triangulate the towers it bounced off.”
Her words made no sense to Leif. Judging from Harald’s open mouth, he too thought she spoke a foreign language.
“Do you know how to do this?”
She waved a hand in the air but didn’t look up from the screen as she answered. “Sure.”
Harald lasted all of five seconds before exploding. “Then get off your butt, jänta. Do the cell matriculate-whatever. Help us find Per.”
Naya flipped the laptop closed. “Show me the email.”
* * *
Crap. She’d almost had sex with Leif. One kiss lit her on fire and she let him do anything he wanted. She could still feel the imprint of his fingers on her ass from where he grabbed her and pulled her against his hardness. And what a hardness that had been, wide and long. She’d wanted to rub herself against him like a cat.
And it wasn’t just her body that responded to his dangerous combination of hotness and confidence. Her emotions were all over the place when he was near. She wanted to please him while at the same time run away.
Shaking her head, she followed Leif and Harald into a room at the back of the game room. She’d figure out what he meant by being king later. Talk about delusions of grandeur.
Crew-cut from the night of the attack sat at a desk with two monitors. Typing away, he stared at lines of text scrolling on the screen in front of him. These dudes had a badass computer setup.
Naya peered over his shoulder at the message header logs. He had the right idea, but hadn’t figured out that the trace code wasn’t in the usual place when sent via phone. Instead of an IP address, he needed to locate the unique cell tower and phone identifiers.
“May I?” she asked the guy.
Startled, he flinched, glancing from Naya to Leif.
Leif only had to nod for the guy to give up his chair. “It’s okay, Ulf. Naya knows how to trace the message.”
Ulf bowed and stepped aside. Maybe Leif really was some kind of ruler. This guy obviously thought so.
Naya avoided looking at Leif. Her body trembled just from knowing he was near. She didn’t want to think about her body’s earlier wanton response. “Is this the ransom message?” She pointed at the screen.
Ulf leaned in and nodded.
Her fingers danced over the keyboard, decrypt
ing each of the hidden marker strings, until she found the thread she wanted. “The public information shows it was definitely sent from the Pine Rapids area.”
Ulf leaned in closer over her shoulder, staring at the screen. “What do you mean, ‘public information’?” His body pushed against the chair. “Where did all that data come from?”
She turned and her nose was half an inch from his cheek. “Do you mind? I’m working here.”
Leif grabbed the guy and jerked him back so fast Naya’s hair fluttered.
Harald chuckled.
She looked up, trying to decipher what had just happened.
Harald beamed at her. “Please continue.” He waved his hand.
Ulf looked pissed, and a little scared.
She smiled at him. “I’ll show you later, promise.” They obviously wanted to find this guy Per, but Ulf had just wanted to learn. No reason to be a jerk about it. She glared at Leif.
He calmly gazed back at her and raised an eyebrow. A slow grin revealed those lethal dimples.
Pretending she wasn’t affected, she shrugged and turned back to the screen. “The message came from southeast of here. The cell phone tower identifiers are close to the ones used in Idaho.”
“That’s amazing.” Ulf loomed up behind her again but kept his distance when Leif cleared his throat.
Man, the king was touchy.
“Can you give us more information?” Harald asked.
“It’s going to take some time. I have to decrypt some of these data strings, and the government likes to make it cumbersome.”
“You’re breaking into government code?” Leif asked.
“Of course,” Naya said. “Who do you think put this tracing in the header in the first place?” The government monitored all electronic communications through hidden tracers. She continued typing. “It would kind of help if you guys weren’t breathing down my neck. Could you go away for twenty minutes?”
Harald muttered something about sandwiches, but Leif pushed him out the door and dragged the computer guy with him.
Naya relaxed a little. She was never comfortable with people standing where she couldn’t see them. Especially one particular large Norse king standing so close her neck still hummed from the heat radiating off his body.
His very hard, muscular body.
* * *
Leif paced the length of the game room while Harald slumped on one of the oversize couches. Ulf leaned against the pool table in the middle of the room.
“She is one badass hacker,” Ulf said. “Did you see how fast her fingers flew over those keys?”
The young warrior didn’t notice his king’s warning look.
Leif turned to Harald instead. “Find out everything you can about her. And I want to know about the man at the bus stop.”
“Already on it,” Harald said. When Leif quirked an eyebrow, he continued. “After you showed me”—he glanced briefly at Ulf—“your interest in Naya, I figured you’d eventually want more information.”
“And?”
Ulf answered. “And there’s nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
The berserker, which had paced obsessively since they’d left Naya’s bedroom, howled. Leif gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, forcing the warrior spirit to calm down. The gods were surely laughing. He needed information about Naya. He needed to know why his warrior spirit claimed her. “What about the man?”
“Ulf hacked into the traffic cams on that block. Some suits showed up to pick up the poor bleeding bastard. Ulf got a license number.”
“I’ve run the number,” Ulf said. “It’s not in the usual databases, but I have some contacts working on it. So far all signs point toward a government agency of some kind.”
Shit. What was Naya involved in? “Why was she in the alley on the night of my attack?”
“We viewed footage from the security cameras on one of the warehouses. All we know is that she exited from the club. The cameras were at wrong angles to film the fight.”
“Keep working on it, but make finding Per your priority,” Leif said.
The door burst open and Naya stepped into the room. “Got it. The phone is on a farm southeast of here. Some of the farm’s property is actually across the border in Idaho.”
“How can you possibly know that?” Ulf asked, his eyes big as mead tankards.
“Google Earth,” she answered with a satisfied smirk.
They followed her into the computer room. A satellite image of some buildings in the middle of a field was displayed on one of the monitors. Leif stared at the picture. It was so detailed, he could see a tractor plowing.
“Now, I can’t tell you which building the phone is in. I can only narrow it down to within this cluster.” She sounded apologetic.
“This is amazing.” Ulf’s voice was filled with awe.
Leif looked at Harald, but his friend just blinked and stared at the screen.
“Well?” Naya asked. “Go rescue the guy?” She waved a few printouts in the air.
“Right.” Ulf jumped up, grabbed the maps she gave him, and headed out the door. “I’ll get the others organized. We’ll strike at nightfall.”
“How did you know what to look for?” Harald asked Naya.
She shrugged. “It’s what I do.”
“What exactly is it that you do?” Leif asked, keeping his voice low.
“I’m a cybersecurity consultant.”
“So you work for some kind of government agency?” Harald kept his voice light, almost bored.
Leif silently commended his stallare for slipping in the question so surreptitiously.
“I work for whoever can afford my fee,” Naya said to Harald, squaring her shoulders, waiting for a confrontation. The two of them locked eyes for a few moments.
“Fair enough,” Harald finally said, and the tension drained from the room. He turned to Leif. “We still have to find out how these fuckers knew where Per was going. It may have something to do with—”
“We’ll discuss that later,” Leif interrupted. He was not going to discuss the possible betrayal of one of his warriors in front of a stranger, själsfrände bond or not.
Harald looked like he wanted to protest but wisely dropped it. “Fine. I’ll go help Ulf and the others prepare for Per’s rescue.”
Chapter 8
With everyone gone but Naya, Leif felt his berserker hum and goad him to move closer to its mate. His mouth suddenly dry, Leif swallowed. Damn his restless warrior spirit and the way it whirled his body out of control.
Naya was still looking at the screen and the image of the farm. “What ransom did they demand?” she asked without turning.
“They wanted me.” Leif took a step closer.
“That seems stupid.” She still kept her eyes on the screen.
Leif smiled at her obvious attempt to avoid him and at the incredulity in her tone. “They think that by incapacitating me, my people will be weakened.”
“Yeah, I get the whole role-playing game vibe, but why would you give yourself up?” Only a slight tensing of her shoulders hinted that she’d noticed him moving closer.
“It’s what a king does.” He leaned over her shoulder. His breath caressed her ear.
Take. He clamped down on the bond with the berserker.
She trembled. “You actually do rule these guys? Like some kind of gang leader?”
Leif’s head started to ache. He pulled up a chair and sat down. How was he going to explain? “Einherjar,” he muttered.
“Sorry?” She finally faced him, eyebrows raised.
He raised his head. “We’re not a ‘gang.’ My warriors are einherjar, elite Vikings and Valkyries. I truly am their king, their ruler.” Her lips were very close to his. He watched her mouth intently.
“Like a religious cult?” Her breath caught and she nibbled her lower lip.
The ache in his head intensified and other parts of his body started to throb. “More like a sovereign nation.”
&nb
sp; “Like an Indian reservation?”
“Kind of. We weren’t here from the beginning like the First Nations. We came from other countries.” He wanted to taste her so bad he ached. The intensity of their attraction disturbed him.
“What countries?” She leaned away.
He smiled at her evasive tactic. Her brain might not admit it yet, but her body wanted him as much as his wanted hers. “Mostly Scandinavian.” He put a hand on her shoulder. This time she didn’t flinch at his touch. “Where did you pick up your computer skills? College?” His finger traced the side of her neck.
She shivered. “My education was of a different sort.” Her brittle smile indicated an old pain.
He wanted to punch whoever or whatever had hurt her in the past. “Tell me about it.” He lightly put both hands on her shoulders.
“Let’s just say I had a knack that was honed over the years.”
He leaned over, his breath caressing her ear. “Your help has been invaluable.”
She shrugged. “We don’t know if your guy is there. It could just be his phone.” Pale pink colored her cheeks.
His hands had slipped off her shoulders when she shrugged. “It’s still a lot more progress than we could have made in such a short amount of time,” he said.
He wanted to know why talking about her past bothered her. What was she hiding?
He needed to distract her into sharing more information. “Are you hungry?”
“Irja says it’s too early for me to eat solid food.”
“Better listen to her. We don’t want to repeat the regurgitation of Harald’s sandwich.” He smiled to show he was only teasing, but her blush still deepened. “Let’s go see if there’s something in the kitchen.”
“Don’t you have a rescue mission to plan?”
“That’s the bad part of being king. You never get to have any fun. I’ll be manning the post here while my warriors are out enjoying themselves.” His tone was more wistful than he’d intended. Shaking his head, he gestured for her to walk ahead out the door.
“That’s a strange way of looking at combat.” She continued through the game room and out into the hallway.
Viking Warrior Rising Page 8
