by Jane Kindred
And then he had one boot in a stirrup and he was swinging himself onto the back of a sturdy horse. He didn’t feel like himself. He felt stronger. More in control. And incredibly angry. “No mercy!” he bellowed. A woman beside him answered, “For Odin and Freyja!”
The horse thundered forward at his command, but before he could catch his breath, the scene changed. Searing pain seized his arm. Leo looked down to find his hand had been severed. Someone grabbed his bleeding stump as he drifted toward unconsciousness.
“We had a bargain, damn you!” It was the woman’s voice, the one from the Hunt.
“You said nothing of limbs,” said another woman, her voice toneless, beyond cold. “Only head and heart.”
“He will have no heart if the blood drains from it!”
“Will you give us his mind?”
“His mind? I have given you his will!”
Leo was shivering and everything was going dark.
“Think quickly, Kára. The skein unravels as the heart winds down. He is nothing but clockwork. A mind for a body. We think it a fair exchange.”
“Leo.” Someone was shaking him. Or he was shaking. Shaking apart. Something crinkly draped his shoulders. “Leo, snap out of it. You’re scaring me.”
He realized his eyes were still screwed shut, and he opened them to find Rhea hovering over him with concern. She’d wrapped him in some kind of space-age silver blanket.
“Are you with me?”
“Rhea?”
“Thank God. You scared the crap out of me. I think you were going into shock. I grabbed the Mylar blanket from the first aid kit. You should lie down and elevate your feet. Get the blood pumping back to your heart.”
Leo let her ease him back onto the couch and lift his feet to slide a pillow under them. Blood to his heart. What the hell had he just seen? He pulled his right arm from the blanket to make sure his hand was still attached.
“It felt so real,” he murmured.
“I think it was real.” Rhea put his arm back inside the blanket.
“How could it be real? I lost my hand.”
“I don’t understand exactly how, but you asked why you were hunting—”
“I also asked who.”
“True, and we didn’t really get a who, but I might have an idea about that. My point is, you seem to have been part of a bargain. Kára said she’d given them your will, and then she apparently bargained your mind to keep you from bleeding to death.”
“Who the hell is Kára?”
“That’s what the voice in the vision called her. I think it’s the woman I saw hunting with you—or with the Chieftain, anyway—last night. I think she’s a Valkyrie.”
Leo sat up, no longer shivering so hard he thought he might come apart. “A Valkyrie? That’s ridiculous.”
“About as ridiculous as a flying hunting party, yeah.”
Nervous energy propelled him to his feet as he pulled off the Mylar blanket. “I don’t know what to think about any of this.” He held out his right hand, alternating between making a fist and flexing his fingers. “But I think I’m good on the whole reading thing for now. Until I can get a better idea of what’s real and what’s my mind supplying images in some semi-dream state.”
Rhea picked up the blanket, folding it into smaller and smaller squares. “But the reading last night—that seemed to ring true.”
Heat rushed to Leo’s face as he remembered the vivid images conjured by the reading and the even more vivid memories that followed when the reading ended. “Yes. Faye is someone I actually knew. I don’t remember when I stopped seeing her or even how long ago, but the vision...yeah, it definitely happened.” He tucked his hands into his back pockets. They felt like extra appendages he didn’t know what to do with. “Sorry. I know it made you uncomfortable.”
Rhea gave him an odd little smile he couldn’t interpret. “I wouldn’t say it made me uncomfortable, exactly.”
Unconsciously, he’d stepped closer to her. Close enough to see the faint glow of heat in her cheeks. Why would she be blushing if she wasn’t uncomfortable? Unless... Please. Dude. She is not into you. She’s into him.
The rings around Rhea’s irises seemed extra dark. “I guess I was a little jealous, if you want to know the truth. Not that I have any right to be. It’s not like we—” She paused, biting her lip. “I mean, I’m your boss.”
He couldn’t seem to stop staring at her mouth. With another step, Leo had breached the distance between them. The folded Mylar slipped from Rhea’s fingers, exploding back into a full-sized blanket at their feet in slow motion as she stared up at him.
Before he could second-guess himself, he took her hand, his fingers weaving between hers. “I could quit again,” he said. “If you think that would help.”
The corners of her eyes crinkled, her smile slight and secretive like the Mona Lisa. It was as good a sign as any.
Her eyes went wide when he cupped the back of her neck and lowered his head, but she melted against him as he drew her close and kissed her. She was surprisingly slight and soft in his arms, her lips slick and sweet. She gave off such a prickly, self-reliant vibe, he’d half expected her to be built like a wiry, hard-muscled boy. But there was nothing boyish about the way her petite curves pressed into him.
After a moment, self-consciousness kicked in, and Leo stepped back, letting their fingers separate, uncertain now whether he’d been projecting. “Sorry. I hope I didn’t misread...?”
Rhea’s tentative smile faded. He’d blown it.
She snatched up the Mylar, cramming it back into little folded squares. “For future reference, Leo, ‘sorry’ is not what a girl wants to hear after intimate contact.”
* * *
Rhea kept things light for the rest of the afternoon, trying not to let on how conflicted she was about the kiss. He’d taken her by surprise, sending the blood rushing to her extremities in the best way possible, and her lips still tingled—she had to keep stopping herself from touching her fingertips to them to be sure his mouth wasn’t somehow still pressed against them—but his tentativeness afterward was weird and disappointing. She couldn’t get the memory of the vision she’d shared with the other Leo out of her head. There had been nothing tentative or uncertain about what they’d been doing.
Leo was gamely trying to pretend the kiss hadn’t happened, which made the disappointment worse. She couldn’t help thinking about the passion he’d shown for Faye. Maybe he only responded that way to dominant women. Rhea certainly wasn’t submissive, but actively dominating someone wasn’t really her thing either.
By late afternoon, she figured making a lighthearted exit before dusk was the best course of action, but after they shared some Indian takeout, Leo posed the question she’d been hoping to avoid.
“Are you going to stick around tonight?”
Rhea didn’t raise her head as she boxed up what they hadn’t finished. “Do you think it matters?”
“Matters?” Leo’s expression was wounded when Rhea looked up.
“I mean, you won’t remember whether I was here, anyway.”
“True. But it’s nice to know someone’s here before it happens.” Leo took the dishes to the sink. “You’re probably right, though. I don’t blame you for not wanting to deal with my out of control id.”
“He’s not that out of control.” Rhea bagged up the garbage and set it by the door. She turned to find Leo watching her with a thoughtful expression. “Do you like board games?”
The expression went from thoughtful to confused. “Board games?”
“I’ve got Scrabble and some other games on my tablet. Maybe the Lucid Ass could use something to occupy the time.”
Leo laughed. “I suppose he could. I can’t speak for him, of course, but presuming we share the same interests, sure. Sounds fun to me
.”
They started playing Scrabble while Leo was still himself, strapped in and waiting for the light to fade. But there was a definite moment when Rhea could almost see the change come over him: Lucid Ass Leo’s Mr. Hyde eclipsing Leo the Dull’s Dr. Jekyll.
He paused with his finger poised above the tile he’d been about to move while Rhea held the tablet for him, and Leo’s habitual hesitant tension relaxed into an easy self-confidence.
Crisp blue eyes rose to meet hers with amusement beneath the pale lashes. “Well, now. What fresh hell can this be?”
“Feeling all right, Leo?”
“Marvelous. I missed you last night.”
“Did you, now?”
“You doubt my sincerity. Do you doubt my tumescence?”
Rhea forced herself not to follow the downward flick of his gaze. “Unless you were about to put that word on the board, that’s a losing move, mister.”
“The board?”
“The game board. We’re playing Scrabble. I have to warn you, I come from a Scrabble family, and I’m very competitive.”
“What’s the purpose of it?”
“We build words onto existing words on the board by placing our letter tiles on the squares, and each tile has a specific value—there, above the letter—while certain squares multiply the points of a letter or a word.”
“But what’s the purpose of it?”
Rhea sighed. “I thought you could use something to pass the time. It’s a game. Entertainment.”
“Is it? I can think of much more exciting entertainment.”
“I’m sure you can.” She tapped the board. “It’s your move.”
Leo perused the board while Rhea averted her eyes to avoid seeing his tiles, which he’d failed to hide at the bottom of the screen. “What was his last word?”
“Tinsel. He added the S-E-L to my tin for six points.”
“Tinsel?” Leo laughed with that deep, warm vibration his laughter had when the munr had the skin. “He could have made it tins and spelled sensual. Or sexual. He’s an idiot.”
“I don’t disagree.”
Leo uncrossed his ankles to poke his stockinged foot against her shin. “Oh, dear. What did the fool do?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. You have to see what an idiot he is.” The foot remained where it was, his big toe slowly stroking her through the fabric. “We share the same skin. He shares my desires. I am his desires. Only I’m honest about it. I’m direct and forthright. What you see is what you get.”
She forgot not to look where his gaze was trying to draw hers. Jesus.
His grin reminded her of the Cheshire cat. “And you obviously like what you see.”
Rhea folded the tablet into her crossed arms. “That’s your opinion.”
“I swear, if I had him in front of me, I’d beat the snot out of him for being too stupid to see how much you desire him in return. The flush in your cheeks, the sparkle in your eyes, the way your breath is rising and falling in your chest.”
“Stop looking at my chest.”
“Honestly, I can’t imagine what you see in him—other than the obvious fact of our rather impressive skin. If he can’t act like a man and respond to those signals, if his all-important dull little soul can’t recognize what he has right in front of him, he doesn’t deserve you.”
Was he trying to make her feel better? Giving her a pep talk about the guy—who was himself, no less—who’d failed to make a move?
“You sound like one of my sisters.” She jumped as the stockinged toe slipped beneath her pant leg and stroked her skin.
“I assure you, I am nothing like one of your sisters.” He was goddamned adept with that one toe—through a sock. It made her wonder what he could do with the rest of his body. “Why don’t you put that fancy game board down and let me show you just how unlike them I am?”
“It’s not just a fancy game board, it’s a computer. Honestly, Leo, how do you not know anything?”
“Is that a reason to keep hugging it?” His foot slipped from her pant leg and hooked beneath one of the wheeled legs of the stool, and with a sharp tug, he managed to drag her close to him, making her lose her grip on the tablet as she threw her arms out to catch herself against the armrests. Which meant grasping his forearms. The tablet tumbled into his lap.
Leo shifted his weight and the tablet slipped between his legs—where it remained propped at a forty-five degree angle.
Leo’s smile was amused at her hesitation. “Are you planning to cede that to me for the rest of the night?”
The tablet gave a little jump as she moved one hand from his arm.
“You seem happy to have it.”
“I’d be much happier with something else there.”
“I’m sure you would.”
“Don’t be silly. Just pick it up. It’s not as if I can do anything.” He jerked lightly on his wrist restraints. “I’m completely at your mercy.”
The image of Leo on his hands and knees at Faye’s bidding sprang to her mind. “Right. I forgot that was your thing.”
“Sorry?”
Rhea snatched the tablet from his lap and pushed off with her feet against the base of the chair, sending the stool rolling backward. “That’s what he said.”
“I’m not following you.”
“You seem to enjoy being at a woman’s mercy.”
Leo’s red-gold brows drew together. “What woman’s mercy? Yours? I don’t exactly have a choice in the matter.”
“Faye’s, for instance.”
“And who is Faye?”
Rhea laughed. “Surely you remember the woman you swore you’d do anything for. The one who marked you as her own.”
“Marked...?”
Leo turned his head toward the Midgard Serpent tattoo, though it was hidden beneath his shirt. He’d worn the long-sleeved one again today. Rhea really needed to give him an allowance to buy some new things. She could write it off as a business expense.
“She gave me the tattoo?” His vision turned inward. “She gave me the tattoo. She marked me so I couldn’t escape the skin.”
“You wanted to escape the skin?”
“She’d already bound me.” He turned his wrists in the restraints. “As you can see. Bound Leo’s will so that he had to obey her. Convinced him to engage in this stupid ritual. But if the hugr can leave temporarily, so can the munr. Except not now. As Jörmungandr constrains the waters of the sea, the mark constrains the will.”
She’d bound his will. “Kára.” They’d said the name together.
Leo’s eyes fixed on hers, narrowed with suspicion. “How do you know that name?”
“I shared a vision with Leo. Two visions, actually. One of Faye having him marked and one of Kára...bargaining his mind for his life. They’re the same woman, aren’t they? The Valkyrie.”
“The Valkyrie.” Leo’s fists curled tightly against the armrests. “The accursed Valkyrie.”
Chapter 13
Leo leaned back against the headrest. Rhea couldn’t help but notice the enthusiasm of his erection had faded. “I can’t say whether it was willing submission on Leo’s part—without will, how is anything willing? But you’re correct that the Valkyrie owns me. She has enslaved me.”
He’d been pretty damned willing in her vision, but Rhea decided not to go there. “How much do you remember?”
“You said she bargained Leo’s mind.”
“He was bleeding to death and going into shock. He’d lost his hand.”
Leo’s eyes flicked toward his presently whole limbs with little interest, perhaps checking to see if they were there. “And that’s why both he and I are absolute shit at remembering things. A pretty stupid bargain, if you ask me. Plenty o
f people have survived the loss of a hand. But I suppose no one did ask me.” He sighed, staring at the ceiling. “I remember... I don’t know. Chronologically, very little. But Kára, I cannot forget. She’s like staring at the sun—intensely and damagingly beautiful.”
Rhea must have reacted in some way she wasn’t aware of—a breath of disappointment or a slight movement that gave her discomfort away—as Leo turned his gaze on her.
“Such beauty is hardly a personal merit. It’s something cold, like a diamond, to be admired and coveted, perhaps, but not truly desired.” He gave her an ironic half smile. “I should know.”
“A lot of people covet you, do they?”
He laughed, a little sound of delight. “I didn’t mean myself. I meant that I know what it is to desire something truly. You dismiss my desire as soulless gluttony, when it is the purest thing I can offer you. Far purer than anything he will ever express. He’s a coward.”
Okay, now she was uncomfortable. It was one thing to think he was toying with her, trying to get into her pants because she happened to be there—and maybe as a ploy to get her to set him free—but the way his eyes looked into hers as he spoke made her feel naked. He wasn’t goddamn kidding. He wanted her. And he’d obviously gotten over whatever had momentarily...deflated him.
Leo tilted his head. “You want me, but my wanting you seems to distress you.”
Rhea cleared her throat awkwardly. Which she was sure was totally hot. “It’s a little weird. You’re...” She gestured at him helplessly.
“Tied up and kept here against my will? A mindless, soulless animal?”
“In my employee’s body, for God’s sake.”
He was still studying her with curiosity. “So it’s because you’ve entered into a financial relationship with him? Would it be like paying me for sex?”
“Jesus, Leo. No.” Rhea flipped the irritating spike of hair out of her face. She had to get him talking about something else. “What do you know about the Wild Hunt?”
