The Barbarian's Stolen Bride (Northmen Barbarians 1)

He had given me a choice, even if he should have given me more of them.

“All I thought about was my own desires, needs, and wants.” He kept stroking my hands as if I were a lifeline to him, something that kept him rooted in place. “I took your choice away. It was selfish. I am a selfish man, Prima.” His big body shuddered as he exhaled. “I’m used to getting what I want, fighting for it and taking it. I saw you as my war prize, that after my endless years of loneliness and battle, I would have someone who would wholly be mine to treasure.” His eyes seemed dark with his bared emotions. “I saw you as mine and only mine, and although that is still the truth, you are not an object. Your life is your own, your choice as well. If you don’t want this… if you don’t want me, I’ll understand. I don’t know if I can ever fully let you go, but I’ll try with everything in my body to win you over the right way, to make you see I am yours the same as you are mine. I knew that the moment I saw you.”

My throat was so tight I could barely breathe, my lungs burning. His words resonated deep within me, and I was taken back to all those winters before when I had been a child staring up at him as he sat upon his great steed. He’d had blood and gore covering him, a fire burning behind his eyes from the no doubt endless violence and battle.

He’d looked like a monster at that moment. But I remembered he’d looked like a savior.

I didn’t know what the future held. I didn’t know if our lives were always meant to be together, intertwined indefinitely, in this infinity cycle. But I knew I wanted to explore what I felt. I knew I wanted to grasp on to the strange and wondrous feelings that Fen conjured up with me.

No, not conjured—I relived. They’d always been there, slowly growing, like a seed in the earth pushing through the soil and reaching for the light. He made me burn alive. He made me want more.

“Say something,” he whispered, his voice husky, deep.

I didn’t know what to say. I was confused by this sudden turn of events. Before I met Fen, I’d seen him as this beastly villain. Sure, he helped the village, but how good could a man like him be if he had to force a woman to be his bride?

“Lash at me. Hit me. Tell me what a bastard I am.” He squeezed my hands gently. “That would all be the truth. I’m not a good man, Prima. You deserve better. But gods help me… I can’t let you go.” He rested his forehead on our joined hands, his warm breath filtering over my skin. He seemed so fragile in this moment, not weak but vulnerable, bared.

“I thought you were going to tell me you were with another woman,” I found myself blurting out and hated myself for even bringing it up. I was sure that had nothing to do with the topic at hand, but in this moment I felt as vulnerable as I was sure he felt.

“You thought I’d ever be with another woman?”

I licked my lips and slowly nodded.

The surprise on his face was instant, and then it changed into anger as he shook his head. He slowly stood, helping me up and off the chair, keeping his hands on mine. The pressure of his hands on mine told me one thing with certainty.

He wouldn’t let me go.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, meaning the words. “I… I forgive you, Fen.” And I did. For as crazy as all of this was, felt, I knew in my heart this man was good. On the outside he may be cold and hard, unforgiving and dangerous. But the violence he surrounded himself with, the savage brutality he wore like a second skin didn’t make up who he was.

And I saw him, saw and felt that heat he had in his heart.

“Don’t you see? Don’t you understand, Prima?” His voice was hard. Sure. He moved his hands up my arms to cup my face again, and I was starting to realize Fen enjoyed touching me. Immensely. “Don’t you see you’re my world? You are my heart. My life. And I’ll prove that to you for the rest of my days.”

My knees grew weak, my body softening impossibly more.

“I am the darkness, and you are my light.”

I didn’t realize what I was doing until I rose on my toes and wound my arms around his neck. Our lips were an inch apart, and as I took in the mead-scented breath exhaled from his parted lips, I realized I didn’t want this man to ever let me go.