Redeeming Her Viking Warrior

She sucked in a breath as muscles flexed in his back and shoulders. Now that the idea of mating had occurred to her, it was proving alarmingly hard to put out of her thoughts again. What was it he’d said that morning? It’s not that I don’t want to mate with you... What did that mean? That he actually wanted to mate with her? Which begged the question, did she want to mate with him? A warrior?

She pursed her lips. Taking a mate wasn’t a possibility that had ever occurred to her before. She lived on her own because she was safer that way, yet for the first time she was tempted. Something about him set her body to humming in a way she’d never experienced before, a way that she wanted to explore further... But he’d said that he couldn’t mate. Why not?

‘Ow!’ The comb snagged on a tangle and she muttered an oath under her breath.

‘What?’ Danr’s head spun round at once.

‘Nothing. I wasn’t speaking to you.’

‘You said something.’

‘But not to you.’ She gave him a pointed look and tugged harder on the offending knot.

‘How was your morning?’ His gaze narrowed slightly. ‘Any interesting patients?’

‘A woman suffering from stomach pains, a man with a burn on his wrist and a warrior with two cracked ribs.’

‘And?’

‘And I did what I could for them.’

‘Is that so?’ His gaze sharpened even further. ‘So how does it work? Do they tell you their symptoms?’

‘No. They gesture. They don’t know if I can speak or understand their language.’

‘So they don’t speak either?’

‘Not usually.’

‘And what about today?’

‘What does today matter?’

He flung his axe on to the ground. ‘I’d like to know if any of them asked you questions.’

‘You tell me.’ She finally succeeded in dragging the comb through the knot. ‘You were there.’

‘So I was.’ There was a moment’s heavy silence before he spoke again. ‘I wanted to be sure you were safe.’

‘I told you not to follow me. I let you stay on condition that you obeyed my rules, remember?’

‘This seemed more important.’

‘That’s not the point.’

He clenched his jaw though his expression was unreadable. ‘How did you know?’

She considered the question for a moment. How had she known? Tove and Halvar hadn’t given any indication. She’d thought she’d caught a glimpse of some movement at one point although she hadn’t actually seen him, yet somehow she’d simply known he was there. She’d been aware of him as surely as if he’d been standing right next to her.

‘I saw the grass where you’d been lying,’ she said instead. Which was true, even if it had only confirmed what she’d already suspected.

‘It could have been crushed by a deer.’

‘But it wasn’t.’

‘No.’ His jaw hardened again. ‘What did he say, the big man who spoke to you?’

‘He asked me if