Embrace of the Damned (17 page)

Broder had loved once. Perhaps he’d even been loved back. But that had been a thousand years ago.

There was something in Broder that needed love; she could feel it. Something inside him that Loki hadn’t managed to kill craved it, wanted it from her. However, she was in no position to give it … and, sadly, he couldn’t accept it anyway.

He collapsed into a chair with his head tipped back and his eyes closed, letting out a long breath. He was clearly exhausted. She could see now that his wounds were worse than she’d assumed. He pulled his shirt off and inspected them. The blood had clotted around the gashes on his upper chest and arms. He had so many scars. They looked old, from his pre-Brotherhood life, presumably.

Her gaze took in the wounds he’d received, tracing the lines of his body. She looked up from his stomach and into
his smoldering eyes. “Do you have a first-aid kit somewhere?”

He blinked slowly, calculatingly, then jerked his head to the side. Following his indication, she saw a cabinet on a wall near the sink and small refrigerator that stood in the corner of the room.

After retrieving the kit, she approached him, unsure that getting so close to him was a good idea. Too late now. Using the disinfectant and bandages she found in the kit, she patched up his various cuts and gashes. None of them were deep enough to need stitches—not that an immortal Viking warrior would ever need them. She was certain these wounds would be healed by morning.

Just as she was packing everything up, Broder yanked her down into his lap so she faced him in a straddling position. The kit fell to the floor with a clatter, bandages and bottles rolling everywhere. She’d barely seen him move, let alone had time to react. Her initial reaction was to jab him in the eyes and throat, but he grabbed her wrists. Her fear spiked, but he held her loosely. All she’d have to do was twist her wrists down to be free of his grasp. On the heels of her panic rose a much different reaction to being so close to him.

Leaning toward her, he brushed his lips against hers with a gentleness that seemed jarring when compared with his power and strength. She fought through the fog in her mind, trying to grasp some thread of sanity. His touch always made good sense slip away like the memory of a dream in the morning.

His hands moved to her waist and slipped under the hem of her shirt, his thumbs brushing back and forth against the skin of her waist. It was mesmerizing and she knew she had to break it, or risk giving herself over to him completely.

“Let me go,” she said carefully. She took measured breaths in and out, calming herself. “Broder,
please.
”

He hesitated a moment, stilling with his mouth on hers. Then he released her.

She shot up as though he were made of fire and backed away from him. He held her gaze and in his eyes she saw agony.

Blinking, she tore her gaze from his and headed for the door. She was not the woman to give him what he craved. Not sex, not love. It was time to get out of here before he touched her again and turned all her resolve to mush.

“I cannot satisfy my desire to become mindless and muddled with alcohol, Jessa, just as I have not been able to satisfy other desires for the last one thousand years.” He paused. “Now you are here and
you
, Jessa, are the only one I want.”

She hesitated in her rapid pace toward the door, but picked it right back up again without turning or saying a word.

“So what if it’s been a thousand years since the guy has been laid?” Jessa muttered, kicking up … not as high as Halla. “That’s not my problem.”

Halla had tagged her for a workout that early afternoon. Jessa was jet-lagged and exhausted, but that hadn’t mattered to her new trainer—who
was
a serious hard-ass.

“He has made pass at you?” Halla was standing opposite her and was punching and kicking the air. Jessa was supposed to mimic her movements.

“A pass? I don’t think Broder makes passes.” She took a moment to pant, then punched down low. “He just goes for the gold.”

Halla grinned. “I can show you ways to bring him to his knees. No. Not like that,” Halla added, seeing the dismayed expression on Jessa’s face. She whipped around, kicking her feet into the air to skewer an imaginary opponent while emitting a sharp battle cry. She grinned. “To his knees
like that
.”

Jessa grinned back. Maybe Halla wasn’t so bad after all.

They went back to the kicking and punching drills. Jessa tried to hide just how much Halla was making her sweat. “I mean, what does he expect, pity sex? I’m not giving him that.”

Halla laughed. “You’d have sex with Broder out of pity? Do you prefer woman?”

“It’s
women
, and I know he’s gorgeous. Most women would probably trip over themselves to jump into bed with him.” She narrowed her eyes at Halla. “Why don’t you do it?” Even as the words left her mouth, she didn’t like them.

“No.” Halla shook her head and executed a perfect roundhouse kick. “The Valkyrie and the Brotherhood are not allowed contact in that way.”

Jessa contemplated a roundhouse kick, then collapsed to the floor with a groan. “No more, please.
No. More.
”

Halla shrugged. “We take a break.” Then she sank to the floor beside her. “You must train well, Jessa. The Blight will want to kill you at the first opportunity.”

“They’ve already tried several times now. I’d be dead now if it weren’t for Broder.”

Halla nodded. “But you don’t need a man to be your shield. You can learn to fight on your own. Defend yourself.”

“I want that.”

“Good.” Halla leapt to her feet. “Then we train.”

Jessa bowed her head in defeat and let out a low, slow breath, then climbed to her feet again. “Where are you from anyway?” she asked right before she did a much poorer version of the roundhouse Halla had just done. She eyed the other woman. “The Amazon?”

Halla missed the reference. “I live in Norway. There is a training and housing facility not far from Oslo. I am a training specialist there. I help the Valkyrie get ready to fight.”

“The Blight are everywhere?”

Halla nodded. “Loki’s daughter, Hel, creates them easily. All she needs to do is scoop up a handful of the snow and ice that makes up her realm and shape into an agent of the Blight. She sends them out into the world to bring darkness here. If she has her way, she will bring about the end of time, the end of the gods.”

“What is she so ticked off about?”

“Loki killed Baldur, the most handsome and beloved of all the gods. Hel loved Baldur and attempted to kill Loki in
retaliation. As her punishment, she was set to guard the icy underworld. She doesn’t want to be the keeper of that realm, so she’s trying to bring down
all
the realms. Both Loki’s and Hel’s punishments come from the death of one man. You should really read up on your lore.”

Jessa executed a rather fine imaginary ear slap, in her opinion, and tried not to preen. “Right, because it’s all true.”

“Not all of it.”

“And where do I read up on the seidhr? It’d be nice to know what I am.”

Halla stopped moving. She tilted her head to the side and the smooth skin between her brows furrowed. “But you’re in Scotland.”

Jessa punched in the air, then hopped foot to foot. She was getting her second wind. “Yes. Is there something significant about that?”

“Your people live here, Jessa. In the north. Broder didn’t tell you that?”

“Yes, but I’m on lockdown, remember?” She thought about what Halla had said for a moment. “Do you think their proximity explains why I’ve felt strange ever since the plane set down?”

“It’s possible. It could be some kind of magickal link, most likely to a blood relative, but I don’t know much about the seidhr. They are very secretive. I do know that Broder should take you there, or call one of the witches or shamans here to meet with you.” Halla paused. “I don’t know why he hasn’t already. If I were your protector that would have been the first thing I did.”

Jessa slammed open the door to the study and found Broder sitting in a chair, reading a book. She blinked at the surprising sight, but that didn’t stop the full frontal assault that followed. “Why haven’t you called the seidhr yet? A witch or a shaman should have come out here to meet with me already.” She stalked up to him and crossed her arms over her chest.

Broder didn’t look up at her for a long moment. Finally he took a bookmark from the table beside him, slid it into the book, closed it carefully, and laid it aside.

Jessa’s jaw locked.

At last he looked up at her. “I haven’t called them for your own good.”

“For my own good?” she sputtered. “How is keeping valuable information from me, information I have been waiting for my entire life, a good thing for me?”

“What do you know about the seidhr?”

“Damn little.”

He nodded. “So you don’t know why you’ve been separated from them your entire life. You don’t know if they hid you away to grow up completely isolated from their society.”

She let out a pent-up breath and stalked over to the massive fireplace and back. “What are you saying … that the seidhr hid me on purpose?”

“Someone certainly hid you on purpose, Jessa. We don’t
know who or why. Perhaps, for whatever reason, you’re in danger from the seidhr. Perhaps it has something to do with your parents, or some quirk of your bloodline. Perhaps they will not like the fact that you are no longer hidden. Perhaps they might mean you harm. In that case, do you think it’s a good idea for us to declare your presence here and invite them into my home?”

She paced, chewing her bottom lip. These were good reasons, reasons she hadn’t considered, but she wanted so much to delve into the person she was. “Okay, that makes sense.”

“Yes.”

Coming to a stop in front of him, she spread her hands. “But I have no idea what my abilities are and there’s no one here to instruct me.”

“I do know a little about what it is to be seidhr.”

“A little.”

Broder pressed his lips together and stared hard at the fire. “A lot. I know a lot about their magick and how their society is organized.”

“Yes, but you’re not a witch.”

“In the human world both men and women are witches. In seidhr culture, witches are female and men are shamans. It has been that way since before time was recorded. And, no, I’m not seidhr. You would have to take what I know at face value. I may be able to find some written works about them, if you would like to read up.”

“I would.” Jessa considered him. It wasn’t as if she had much of a choice. She had to take what she could get. “I want to know everything.”

He inclined his head. “I’ll work on that. In the meantime, ask me questions. I may have the answers.”

She tipped her head to the side. “The first thing I want to know is why you get that look on your face when you talk about them.”

“What look?” He nearly growled the words and the hair stood up on her nape. There was danger here and she didn’t know why.

“It’s almost like … guilt, but it goes deeper than that.” She knew that what she was describing wasn’t really from the look on his face; it came from having an intuitive sense about him, just as she’d always had intuitive senses about people. “It’s almost like … torment, or grief.”

“Never mind.” This time he really did growl. He pushed up from his chair. “Don’t ask about it again.”

She held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay. Message received. Can I ask about something else?”

“What?” he barked, making her jump.

“Tell me about the books. You had them in the States and you have them here. Are you a collector or a reader?”

“Both.” He still wouldn’t look at her.

She nodded. “Old books are a passion of mine.” She walked over and picked up the book he’d been reading—a slim, battered volume of Poe’s
Tell-Tale Heart.
Dark romanticism. That totally made sense. “Broder, we should talk about storing these volumes appropriately.”

He stalked out of the room.

“Okay, then,” she called after him. “We’ll talk later.”

She watched him go, wondering more powerfully than ever before what the deal was with the seidhr. She understood his explanation about not uniting her with them yet and she agreed with it, even though it was painful.

Yet she had a feeling there was more to the story. Broder didn’t want to have anything to do with the seidhr.

Yet apparently that desire didn’t extend to her.

She picked up another of the books he’d been thumbing through. It was open and facedown on the table, which made her wince. This one was
Adventures of Sinbad
… written in Arabic. Her head came up abruptly and she stared at the door Broder had just exited through.

There were so many mysteries about this man she wanted answered.

Book in hand, she followed him out of the library and into the living room.