Page 28 of Alien Viking's Plunder

There was a scraping noise from the entrance, and Josie grabbed her stick and stood up, ready to whack anyone who might come through.

“Stay your hand, stick-maiden,” came the deep voice. “I’m not here to murder you, unlike someone else we know.”

Bragr crawled through and stood up, seemingly filling the cave. It looked as if he had used snow to clean the worst of the blood off him.

“The vettir are gone, and the dfergir must be waiting for daylight,” he said, drawing his sword. He picked up two big pieces of firewood and chopped pieces of them until they were planks. “These should be better to sit on than the bare, cold rock.” He placed them side by side by the fire and sat down on one of them.

“Cold rock not good to sit on,” Josie agreed and sat on the rough plank. She didn’t really need it, but itwasmore comfortable. “We stay here until daylight?”

“We will leave while it’s still dark. It’s better to avoid the dfergir than fight them. I doubt the vettir have given up, and they know where we are. But we will rest here for some time.”

Josie studied the Viking’s face and upper body. “You injured many places. How is that?” She pointed to his foot.

“My foot? I’d rather not know,” he admitted. “It aches.”

“Bad?”

He shrugged. “I can walk on it.”

Josie got what he was really saying:if you can’t fix it, there’s no reason to look.He had a point. It wasn’t like they could call a medevac helicopter. They had to walk, and that was it.

She took out the opened medpack. “I can look at the other injuries.”

He prodded the place where she had put on a small bandage. “This feels good. You have good healing skills.” Another half-spoken message:I would like you to do that.

She turned towards him and positioned herself so she could see by the fire light. She had to suppress a gasp when she saw his back. “They picked pieces off you!”

He looked at her over his shoulder. “Pieces of skin? It felt like they were picking offsomething. That’s what those beaks are for.”

Josie winced in sympathy. Those vettir really had ripped strips of skin off him. And he hadn’t complained or even made a sound, just held on to her ankle while the monsters did their worst to hurt him. His arm wasn’t much better, and she spent a good while dabbing multi-purpose antiseptic fluid on him. Using medical tape and the gauze, she patched up the worst wounds until the medpack was empty.

His skin was warm, and his massive muscles worked underneath it whenever he’d move to present some wound to her gaze. He let her do her thing without trying to control or even check what she was doing. That easy trust made her feel more warmth for the huge male than she wanted. There was an innocence to him that was a sharp contrast to the Viking raider that he was.

His tattoos puzzled her. They were immensely intricate and precise, their centers gleaming with gold. She couldn’t imagine how it was done. They even went deeper than the outer skin, because even where the vettir had gouged strips of it, the pattern was intact. Almost as if it was a part of him, not superficial.

“That’s all I can do,” she finally said and crumpled up the plastic gauze wrapper. “You not fight vettir again.”

Bragr inspected the white patches on his arms and chest. “I may not be able to avoid it. I’ve never seen them try to carry a person away. They say it can happen to babies, but not adults.”

“You fight them and took me away from them. Very considerate,” Josie said, not sure if the word was the right one. Then, on impulse, she leaned closer and placed a little kiss on his cheek, right by his mouth.

He gave her a surprised look, and she withdrew, having surprised herself even more.

Well, if a gesture like that would help him keep saving her life, then it was a smart investment. But she knew that wasn’t really it — he was a magnificent male, and she had simply wanted to kiss him. It wasn’t a rational decision at all; it was all primal. He had filled her thoughts and feelings since the abduction. In ways that she would never have expected.

She was fully aware that he didn’t need to be this nice. He had all the power here, and if he had been an absolute jerk, there wasn’t much she could have done about it. Actually, she would probably have been dead by now. No man with jerky tendencies would have taken her back from the vettir.

Still, hehadabducted her. She had to worry about what he had in mind for her when they reached a safer place than this. An ice-cold part of her knew that her best chance may lie in taking advantage of Bragr’s various injuries and escape from him at some point.

Bragr reached for the myod. “Did you try it?”

“It’s good,” she said.

They shared the rest of the pot in silence. It was enough to make Josie noticeably tipsy. And drowsy. She was drained, emotionally and physically. There was a lot to process, but the important part was that she was still alive. For now.

The fire crackled calmly, filling the cave with the warm light from its flickering flames.

She jerked awake and straightened, lifting her head from Bragr’s shoulder. Her ear was hot with the warmth from his skin. She must have fallen asleep. “Sorry.”

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