Lord of Fire and Ice Read Online Free Page B

you.”
    “No, you won’t, princess,” he said as he stooped to pick up the bucket.
    She glared at him. “A man’s seed bag makes a fine coin purse, I’m told.”
    He laughed. She was bluffing. He hoped she was bluffing.
    “I won’t kiss you again without your permission,” he said gruffly. “In fact, if you want me to kiss you, you’ll have to order me to do it.”
    “Don’t hold your breath,” she muttered. “I’ll never give that order.”
    He grasped her chin and forced her to look up at him. “ Ja , you will. You need a man. You’ll order me to your bed before you and I part company, princess. And we both know it.”
    Bucket in hand, he turned and strode from the room without a backward glance.

Chapter 3
    When Brandr brought back the bucket of water, Katla was seated near the meal fire, with a gaggle of children surrounding her. Heads bent, tongues clamped between their teeth in concentration, they were learning to sew straight, even stitches in pieces of worn fabric. Boys as well as girls huddled close as Katla gave them soft instructions.
    “Of course, you must learn to sew, Darri,” she said to one of the boys who’d protested that this was women’s work. “A man must know how to mend sail on the open sea. On land, he must care for his own clothing if he doesn’t have a wife to tend to it for him.”
    She bent and pressed a quick kiss on the boy’s crown. “And if you make a habit of complaining, young man, you’ll never have a wife.”
    The little girls giggled.
    Brandr halted at the entrance to the longhouse, watching the woman who’d enslaved him. Surely this Katla wasn’t the same one who’d ordered him to kiss her foot, the hard taskmistress who was set on humbling him.
    She treated the children with gentleness, with doting fondness.
    She smiled at the little girl by her side and gave her a quick hug along with a word of praise. When the boy called Darri lifted his swatch to show her, Katla’s green eyes glinted with pride in his accomplishments.
    “Excellent work,” she told the child. “Stitches like that will stand up to a gale.”
    When the boy settled back, beaming under her praise, Brandr saw an expression pass over Katla face that surprised him to his toes. Her smile softened, became wistful and sad.
    And yearning.
    None of the children gathered around her was her own. He’d fallen into conversation with one of the men who worked in the tanning sheds near the mouth of the river that emptied into a sheltered cove. The man was ready to tell all he knew about Brandr’s new owner.
    “Katla’s a fair mistress,” the tanner had told him. “It was a kiss of luck that she was here to pick up the reins when her husband was killed. She’s deep minded, that one. Better at managing things than Osvald ever was—meaning no disrespect to the dead.”
    The tanner cast a superstitious glance over his shoulder, but it didn’t stop his blather. Brandr needed only to nod and look interested while his new acquaintance regaled him with the doings of the farmstead and the many folk who lived there and worked it.
    No, there’d been no children in Katla’s brief marriage, more’s the pity, the tanner had said. But weren’t her brothers trying to match her up with a new husband? The lady was young. There was still time.
    Judging from Katla’s expression of longing, she wasn’t the sort to wait patiently. Brandr had heard that some women crave children as a man craves silver, but he’d never seen that hunger so clearly etched on a woman’s face before.
    Then he stepped into the longhouse, and his shadow falling over her made her lift her head. The soft, needy expression vanished in a blink.
    “Help yourself to a bowl of porridge, thrall,” she ordered and then turned back to the children, ignoring him completely.
    The boiled oats were pasty and palatable only if laced with honey, but it would keep his stomach from knocking on his backbone. His mind was clear enough this morning to