Page 111 of The Outlaw Viking

Tell her you love her.

Selik closed his eyes momentarily on that painful advice from his inner voice. I cannot. There is no love left in me. Besides, she should go home—to her own country, her own time. ’Tis safer there. I saw what a good physician she was today. Her healing skills would be better served in another world.

Tell her. Trust me, you should tell her.

“Are you putting these voices in my head?” he asked suddenly.

“No,” she snapped, looking at him through red-rimmed eyes, swiping at the tears on her blotched cheeks. “Are you putting them in my head?”

“You look awful.”

“Thank you for sharing that information,” she retorted, raising her chin proudly and stomping off in front of him.

He smiled and stepped on the hem of her monk’s cassock, pulling her to a jarring halt. Before she had a chance to spit out the venomous words that obviously hovered on her sharp tongue, he steered her toward a nearby cow byre on the outer edges of his land, little more than a three-sided shelter. “Come. Let us warm up a bit afore continuing.”

She complied stoically, then walked to the far corner, away from the wind. And from him.

“Rain, do not turn from me,” he pleaded softly, feeling a painful constriction in his chest. “There is so little time left.”

Tell her. What do you need to convince you, a clap of thunder? Tell her.

She kept her back turned to him, but he saw her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Despite his best intentions, his feet had a mind of their own. They moved one step closer to Rain and the danger she represented to his bleeding heart.

Tell her.

Something deep inside, long hidden, melted and exposed a part of him so vulnerable, so open to pain, he could not bear to think on it. And he moved another step closer.

Tell her.

“I love you,” he whispered, so softly she could not possibly have heard. Still, the words burned his lips and made his hands tremble.

And she turned. “What did you say?”

He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. And moved another step closer.

“Tell me, dammit,” she cried out, a sob catching her unsteady voice. Then she whimpered in a low plea, “Tell me.”

“I love you,” he groaned out. “God help me…’twas He, no doubt, who brought you into my life…but I love you. I do.”

He thought he heard a clap of thunder in the distance and rolled his eyes upward. That was not necessary.

Rain lurched into his arms, jolting him backward and almost knocking over the ancient walls of the byre with their combined weight. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she alternately hugged him tightly and held his face between her two hands, kissing every bit of skin above the neckline of his monk’s robe, the whole time saying, “I love you, too. Oh, God, how I love you! IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou….”

Selik smiled against her neck, feeling the wetness of her tears even down near her throat, and he wondered why he had not told her afore. It felt so good.

“Say it again,” she begged, pulling away slightly so she could see his face.

He turned her so her back was to the wall, both his arms extended on either side of her head, hands against the wall. Leaning closer sc he could smell the sweet scent of her breath and her Passion on the pulse point of her neck, he whispered fervently, “I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

He laughed, a joyous spirit of well-being surging through him, and lowered his lips to hers. “Imlufayahu.”

At the first taste of her lips, open-mouthed and clinging, a ravaging hunger swept him. Trembling, he kissed Rain with all the pent-up need of a starving man. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and she cried out, shuddering, her senses apparently as inflamed as his.