Page 131 of The Outlaw Viking

She nodded.

“If you do aught by look or word to show you are with me unwillingly, Selik will be dead by nightfall. Do you believe me?”

She nodded again, and he released her chin. Before they left the room, he pinched the nipples of both breasts so they stood out painfully against the thin silk of her tunic.

Selik paced back and forth along the short distance the rope would allow. His hands were still tied behind his back. For days he had heard nothing and seen no one.

He tried to forget the image of Rain with Steven when they had visited his cell five days ago—five agonizing days, during which he had imagined the implications of the two of them together.

Trust in her.

One part of him wanted to believe Rain had been with Steven against her wishes, to listen to the voice in his head, but she had appeared willing. Women had always found Steven godly handsome when he plied his insidious charms, and he remembered clearly that Rain had permitted Steven to put his arm around her shoulders. Even worse, he recalled in perfect detail Steven’s words to her outside the cell, referring to him as a filthy beast, encouraging Rain to go with him back to his bedchamber. As hard as he had strained to listen, he had heard no struggle, no pleading words from Rain on his behalf.

Trust in her.

Selik tried to block out the inner voice. He wished he could die. None of the torments visited on him by Athelstan’s vicious soldiers could compare with the pain of Rain’s betrayal.

But then, at other times, he hoped he would live to enact his revenge. On them both.

He heard a rattle near his cell door, followed by the squeak of rusty hinges. He gasped when he saw Steven enter, followed hand-in-hand by Rain.

Her hair was beautifully dressed, and she wore a magnificent fur-lined cloak. She stared at him through wide golden eyes, expressionless pools filled with an emotion he could not understand. Her lips were rosy and swollen, as if they had been kissed endlessly.

A sweet, recently awakened part of him died inside.

“Argh!” he raged and lurched forward against his ropes. He would kill her, as well as Steven, if he could reach them.

Rain’s eyes widened and pooled with tears. He noticed the dark circles under her eyes then. No doubt due to sleepless nights spent under Gravely’s panting body. Did she moan for her new lover the way she had for him?

His heart felt as if it were splintering inside his body, and he feared there were tears in his eyes.

How could she? How could she?

Steven smiled at him then, a twisted sick curve of the lips, and pulled his cloak off Rain’s shoulder. With a flick of his fingers, he pulled the laces from her tunic. Standing behind Rain, Steven parted her tunic, baring her breasts with their aroused nipples for his view. Then he put his hands under her breasts and raised them high. Bruises marred the white flesh of her breasts from their love play. All the time, Steven was smiling at him.

Rain dropped her head in shame. Even a woman in love, as she must be with the handsome Steven to allow such intimacies, would not want her body bared before another man, a former lover. But she said nothing, not a word, to stop Steven. Not even when he put one hand on her womanhood, rubbing sensuously, and another hand under her chin, forcing her to look up.

“I hate you,” Selik said to Rain with all the venom that boiled in his blood. “I hate you more than Steven, and that is an ungodly amount. You took my love and spat on it, and for that I will never forgive you.”

He turned away from her then and felt the wetness on his cheeks. He heard a low choking sound behind him, quickly stifled, but he did not turn again until they were long gone and the door closed behind them.

After that, Rain didn’t care anymore. Her lack of resistance angered Steven, and his brutality increased. Rain wondered if she would be alive in another week—if, in one of his rages, Steven would go too far and kill her. Or if he might change his mind and assault her sexually. That she would not be able to accept.

Through it all, she didn’t scream for help because she still needed to protect Selik.

A week after her ill-fated meeting with Selik, Caedmon came running into Steven’s bedchamber, yelling, “That bitch Elgiva is looking for Rain. She went to the king, and he agreed to a search of the castle.”

Rain barely raised her head from where she sat on the floor of her little room, able to hear everything they said through the open doorway.

“Hurry, Caedmon, pack all our belongings,” Steven said anxiously. “Efric, get the horses. We will leave immediately.”

Rain dozed off, or perhaps she passed out. She did that a lot lately. Steven had struck her on the head several days ago, and she feared she had suffered a concussion. She heard the door open some time later and Efric exclaim in a rush, “Bloody hell, Steven, the king and the bitch are headed this way. Someone told Athelstan they saw The Outlaw’s wench with you at the prison.”

Suddenly, Rain realized that Steven was about to escape. Once again, he would elude punishment for his evil deeds. He would not pay for raping and killing Selik’s wife, for decapitating the baby Thorkel, for his mistreatment of her, for all his horrendous acts. Rain couldn’t allow that to happen.

While the three men picked up their chests and leather bags, Rain stood, unnoticed, staggering painfully. She saw a knife on the table beside the bed, picked it up as if in a trance, then ran toward Steven’s back screaming, “You bastard! You bastard!”

Steven turned at the last moment and flung out an arm. The knife was deflected and, in her weakness, she tripped. Instead of the knife going into Steven’s back as she’d intended, it grazed his forearm. Still, blood flowed freely down his sleeve.