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"Ecstasy." He touched the small charm at her throat.
"What?" Was he in her mind again? She checked. Nope. Mind empty.
"What we felt was true ecstasy, not this Ecstasy Incorporated ye work for." He returned his gaze to the ground
and continued walking.
Okay, she got the picture. He didn't want to discuss what had just happened. Fine with her. It was his loss.
Now he'd never hear that she hadn't known the meaning of mind-blowing sex until him. She followed him on
legs that still felt shaky.
But that was all it had been. She wouldn't even consider that it had been something more.Stop thinking. Say
something .
"What about things that can harm you?"Can the trembling and throbbing still going on inside me do damage ?
She tried to remember the list she'd made after her research. "Holy water?"
"No."
"Crosses?"
"No."
"Fire?"How about the way I'm still burning for you, vampire? Is that terminal ?
"I would burn just as ye would burn."
"Daylight?" Sheknew sunlight was a danger.
"I wouldna burst into flame, but light causes terrible suffering. The pain would drive me mad, and if I stayed
in the sunlight overlong, the pain would kill me."
Blythe nodded. It had taken courage for him to walk out into the daylight this afternoon. She clamped down
on her budding admiration. She had to keep thinking of him as only a sexual animal, one she had to make
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happy.
He quickened his pace like a predator who senses his prey close by. Blythe smiled as she struggled to keep
up. It was incongrous to think of an eight-foot-tall Viking, with an ax, as prey.
She did have one last question. "What do you fear, Darach?"
He offered her a long, hooded stare.
"I fearye , woman from another time."
Â
Chapter Nine
"Me?" Blythe stared at him with wide eyes as she clutched her cloak tightly around her body to ward off the
night's chill. "Why would you be afraid of me?"
Because of how ye tempt me. Mayhap Blythe would do better to use her cloak as protection againsthim , for
when his mouth touched her warm, bare flesh, it threatened to unleash the beast in him. Only centuries of
practice controlling his hunger stood between Blythe and death. And yet, each time he had reached orgasm
with her, the explosion of his senses had taken him beyond his desire to feed. In five hundred years, only
Blythe had been able to do that.
"Well, why do I make you afraid?" Her tone said that if her hands were free, she would place them on her
hips.
Darach smiled into the darkness. He sensed that he was close to the end of his hunt, but before continuing
along the path, he would give her an answer.
"Ye look at the world through different eyes. And sometimes when ye speak with me, your ideas make me
think differently, act differently." He shrugged and glanced at her. "I have done things in a certain way for five
hundred years. Ye disturb my life."
Darach could see the white flash of her smile, and was reminded of the feel of his mouth on hers, the slide of
his tongue across her teeth, the warm, wet tangle of her tongue with his. Odin's fire, a score of Valkyries could
beckon to him and he would still think of this woman from Ecstasy.
"Disturb your life? You mean that I take you out of your comfort zone?" She brushed her hair away from her
eyes, and he followed the motion hungrily.
Darach nodded. Absently he decided that he would feed tonight, sparingly, just to make sure his hunger was
at its lowest when he was around Blythe. He would find someone completely undesirable, someone with huge
warts and a love of garlic.
"Interesting." She followed him as he moved warily down the path. "Just for your information, you take me
out of my comfort zone, too. Big time."
"Shh." He held his finger to his lips. What he sought was near. Strangely, he felt no danger. But he would not
take any chances with Blythe's safety. "Ye must stay here while I go ahead. I will come for ye when 'tis safe."
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"Fine." She stopped walking.
He narrowed his gaze on her. "Ye agreed verra quickly. 'Tis not in your nature to be left behind."
She smiled at him, but Darach was not certain he believed that smile. "I'm not stupid. I don't want to have a
front-row seat to the Ugly Viking versus Stupid Innkeeper grudge match. So long as you don't lock me in a
room without a bathroom, I'm okay being left behind."
Darach nodded and left her standing in the moonlight. He would not look back and be affected by her forlorn
expression. He strode quickly away.
He slowed as he entered a small clearing ringed by large boulders. Taller than a man, the stones could easily
hide a waiting enemy. He did not worry overmuch, because even if the Northman caught him unawares,
Darach would have little trouble defeating him. But years as a predator had taught him to prepare for the
unexpected.
Only the dead awaited him this night. Darach relaxed as he sensed no living thing in the clearing.
Instinctively, he knew the innkeeper no longer lived.
Within seconds he found the man's body. He was sprawled between two giant boulders, his face frozen
forever in a twisted mask of unspeakable terror. Darach raked his fingers through his hair and fought back the
guilt. It was always so. You would think after five hundred years he would no longer react like the human he
had once been. He had done what he must. One man had died so that many could live.
"Is he dead?" Blythe's quiet voice was right behind him.
"Aye." Darach would not berate her for following him. He had expected nothing less. He only regretted that
she should see this. "He bears no marks. His fear killed him."
"A heart attack?" She did not sound frightened as she peered around Darach.
This was not a woman who would run screaming into the night. He admired that in her, but also feared that
her courage might eventually prove her undoing. Darach frowned at the thought.
"Ye may call it what ye wish." Darach glanced down at the massive footprints of the Northman. They ended
only a hand's span from the innkeeper's body.
"And Black Varin?" She moved to his side, then slipped off her cloak.
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