Master of Miasma (The Valhalla Series) (10 page)

“And lingonberry?” I check, lifting up the other jar. It smells and looks like cranberry compote.

He nods, refilling our coffee from a flask, “It grows flat to the ground like a ground cover. It's evergreen and the berries are potent superfood. You need your strength
elskling
.”

Smiling at the endearment I take the offered cracker smeared with cloudberry jam and covered with white cheese.

Tentative, I take a bite, having an instant culinary orgasm at the infusion in my mouth. The cloudberry is ever so faintly tart, the cheese is gouda sweet, and there's definitely a hazelnut, citrus, and honey amalgamation in the flatbread.

“
Gosh, that's fab,” I mumble, chomping like a starving waif.

Leaning back in his chair, spreading the selection of condiments on the crackers, he announces, “I expect you to finish all of this. You need the energy because your dormant genes have been activated by the l
æraðr juice, that... and today I'm taking you to the gym.”

“
What for?” I demand, eager for my next morsel, washing away dryness with another sip of dark roasted coffee beans.

“
I need to test your reflexes, and show you around. We can shower there after we finish training.”

“
Training?” I gasp, looking at his broad shoulders while intimidation polyps my blood vessels. Surveying the bulk sheathed by his shirt and the indelible muscles in his arms, terror robs my legs of stability and I am instantly woozy.

Putting a bunch of assembled crackers on my plate, he nods, pausing long enough to look reassuringly into my eyes, “I am your guide. You need to be able to defend yourself. I'm not taking you there to beat you up, I'm your teacher.”

“Teacher of what?”

His left eye glows with an excited flare and he averts his focus back to his plate, “Emma, judge me after I mess up, not before. I am going to test your karsk, to gauge your reflexes and might. Karsk is agility and strength.”

“Will I keep growing?” I ask, wishing I wouldn't keep putting my foot in it.

He looks up again, his surveillance pausing a moment too long on my chest, “Affirmative. You'll stabilize after a few days. That's why you need your strength right now.”

Holding my stare with his fathomless eyes ringed with fake fire, he smiles, morphing his strong face into charming, “Are you ready to meet the clan yet, or do you think you still need a bit of adjustment privacy?”

“
Er, too soon,” I nod emphatically. “Worry steals my appetite.”

Let's just put that out there right now.

I look down, picking up my mug.

“
Trust me, nothing will suppress your appetite.” He purrs it, the way he licked my earlobe with my name back at the F.F. It heats my insides and does insane things with my ability to focus. Unable to look at him I grip my mug tighter, fogging up at the suggestion in his tone.

God, the F.F. feels like a lifetime ago.

How am I going to 'train' when every time he talks to me I turn into a side order of mushy peas?

“
Em,” he hums so low even the wood of the table vibrates, clinking the cutlery.

Summoned with temptation I look directly into his eyes.

“Please stop fretting, I promise I'll never let harm come to you, especially not by my hand.”

I nod, attraction squeezing my throat, making conversation impossible.

Impulsively he reaches up, holding my chin in his long fingers, belatedly seeming a little shocked at himself . “Your eyes are gorgeous today.”

That unglues my voice and I feel shrill, “My eyes? Why? What happened to my eyes?”

He leans closer, staring into me, saying intimately, “They're incredible, the gray has turned into a slice of firmament, sparkling like imprisoned cosmos. You're a frail sacrament, the storm within you has come out of hibernation and it's... beautiful.”

“
Jeez Mac, you're a soppy one.”

He scowls at me, pulling back and releasing his hold, sitting straight, “Soppy? Has no man ever told you how gorgeous you are?”

“I wish. The best Guy ever did was tell me I look 'nice'.”

“
You know what Guy's missing?” he snaps, anger tarnishing his tone.

“
A heart?” I laugh with bitter deprecation.

“
A concussion.”

It's so brutally sincere, said with such ferocity cast into his face that I burst out laughing.

“I'll be sure to give him one the next time I see him,” I smile, the tension alleviated.

“
Not if I beat you to it,” he winks, shoveling a cracker into his mouth without even needing to bite it in halves like I do.

I watch his mouth, the full lips spread by the motion, the way his square chin wiggles and deepens the barely visible cleft. He looks noble and altogether too sexy. All angles and spikes which totally matches his statuesque body. I could stare at him for hours.

“You're okay, Mac,” I nod, following suit and silencing my runaway tongue with coffee.

“
You're better than okay, Em.”

Grinning stupidly at each other I hold up my mug, “A toast to eating as friends.”

He returns the gesture, saying, “Skal,” then sips his java while staring sharply at me over the rim. He's hiding a secret today. He keeps looking at me with such intensity that I wonder if I should be worried.

Exchanging his coffee for my hand, he lifts it and gives my knuckles a brief kiss, “Stop worrying. If I was a rogue I'd not be this patient, and if we are anything it is patient.”

“You're a romantic sap,” I tease again, loving that he's strong enough to rip my clothes off but can hold my hand like it's a fragile eggshell.

He closes his eyes, squeezing them tight together, “Please stop thinking about me taking your clothes off. Every time you do I'm back in that bathroom looking at legs so long they belong on a unicorn filly.”

“Not my rack?” I tease boldly, impressed that he has a thing for legs like I do.

His eyes open, the left disproportionately bright again, “Lady, if you value your virtue you'll change the subject.” He kisses my hand again, twisting it to look at the mark, running his thumb across it before release, saying firmly, “Eat! It stops you from talking about cleavage and legs.”

My insides are melting. How did his thumb stroke make me instantly horny?

Pointing an accusing finger at me, he says in a deep voice, “Don't think about the bathroom incident or I'll have to hand you over to Arghin for training, because all you do is distract me.”

Laughing, I kick him under the table before retracting my legs to prop my heels onto my chair, “Ha! That's the price you pay for kidnapping women from their homes.”

He opens his mouth to retort, then snaps it closed, smiling, shaking his head and selecting a cracker, shoving three into his mouth so his cheeks distend, obviously determined to stop himself from flirtatious repartee.

Or just maybe I hit the only raw nerve he has.

Lifting my feet closer to my ass I close my eyes too, wishing there was a magic potion to halt stampeding libido.

“You know what I think?” intrudes his voice.

“
What?” I say, keeping my eyes closed.

“
We should celebrate tonight. This has been entirely too serious for you and it makes you tense. After Arghin and me help sort out your quarters I say we introduce you to Akevitt.”

“
What is ackafit?” he's managed to coax me from my isolation and I open my eyes, simultaneously dropping my legs and swinging them idly under my highchair.

“
Water of life, the drink of Scandinavia.”

“
What's it made from?”

“
Potato.” He laughs hard, shrugging, “What can I say? We're resourceful.”

“
I dunno, I don't think I fancy drinking potato smoothies.”

“
No elskling, it is a liqueur we classify as brennevin, which means burning wine. Akevitt is crystal clear and flavored with anise. It tastes like Yule in a glass, distilled through amber. When we feed you potatoes they're deep purple, naturally almost black.”  Shrugging again, the movement causing his chest muscles to dip and pout under his shirt, he smirks, “We are harii, the warriors in black, you'd expect us to favor the dark potato.”

“
You're just excited because you hope I can't hold my liquor.”

“
Nonsense, you can't persecute a guy for wanting to share your own culture with you.” This time he kicks
me
under the table and I'm grateful he's not wearing shoes, “Plus it's nothing new for me to have to carry you around. You need a party Emma, a real one. I'll let you in on a secret, in the old words we called yule, jøl. To jøl means to have a good time, and as it was yesterday I think we all need to kick back and let our hair down.”

“
Yoll?” I check I say it right.

He nods, “Yes babes, you need to jøl the T'ach'aa way. A jøller is a party animal.”

Ha! Next he'll be offering to teach me the raven dance.

This time I sense the tension oozing out of him when his eye flares. He looks at the mark on his hand, then into my eyes, tightening my lungs when he absently rubs the sigil on his palm, twisting my womb into an involuntary spasm, turning me on.

It's diabolical that mark is.

“
You're too astute sometimes,” he says, his natural croon coming out strained.

“
Why?”

“
The raven dance is slang in our world for coupling.”

“
Oh!” My palm is tingling and I copy him, rubbing the black triangle on my hand. It's completely healed now and is fascinating in its intricacy.

Tracing it, his groan breaks my focus. His veins are popping out and he looks like he's in pain.

“Mac?”

He holds up a hand, “I'm fine.” He readjusts his slouch, looking all business now, “Finish eating, we need to start this day.”

The atmosphere is different and I have an awful hunch it's my doing.

Now what did I do?

Chapter 12

Emma:

After grabbing essentials from my supplies I've brushed my teeth, neatened my hair and tied it up, and am now wandering the catacombs with my guide.

The tunnels are high and rough, everywhere illuminated by crystals, some he says is lit with their old technology of energy which he calls glasir.

Smiling with indulgence he continues while we walk the long corridor, “We found it endlessly amusing when movies came out with swords of light because in Asgard all the swords have that ability.”

“
Oh yeah?” I don't think George Lucas will appreciate you claiming the spotlight for that ingenuity darling.

“
It's true,” he says authoritatively. “It's recorded as such in the
Skáldskaparmál
.”

“
Ah huh,” I nod, absorbing sights and sounds while he tries to convince me Asgard is teaming with light sabers.

“
At the beginning of
Skáldskaparmál an account is given of
Ægir
visiting the gods in Asgard and shimmering swords are brought out and used as their sole source of light as they drink.”

“
Okay,” I shrug, seriously not caring. “Why does it matter so much to you?”

“
Because the modern man peddles the holy for entertainment. Asgard is real, Valhalla is real, all of it is based in fact but because of the passage of time instead of teaching children truth they're taught propaganda and how to recite wars and bloodshed. Children are not taught hope, but despair. And when the truth is finally revealed it's called science fiction.”

We're walking across a central dome with a myriad of tunnels leading off it and it hits me for the first time that this is a hidden city. Holy cow!

People move around conducting their own business, mostly normal looking folk who nod while surveying me with inquisitive expressions.

I nod back, beginning to feel like a curiosity.

“How come it's not cold in here?” I mumble, self-conscious, but wondering why we're barefoot on hard stone which should be chilling and isn't.

“
It's a fallacy that stone is cold. Stone not exposed to the elements retains residual heat,” he explains, holding his arm in front of me to prevent me from walking into the room we're headed for. “Close your eyes.”

Shaking my head, laughing, I close them, waiting for the next big surprise.

His arm moves behind me, pulling me forward around my waist when suddenly my feet hit cold and smushy. It gives me a skin crawling case of jeeblies. The sensation on my naked soles is so cool it feels wet. Wriggling my toes on something soft and moist it is both elicit and repulsive.