Louise Allen - Virgin Slave, Barbarian King

Wulfric caught the soap one-handed, pivoting as he did so to admire the exquisite rear view of Julia vanishing behind the curtain. ‘Little witch,’ he murmured to himself, settling back into the rapidly cooling water. ‘Little vixen.’

What had happened just now had been no part of his intentions, but with Julia Livia it seemed his prized self-control was like a reed in the wind. She could provoke him just by the way she lowered her lashes with exquisite disdain, let alone by the sight of her naked body a hand’s span from his.

Wulfric lifted a foot to the rim of the tub and began to soap his leg, trying to give proper attention to the condition of his muscles and the feel of the tendon he had strained two weeks before. His physical condition was important; some chit of a girl, however aggravating, was not.

Only…he lowered that leg, satisfied with the lack of discomfort in the tendon, and raised the other. Only, she was not a girl. He had let her lack of stature compared to the women who surrounded him delude him into thinking her nearer Berig’s age than his own twenty-seven summers. But she must be twenty, he supposed.

Well past marriageable age in his society. What was the matter with this senator she was supposed to be betrothed to? Had the man ice water in his veins?

He, Wulfric, was very uncomfortably aware that what was coursing around his own veins was not ice water, but hot blood. He had not meant to kiss her. He had known, without having to think about it, what the effect of taking that lush, red, angry mouth would be. His own body had predicted absolutely what her narrow frame would feel like under his hands, how the sweet curves and soft skin would feel against his own hardness, against his bruised flesh.

And he would not take what he so easily could, because his faith told him it was wrong and his honour despised the thought that he would force a woman.

Even this one who attacked him with his own weapons of sensuality and of anger. He knew what she was about, even if he doubted she could explain it to herself. She had wanted to show him that he was less than he believed himself to be, and he knew that even greater than her fear of him was her own terror of being afraid, of not living up to the standards of a patrician Roman lady.

Did she know what danger she had been in? Had she any concept of the fire she was playing with? Surely she did. Somewhere, under that angry defiance, there must be the belief that he would not force her. She had gone white around the mouth when he had flung that remark about taking her on the floor. That had shocked her deeply and yet she had the spirit to continue to taunt him, to play her dangerously provoking games with him. Somewhere there was a trust in him and in his honour. He should not care, but it seemed that he did and that the thought warmed him, deep inside where he kept the emotions that a leader could not show.

He stood up in a surge of water and reached for a towel, swathing it around his hips as Berig ducked into the tent. The boy was clean, damp and his hair was slicked back.

‘Una says, do you want the salve for…Bloody hell!’

Wulfric followed his gaze to the beaten earth of the tent floor. Trodden, swept with a stiff broom, the summer-hardened earth had made a perfectly serviceable floor. Now there was a muddy ring right around the tub, a quagmire directly in the centre of the living space.

‘Your lord splashes a great deal.’ Julia emerged from behind her curtain, her creased clothes clinging to her, her gaze scornfully averted from Wulfric as he stood there up to mid-thigh in cooling, dirty water. ‘I was surprised to find him so clumsy.’

With a flick of her skirts she picked her way around the mud, past the gaping youth and out of the tent.

Wulfric balled the towel up in his hands. ‘Empty the tub, get some straw for the floor and sort something out with that hell-cat for dinner.’ He climbed grimly out of the tub onto the stool and from there to dry ground.

Berig swallowed audibly. ‘What are you going to do to her?’

Wulfric stood where he was, hands on hips, and considered his tactics. He saw the shadow slide under the tent flap and raised his voice. ‘Do to her? Why, nothing. Nothing at all. If she wants to eat, then she must cook. If she wants to drink, then she must fetch water, and, if she wants to sleep on a bed, then she must wash the linens.’ And if she wants to tempt and torment me with those red lips and those soft curves, those big brown eyes—then she will find I am as much a rock to her wiles as to her temper.

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