The Winter Bear's Bride Read online

  Argument and the men around them forgotten, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her hard against his body. She didn’t hold back, opening to allow him access to the sweet recesses of her mouth. He groaned and swept his tongue against hers, seeking her flavors. She was sharp and sweet like always, and he was totally addicted.

  He turned them both and boosted her up onto the table behind her. She stiffened a little, but he growled in warning. She hadn’t responded to him like this for weeks, and he’d be damned if he’d let her tease him and back out now.

  “My lord,” she finally managed to break away to whisper against his lips. “Not no, just…not here.”

  He looked up and realized they were still in the middle of the great hall. The warriors gathered around them were doing their best to look in every direction but at them. Difficult when he practically had her spread out on the main table.

  Hauling her up, he nodded to Arick and half-carried, half-pushed her from the hall. As soon as they were through the door to the tower stairwell, he shut it with a booted foot and turned to pin her against it.

  “You don’t get away with it that easily, my lady.” His anger still simmering, he turned the last two words into a sneer. He knew what they called her for not bearing his mark. Until she did, none of his people would take her seriously as his wife and Lady of the Keep. It was cruel, but he didn’t care. She’d made a fool of him, so it was only fair she get the same treatment in return.

  “Jaxon didn’t do anything,” she whispered, and the man’s name on her lips set his temper boiling again.

  “Oh, Jaxon now, is it?” he asked, hands hard on her waist as he half lifted her against the door. She gasped, air knocked out of her, and tried to push his hands away when he started to lift her skirts. “I bet you’d rather he was here, fucking you than me.”

  “No!” Her swift rebuttal and the hurt look in her eyes eased some of the rage that tried to consume him. “No. I wouldn’t. I’m your wife. I would never do anything like that.”

  He didn’t answer, instead sliding his hand between her legs. She was slick and wet, and he growled. “Wet for me already?”

  Color covered her cheeks and she dropped her gaze. He stroked a finger through her cream, finding her clit and rubbing it in hard circles. “You like this, don’t you? Like me touching you…”

  He found the entrance to her pussy and slid two fingers deep inside in one hard thrust. She cried out, her head dropping back against the door.

  “Like me inside you…”

  His thumb found her clit as he fucked her with his fingers. She was so tight they almost didn’t fit, but with the slickness of her body, he managed. A groan welled up from his soul at the memory of what that tight grip felt like around his cock and a second later, he ripped the front of his pants open. Desperate to be inside her, his cock sprang free. Gathering her skirts, he shoved them up around her waist.

  Pulling his hand from her, he yanked her leg up, only to catch sight of her face and stop dead. Her expression, somewhere between need and misery, rocked him to the core. Instead of shoving his cock as deep inside her as he could get it, he paused for a moment and ran the broad tip over her clit. Arousing her at the same time as he bathed the wide tip in her juices. Her eyes closed, barring him from seeing her expression, but her breathing shortened as he brought her up closer and closer to the edge.

  Once he was sure she was nearly there, her soft pants on the edge of a moan and her hips rocking against his, did he adjust himself against her and drive inward.

  “Oh…” The breath left her lips on a moan as he filled her. The tight sheath of her body gripped him, and he groaned. The ability to be gentle deserted him and he pulled back only to drive in again and again. He picked up the pace, every muscle in his hard warrior’s body bent to the task at hand…pounding into his wife so hard the door behind her rattled.

  Within minutes, his release roared up out of the blue, filling his balls with fire. Slamming into her a last time, he came, cock pulsing seed to bathe the silken walls of her inner depths. Dropping his head against her shoulder, he panted as the hard pleasure receded.

  Then he realized he hadn’t made sure of her pleasure. Pulling back, he tried to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at him. Shame filled him as he pulled out of her. Without a word, she put her dress in order, smoothed her hair down and walked away.

  But not before he’d seen the tears in her eyes.

  He was never going to forgive her.

  Bent over the toilet, Analise heaved again. There was nothing left in her stomach, but she couldn’t stop for long minutes. The wave of nausea passed and she pushed away, making it to the sink to wash her mouth out and clean her teeth.

  She caught sight of herself in the mirror and winced. She was gaunt, probably a result of the stomach bug she seemed to have picked up, and the dark circles under her eyes said she was exhausted. And she was, mentally and emotionally. If she’d thought living with her father was a nightmare, then life as the wife of a man who hated her was a hundred times worse. At least with her father, she’d been able to escape to the sanctuary of her room at night. With her husband…

  There was no escape. He took her every night, sometimes many times, but she wasn’t under the impression it was love. Even when he was gentle with her, his expression was shuttered, a barrier between them.

  Sighing, she left the bathroom and, making sure her indoor wrapper was tightly belted around her waist, stepped out into the corridor.

  Her footsteps were, as always, barely audible, a talent that had proved as useful in her new life as it had in her old. The servants barely noticed her passing now, so she could avoid most of the looks of dislike. She’d become a wraith in a keep she was supposed to be lady of. But, one blessing at least, whichever servant was responsible for the mending had noticed her work, and there was always a pile of clothing in the sunroom above the great hall. It wasn’t much, but it kept her hands busy and made her feel useful.

  On her way there, though, she needed to pass through the darkened part of the main hall behind the dais the Lord and Lady of the Keep’s chairs were on. A couple of servants were cleaning. Head down, she didn’t look at them, but couldn’t avoid overhearing their conversation.

  “Mari said she went in this morning to fetch the alpha’s clothes to wash and she was in there again, throwing up.”

  “Really? That’s like…two weeks now?”

  Analise blinked, pausing in the darkest part of the shadows. They were discussing her illness? Had it been two weeks? She’d only thought it had been a couple of days.

  “Yeah…she should be getting over the worst of it soon. My Kerin was the same when she had her eldest. Morning sickness is always worst with the first one.”

  “Bollocks. Geth’s wife was bad with all three of hers…”

  Their voices faded out as the world stopped for Analise. Morning sickness.

  She was pregnant.

  Holy crap, no. She couldn’t be pregnant.

  Slowly, her hand crept out to touch her stomach in wonder. The numbness that had pervaded her body and mind for weeks rolled back a little. She was pregnant…a baby. Scar’s baby. She closed her eyes for a moment. It couldn’t be a boy—he hadn’t bitten her to bond her—and even if he had, she knew deep down the baby was a little girl.

  My little girl.

  Fierce joy filled her, protectiveness following a half step in its wake. Darting a look around the hall, she made sure the servants hadn’t seen her, then retraced her steps. If they’d noticed her condition, it wouldn’t be long before others would, or before someone asked Scar about it.

  She returned quickly to Scar’s chambers. Hands shaking, she took a heavy winter cloak from one of the trunks and switched her indoor shoes for thick snow shoes. Getting out of the keep was child’s play. The guards had long ago stopped being vigilant where she was concerned, convinced she was as downtrodden and broken as she’d appeared to be the last couple of weeks.

  B
ut she wasn’t. She was the Elder’s daughter and damned if she was going to let her daughter grow up like she had…despised from birth and used as a political pawn.

  Keeping close to the wall of the keep, she hurried around to the south wall. There were no gates this side and the roll and rise of the landscape meant that she only had to cross a small stretch before she’d be hidden from view. Since she didn’t know when or if Scar and his men would return today, staying out of sight was all-important. It would be just her luck to escape finally only to be caught on the road. And, if memory served her correctly, there was a small village a couple of hours walk away. Perhaps she could find a barn or shelter to rest in for the night. Satisfied with her plan, she set off into the snow.

  Three hours later, she realized just how dumb a plan it had been. The weather, so bright and sunny when she’d set out, had quickly closed in. The bitter wind tugged at her cloak and skirts, finding its way beneath to bite into her skin, chilling her to the bone. The sun had disappeared, replaced by a vicious snowstorm that stole all visibility. She blundered on, her arms wrapped around herself, hoping beyond hope that she wasn’t going in circles.

  “It’s okay, baby girl,” she muttered, rubbing her stomach gently, as if to reassure her unborn child, although she knew the words were really for herself. “We’ll get out of this, I promise.”

  But the cold stole her energy, and it became a struggle to put one foot in front of the other. Then she stopped shivering. Fear rolled through her. Not shivering in cold like this was a bad thing…a really bad thing.

  Tears tracked down her cheeks. She was going to die out here, and she’d doomed her daughter to the same fate. Like her great plan to stop the clans’ fighting, her escape plan had just screwed things up even more.

  “I’m sorry, angel,” she whispered, falling to her knees and crying. Longing filled her…for the husband who hated her and the life she couldn’t give her child. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Hello? Is someone out there?”

  A woman’s voice filtered through the storm, and Analise yanked her head up, hope filling her.

  “Yes! Hello! Over here!” Using the last of her energy, she scrambled to her feet and lurched toward the faint outline of a cloaked woman. It resolved into a familiar face, and Analise broke into tears.

  “Rika,” she whispered and fell into her savior’s arms.

  She was gone. Analise was gone.

  Scar sat slumped in his chair in the main hall, his face set into a scowl, and brooded. His men all studiously avoided him, their revelries over yet another successful battle muted. If he knew keep gossip, then the word had gotten around within an hour of them returning.

  The lady had left. No one knew where she was or where she’d gone. Just that at some point between them leaving this morning and returning in the midst of a snowstorm this afternoon, she’d managed to slip out of the keep. He’d bellowed and raged at the men who were supposed to be on guard, but to no avail. No one had any idea when she’d actually left.

  He should have known she’d do this. His anger deepened, a maelstrom of bitterness and fury within him. But she hadn’t kept her word over the peace negotiations, so why had he expected her to keep to their marriage vows? He was better off without her… Faithless bitch.

  The door to the hall opened, framing a feminine figure in a cloak. The warriors around him all looked up, interest in their eyes, until she pulled her hood down. White hair flowed over her shoulders and her eyes, identical to Scar’s, cut directly to him.

  “Mother,” he said, his tone flat. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  “All these years, if someone had told me I’d raised a village idiot, I’d have stabbed them with a blunt spoon,” she snapped as she strode toward him, fire in her eyes and anger radiating from every line of her body. Stopping in front of him, she looked him up and down, lip curled back. “But right now? I’d have to agree with them.”

  The silence in the room was absolute. No one got away with speaking to him like that, not even Arick, so to say one could hear a pin drop was an understatement. Every eye was turned toward them as he raised an eyebrow at his mother.

  “And what, pray, have I done to piss you off this much?”

  Absently, he thought over any deed that could have raised her ire to this level, but came up with nothing. After she’d refused to settle in the keep, he’d found a nice little freeholding for her a short distance away. Between the keep and the nearest village, it was close enough that she wasn’t isolated, yet far enough away she had her independence. Knowing who she was—his mother—no bear would dare bother her lest they bring down his wrath on their heads.

  “Analise.”

  One word, but it froze Scar in place.

  “What about her?”

  “Oh, not much…just the fact I found her in the middle of a snowstorm, almost frozen to death.” His mother shook her head, disgust in her eyes. “Never would I have thought a son of mine would terrify a woman so much she would risk traveling in the snow to escape him.”

  Analise…in the storm.

  Just the thought was enough to make him feel sick. He’d assumed she’d left well before the storm had hit. She’d lived in the circle all her life; she knew the dangers…knew not to travel before bad weather hit. Unless she was so desperate to escape him that freezing to death was an acceptable risk.

  He shrugged. “She’s a fully-grown adult. What she chooses to do or not to do is none of my concern. I can’t keep her here if she doesn’t want to be here.”

  “Yes, but you made it pretty fucking impossible for her to stay, didn’t you?” Rika snapped, stomping up the steps to loom over him. “You”—she jabbed a finger into his chest—“took her to your bed. Fucked her. Got her with child. And didn’t fucking bond her. How could she stay? In the eyes of…everyone…she’s not your wife, she’s your whore.”

  The world lurched at her words, and he felt the blood drain from his face.

  “What did you say?”

  She looked down at him, her face hard. “That poor girl loved you, and you made her a whore.”

  “No, not that part. The part before. That I got her with…” He couldn’t say the word. Just looked up at her mutely. Analise couldn’t be…could she?

  Realization spread over Rika’s face and she laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound.

  “You didn’t know. Rather than tell you, she chose to run. What does that tell you, Aevar?”

  He was so shocked he didn’t even flinch when she used his real name…the name of the boy who had loved Analise Asmundr more than life itself, only to find himself beaten so badly he’d almost died for daring to look at her.

  “She hates me.” He groaned, running a hand through his hair to push it back from his face. “And I don’t blame her.”

  “Neither do I.” Her answer was short and as sharp as the expression on her face. If he’d been looking for sympathy from his mother, he didn’t get it. “So what are you going to do to put it right?”

  “I…” He snapped his mouth shut before he said something stupid that would set her off again. Rika might be seen as a “mere female” by some of the more traditional members of their society, but he well knew she had a tongue on her that could flay a man to the bone with her words and leave him bleeding for days.

  Instead, he focused on the problem at hand.

  Analise was carrying his child. His wife…no, the woman he loved…was pregnant.

  Those two truths hit him one after the other; a double blow that struck him deep down in the center of his soul and stole his breath.

  He loved Analise. With all his heart, soul and mind. Warmth spread out from his heart through his chest, warming him through, and his gaze snapped up to meet Rika’s.

  “Where is she?”

  Rika folded her arms. “What are you going to do? And it better not be some dumb shit or you’ll have me to deal with. Remember, that’s my daughter-in-law and grandbaby…so you’ll have me to deal with if you’r
e an asshole.”

  “And they couldn’t have found a better protector in all the circle.” He chuckled, rising to his feet in one lithe movement to grasp her gently by the arms. Laying a quick kiss on her cheek, he looked down at her.

  “You’re going to take me to where she is, and I’m going to put this right.”

  Chapter 9

  One day, she would get out of the circle. That was a promise, to herself and to her unborn daughter.

  Crouching, Analise scooped snow into a bucket to take inside and melt before Rika got back from the village with supplies. It had been a few days since she’d escaped from Scar’s keep and still she couldn’t believe that, in the middle of a whiteout, she’d managed to practically stumble through Rika’s door. She suppressed a shiver as she packed more snow into the bucket, not wanting to think about what would have happened if she’d been on a slightly different heading.

  “Someone was looking out for us for sure, baby girl,” she said aloud, only comfortable speaking to her baby when Rika wasn’t around.

  The pregnancy wasn’t that far along, so she wasn’t showing yet, and so far she’d managed to conceal her morning sickness from the other woman. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Rika. But to have shared a man’s bed without a mark meant the words of their marriage ceremony were pointless…and a child born to an unmarked woman? He would never claim her as his.

  Sighing, she stood up and rubbed her lower back. Hot tears prickled the backs of her eyes, but she rubbed her back hard and ignored them. She would not cry. Not over him, not over any of this. Not even over the fact her father had survived and was apparently a new man after his brush with death, sorry for his treatment of her.

  She snorted, the sound bitter. Yeah, like a leopard—or bear, in this case—ever changed its spots. Her father had probably heard that Scar hadn’t marked her and thought he could get the marriage annulled and sell her off to one of his cronies.

  Her jaw set and she straightened her spine. Not happening. She was done being a pawn, for any man. Even if she still did love her husband…