His brown-green eyes came to me. Then his eyebrows rose. Then he shoved a gigantic bite of pancake in his mouth.

I took the eyebrow raise as a, “Yes, Seoafin? What would you like to discuss?”

“I’m not a lesbian,” I blurted for some completely unhinged reason and those raised brows shot together in a scary way.

He chewed, swallowed and growled his first word to me of the day, “What?”

“I’m not a lesbian.”

Words two and three came in quick succession. “A what?”

Oh. Maybe they didn’t have the term lesbian here.

“I… uh,” Damn you, Sjofn! “I don’t prefer um… my own sex.”

He froze. Completely. His face. His body. His hand with pancake on fork suspended in mid-air. All of him. Frozen. Even the air around him seemed to glitter with frost.

Okay, maybe I should have left that for later, say, after I learned his birth date, favorite color and preferred way to down a deer.

I hurried on. “See, I was, well, I don’t remember it actually and when you told me about it the other… well… after we got married, I was surprised. I mean, I didn’t even remember I said that to you. That’s kind of uh… a crazy thing to say and a crazier thing to, um… share. I’ve tried to figure out why on earth I would say something like that and I think maybe I was drunk and nervous. I mean, uh…” I faltered. Shit. Think Finnie! “You’re a big guy and all and I’m… well, I’m not that big and you kind of, um, flip me out…” His eyes narrowed at a term he clearly didn’t understand. “I mean, scare me a bit. Actually, uh… you’re doing it, well… right now.”

He dropped his fork on his plate, sat back, crossed his arms on his chest and scowled at me in that way it made me think he wanted to break me in two.

I kept blathering. “And… well, now. Actually more now. The scaring me part. Since I’m, you know, sharing.”

He didn’t speak.

Shit! I wished he would talk and not when he said stuff that freaked me out or pissed me off but when I wanted him to.

I kept on going. “I thought, with you home and us being, well, you know, wedded in holy matrimony…” I faltered again because his eyes narrowed telling me they didn’t have that and he had no clue to what I was referring so I covered, “of the… um, gods,” Eek! “that maybe we should start to get to know one another and I thought we should start off on the right foot, with everything out in the open. Being honest.”

“Being honest,” he finally spoke and he did it on a low rumble.

I nodded. “Yes, being honest.”

“So this is you honest, now, and that wasn’t you honest, back then?” he asked a good question.

“I can be a little… crazy when I have a bit too much to drink.”

“Yes, the wench at the inn said you come in often, drink much ale and get quite loud,” he remarked, not looking happy about this but I was sure glad Lindy corroborated my story.

“Uh… yes,” I agreed. “That sounds like me.” And, actually, that was no lie.

He scowled at me.

I pulled in breath and said quietly, “Frey, this really sucks to admit but just the way you’re looking at me now scares me.”

“The Winter Princess Sjofn of the House of Wilde does not easily get scared,” he replied quietly right back but his quietly was distrustful, disbelieving and a bit frightening.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t. You’re right. I can usually handle myself but I’m alone in a cabin in the woods with no one even close with a really huge man who could break me in two who doesn’t seem to like me much and you have no problem getting physical and it scares the beejeezus out of me and when it isn’t doing that, it ticks me off.”

“Ticks you off?”

“Upsets me, makes me angry,” I explained.

He went silent again.

“Frey –” I said softly but he cut me off and scarily changed the subject.

“So if you do not prefer women, you wouldn’t mind if I took you to the loft, stripped you na**d and did as I pleased with you?”

I felt my face get hot, my br**sts swell and my heart start beating faster.

“Actually, I would,” I whispered.

He started scowling again. “Right,” he whispered back.

He totally didn’t believe me.

“But only because… well, I’d like for us to get to know one another better. Spend time together. Then maybe advance to the next level.”

His brows snapped together again and he asked, “The next level?”

“Uh… the part where you strip me na**d and do as you please,” I whispered. “That’s the next level.”

He scowled.

I waited.

He scowled more.

I didn’t have anything left.

Then he asked in a low, surprised, unhappier than normal unhappy voice, “By the gods, are you asking me to court you?”

That sounded crazy. The very idea of this big, scary guy who was a renowned Raider courting me or anyone sounded absolutely nuts.

And that must have been why I burst out laughing.

He did not laugh, in fact, not one thing was funny to him and he made this obvious so I struggled to control my mirth, won my fight and suggested, “How about this? We make a deal. You don’t order me around, throw me over your shoulder and carry me out of pubs or other locations, toss me into sleighs or on horses, send me careening through the forest on a horse whose reins I don’t have in my hands and maybe we share a few meals together. I’ll cook. Then we’ll see about the next level. Is that a deal?”

“And how many meals would we share, Sjofn?”

Hmm. He was considering this.

I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“Fifteen?” I tried.

“How about two?” he returned.

Two?

Okay, maybe it was bad.

“Twelve,” suggested.

“Two,” he fired back.

“Nine?” I kept trying.

“Two,” he stated firmly.

Ho boy.

“So, in your two, does this one count as one?” I asked, pointing with my fork at my plate.

“Absolutely,” he answered.

Ho boy!

“Do I have to answer now?”

“Yes.”

Shit.

I stared at him and tried not to look like I was breathing as hard as I was breathing.

Okay, this was an adventure, my adventure. I’d paid for it and I knew there were risks. There were always risks. And this was a risk I had to take.