Viking King (The MacLomain Series: Viking Ancestors, Book 1) by Sky Purington Page A

crawl inside her soul. “But I wonder, were you deserted as she was by Od?”
    Megan clenched her teeth and tried to ignore how close he came to her own personal truth with Nathan. Yet the stories told that Freyja leaned toward promiscuousness when mourning Od’s absence. “Rest assured, if I was anything like Freyja I wouldn’t turn to other men to bury my heartache.”
    Naðr’s eyes stayed with hers, his gaze a little lost as he whispered, “No, I don’t think you would.”
    It was the first time since she’d met him that Megan saw a smidge of vulnerability in his eyes and she didn’t much like how it switched her breathing. Pulling her eyes from his, she took a long swig of ale and did her best to ignore the constant ache below her waist.
    His hand left her hair and trailed down her back slowly, as though memorizing the contours of her spine. “You seem to know much of my gods, even my people. You’re not afraid of being here. Why is that?”
    “Just trying to blend in.”
    “I think it’s more than that.”
    “Do you?”
    “Yes.”
    Though it was likely because of the beer, Megan was growing comfortable so said more than she probably should. “I grew up in a place called Hampton, New Hampshire. My Dad ran a small fishing company so I was raised around a fairly hearty seafaring bunch.” She shook her head and sipped from her drink. “My father had lots of ideas about how best to provide for his family. Most of the time it meant gambling away money, but there was this one project that he thought might be the start of something.”
    Naðr said nothing as she drank again, lost in thought…in memories.
    “We had this beat up house a few blocks off the beach with a sizeable yard.” She again shook her head. “The truth was we had more yard than house. Far more. Inherited. Anyways, he decided to build a boat. I was ten at the time.” She snorted. “He started to build this thing out of any scrap wood he could find and I’ll give him this, Dad made it work.”
    She peered at the king. “Know what he called it?”
    Naðr shook his head, eyes as always avidly on her face.
    “The Viking.”
    His eyes warmed. “Ah, so started your fascination with Vikings?”
    Megan quirked her lip. “Yeah, actually, it was that simple.” Then she again got lost in thought. “At first.” She sighed. “Yet the more he became obsessed with building this boat, the more infatuated I became with being knowledgeable about what he’d named his obsession after. There was nothing as gratifying as eventually helping him build the boat while sharing what I’d learned about Vikings.”
    When her words trailed off, Naðr murmured, “And was your father proud of your knowledge?”
    Not expecting his question, she involuntarily arched her brows as she stared without any real focus. “He might’ve been had he named the boat for actual Vikings.”
    Naðr frowned. “I don’t understand.”
    “Neither did I.” She took another swig of beer. “At first.”
    When the king continued to frown in confusion, she said, “He named it for someone who not only loved the sea but evidently stole his heart. A woman he was having an affair with. He apparently called her his little Viking.”
    “I do not know the word affair .”
    “He was…” she paused, considering the best way to phrase this to a man that slept around. “He was having sex with someone other than my mother when he’d promised to be faithful.”
    The lighter cobalt in Naðr’s eyes flashed a bit brighter. “I see.”
    “I’m sure you do.”
    Naðr ignored her innuendo. “What happened to the boat then?”
    A man after her own heart in a way. Why bother with human emotion when a boat was at stake? Megan couldn’t help but smirk as she remembered the sweet revenge that Fate took out on her father. “Though he survived, it sunk and my mother left him.”
    “Good.” Naðr nodded. “A weak boat made by a weak man and a woman only stronger because of