The Valkyrie's Guardian by Moriah Densley Page B

also wants me away from you.
    She turned her head to look down at him, finally meeting his gaze. No harm in speaking aloud now. “I suppose this brings us to the second forbidden topic.”
    â€œI didn’t want to tell you.”
    â€œTell me what?”
    â€œI’m a berserker, Cassie.” He said it so gravely, she nearly laughed.
    She lifted her shoulders and her eyebrows in tandem to mean, Yeah, I know?
    â€œThis reaction between us. It’s not supposed to happen with you. It means we’re mates. At least, it’s a biological compulsion to mate.”
    â€œHow romantic.”
    â€œYou haven’t met my family, but you should know that all of them, including the women — especially the women — are big.”
    â€œI figured you were six-foot-six for a reason.”
    He smiled, but tension pulled the corners of his mouth. “MacGunn women are big like their husbands, because they give birth to big berserker babies. You don’t know what that entails, and I’m glad.”
    Cassie couldn’t help the shudder down her back. A few years of residency in an L.A. emergency room had honed her vivid imagination.
    That stray thought, a reminder of her greatest failure — quitting her residency program in her last year — made Jack cringe. She heard an echo of his anger and frustration and thrust the topic from her mind, making it clear she didn’t want to talk about it.
    Jack cleared his throat. “You should know there is no contraceptive that works for a berserker. I can’t sleep with you, Cass — I’ll get you pregnant.”
    Her eyebrows hiked even higher and she tried not to grimace.
    He added before she could argue, “Doesn’t matter what time of the month. One-hundred-percent, since the Vikings recorded their history.”
    Cassie watched the water swallowing the beach, the seagulls fighting over washed-up Cheetos, and turned Jack’s words in her head. Cassie’s mind wandered to the legion of blonde peppy women he flirted with, undoubtedly went home with …
    He snorted. “No little bastard MacGunns running around terrorizing the world. I wouldn’t do that.”
    Cassie blinked, then burst out laughing with her head tossed back. Imagine! Jack MacGunn: insatiable flirt, smokin’ hot Atlas lookalike … a virgin. Impossible. “But that’s what you mean, right?”
    â€œLaugh it up, princess. You are, too.”
    That sobered her. She shouldn’t have laughed. It was unkind. She felt a little guilty. Only a little. “So, you’re some kind of monk?”
    â€œNo way. I’m sixteen years past due for taking a mate from the clan and settling on the family land.”
    Her eyes flickered to his impressive form, lying stretched on the beach with his hands tucked behind his head. It flexed his ridiculous twenty-one-inch biceps and inflated the cords of tendon around his neck. His Navy-issued BDU pants hung jauntily on his hips, contrasted by the designer watch strapped to his wrist. “I’m trying to imagine you with a bushy beard, hiking over the heather in a kilt, and I just can’t see it. Where would you park your Camaro?”
    â€œNext to my truck.”
    â€œI bet you don’t even like haggis.”
    â€œMight eat it on a dare. But I do have a kilt.”
    â€œThat’s totally hot, Jack.” She mocked, “So, you’re a misfit among the highlanders?”
    He shrugged in agreement and raised his head to study his wristwatch, clearly uncomfortable. “They’re a dying breed, and I succumbed to the soulless ways of the modern world.”
    â€œI see.” All the fight went out of her. The realization that she’d made a dozen wrong assumptions about him sat uncomfortably. It was humbling. She spread his fingers open and slowly razed his palm with her nails. This hypnotized him, she knew. “So, if you were to show up with me at the