Dark Viking (23 page)

“Where are we going?”

Silence.

“We need to talk about Armod.”

Silence.

“Why are you so angry about another man talking to me? Even if he was flirting with me, which he was not, that‟s between the two of us. It has nothing to do with you.”

Silence.

“You know, this dark and brooding crap isn‟t attractive to me. Oops. I vowed to cut my bad language. Let me re-phrase that. Your dark and brooding
garbage
isn‟t attractive to me.”

Silence.

“Even if we were together, I wouldn‟t belong to you. Unless you belonged to me, too. No, I don‟t like the idea of possession. People should be together willingly. A partnership.”

Silence.

“I have to pee.”

Silence.

They were entering the stables now, which was a surprise to her. There were several dozen stalls to hold the warhorses, as well as riding horses. One of the riding horses was being led toward them, fully saddled with a leather bag strapped over the rump. He must have sent word up ahead.

Without releasing the end of her chain, Steven mounted the horse.

“Where‟s my horse? Oh, good Lord, you don‟t plan on me walking while you ride, using that chain as a lead? That would be the most barbaric thing you‟ve done so far.” Quickly, she reached up and untied the back of the leather collar, letting it drop to the ground. “Don‟t go getting bent out of shape over . . . What the hell . . . I mean, what the heck!”

He‟d leaned down and lifted her by the waist so that her bare feet dangled above the ground.

“Put your foot in the stirrup and lift yourself behind me.” The stable hand came over and helped her up.

“I can ride myself, you know,” she said to his back, even as he began to move outside, causing her to grab for his waist. “You could have given me warning,” she griped. “I could have fallen off.”

“Oops,” he said. “Isn‟t that your favorite word?”

The horse was moving at a canter now, and they were headed toward the forest where he followed a path of sorts through the thick undergrowth. She was unable to speak then until they arrived at a clearing where there was a small waterfall spilling into a pond that veered off to a stream that probably ran through the Norstead estate down to the fjord.

He dismounted and left her to get off the horse herself while he took the leather bag off the horse. Then he led the horse over to a grassy area where the animal immediately began to graze. When he came back to her, he gave her his full attention for the first time since his overreaction back at the hitching post.

It was her turn to remain silent, and she did.

“You are a great one for wanting a choice in all things,” he started out.

Uh-oh! This was beginning to sound like one of those situations where what you‟ve said in the past comes back to bite you in the butt. “Yes?”

“I made a decision whilst riding here. It was my intention, originally, to come wash the sweat off my body . . . or the stink, as you put it so nicely.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“I am going to give you a choice.”

“About bathing?”

“Either I order a flogging for Armod . . . fifty lashes with the whip . . .”

She gasped.

“Or you make me the luckiest man at Norstead.”

“You wouldn‟t!”

“I would. Your choice.”

“Some choice! You would really whip a man for no reason?”

“You misspeak me. My men, including Armod, knew not to approach you. If soldiers do not follow rules, there are consequences. Is that not so in your country‟s military?”

It was, and sometimes it was just as arbitrary and unfair, she had to admit. Take those soldiers court-martialed for defending themselves against civilian bombers in Tikrit. “You wouldn‟t enjoy having sex with an unwilling woman.”

“You would not be unwilling.”

The arrogance of the jerk! “Exactly what would I have to do? I mean, just for today, right?”

He snorted his opinion. “For as long as I want, as long as you are here, in any way at any time I want.”

“You don‟t want much, do you?”

He shrugged.

“I will hate you for this.”

He shrugged again. “ ‟ Tis a chance I am willing to take.”

“Would I have to put on that blasted slave collar again?”

Tapping his chin thoughtfully, he finally said, “Only if you do something wrong again.”

“Well, hell‟s bells, Steven, everything I do is wrong to you.”

“Not everything,” he said, taking her hand.

“Where are we going?”

“Talk, talk, talk.”

“You never listen to me.”

“I listen.”

“No, you don‟t. You still haven‟t let me tell you about my visit with Kraka and Grima and their ideas about my time travel. I‟ve tried to tell you I left Norstead in all innocence, thinking I would return shortly. You won‟t even let me tell you what Armod was discussing with me.

It‟s as unjust to flog Armod as it would be Sigvid, or the children who approached me.”

“Do all women blather endlessly?”

“Only when they‟re nervous.”
And speaking to a brick wall.

Silence.

“Aren‟t you going to say that I have no reason to be nervous?” “Nay, I am not.” He stopped abruptly and looked at her in a considering fashion. “I do not suppose you would take off your garments for me without argument.”

“Hah! What do you think?”

Then, without warning, he picked her up by the waist and dumped her into the pond, clothes and all . . . tunic, tights, and belt. When she came back to the surface, choking, she saw him toeing off his boots and shrugging out of his braies, after which he dove in after her.

When he rose like a dolphin in front of her, she asked, “Now what?”

“Now I get lucky.” 

There are Popsicles, and then there are Pup-suckles . . .

Steven had never been so blistering wrathsome or so blistering lustsome at the same time in all his life.

A dunking in the cold waters of the pond should be doing him good, except the wench who caused it all was crawling up onto the bank, arse upwards, giving him an up-close view of her buttocks, clearly outlined by her soaking-wet braies.

She glanced back over her shoulder to see if he was following her, then looked again when she noticed the object of his gaze. She made a tsking sound of vexation that women perfected through the ages and muttered something that sounded like “Men!”

“Do not put a rump of boar roast in front of a starving man if you do not want him to salivate,” he called out.

“A pig is a pig is a pig,” she called back.

Whatever that means!

She stood now on a huge flat-topped boulder, the lip of which protruded over the pond. With her short hair flattened to her head, her eyelashes clumped together, and the sodden clothing plastered to her slim body, she looked more like a boyling than a full-grown woman. But she was more desirable to him in that moment than the most voluptuous beauty.

Which was amazing to him, he thought, as he looked downward through the clear water to his raging enthusiasm, undaunted by the cold. Weren‟t men supposed to shrivel under such circumstances? Somehow, his body had gotten the signals mixed.

Apparently she saw what he saw, because her face flushed, and she made another of those tsking sounds.

“Get me a bar of soap from the saddlebag.” Then to soften the tone of his order, he added, “To remove the stink you so colorfully described earlier today.”

She walked toward the grazing horse tethered to a tree, got the soap, then tossed it out to him where he stood waist deep in the pond.

“Take off your garments, Ree-tah. There on the rock where I can watch.”

Her chin shot up with resistance.

He‟d expected no less. “I refuse to play these games with you. Either you agree to my terms regarding Armod, or you do not. I will not warn you at every turn. It is not fair to me or to Armod.” In truth, this would be the only day for some time that he would be free to take his leisure, what with meeting Brodir on the morrow and the Althing mere days away. He intended to take advantage of every second of the freedom.

“What about me? What‟s fair for me?”

He began to soap his body . . . his chest, arms, underarms, and neck, then his hair. The harsh lye soap did not lather much, but it did the job. Without answering her question . . . he was done discussing a completed deal . . . he ducked under the water and swam a short distance to the shallow end, where he soaped the rest of his body.

When he finally turned around, he saw that she was standing in the middle of the rock, totally nude. She did not look like a boyling now.

Many women would blush with humiliation at being so exposed. They would attempt to cover themselves with their hands. They would beg for mercy, accompanied by leaking eyes and sobbing mouths.

Not his Rita.

Nay, she held his gaze, challenging him. Then she executed a perfect dive into the water, swam underwater like the fish he had originally thought she was, and ended on the far side of the pond, where she pulled herself up onto a ledge just below and in front of the small waterfall. With cascades of water spraying around her, through which sunlight was being filtered like a full-bodied halo, she resembled nothing more than a water sprite. A wicked water sprite.

With a shake of his head, he swam over and lifted himself to sit beside her. “Are you ever biddable?”

“If biddable means a doormat, no.”

He nudged her bare foot with his bare foot for no reason other than he wanted to touch her.

“I ne‟er asked you to be a doormat.”

“Just a slave.”

“Symbolic only. To make a point.” He ran a fingertip from her shoulder down her arm to her fist clenched on the ledge, and watched with fascination as goose bumps rose in his wake.

“You made your point, all right. Bondage, slavery, flogging, blackmail. I‟m not sure I even like you, Steven.”

He noticed that her nipples were engorged and rosehued. Was it due to rising arousal? He suspected so. If he did not miss his guess, Rita was fighting her own body‟s overstimulation as much as he was his, which incidentally did not have the good sense to deflate until the right moment. “The bondage was bedsport, pure and simple, and you liked it, you cannot deny that.

But I will not defend myself anymore. Favor me or not, I want you.”

She arched her brows toward his unbridled enthusiasm, which rose from his man-hair like a lance. “No kidding. And do you always get what you want?”

He shrugged.

“Even if you have to use devious methods to get what you want?”

He shrugged again. Wise to her ploys, he would not let her guilt him into releasing her from their pact. “Are you an honest person, Ree-tah?”

She bristled, as he knew she would. “Yes, I am. To a fault sometimes.”

Gently, he pushed her backward until she was resting on her elbows. The short waterfall hit the ledge like a curtain behind her head before spilling forward on the ledge into another small waterfall. Water splashed all around them, the cold alleviated by the warm sun.

Leaning over her, he blew against the golden fuzz that covered her mons. Her stomach went inward as she inhaled sharply.

He used a forefinger to trace the line of her cleft between her closed thighs. “I do not suppose you would like to demonstrate your Pup-suckle for me?”

“What?”

He was not sure if her shriek was in response to his repeated stroking of her cleft or to his question. “Pup-suckle. Remember Pup-suckle, Butterfly, Swing, Backbend sex?” It gave him immense pleasure to see that even though she deliberately closed her sex to him, a glisten of her woman dew seeped through. One of the advantages . . . or disadvantages, depending on one‟s viewpoint . . . of having a bald pate down there. No secrets.

“You mean Popsicle.” She burst out laughing and kept on laughing until her eyes were misting with tears of mirth. “You have an incredible sense of humor.”

“Is that good or bad?” Either way, it did not matter to him, because in the process of laughing, her legs had spread slightly, giving him a foothold . . . rather a handhold . . . to heaven. The heel of his hand was now pressing against her most erotic place, his middle finger in its own hot sheath.

“It depends on whether you‟ve given up on blackmail sex.”

Good gods! How can she be grasping my finger and talking at the same time? It must be a
talent future women develop.
But blackmail sex? That subject was dead to him now. He refused to discuss it one more second. “You are so sexy I could peak just looking at you.”

The parting of her lips and the arching of her breasts told him without words that she was in the same condition. Still, he could almost see her brain working. Should she yield to him? Or should she continue a futile struggle?

As if reading his mind, she said, “A good soldier knows when to pick her battles.” With those words, she sat up and swung herself sideways to her knees, straddling him.

“And this is a battle you concede?” he asked with a husky growl. His hands swept up and down over her back, over her waist, palming her buttocks.

She nodded. “The battle, but not the war,” she murmured against his mouth. And then she bit his bottom lip to emphasize her point and raised her hips before lowering herself onto his rock-hard staff.

She still thought she controlled their sex play. Well, let her. For a while.

His groan had to be interpreted as a concession of sorts to her, seeing the small smile of satisfaction on her face.

No matter.

The war talk aside, this was now one man, one woman, pleasing one another in the most exquisite way.

She was the one pushing him back to his elbows now where he could watch her take her pleasure of him, thus giving him even more pleasure. And what a glorious sight she was!

Slim. Much slimmer than he preferred his women to be. Leastways, he had in the past. But because her frame was so slender, her breasts appeared bigger, though they scarce filled his cupped hands.

Another difference was the muscle definition in her shoulders and upper arms, her abdomen and belly, her thighs and calves. She must do some vigorous exercising to keep her body in this condition. The female soldiering business, he supposed. Well, that was good. Mayhap she would be able to keep up with all he had planned for the next few hours.