Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 02] (31 page)

“Nay, not that way,” he said, turning her to straddle his lap.

Rain felt suddenly exposed and vulnerable, sitting in such a position, naked, while Selik was fully clothed in tunic, braies, and leather boots. She bent her head in shame, then gasped at the air that hit the inner folds of her body when Selik widened his legs.

Selik grinned, almost as if he couldn’t help himself. Then he traced the scar at her inner elbow. “You should have told me you could not get pregnant.”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“Why do you think I refrained from penetrating your body during that ridiculous hour-long kissing bout or the other near-consummation?”

Rain looked up in surprise, searching his eyes. “Because I thought you believed what you said about sex weakening soldiers before a fight. And because…because I thought you didn’t find me attractive enough.”

Selik inhaled sharply and she felt his erection grow and harden against her center. “Are you daft?”

Rain smiled tentatively, for the first time beginning to think Selik might not be going to punish her physically—at least, not in the tortuous ways she’d imagined. “You mean, you
are
attracted to me?”

“You are a witch. Nay, do not think to pretend to be an angel. I see the devilish glint of seduction in your honey eyes. You think to lure me from my anger with your sensual wiles.” Abruptly, he pressed her femininity against his raging arousal. “For weeks, I have fantasized about all the things I would like to do to your body, but could not do
because of that nonsense you spouted about beads of semen.”

Rain smiled, but her smile soon faded as he mentioned a few of his fantasies in sultry whispers as his fingertip still traced erotic circles around the scar on her arm. Rain was
very
impressed with his creative mind. When he raised her arm and put the tip of his moist tongue to the scar, Rain felt a wetness pool, hot and molten, between her legs. She tightened her thighs in resistance.

Selik’s eyes glittered. He knew what he was doing to her. Oh, yes, he knew. And loved it.

“Selik,” she whispered in a hoarse plea, “take off your clothes, too.”

“Nay, this is a journey I intend to begin fully garbed.”

“A journey?”

“Yea, we are going a-Viking—on an adventure, an exploration.” Although anger and hurt over her betrayal still tensed his face, Rain saw the glint of mischief in his eyes.

“What kind of exploration? What are we looking for?”

“Your G-spot.”

“Oh, Selik.” She laughed, “That’s not necessary.”

“Yea, ’tis,” he disagreed. “And I might even show you the secret S-spot if I am able to get over my anger toward you.”

“S-spot?” Rain asked dubiously, not sure if he was teasing.

“Yea, do not tell me there is something your famous sex exports with their bloody manuals do not know.”

Rain choked back her laughter. “Experts,” she corrected, “not exports.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “’Tis of no import. The truth is, the sultans who first discovered the S-spot guard the secret in their harems. A few Viking
invaders learned the secret and perfected the art. No doubt, the information never reached your…country.”

Selik’s lips twitched with amusement. Rain couldn’t be sure if he was serious or not. She didn’t care. At this moment, all she cared about was Selik and the love she felt for him.

Selik put his hands on the outside of her knees, near his hips, and ran the calloused fingers in a slow sweep up her thighs. “Why are your legs so bristly?”

“Because I haven’t shaved in weeks.”

“Ah, yes, the leg shaving your mother mentioned.”

“You know, I’m getting a little sick of hearing all the outrageous things my mother said and did.”

“Well, mayhap you can shave your legs later with my knife. ’Tis very sharp—the one I use to shave my face. Of course, I will watch to see you do it properly.”

“Oh, Selik, I lo—”

“Nay,” he stopped her gruffly. “You have proven yourself untrustworthy. Do not toss me your lying words. Besides, ’tis not what I want of you.”

His open palms moved over her hips then, past the curve of her waist, over her rib cage. When his thumbs reached out and brushed the undersides of her breasts, she sighed.

“Like that, do you?” he asked with a chuckle. “And how about this?”

The heels of his hands lifted the weight of her full breasts and his fingers spread over them, touching everywhere except where she most wanted to be touched. Then, just briefly, his middle fingers flicked the tips back and forth.

Intense, wildly erotic pleasure shot from her breasts to her aching center, and her inner thighs hugged his legs tighter. “More,” she pleaded in a hoarse whisper.

But Selik withdrew his hands from her breasts and placed them on the small of her back. Pulling her forward, he adjusted her so that her cleft rode the ridge of his erect penis. Then his hands moved upward, tunneling in her hair, holding her scalp in a firm grip.

She looked into his blazing eyes and begged, “Kiss me. Please.”

“I thought you would never ask,” he said in a raw voice as he lowered his lips to hers. He angled his open mouth over hers, then, without any soft preliminaries, plunged his tongue into her mouth, searing her. She felt a hot liquid pool at her center, and her center swelled and opened. Reflexively, she rode him with jerky thrusts of her hips until spasms of electrifying pleasure shot through her. She tried to tell Selik that she wanted him, all of him, but she could not speak for his hot tongue, which matched the movements of her hips in the slick sheath of her mouth. His hands were holding her rib cage, moving her from side to side so her nipples brushed abrasively against the wool of his tunic.

She groaned, then exploded in a million wonderful, wonderful sparks of the most intense pleasure she’d ever experienced in all her life.

And she wanted more.

For a moment, she rested her head against Selik’s shoulder. She knew he hadn’t climaxed. She could still feel his hardness pressing against her and the panting of his breath near her ear told her his iron control was slipping.

Quickly, before he could protest, Rain pushed away from him and slid off his lap, kneeling between his legs. She began to undo the clasp of his belt, then raised the tunic upward, urging him with silent motions to lift himself slightly to accommodate her.

She could not stop herself from touching him then. She brushed her widespread palms over the
abrasive dark blond hairs on his chest, along his wide, wide shoulders, across his flat male nipples. She felt the shudders that rippled through his tense body and looked up. His beautiful gray eyes glazed over with passion, and the whiteness of his scar stood out starkly against his flushed skin.

“I love you.”

He put a hand to her lips and shook his head. He didn’t want her proclamations of love. Well, she would give it to him anyway, but without words—with her body.

This is my beloved
. The Biblical words in her head shook Rain. She was not sure they were her own, or God speaking through her, but they seemed to describe her feelings completely. And a sense of wonderful completeness overtook her.

She took off his boots and untied the cord on his braies, pulling them off his legs. When he was fully naked, her gaze swept him lovingly.

“You are so beautiful. You take my breath away.”

He smiled, and Rain felt warmed. “I am not, but it pleases me that you think so.”

She leaned down then and put her lips to him, lovingly. He gasped, pulling her away quickly. “Nay, sweet witch, you will not end this love play afore it begins.”

He stood her upright so her breasts were level with his face and began to pay delicious homage to them, alternately laving and flicking them with his tongue, then taking the tips into his wet lips and tugging.

“Oh…oh…oh-h-h!”

“Am I too rough? Shall I stop?”

“Don’t you dare,” she gasped out.

Selik fell back to the bed then, taking her with him, and she couldn’t wait. She straddled him and guided his rigid, pulsing length into her body, which welcomed him with soft, clasping spasms.

“Bloody, bloody hell!” he groaned. “’Tis too soon. You are so tight. Nay, do not move. Not yet. I want to savor this feeling for as long as possible…forever.”

“Selik…?”

He unshuttered his eyes lazily, exposing the depth of his arousal in blazing gray pools that almost seemed to swirl with need, and a mouth swollen with passion. “What?” he whispered thickly.

“I love you,” she said, despite his orders to the contrary, and raised her body on his shaft, then slowly sank back down.

“Nay,” he protested, but put his hands on her hips to regulate the pace of her rhythm.

“I love you,” she repeated against his parted lips and tried to convey with loving kisses the intensity of that love.

“Nay, you love the feel of me inside you.”

Rain laughed exultantly. “Yes, that too.”

She smiled, barely, between his agonizingly slow strokes.

“What else do you love?” he whispered as he stroked the peaks of her aching breasts with his fingertips.

“I like
that
,” she said, gasping, “and
that
,” she added as he took one breast into his mouth and grazed the nipple with the edges of his teeth. She arched her back, throwing her head back, and began to keen in a low whimper as the storm between her legs accelerated, turning her mindless and out of control.

Placing his middle finger between her legs, against the throbbing bud, Selik rubbed up and down in the slick groove until she screamed, “I can’t…I can’t…oh, God, stop…no, don’t stop…I want…”

He flipped her over onto her back, still inside her,
and pushed up on her ankles and outward on her knees. Then he tormented her by pulling outside her body, the tip of his rock hardness pressed against her most sensitive fold. She tried to move against him, to pull him back inside her, but he would not allow it.

“Tell me what you want,” he demanded in a voice so thick with passion that she could barely understand the words. Rain could see that he was as aroused as she, but still he tormented her by withholding himself.

“I love you, and I want you to love me, too,” she said, expressing her fervent wish.

Rain saw the surprise on his face. They were not the words he’d expected. But he closed his eyes, as if in resignation, and slammed into her.

“I love you,” she cried, and on each of the hard strokes that drove into her body, she repeated the words over and over and over, “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou….”

The veins stood out in Selik’s neck as he imbedded himself into her one last time, almost to the womb, and cried out his own piercing climax, before she joined him in a cataclysmic shattering of her senses, which convulsed and convulsed and convulsed around him, until they finally shattered into little aftershocks.

The weight of Selik’s body pressed her to the cot, and she relished its sweet warmth in the afterglow of their lovemaking. At first, he panted, then breathed evenly against her neck.

“Are you asleep?” she asked softly, brushing a hand caressingly over his silky hair.

He made a small strangling sound low in his throat, then lifted his head and smiled. “Nay, I am dead.”

She smiled back and felt her heart expand with the love she felt for him. No torment marred his
handsome face now. The lines of pain and bitterness that usually bracketed his eyes and mouth had melted with their lovemaking.

“Why are you gazing at me so?” he asked, chucking her under the chin.

“How?”

“Like a bear suddenly presented with a bowl of honey, when it should be the other way ’round,” he said with a growl. He rolled off her to his side, then quickly leaned down and licked her lips. “Hmmm. Yes, I do think I taste honey. Let me check further.”

When he finally tore his lips away from hers, breathing unevenly, he nipped at her shoulder and commented, “We have not finished our a-Viking.”

“We haven’t?” Rain exclaimed, and the note of astonishment in her voice drew a chuckle from Selik.

“Nay, I have yet to show you your G-spot,” he said, sitting up, then moving to kneel between her legs. He sat back on his heels, then pushed her knees up to her chest, holding them there with the pressure of his left arm.

Placing his thumb above her pubic bone, he stretched two other long fingers inside her so that they met the thumb from the inside. Then he began a rapid, hard, pumping stroke that continually brought him back to that spot beneath the thumb.

A fiercely intense arousal began at the point of his expert sliding fingers, aided by the wetness of their previous lovemaking. “Selik, I don’t know if I like this,” she said hesitantly.

“You will.”

Unlike her other arousal, which encompassed all her senses, this fiery excitement centered in just one spot. When the first shutters of climax began to shake her, she tried to close her legs, afraid to increase such a powerful cataclysm, not sure where
it would lead. But he forced her legs to stay apart with his arm, and, when the first spasms hit her, he did not stop. Over and over and over, his hard fingers rubbed abrasively over that sensitized inner spot until she rolled from side to side, trying to escape. She came and came and came until suddenly she shook and felt a gush of liquid come from her, like an ejaculation.

Selik released her legs then and entered her with his hard, hard length filling her. He soothed her with soft whispers, stroking in and out with slow, agonizingly slow, caresses. “Shh, it will be all right. You were wonderful. Magnificent. Can you do it again, sweetling, with me inside you? Can you? Can you?”

And she did.

“I’m hungry,” Rain gasped several hours later, and her stomach grumbled redundantly in agreement. She lay in Selik’s arms—depleted, wrung out emotionally and physically, and happier than she’d ever been in her entire life.

“Me too,” Selik growled and nipped at her shoulder playfully.

“Not
that
kind of hunger. Selik, stop it,” she squealed as he began nibbling lower and lower. “Keep it up and your precious manhood is going to fall off from overuse.”

His head shot up and his eyes widened in alarm. “Nay, do not tell me. One of your sex manuals claims that a cock can fall off from too much bedsport?”

Rain laughed. “No, but even if it did, there are surgeons who can sew a penis back on.”

Selik jerked upright and made a snorting sound of disbelief. “For shame, Rain! That statement is so outrageous it does not merit consideration.”

“Listen, Selik, there was this abused woman who cut off her husband’s penis…”

When Rain completed her explanation, Selik stared at her, mouth agape and eyes wide with astonishment. “And it worked as good as afore the cutting?”

“Well, no one knows for sure, but his doctors seemed to think it would be all right in time.”

“I do not believe you. Methinks you weave these tales for your own twisted amusement,” Selik declared with finality, lying back down beside her. “No doubt you will have great fun relating this jest to your friends when you return to your country—how you made the fool of a lackwit Viking.”

Rain turned on her side, facing Selik, and laid her right hand on his cheek, tracing his scar lovingly with her fingertips. “Selik, I’m not going back. I’m never going to leave you.”

“Do not make promises you cannot keep,” he said gruffly and pulled out of her embrace, folding his hands under his head and staring somberly at the roof of the barn. “Besides, I did not ask you to stay.”

The storm had ended, but the steady patter of raindrops against the barn boards made their little pallet seem like a tender cocoon of peace and love. But Rain knew this was only a temporary reprieve from danger and hate, and she had to convince Selik of her love while she had the chance.

“I can promise not to go near the Coppergate site in Jorvik,” she avowed fervently. “I can promise to stay with you as long as you want me. I can promise to love you forever. I can—”

“Do not do this,” Selik protested on a groan of despair, turning to face her again. His sad eyes and tightly pressed lips bespoke his conflicting emotions. Finally, unable to keep his feelings under control any longer, he pulled her roughly into his arms and
hugged her tightly. “Ah, Rain,” he said on a sigh of utter hopelessness.

When he pulled away, his pain-filled eyes tore at Rain. He told her in a shaky voice, “I cannot protect you. I did not keep my wife and son safe from harm. I cannot promise to do any better for you.”

“And who appointed you my protector? Who said you were responsible for the safety of the world? Oh, Selik, can’t you see? It wasn’t your fault that Astrid and Thorkel died. Stop tormenting yourself with the past and start living.
Living
. Not just existing. Not waiting to die.” Rain stopped suddenly, realizing that she’d probably gone too far.

But for once Selik didn’t seem angry at her mentioning Astrid and his past. He gazed at her pensively, then said, “Mayhap ’tis true. If I had been able to accept my blamelessness years ago, soon after it happened, perchance I could have lived a normal life. But too much has happened since, too many deaths, on both sides—”

“But if you left Britain, started over somewhere else—”

“Give it up, Rain. I cannot rest until Steven is dead, and Athelstan will never allow me to live with the blood of so many of his soldiers on my hands.”

“But—”

“Nay, dearling, we have no future,” he said, cradling her against his shoulder, stroking her hair lovingly, “but we have now. Let us make the best now that we can.”

Later, after they had slept for a time, Selik shivered and shook Rain awake. The aftermath of the storm had left the barn drafty with frigid air.

“Bloody hell! ’Tis colder than a whale hunter’s arse on a glacier. Best we move to the pallet downstairs near the hearth or your tits may turn to snowballs.”

“And your penis to a popsicle?” Rain asked saucily and moved quickly off the bed to avoid his swatting palm. He had a very fair idea of the meaning of popsicle.

They moved downstairs and made sure that the barn doors were barred from the inside and Selik’s sword lay nearby, in case the Saxon soldiers returned.

After gorging themselves hungrily on whatever food they could rustle up—manchet bread, cold venison, hard cheese, and watered mead—they pulled a pallet up close to the roaring fire and put several cauldrons of hot water on for bathing. They sat companionably wrapped in one large fur blanket, feeding the flames with bits of kindling while they waited for the pot to boil.

“Admit you lied to me afore?”

“About what?” Rain slanted a sideways look at him.

“About your bad ruttings with men.”

Rain jabbed him with an elbow in the ribs and he pretended injury.

“I never used those words. I said, as I recall, that I could take sex or leave it, that I had a poor history of relationships with men.”

“And you still feel the same?”

“Fishing for compliments, are you?” she asked, raising one brow mockingly.

“Nay, I know how good I am,” he boasted. “I merely wanted you to admit you were wrong, for once.”

“I didn’t lie, Selik. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I love you. And I think that’s what made the difference in making love with you.”

In truth, he did not mind her saying the words so much now. Actually, the sentiments warmed his soul and made him feel more alive than he had in years.

“And if you did not love me, you think you would not have enjoyed our coupling?” he asked, biting his bottom lip with concentration.

“I don’t know,” Rain admitted honestly. “Maybe it would still have been good. All I know is that from the moment I first saw you, long before the Battle of Brunanburh, from the first time you haunted my dreams, there’s been a special connection between us. And last night, it was as if two pieces of a broken whole were finally connected. That sounds really corny, doesn’t it?”

“Corny? I do not know that word, but I like the part about being coupled,” he said with a smile, then caught his breath at the open look of adoration in Rain’s eyes.

“I didn’t say coupled, you horny toad, f said connected. C’mon, let’s see if that water is hot enough before you get distracted—again.”

When they had finished bathing, and she helped Selik shave his face and he did
not
help her shave her legs—choosing, instead, to make erotic remarks the entire time—Rain rummaged in her carryall for a comb. While Selik combed his hair and then hers before the roaring fire, pulling the teeth sensuously through the drying strands, Rain looked through her bag to see if she might find a loose Lifesaver she’d overlooked. No such luck.

But she did find something of interest.

“Selik, how do you feel about strawberries?”

“I like them well enough, but the fruit will not be in season ’til next spring.”

Rain opened the little metal tube in her hands and applied the strawberry lip gloss. Then she turned and took the comb from Selik’s hands. “I’ve got a little out-of-season treat for you, babe.”

Sometime later, Rain whispered, “I sure hope you don’t have an allergy—a bad reaction—to strawberries, like some people do.”

He retorted with a gasp of pleasure, “Holy Thor! If I do, I will have rashes in some hard-to-explain places.”

That afternoon, Selik wakened from a deep sleep with Rain’s arm across his chest and her knee between his legs. He did not want to open his eyes, burrowing deeper under the warm fur blanket whose silken hairs caressed their naked bodies.

But something had jarred him. A sixth sense, mayhap. Selik came suddenly alert and carefully reached for his sword. Then he slitted his eyes carefully to peer at his surroundings.

A dozen pair of wide eyes stared back at him in open curiosity.

“Ubbi! Where the hell are you, you lackwit?”

Ubbi stepped forward immediately. “Yea, master, did ye call?”

Rain sat up beside him, pulling the furs up to her bare shoulders, exposing his naked body to the cool air.

“Did I not tell you to stay at Gyda’s ’til I sent for you?”

“Yea, ye did. Ye surely did, m’lord. But Gyda made us leave. Said to tell ye that she raised eight babes of her own and she be too old to have these noisy, pesky, dirty varmints raining havoc on her home. Oh, and coarse-mouthed, she called them too,” Ubbi added, leveling a look of condemnation at Adam who was gawking with interest at Selik’s exposed body.

Selik groaned, pulling the furs over his male parts, and glared at Rain, whose lackwit idea it had been to open an orphanage.

“And another thing,” Ubbi added, looking with offended eyes at Rain, “that Ella was hangin’ over me like a hungry dog on a bone. Didst you promise me to her, as she claims? Am I a side of beef to be bartered?”

“Rain! Oh, nay, do not say you are matchmaking atween Ubbi and Ella?” Selik said with astonishment. “Do you not know that Ubbi has been running from Ella’s salivating clutches for years?” But then he remembered how his loyal servant had betrayed him of late and added, “On the other hand, mayhap you need a forceful woman to control you better, Ubbi.”

Ubbi inhaled sharply with outrage.

“So, do ye like stickin’ it in her?” Adam interrupted them idly, one hand on a jutting hip and his eyes glued with undue interest to Rain’s half-exposed breasts where the fur had slipped. She immediately pulled it back up.

All eyes locked on Adam then, unable to believe he would ask such a blunt question.

“What? Why are ye all gawkin’ at me? I was only askin’. Bloody hell! How is a boy to learn things if no one will answer an honest question?”

“Someone ought to wash your mouth out with soap,” Selik declared ominously.

“The witch already did,” Adam snapped, glaring at Rain, then turned back to Selik, “Did she do the same to you—wash out yer mouth with soap? You use the same foul words as me.”

“I have to make pee-pee,” Adela said suddenly at Adam’s side. He took her hand, leading her to the chamber pot in the far corner.

“Pee-pee?” Selik choked out.

Adam looked at Selik over his shoulder. “The witch sez we cannot say piss anymore. ’Tis too crude.” The little boy’s voice rang with disgust. He helped his sister adjust her tunic and led her back toward the gaping group, adding disdainfully, “Pee-pee is bad enuf, but ye should hear what she calls
it
.”

“It?” Selik asked, then wished he had not.

“A too-too,” Adam declared flatly, looking down at the vee of his braies. He folded his arms across his
chest, shooting an I-told-you-I-was-gonna-tell look at Rain before nodding in self-satisfaction. “And she sez we have to wash every day,
every bloody day
, and clean our teeth, and say our prayers, and learn to read and write, and do our chores, and so many damn rules me head spins.”

Selik looked at Rain’s blushing face, then put his head into both of his hands and groaned. His well-ordered life was crumbling around him. A short time ago, all he wanted was to kill Steven of Gravely and mayhap a few Saxons, then die. Now, he was saddled with a guardian angel from the future, a servant who believed he got messages from God, a dozen orphans, and a boy who had to be related to Lucifer himself. How would he ever escape this quicksand of a life?

Looking up, he saw Adam sit down before the hearth, stoke the fire, then proceed to ignore them all and play idly with Rain’s Rubik’s Cube.

And, worst of all, he solved the puzzle.

The next afternoon, Selik insisted on accompanying Rain to the hospitium for her usual rounds. They both wore the monks’ habits, as before.

Selik was not in a good mood. The weather had turned frigid last night, even for early November—too cold for him and Rain to sleep in the loft. Which meant twelve squirmy, squealing, curious bodies had slept beside them, not to mention a loudly snoring Ubbi on a nearby cot. And Selik did not even want to think about Adela, who had crept into the pallet between him and Rain during the night and snuggled up against his chest like a frightened kitten.

“I still say, it’s unsafe for you to be prowling the city streets with so many Saxon soldiers about,” Rain complained for what had to be the hundredth time.

“I would much rather face a troop of bloody Saxons than stay one more minute in that madhouse back there.”

“You’ve seemed restless all day, Selik. I’m afraid to ask this, but are you leaving soon?” She looked up at him from the shadow of her monk’s cowl with eyes so hopeful that Selik had to restrain himself from taking her in his arms and promising anything that she desired. But that he could not do, and not just because the sight of two monks embracing near the minster steps would horrify the passersby.

“I expect word today from Gorm on Steven’s whereabouts. He will meet me at Ella’s shop.”

He saw the fear in Rain’s eyes, but she bit her bottom lip, restraining her usual protests. He w/as oddly touched that she tried to curb her shrewish tongue for his benefit.

“Well, I’m not going to fight with you over this anymore. Oh, don’t look so pleased with yourself. I still don’t agree with you. I just don’t want to waste any more of the little time we have together.”

“What will you do after I’m gone? Return to your home?”

Despair flashed briefly across her face before she masked it and lifted her chin bravely. “No, as long as I know you’re alive somewhere, I’ll stay. Probably continue going to the hospitium every day and run the orphanage, if you’ll let us stay on your property.”

“And if I never return?”

Rain’s bleak eyes locked with his and she seemed to swallow hard before speaking. “I don’t know.” Then she seemed to force her mood to lighten and poked a finger in his chest. “But know this, you stubborn Viking, if you are alive somewhere, hiding from me, I’ll find you. Maybe even kidnap you again.”