Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 02] (8 page)

“I don’t think you’re funny, Ubbi. Not one bit.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, don’t give me that innocent look. I know you were pretending to be God, speaking in that deep voice.”

“God?” Ubbi said with a gasp. “What did I—uh, God—say to you?”

She stood angrily and glared at him as he gawked
at her across the fire, open-mouthed and incredulous. Obviously, he hadn’t said a blasted word.

“I must have been mistaken,” she muttered as she stomped away from the fire, then turned abruptly and came back. “Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?”

He shrugged. “In my lord’s tent, of course.”

“Humph! He’d better not get any ideas. In fact, if you see him before I do, tell him to spread his sleeping furs out here by the fire. I have no intention of sharing his bed again.”

“But why?” Ubbi asked, apparently stunned that any woman would consider it less than an honor to share Selik’s bed.

“I
never
sleep with married men.”

Ubbi tilted his head to the side as if trying to understand her foreign words. “Married men? But who…Mistress, methinks you misunderstood me words afore.”

“Oh, I understood all right, but don’t you worry about it. This is my problem, and you can be sure I will straighten it out.”

“But you want me ter tell me master to sleep out here on the ground?” he asked with utter amazement, then scoffed, “He would flatten me with his shield fer such a suggestion.”

“I’ll talk to him about it in the morning,” she assured him, “but in the meantime, just tell him”—she waved her hand in the air, searching for the right words—“oh, just say he snores too much and I don’t want to be disturbed.”

She turned once again, smiling, despite herself, at the small choking sound Ubbi made behind her as she walked to the tent.

A soldier told her about a small spring-fed pond at the far end of the clearing, about a quarter-mile away. She rummaged in Selik’s chest until she found a clean tunic of worn green wool, some
soap, and linen cloths that would do for towels. A half hour later, despite the chilly air and water, she sat soaking ecstatically in the knee-high water, having soaped and rinsed her hair and body several times and washed her underwear, slacks and blouse. After she dried, she put a few dabs of Passion from a small sample bottle in her carrybag behind her ears and at the base of her throat. It was amazing what a good perfume could do for a woman’s self-esteem. And it was a link with the future she somehow needed right now.

When she got back to Selik’s tent, he still hadn’t returned. She bit her bottom lip worriedly as she laid her wet clothes across his wooden chest. She fussed around the small tent, picking up articles, stacking others, hoping her outlaw Viking would return.

Finally, she yawned widely and decided it was foolish to wait any longer. She removed Selik’s warm tunic and folded it carefully near the bed furs, donning her wispy bra and briefs, which had already dried. Sliding sensuously between the furs, she fell fast asleep within seconds.

As she had the night before, she slept deeply. No primitive warriors waged violent battles in her dreams, but her sleep soon turned troubled just the same.

Like a Michael Jackson video in which the faces blended creatively from one identity to another, the hero of Rain’s dreams alternately had the faces of Daniel Day-Lewis, Kevin Costner, and Selik. Mostly, Selik’s image kept recurring, but it was a Selik she had yet to see.

No scars or broken nose marred the purity of his facial features. Gone were the lines that pain and rage had etched mercilessly at the corners of his sensuously full mouth and silver-flecked eyes. This was the godly handsome Viking her mother
had described before the tragedies of his life had transformed him.

In her dream, the Daniel/Kevin/Selik man knelt on the dirt floor at the side of the fur pallet, wearing nothing more than a primitive loin cloth. He leaned over her, whispering soft words, and she was strangely unable to move, her arms immobilized at her sides. In slow motion, he bent and his long blond hair, like a veil of gossamer cobwebs, brushed across her bare arm. She shivered with the electric shock of just that barest of caresses.

“So beautiful,” he whispered as the calloused fingers of his strong hands skimmed over her arms, from the wrists to the shoulders.

All the faces and bodies blended together in that instant and became one—her outlaw Viking.

Rain made a small purring sound, which drew a warm smile of approval from her lover. She did feel beautiful then, probably for the first time in her life. Not too tall or big-boned or unfeminine. Just perfect. She could see appreciation, and so much more, in Selik’s smoldering eyes when they locked with hers for one breathless heartbeat. The earth tilted for her then and seemed to stand still.

His fingertips brushed the delicate edge of her collarbone, ever so gently, then moved up to trace the outline of her parted lips. She yearned to lean up and kiss the firm, sensual lips of the ethereal, constantly shifting being above her, but she could not move. Only feel.

He drew his hand away slightly and Rain whimpered, “Please. Don’t leave me.”

His gray eyes filled with tenderness, and in a voice that seemed to come from far off, he whispered softly, “Never. ’Til the end of time, my love.”

The skin of her dream lover shone with pale gold undertones in the shimmering candlelight. Muscles
rippled across his powerful shoulders and chest as he moved his hands to explore her taut body. And, oh, dear Lord, blood rushed to every spot he touched with feathery strokes, igniting small fires of longing in their wake.

His hands slid from her face, down her neck, through the valley between her breasts in the lacy, flesh-colored bra, searing a path down to her abdomen. The open palms of his big hand caressed the flat planes of her belly, drawing invisible circular patterns of spiraling pleasure.

Then he backtracked upward, ever so slowly, and lightly touched her hardening nipples, bringing them to crested peaks of such intense pleasure that she cried aloud.

“Shhh, Sweetling. Slowly. Slowly.”

But Rain was beyond rational thought, beyond putting a brake on her racing arousal, beyond everything she had ever experienced or thought possible in feminine response. With a few whispery caresses, this man—this dream Viking, this outlaw warrior—had reduced her to a writhing, whimpering mass of flesh desperate for their joining.

She looked down and saw his erection through the loin cloth. And his eagerness for her excited Rain even more. She ached to touch him, but her arms remained locked at her sides in her dream state.

As if sensing that she could not take much more, Selik skimmed the smooth planes from her breasts to the vee between her thighs. Placing the heel of his palm against the silk brief, with his long fingers between her legs, he pressed once, then again, and again, in rhythm, until her body exploded in a million shattering explosions of the purest, most intense climax she had ever experienced.

When her breathing finally calmed, Rain confessed in a whisper of awe to the man whose face
no longer shifted but was Selik, only Selik, “I have been waiting for you all my life. Now I know why I was sent here.”

Selik’s eyes suddenly filled with a fierce longing. “I never expected to see you again, Astrid.”

At first, Rain’s mind refused to register the significance of Selik’s words. But then, through the roaring in her ears, she heard one single word, repeated over and over, echoing through her passion-sluggish brain, “Astrid! Astrid! Astrid!”

His wife
.

Selik stood and dropped his loin cloth, supremely confident of his masculinity. He was preparing to join her in the bed furs, to make love to her. No, not her, Rain realized—
his wife
.

The shimmering glaze in his cloudy gray eyes caught her attention, and she recognized the disorientation, almost like yesterday when she had seen him in the battlefield after his berserk bout of violence.

Oh, no!
Rain came instantly awake and quickly realized that this was no dream.

Her eyes skimmed the tent area and saw the reason for his strange behavior. His bloody tunic and sword lay where he had dropped them on the ground, still wet with the life fluid of those he had undoubtedly killed that day. It was bloodlust that drove him to her, not lust for her body. And certainly not love. That was apparently reserved for the wife who held his heart.

She had surrendered completely to Selik’s masterful seduction, yielding all her defenses as she never had before, but he didn’t want her. He had thought she was his wife. Her throat ached with defeat, and she could not speak over her acute sense of loss.

Abruptly, Rain stood and backed away from Selik. Her face flamed hotly with shame over her easy
capitulation. Humiliatingly aware of Selik’s scrutiny, she knew the instant that violence and rage replaced his smoldering arousal.

“Is this the kind of game you played with those other men you mentioned yestereve—those of the bad ruttings? Do you turn hot, then cold, with all your men? Or just me? Are you one of those women who enjoy teasing men?”

“No,” she denied, finally finding her voice. “I was sleeping…dreaming. You took advantage of me.”

He snorted rudely, pulling on a pair of loose leggings, and raised an eyebrow mockingly. “Lady, your woman heat practically singed the fine hairs all over my body.”

Rain raised her chin defiantly, never one to fabricate or hide behind false modesty. “You’re right. I did want you. For one moment of insanity. Until I remembered.”

“Remembered what?”

“That you’re married, you cheating bastard,” she snapped, having reached her breaking point. “That you have a wife, Astrid, who’s probably sitting at home somewhere surrounded by a bunch of kids. That you didn’t want to make love with me. You thought I was your wife.”

Rain swiped at the tears that smarted her eyes and turned away, not wanting Selik to witness her further humiliation. “Go away. Just leave me alone.”

A long silence followed, during which Rain heard no rustling of cloth which would indicate that Selik had left the tent. Finally, she turned slightly to see what he was doing.

He stood in the same spot as before, just staring at her in horror. “How do you know about Astrid?”

Selik was confused and disoriented. He had been gone all day. So much blood. And killing. Captives. Screaming. His brain buzzed with the horror of it
all, the violence with which he was still not comfortable, even after all these years.

He tunneled the fingers of both hands through his hair and pulled, hard, to clear his head.

The tall blond woman stood before him like a majestic goddess, her golden hair in wild disarray, flowing down her back, over her shoulders, caressing the mounds of her flesh-colored undergarment. And the matching wisp of material that barely concealed her womanhood clearly delineated the gentle curve of her narrow waist and hips and drew the eye to legs that were exceedingly long and comely.

This was not Astrid, his petite wife with her fine bones and dainty, shy ways. No, Astrid had died, and this woman, this messenger from the gods, or so she said, was statuesque, hard-muscled, willful—a woman to stand at a man’s side, not behind his shield. She was magnificent.

“Nay, you are not Astrid,” he said, realizing too late that he had spoken the words aloud.

The hurt which had clouded her beautiful honey eyes turned instantly to outrage. Angrily, she reached down for a tunic of his which lay near her feet, giving him a better view of her enticing breasts as they hung suspended in their lacy cups for a brief moment before she straightened. And he felt his manhood grow harder.

“Don’t look at me like that, you horny toad.”

His mouth snapped shut, and she jerkily pulled the tunic over her head. Without a belt, the short-sleeved wool garment hung to her elbows and down to midcalf. For some odd reason, he liked the idea of her wearing his tunic. Could she smell his scent in the fabric? Did she like the notion of wearing something which had touched his skin as well?

Thor’s Blood! Where do these notions come from? I care naught for this strange wench, or any other
.

“I see you’ve been out raping and pillaging again,”
she snarled, pointing to his bloody sword and garments on the ground near the tent entrance.

“No raping.” He grinned mockingly.

“And you think that excuses your violence? You damned warmonger! You murderer! You—”

“How dare you condemn me? I have just cause to kill. I do naught that has not been done over and over to my people.”

“Oh, how I hate war and fighting and men who perpetuate the principle of might makes right!”

Selik could not fail to see the tears misting her luminous eyes, even though she blinked repeatedly, trying to hide them from his scrutiny, as if weeping in a woman was a sign of weakness. What a strange wench!

“Go to sleep. Your shrewish tongue makes my head ache,” he said finally. It had been a long day, and his head did, in fact, feel like a hammer pounded inside it. A death knell, no doubt, he thought ruefully. For him, or those he had killed that day? He wiped his hand across his brow.
Thor’s hammer! The wench is getting to me with her waspish talk
.

“I’m not sleeping in the same bed with you,” she declared vehemently, raising her chin in defiance. “Just forget it, buster, if you think you’re going to pick up where you left off.”

“What makes you think I want you?” he said in a steely voice. Her willfulness was no longer amusing.

“Go to hell. Better yet, go to your wife, you—you adulterer.”

The wench pushed him too far. He did not like talking about his wife. “I asked you afore, who told you about Astrid?”

“You did.”

He raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

Her face flushed a becoming pink. “You said her name when—when—oh, you know very well when.”
The pink of her cheeks now darkened to a deep rose.

“But I never mentioned she was…my wife.”

“Oh, what difference does it make? Ubbi told me.”

Selik stiffened with anger. “He had no right,” he said in an icy voice that promised retribution.