The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2) (19 page)

Her hand brushed the skin of his throat, where she slipped the top button free of its hole. Each button took her a different amount of time. She hurried, then slowed, then fumbled, her rhythm shifting while he sculpted her body. But then his shirt was fully open and her hand spread across his chest. Each finger branded him as surely as an iron rod from a fire. When he sucked in a breath, her hand trembled on his chest.

Too light.
He wasn’t as delicate as she was. He yearned to have her press hard enough for touch to overwhelm his memories and replace this evening’s troubles with pure sensation.

“Here.” His fingers wrapped around her wrist and shifted her touch to his nipple. “Hard.” His voice sounded half-choked, but that was how he felt, on the verge yet bound by his trousers and belt.

Understanding his plea, she rolled his nipple with fingers sure enough to make him groan. When she flicked it, his automatic reaction was the response of a man shot through with urges so basic all his plans fell abandoned. No more gentle petting. He yanked her lower body across the last inches of bed to meet his hungry cock, the same hard move of slamming car gears mashing their bodies together until he pressed through layers of clothes and belt buckle and she threw her leg over his.

She opened herself, gave him the space to thrust closer until all space between them disappeared. The shirt pulled over her head, tangled in her hair, but she didn’t mewl, so he didn’t stop. As soon as she was free she raised her arms to welcome him.

Forget lying side by side. He was on top of her, pressing into her with his cock that was still begging to be released, if only a man had four hands. Her bra hooks opened as easily as any purse, while her fingers latched onto his belt. Hands and mouths, both of them were all hands and mouths, kissing and suckling each revealed inch until he reached her nipples. He traced the edge of the brown circles with his tongue, as slowly as his need would allow. The valley between her breasts held the sweet smell of a woman, and he buried his face there when she arched under him, offering herself.

She was a feast. He switched back and forth between her nipples, each growing longer after he sucked. Moans told him that she liked a firm touch, not a soft one. She liked him to flick with his tongue while he latched and pulled. Her hips met him when he drove down, but they had too many damn clothes on for either of them to find relief. He propped himself over her body, thrusting his only imperative, thrust and suckle, but hell was bedding a woman without getting her knickers off first.

Her skin was flushed pink and her nipples had become dark, glistening points. The tension tightening his balls was visible in her breasts, the tension that screamed
I need a long fuck with a slow man,
and he was the man to give it to her.

She had both hands at his fly. One fumbled with the prong and buckle, but her other hand tormented him by running up and down the length of his erection. Base to tip, she shaped his cock when he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Fuck, she was lazy about getting his boy out.
No hurry, mate,
he told his hungry lad,
savor it.

Air brushed his stomach as she parted his fly, but it didn’t cool him because her hand hovered over the sensitive skin below his navel. He was ready for her touch. His cock was ready. His stomach was ready. His balls were ready.

And she did it. Her hand squeezed his shaft and he knew this was the moment of struggle, the wait to be inside her when he wanted to burst, but a gentleman really must hold the door.

He fumbled with her jeans, button, zip, sliding fabric, her hips lifting and legs kicking to assist and then they were finally skin to skin. She was wet, soft and hot around his fingers.

A woman was trickier than a lock, but the rewards of finding the spot were greater. Unlike an inert mechanism, her mechanism signaled that he’d found her tumbler when he pressed with his thumb and thrust deep with his fingers at the same time. Her thighs clamped tight as she bucked her hips at him. He continued thrusting to know how far she could fly, how tight she could squeeze, how high she could shove her tits at his mouth and how hard she could fist the sheets. He wanted to memorize her responses for the day she wouldn’t be at his side, so he watched.

“Now.” She dug her fingers into his shoulders and moaned, coming hard on his hand with a long wave of high sound and wet need. Her eyes were wild and dark, her lips open and dry from panting. “In me. Now.”

No asking more times. He slid into her heat so deeply his stones jammed against her, and then he slid out and went home harder. Again and harder. And again.

She was loud, coming and yelling as he rode her in and out, with the headboard thumping the plaster to echo each thrust.

Yes.
His mind went to all colors and sounds, blank of thoughts, nothing but squeezing sensation and slamming deep, trying to breathe as everything he knew, everything he was, everything he could be, shot out of his body.

He collapsed into the soft sigh of her relaxed body.

They were one, together, partners.

Chapter Seventeen

The dog’s bark pulled Stig from the warm place he occupied spooned around Christina’s back. They fit naturally, as if her waist had been designed for his hand and his legs had been measured to order for cradling this woman.

Then the bloody dog barked again, and he knew he wouldn’t return to sleep with his curiosity aroused. He could ignore the noise and stay in the warm narrow bed with a satisfied woman, hoping she would wake soon, or he could go and discover what Porkchop’s owner was doing at night on Luc’s property.

The bare floor was cold, and pulling on his trousers didn’t make his freezing bollocks happier about leaving the previous warm spot nestled against the perfect pair of buttocks, but he forced himself to move.

Downstairs, Luc’s easy chair reclined at an obtuse angle, and the blue glow from the muted television playing Eastern European porn was the only light.

The dog barked farther up the hill, and a man’s indistinct voice called, faint enough to sound like an owl.

The sound made Stig’s neck hairs vibrate. La Roche-en-Ardenne was small. People like Stavros’s grandson moved to the city, and new people didn’t immigrate to tiny country towns. Many of those still living here were too old to wander after midnight. So why were Thomas Locke and his concealed weapon here in La Roche, and why at Luc’s?

The old man jerked, still a light sleeper, and his lounger rocked as he stirred. “Eh? Stig?”

“Heard the dog.”

He shrugged. “It’s Thomas.”

“We met.”

“Eh, bien.”
Luc reached for the glass on the table at his arm. Only fumes remained.

“Still don’t know who he is.”

“My tenant.” Luc peered into the glass as if looking would conjure a refill. “Enjoys his privacy. I fixed the shack where you used to paint, and now it’s a tourist cottage.” He paused to listen to another bark, fainter and moving away. “Old dog pisses more than I do, but he pays cash, so I don’t care if the little German sausage barks all night.”

Reasonable, all of it except the part where a person who actually possessed legal tender paid any amount of it to stay in the debris pile at the back of Luc’s property. Even in ‘44, the shack was a heap the goats ignored, and Luc hadn’t remodeled his own kitchen since installing knob-and-tube lighting. So Locke stayed here for reasons worth exploring.

“Still have the basement exit?” More than once the connection to the limestone cave system under the hill had saved them from German patrols.

“Hole was there before I entered the world.” He coughed into his sleeve. “Come back next week and see if it outlasts me.”

Stig grabbed a black jacket from a hook in the front hall and pulled a knit cap from the pocket. Probably neither had been worn in a decade, but black was black.

“Going to want a weapon, aren’t you?”

He grinned. “What makes you think I need extra help?” He crossed to the safe and spun the familiar lock.

“You still have artist hands.”

The familiar wood veneer grip and black matte barrel of Luc’s old Browning Hi Power semi-automatic sat next to an inch-high bundle of cash. “For you.” Stig handed the pistol and its thirteen-round magazine to Luc, because spying on Locke shouldn’t require a weapon. The incident at Paddington had reminded him that he preferred palette knives to guns. Less mess. “Keep Christina safe.”

His expression must have accidentally conveyed his worry, because Luc winked and said, “I haven’t heard that much banging since the Germans knocked down the Wall in eighty-nine. Glad you came.” Despite the knobby knuckles, his hands worked the Browning’s slide with ease. The weapon was clean and well-maintained. “Don’t worry for me. But if you go to check on Locke, two pieces of advice.”

This was one of the few men in the world Stig could trust. “What?”

“Don’t screw with my cash flow, and he’s at least twice as dangerous as I ever was.”

“Hard to believe, you old pisser.”

“Comme un cerveau de beignet, tu.”

“Doughnut brain? That’s your best?” Stig laughed his way out of the room. “You have gone soft.”

The familiarity of exchanging taunts warmed him down the steps to the cellar full of dusty cans of peaches and jars of pickles, put by for an apocalypse that hadn’t arrived at this crossroads for once. Despite the decades, the motions were as familiar as dressing and shaving. Slide the bin once filled with potatoes, now with bundles of newspaper to provide weight, to the side, lift the trap door, descend to the natural fissure below and work the counter-balances and pulleys to glide the bin back into place over the concealed door. Luc came from a line of carpenters and smugglers, a combination that had bonded them when Stig had parachuted into the Nazi-occupied territory to connect with the Resistance.

Although it was stored in the same niche, the torch was newer than the batch they’d hoarded during the war. Smaller, but brighter. Worse weapon, better light.

Along the tunnel and then forty-two steps to descend to the cavern floor. He could navigate the route from memory, so he shut off the torch and waited for his senses to adjust in the absolute dark. The cave smelled exactly as it had seventy years ago, no rot or mildew, just wet. Without hundreds of sweaty tourists tramping through daily leaving odors, the steady drip of water carried a crisp smell of minerals. This was a living cave. Much of the town had hidden here during the Ardennes shelling and bombing, and he’d been comfortable in it for the two years he’d operated in Belgium.

He moved forward, one hand trailing the wall and counting his paces. Air brushed his skin, as substantial as a missed kiss. Cold, wet caves had never bothered him because the one trove he’d known better than to steal, the one treasure that terrified instead of tempted, had been in a hot cave.

* * *

“A grand tunnel.” Galan’s voice emerged from inside the earth.

“It’s a barrow.” Deep in the bushes, flat stones twice Stigr’s height faced each other like a giant’s door. Runes of an ancient tongue marked the lintel. He wouldn’t have agreed to teach his friend cliff scaling if he had known what hid here in the rocks. “Come out.”

Galan must not have heard. Grave-robbing stained men in the eyes of the gods, and surely he would not continue if he knew this place was sacred to the dead. Galan’s next words were muffled, as if he’d passed where his voice couldn’t travel the stone path to the surface.

Despite the wind pushing Thor-clouds across the western horizon like frenzied steeds, the cliff stone was warm underhand. Far at sea, three ships, their red sails billowing, raced the storm. Perhaps they brought tributes for Lord Beowulf. Fifty winters, and he was as strong as the day he had sundered the monster’s arm sinews. All of their company were.

The longships might make harbor before the storm. Men took bigger risks than riding the dark sea.

When Galan emerged from the stone door, the whites around his eyes showed brighter than the sea-froth below. Stigr forgot about the ships.

Galan unwrapped his cloak to reveal a golden goblet.

The cup was exquisite. Workmanship from a forge the Geats could not master, nor the Swedes, nor any of the tribes of the Finns or farther east. The smooth white balls of soft stone decorating the base came from the warm seas several months’ journey south. This was surely the work of the gods.

Galan shoved the treasure toward him. “Take it.”

His hand opened wide to catch the cup, and then he sucked his breath dry at the pain of heated metal on his palm. Like he’d reached into a forge.

The goblet clattered to the stones between them.

“Put it back.” Stigr spit into his hand, but nothing doused the heat as a red blister rose on his palm. The mark obscured his lifeline, and fear of the unknown at the end of that stone passage made his knees feel like thin winter milk. “Put it back.”

“Nay.” Galan quaked. “I’ll not return. It’s a fire-drake.”

His gut had known as soon as he touched the warm rock, but he had denied the truth until Galan spoke. No natural heat, no sun, made a sea cliff like a hearth. Only a wyrm of the old stories could do that.

The blister faded to a flat red mark that would disappear before he and Galan resolved this problem. The skalds sung tales about the hoard-counting of the night-fire breathers. Nothing could be missing. Ever. “You have to put it back.”

“I can’t.” Galan trembled, backing toward the rope they had descended from the headland. “You do it. I can’t.”

Stigr was a thief, but now he would have to return a treasure.

* * *

The wet stone on his cheek was the first thing Stig noticed when he returned to himself. His body felt complete, although his mind was hazy. He’d fallen. Waking dreams or visions, his problem had been called long ago. He supposed the internet would diagnose him with a traumatic disorder. Plenty of source material after fifteen hundred years, no doubt, but only if he talked about what he saw or felt. A bed of cold stone was far from Christina’s warmth, further still from the ancient scourge awoken in the fire cave. He craved light to drive the last memory away, but in his fugue he must have dropped the torch.

He rose to his knees and brushed his hands left and right across the floor.

Light burst on his face, as blinding as a stage spot. Instantly, he threw himself to the ground and rolled toward a mineral formation that had thousands more years before it reached the ceiling.

Ruff-ruff-ruff.
A familiar little dog bark echoed in the stone chamber.

Relief left him flat on his back. “Hallo, Porkchop. Not my ear please.”

Thomas Locke stood twenty feet away with a boxy high-powered spotlight in his left hand and a bluntly effective-looking revolver in his right. The man he’d been hunting had found him. “Good evening again.” The pistol didn’t waver.

“I see we both thought it was a nice night for a stroll.” Stig stood and dusted his trousers and coat, but water didn’t like to brush off as easily as dirt did. Locke must have come into the caves through the disused tourist entrance. “If one finds hundred-thousand-year-old limestone caves to be nice spots for midnight dog-walking, the Ardennes makes an ideal vacation, I must agree.”

“Dachshunds were bred to be tunnel dogs. Walking Porkchop is a little more believable at this hour than sight-seeing.” He had a metal case, the damp-proof type, next to his feet.

“May I point out that I’m unarmed, and we appear to have a mutual friend in Luc, so perhaps you could put that weapon back where you like to keep it under your cardigan.”

“Momentarily. Although bullets don’t really matter to you, do they?”

Stig froze solid from his wet feet to his fingertips. “I would bleed and die like anyone else, of course.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Who are you?” Locke couldn’t have followed Ivar to La Roche, because he’d been at Luc’s for weeks already. Stig couldn’t imagine how Unferth would have sent someone here even before Wend and Skafe had made contact. “What do you want?”

“Nothing. I’m an old man looking for a quiet retirement.” He exaggerated his age. “And you?”

“A young man looking for a romantic getaway.”

Locke’s small snort was humorous as they both acknowledged the inherent lies.

“Thank you for Porkchop’s assistance in the pub.”

“Think nothing of it. He likes chew snacks from dried pig’s ear, but I find them disgusting and won’t purchase them. He was thrilled to indulge. Who were they?”

That question, Stig was willing to answer. “Insurance fraud investigators.”

Locke laughed with his full chest this time. “I used to have a similar job. Thankless work. No one’s ever happy to see you.” The revolver disappeared smoothly into the underarm holster, a practiced and easy move. “Even your bosses don’t like your reports, because it means they’re losing money. Luckily no one sicced a dog on me.”

“Would have liked those two well enough if they’d remained in London.” The joking didn’t hide the fact that Locke knew more about him than he should. His friend wasn’t a gossip, not about important things, so Locke must have been listening when he and Luc talked old times. Not only was the house bugged, but unlike Christina, this man believed. Which was interesting. And unsettling.

“You’re one of the good ones, aren’t you?”

Stig’s muscles urged him to run and avoid this conversation, but that would be an admission of its own. Since he didn’t wish to leave Luc’s in the middle of the night, he’d have to brazen it out. “Don’t know about that. I’m a thief.”

The other man blew air out his lips, the sound of disdain. “Crime and honor are not mutually exclusive. The man you were with. The one with the gloves.”

He wouldn’t discuss Ivar with this man, not without a lot more pressure than a sausage dog and a holstered weapon.

“I want to help him.” Thomas nudged the metal case forward with his foot. “Here. Use it.”