The Caged Viking

by Sandra Hill

I want you. I don’t want you. Whatever (her favorite, most irksome word)!

  Stab and retreat.

  Bestir me. Betray me.

  Feint and spin.

  I’ll never leave you. Good-bye! Tra la la!

  ’Twas enough to drive a Viking into berserkness. If he wasn’t careful, he would be howling like a wolf and biting his shield.

  Another animal! Aaarrgh! I am doing it now, too.

  With a muttered curse, he stood and undid his belt, holding her gaze the entire time. He tried to view her as a combatant he was about to duel, but it was difficult when she did not even try to hide her smile of satisfaction. A good warrior did not react to the enemy’s taunts. So, he raised his chin and scowled her way.

  Having taken that stand, he held her gaze as he lifted his tunic over his head and bared himself to the waist. He knew that she liked his body, and liked to look at it. She’d told him so many times. Bloody hell, he liked to look at her body, too.

  She waved a hand, indicating that he should continue. As if she were the commander in this battle of wits…or witlessness, he was beginning to think.

  Even so, he held her gaze as he shrugged out of his braies, and toed them off along with his half boots. Take that, wench! he thought as he brazenly exposed himself to her scrutiny.

  With his hands on his hips, he continued to hold her gaze, or tried to hold her gaze, but it was difficult because her gaze kept flickering to his enthusiasm, which was standing out like a knight’s lance about to wage an assault. Embarrassing, really. Well, not really. Try as he might, it was difficult for a man to remain angry and seemingly unemotional when he was betrayed by his favorite body part.

  “Do you want me to explain about the arm rings?” she asked.

  Unbelievable! I present her with all my magnificence, and she wants to chatter. “Do not dare!”

  “What? You don’t want to know why I had two sets of arm rings?”

  “At this moment, I do not care if you have ten sets. Enough blather!” He picked up the top edge of the bed fur covering her and flipped it up and back to land at the foot of the bed.

  “Hauk! I’m getting cold.”

  “You won’t be cold for long. Where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  “The tattoo.”

  “I was saving that for later.”

  “Well, there’s no saving this.” He cupped himself, then put one knee on the edge of the mattress and swung the other knee over her body, managing to land exactly where he wanted, skin to skin.

  “I can see your point,” she said, raising her hips a little, which caused his enthusiasm to become more enthusiastic, pressing against her belly.She was probably being sarcastic, but he was beyond caring.

  “Are you still cold?” he asked.

  “You’re better than a bed fur any day, babe, but, yeah, I’m still a little chilled.” She put her arms around his shoulders. “A few kisses might heat my blood.”

  “Kisses? I’m beyond that now.”

  “I thought you liked our kisses. I could reapply my lip gloss.”

  “Later,” he said. “Must we talk?”

  “Just one thing. I love you, Hauk. If we love each other, we can work all the little details out.”

  “The little details!” he exclaimed with consternation. “Like your deserting me? Like your pretending to melt your arm rings? Like you sobbing your eyes out when you’re finally in my arms?”

  “Minor speed bumps on the road to love,” she proclaimed airily. “You do love me, don’t you?” The slight quiver of her lips told him that she was actually unsure what his answer would be. Foolish woman!

  “My hands are shaking. My brain is spinning. My stomach is churning. My knees are wobbling. My heart is racing. My cock is throbbing.” He ran out of bodily descriptions and shrugged. “Must be love. Or else I’m suffering from herfjöttr, or war fetter, like some head-battered berserker.” He paused to consider that last possibility. “Nay, it must be love.”

  “You’re never going to let me forget that Cosmo article, are you?” She smiled.

  His racing heart skipped a beat and seemed to grow and grow. If a smile could do that to him, he wondered what a more overt expression of her pleasure would do to him. He could scarce wait to find out.

  He grew more serious then as he began to make love to his wife. He wanted to go hard and deep, to imprint himself inside her so that she would never leave again. A fanciful thought! Like those lamebrained poets who spoke of lovers becoming one. That’s what she was turning him into…a fanciful dolthead. And so it was with special care that he made slow love to his wife.

  And she returned that slow love right back at him. Kiss for kiss. Caress for caress. Moan for moan.

  But then…

  He couldn’t believe it, but then…

  As he wet her ear with the tip of his tongue, then blew it dry, over and over, an erotic technique he knew she enjoyed, as evidenced by her little sighs and shivers…but then she insisted on talking. “I had my brother make me a separate set of arm rings, not because I plan to go back, but just in case there is some emergency.”

  “Like?” he asked, meanwhile moving lower to lick her nipples into hard points. Another of her special erotic places that Hauk had discovered on earlier occasions.

  She arched her back to give him better access and remarked, “Oh, I don’t know. A plague or something.”

  “A plague! We have ne’er had a plague in the Norselands afore. Unless you know something that is to come in the future.” He shot up to a sitting position, his buttocks resting on her thighs. “Oh, my gods! What will it be? Locusts? Boils? Frogs? Disease?”

  “No, no, no! I don’t know about any specific plagues. It was just an example of an emergency that could occur.”

  “I swear, you will be the death of me,” he said, lying back down over her.

  “I’m just saying we should have a spare set of arm rings put away in some safe place, in case they’re ever needed.”

  “How can you make love and talk about other things at the same time?”

  “I’m a multitasker,” she said.

  Is it a sign of intelligence or lackwittedness that I am beginning to understand her strange words? He smiled to himself and thought, Whatever!

  “I missed this,” she murmured as he licked her breasts.

  “And I missed that,” he choked out, well above a murmur, when she stroked him down below.

  He kissed her endlessly and deeply and told her. “Your taste…I forgot your taste.”

  “I didn’t forget yours,” she drawled, later. And she wasn’t talking about his mouth.

  He wasn’t able to say anything at all for a while after that. And they hadn’t even mutually consummated their loveplay yet.

  “Oh, I forgot,” she said as he lay splatted over her. “You mentioned that you had something in mind for my ass, and I thought you’d guessed where I got my tattoo.”

  His brain was fuzzy from his lone peaking, and he probably had a sex flush covering his face and neck; so, only half attending, it was several moments before her words sank in. He raised his head and arched his brows in question. “You didn’t!”

  She nodded. “I did.”

  Without warning he rolled her over so that her body was face down on the mattress. And there it was!

  His shield sign of chasing hawks tattooed on one of her nether cheeks. He spread her legs and knelt between them, lifted her hips so she was on her knees, too, her arse raised, to give himself a better look. He thought earlier of wanting to make such deep love to his wife that he would be imprinted inside of her. But she’d imprinted his sign on the outside of her body.

  What a woman!

  And she is mine!

  His enthusiasm shot back with a vengeance. And he made love to her in what was to become his new favorite sexual position, one in which he could do the deed deeply and at the same time view the artwork on her arse. ’Twould seem he was good at multitasking, too.

  “I
love you, sweetheart,” she told him as she drifted off to sleep a long time later.

  “I love you, too, sweetling,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head which rested on his shoulder, “for all time.”

  The next morning, they buried the arm rings beneath a tree in the mossy patch over by the fjord, which was not an easy task, considering the snow and icy earth. It was just a precaution that Hauk had agreed to, just in case someone (not either of them) needed them in the future.

  Some of his people who watched from afar considered them addled by the love that clearly showed in their eyes. Thorkel thought it might be the sex flush which had moved to their brains. Egil wondered if they were digging for some treasure that the lady had learned of in her time travels. Bjorn had nothing to say; he was still asleep.

  Thereafter, that mossy, flowery grove was said to have magical powers.

  Epilogue

  Time went by, in more ways than one…

  Over the next five years, Kirstin gave birth to four daughters, two sets of twins, whom Hauk referred to as his “heartlings.” Then she went on to have two sons. As decades passed, the timeswept couple were more in love than ever, their bond enhanced by their large family. Never once did Kirstin regret giving up her modern life, even as she missed her “other” family. Although she was said to complain more than once that she would give anything for a good shower, whatever that was.

  Hauk’s trading skills (dealing in amber and furs) brought prosperity to Haukshire which allowed him to expand his keep and outbuildings enough to rival a minor kingdom. His fleet of longships numbered twelve at last count, including two knarrs or merchant cargo ships. A village grew up in those surroundings to house all the new Haukshire folks, and not just seamen and their families. There were blacksmiths, ship builders, carpenters, woodcarvers, weavers, and other skilled craftsmen.

  Kirstin made good use of their prosperity to better furnish her home with tapestry wall hangings and even carpets on some of the floors, which was unheard of for that time. Revna taught Kirstin’s weavers how to make the intricate orphrey embroidery, and Haukshire fabrics became prized products in the trading markets of Hedeby, Birka, and Kaupang.

  Of course, Kirstin, always looking for new “projects,” pleaded with Hauk for “a few” sheep (they ended up with ten, and the frisky animals kept reproducing) to provide the wool to make the cloth, much to Hauk’s disgust; for some reason, Hauk had a dislike for the wooly creatures, which he often said were “dumb as Saxon dirt.” But there was nothing Hauk wouldn’t do for his beloved wife.

  Kirstin used those initial seed packets to grow vegetables and herbs, some of which thrived with her constant care. Even some of the grapevines managed to survive, and they made their first wine on the fifth year. “Tastes like dragon piss,” was the general consensus, but it improved over the years to the point they no longer needed to import any of that beverage.

  “Chicken Slop” with “spit balls” became a favorite dish at Haukshire. Kirstin gave up on correcting the mispronunciations after a while once she figured out that Hauk deliberately fostered those false ideas, one of his many ways of teasing her. Viking men were known for their playful mischief.

  Hauk never escaped his experience in that Saxon cage. Over the years skalds not only told sagas of “The Viking in a Cage,” but they embellished on it. To hear some of them, you’d think he had grown fur and animal parts by the time he finally escaped…an escape which was aided by a silver-blonde Valkyrie with wings, which allowed the two of them to fly out of Winchester Castle. Good thing he had a sense of humor, but then, Viking men had a great talent for laughing at themselves.

  Bjorn became a skillful warrior, a member of the far-famed Varangians, travelling to many lands. Eventually, he left that band of fighting mercenaries and married Gisela. As jarl of Stormstead, after her father’s death, Bjorn also flourished with three sons and two daughters.

  Egil lived to a ripe old age of fifty-five and was said to be pleased in his final hour to die in battle (one of the many continuing wars with the Saxons), which entitled him to go on to Valhalla. No straw death for him!

  The biggest surprise of all came with Gorm, who grew into an incredibly handsome Viking man, praised by his comrades-in-arms, loved by women in many countries. A rascal to the bone! In other words, a Viking. A lot like his brother Hauk, many people said. Gorm sought adventure every chance he got, and it was he who vowed to use the arm rings one day to travel to that new land of America.

  Who knows! Stranger things have happened.

  Reader Letter

  Dear Readers:

  Well, my goodness! Did you ever think I was going to write another new Viking book? Seems like forever, doesn’t it? Well, it has been eight years since I’ve written any Viking novels, eleven years since I’ve written any books in this particular Viking series, the last ones being DARK VIKING and VIKING HEAT. I forgot how much fun these guys were.

  Those of you who have been with me and my Vikings from the beginning, more than twenty years now, know that I pride myself on my Norse ancestry. I can actually trace my paternal family tree back to the tenth century Viking Rollo, first duke of Norsemandy. But besides that, research has shown me that these Vikings were brave, handsome, talented men with a remarkable sense of humor for their time. They were not the rapers and pillagers depicted by the biased monk historians of that time, or at least they were no worse than the Saxon, Franks, or other cultures back then. They were violent times.

  In my opinion, my Vikings are different from many other Vikings out there because of my unique voice for humor and sizzle. I hope you agree. Where else will you find a Viking commissioned by a king to find the witch who caused his cock to take a right turn, or a grief-stricken Viking berserker who is being counseled by a modern-day psychologist on anger management, or a whole series of Viking Navy SEALs, for that matter?

  Y’know, there’s nothing sexier than a man who can make a woman smile in bed. Boy, do my Vikings ever! I also often quote that old proverb, “When a rogue kisses you, count your teeth.” Yep! You could insert “Viking rogue” in there, and it would be doubly true.

  Historical accuracy is important to me, but I have taken some author license in terms of dates. For example, there was, in fact, a St. Brice’s massacre, but it might not have been the exact year I’ve used.

  I love to hear from you readers. Your opinions do matter to me. I answer every email. I can be reached at shill733aol.com, or on my website at www.sandrahill.net, or on Facebook at SandraHillAuthor. More than anything, I’d like to know what you’d like to see next. Gorm’s story? Another Viking Navy SEAL or maybe some of the old secondary characters that never got their own stories, like Alrek the Clumsy Viking, or any of that rogue Tykir’s sons. If you sign up for my mailing list on my website, you’ll receive occasional newsletters with updates and gift offerings.

  The books in my series can be read out of order, but, of course, it’s best if you can go back from the beginning. One of the best things for me, as a reader, not a writer, is discovering a new-to-me author and being able to go back and glom onto his or her other books. That’s what I’m hoping you’ll do, go back and read all the books in this Viking Series II: THE LAST VIKING, TRULY, MADLY VIKING, THE VERY VIRILE VIKING, WET & WILD, HOT & HEAVY, ROUGH AND READY, DOWN AND DIRTY, VIKING UNCHAINED, VIKING HEAT, DARK VIKING, and now THE CAGED VIKING.

  As always, I wish you smiles in your reading.

  * * *

  —Sandra Hill

  Dark Viking Excerpt

  Double or nothing...

  With a loud whoosh, Rita Sawyer’s body went up in flames, and she prepared to catapult through the fifteenth-floor window of the burning skyscraper. The whole time, she pondered whether she’d have the time or the inclination to shave her legs before her date this evening with her ex-husband’s brother.

  Darron, who was suffering major post-divorce guilt—on his brother Scott’s behalf, of all things—had made it his mission in life to find her
a mate to make up for his hound-dog brother’s betrayal during Scott and Rita’s short-lived marriage. As a result, he was bringing along the “perfect man” for her. His words. Presumably heterosexual with a job. Absolute essentials for her as a twenty-nine-year-old veteran in the dating wars.

  To be honest, she was still raw and angry over Scott’s infidelity, whether it was one time, as he outrageously claimed, or dozens, as she suspected. She’d seen what adultery had done to her mother, as well.

  Having known Scott since kindergarten, she’d seen him at his worst, and it wasn’t even when she’d caught him in bed with a fellow physician. Think seven years old and green snot. She shouldn’t have been surprised when he’d turned out to be an adulterous snot when he grew up.

  She had an ulterior motive for meeting with Darron tonight. He was a top-notch financial advisor, and Rita was facing monumental money problems since her mother had died, leaving her with medical bills out the wazoo. It wasn’t the long bout with cancer that caused all the problems, but the experimental treatments not covered by insurance, for which Rita had gladly taken out loans, and the year as a caretaker when she’d had no income. Unfortunately, all in vain. Collection agencies now had her on speed dial.

  “Scene Three, Take Two. Lights! Camera! Action!” Larry Winters, the director of this latest spy thriller starring Jennifer Garner and Hugh Jackman, shouted through his bullhorn.

  Whoosh! Bursting into a ball of flame, Jennifer went sailing through the glass and the air with expertise, landing on a trampoline that looked like the roof of another building, from which she then front flipped onto yet another rooftop, aka a padded platform. Of course, it wasn’t really the fifteenth floor, but the third, and it wasn’t really a skyscraper, but a set prop, and it wasn’t really Jennifer Garner, but her, Rita Sawyer, stunt double.

  “Cut!” the director yelled. “That’s a wrap! Great job, Rita!”