“We could get a couple days off of school,” Beth argued. “They’re allowed for educational purposes. And this would be educational, I bet.”
“You never let us do anything,” Suzy added.
“Girls, I want you to go upstairs and take your baths.”
“It’s Christmas. Why do we have to go up so early?” Suzy protested, tears welling in her eyes.
“I thought we were going to watch A Christmas Story on TV tonight,” Beth added. “You said we could, Mom. Remember, that’s the movie about the kid who wanted a BB gun for Christmas? It was so funny when he got those footed bunny pajamas, and when that kid’s tongue got stuck to the flagpole.”
Maggie remembered. She didn’t need Beth’s nervous jabbering to jog her memory. Did Suzy and Beth really think she would be so harsh? She wasn’t about to let their Christmas end on such a sour note. “You can come back down after your baths,” she said gently, pushing some loose strands of hair off of Beth’s face and behind her ears. “Joe and I need to talk…alone.”
Once the girls were gone, Jorund knew he was in big trouble. But before he let that trouble hit him smack in the face, he had something important to do. Walking resolutely to the door leading from the den to the hallway, he shoved Rita out with a whisk of his foot, closed the door with a loud bang, then turned the key in the lock.
“What are you doing, Joe?” Mag-he asked, backing up slightly. She was wearing tight black braies, which were appropriately called tights, and a big, loose black tunic, caught in at the waist with a twisted rope belt of red and green. He hoped to hell she was wearing no undergarments, because he didn’t have that much time before the girls returned.
“What am I doing?” he repeated, already yanking his Proud to Be a Viking T-shirt over his head. “I’m about to give you the best Christmas present you’ve ever had.”
“No.”
“Yea.”
“We can’t. I told you that I wouldn’t do this with the girls in the house.”
“Surely there must be an exception for Christmas.”
She wavered. He could see it in her eyes. He would warrant she’d missed their lovemaking almost as much as he had.
“Mag-he, you are killing me with all these new…emotions. Not just our lovemaking, or being amongst twin girls again, but the whole Christmas season. I need…I need…”
She waited for him to finish, but he could not. In truth, he had closed the door to the den chamber in hopes of a quick swiving. He had not intended to spout such nonsense—at least, that was what he would have called it at one time—but the words just came out. Perhaps it was not just a quick swiving he was after…or not the only thing he was after.
Why does everything have to be so complicated in this land?
“You need what, Joe?” Mag-he asked softly.
He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them, staring at her bleakly. “I need to be touched,” he confessed.
“Oh, Joe.”
She was ripe for the plucking now, if he wanted to take advantage of her vulnerability. Somehow Jorund could not do that. He did not want to seduce her tonight. He wanted her to want him as much as he wanted her.
She bit her bottom lip with indecision and reached a hand out, cupping his jaw.
That touch—that mere touch—was almost his undoing. He moaned and turned his mouth to her palm, kissing it gently.
She moaned, too, a soft, feminine sound of capitulation. “I need your touch, too,” she admitted. “I have missed you so much this week.”
He nodded, waiting for her word to proceed. Jorund was a warrior. He knew when to advance and when to delay. Now his instincts said to wait for her cue.
“They’ll be back too soon for us to do anything.”
“Not for what I have in mind.”
She arched an eyebrow. Yes, she was interested, despite herself.
“Something I heard about on the TV world box,” he answered, backing her up against the closet door, beside the glittering Christmas tree. Even as he brushed his mouth over hers, restraining himself from deepening the kiss, he was already at work, loosening her belt. “A wall-bang-her.”
Maggie gasped with surprise. He wasn’t sure if it was because of what he intended to do, or because he’d already lifted her off the floor, shoved her tights down to her thighs—and yes, he had been right…thank the Lord…she was not wearing undergarments—and pulled his braies down far enough to release his erection…which was immense again. Oh, for the tears of Thor! I resemble a tree limb. What is happening to my male parts in this land? I ne’er thought I would say this about my virility, but ’tis embarrassing. Before she could blink, or raise some objection, he adjusted her legs to hug his hips, and plunged inside. Luckily, Mag-he had gone back on something called birth-control pills, and the condoms were no longer necessary.
“We can’t.” Maggie was already wrapping her arms around his shoulders and adjusting her legs more tightly about his hips, locking them at the ankles behind his back.
“We can,” he said, then beseeched her in a raw voice, “Touch me, Mag-he. Touch me, touch me, touch me.”
She undid the rub-her band holding his hair back and ran her fingers through the long strands lovingly. She traced the line of his jaw and his eyebrows with a forefinger. She rubbed his shoulders and caressed his back. Everywhere her hands and fingers could reach, she touched him.
Only then did he begin the long, slow strokes that he knew she enjoyed so much. The friction of her inner walls tugging at his staff on each backward stroke was sweet agony to him.
With one hand under her buttocks to hold her up, Jorund reached his other hand under her shert and began to massage one breast. He lifted its fullness from underneath, then palmed the whole, rubbing in a circular fashion till the tight bud in the center stabbed at his flesh. Mag-he had the most sensitive breasts, and it was only seconds before she was moaning aloud, and peaking around his pounding erection.
He wanted her to continue peaking for him till he came to his own release. So, even before she stopped her erotic spasms, he was fluttering his thumb against her sex-bud…a continuous, rapid, back-and-forth motion that prompted another orgasm from Mag-he. The whole time, he continued his long strokes, which were becoming shorter and faster as he approached his own imminent exploding point.
“I love you,” she cried out in the midst of her ecstasy, still alternately clutching and caressing his shoulders. Then, “Tell me, tell me, tell me,” she begged.
He knew exactly what she wanted to hear, and perhaps it was the sex, or perhaps it was the Christmas spirit in the air, or perhaps he was finally surrendering to the inevitable, but Jorund couldn’t help himself then. “I love you, heartling. I love you, I love you, I love you.” He said all this to her as his seed burst into her body.
And for that moment, at least, Jorund’s life seemed to have come full circle. He was complete.
“I said no, and I mean it,” Maggie said, straightening out her clothes.
There was no afterglow period to their lovemaking this time, as much as she cherished Joe’s words of love. She didn’t blame him for the wild sexual interlude. She had needed his touch as much as he’d apparently needed hers. It had been as beautiful in its spontaneity as some of his long, drawn-out loveplay often was. But now Maggie felt awful, unable to savor what should be such a special moment. She couldn’t seem to help herself. The girls would be back soon, and she had to settle the absurd question of their taking off across the country to some tourist attraction that wasn’t even open to the public during the winter.
Joe stared at her, his eyes desolate and pleading.
“Why is it so important to you?”
“I don’t know. It just is.” He’d already adjusted his clothing. Now he went over to unlock the door. When Rita rushed in, he made a disgusted sound. Turning back to Maggie, he reached out and took one of her hands in both of his. “My instincts tell me that this is something I must do.”
Maggie pulled her hand
from his clasp. She couldn’t think when he touched her in any way. Besides that, her skin was still extrasensitive from their lovemaking. Pacing the room, she tried to get her emotions under control. “You want us—me and my two daughters—to take a fruitless, two-thousand-mile trip, all based on an instinct?”
“Yea, I do.”
She noticed a familiar expression on his face. “Oh, don’t you dare throw that trust business in my face again. This isn’t about trust. It’s about a whim.”
“Mayhap it’s about control, Mag-he. Mayhap you just can’t bear to give up some of your precious control. I admit that I should have discussed this with you first, but I did not do it to usurp your authority. I was so excited over the idea that I blurted it out.”
She took a deep breath. “Listen, Joe, we can go next summer when the girls are on vacation—”
“Next summer! What makes you think I will be here next summer?” His words were angry and bleak at the same time.
Maggie felt as if a vise were squeezing her heart.
“I’ll go myself then. I will reserve a seat for myself on a gray dog.”
“Gray dog?” Maggie laughed briefly. “You mean Greyhound…like a Greyhound bus?”
He waved a hand dismissively. “That is what I said, is it not?”
The idea of a tenth-century Viking boarding a modern bus and traveling a great distance to a place where he knew no one was so outlandish that Maggie hurried to convince him he was being unreasonable. “I can’t let you do that.”
His eyes threw flinty sparks at her, as if to say, Try to stop me.
“Joe, try to understand. I’m the only one who drives. Even if I could drive nonstop, it would be two days going and two days coming back. With at least one overnight stay in a motel, we’re talking three days each way of driving alone. Were you planning that we would go, examine the closed-to-the-public village from the outside, then turn around and come right back?”
“You know I have made no specific plans. It’s just something I want to do-nay, something I need to do.”
As he needed my touch? No, don’t think. You’re softening, Maggie. Whatever you do, don’t soften. “Don’t you think you’re being selfish?”
He seemed to give her question serious thought. “Nay…yea…it does not matter.”
“And there’s another thing: do you think it’s wise to go so far away from the point of your time travel entry? There’s a chance you’d cut yourself off forever from returning to your time.”
“On the other hand, Thora may have traveled north to colder waters. Mayhap she awaits me there. Mayhap that is why it is so important to me.”
That prospect staggered Maggie. “You think that this might be a sign from Thora?”
“Mayhap.”
“And you would abandon me and Suzy and Beth in Maine?” Maggie hated the pathetic tone of her voice.
“Not willingly.” He drew himself up resolutely. “Heed me well on this, m’lady: I am going to this Rosestead village, but your arguments make good sense. So I will offer this compromise, though it vexes me no end to think of doing it.”
He had her full attention now.
“We could go on one of those flying longships.”
Flying longships? Flying longships? Oh. “By airplane?”
“Yea.” His face was pale as a ghost at the possibility.
He plopped down on the sofa, pulling her down next to him. “I cannot credit that this love we have just discovered is destined to end here. Come with me, heartling. Please.”
The girls burst through the door then, smelling of shampoo and lilac bubble bath. “Well?” they both asked expectantly.
Maggie barely hesitated a moment before informing them with forced brightness, “Looks like we’re going to see snow this Christmas, after all.”
Chapter Seventeen
“If ever I make it back to my time, I am going to have some fantastic stories to give to the skalds,” Jorund grumbled.
Sitting next to the window—in an actual flying machine, for the love of Freyja—he was as rigid as a Saxon soldier with a Norse blade at his private parts, and twice as frightened. The only thing different was the lack of piss running down his legs…so far.
The airplane had the whimsical name of United. He supposed that was not so unusual, considering the names some Vikings gave their longships and favorite weapons.
Mag-he sat totally at ease in the seat next to him, trying to assure him of their safety with such ludicrous words as, “Only one plane in about a million ever crashes.” As if that were any comfort to him. This metal container could very likely be the millionth one.
Once the craft was airborne, he released a long breath and continued his complaints. “Truly, my sagas will be retold through the centuries: how Jorund the Lackwit Warrior not only rode naked on the back of a killer whale, but landed in a madhouse, then willingly flew through the skies in a magic machine called an airplane, thus proving his madness.”
Steve had loaned him his new SEALs jacket in anticipation of the low temperatures they would find in Maine. Mag-he and the girls, who sat in the seats behind them, wore layers of sweat-hers under their jackets.
While the girls were excited about the trip, he was tense, waiting for something—he knew not what—to happen next. Not an airplane crash. No, it was something else, he was certain. Mag-he, bless her trusting soul, was simply resigned.
For the next hour or so, he was able to relax, even though the airplane was traveling at an excessive rate of speed. When he turned to glance over the back of the headrest, he saw that the girls were napping. He had thought Mag-he was dozing, too, till she asked softly, “Do you still feel this trip has some importance?”
Clearly she was worried that their time together was nearing an end. He could give her no assurances to the contrary. Reaching over to lace his fingers with hers, he tugged her closer, then put an arm around her shoulders and rested her face in the crook of his neck. He would try to lighten her spirits, he decided. “Steve told me about a remarkable feat that some couples attempt while in an air machine.”
She laughed—a choked, wobbly sound. “Stop trying to make me laugh.” Her words were light, but her eyes remained melancholy.
“’Tis called the Mile-high Association,” he went on. “I believe it has something to do with sex in the clouds. That sounds interesting, do you not think?” Jorund was just jesting, of course. He might have been foolhardy enough to try flying in a metal box, but never would he dare fornicate on a cloud.
“Oh, no, you don’t, buster.” She punched him lightly on the upper arm. “Last night you might have been able to talk me into…into—”
“A wall-bang-her?” he offered with a grin.
“Yes. You might have been able to seduce me into vertical sex…”
Well, that’s an interesting name for it.
“…but no way are you sweet-talking me into sex in an airplane bathroom. Uh-uh.”
Oh, so that is what the Mile-high Association is.
They both sat in silence then, but Jorund had some things that needed to be said, and Mag-he apparently did, too.
She spoke first. “You very cleverly evaded my question, Joe. Why are you so serious, aside from being scared to death of flying? What’s bothering you?”
“If I should depart suddenly…” he blurted out.
Her body stiffened with alarm. “Oh, no! Do you really think you might—”
“Shhh.” He squeezed her shoulder and held her face with his other hand. “I don’t know that I would be sent back without warning, but I must needs be ready.”
“Tell me the truth. You sense that something is about to happen, don’t you?”
He hesitated to tell her, but she had to be prepared. Finally he nodded.
She gasped.
He tried to explain. “I cannot tell you how many times over how many years I have prepared myself to go into battle. Each time, at the last moment, there is a rush of blood in the body, a humming in the ear
s, an excitement of sorts.”
“It’s called adrenaline.”
Why was he not surprised that she would have a name for it? They had a name for every other bloody thing in this strange land…including mouth sex, the bad temper women were in before their monthly flux, the perfectly natural inclination of males of middle years to swive younger women, and—
“Is that how you feel now? All hyped up?” she asked, tears misting her beautiful blue eyes. “As if you are about to fight?”
“Hmmm. Not exactly. More like something immense is about to happen.”
They were both silent then. What could be more immense than his being hurtled back through time? What could be more immense than their permanent separation?
“You’re strong, Mag-he,” he remarked in a strangled voice. “You can handle anything.”
He was not so sure about himself, though.
“No matter what happens, Joe, I can’t be sorry that I met you, or that we made love.”
He nodded, unable to express just how much his short relationship with her meant to him. In the end, he told her, “I will never forget you.”
They were both too overcome to speak more, and Jorund turned away to stare out the window. The airplane was now traveling over an expanse of water. He narrowed his eyes and pressed his nose to the glass. Aha! He didn’t even bother to tell Mag-he when he saw a killer whale spyhopping merrily down below. She would only tell him that it was impossible to see that far. But he knew. It was Thora; he was certain of that.
And her words to him, accompanied by the usual clicks and groans, came up the great distance from the water to the plane, loud and clear, for his ears only.
Soon, Viking. Soon you will know.
Sandra Hill - [Vikings II 02] Page 25
