The man was stalking her... no doubt about it. She would have darted for safety if her back weren't pressed to the wall. On the other hand, maybe she wouldn't have fled. For once in her life, Maggie yearned to free the sensuality she'd suppressed for so long. She didn't want to be self conscious about her body or worry what other people would think. She wanted to be wanton.
As Maggie stood, transfixed, he moved toward her slowly, but purposefully. Then, in a blink, he wrapped his arms about her waist, lifting her high, and walked her to the bed. Without breaking his stride, he tossed her onto the mattress and followed after her, landing between her inadvertently outspread legs.
They both gasped at the delicious contact of his sex against her sex, even through the barrier of his denim jeans and her robe. The position had been an accident, but Joe wasn't about to set aside the advantage. Instead he moved himself from side to side, adjusting himself more firmly in the cradle of her thighs. The whole time he watched her steadily, clearly wanting to witness her every reaction.
Oh, this was too embarrassing for a sexually inhibited person like herself.
Could he sense the passionate fluttering that had started between her legs and moved like wildfire to all the erogenous zones of her body? Well, at least she used to be sexually inhibited. Now she didn't even recognize the wild woman who was yanking at his open shirt and tossing it aside. She could smell the clean, musky scent of his skin, but more than anything she wanted to see it, and feel it, and taste it.
"Your eagerness excites me mightily," he said as he brushed the palms of both hands over her breasts, causing them to peak through the silk fabric.
"I'm not eager," she lied. What she thought was, Touch me, touch me, touch me, again, again, again.
As if he heard her thoughts, he put his open mouth over the tip of one breast and began to suckle wetly through the flimsy cloth barrier with a hard rhythm.
Maggie almost shot up off the bed, except that his lower body still held her in place... his lower body that had a thickening ridge pressed against her in just the right place.
He took her hands and encouraged them to explore his shoulders and chest and, yes, even his flat, male nipples. To her delight, he looked as if he might shoot up off the bed, too.
And he grew even larger against her.
And flexed.
And then Maggie flexed back.
There were so many hormones flying about that Maggie feared an explosion. In fact, an explosion was guaranteed if they continued on this course.
But wait. Wait, wait, wait. Maggie realized that she hadn't spoken the cautionary word aloud. "Wait!" she practically shouted now. She didn't know if she was trying to be heard over the roaring of blood in her ears or his... probably both, because the heightened color on his face as he stared down at her, not to mention his ragged breathing, proved he was as turned on as she was.
"Wait?" he inquired in a strangled voice. "Now you tell me to wait? What is amiss?"
"I can't make love with you here... now... not with my daughters in the house."
"Now you gainsay me?" His eyes darkened angrily to a steely gray. "Why not?"
"Because it wouldn't be right," she insisted. "I have to set an example for them. I'm a single mother... an unmarried woman. My girls can't ever think of me as being promiscuous."
"In my land, children respect their elders' privacy. They know that lust and marriage do not necessarily go hand in hand."
"Yeah, well, you're not in Oz now, Toto," she said snidely, then immediately regretted her words. "It doesn't matter what the morality is in your land—or my land. It matters what I think."
She put a palm over her heart for emphasis. "And I want my children to grow up believing that lust or love, or whatever you want to call it, do go hand in hand with marriage. Or at the least, a committed relationship."
He made a rude sound of disgust. "Like all women, you want something for your favors, then. Whether it be coin or the bindings of marriage, females are ever out to snare men with their wiles."
"You don't know me at all if you think that."
She saw the stiffening of his jaw and the accusatory gleam in his eyes. She knew exactly what he was thinking. "I wasn't teasing you, Joe."
"It felt like teasing. Are you one of those women who enjoy the chase, and get your pleasure from making a man grovel?"
"No!" she asserted forcefully. "And I doubt whether you've groveled a day in your life."
"Then why come to me in your siren robe, giving me those come-take-me looks?"
Now he was getting insulting. She tried to push him away, or squirm out from under him, but he wouldn't release her.
"I came because I wanted you, you big lout. Because I wanted you so much, I forgot that l have responsibilities." She turned her face to the side, hating the fact that her eyes were misting over.
He tipped her chin back with a forefinger so that she was staring up at him as he propped himself on one elbow above her. His anger had melted away, replaced by a rueful acceptance. "A big lout, hmmm?" he remarked with a self-deprecating grin as he fingered the ends of her hair, still damp from her recent bath, then sniffed her. He nodded, as if pleased with the scent of her shampoo. Lilacs... the same as her bath salts had been.
"The biggest," she answered with a small sob.
"And you wanted me a great deal?"
He was leaning so close that his breath fanned her lips as he spoke. When she declined to answer, he nipped her bottom lip with his teeth and rubbed his erection against her at the same time.
She jerked back at the exquisite sensations those brief caresses engendered. If that wasn't bad enough, he nudged her legs farther apart with his knees, then cupped her bottom and rocked her hips against him.
She squealed. She actually squealed. Then she admitted, "A great deal."
"And still do?" he persisted.
Now he was alternately wetting the inner whorls of her ear with the tip of his tongue and blowing it dry. It was as if a thin, erotic thread connected her ears to her breasts and genital area, because each flick of his tongue was causing her to swell and throb in delicious agony.
"Still do," she whimpered. "But, I repeat, we can't make love."
To her surprise, he nodded. "Well, a kiss then.Surely it would be no great shock to your daughters' sensibilities to see a man kissing their mother."
She laughed softly at his too-obvious ploy. "You don't even like kisses."
"Oh, m'lady, you have sung that song too many times already. I have told you more than once that I have changed my mind on that issue."
"A kiss? That would be all?"
"Well, a little touching, too."
"A little touching? Aha! Men have been saying that throughout the ages. A little touching leads to a lot more, and before you know it, well, you can guess where it all leads."
"The injustice of your remark wounds me, m'lady," he said. "If I promise to give you only kisses and little touches, then that is what I will do. My word is my bond."
She nodded, because she really did want—no, need a little bit of his loving tonight... some thing to seal this change in their relationship.
"To be fair, I must advise you that I have been told I have clever hands."
Clever hands? What does that mean? I don't want to know. Yes, I do. Oh, boy!
"Mayhap it is the calluses on my palms from wielding a long sword for so many years. Or mayhap it is the flexibility of my fingers, which must neethrust a spear or pull on the reins of a blood-maddened warhorse with equal dexterity. Or mayhap it is the things learned in the Eastern harems that—"
She put her hands on either side of his neck, pulling him down for a kiss.
He drew back a hairbreadth from her lips and said, "I may be willing to accept your terms, but he forewarned: there are things I want to do to you that no man has ever done afore... "
Maggie's heart skittered wildly at his words, and a hot dampness pooled between her legs.
"Even so, I will keep my
word, for now. Mere kisses and little touches... that is all."
Joe kept his promise then, but there was nothing mere or little about him.
And, as to clever hands... Lordy, lordy!
Jorund sat at the head table of Mag-he's great hall early the next afternoon, awaiting the Thanksgiving feast.
Actually, there was no great hall... not even a hall at all, for that matter. And only one table. But then, Mag-he's keep itself was not all that large; he could touch the ceiling in any of the chambers. It was not as humble as the longhouses of his Norse cotters, nor as grand as the wood castles he, his father, and his brothers had erected in his homeland, following the Saxon and Frankish styles.
But one thing in this land might prove better: the food set out on the table smelled delicious, though foreign to his palate. Not a salted fjord fish or a bowl of skyr, the soured cream favored by many in his country, was in sight. And there was no central hearth with a boar on the spit or an ever-present cauldron of the meat or vegetable of the day—usually rabbit and leeks. No loss to him were any of those things.
Instead Mag-he, without the aid of any house carls, had prepared a roast turkey with sage stuffing, whipped potatoes, and candied sweet potatoes. Jorund had no idea what a potato was until Mag-he explained that it was a root vegetable, like a turnip. How one went about whipping a root, he could not even guess. There was also corn—another vegetable he'd never witnessed before—cranberry sauce—which caused his eyes to narrow and his belly to knot up because it had the same jiggly texture as that hated jail-low from the Rainbow hospitium— bread, butter, milk, and pumpkin pie.
Another thing he did not miss from his time was the often smelly, vermin-infested rushes on the floor. It was a constant struggle on the part of womenfolk to keep them fresh with juniper and dried herbs. Here there were luxurious carpets... thick as the plushest wool fleece. But then, hounds did not abound indoors here, grousing about for bones and relieving themselves hither and yon. Just an irksome cat that had its own privy box. The insufferable Rita had taken to following him about, giving him the evil eye. He would consider cleaving the bothersome beast from its hissing mouth to its twitching tail if he did not recognize the misplaced affection these three females held for the fat cat.
He started to reach for a piece of bread, then pulled his hand back abruptly when Beth made a cautionary tug on his sleeve. Beth was the name of one twin, he had learned; Sue-zee was the other. Jorund was not devoid of social graces, but he felt so awkward in this strange country whose customs he was yet learning. Even the use of a fork still came clumsily to him.
"We have to say grace firt," Beth informed him as she took his hand.
Grace? Who is Grace? Jorund glanced behind him to see if another person had come in, or worse yet, another bothersome cat.
Sue-zee took his hand on the other side. Then both girls joined hands with their mother at the other end of the table.
Jorund closed his eyes briefly at the wave of poignant memory that swept over him at the feel of two tiny hands engulfed by his. The entire hand of each of them barely covered his palm.
And the skin... ah, the skin was softer than the film on his mother's thick cream.
Dismayed, he opened his eyes to see the girls gazing at him with what could only be described as... adoration. Adoration! That caused him to be even more dismayed. What had he done to earn such adoration? Nothing. He did not deserve—nor did he want—such sentiments. Really, they were pathetic little creatures in their need for a father figure, he concluded. Any man would have suited, At least, that was what he told himself. But deep down, he suspected the only pathetic one in this picture was a Viking who was quaking in his boots... or rather, his cloth running shoes.
"Dear God, bless this food we are about to eat.... " Mag-he began.
Oh. Grace must be a prayer.
"And let us give thanks for all the bounty you have given us this year."
"Amen," the three of them said at once.
The only bounty I've been given is a kick in the arse through time to a land of lackwits, he thought ungraciously, and tried to tug free of the girls' hands, but the little imps held on tenaciously. Now that they had him, they were not about to let him go.
"Now let's begin our annual ritual," Mag-he told her daughters. They nodded, but first Mag-he elaborated to him: "Each Thanksgiving we list the things we are most thankful for from the past year.
Holy bloody hell!
"I'm thankful that no more killer whales were captured last year," Beth, the gentle twin, said.
Huh? What an odd sentiment! I would think a child her age would be thankful for a new pair of slippers, or a riband. But a whale's noncapture?
"I'm thankful that I passed math this quarter," Sue-zee proclaimed with a brash smile at her mother.
"What is this math?" Jorund asked.
"Numbers. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing. Yuck!" Sue-zee explained with disgust.
"Ah," he said with understanding. "I know exactly how you feel. Ever did I have trouble with my numbers as a child. Likewise, my brother Magnus of the Big Ears. The priest who was hired to tutor us nigh pulled his hair out with frustration... what little there was on his bald tonsured pate. My brother Rolf the Shipbuilder was the scholar... he fostered in the Saxon court, but I was destined for the battlefield, even as a youth ling, and..." His words trailed off as he realized that everyone was gaping at him... and that he'd interrupted the thanking ritual.
Mag-he spoke next. "I'm thankful that I got my doctorate degree finally, and that I'm now a full fledged psychologist."
Jorund thought her efforts might have been better directed toward more traditional female tasks... like begetting more children, especially boys—there was always a need for more young men to go off to battle or build ships or plow fields. With a grin, he decided not to share those sentiments with her. She would no doubt call him a male show-vein-is pig, just as Reva had called Josh one day a few weeks ago. Or perchance she would clout him on the side of the head, as his mother was wont to do with his father when he pronounced what she called "male blather" or "ale talk."
Sue-zee spoke again. "I'm thankful Joe came home."
"Me, too," Beth said.
Oh, no! No, no, no, no! Do not be thankful for me. And do not call this my home. I am just a wayfarer passing through. The only reason Jorund kept these sentiments to himself was that he'd promised Mag-he not to hurt her daughters.
He looked at her for help.
Mag-he just nodded her head, seemingly at a loss for words, too. Why didn't she correct her daughters? It was her job to steer the children's thinking toward the right path.
On the other hand, Mag-he might also be thankful that he had "come home." More likely, she was thanking her One-God that she had peaked three times the night before under Jorund's expert fingers. She should be thanking her One-God that Jorund was going to bring her even more pleasure at the first opportunity. He knew that he was thanking the gods that she was a woman with enthusiasm for bed sport. He could not wait till he showed her the renowned Viking S-spot. She would be more thankful than she'd ever been in all her life, he would warrant.
"Actually," Beth began, "it was really the Vikings who discovered America. So we should probably be thankful today for the Vikings."
"Funny you should mention that. I had forgotten. You know, that Leif Eriksson was a barmy fellow...just like his father Erik the Red. I remember one time he..." Jorund's words trailed off as he realized that Mag-he was staring at him with dismay. He assumed he was not supposed to be speaking of his ancient past around her children.
"What are you thankful for, Joe?" Sue-zee asked.
Caught was his first thought. He'd been caught having lewd thoughts in the midst of a family event. His mother really would have clouted him now, having an intuition concerning her boys' lustful fantasies, even when they were no longer boys. His eyes went involuntarily to Mag-he's shert front—made of another of those stretchy materials that he love
d—which clearly delineated her nipples.
She blushed, sensing his wayward thoughts, then frowned in warning.
"I'm thankful I'm alive," he blurted out, grasping at the first thing he could think of. When he saw the expression of disappointment on their faces, he added, "I thank the gods that they have given me a family with whom to share this special day."
Jorund wished he were dead.
He was strapped into a metal box, with Beth and Sue-zee on either side of him, and they were in the midst of riding a metal monster called 'the Comet,' or 'the Vomit,' depending on which child was speaking. Sue-zee was laughing gaily. Beth was tapping her fingers with boredom, much preferring another trip to the orca park, where there had been not one single message from Thora. And Jorund was holding on to the front bar with white knuckles, his Thanksgiving turkey in his throat, along with the candy apple and cotton candy and root-beer Slurpee he'd just consumed. If his brother, Magnus, ever heard that he'd consumed a beverage called a Slurpee he would roll on the rush floor with laughter.
Mag-he—the coward, or the wise woman, depending on one's perspective—was standing down below, waving up at them. He was going to wave something at her, like a birch rod, if he ever survived this ordeal. She should have warned him about the danger of this amusement ride, which he thought was ill-named. There was nothing amusing about putting oneself into a metal box that rode up one hill, then down another, higher and higher into the sky, sometimes upside down, then hurled the passengers straight down at excessive speed till their stomachs lurched and rose to their bulging eyeballs. Then the procedure was repeated over and over again. It was insanity, pure and simple.
They ought to establish a Rainbow Hospitium right in the midst of this chaos.
If Mag-he ever again dared to refer to him as a type-tea personality, he intended to set her crooked mind straight. There might very well be men—or women, or children for that matter—who enjoyed great thrills by making their hearts nigh stop beating, but he was not one of them. In truth, a Saracen horse soldier had once put a scimitar to his throat while dangling him off the side of a cliff, and Jorund had not felt such fright as on this rolling hell-ride.
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