Liv groaned. Her eyes would not stay open.
He was leaning closer. She felt the heat of his breath—and then his lips upon her. She cried out then. He wrapped his hands around her hips, pulling her into him, opening her with his hot, skilled mouth, delving in with his clever, knowing tongue.
He found her, found the center of her pleasure, the small, swollen nub tucked away in the wet folds. He drew on it.
She clutched his shoulders and moaned. She couldn't bear it. Couldn't…
Words blew away. The world spun off into twilight and wonder. She saw meadows, smelled heather and cedar, felt the acrid tang of wood smoke at the back of her throat. And there was fire. Endless, red fire, blazing toward the twilit sky.
She called his name and the pulsing began. He held her to him as the contractions claimed her, his mouth tender and demanding, never letting go.
At the end, she crumpled on a groan. He let her fall, guiding her so she dropped across his shoulder, limp, finished.
She let out another sharp cry of surprise as he rose beneath her. The floor moved away and she found herself carried, head down, legs dangling, like the ravished prize from some hard-fought midnight raid. He wrapped an arm tight around her to steady her. A few dizzying steps and they reached the bed.
"Here we are." He was whispering, the sounds soothing, coaxing. Carefully, as if she were a most precious burden, he lowered her to her back on the high, soft mattress. Then he stood to his height again and looked down at her.
She lay under his gaze, without a stitch on, arms and legs flung luxuriously out, everything heavy—with heat, with stunned satisfaction. She had no urge to move or to cover herself.
He looked at her, at all of her, his gaze burning. She felt claimed by him, his in some deep and irrevocable way.
She had felt this same soul-deep sense of possession Midsummer's Eve in Gullandria. And as soon as the morning came, she'd set herself to escape it—to escape him.
It hadn't worked out the way she'd planned.
Really, the truth was, it hadn't worked out at all.
He had won this race. And in this at least—in her passion for him—she conceded to him willingly.
With a soft sigh, she lifted her arms.
He started undressing, quickly, ruthlessly, kicking off his shoes, tearing off his socks, shrugging his shirt off and tossing it behind him, yanking his zipper down, shoving his pants and briefs off in the same motion. He stared at her the whole time, pausing only to take from a pocket a few small foil pouches, the condoms he'd forgotten that other night.
She smiled at that. "Prepared this time, huh?"
He gave no answer. She gazed up at him. He was so tall and lean, every muscle sharply defined, long rather than bulging. Graceful, in a thoroughly masculine way. A dusting of chestnut hair tracked the center of his chest, continued over his lean belly, and widened to a nest between his strong thighs. His manhood stood out, proof of his intent. She looked at the strong, upthrusting shaft, and then she looked back into his eyes. Her smile trembled. Her whole body felt as if it shimmered in sheer eagerness.
He tossed the last of his clothing aside and joined her on the bed, settling himself between her open thighs, lifting up enough to slide the protection into place. She lowered a hand and took him, guiding him home.
He lunged deep, filling her. She gasped in shocked delight, grasping his hard shoulders, holding on tight.
He moved—a slow, rocking motion, settling in. Then he rested on his forearms above her and sought her eyes.
It was Midsummer's Eve again. They were joined, they didn't move. He looked into her, into the heart of her. And she looked back at him.
"Sweet," he whispered. "So very sweet."
She sighed and managed a nod. "Oh, yes."
Time spun out, a web of stillness and sensation. She couldn't have named the exact moment when they began to move. It happened so slowly, her body responding to his, so they rippled together, a seamless swaying, like waves lapping on a gentle sea.
His eyes changed. They made demands of her. She gave herself up to them—gave herself up to him, as the rhythm below became faster, deeper, frantic…
Needful.
She wrapped her arms and legs around him, anchoring on him, and drew him down. He buried his silky head in her shoulder.
The rhythm slowed, each stroke so long and hot and deep. And then, with a groan, he was moving faster again, she with him.
She saw the heavens, exploding on the inside of her eyelids, stars going supernova, everything shimmering, a blanket of light thrown out to swallow the universe.
A sense of falling.
Of opening.
Lilies, roses, water…
Heat.
Liv heard a shout of pure erotic joy. Several endless moments went by before she recognized it as her own.
* * *
Chapter Eleven
« ^ »
"Come home with me tomorrow," he whispered. "We'll be married in the Viking way."
"Oh, Finn. I am home."
He looked at her for a long time. She wasn't sure she liked what she saw in his eyes. Finally he covered her mouth with his own in a savage, demanding kiss.
She didn't fight him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him right back, as hard as he was kissing her. Slowly, the kiss gentled.
And then it turned to heat and hunger.
They spoke no more of marriage that night.
They got up much later, showered together and went out for a late meal. He stayed with her until morning.
* * *
It was after nine when Finn returned to Ingrid's house. Hilda came out on the back steps as he was emerging from his rental car. The housekeeper watched him, her long face set in a scowl as he came across the lawn.
"Well," he said cheerfully, "good morning to you, too."
Hilda grunted. She opened the screen door and held it for him to go through.
"Thank you, Hilda."
"Humph," said the housekeeper.
"Is Ingrid already gone for the day?"
Another grumbling sound. He assumed it must mean yes.
Finn turned and faced her once she'd joined him on the big service porch. "Something you'd like to say to me, Hilda?"
One side of her thin lip lifted in an expression very close to a sneer. "His Majesty called for you ten minutes ago. He asked if you'd returned yet. I said you were … still out. He said to tell you to call him back as soon as you got in."
"All right. And you're angry because His Majesty called?"
"I am only a servant," the housekeeper said, aggressively humble.
Finn knew that when good servants got surly, it was usually wisest to keep after them until they admitted what was bothering them, and then to immediately take pains to solve the problem. Otherwise, they tended to exercise their pent-up frustrations in inconvenient and unpleasant ways—they'd run off with the silver, or take to spitting in the soup.
"Come on, hit me with your best shot." He smiled to himself. He liked that expression. It came from an old song by an American rock star, Pat Benatar, a song that sounded especially satisfying when played very loud.
"Too much scheming around here of late," the housekeeper muttered. "The king knows where you've been. So does the queen. So do I."
"And?"
The housekeeper shook her iron-gray head. "I don't like it, that's all. I'm not so blind as some. I have no stars in my eyes at the idea of a grandchild. I know what Liv wants from life. And I can see it's not at all what you have planned for her. I know the ways of Gullandria. I know you will see to it, in the end, that she marries you—whatever you have to do to make it happen."
"You know then why I'm here?"
Hilda knew. The servants always did. "Liv has shown the Freyasdahl signs. She carries your child."
"And you are Gullandrian by birth?" He knew she was.
She admitted it. "I am."
"Then you should understand why a marriage has
become imperative."
"I understand more than you think. Liv is not like Elli. She's not a woman to follow her man wherever he must go. You think to tame her to your will. Think again."
Finn stared into Hilda's piercing dark eyes. He wondered if perhaps she'd been raised among the Mystics.
A chill crept up his spine.
And why in the name of all the frozen towers of Hel was he standing here explaining himself to the housekeeper? He'd do better to leave her to spit in the soup.
"Thank you for the advice, Hilda."
Hilda took his meaning. The subject was closed. She brought a fist to her chest in the Gullandrian salute of respect for one's betters. "Will you have breakfast, sir?"
"I'll go up and make that call. I'll be down in an hour to eat, if that's convenient."
"Of course. I'll have it ready."
* * *
"Well?" said the king.
"Your Majesty, I am returning your call."
"Stating the obvious is not answering my question. I know you spent the night with my daughter."
"Sire."
"Has she come to her senses?"
"If you mean, has she agreed to a marriage—no, she has not."
"Is it your intention to stay there in America forever, catering to her every whim?"
Finn decided that silence was the most effective answer to that one.
The king sighed. "In the end, you know, you'll have to take her."
Finn was thinking that Osrik Thorson, given his own marital situation, was the last person he ought to be listening to when it came to the question of what to do about a woman.
But one did not remind one's king of such things. "I'll do what I must do, my lord."
"Has she at least admitted there is a child?"
"No, my lord. But that time is coming."
"When?"
"Very soon."
* * *
That night, Liv took Finn to the Convention Center to hear the Lieutenant Governor speak on preserving coastal ecology. A five-hundred-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner followed. Liv and Finn found themselves seated at the same table as the state treasurer and his wife. When he learned Finn was Gullandrian, the treasurer asked him a few questions about the new European currency. Finn explained that Gullandria, like the other Scandinavian countries, was sticking with its national currency, the Gullandrian krone. They spoke of the offshore oil industry. Finn said that, because of it, the Gullandrian standard of living was much higher than it had once been.
The treasurer's wife wanted to hear of the recent wedding of Liv's sister. So Liv and Finn took turns describing a Viking wedding.
It was well after midnight when they returned to the T Street
house. They paused on the porch for a long, searching kiss.
Then she slipped the key in the lock and pushed open the door. "Will you … come in?"
He swept her high in his arms and carried her inside, kicking the door shut behind him.
* * *
The next day was the Fourth of July. Ingrid, Liv and Finn went together to the picnic sponsored by the Boys and Girls Clubs of Sacramento. There was softball. Liv and Finn played on opposite teams. Twice, Finn put her out at third.
That night, after the fireworks at the fairgrounds and the more intimate pyrotechnics at home, she told him she didn't at all appreciate the look of pleasure on his face those two times he caught the ball just as she was sliding in.
He pulled her close and kissed her hard. "Ah, my love. Leave a man his petty triumphs, won't you?"
"Why? Your team won."
For that, she got a maddening low chuckle.
She grumbled, "I'll bet you're a lousy loser."
"Not as lousy as you are, my darling." He slid beneath the sheet, disappearing from her view. She felt the shivery scrape of his tongue against the curve of her hip. "I am not a lousy loser," she announced.
And then she moaned.
And then she forgot everything but the magic he could work with his hands and his tongue.
Liv and a number of other "nonessential" staff at the Justice Department got Friday off.
She and Finn slept late. When they woke, they made leisurely love. Then they wandered downstairs and fixed a big brunch, which they ate sitting on the floor in the family room watching daytime TV, sharing coffee-flavored kisses.
Later they went over to Old Sac. They strolled the wooden sidewalks and toured the permanently moored Delta King. When Ingrid's shop closed at six, they took her to dinner.
They were back at the T Street
house by eight-thirty—and wrapped in each other's arms upstairs in her bed by nine. They made love and then they made love again.
They slept.
Live woke a little after two. She looked at the clock and she thought of the test she'd agreed to take in just a few short hours. The truth was, the test had been there, lurking in the back of her mind, since the night Finn had brought it to her and they became lovers again.
Her period hadn't come and she'd experienced none of the usual signs that it was coming. Still, things had been stressful, to say the least, these past few weeks. In all likelihood, she was simply going to be a little late this month.
She turned her head and looked at the sleeping man beside her, resisting the all-too-constant urge to touch him, to trace his fine brows, to brush at his hair where it curled at his temple, to run her finger down his beautiful blade of a nose.
Positive or negative…
Either way, tomorrow she would probably lose him. Unless she agreed to return to Gullandria and become his wife. The choice, in the end, was one she dreaded having to make. Give him up. Or give up her dreams for herself.
There was pressure at the back of her throat. Ridiculous. She was Liv Thorson, head of her class, with a mind like a steel trap. She was going into politics and there was no crying in politics. She swallowed to banish the traitorous tightness.
Finn stirred. He opened his eyes. Through the darkness she saw the white flash of his smile. The smile faded and he looked at her deeply as he realized what was going through her mind. "Don't think about it. Plenty of time for that when daylight comes."
She did touch him, then. She laid her palm against his cheek, rough now with the beginnings of morning stubble. "It seems as if we've just begun to get to know each other."
"Come home with me. Marry me."
What could she say? She settled for snuggling close and lifting her mouth to his.
* * *
Daylight came too quickly, a golden slice of light between the curtains. Finn lay with his eyes closed as he felt the bed shift.
Oh, he knew her. Three short weeks since the night he'd first seen her, in the grand ballroom at Isenhalla, a frown on her kissable mouth as she watched him whirl another across the floor. Two weeks since Midsummer's Eve, when he'd first held her naked is his arms. And but a few short days since he'd become her lover once again.
The blankets moved slightly as she slid from the bed. Her bare feet whispered across the floor. The bathroom door made hardly a sound as she shut it behind her.
He turned so that he could watch the clock. The test would take several minutes. He waited.
When the time came, he pushed back the covers and rose from the bed. He knew she wouldn't lock the door.
She hadn't. He turned the handle and pushed it open. And there she was, wearing a fluffy white robe, perched on the edge of the claw-footed tub, head bent over the test wand, her straight gold hair sleep-tangled, falling forward over her shoulders.
Something happened inside him right then as he stood naked in the doorway and stared at the vulnerable crown of her head. Something tore.
Something ripped wide open.
She looked up. Her face was white as her robe, the blue eyes haunted.
Up till now, he'd been able to keep his eyes on the prize—the prize being to get the mother of his child to marry him and come home with him where she belonged. My love, he had called her. A
nd Darling Liv. It had all been in the nature of a delicious game, a game he had played for the joy and the challenge of it, his only goal: to win.
But all at once it was a game no longer. His mouth tasted of ashes as he recognized the moment for what it was: the moment of his own defeat.
"Well?" The word emerged from his mouth sounding harsh, guttural.
She whispered, "I'm pregnant."
It was no surprise to Finn. He'd known she carried his child from the Sunday after Midsummer's Eve, when her father called him to his chambers to tell him of the Freyasdahl signs and their meaning.
No, it wasn't the news of a baby coming that stole his breath and gripped his belly to a fisted knot.
It was the sudden clear knowledge that he loved her.
Deeply.
Completely.
He loved her in a way he had never, ever meant to love anyone—the way his father had once loved his mother, the way that cut out all others and left him longing only for her.
He felt scraped raw, his flesh peeled away. Leaving him much worse than naked. Leaving him shamed and revealed: the seducer, seduced.
He looked into those stunned blue eyes and saw her doubts, her thousand and one denials. He knew her thoughts exactly. "You never believed you were pregnant, did you, until now?"
She swallowed, her slim throat moving convulsively, and she shook her head.
"And even though you know, it now, you still don't plan to marry me, do you?"
She found her voice. She used it to sputter excuses, to stammer out halting evasions. "It's just … so difficult. To believe. I, well, of course, somehow there'll be a way. It's going to be … challenging, but not impossible."
He knew what people called him. Player. Charmer. A man who changed lovers like most men change shirts. And it was true. He wanted to give pleasure. And take it. It was never his intention to love anyone too much or too long. He'd seen what that could do to a man.
Yet at the core he was Gullandrian. It was bred in the bone with him to make certain his children were born only to his wife.
What a vain, proud fool he'd been. He should have taken the advice of his king, should have kidnapped her that morning when she first refused him, should have kept her under lock and key until she'd agreed to marry him and the baby was born.
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