The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2)

by Anna Richland

  When her eyes locked with his in the lamplight he could see her pupils, large and dark, and her lips, parted to help her breathe. She must remember his touch. Like him, she struggled for air in a room that had become too hot for blankets. And still they both stroked the bedcover, unable to step away or crash together unless one of them moved first.

  “Five,” she whispered as if her voice had disappeared.

  “What does a good girl like you do with that much money?” If she lied, he’d kiss her until she told the truth; if she told the truth, he’d kiss her until she moaned his name. Simple plan.

  “That’s my business.” She stopped petting the blanket and edged to the center of the room, rubbing her hands on her thighs. Her fidgets meant she was aware of her body, but she wasn’t actually leaving, so the awareness was in his favor.

  He continued to stroke the nubby white spread, lifting his hand at the bottom, watching her eyes follow his action as he placed his hand higher on the bed and completed the motion again. Each time he smoothed out an invisible wrinkle, she rubbed her hands across her thighs as if she wanted to be touched. “You don’t think when you impound half my wages, I can inquire?”

  He bent to rest both palms on the edge of the bedframe, and yes, her gaze moved to his buttocks. She was so far from indifferent that he suspected he could pull her across the end of the bed and she’d be wet already. But that wasn’t how he wanted to do this tonight. He heaved at the frame, and the bed legs groaned across the wood planks as the new bed slid into the other one. “What if you’re investing in virtual coins or stuffed animal currency with my money? Shouldn’t I have a say?”

  “No.” Her eyes fixed on the suddenly larger sleeping arrangement in the middle of the floor. Her cheeks had flushed darker.

  “No?” He came around the end of the bed to where she stood, stopping a few inches tighter than normal personal space. The distance between them was close enough to cross by merely leaning. “Or yes?”

  “Yes.” She drew out the final sound into a sigh of agreement.

  Yes, he’d been right that her needs and his matched.

  “I thought there was a chance you’d say that.” One hard kiss was all he’d give her now. Her lips were the same perfect fit he remembered, plushy heaven for a man who’d spent an evening revisiting bad parts of his past, but the moment she opened her mouth and softened her body into him, he retreated. No pushing too fast tonight. Tonight had to be different from the wild taking in Calais. Tonight had to be slow and build trust, so he released her and crouched at her feet.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice had the breathiness of a well-kissed woman. Good.

  “Same thing I was doing three minutes ago.” He untied his shoes. “Getting ready for bed.” She hadn’t backed away, so he reached for her laces. “Here, let me untie your trainers. Lift your foot.”

  “Last night, we didn’t...” she rested one hand on his head and pressed for balance, “...we didn’t use any...”

  He realized what she was struggling to say, but she’d never believe that the immortals were unable to father children, given that she thought he was full of fabrications and fairy dust in the first place. Of course a man who hadn’t had a cold virus, nor crap-all else since the sixth century, didn’t have a condom in his pocket. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t need to worry about a surprise.” Her voice was small and quiet, but he admired that she wanted to be clear with him. “I use a long-term birth control.”

  “And I don’t have anything catching.” That much was true. Once Grendel’s blood had dried, no one else had ever become like them. Their crew alone had survived the ages, only Beowulf killed by dragon poison.

  The contact of her fingers on his scalp was better than any energy bar, any caffeine, any shock. She stood in front of him and pulled her foot out of the shoe he held, then he switched to hold the other. Mundane tasks, when shared, rose to the level of seduction. The dance of bodies and hands doing complex jobs, like making beds and unlacing, mimicked what hands and bodies wanted.

  He peeled off her socks and couldn’t resist cupping her bare arch in his hand. This was the instrument that had tortured him into mindless madness last night. Her ankle was so delicately formed that he could wrap his fingers completely around the fine bones. She swayed, a tiny sign of the strength of her desire impacting her gymnast gracefulness. He set her foot slightly apart from the other to give him access to her legs.

  The jeans she wore were too long. Kneeling on the floor, he pushed the rolled fabric higher on her calf and let his palms shape her taut muscles. Her smooth skin begged to be stroked and the faint scent of her sex intoxicated him. If he had to refrain from pressing his face to the apex of her thighs, he would need to grow another spine, because the urge to lean into her and absorb her was too overwhelming for one weak man to resist.

  Her hands shifted from using his bowed head for stabilization to sifting her fingers through his hair. The attention felt more personal than even a kiss. He’d never been a saint, and he knew more than a bit about women. This type of touch was what people who had bonded more intimately than sex shared. Her hands in his hair, his cheek resting on the hot scratchiness of her new denim and his hands on her calves, these were the definition of connection.

  “I was terrified tonight.” Her quiet sentence cut into his chest.

  “Me too.” Seeing that idiot lay his hands on Christina had made him want to tear the world apart. If the investigator had used a weapon, had put a knife to her throat like Skafe had done to him, if, if...He couldn’t allow those thoughts to proceed, not when he was so close to her that she could read his reactions.

  He lifted the bottom hem of her shirt. The skin of her stomach was smooth, beautiful. He pressed his lips to the spot above her navel and breathed the fragrance of her. Hot and enthralling. Musk. Earthy. He could use all the wine descriptions he’d learned in order to play Geoffrey Morrison and not come close to the fascination of her skin.

  “You fell out that window. I thought you were dead.”

  “It’ll take a lot more than a spot of defenestration to kill me.” His hands stroked the backs of her thighs, the denim an unwelcome barrier, but the pressure urged her closer. “I’m immortal.”

  “Don’t joke. Not about that.” She tugged on his hair, the small tension mirroring the pull growing in his belly.

  He obliged and stood, and they were thigh to thigh and chest to chest and he could bury his face in her hair. It smelled less musky than her skin, more like the crisp citrus of white wines. She would like that comparison if he shared it.

  “Please.” Her hands clung to his shoulders.

  “Please what?” Her responses said she wanted the same thing he did, so he backed toward the combined beds.

  “Please be careful. I’m scared.”

  He froze at the words no man wanted to hear. This should be a celebration, nothing to fear, nothing to distract from the cocoon two bodies made. “Not of me.”

  “Not of you. For you.” She stood on her toes to brush fluttering kisses on his cheeks and lips. “For us.”

  “That’s all I need to know.” He eased her to the narrow bed. Her hair spread across the white pillowcase, the dim lamplight shadowing her face and darkening her hair to a spill of Indian ink. He toed off his loosened shoes and stretched next to her, both of them fully clothed. Propped on one hand and elbow, he watched her face as he stroked his other hand along the shape of her body. “Tonight I want to take my time.”

  “I noticed.” She smiled, and it was more beautiful than any portrait he could remember. Her smile was warm and real and here with him, inviting.

  He ran his hand from her shoulder across her collarbone. Her head tilted back and her eyes closed as he followed the curve of her breast to her ribs, her waist, lower, to the tight jeans and her hip. Everywhere he strok
ed he felt her tighten in anticipation and regretted what he’d missed the first time when she’d gone this path alone in her chair.

  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.