Magnus started to say, “Thank you,” for the gift of pleasure she had given him, but instead, out of nowhere, other words entered his head, and he said, “I love you.”
Angela was just as surprised as he was.
Who knew a Viking could rock her world…?
Angela was stunned.
The man—almost a perfect stranger—had just said that he loved her. Well, not a perfect stranger, after what they’d just done. She had to say she knew him intimately now…sort of.
And Magnus appeared just as stunned as she by his unexpected admission.
“Angela,” he murmured.
She was about to tell him that he didn’t have to ply her with smooth talk. She’d already made it clear from the beginning that theirs would be a no-commitment relationship. She had no chance to say anything, though, because Magnus had other ideas.
“It is my turn now, sweetling.” He was leaning over her once again, and the expression on his face could only be described as determined.
“Your turn?” She almost swallowed her tongue.
He nodded. “The no-touching rule is over. Now we play the game my way.” Before she could blink, or raise another question, or a protest, if she was so inclined, Magnus placed a big hand on her tummy, then slid his fingers under the waistband of her panties, skimming her pubic hair, and delving right into her cleft.
“Wet,” he pronounced with great satisfaction, and smiled at her.
“Well, of course I’m wet. What did you expect?” Mortified, she tried to squirm away from his probing fingers, but he would not allow that. “Oh, no…Magnus!…really, I don’t think—”
“Shhhh!” he whispered against her ear. “Let me.”
And she did.
Angela had no idea she had the expertise, or the nerve, or the moves. She had somehow turned into a sex goddess. Within moments—way-too-short, embarrassing moments—she climaxed again.
He raised a brow in amusement when she tried once again to squirm away and avoid his scrutiny.
“What can I say? I must be a slut.”
He laughed. “Nay, I just have talented fingers.”
“No one can accuse you of humility,” she said. “It’s more likely that I’m just pathetic.”
“Perchance we are both pathetic…in our need for each other.”
“Whatever,” she said.
Magnus threw back his head and laughed. What an odd reaction to such a simple word.
But then she had no more time to think about simple things…like words. Magnus was aroused again. She knew by the way his new erection pressed against her thigh. And he could tell that she knew, as evidenced by his soft chuckle as he rolled over on his back and adjusted her astride him. The change in position was a feat in itself, since the chaise longue was not all that wide.
He had a self-satisfied expression on his face, which she couldn’t let stand…although she hated to move away from the delicious sensations created by her crotch resting against his crotch. Still…
She slid her bottom down his thigh, tugged on the waistband of his shorts, and let his penis spring forth. His very huge, very hard penis. Her eyes probably bulged with amazement before she took him in both hands and moved.
“Holy Thor!” he said through gritted teeth. Then, “Holy, holy, holy Thor!”
Before she could move the circle of her hands up and down the smooth column more than two times, Magnus swore again, shoved her hands aside, pulled up his pants, and jerked her up to straddle him again.
“Ride,” he ordered.
And she knew just what he wanted. But, golly, she would have thought that she would be the one in control when she’d ordered him not to touch her. Somehow she had quickly lost control. And now, when she’d reversed roles and taken him in hand, she was the one out of control again.
“I want you to be wanton, Angela,” he pleaded hoarsely as he put his hands on her hips and showed her the movements he liked. “No inhibitions. Lose control…for me.”
Is the man a mind reader, too?
But Angela soon lost the thread of that thought as her control melted like butter under a hot knife, and that hot knife was stabbing at her most erotic places with a delicious rhythm. She imagined that her eyes were rolling in their sockets like a pinball machine. When they came this time, powerful shudders shook them both and she lay collapsed across him like a rag doll.
It was more than sex, more than a physical act. In a way she could not explain, she felt as if some electrical current had zigzagged back and forth between them, burning and bonding them. Aftershocks shook them both.
And they hadn’t even had intercourse.
Amazing!
Finally she raised herself up on her arms and stared down at him. He was as solemn and incredulous as she was.
“What just happened here?” she asked.
He thought for a moment and then replied, “Destiny.”
The morning after…sort of…
First thing the following morning, Angela was having second thoughts.
Who was that person who bared her body like a horny harlot?
What could I have been thinking?
When did I start engaging in stranger sex? Stranger in more ways than one…
Where can this relationship possibly go but nowhere?
Why has this one man become so important to me?
So what did Angela do about her misgivings?
She had almost-sex with Magnus midmorning against a tree in the empty west vineyard. She would never smell chardonnay grapes again without certain memories.
Then she repeated the almost-sex that afternoon on a picnic table in the orange grove.
That night, not to be outdone, she slipped into Magnus’s third-floor shower with him—wearing panties, of course—after all the kids were asleep. Her knees could barely hold her upright by the time she crawled into her own bed.
She was going to lay down the law…tomorrow.
Tomorrow, tomorrow…tomorrow is another…yeah, right, Annie!
Magnus was having second thoughts. Not just about the constant loveplay of the last twenty-four hours. But about his own feelings.
He had told the witch that he loved her. By thunder! Magnus racked his brain and could not recall ever having told a woman that before. Had she put a spell on him?
As to all the “fooling around,” as Angela called it, he had to ask himself certain questions.
Who is she?
What am I doing, tempting myself so dangerously?
When will this sexual yearning end?
Where will I be tomorrow, or next week, in this strange journey I am on?
Why can I not keep my hands off the woman?
Enough was enough! Well, not nearly enough…but enough lest he go insane from an overabundance of nonsex…which came close to nonsense, to his mind. Nonsex, Nonsense, same thing. So he was off to set some ground rules with Angela about this nonsense. No more “making it.” Or was it “making out”? Whatever!
But he got waylaid in the kitchen, where Juanita—the goddess of cooking—was whipping up batter for blueberry waffles, his favorite morning feast in this land…next to scrambled eggs, Froot Loops, fried ham, strawberry jam, fresh orange juice, and toasted, butter-dripping muffins, that is. If he was not careful, he would soon lose his fine physique. And wouldn’t that be an outrage—a fat Viking?
Until the meal was ready, he decided to crawl under the table and play hide-and-find with Lida. Hamr, Kolbein and Njal were under there with Magnus, pretending to be quacking ducks. It was amazing the way the reticent Kolbein had lost his shyness now that they were at the Blue Dragon. The boyling no longer felt the need to be attached to his father like a bothersome burr. Kirsten and Dagny were doing an outrageous Britain Spear-type dance around the kitchen to some raucous music on the raid-he-oh, trying further to distract Lida. Jow was barking wildly, making sure he was part of the activity. Torolf and Jogeir had aprons on and were helping Juanita serve up the food. Grandma Rose was no
doubt off in the downstairs bathing room smoking one of her toe-back-hoe sticks in her usual surreptitious manner, as if she were fooling anyone.
That was when Angela walked into the room. Her eyes practically bugged out at the scene they all presented; then she burst out laughing. But he’d also seen the gleam in her eyes as she’d watched him playing with his children. Angela liked him. She really liked him.
Therefore, Magnus did as any thinking man would do. Or was that nonthinking man? Whatever! He took Angela’s hand and discreetly led her off with him to the nearby pantry, where he locked the door behind them. Then, hoping they’d be momentarily forgotten in all the chatter and activity of a huge breakfast, he and Angela engaged in some more nonsex. And that was before he had eaten any blueberry waffles…which was saying a lot.
His resolution to end this nonsense was further thwarted that afternoon when Angela came out to the machine shed, where Miguel was teaching him how to check over the motor of a clanking tractor. She was wearing a white tanking-top over den-ham braies that were cut off practically at her woman parts, and skimpy leather sandals on her bare feet. He wasn’t sure which made him randier, the nipples visible through her tanking-top or the pink toenails peeking out of the sandals. Not that it took much to make him randy these days. Randy could become his second name. Magnus the Randy. Aaarrgh! Naturally he and Angela ended up having more nonsex on the seat of the vibrating, still-running tractor when Miguel went off to buy a new car-burr-ate-whore.
That night, he was determined to end this nonsense before he did something really foolish, like break his vow. In fact, it would be more than foolish. It would be dishonorable. That, he would not—could not—do.
His downfall, this time, was a guard-her belt…the most scandalous, tempting garment ever invented by man…or woman. Whooee! The things a man could do to a woman in a black lace guard-her belt with sheer black hose and high-heeled shoes. By midnight, when Angela had left his third-floor bedchamber, the bed linens were in a shambles, his knees were scraped raw, his lips were swollen, his legs were shaky, his cock ached from lack of a female sheath, and his muscles were tense and trembly. In essence, he felt wonderful. No wonder he forgot what it was he had been going to tell Angela.
All shook up…
Magnus was shaken the next afternoon, upon returning from his vineyard work, to learn that Angela had gone back to the city where work presumably beckoned her.
Apparently Dare-all had called and canceled his visit for the next day, postponing it till the following Monday. That gave her some free time to go back to work in her office and earn more money, or so Grandma Rose explained. He could have given her any money she needed, he had started to say, but halted himself, knowing Angela was a prideful woman and probably wouldn’t accept what she would consider charity from him. If their positions were reversed, he would feel the same way.
It was all for the best, he supposed. They needed some time apart…a resting period during which each could evaluate this irresistible force that drew them into a fiery sexual maelstrom every time they were within kissing distance of each other.
But then Miguel took him up to the old winery, which had been closed down the past few years. That was when Magnus’s world came apart with a crash.
Miguel, with tears in his eyes, held up a bottle of wine from the last vintage, six years past, and pointed out the label to Magnus. It read, Blue Dragon Vineyard, Sonoma, California, 1997.
Magnus was thickheaded at times, ’twas true. So it took several moments for the fact to sink in that the wine label read 1997—supposedly six years past—which would mean that this was 2003. In other words, if he was to believe what he was seeing, an entire millenium had passed since he’d left the Norselands.
“Miguel, what year is this?” he asked, just to make sure.
“Two thousand and three,” Miguel said, casting him an odd, questioning look.
“Are…are you sure?”
Miguel nodded. “Magnus, are you all right?”
“Nay, I am not all right,” he murmured as he staggered out of the winery and off toward the house.
How was it possible? A thousand years! Impossible! But so many perplexing things about this land began to make sense to him now. Like the turning pages of a book, he saw the modern inventions that he had tried to explain away as just the innovations of a different land and culture, the peculiar manner of speaking English, the intuitive sense he had had all along that there was some puzzle to be figured out. All these things, and more, convinced him that the answers had been there all along, and he had not recognized them.
But if he accepted that he was living a thousand years in the future, then he would have to accept that he and his children had traveled through time. Paradoxical. Wasn’t it?
Torolf caught up with him at the pond, where he was sitting on the grass, staring off into space. Miguel must have sent for Torolf, concerned about Magnus’s behavior over a mere wine bottle he had shown him.
“Faðir?” Torolf asked, sinking down to the ground beside him and placing a hand on his back. “What is it?”
“We are time travelers,” Magnus informed him bluntly.
“What?” Torolf squawked at him.
Ha! He would have squawked at anyone who’d suggested such to him, too, if he wasn’t seeing evidence of that fact all around him.
“I have just learned that this is the year two thousand and three. We must have traveled somehow into the future a century and more from our own time of one thousand.”
“I cannot credit that notion,” Torolf said, shaking his head from side to side. “Oh, I know that the old sagas speak of such, but I always thought they were mere folklore.”
“Me, too,” Magnus agreed. “Me, too.”
“Why? Why would such a thing happen to us?”
Magnus shrugged. “Methinks it is our destiny. All along I assumed that Grandma Rose and her prayer beads cajoled the gods into bringing us to a strange country. Little did I know that her prayer beads could bring us across time.”
“But what will we do now that we know?”
“We must bide our time and see what happens. What will be will be,” Magnus said philosophically.
“Now that I think on it,” Torolf mused, “something Juan told me about one of the greatest inventions of all time begins to make sense. Of course, I did not believe him at the time, but if we have indeed time traveled, mayhap it really is possible.”
“What great invention?” Magnus asked with little interest. What did he care about another modern marvel when his world had been turned upside down?
“Birth control.”
“Birthing control?” Magnus asked, his interest piqued in spite of himself.
Torolf nodded vigorously. “Not only do they have pills that women can take to prevent conception, but men can wear extremely thin sheaths over their man parts called cone-domes, or men can even have a cutting operation performed that prevents them from impregnating a woman. And none of these interfere with the man’s or woman’s pleasure.”
Magnus literally gaped at his son. “Can this be true?”
“I see no reason why Juan would lie to me.”
“As a jest?” Magnus suggested.
Torolf thought a moment, then shook his head. “Nay. At the time, Juan was telling me about his girlfriend, Anna. They are both call-ledge students with three more years to go till graduation. They practice this birth control so they will not have children afore they are able to marry.”
The implications of all that Torolf had told him suddenly began to sink in. “She knew! She knew, and she did not tell me!” he exclaimed, standing suddenly in outrage.
“Who knew? And what?”
“Never mind!” he said. But what he thought was, Someone is going to pay for this withholding of information. Someone is going to pay for torturing me needlessly. Someone is going to find out just what it means to be my destiny.
Then he recalled his vow. Even if he had known about this modern b
irthing control, there was still his vow to be reckoned with.
“Where are you going?” Torolf called after him as he began to walk away, not toward the house, but in the direction of the road leading away from the house.
He turned around and informed his son, even as he was backing away, “I must needs find an expert on vows.”
“With all due respect, Father, have you lost your senses?”
“Probably.”
Chapter Ten
Give me a vowel…I mean vow…
Grandma Rose was sitting on the side porch off the kitchen peeling apples when he walked up the steps. Juanita was sitting across the table from her snapping string beans. The apples made his mouth water, because he knew they would probably go into a pie or some such sweet delicacy to end the dinner meal. The string beans on the other hand, he could do without. Although he was a farmer, and should appreciate fresh produce, he still contended that they served far too many vegetables in this land. Even worse were the greens that they put in salads; no matter how they tried to hide them under various sauces and dressings, they were still weeds.
Torolf scurried up the steps to stand beside him. His son was sticking to him like a thorn in a bear’s behind, not to be helpful—oh, nay, not that—but to see what kind of mess his lack-witted father would end in next. Magnus couldn’t wait to see himself. Still, he told Torolf, “Best you wipe that smirk from your face, son. I am still bigger than you are.”
“Not by much,” the impudent lad countered, and continued to smirk at him.
Magnus shook his head at Torolf’s silliness and turned his attention to the ladies on the porch. “M’lady Rose, I come to you seeking advice.”
“Yes?” she said, always eager to help.
“I must needs speak to a man about some vows,” he started out, “and I was wondering if—”
“Vows!” Grandma Rose exclaimed, exchanging a quick glance of happiness with Juanita. They both beamed as if he’d offered them a plate of gold.
“Yea, vows. There is an important matter regarding vows that I must discuss with…well, the appropriate person.”
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