“Plastic inside,” she explained.
“Like the bowls?”
“Not really. I can’t explain. I don’t understand it.”
“You live in a world you do not understand?”
“Yeah. Get used to it, guy.” He might have to get used to it if she couldn’t get him back to his time. “And don’t believe everything people tell you.” She showed him the can the tennis balls had come in. “ ‘Miracle bounce,’ ” she read. That took some Latin to translate. “Not true. It’s not a miracle. Just plastic.”
“Men lie to you about your world?”
He was serious, as she had not been. “All the time. That hasn’t changed.”
“Men do not lie about balls in my time.”
“Only because they didn’t have tennis balls.” The dog brought it back, a little soggy. She threw it out again and the dog trotted into the green weeds blooming with small yellow flowers. “Men lie and trick and steal.” The man was a Viking, for goodness’ sake. Vikings weren’t naïve. “What do you call conquering the east of England but stealing?”
He looked indignant. “Mighty people are meant to spread over the world.”
She raised her brows. “Doctrine of manifest destiny if I ever heard it.” She sighed. “Not that America is any different. Bush doctrine of preventive wars and all. And the Mexican-American War. And the War of 1812, now that I think of it.” The dog brought back the ball.
“So, Lucy, your people are like Danir.” Galen’s voice was sly.
“Do not think that’s anything to brag about.” She threw the ball with two fingers. Yuck.
“Danir are a good people. They do not lie about what they want.”
“Of course they do,” she protested. “Look at Leif Eriksson.” His expression was puzzled. How does he not know one of the most famous Norsemen of all time? Oh. “You were before his time. But he is known by all. He discovered a great island west of Iceland and even colder. He named it Greenland so he could get settlers to go there. Real estate scam if I ever heard one.” Now how would she explain “real estate scam”?
But Galen didn’t ask what it was and indeed seemed unfazed by the accusation. “Who would take his woman and lytlings to ‘Ice and Snow Land’?” He watched the dog go after the ball. “This Leif Eriksson is a wise man.”
“What about Danegeld? Your people asked for payment to leave a kingdom in peace.”
“We took the silver. We went away.” He shrugged and looked his question.
“But you didn’t stay away. You came back the next year.”
“It was the choice of the king. Pay again, we go away again. Or we settle there.”
“So that’s what you call it.” She grinned. “Settling. I’d call it conquering.” A disturbing crinkle around his eyes made her sure there was no use arguing with him.
But he came back to being serious. “No land in Denmark for second sons. Only land in England, Iceland, Brittany, the lands around the Volga River. My father was second son. You think we are thieves? We do not take the land of the English. We make villages beside them. Often the land of our village is not so rich as their land. But we do not fear work.”
She sighed. “I guess it’s the way of the world, anyway. That’s how America was settled, too. We did take land from the people who were here.” Vikings had nearly been the ones to settle North America. Their settlements in Nova Scotia, way before Columbus, didn’t take. She had to admire that they’d crossed the North Atlantic in boats that couldn’t even tack before the wind. “Your people were good sailors.”
“We know the sea.”
Lucy noticed that he used present tense and she used past tense to talk of his time. Another signal of the barrier between them. They walked on in silence. Lucy was worn-out. Maybe it was all the lessons or the constant electric arc of attraction between them. He felt it, too, even if it was just desperation for a lay. But he didn’t act on it. Was the only reason because he had promised not to kiss her? He was an honorable man, but was that all?
She knew why she didn’t act on this growing urge. Because he didn’t. She wasn’t going to risk rejection. And because he was from another time and would soon go back.
God, how? How will I get him back? She tore her thoughts away. Don’t go there, Lucy.
If he couldn’t go back, he’d be devastated. Indeed, so much stood between them conversation was like shouting across a chasm that grew wider by the hour.
When they got back to the boat, she could see he was tired. She showed him how to work the DVD recorder, so he could listen to words, and she put in a copy of The Searchers from Jake’s collection. A cowboy movie wouldn’t overwhelm Galen with dialogue at least. The dog plopped down at his feet with a sigh. She went out to make dinner.
This was the most domestic she’d been for four days in a row in forever. At least since her father died. At home her fridge was filled with Lean Cuisine dinners and pre-washed vegetable packs. Why cook for one? But this . . . it seemed . . . peaceful. At least when she wasn’t thinking about Galen’s dilemma, or whether Brad and Casey would find them. That underlying core of . . . rightness was growing. Was she getting sentimental? Was she . . . ?
Hell, she didn’t know what was happening to her anymore.
She took a bowl in to Galen. It was a stew, but homemade this time.
“Right kind of you, little lady,” he said in a perfect John Wayne drawl. The guy did have an ear for accents. His accent had been growing less pronounced as he listened to her speak.
She laughed. “You are dangerous.”
“What means this?” He looked askance.
“Uh . . . something or someone who gives others fear that something bad will happen.”
“Ahhh. Plihtlic.”
She considered. It sounded like “plight.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I am dangerous.” He looked up at her, his bowl forgotten. “You are dangerous.”
“Me?” she asked with a half laugh. “I am sooooo not dangerous.”
His gaze roved over her face. “I like laughter. Your laughter.”
He said it without an “f” sound in it and who knew how he thought it was spelled, but she knew what he meant. She felt herself blushing. “Laughter is always good.” She got her own bowl and sat beside him. The dog begged shamelessly, nosing her bowl and licking his lips. “You go away,” she ordered. Her words fell on oblivious ears. “You have food in the galley. Free feeding means your bowl, not mine. Now go away.” Nothing.
“Go.” Galen flicked a finger. To her astonishment, the dog went to the other side of the bed and lay down.
“Boy, you do have a way with dogs.”
He nodded. “It has always been so.” And then the look of shame flickered across his face. His expression went flat to hide it, and he turned to his stew. But he was still thinking about something. She could see a muscle work in his jaw.
How she wanted to know what caused that look. How she wanted to relieve whatever pained him so. She wanted to reach out to him, touch his shoulder. The feeling was almost overwhelming. It didn’t feel natural. She was losing herself. Or at least her self-control.
They grew silent, pretending to eat without thinking or feeling. What a lie. When she heard his spoon scrape against the bowl, she rose. He handed it to her and their eyes met and Lucy felt as though she were falling a long ways into icy blue waters that burned they were so cold. It took all she had to jerk away and hurry out the door.
Odin’s eye. What was he going to do?
She was a wicce and she had ensnared his soul. And it felt right. That was the worst of it. He wasn’t sure he cared to keep his soul, if giving it to her would make him feel thus. He was glad Egil’s axe had found his flesh, because only his wounds could possibly make her feel safe around him. And he wanted her around him. All the time.
So, what was he going to do?
He could feel she wanted him in spite of this Brad. But he couldn’t be her lapdog, dependent on her, ans
wering to her beck and call, because she was more powerful than he in this time. He could have no value to her except what pleasure his body could provide her.
He grimaced to himself. When had that stopped his frolicking in bed with a winsome widow, or even a married woman whose husband was vikingr and who needed the services of a man? They took their pleasure of each other in bed and were done with it.
Mayhaps he could do the same with Lucy and be done with it. Once he had plunged himself inside her and loosed his seed, then she would not have this hold on him.
He knew then that she had been right. Danir did lie. He was lying to himself. If he bedded her, he would be lost. He began to throb as thoughts of bedding her had their usual effect.
He could hear her moving about in the little place for cooking food. He’d just shut the door. There was no use releasing his seed himself. He’d already proved that did not help. He’d have to just wait out his violent erection.
He felt the moon rise.
Could you feel the moon rise? But he did. Moonlight bathed the cabin through the small, high windows. It twisted inside him, a cold fire. His loins throbbed almost painfully inside his tight breeches. He rose from the bed against his will and went to the small passageway. A feeling of incredible urgency washed over him. Something was required of him. Something immediate and real. Things were wrong, somehow, and he had to set them right. He saw Lucy, standing in the moonlight, frozen, staring at the hatch. His gaze moved to the hatch and was caught, too.
The lights in the boat fizzled and went out. They were bathed in darkness. Galen’s gut trembled. Lucy must be trembling, too, because she dropped the pot she had been washing. It clattered to the floor. Galen knew that if he moved, he would race toward that hatch.
And his brain told him, whatever his heart and his loins were shouting, that he should not go out in the moonlight.
The lights in the cabin went out with a fizzle, leaving only the clear, pale moonlight streaming in through the ports. Lucy couldn’t get her breath. She was hurtling toward something that had been growing inside her, around her. It felt like destiny. She could refuse it. She had a choice. But she was standing on a precipice and everything would soon be very wrong if she made the wrong choice right here, right now. Her certainty was stark, as though illuminated by lightning.
But the sky had cleared. No storm, except the one inside her. So what had doused the lights? She felt Galen behind her. His physical presence overwhelmed the small space. Her thighs were wet and she throbbed, her pelvis aching. She didn’t know what to do. But she had to do something. She just stood there trembling until finally she couldn’t hold the pot in her hand.
It crashed. She held herself still for one long moment more. And then her head moved of its own accord. She turned to look at Galen. He shook, alternately flushing and going dead pale in the moonlight. His gaze jerked to hers.
Conflagration.
And she knew what she must do. It wasn’t what she’d thought.
She held out a hand. “Let’s go on deck.”
He looked alarmed, confused.
“You know it’s right.” She did. All would be well if they could but see the moon.
A taut invisible line stretched between them. She saw him struggle. She smiled, hand still extended. He closed his eyes, took a breath. She moved to touch him. He flinched under her hand. She didn’t flinch. She expected the firestorm of feeling that shot through her. It was just a more intense version of what she’d felt each time she touched him since he’d fallen against her on a battlefield in 912. His eyelids fluttered and opened.
“I fight no more,” he whispered.
She opened the hatch. They climbed the ladder single file, the dog wriggling out ahead of them. The moon was rising over the bay to the east. It had cleared the horizon, golden from the pollution in the air. It shone in eerie serenity. Clouds still laced the sky. The moon would be obscured soon, but just now it was sure of itself, eternal. It spread that sureness to her.
This moon had shone over Galen’s time, just as it shone now. He came up behind her.
“What month is it?” he whispered hoarsely.
She shivered, only half from cold. “We call it March. Third month.”
“What day? What day?” He sounded as if it was the most important thing in the world.
She had to think. What had the woman at the hospital said? The day before St. Patrick’s Day. Yeah. That would make this the . . . “Twenty-first.” She held up fingers.
He rolled his head as though in pain. “Ostara’s day. Change of season.”
“The . . . the vernal equinox . . .”
“Ja. Ja. Day same long as night.” His voice held half wonder, half fear.
The beginning of spring. The day that signaled a change in the world as it quickened toward the plenty of summer. “Who . . . who is Ostara?”
He seemed most agitated. “Norse goddess of . . . ,” he went to Latin, “fecundity. Like Saxon Eostre,” he added. “Very mighty day.”
So powerful that Christian priests had borrowed it, moved the date and made it the celebration of Christ’s resurrection to spread their faith among the pagans. Druids, who believed that the elements of the Earth, its plants and animals, all were incarnations of the gods or the force of the universe—they celebrated the first day of spring, too, didn’t they? But the moon couldn’t always be full exactly on the twentieth or twenty-first of March. That must be pretty rare. . . .
She turned to him under the full moon of the vernal equinox and knew in her bones and her belly that something special was supposed to happen here, something bigger than her or even bigger than her and Galen together. The full moon, the tides, the earth’s axis that rotated through space, all those could be explained. But in their confluence, they became something more. She ached for completion and she knew what would complete her. Could something be bad that feels so right? Yes, if the universe lied to you, as men lied.
God, she sounded like a loon, even to herself. The universe was not talking to her. Next she’d start believing in astrology or numerology, and she’d open up a shop that sold crystals and incense and tarot decks.
But Galen was here, big and real in the cold March air of the vernal equinox under a full moon. She felt his physical presence, the essence of him clearly. This was real. This was right.
“Lucy,” he whispered, and it was a plea or a prayer, maybe for deliverance. Whether from what would happen here or from the pain of resistance she didn’t know.
He reached out with his good arm and drew her tight against his body. His chest was hard, his biceps were hard, and the ridge under the zipper of his jeans was very, very hard. It made her dizzy. The ache inside her made it difficult to think.
“Lucy.” His lips had found her hair. Her frfeaxen hair. His hands ran over her back, down to cup her buttocks and lift her slightly against him, so her belly pressed against the ridge of his erection. She turned up her face and his mouth found hers, not gentle this time but hungry. She returned that kiss with all the need she’d been suppressing for the past days. His tongue searched her mouth, and she pressed her breasts into his chest as though they could get closer. Which they could. . . .
His thoughts must have been tending the same way. He broke away and held her by the shoulders. The moon was bright enough so she could see how blue his eyes were.
“You are cold. We go below.”
He pulled her toward the hatch and the warm cabin where they could get naked and closer still. She wanted to melt into him. The dog was ahead of them. At the bottom of the ladder Galen reached up and simply lifted her down. Was he hurting his shoulder? You’d never know it by his expression. How selfish she was to be using his small strength this way. Did she have a choice? No. She’d made her choice when she drew him out into the moonlight. She wasn’t sure she could be careful of his wounds. She’d try. She’d try.
He pushed her toward the aft cabin, leaving the dog staring after them. Galen turned and firmly shut the
cabin door on him. Lucy heard him sigh and settle down in the passage. The only light in the room was the dim glow of the moon through the high ports on each side.
Lucy knew what she wanted. She grabbed the bottom of both layers of her tees and pulled them over her head. He pulled off his Henley, surprisingly deft with an injured shoulder. His stitches were black across it. His hair streamed over his shoulders. She unclasped her bra and tossed it to the floor. Galen groaned and reached for her breasts. She wanted that. More than she had ever wanted anything. She moved closer to slip her hands across the hard muscle of his belly and unbutton his jeans. His hands cupped her breasts and his palms rubbed the nipples lightly. Sensation ripped straight to her core. She lifted her face to give him access to her lips, and he took her mouth in a kiss as thorough as the one up on the deck. She worked his zipper as she moaned into his mouth. She wanted him naked. She wanted to touch all of him. She’d wanted that for days. By the time he broke away to kick off his boots and push down his jeans, her body was screaming for gratification. She fumbled at her own jeans as she watched his cock spring free. She sucked in a breath. It was big and straight and thick. She’d never had a man with equipment like this. Could she even do this? She pushed off her own Nikes and jeans. He kicked his clothes away and moved back toward her, a beast coiled to spring.
She reached for his erection, satisfied with his ragged breathing, and ran her hand along the shaft. It was rock hard under the silky skin and straining with need. He backed her the single step to the end of the bed. The edge pressed against the backs of her knees. He lowered her carefully onto it. He had that much control. But then he was on top of her, his body fitting over the length of hers as he braced above her on his elbows. His erection prodded at her entrance even as he kissed her thoroughly. The head of his cock must be drenched in her juices. But he didn’t thrust inside her. He raised himself on his good elbow and kneaded her breast gently with his other hand, leaning in to kiss her throat as softly as he could. But his breath was still ragged and his teeth nipped at her as though he could barely keep from devouring her. He made his way down to her breast. She thought she might burst. He was trying to make sure she was ready. But she didn’t want it gentle. She wanted it now, as fierce and demanding as she could get it.
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