Kiss of Pride

by Sandra Hill

  “I don’t think they are the kind of thing we should have at the castle when Mike arrives,” Vikar told the boy. “C’mon. Let’s find someplace to eat. I’m starving.”

  They’d already passed restaurants and bars with such names as Out for Blood, Suck It Up, Suckies, Addiction, and Drac’s Hideout, all of which advertised with signs outside that they served red drinks resembling blood, but were either wine or fruit punch or colored beer.

  They settled on a tavern called the Dark Side because it served food and alcohol. Plus a country band would be playing later. Since they were early—it was not yet seven—they were able to find several empty booths near the back, close to an exit door . . . just in case. Vikar put himself and Alex alone in one of them and let the others fend for themselves. Sigurd and Ivak sat on stools at the bar where they could keep an eye on the entire scene, while Mordr and Cnut sat in the booth in front of theirs with Armod, who was underage and forbidden from entering the bar area.

  Alex ordered a steak, medium rare, with mushrooms, a baked potato with butter and sour cream, and a Caesar salad, although what that blowhard Roman had to do with green leaves was beyond Vikar. He decided to order the same, except his steak would be rare and instead of a salad he substituted stewed tomatoes with jalapeño peppers.

  As soon as the waitress left, a man walked up. A badge on his white shirt read “Jack Owens, Manager.” Unlike the waiters and waitresses, he was dressed in normal attire, no vampire nonsense on him. “Lord Vikar, I presume?” he inquired.

  Vikar slid over and stood. “Yes, I am Vikar Sigurdsson.”

  All his brothers stood as well, though at a distance, watching warily.

  “I’m Jack Owens, owner and manager of this joint,” the man said in a jolly fashion, extending a hand.

  Vikar shook it.

  “I’m also on the Labor Day committee for the Monster Mash, and I was wondering if your hotel will be open by then.”

  “No. I do not think so.” Vikar was not about to announce to the public that there would be no hotel at all up on the mountain, but a private residence instead. Not yet, anyway.

  “That’s too bad. We’re expecting thousands of tourists, and accommodations are in short supply.” The man tilted his head to the side and gave him a speculative look. “I don’t suppose you’d serve on the committee with us. We need all the fresh blood we can get.”

  Vikar almost choked on his tongue, and he heard Alex snicker behind him.

  “Ha, ha, ha,” the owner/manager added quickly. “Fresh ideas is what I meant.”

  Vikar smiled to show he understood. “Sorry I am to decline, but I am too busy at the moment. Mayhap in the future?”

  “Definitely.” Then seeing that Vikar wasn’t going to continue the conversation or introduce him to Alex, even though his gaze kept shifting to her, he said, “Enjoy your meal, and come back again.”

  “You are too far away,” he declared to Alex once the man had left and he’d signaled to his brothers that all was well. Instead of sitting on the other side of the table, as he had been before, he slid in next to her. Now they were thigh to thigh, arm to arm. “Much better.”

  “You shaved and put on cologne,” Alex observed with an appreciative sniff. “For me?”

  He nodded and considered asking her if she could smell the testosterone under the cologne, but decided to save that question for later. “I showered, too,” he informed her with a waggle of his eyebrows.

  “You must have been a talented seducer in your time period,” she said with a laugh. “I mean, back when you were alive, or whatever you call that time.”

  “What? I have lost my talent?”

  “You know you haven’t.”

  “There are some things a man never forgets,” he agreed with no excess of humility.

  “Like riding a bicycle?”

  “Or riding a woman.” He grinned at her.

  “Whoa! This conversation is going way too fast in a direction that could prove dangerous for us both.”

  That was the truth, but he’d decided to enjoy himself tonight, despite the consequences. The next few weeks would be busy with the serious business of Reckoning and Michael’s arrival. He’d wanted to lighten his spirits and that of his brothers for these few short hours.

  The waitress brought a bottle of beer for him and a Bloody Mary for her.

  He took a long swig of his beer and remarked, “Um, cold beer tastes good. In Viking times, we drank our ale and mead warm, at room temperature. Can you imagine?”

  She wrinkled her nose with distaste, then took a sip of her own drink with a straw. Her eyes widened with delight. “This is good. Potent, but good.”

  “Keep drinking,” he urged then.

  “What? You want me drunk?”

  “No. Just relaxed.”

  “Hah! That would be the worst thing I could do. Relax around you.”

  He put a hand to his chest with mock innocence. “You offend me, m’lady.” Then he laughed and put an arm around her shoulder, tucking her closer. After kissing the top of her head, he said, “I could get accustomed to this dating.”

  “They must have had courtship rituals in your time, too.”

  He arched a brow at her. “Either a marriage was arranged by the king or families, and a man met his wife for the first time in the marriage bed, or a man gave a woman a certain look and she met him in the bed furs that night.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  He shrugged.

  “And did the reverse work? Women gave men a certain look and decided whether they would make love with them or not.”

  “For a certainty. Especially Viking women who have minds of their own, believe you me. I remember the time Olga the Big fixed her attentions on Ivak. When he declined her favors, she tried to spear his manparts with a boat oar. Took all of Sigurd’s healing talents to save his most precious parts.”

  “I find it hard to see Sigurd as a doctor.”

  “He has long been a healer. That is what we called a physician in ancient times. Of course, he was first of all a warrior when called to duty, but a healer in the off times.”

  “Isn’t that kind of an oxymoron? Killing and healing?”

  “No different than physicians serving in the military today.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Over the centuries, Sigurd has studied in medical schools. Of all of us, he has spent more time in this century. Currently, he is assigned to Johns Hopkins University Hospital where he does medical research. In truth, he is the one who invented Fake-O for us . . . he and his underlings who work with him.”

  Alex appeared stunned.

  “What? You thought Vikings were witless men who knew naught but fighting skills or how to ride the waves on a longship?”

  She blushed.

  “For your information, my brothers and I, and those vangels under us . . . all of us are skilled in professions that might impress you. There is a biologist, a lawyer, an accountant, shipbuilders. Always our primary goal is to do God’s work, but whenever we come upon a problem that requires a certain skill, someone is assigned to learn it.”

  She was staring at him as if he spoke some alien language. Then she shook her head to clear it and laughed. “I assume that until now you’ve had no need of architects, plumbers, electricians, and carpenters.”

  He laughed, too. “You have the right of it, except for carpenters. Vikings have always been skilled carpenters. We’ve had to be in order to construct our fine boats. And truth to tell, we were engineers and mathematicians, though we did not have those words. Even astronomers who studied the skies for direction. Building and sailing longships took expertise in all those fields.”

  “Well, there’s a lot more work to be done on your castle. So someone better learn how to paint and plaster.”

  He nodded. “Actually, one of our vangels is a fine artist. Tofa will no doubt be putting murals on all the walls, if given a chance. Impish angels are her specialty. She was an assistant to Michelangelo at
one time. Ah, the stories she can tell about the doings in the Sistine Chapel!

  “Then there is Moddam, who was a stoneworker whom we found building the Colosseum. No doubt he can rebuild some of the outside walls whilst here. And I cannot forget Bodil, who had been a slave in Byzantium. She worked on the emperor’s imperial gardens. Mayhap she will help with some of the landscaping so the castle is not so gloomy.” He stopped for a moment to see Alex’s reaction.

  Her jaw had dropped with astonishment, but then she punched him in the arm. “You lout! You’re teasing me!”

  He shrugged. She would see if she stayed long enough. “You know everything about me. Tell me about you. Where do you come from? What have you been doing with your thirty years?”

  “I’ve led a rather ordinary life. My parents were killed in a train wreck when I was a child, and I was raised by my grandparents on a small horse farm in Virginia. They died two years apart when I was in college. I inherited the farm that I later sold, giving me a comfortable cushion for living since then. I’m not rich, but I have enough to live on if I quit working.”

  “Ah, a wealthy heiress. If this were back in Viking times, my parents would be arranging a marriage betwixt us.” He winked at her.

  “Would you protest that arrangement?” she asked.

  “Not at all. Of course, at our ages . . . you being thirty and me thirty-three . . . you would no doubt be my wife number three or four. ’Twas a common practice, the more danico, or multiple wives.”

  “In your dreams, buster. I would be like one of those independent Norsewomen you mentioned. I’d wallop you over the head with your own sword before I’d share your bed.”

  They both paused to think about that image.

  “I suspect that, for you, I would have given up any other woman, wife or concubine,” he said in a voice thick with emotion.

  “Damn right you would!”

  His heart melted with tenderness at her vehemence, and he squeezed her close to him. “When did you wed? Tell me about this man who won your heart?”

  “I met Brian in college, and we got married right after graduation. We were legally separated at the time of his death.”

  “Whaaat? You never mentioned that.”

  She shrugged. “I thought I was in love with Brian, but I think in retrospect it was just me being vulnerable after losing my grandparents. Oh, he was a good man, and I did love him. I just wasn’t in love with him toward the end, especially after he’d had an affair with one of the Drug Enforcement Agency field operatives. He was a lawyer for the DEA.”

  He did not know what to say at that news. “So, how is it that your child was with him at the end?”

  “Visitation. He had her for a week during a school break.”

  “Do you blame him, as well as the men who murdered your child?”

  “No. If he’d taken her somewhere dangerous, I might have, but they were in a parking lot of the Annapolis Mall. A seemingly safe place.”

  “Enough of this sad talk,” he declared, hating the misting of tears in her eyes. “The band is going to start playing music.” He pointed to the small bandstand.

  “Do you dance?”

  He scoffed, “Never! Real men do not flail about to seduce women. Especially not Vikings.”

  The tables had filled in around the tavern while they’d been eating, and the band tuned their instruments. Two men and a woman, playing piano, bass, and guitar, respectively. “Hey, folks, how ’bout we start with a little Alan Jackson?” There was much applause and whistling. Jackson . . . that sounded like a nice Viking name. Vikar sat back prepared to be entertained. The band’s first song was one with a heavy rhythm called “Don’t Rock the Jukebox.”

  “Oh, so Vikings don’t dance, huh? Look at Armod. Appears as if he’s about to flex his wings, so to speak. Or is that flex his fangs?” She laughed, a delightful tinkling sound, like bells to Vikar’s ears.

  “I should have known! I would wager this is Ivak’s doing.”

  Several couples got up and began to dance, if you could call it that. It was more like a shaking of the buttocks and flexing of the elbows like chicken wings. Ridiculous!

  But Armod was standing at the edge of the dance floor with Ivak, both of them having removed their weapons, placing them surreptitiously, wrapped in their cloaks, in the care of his brothers. Armod was eyeing a young girl sitting with her parents on the far side. The purple-haired girl, who had more rings than an Arab princess—in her ears, eyebrows, nose, lower lip, and tongue—was eyeing him back. And Ivak, the instigator, was whispering in Armod’s ear. Several times Armod stepped forward, then backed up when shyness overcame him. Finally, Ivak gave Armod a look of disgust, turned to a nearby table, held out a hand in invitation to one of three women sitting there, then walked out on the dance floor with her and began to dance. Women found Ivak’s neatly clipped beard and mustache a “turn-on,” or so Ivak told his brothers. Repeatedly.

  Vikar’s eyes about popped out at what he saw next, and it wasn’t the tightness of the wench’s braies that must be cutting off her blood circulation from her crack forward or the size of her bosom with radish-size nipples nigh exploding from her low-cut top.

  “Oh my God!” Alex exclaimed. “That boy can move.” And she wasn’t talking about Armod.

  Ivak was indeed moving his body, and his partner’s, in the most amazing ways. To the beat of the music, he bumped, he undulated, and he thrust, all of his movements conveying sex. If Vikar was worried about near-sex, Ivak had a thing or two to consider regarding his dance-sex, if you asked him, which nobody did. Ivak’s partner didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, she laughed and mimicked all his actions and added some of her own. When she strutted away from him a short distance, then shimmied her upper body on the return dance step, every male eye in the place was glued to her jiggling breasts.

  “See. Vikings do dance,” Alex pointed out.

  Huh? He had to think a moment to jar his mind back to the woman at his side. “I had no idea Ivak danced.” No wonder he is so successful with women. I wonder if Alex can do that shimmy thing. I wonder what she would do if I asked. I wonder if I am losing my wits.

  When Ivak glared at Armod, as if to say, See. This is how it’s done, the boy lifted his chin with determination and walked over to the girl’s table, his demeanor that of a convicted felon off to the guillotine. Surprisingly, the girl looked to her parents for permission, then got up to dance with him. Well, why not? Armod might dress weird, but he was a Viking. And everyone knew Vikings had woman-luck . . . rather, girl-luck, in his case.

  And Armod was good, too. Vikar had half expected him to moon dance across the floor, but instead he took the girl’s hands in his and then moved to the beat in a more subdued fashion. The whole time they talked. Thank the heavens, Armod seemed to have control of his fangs tonight. And his lisp.

  “I am so happy that the girl accepted,” Alex said. “He would have been devastated if she’d declined.”

  “Yes, ’tis the way of women to break men’s hearts.”

  “But not a Viking’s?” she teased.

  “Not a Viking’s,” he agreed. Not mine, leastways. Not yet.

  They watched as Ivak and Armod danced one song after another with their partners, including one where the female singer wailed out, “I’m Here for the Party,” and the crowd sang along. Vikar was not a big fan of music. Oh, he had liked a rowdy good time with his comrades on occasion that included ribald singing along with tuns of mead, but more often these days, he savored silence, or soft classical music in the background. His soul seemed to yearn for serenity.

  But then the loud band music softened in volume and slowed down, and the bandleader announced the next song would be last year’s granny winner, Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now.”

  “What’s a granny winner?” he asked Alex.

  “Not granny. Grammy. It’s a music award. This is a really pretty song. Very poignant. C’mon.” She nudged him with her hip to move over in the booth.


  He glanced down between them and saw that her short garment had ridden up to expose more of her exquisite legs covered by the sheer silk hose. In fact, the lace tops of the hose peeked out at him now.

  Without thinking, he reached down to touch her knee. He’d been right. It was like silk. Warm silk.

  She slapped his hand away and nudged him again with her hip. “C’mon. Let’s dance.”

  “Oh no. Not me,” he said, even as he stood and took her hand to pull her to her feet beside him. “I do not dance.”

  She laughed and led him to the dance floor. “Don’t worry. I’ll teach you. All you have to do is stand still. And sway.”

  “I do not like dancing,” he insisted.

  “You will.”

  She was right.

  “Put your hands on my waist,” she instructed, then immediately added, “Not on my butt. Behind my waist.” She showed him how, as if he hadn’t known what she’d meant to begin with.

  He saw Mordr and Cnut, back in their booth, shaking their heads at his idiocy, no doubt. But Sigurd, still at the bar, raised a fist in the air with encouragement. There was a good-looking woman sitting next to him on the stool Ivak had vacated.

  Then Alex put her arms up, idly touching the wing epaulettes on his shoulders. Alex was tall for a woman, and with her high-heeled shoes, her chin came to his neck. A nice fit. She placed her face on his chest, and showed him how to shift from side to side. Luckily, he’d secured his sword and scabbard with leather ties to his thigh so it did not clank against them as they moved.

  While the female singer in the band crooned the poignant lyrics about it being a quarter after one with her being all alone and “I need you now,” Vikar came to a realization that he needed something, too. Or someone. Desperately.

  Ever since Alex had entered his life—was it only two weeks ago?—his emotions had been in turmoil. And he wasn’t sure why. She was not the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. Nor the most sensual. Mayhap it was the loneliness he sensed in her that matched his own bone-deep solitary life. And, yes, he felt lonely, despite always having vangels about him.

  Alex leaned back and looked up at him. She needed him, too. He could tell these things. Loneliness had a scent of its own. “See. I told you that you would like dancing.”