Hrolf gave his grudging congratulations, and Dar bear-hugged her, stating gruffly, " 'Tis all as I had planned." Poppa joined them, and they discussed the ceremony to be held the next day.
Thork winked mischievously at Ruby and ordered with mock sternness, "I would like to have cheeseburgers and baklava for my marriage feast tomorrow, woman. Dost think thou could manage that betwixt your bouts of blubbering?" Then he followed with his now familiar, annoying pattern of tweaking her behind.
Ruby didn't care. He'd said 'for the rest of my life." That was a promise she liked.
* * *
The hastily arranged wedding in the Rouen cathedral went off surprisingly well the next day, considering the small amount of time they'd had for planning.
Ruby did, in fact, supervise the making of cheeseburgers and baklava to supplement all the sumptuous foods Poppa ordered for the nuptial feast. It turned out to be a monumental task. The Vikings, known for their voracious appetites, consumed two hundred cheeseburgers and fourteen platters of baklava.
"Can you move?" Ruby teased, patting Thork's flat but stuffed stomach.
"Yea, I can, and will show you just how well in a short time. Ne'er doubt it." The heat in his eyes showed how much he wanted to do just that. Hrolf had infuriatingly refused to allow them to sleep together on the eve of their wedding.
"Well, I don't know. You are an over-the-hill married man now, and—"
Thork gave her a quick kiss on the mouth to stop her devilry. That caused their guests to bang their goblets on the tables, calling for a more serious effort. He laughed, pulling Ruby onto his lap, and kissed her thoroughly.
Later, as he spoke to his grandfather on his other side, Ruby marveled at the contrasts between this wedding and her previous one, and the similarities. She still couldn't separate the two men in her mind. In a way, she felt as if she'd married Jack all over again—an earlier, more primitive version, but her husband just the same.
And the biggest constant of all was her all-consuming happiness. Jack had been her perfect first love. He'd brought her everything new and hopeful in the world, and together they'd forged a life based on the youthful belief that anything is possible in the gift of life if the package is tied with the strings of love. Thork was the other side of the same coin. Not so young. Certainly jaded, seemingly without hope. Definitely not perfect. But he loved her, and that's what real, mature love was all about, Ruby realized. When a man and woman love each other despite their flaws, despite the stumbling blocks life throws their way, that is true love.
"Why so pensive, sweetling?" Thork asked, running a rough palm caressingly up and down the sleeve of her silk dress.
"I was just thinking how happy I am," she answered, pleased to see the joyous leap in his eyes at her words. "You know, I had a professor in college who was discussing the poet John Milton and his principle of 'cloistered virtue.' Milton contended that the truly virtuous person is not the one who hides from the world in a monklike fashion, but who lives in the midst of life's muck and still manages to be moral—"
"Oh, Ruby," Thork said with a laugh, pulling her onto his lap once again. "You make my mind fuzzy with all your confusing words. What have monks to do with love?"
Ruby slapped his arm playfully. "Let me finish, you rogue. I just meant that Milton's philosophy could be extended to include 'cloistered love.' Don't you think the stronger love is the one which has been tested and forged by adversity, rather than one which has been sheltered and based on unrealistic expectations?"
"What makes you think, dearling, that I do not have high expectations for our love?" Thork said in a soft, serious tone. "But, yea, I agree that our love will be stronger for having overcome some... obstacles." He grinned then and blew teasingly in her ear. "There are some obstacles I expect you to overcome for me... and soon. I have missed you sorely, sweetling."
Ruby sighed and forced herself to turn back to the banquet. Fidgeting in Thork's lap, she tried to take in all the events—jugglers on one side, skalds on another and a musical group composed of a lutist, two harpists and a singer.
* * *
Thork cradled Ruby in his arms as she turned constantly to view all the activity in Hrolf's hall. Truly, Ruby's grandfather had been gracious in providing such a lavish wedding feast, especially while harboring such ill will toward him. But, damn the merrymaking. He wanted to be alone with Ruby. It had been more than six weeks since he had left her bed. Six long, celibate weeks!
"Are you truly happy, sweetling?" Thork whispered, remembering with a smile her words of, what was it, "cloistered love." Holy Thor! The woman was a fount of high-flown, foreign words.
Ruby beamed at him, and Thork's heart slammed against his chest. He closed his eyes for an instant on the almost painful intensity of emotion the sweet witch stirred in him. The deep green pools of her eyes were so open in their love. Even if she tried to hide it with the lush length of her auburn lashes, as she did now, he could still see how much she cared. No one had ever loved him so unconditionally afore. He truly did not deserve it.
"Happier than you can ever know," Ruby answered, turning misty eyes on him which glistened with the tears of her joy. The muted green silk gown that Poppa had given her as a wedding gift swished enticingly as she twisted once again in his arms. Suddenly her movement struck Thork as odd, pain-ridden.
Thork put his hand gently on her arm and asked, "What ails you, wife? You are as jittery as a cat on hot coals." Wife! Lord, that word had a sound to it he liked. He rolled it silently on his tongue. He touched Ruby's hair gently, no longer repulsed by the short style, and moved his hand smoothly down her back, then stopped abruptly below her shoulder blades where a rough object protruded slightly. "What in the name of Freya is that?"
"Whalebone."
"Whalebone! You never cease to amaze me. Is it a talisman or such that you wear?"
"You could call it that." Ruby smiled enigmatically at him through half-veiled lashes.
In an instant, Thork understood and burst out laughing, hugging her to him. Dar and Hrolf turned to see what amused them so.
"Oh, sweetling, have you been wearing that teddy all day? For me?"
"Yes, and you better appreciate it, you brute. I can hardly breathe."
"Mayhap we best go to our chamber and remove it at once afore you expire of suffocation," he said with a devilish grin.
"My thought exactly."
But Hrolf and his guests would not allow them to leave so hastily, demanding that Ruby sing at least one song for them. Ruby balked, but Hrolf insisted it was the least she could do after saddling him with Harald's get for a grandson-in-law. Thork pinched her to comply.
The sly vixen challenged ominously, "I'll show you." She darted a meaningful glance at Thork as she stood and picked up a lute. "Since this is my wedding night, I think it would be appropriate if I sing a song for my new husband, just in case he doesn't know quite what to do," Ruby said with mock sweetness as an introduction to her ballad.
The men in the hall roared with laughter at her jest and called out ribald remarks to Thork about a woman having to teach him such. But then Ruby poked fun at the masculinity of all the other men, as well, by saying, "Actually, from what I've heard from the Viking women, a lot of you men out there could use a lesson from this song. So listen well. You, too, Selik," she called out and actually caused the rascal to blush.
She announced a Pointer Sisters song, then looked directly at Thork as she began in a low, husky voice to tell of her need for a lover with a slow hand. Several stanzas later, he began to understand the graphic message of the song.
Slow hand! Easy touch! Heated rush!
The entire hall twittered, then burst into full-blown laughter by the time she ended the song. A few of the women turned red with embarrassment, but most of them nodded their heads in agreement with her sentiments.
Ruby grinned impishly at him.
"Perchance, are those Pointer Sisters acquainted with that Kevin Costner person?" Thork asked dryly.
Ruby laughed. "I doubt it."
"So, I do not satisfy you in bed?" Thork had trouble holding back the twitch of amusement in his lips.
"I didn't say that."
"Oh ho! Now you back down. 'Tis a slow hand you asked for, and that is precisely what you shall get," he warned seductively.
The impertinent wench surprised him by winking and countering saucily, "I will hold you to that promise."
Slow hand! By the faith, where did the woman come up with these ideas? Already that day, he had overheard Poppa and her women discussing lingerie and the shaving of legs. Hrolf told him in no uncertain terms that he was to make sure his wife did not discuss birth control in Normandy. As if he could direct her actions!
Then Ruby demanded that Thork reciprocate by singing a ballad for her. "Not on this side of Valhalla!" he refused, but he finally agreed to recite a few lines from a skaldic poem he remembered—"Rigspula," or "The Song of Rig." Oddly, although the poem dealt with the humorous, certainly unromantic, notion of the Viking social order, a few of the lines reminded him of Ruby and himself:
"...Her brows were bright, her breast was shining, Whiter her neck than new-fallen snow...
Blond was his hair, and bright his cheeks, Grim as a snake's were his glowing eyes..."
The tears that sparkled in his wife's eyes when he finished were compensation enough for any discomfort he may have felt in reciting poetry in front of his fighting men. When they finally escaped the great hall and were alone in their sleeping chamber, Thork quickly removed his clothes and lay naked on the bed with arms folded behind his head, inquiring, "Shall you entertain me now, wife, by modeling your undergarment for me?" He yawned loudly and stretched languorously, adding, "Or do you think there will be a dullness to our lovemaking now that we are wed?"
Ruby's eyes lit up at his challenge. "Hah! Not if I can help it."
"And this slow hand business—does that go both ways? Or is it only women who are permitted to seek such lovers in your country?"
"No, it goes both ways." Ruby grinned. "Shall I show you?"
And she did. Oh, Lord, she did!
Chapter Twenty
Ruby shed her clothing slowly, teasingly, drawing out the process an exceedingly long time. When she was down to the teddy, she posed and dawdled, removing the wispy garment one bloody inch at a time until Thork was sorry he had ever voiced a liking for the foolish item.
"Come to bed now, Ruby," Thork urged raspily when she was naked. But, nay, the contrary miss had other plans. He ground his teeth and waited, refusing to grovel for her favors, especially on his wedding night.
"Not yet," Ruby evaded with a teasing lilt in her voice. "First I want to ask you something," she said, coming closer to the bed, but not so close he could grab her, which Thork was sorely tempted to do as Ruby leaned forward provocatively. Her firm, upthrust breasts swayed slightly, enticing him to do anything but engage in a conversation.
And her hips! Holy Freya! The wench's slender waist flared out just so to the cradle of hips he'd hoped would be under his by now, then on to the down-covered delta he planned to explore endlessly this night.
If she ever got into bed!
"Thork, you're not listening to me."
"Huh?"
Ruby smiled knowingly and asked a totally irrelevant question, to his frustration. "Do you remember that first day I arrived in Jorvik?"
Thork nodded his head suspiciously. What was she up to now? Lord, she would have to be blind not to see his raging need. Hah! If she would only come a little closer, he would teach her a few memory games. He forced himself to remain calm, to wait for just the right moment to pounce.
"Remember when we were walking to Olaf's house, and you said you could never be attracted to a woman like me, that Viking men liked women who were softer and less waspish?"
"I remember it well. Surely, you do not hold that over my head now, of all times! Come to bed, sweetling."
"In a minute." The mischievous maid turned slightly, giving him a wicked view of her rounded buttocks. Thork felt his arousal swell practically to bursting. He gritted his teeth as she looked back at him over her shoulder and asked in a low, seductive voice, "I was just wondering... don't you think I'm sweet at all?"
"Sweet! 'Tis the last word I would use to describe you. Maddening, alluring, yea. Sweet, never!"
Ruby's lips twitched. "That's just what I thought you'd say." She turned and picked up a small crock with a spoon in it from a table near the bed.
Thork sat up and stared at her. It was a pot of honey. Did she intend to feed him? Now? Holy Thor! That was not the raging hunger he needed to appease, but he did not want to hurt her feelings.
"I wouldn't want you to be married to a woman who wasn't sweet," she said coyly and dipped her fingertip in the thick syrup and coated' her lips with it. Then she took the spoon and... oh, my God!... drizzled the honey over her breasts, onto her stomach, down the inside of her thighs, then... for the love of Freya!... between her legs.
Thork lurched from the bed and tried to haul her back with him, but she eluded him by ducking under his arm with a low, sensual laugh.
"Don't be so anxious, husband. I want this to be a wedding present you'll never forget."
A wedding present! She will put me in my grave, instead.
With the palm of her hand pressed against his chest, Ruby moved him back to the bed, teasing, "I thought you were going to have a slow hand."
"Slow hand! Hah! You will not even let me touch you."
"Lie down, sweetheart," she ordered gently.
"Why?" he asked suspiciously. "Come with me."
"I will. Just relax."
Relax? Was she bloody, out-of-this-world touched in the head?
When Thork was on his back once again, Ruby stood at the edge of the bed and streamed a thick dollop of honey in a steady stream from his neck to his burgeoning manhood. He almost shot off the bed at the intensity of pleasure caused by the warm syrup oozing around his rock-hard staff. With a smile, she laid the crock down and crawled onto the bed.
"It's just as important that men be sweet as women."
"Woman, this bed is going to be sticky as a beehive by morn," Thork growled appreciatively, pulling her into his arms.
"Oh, really, I don't think so. I always lick my plate clean. How about you?"
Thork almost lost his control then. Almost.
Ruby moved over him, rubbing her honey-slick breasts across the hairs on his chest. At first they both just laughed at the mess they made, but their laughter soon died and turned into breathless pants as the slickness of their rubbing skin created tingles of aching sensation wherever they rubbed.
"Thork, do you think I'm silly trying all these outrageous things to please you in bed?" Ruby asked shyly in a low, aroused whisper, her eyes downcast.
Thork put his forefinger under her chin and raised her face. Her eagerness to please him touched Thork deeply, almost as much as her uninhibited ability to share in sexual gratification.
"Oh, Rube, I love you so. Do you not know that everything you do pleases me?"
Tears welled in her eyes, and she seemed to have trouble speaking. "I love you, too, husband." She put her hand up to his face and stroked it softly. "Let's promise each other, Thork, that this night, our wedding night, will be the first of an eternity of nights for us."
Thork nodded, then teased, "All of them filled with loving?"
"Of course!" she said with a weak laugh.
"Don't you think we should get started then, wench?" he said with a low growl, rolling her onto her back. "We have a quantity of honey to consume." He put both hands on either side of her face, holding her in place for his hungry kiss. First he licked the honey from the edges of her lips with the tip of his tongue, then outlined the seam. When she parted her lips on a sigh, Thork smiled with satisfaction and laved her entire mouth with wide sweeps of his tongue.
"Mmmm! You taste so good," he murmured.
"Let me taste," she urged
softly against his lips.
He inserted only the tip of his tongue. She circled it with her own, then drew deeply on the honeyed moisture. "So sweet," she whispered appreciatively. "Give me more."
Smiling against her lips, Thork sheathed his tongue in the warm cavern of her mouth, then slowly slid it in and out. Ruby wouldn't stand for that. She drew on it tightly, then suckled him. Thork felt a spasm of pleasure start in his tongue and travel that invisible line straight to his male organ which jerked against her belly.
He pulled away slightly, panting, and Ruby leaned up, following his lips, wanting to continue the deep kisses.
"Nay," he said firmly, putting both hands on her shoulders and pressing her down. "As of now, I take over control of these wedding night maneuvers," he proclaimed in a voice so raw and low he barely recognized it.
He slid down her body, literally, until his mouth was level with her breasts. With a forefinger, he circled the aureole of first one, then the other, then put the finger in his mouth to taste. "So good," he murmured. Ruby just gazed at him, mesmerized, with parted lips. He repeated his actions, but this time offered the finger to her. She leaned up and licked the tip with her pink tongue, then the slick sides in wide sweeps. Finally she took the whole finger into her mouth, sucked it tightly, then, using both hands, moved it in and out of her mouth in long strokes, simulating the sexual act. Holy Freya! How would it feel if she did that to—
He pulled his finger away abruptly, fearing he would embarrass himself by ending this game prematurely. He moved back to her breasts and consumed every speck of honey with his licking tongue. When he leaned away to inspect his work, Ruby moaned, arching her breasts up off the bed.
"Please, don't stop," she begged.