Rough and Ready

  He smiled knowingly. “Jackpot!”

  She tested that spot, around its side, over its hood, feeling it grow bigger, more sensitive, almost too sensitive.

  “Now, inside your body.”

  She put a finger inside herself, then two. All over, down below, she was throbbing and hot and slippery wet and buildingbuildingbuilding toward something she needed so bad she was keening her need. He directed her other hand back to the nub, even as the fingers of her other hand were still inside herself. As she played the nub now, she began to stiffen, to brace herself, to resist some powerful waves rippling over her.

  “No! Relax. Don’t fight it.”

  And then it happened. Wave after wave of pleasure seemed to come from inside her woman parts, out, over her pleasure nub, to her breasts, her skin, everywhere.

  In the end, her chin went to her chest and she breathed in and out, trying to calm her fast-beating heart.

  “How was that?” he asked in a husky voice.

  She looked up. “Wonderful and not wonderful. Yea, I peaked, but, in truth, I like it better when you are inside me.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.” He chuckled and lifted her up and over him so that he impaled her.

  To her embarrassment, her inner muscle began to ripple around his staff, and her pleasure nub swelled and throbbed. She came again.

  “JesusMaryandJoseph!” he prayed, gritting his teeth.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. Did I hurt you?”

  He choked out a laugh. “Don’t apologize. That felt so damn good I almost exploded.” At her questioning look, he added, “Too soon.”

  “I do not understand. Oh, you did not peak yet.”

  “Okay, baby, let’s see how you can ride this cowboy.” He lifted her off of him, then reached over the side of the bed to his braies and pulled out one of those animal intestine things, which he quickly slipped over his manpart. She wanted to tell him he had no need to increase his virility with her, but words failed her when he put his hands on her hips and placed her back on top of him. Soon she was performing a delicious exercise akin to riding astride a horse. And soon she was coming again, and he joined her in the frenzy, calling out her name at the end.

  When she was nestled in his arms, when their breathing was close to normal, she said, “That was amazing.”

  “Adrenaline sex.” He kissed the top of her head.

  “Hmmmm?” She had just discovered that she liked the feel of his chest hairs on her hardened nipples.

  He inhaled sharply. “Adrenaline sex is when people have sex after battle or some catastrophe or a supercharged event.”

  She thought this was more than that but did not tell him so. It would scare him, she sensed, just as her growing conviction that she loved him would drive him away in a trice. He was leaving soon. He’d told her that more than once. He could scarce wait to be gone.

  But in the meantime, she let him make gentle love to her. Only later did she allow her fears to surface, not fears of Steinolf or some new invader, not fears that she would be unable to feed and clothe her women, not fears that her life at The Sanctuary would be different now. Nay, it was a new fear.

  What will I do when my heart is broken?

  Slip-sliding away . . .

  For the past two weeks, Torolf and his fellow SEALs had done everything in the world to reverse the time travel.

  They’d used one of the longships Thorfinn and Steven had left behind and gone out to sea, hoping that might trigger them back. Nothing happened, except they’d all about frozen in the cold ocean air.

  They’d tried standing on the exact spot where the modern-day longship had crashed. Nothing. Except Hilda had figured that while they were there they may as well clear up the rest of the remnants of the dam. They’d been aching and bone-weary at the end of the day. And still in the past.

  They’d even tried praying under JAM’s directions. Nothing.

  His guys were frustrated and anxious to get home, even Pretty Boy, who was still trying to boink Britta on every surface inside and outside the keep, to no avail. He suspected Pretty Boy had fallen in a big way for Big Mama, and Pretty Boy wanted to be a thousand miles away, or a thousand years away, to escape a fate worse than death for him: commitment.

  As for Torolf and Hilda, she’d sutured his two wounds and fussed over him incessantly. They were in the midst of a tentative peace. She never said so, but he could tell she was hurt every time he and the guys left the keep, conceivably not to return. She’d given up trying to convince him he had an obligation to stay and help his people . . . help her people, too. She’d probably been praying that their time travel would fail.

  And Stig . . . holy cow, the dog was whining all the time and following him around, even more than usual. It was as if the dog sensed he was leaving.

  All of Torolf ’s loose ends were tied up here. Thorfinn and Steven were in place at Norstead and Amberstead. Steven had brought Hilda a bundle of items he’d found at her former home: jewelry, several silk gowns, some soft leather slippers, and a leather pouch filled to the top with rare pieces of amber from her father’s trading. She’d refused Steven’s offers of marriage, and he’d gone away smiling, promising to offer again . . . and again . . . till she relented.

  And The Sanctuary, now housing only fifteen women—the others choosing to live in the outside world—was flourishing. Food and wood had been stored for the upcoming winter. Hilda spoke of possibly taking on her father’s trading profession, going to the market towns of Birka and Hedeby come spring. Torolf wanted to discourage her from doing that. These were dangerous times for women to travel alone, but he didn’t dare mention his reservations. She wouldn’t appreciate his advice on that subject.

  So it was that he was escaping from his guilt today as he made his way to the far side of the mountain where Hilda and her women had dug a diversionary channel when the dam was still in existence. These past few days, the weather had turned unseasonably warm. Torolf couldn’t recall it had ever been this balmy, nor could Hilda. And rainy. They’d had so much rain they all felt as if they should be growing feathers and webbed feet.

  He sloshed through the mud and pounding rain, making his way to his companions, who were trying to block the muddy channel so that the mountain water would go its normal route instead of being half diverted here. The guys were cursing up a storm, pun intended, when he reached them. Leaning on shovels, they glared at the mess the rain was making of all the work they’d done so far. Instead of filling the channel, they were just creating a muddy mess.

  “God, I wish I were in the Wet and Wild, nice and dry, sipping on a longneck,” Pretty Boy said.

  “Ditto that,” JAM said. “These women have half talked me into becoming a priest again. A priest who fornicates.” His grin was the only white spot in his muddy face.

  “I miss my computer.” Geek sighed.

  They all looked at him. Of all the things the rest of them missed, lowest on the totem pole would be an electronic device.

  “If I don’t get out of here soon, I’m going to find myself wedlocked . . . and I mean locked,” Pretty Boy complained. “Can you imagine me monogamous?”

  None of them could.

  “Me, if I ever get home, I’m gonna quit the Navy and live the rest of my life out on the bayou.” Cage’s statement surprised them all. Cage had always planned to be a lifer.

  “We’re gonna get out of here; I know we are,” Torolf told them, taking the shovel JAM shoved into his hands.

  “That’s what you said last week and the week before that,” Pretty Boy pointed out.

  “If y’all ask me, this is what we in bayou land call a one hundred proof, finger-up-the-ass snafu,” Cage said. “Situation normal all fucked up.”

  “Yep,” the rest of them agreed.

  “Uh-oh! You better brace yerself, cher. Here comes yer woman, yes, and she’s practically got smoke comin’ outta her ears.”

  Torolf turned, about to protest that Hilda was not ??
?his woman,” but man oh man, she had a bug up her behind for sure. The rain was pelting down now, a biting rain. Her hair was plastered to her head, and her gunna was wrapped around her slim body like a big ol’ roll of dark Saran Wrap. It was no surprise that thunder clapped and lightning flashed when she reached him. If he didn’t know better, he would think she was the witch she’d professed to be when they first arrived here.

  He was leaning on his shovel, grinning.

  Hilda shoved him with a palm to his chest.

  He slipped and almost fell into the muddy ditch.

  “You bloody cod-sucking son of a toad!”

  His buddies all laughed.

  And she turned on them. “All of you!”

  That shut them up quick.

  “What’s the problem, honey?”

  “Do not bother with those false sweet words. I will tell you what the problem is. Those sausage casings you all put on your dangly parts. Cock coats, we women call them.”

  Snickering rippled among the guys. There was nothing more amusing than watching another guy getting reamed by a woman in public. Not that she wasn’t blasting all of them.

  “Sausage casings? Cock coats? For chrissake, do you mean condoms?” I’m standing in the frickin’ rain. Hilda is about to drown standing up. And we’re talking about birth control. Unbelievable!

  “Yea, cone-dumbs. Their purpose . . . is it to increase male virility?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do not ‘huh’ me. You led us women to believe you wore those ridiculous sheaths to improve your virility.”

  “Hey, my virility is just fine, thank you very much,” Pretty Boy said, and the others agreed.

  Torolf’s brow furrowed. “Condoms are birth control. They have nothing to do with virility.” Uh-oh. I sense a failure to communicate here.

  “Aaarrgh! That is what Rakel told me this morn. You lied to us.”

  “You are so busted,” Pretty Boy hooted.

  “You all lied,” Hilda said pointedly to Pretty Boy.

  “Hilda, don’t you think we should take this talk to a private place? I mean, I had no idea you wanted a baby. Not that I would give you one and leave it behind, but, hell, if you want a baby, maybe you should marry Steven . . . or Thorfinn.”

  “Do not dare to suggest what I should do with my life.” She shoved him in the chest again.

  He stood, immovable. Okay, now I’m getting mad.

  Did she have any idea how awful she looked, screaming at him in the middle of a thunderstorm, resembling a wet homeless person in rags? The only thing missing was the shopping cart.

  “I do not want your babe, you arrogant lout. But all the other women do want children. Why else do you think they welcomed you men to their bed furs from the beginning?”

  Torolf hitched one hip, then the other, trying to appear unaffected by her flipping her lid over a simple misunderstanding. “Because they were horny?” Torolf blustered.

  She gave him a glare that put him in the same class as, oh, let’s say, Howard Stern . . . a Dark Ages version of Howard Stern, timeless male chauvinist pig.

  “Hey, wait a minute. Are you saying that all these women were so willing because they wanted kids, not because they were hot to trot?” JAM asked.

  “And they thought we’d leave our kids behind?” Geek was so naive. He thought women were pure of heart. Hah!

  “You made fools of us all,” Hilda charged.

  “It sounds more like you women made fools of us,” JAM said.

  “Hey, I never said anything about increasing virility. Did you?” Torolf turned to his buddies, who all denied having made that claim, too. “It must have been an assumption on your part.”

  Just then, lightning cracked again up the mountain, very loud. The hard rain turned to torrents. And before anyone could run, the roar of what turned out to be an avalanche of mud and stone and limbs rushed down the mountainside. They all turned in slow motion but too late. Within seconds, they were buried.

  As Torolf drifted into unconsciousness, his last thought was, Here we go again.

  Immediately followed by, Good-bye, Hilda.

  Chapter 15

  You could say they did the dirty . . .

  “Here we go again,” Torolf said with a wide grin as he crawled out from the mud and debris and saw his buddies doing the same thing. An ambulance could be heard in the distance, and a bubble-top car over near the road said Malibu Police Department.

  Malibu, California? Well, why not? The time travel is reversed. Hallelujah!

  The guys were using a fireman’s hose at low pressure to wash the mud off themselves. When Cage was done, he hosed Torolf off as well. “I’ve gone on some wild rides with you before, cher, but this one? Talk about!”

  “So, we’re back?” Pretty Boy asked, incredulously. “From Norway to Norseland, from Norseland to Malibu, all in a flash?”

  “Looks like it,” he replied.

  “Cool!” Geek said. “I can’t wait to get on the Internet and investigate time travel.”

  “This was the most incredible experience of my life. I’m gonna have to rethink my religious beliefs. It had to come from God.” JAM frowned, trying to understand the unexplainable.

  “Be careful who you tell about this experience,” Torolf advised. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you’ll find yourself living in a bubble in some lab.”

  “Y’all think this really happened . . . that it wasn’t a dream?” Cage was shaking his head as if to clear it.

  “Five people having the same dream? Any idea what the probabilities on that are?” Geek asked.

  “It wasn’t a dream. More like a nightmare. But it’s over now.” To himself, he thought, Not all parts of it were a nightmare. Ah, Hilda, I WILL miss you.

  “I’m gonna miss Britta,” Pretty Boy said, then grinned, “but not too much.”

  They all agreed to talk about this later, once they were done answering the police questions and letting the EMTs give them a once-over before releasing them to return to Coronado.

  The police began talking to Pretty Boy and JAM about the mudslide, a phenomenon not uncommon in this part of California. JAM had already called Slick, another Navy SEAL, asking him to come pick them up. Slick had a place near Malibu, though he was pretty much a loner and no one had ever been there. Luckily, he was at home and soon arrived on the scene, wide-eyed at the spectacle they made.

  Just as they were about to leave the scene, Torolf thought he heard Hilda calling to him. It was his conscience tugging at him. In some ways, he felt as if he’d abandoned her, even though he had helped rid the Norselands of that scumbag, Steinolf. True, the guys hadn’t left the women with buns in their ovens, as they’d unbelievably expected, but that was a good thing, not bad. Now that there was peace, the women would find husbands. All would be well.

  Then, why am I so troubled?

  “Where is he? Where is the lout? Toroooolf!”

  Torolf and his buddies turned as one to see a fireman pulling something out of the mudslide. Creature from the Mud Lagoon, he joked to himself. But this was no joke. It was tall and slim and covered with mud from head to toes and small breasts in between.

  “Oh . . . my . . . God!” He rushed forward and took her hand. “Hilda, is that you?”

  “Who do you think it is, you bloody maggot?”

  “Britta better not be hiding under that mud pile,” Pretty Boy said, his face white with worry. They soon found out she wasn’t there, which caused Pretty Boy to let loose with a loud exhale of relief.

  Torolf grabbed the hose from Cage and began to wash the mud off of her. She screamed and squealed and cursed at him as he did her that favor. The whole time, his stunned brain kept repeating, Hilda is here. What am I gonna do with her? Hilda is here. What am I gonna do with her?

  When he was done hosing her down, she kept rubbing her eyes. “Give me something to wipe the mud from my eyes. I can’t see.”

  An EMT came up and handed Torolf a linen cloth. He wiped, but Hilda continue
d to complain that she couldn’t see.

  “Let me,” the EMT said. Lifting her eyelids, one at a time, he stepped back and nodded some hidden message to his partner. To Torolf, he mouthed, “Blind.” To Hilda, he said, “We’ve got to get you to a hospital, miss.”

  Hilda is here. And she’s freakin’ blind. What am I gonna do with her? What am I gonna do with her?

  Over her protests that she wasn’t going to any bloody “hospitium” and have monk healers prodding her body and bleeding her with leeches, he and two EMTs managed to get her into the ambulance and strap her down. One of the paramedics was on the phone, talking with a doctor, who advised him to sedate her before bringing her to the emergency room. Soon she was dead to the world, so to speak.

  Hilda is here. And she’s freakin’ blind. What am I gonna do with her? What am I gonna do with her? “Blind? Hilda is blind?” he said to no one in particular. “No, it must be some temporary thing from the shock. She’ll get better. She has to. Then what? Talk about the need for an exit strategy! Oh, my God! We are in serious shit here.”

  “No, mon coeur,” Cage said, patting him on the shoulder. “You are in serious shit here. We are free at last, free at last, thank God, thank God, we can go home at last.”

  The other guys laughed. Not him, though.

  Hilda is here. And she’s freakin’ blind. And she’s sure as shit gonna blame me. What am I gonna do with her? What am I gonna do with her?

  He gave the police and ambulance driver all the vitals and told Slick, “I’ve got to go to the hospital first. Hilda will be a madwoman.”

  “We’ll all go with you.” Cage squeezed his shoulder.

  Once the ambulance took off and they completed their reports, barely avoiding a TV crew and newspapermen who’d just arrived, the five of them got into Slick’s SUV.

  “XO Gilman is ready to put you all in the brig for not answering your beepers. Where the hell have you guys been?”