The Last Viking

  Merry-Death's breathing escalated to panting as she tried to twist out of his embrace.

  "He could hurt you, Mer," Jillian continued.

  "I don't see how." Meredith snorted, though she gave him a meaningful glance that implied there were different kinds of "hurting."

  To punish her for the silent reprimand, he took one nipple and aureole deep into his mouth and began to suckle with a rhythmic fervor. With each erotic pull, a delicious shiver passed from his tongue to his loins. He suspected there was pulling and shivering going on in her body, as well.

  "Well, all right then. We'll talk in the morning," Jillian said. The shuffle of her departing feet faded down the hallway.

  Merry-Death probably wasn't aware her sister had left, so stunned did she appear. He had that effect on women ofttimes. Gasping, she closed her eyes and fling her head back, giving him even greater access to her breasts. At the same time, her hips began to undulate against him.

  It would be over afore he began if he wasn't careful.

  Twice now, the witch had seduced him into losing his seed in his braies. It would not happen again, he vowed.

  Releasing her hands, he rolled over, causing her to land on her back with him on his side bending over her. Numb with passion, she gazed up in confusion.

  "Wh-what?"

  He put a fingertip to her lips. "Shhh. The time isn't right for our joining. There is much we need to settle first." He gave her numerous little kisses in between his words.

  She gaped at him blankly, and her breath still came out in gasps. He shared the turmoil.

  Passing his palm over a heaving breast, he skimmed her stomach, resting the heel of his hand against her nether hair, the fingers delving into her woman dew. He nigh keened with male triumph that he'd brought her to this State so swiftly. "Before we talk, do you want me to bring you to your ecstasy?" His fingers moved against her slickness till they found the bud of her pleasure, swollen with need.

  Her thighs trembled before she stammered, "A-alone?"

  He puzzled over her question till he realized she was asking if they'd bring each other to mutual satisfaction.

  Or couple. "Yea. Alone. Just you." For now.

  "You idiot!" she exclaimed, shoving him aside and scrambling to her feet.

  Now it was his turn to blink in confusion. He sat on the floor with his knees drawn up to his chest, watching with bafflement as Merry-Death grabbed a fleecy robe from a wall hook, sliced him a quelling glare, unlocked the door, and shot away from him, faster than an arrow from a crossbow.

  He would never understand women. How could Merry-Death's mood have altered in such a short time from happy tears over his avowal of undying love to scowling condemnation? Was it a woman quirk? A female tactic to drive men mad?

  Or could he perchance have mishandled the situation?

  Quickly, before Rolf could follow, Meredith extinguished the living room lights and crawled under the sheets of her makeshift bed on the sofa. She didn't want him to see how shaken she was. She didn't want him to see the tears that wouldn't stop flowing.

  She heard the shower running upstairs. The dolt! She boiled with frustration, and he was cool, calm, and collected enough to take another of his leisurely showers.

  How could she have been such a dope... falling for that old line? I love you, Merry-Death. Hah! There was nothing of love in his working her up like a wind-up Barbie, then having the nerve to tell her they wouldn't be making love... that he'd be pressing her buttons, but not participating himself She felt pathetic and unfeminine.

  It was probably some kind of power play. A form of Viking torture. Another example of her trying too hard to please, and falling short. Pathetic. She was pa thetic. He had been interested in the beginning, she knew he had, but somewhere along the way he must have decided she wasn't all that exciting. What else is new? The challenge for him had faded away with her surrender. But Rolf had pitied her in the end and he'd been willing to finish her off. Oh, the humiliation of it all!

  Suddenly, one lamp light clicked on, then another.

  Rolf stood over her, water drizzling from his wet hair, which was raked back off his forehead and behind his ears. Water also drizzled down his body... a body that became alarmingly naked and menacing and fully aroused when the towel wrapped around his hips accidentally unknotted and slipped. He started to catch it, then shrugged and let it drop to the floor.

  Aroused? But he didn't want me.

  Grinning when he caught her gawking at his... ah, midsection, he drawled, "Even a cold shower couldn't bank my lust for you."

  Huh? "You said you didn't want to make love with me."

  "I said no such thing," he asserted, and then burst out laughing. Pointing downward, he chuckled, "Merry-Death, Merry-Death, tsk-tsk, how can a woman with your education be so naive? In truth, how could anyone with a lick of sense misinterpret this."

  His laughter escalated to deep belly guffaws.

  She began to blubber in earnest under the onslaught of his ridicule, causing him to notice her tears for the first time.

  "Blód hel!" he cursed, and scooped her up in his arms—sheets and robe and all. Then he swiveled his body so he plopped down on the couch with her on his lap. She kicked and flailed and clawed, to no avail.

  "Leave off," he hissed, and maneuvered his torso so she was sandwiched between the back of the sofa and him. There really wasn't room on the narrow cushions for two people, and certainly not when one of them was six-foot-four and over two hundred pounds, with an added rock-hard appendage poking her belly.

  She stilled but continued to show her resistance by glaring at him... between sobs. A lot of good that did.

  He raised one of his hands, which had been imprisoning hers at her sides, and used a thumb to wipe the tears from her cheek. It was useless. No sooner did he erase one than another took its place.

  With a cluck of reproval, he asked, "Why?"

  She raised her chin, refusing to open those wounds again. To her surprise and dismay, though, she blurted out, "Because you don't want me." I am pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. Next I'll be begging him to make love to me.

  "I love you, Merry-Death. How can you think I don't want you? Is this a language problem we are having? Shall I fetch the talisman belt?" While speaking, he'd distractedly opened the front of her robe and taken her left breast in a wide, callused palm.

  And it felt so-o-o good. Was she acquiring a taste for calluses now? Oh, lordy, yes! Were her tastes becoming as plebian as her parents said? Yep! Oh, geez, did she say... no, did she think, "yep?" Yep. Would she be ogling blue-collar workers at construction sites, like that guy in the diet Coke commercials? Probably, if they have long hair and washboard stomachs and touches that...

  While her mind was regressing, Rolf watched her and absentmindedly drew wide, abrasive circles over her breast. Every bone in her body began to melt, one calcium particle at a time. She wanted to slap his hand away, but she forgot how.

  "Do you do everything you dam-well-Viking-please, without asking permission?" she asked in a suffocated whisper.

  "Yea."

  She shuddered under his ongoing caresses.

  'Let me," he implored thickly. "Let me give you pleasure. After that, we can talk with a modicum of rationality about... so many things important to us."

  Was he saying she was irrational? "Aaaarrgh!" she shrieked and gave him a harsh shove against the chest.

  Caught off guard, he fell off the sofa and onto the floor.

  Startled, Geirolf peered up at the wench with shock.

  He ever did love a good battle and his Merry-Death was giving him a fair chase. She'd knocked him right on his ass. With a grin, he congratulated her. "Well done, sweetling." Then he launched himself at her afore she could scramble away. This time, he tossed her over his shoulder and carried her into the scullery where he flicked on the light lever, and then dropped her into a chair. "Sit," he ordered, "and do not move."

  He went back to the great room where he found a pai
r of sweating braies. A man could scarce carry on a serious discussion when naked and lustful. On second thought, he scrounged through the small chest Merry-Death had given him for his belongings till he found a pair of the tight jaw-key undergarments men wore in this land. He needed something to bind his raging man-root if he wanted to speak in more than a drooling drivel to Merry-Death.

  Returning, he sat in a chair on the opposite side of the table. Her robe was tucked neatly around her body now, but if she thought she presented a prim and proper picture, she was sorely mistaken. Her drying hair wisped out in wanton disarray. Her cheeks were flushed with anger and brush burns from his nighttime whisker stubble. Her eyes glittered with glorious fury.

  "I love you," he said, taking her hands across the table.

  Her shoulders slumped. She tried to pull out of his grasp, but he laced their fingers and held firm. She averted her face.

  "Look at me, dearling." When she did, reluctantly, he asked, "What is amiss? Does my love displease you?"

  "You don't love me, and saying you do out of pity... that's what displeases me."

  "I have ne'er told a woman I loved her afore.... Oh, do not look so skeptical. I have not. Therefore, if I fumble with my words, you must make allowance. 'Tis new territory for me."

  "Rolf, I'm thirty-five years old. I'm not a raving beauty. When I walk down the street, men seldom give me more than a passing glance. I'm not a scintillating conversationalist. My sense of humor is about nil. I devote my life to study in boring, cryptlike libraries. I can't have children. So, when a man like you says he's fallen in love with me... Well, pardon me, but I'm not buying it."

  He shook his head sadly at her self-assessment. Pulling their laced fingers up to his face, he kissed the knuckles of one of her hands, then the other. Her indrawn breath, quickly suppressed, ricocheted down her throat and lungs and out to her extremities. He knew that was so because he felt it in the rapid beat of her pulse where their wrists were joined. With great effort, he placed their hands safely back on the table where he wouldn't be tempted to kiss more than knuckles. Searching for the right words, he began tentatively, "I have met more beauteous women, 'tis true, and have enjoyed tumbling a few of them. Nay, I will admit, more than a few."

  Her lips twitched to hold back mirth at his stumbling admission. 'Twas a good sign, this half-smile.

  "But my heart ne'er thundered like Thor's mighty hammer when one of them walked into a chamber," he continued. "The blood did not drain from my head, leaving me dizzy and gasping for breath at a mere smile from one of them. I did not tingle when one of them brushed my skin in passing."

  "Tingle? You?" She hooted with disbelief.

  "Yea, you may smirk if you choose, but I have taken to tingling. My brothers would make great sport of teasing me if they knew of the malady, I can tell you. And the skalds would write a saga poking jest at me. 'Geirolf the Tingling Shipbuilder,' or some such."

  She did smile then, a full-blown smile that transformed her face and touched his heart. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. "Einn, tveir, þrir, fjórir, fimm, sex, sjo, átta, níu, tíu. " Upon regaining his composure, he went on. "As to your not having a sense of humor... I cannot credit that. You are funny to me. In fact, I cannot recall having smiled or laughed so much in all my born days as I have this past sennight with you."

  She squared her chin, unconvinced. The stubborn wench!

  "You point out your less-than-exciting profession. Well, I know naught about that. When Jillian called you boring earlier—"

  "My sister called me what?" Merry-Death squealed and tried once again to escape from his renewed clasp, no doubt to go attack her sleeping sister.

  Her ferocity amused him mightily. "What I started to say was that, when Jillian called you boring, I told her she was blind."

  "You did?"

  "I did."

  Her open face revealed the inner struggle her mind was waging with her heart. Unfortunately, he must hurt her before all was reconciled betwixt them. "Lastly, you are barren."

  Meredith recoiled under his harsh statement.

  "You told me of your infertility afore. Do not ever mention the subject again. 'Tis of no importance."

  She sighed. "Rolf, I don't understand any of this."

  "Do you believe that I love you?"

  He held her gaze till she answered in a whisper, "Yes."

  Releasing a sigh of relief, he leaned across the table and kissed her lips, briefly. Then he sat straight in his chair, all businesslike. "So, we have settled one issue. Now, the next important hurdle. Who am I? Tell me, Merry-Death, who is this man who sits across from you, professing his love?"

  "I don't know. I honestly don't know."

  "Set. That is one of the biggest obstacles we have to overcome before taking any further steps, including making love. And we will be making love, sweetling. Do not doubt that."

  "Are you saying that you didn't want to make love with me upstairs because I don't know who you are?"

  "Exactly! Well, partly.,,

  "Then tell me. Who are you?"

  "Merry-Death, l do not lie. You must concede. When I tell you that I come from the past, you must accept it as truth."

  "But it's impossible," she cried.

  " 'Twas hard for me to credit, too. But there it is. Until you trust me fully, we cannot... proceed."

  "But—"

  "I could spend days telling you of my land and my time. I could describe, in detail, the Norse and Saxon courts and all their peoples. Their dress. Their language. The politics and the everyday living. I could fill in the gaps in your history books, and correct the mistakes they contain. Eventually, you would believe that I am Geirolf Ericsson, born in the year of our Lord nine-hundred-and-sixty-two on a Norwegian fjord to a Norse jarl and a Saxon lady. But we do not have days to waste, and I much prefer that you trust me on my word alone." After his long-winded declaration, he waited for his words to sink in to Merry-Death's obviously troubled mind. Finally, he insisted on a reply.

  "Who am I, Merry-Death?"

  "Oh, no!" she whimpered. There were tears in her eyes as a dawning acceptance unfurled. Then, with a firm voice, she said, "You are Geirolf Ericsson, a tenth-century time traveler."

  He nodded, too overcome to speak. Her trust meant more to him than he'd realized.

  "I'm not sure why I believe you, Rolf. Or when I accepted that you were telling the truth. Maybe just now. All I know is there have been too many little known historical details you've volunteered that have turned out to be true. But, in the end, it comes down to intuition. Going with the heart."

  "Thank you," he said softly.

  She pulled their clasped hands across the table and reciprocated his earlier gesture, kissing each individual knuckle with slow, painstaking care. The whole time, her eyes clung to his with some mysterious message.

  He felt the tingle everywhere, even in his ears where he could swear tiny bells were ringing. When she was done, she set their hands back on the table.

  "You haven't asked me the most important question of all," she informed him. "If you think those other things were impediments to overcome, you must know there's an even bigger one ahead."

  He cocked his head. There were so many questions, but he wasn't sure which she referred to. Except... Oh, dear Lord, how could he have failed to consider that? Insecurity was new to him and unwelcome. He did not favor the unsettling queasiness in his stomach at the possibility of rejection. Oh, please, he prayed to all the gods, Christian and Norse alike, do not let me have come so far, only to fail.

  Her face was blank now, revealing nothing. Would she keep him in suspense forever? "Well?" he rasped out.

  "Well what?" Oh, she was a cruel wench, torturing him with knowing delight.

  "Do... do you love me, Merry-Death?" His voice was so raw and low, he was not sure she heard him.

  But she did.

  "With all my heart, Viking. With all my heart."

  Chapter Twelve

  Meredith reeled un
der the euphoria of her own words.

  I love him I can't say why. I don't know when it happened But I do. I love him.

  "I love you," she whispered in wonder.

  He stood and came around the table to take her into his arms. His fingertips gently cupped her face as he adored her with his eyes. "I love you, too, heartling."

  The kiss he pressed lightly on her lips was soft and sweet and full of promise. She could tell he restrained himself from deepening the kiss or holding her more intimately. Why? Her mind swirled in confusion under his intense scrutiny.

  But then she noticed the tears that filled his eyes. He swiped at them with a man's embarrassment. "I ne'er expected love to feel like this. You make me tremble with so many new feelings. I want to scream my joy to Valhalla. And I want to weep with the exquisite pain."

  "Oh, Rolf." There were no words adequate to express the depth of her emotion. "Let's... let's go somewhere private where I can show you how much I love you. I want... I need to make love with you, sweetheart." She tried to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him close.

  He groaned and, with a quick kiss, took her by the forearms and set her at arm's length.

  "What?" Oh, geez, is he going to reject me again? I don't think I can take much more of this ping-ponging back and forth. Want you, want you not.

  "Wipe away that wounded look, Merry-Death. Do not for one moment doubt my desire to mate with you. "

  "But?" Meredith tried to sound angry but her voice came out wobbly with insecurity.

  Rolf groaned again, and his jaw worked with a silent effort for control. "Come," he said, leading her into the living room wheze he adjusted the sheets on the sofa. "Lie down."

  When she did, expecting him to join her, he instead tucked her in tightly up to the neck, arms bound at her sides. Alone. He was putting her to bed alone. Then he knelt on the floor beside her.

  "Sweetling, please, I beg you, help me do this right."

  "I didn't say anything."

  "Ah, but you did. Your eyes reproach me for being a rascal, which I am not. I am trying my best to follow the noble path. " He put up a halting hand when she started to protest. "Two days ago-nay, two hours ago—if you'd suggested we have a... what did you call it?... a fling, I would have been on you faster than lightning. And we would have enjoyed each other's bodies. Immensely. "