The Last Viking

  It was mere parchment, not coins.

  She explained that, while coins existed in her country, paper, another word for parchment, counted as trading tender, as well. He accepted her pronouncement dubiously, but another distressing thought occured to him. "I have no money with me. How will I buy clothing and all the items I'll need whilst in your land?"

  "You don't have to worry."

  "I know," he said with sudden enlightenment, pulling off one of his armlets. "I can sell this for coin, can I not?"

  "You could sell it, yes, but—"

  "Why do you hesitate? Is it worth naught here? In my world, jewelry is a portable commodity, to be bartered or cut into pieces for money."

  "Rolf, You could probably buy a small country with the money you'd get for such a priceless object. It's just that it's not necessary. There's a salary that goes with the position of head shipbuilder for the Trondheim project. Not large one, but sufficient for your needs. I'll give you an advance."

  He narrowed his eyes at her. "Are You sure? I have always paid my own way. And, for a certainty, I ne'er let a woman care for my needs. I would not accept charity from you."

  "Save your pride, Rolf. I'll let you know when your tab gets too high."

  "Well, then, we are agreed," he said, slipping the armlet back on. Then, he turned with her to advance forward into the deep bowels of the shipping mall. But he vowed, the first purchase he was going to make was a sword.

  He saw several couples walk by—obviously lovers—with their hands entwined. So, he reached over and took Merry-Death's hand in his, lacing their fingers.

  He liked the way her pulse beat against his. And she obviously did, too, because she glanced up at him with surprise, but did not pull away her hand. And the slight coloring of her cheeks betrayed how his touch affected her.

  Good! He wanted to affect her. And a lot more.

  "Ooohh! Ooh, ooh! Look at that. Isn't he adorable?" Meredith squealed and began to tug him in another direction.

  "W-what?" he inquired, unable to discern object of her favor. All he could see were the the market stalls and an overgrown crowd of men.

  "It's the biggest one! Great Dane."

  "Would a great Norseman suffice?"

  She started to choke with laughter at his words, and he slapped her on the back.

  "Well, there's naught a Dane can that Norwegian can't do better," he said. "I do not appreciate your raving about another man in my presence."

  "Rolf, a Great Dane is the name of a dog breed."

  She dabbed at her brimming eyes with a paper handkerchief, then indicated with a wave of her hand the forlorn puppy that sat in front of the glass window, yipping and yapping. It was probably laughing at him, too.

  "I knew that," he lied and walked bravely off into the shipping mall. Jealousy! For the first time in my life, I have exhibited that lackwit emotion. My brothers would laugh their bloody heads off. My father would say 'twas past time I suffered like all men. My mother would be arranging a wedding. I am doomed. The next being-man or beast-that laughed at him was going to feel the bite of his sword. Once he bought a sword, that was.

  The closest he came to a sword, however, was something called a laser pointer. It would have to do, for now.

  Two hours later, they sat at a table in the food court. Bags of clothing and other purchases were stacked at their feet.

  Meredith hadn't had so much fun in years.

  "Now this is food fit for the gods," Rolf declared enthusiastically as he finished off his sixth slice of sausage and mushroom pizza. "But what is this fondness your people have for bodily raiment? I've had my fill of trying on garments and shoes for one day."

  She nodded. Actually, they'd bought more than enough to last Rolf for now. Two pairs of jeans and a half dozen T-shirts, underwear—he preferred boxers—and socks, and a pair of work boots... a whopping size fourteen.

  Rolf had shown a surprising fashion instinct, selecting a pair of pleated, Ralph Lauren khaki slacks and two Polo shirts, along with a pair of sinfully expensive loafers of the softest leather.

  "This shopping, is more tiring than a day of battle exercises," Rolf grumbled, pushing away from the table and giving her his full regard.

  Meredith didn't like it when he studied her like that. It made her very uncomfortable. And he knew it. She could tell by the way he grinned, slowly and lazily. "I agree... about shopping being exhausting," she said, picking at imaginary lint on her jeans. "And we still have to stop at the supermarket. The way you eat, I'll need to stock up on lots more food."

  "Do you say that I eat overmuch? That I am fat?"

  He threw back his shoulders with affront, which only accentuated his superb body.

  "Hardly." He wore the plain old gray T-shirt and black sweats she'd given him that morning, along with the talisman belt, but if he got any more attention from ogling girls and oversexed women in this mall, she was going to scream. And Rolf didn't even seem to notice the pivoting heads as he strolled along because he was doing his own gaping at each of the new wonders he encountered; water fountains, ballpoint pens, aquariums. Besides, he was probably used to female adulation, looking as he did.

  As they headed back toward the mall entrance, weighed down with bags, Rolf stopped suddenly.

  Now what?

  "Give me fifty dollars, Merry-Death, and mark it in my book." Rolf had made her purchase a small notebook to keep track of all his expenses. His male pride again.

  "Why? I thought we got everything."

  "Not quite," he said and veered off to the right after she handed him the bills.

  "Oh, no," she groaned, realizing that he was entering Victoria's Secret.

  "Rolf," she hissed, finally catching up, her bags banging against her legs, "what are you doing in here?"

  "All day we have been shopping for me, but naught for you. I want to buy you a gift." He held up a flame-red, see-through nightie. "What do you think?"

  Her face heated, fuming a matching flame red, no doubt. "I don't wear things like that to bed. I prefer... nightshirts."

  "I know," he said dolefully.

  "You know?" she squeaked out.

  He shot her a glower of consternation. "I was tired last night, not dead."

  Oh, geez, what else did he see? Or remember?

  He put the hooker-style outfit back on the rack, and said idly, "In truth, I prefer you wear no bed garments at all."

  As her heart started racing, he forged ahead into the store.

  "These would show off those wonderfully long legs of yours." He stuck a pair of French-cut silk panties in her face. "What are they?"

  "Underwear. Rolf, please," she whispered, mortified at all the attention they were getting. And, oh, Lord, was that one of her students over there-no, two of her students, Amy Zapalski and Joleen Frank?

  He riffled through the assorted colors till he'd found a flesh-tinted pair edged with white lace, held it out before her as if to judge the size, and then tucked it under his arm. "Just right," he said with a wink.

  Next, before she could grab his arm and drag him out the door, he said, "Aaaah," and hightailed it to the teddy section.

  "What purpose do these garments serve?" he was asking a pencil-thin, blond sales clerk who'd appeared like a flash of lightning at his side.

  ' 'Those are teddies, hon. Don't tell me you've never seen a teddy before."

  "Nay, never," he replied, his mouth dropping practically to the floor with appreciation as she held up one scandalous creation after another.

  "That one," he said, stopping her at a pink satin, two-piece outfit, with tiny straps. Very simple and very sexy.

  "What do you, think, sweetling?" he asked, drawing her to his side with an arm looped over her shoulders.

  They'd dropped their packages to the floor back by the see-through nighties.

  "I think you're crazy, that's what I think," she muttered, but when he called her sweetling, she felt warm and tingly all over. Like a schoolgirl. Oh, Lord!

&nbs
p; "She loves it," Rolf told the salescierk, who was assessing him like a giant cotton candy she'd like to inhale. He squeezed Meredith closer and kissed the top of her head.

  "No, I don't love it," she argued. "It's... it's pink. "

  "And?"

  "I'm thirty-five years old," she informed the brute in an undertone. "Thirty-five-year-old women don't wear pink."

  "They should, " he proclaimed, but by now his focus was diverted elsewhere. He was gaping at a mannequin in the back of the store wearing the undergarment sensation of the nineties.

  "Bloody hell!" he breathed.

  'That's it. No way! Never!" she asserted. "I draw the line at a Miracle Bra. Come on." She tugged on his arm.

  "Miracle Bra," he said on a sigh, but he followed after her. While paying for his purchases, he remarked to her in an aside, "I have a brother Magnus who would buy a dozen of those, one for each of his mistresses."

  She glared at him dubiously.

  "He would," Rolf contended. "Magnus has a fondness for big tits."

  Meredith sputtered at that crudity.

  "Hi, Ms. Foster," Amy Zapalski and Joleen Frank mooned in unison, halting whatever tirade she would have come up with for the coarse Viking. The girls' eyes were glued on Rolf's bulging biceps and tight buns, highlighted when he bent down to pick up a quarter he'd dropped. Then their observation moved on to the items he was purchasing. The girls glanced from Rolf to her to the garments, and giggled.

  Meredith cringed. She just knew the rumors would be flying around campus by morning. Professor in hot pink. Or would it be hot professor in pink? Or professor in pink with hot Viking?

  Two hours! They'd been in the supermarket for two hours! Meredith had never spent so much time in a grocery store in her entire life.

  Of all the odd things this odd Viking had encountered since arriving so oddly in her life, he claimed that the grocery store was the most marvelous. In the fruit section, he'd examined each and every different item, and she'd had to stop him from eating as he went along.

  "But where does all this come from?" he'd exclaimed.

  "From all over the world."

  "On ships?"

  "Some of it."

  He'd had the same incredulous reaction in the vegetable department. "Who would have e'er guessed that so many bloody vegetables exist."

  Then it was the boxes that held all the items in the store, whether they were cereals or pastas or ice cream.

  "I have ne'er seen a land with such a reverence for boxes.

  Hmmm. She'd never thought about it before, but she guessed he was right.

  And metal cans, as well, drew his fascination.

  But the meat section alarmed him most. "I don't understand. What do men in your country do? What is their role? If they are not the hunters and protectors of their families..." His words had trailed off in dismay. "Are men not men here?"

  "Men earn the money to take care of their families," she'd tried to explain. "Well, actually, that's not quite true. Today, in most families, the men and women both work. They share duties equally."

  "Men are not the heads of the families?"

  "The roles aren't defined like that anymore." She'd stumbled in her explanation, and she could see that Rolf was still deeply troubled. The more time they spent in the giant supermarket, the more depressed he seemed to get.

  "What's wrong?"

  "The excess. There's too much of everything in your land. And it comes too easy. I don't think I'd want to live in such a land. Surely, the men become soft. It's all so confusing."

  Meredith couldn't argue with that. But now, her cart was overflowing, and even Rolf's energies seemed to be flagging.

  "What are those?" he asked, nudging her to look at a toddler seated in his mother's cart. The imp was eating Oreos with meticulous detail, taking the two cookies apart carefully, licking the icing with the tip of his little pink tongue, then crunching the outside wafers.

  Rolf licked his lips in imitation.

  "Those are Oreo cookies," she said with a laugh. Really, Rolf was like a little boy himself sometimes.

  She pointed to the shelf behind him.

  Rolf put three packs in her cart, then added another.

  There was only one more aisle Meredith needed to hit. Personal products. She bought Rolf some deodorant, having to explain its purpose.

  He sniffed the open Mennen roll-on. "It's acceptable, but it doesn't smell as good as your drek."

  Then she bought him a toothbrush, which he considered a good invention, though shredded twigs had done well enough in the past. She hesitated in one last section, then threw a box of condoms in the cart. Forget about pregnancy... a woman couldn't be too cautious about AIDS these days.

  When Rolf asked what they were, she said she'd explain later. But he was persistent and sounded out the words aloud. "Trojan. Cone-dome."

  "Rolf. Be quiet," she gritted out.

  "Why is your face so red?" he asked suspiciously, looking from her to the package. He stopped in his tracks, refusing to move till she explained. After she did, briefly, he gazed at her in amazement, and then said, "And you bought only one box? Hah!" He scooped two more boxes off the shelf and threw them in the cart.

  Smiling from ear to ear, he took the cart out of her hands and rolled it toward the cashier. She finally caught up with him at the checkout line.

  "I'm hungry," Rolf growled. "Let's hurry home."

  He ran a fingertip caressingly along her jaw, tilting up her chin for a brief kiss. The husky tone of Rolf's voice and the smoky haze of his whiskey eyes told her loud and clear that his appetite wasn't for food.

  And, Lord help her, Meredith shared the hunger.

  Rolf kissed her shoulder while the bag boy was stuffing their groceries into paper sacks. Even through her sweater, Meredith felt seared by his heat.

  The minute they left the store, he pulled her into his embrace and pressed his lips against the inside of one wrist, then the other. The whole time, his eyes held hers with a promise that ricocheted between them.

  After they'd put all the bags into the trunk of her car, Rolf backed her up against the fender, bracketed her face with his hands to hold her in place—not that she had any intention of moving—and really kissed her. Mouth against mouth. Insistent. Voracious. With age-old expertise, her Viking brushed and slanted and shaped her lips to fit his perfectly. Then he used his tongue to demonstrate the depth of his hunger for her.

  Meredith's knees would have buckled if she hadn't been braced against the car, pinioned by Rolf's body.

  Then he pulled back slightly and grinned, as if satisfied with his work.

  She practically crawled into the driver's seat and buckled up, then inhaled deeply to calm down. Focusing on her driving, she wasn't immediately aware that Rolf had released his seat belt and moved closer to her.

  Too late she realized that one arm lay across the back of her seat rest. The fingertips of that hand played with the edges of her hair, and the other hand rested heavily on her knee... unmoving, but dangerous.

  "Rolf," she protested, "I can't concentrate when you do that."

  He grinned against her ear, whispering, "Exactly."

  She felt his warm breath before she heard the word, and a delicious shiver traveled through the sensitive whorls of her ear, straight down through her body, making erotic pit stops along the way at her breasts and the vee of her thighs.

  She moaned softly and turned off the highway onto the local access road leading to her house.

  "Do you like this?" he drawled, and used the tip of his wet tongue to trace all the shell-like crevices, then dart inside.

  Meredith arched her neck against the too-intense pleasure that caused her breasts to peak into hard points, and throb. "Don't," she whimpered.

  "Doesn't it feel good?" he asked with surprise.

  "That was when she noticed the hand that had been resting on her knee was roving, a forefinger examining the inseam of her jeans.

  "Open your thighs," he coaxed
.

  She stared straight ahead, trying to convince herself that this lonely road needed her undivided attention.

  But her legs parted, of their own volition.

  Now, while his mouth and teeth and tongue played seductive sex games with her ear and neck, his lone fingertip traced a slow path along the inseam from knee to crotch to the other knee, then back again. Slowly. Over and over. Until she wanted to screech aloud with her increasing arousal and the urge to grab his hand and hold it where she needed it most.

  "How do you feel now?"

  She remained silent, not wanting to reveal her vulnerability.

  "Your breasts," he said huskily, looking at her there, "tell me how they feel."

  She made a soft mewling sound of resistance, never having talked like this with a man before. Besides, his teasing fingertip was still tantalizing her with its bold exploration.

  "Tell me," he pleaded. "About your breasts. How do they feel?"

  She nodded mutely. "Full."

  "And?"

  She didn't know what to say.

  "Are the nipples hard?"

  "Very," she confessed thickly. By now, she was creeping along at five miles a hour. She hoped no neighbors were outside to wonder what was wrong.

  "Do you want me to touch them?"

  She felt tears well in her eyes; that was how much she wanted his touch.

  "I've wanted to touch you in that cat fur sweater all day. Every time you moved or stretched, I pictured your breasts underneath, waiting for me."

  She expected he would touch her then, but, instead, he sat back on his own side. She gave him a sideways glance and saw that he was equally aroused. "What?"

  "We're home," he informed her with a wry grin.

  Mortified that she'd lost her decorum so badly, Meredith pulled into the driveway. She couldn't look at him now; he must be laughing at her. She released her seat belt and was about to open her car door when Rolf put his hands on either side of her waist and lifted her so she faced him on top of his lap, straddling him.