Viking Unchained

  “Apparently, Ian got him in sooner. Finn was anxious to take the test, and . . .” She seemed to stop herself.

  “And what?”

  “. . . get out of here. I’m sorry, Lydia.”

  So that was that. He was trying for the teams, definitely. And what exactly did “get out of here” mean?

  Her heavy heart gained a few more pounds.

  “Want to go over and watch?” Visitors often went to Coronado just to see the SEAL trainees in action. The spectators couldn’t get too close, but then they didn’t need to. Or necessarily want to. Unless they were her.

  Two hours later, with a little pull from Kirstin’s brother-in-law, Commander MacLean, they were in. Lydia was laughing at something Geek said to her out in the hall of the Special Forces Center. Lydia had her nose pressed to the window in the commander’s office, which overlooked the grinder where SEALs and potential SEALs were put through their paces.

  Lydia was surprised at her lack of distress on viewing this familiar place again . . . the compound itself, with the blacktopped grinder and the O-Course, the obstacle course best known to SEALs as the Oh-my-God course. Dave used to say it looked like an adult playground, one designed by the Marquis de Sade, maybe. And he was right.

  The rope-climbing wall known as the Cargo Net. The Spider Wall. The Slide for Life. Tire Sequence. Parallel bars. The Dirty Name . . . a log-climbing torture device. The Weaver. The Tower. And, of course, the hated IBSs, or inflatable boats, small, that had to be carried everywhere. All to provide rotations during BUD/S training that would build upper-body strength, stamina, and the will to survive. And, actually, they weren’t just for trainees. SEALs themselves had to continually maintain their physical condition by working out there alongside the swabbies. In fact, there were a half dozen SEALs there now.

  “Do you see Finn?” Kirstin asked, coming into the room.

  “Oh, he’s not there,” Geek said, following after her. Geek had been one of the youngest men to ever join the SEALs, in addition to being the smartest. With his baby face, he’d always given the impression of being such an innocent, but somehow over the years, without anyone noticing, he’d turned into quite a hunk. He still had a kidlike expression on his face, but it was belied by the twinkle in his dancing eyes.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  “Oh, Ian and some of the guys gave him a good practice workout this morning, but the PST test didn’t start ’til thirteen-hundred,” Geek told them. “Finn did the five-hundred-yard swim in ten minutes, thirty seconds . . . one minute under the minimum, and he was okay on the forty-two push-ups and fifty sit-ups in two minutes, each, but he struggled with the six pull-ups that immediately followed. Right now, the gang is doing a one-and-a-half-mile run in boondockers.” He checked his wristwatch. “They should be coming in any minute now.”

  At that moment a guy walked by, then came back with a double take. “Hey, y’all.” It was Justin LeBlanc . . . Cage. Like Geek, he wore shorts, a T-shirt with the Navy SEAL emblem, and the heavy boondocker boots. Walking into the room, he slapped Geek on the back, almost knocking him over. “You were supposed to be spotting me, dipwad.” Then he turned sweetly to Kirstin and said, “Darlin’, you look hot, as usual.”

  Kirstin rolled her eyes at what everyone knew as the Cajun’s usual pickup line.

  Then he gave Lydia a big hug. “I haven’t seen you in ages, sweetheart. You are a sight for sore eyes.” Still holding her, he leaned back and pretended to give her a lascivious once-over. “Talk about!”

  Cage had been a teammate and good friend to Dave. She hadn’t seen him much the past few years, but suddenly, she wondered why she’d avoided him. “You’re not looking bad yourself, hot stuff,” she replied, hugging him in return.

  “Whatcha all doin’ here?” Cage asked. With an arm looped over Lydia’s shoulders, he looked out the window to see what they were all looking at.

  “We’re waiting for new guys to come in from their run. The ones taking the PST,” Geek explained.

  “I heard there are only fifteen left,” Cage reported. “They started with thirty.”

  “Is . . . is Finn . . . I mean, Thorfinn . . . still in?” Lydia asked.

  Cage looked down at her with surprise. “Ah, so that’s how it is, darlin’?” He squeezed her shoulder.

  She thought about protesting, but just then the runners were approaching from the beach. Staggering would be a better description. Finn wasn’t at the head of the line, but he wasn’t at the tail end, either. He looked beaten down and pushed to his limits, but still standing—rather, running.

  One by one the guys sank to their knees, panting with exhaustion. They were covered with sweat and sand. Probably the result of “sugar cookies,” a SEAL brand of torture that involved running, taking a quick dip in the ocean, rolling in the sand, running, then repeating the process over and over. Two of the guys rushed to the side and threw up.

  For some reason, Lydia felt inordinately proud of Finn. A strange country. A strange time, if he was to be believed. And still he’d managed to survive.

  “Did he pass?” she asked.

  “This part, probably,” Cage answered.

  “Well, he’ll pass the verbal test next week if it kills me,” Geek added.

  “Assuming he gets through each of these hurdles, when will the next BUD/S class start?”

  “Not ’til the fall,” Geek said. “They have a new WEALS class to launch first.” WEALS was the female version of SEALs that had been started a year or two ago.

  “That means you might have a few weeks of hanky panky with lover boy down there,” Cage told her with a grin.

  She gave him a playful slap on the arm, then hugged him spontaneously for no reason other than renewed friendship and possibly the hope he’d given her that things might resume with Finn.

  Unfortunately, it was at just that moment that Ian alerted Finn to the fact that they were up here. And when he glanced their way, it seemed that she was in Cage’s embrace.

  He glared at her with disdain. “Faithless wench!”

  Then he turned his back and walked away.

  Men are all the same, really . . .

  Thorfinn sat in the Wet and Wild once again.

  It was early, so there were no musicians and blaring music. Nor crowds of men and women looking for partners in bedsport. Mostly, it was men and women stopping on their way home from a day’s work.

  This time he was having dinner with Ian, his house-mate for another evening since Madrene had left with the children for her father’s winery at Blue Dragon. He would go there with Ian late tomorrow. I must truly be losing my senses to willingly place myself in the midst of that Magnusson clan.

  With them were Geek and Luke Avenil, known as Slick, another SEAL. A dark and brooding man—just as Thorfinn himself had ofttimes been described—Slick was older than the rest. More than thirty-five, he would guess.

  Torolf was still off on a mission with yet more SEALs, named JAM, Sly, F.U., and Scary Larry. And I thought Vikings had odd names! Torolf hoped to return afore his father’s harvest feast this weekend.

  He could have stayed at Torolf’s apartment, alone, but Ian convinced him it would be more convenient to stay with him. He intended to have him “work out” in the morning. Thorfinn did not want to know what “work out” meant. He had a fair clue it involved sweat and pain. In truth, there was not a bone or muscle in his body that did not hurt, but there was satisfaction in having passed the PST.

  “Here’s the deal,” Geek said after wiping the red sauce from the hot wings off his mouth. The best thing about the hot wings, Thorfinn had discovered, was that so much good beer had to be consumed to cool off the tongue. He had also discovered a taste for ice-cold beer, whereas in his country and time, beer, or mead, was lukewarm at best. “We’ll study together twelve hours a day for the next week . . . after you get back from Blue Dragon on Sunday night, that is. Then you can take the verbal test next Friday.”

  “I’ll see if there
’s any way you can be given the test orally,” Ian added. “Since English is your second language, they might waive the written test. They’ve done it for some foreign military personnel in the past.”

  “Where’s Cage?” Slick asked. “I thought he was supposed to meet us here.”

  Thorfinn’s ears went on alert at the question he had restrained himself from asking.

  “He has a date.” Geek rolled his eyes. “I saw him at the commissary buying a pigload of condoms.”

  Well, that is just wonderful. Cage and my woman!

  Well, not my woman anymore

  If she ever was.

  Aaarrgh!

  And, really, Cage is military, too. Why him and not me? Does she think he is a milksop who polishes weapons and ne’er uses them?

  Bloody hell! I am not going to pine after a woman. She doesn’t want me? Fine! I will find another woman.

  Or better yet, I will give up women.

  Hah!

  Even I know enough not to bite off my cock to spite my stubborn head. Ouch!

  “So what do you think?” Geek asked him.

  “What?” Thorfinn had been only half attending and worried that he had spoken his pitiful thoughts aloud.

  “I asked if that schedule for studying would work for you.”

  Whew! THAT question. “Yea, it would, except I will be going to Minnesota next weekend.”

  “Minnesota!” the three others exclaimed.

  Ian half turned all the way around in his chair to stare at him. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “What? You think just because you grant me hospitality that you own my life?”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re an asshole?” Ian countered.

  “Plenty of times since I have entered this godforsaken country,” he responded, as if it were a compliment.

  “You know, there are a hell of a lot of Scandinavians in Minnesota. Mostly farmers, I think,” Slick pointed out. “You planning on moving there?”

  “Did I not just take a test to become a SEAL? Nay, I am not planning on moving to Minnesota. And do not, any of you, make a jest about my playing idiot football, just because I am a Viking going to Minnesota.”

  They all grinned at his vehemence.

  “Uh-oh! Isn’t Lydia from Minnesota?” Geek remarked.

  “She is.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but his face must have shown something.

  “I thought you two were broken up,” Ian said.

  “Broken . . . I did not break anything.” But I would like to break something. Like a Cajun head.

  “He means that you and Lydia are no longer involved romantically,” Geek interpreted.

  “Romantically? We were never involved romantically, not like Ian and Madrene, for Thor’s sake. With smelly candles and scarves and pole dancing in the dark. We just swived ’til our eyeballs rolled back in our heads.”

  Now all eyes rested on the commander, whose red face matched his thinning reddish-brown hair.

  “Uh, how do you swive?” Slick wanted to know, but by the twitching of his lips Thorfinn assumed he already knew; so, he did not answer.

  But then Geek said, “Finn and Lydia were playing the love-slave game.”

  Slick choked on his beer, and Ian’s face turned so red he best be careful he did not burst the bulging vein in his forehead.

  “’Twas not a game, lackwit,” Thorfinn said to Geek. “But, ’tis true, Lydia and I are no longer together. Even so, she promised to take me to see her son, who is visiting his two grandsires in Minnesota.”

  “Why would—?” Geek started to ask, but stopped at Thorfinn’s glower.

  “How come no woman ever wants to play love slave with me?” Slick wanted to know.

  “A lot of women would if they knew about that McMansion of yours in Malibu,” Geek answered Slick. Then he added, “So how’s the situation with your ex-wife? I hear you were in court again last week.”

  “Hopefully, it’s finally over. Five frickin’ years she’s been dragging me through the court system, trying to get more and more money, as if she didn’t about bleed me dry the first time around. What she really wanted, and thank God the Superior Court of California didn’t give it to her, was the Malibu house I inherited from my great-aunt, Lucy. And, no, it’s not a mansion, thank you very much. Just a prime real estate location.”

  Slick explained to him then how he was divorced from a coin-hungry wife these many years, but she kept trying to get more and more from him.

  “I knew women like that back in my country, but when they get too irksome, we just slice off their blathering tongues. That quiets them good and proper.” When he noticed the shock on everyone’s faces, he added, “You lackwits! I was jesting. Viking women are bothersome, too. The best remedy is to not wed at all.”

  “I disagree,” Ian said.

  But he was the only one.

  “With the right woman, marriage can be the best thing life has to offer,” Ian persisted.

  Still, no one agreed with him.

  “Hey, Geek, wanna catch a flick later?” Slick asked. “That old Bruce Willis movie is playing at the Bijou.”

  “Uh, I don’t think so. I have a date. Sort of. Julie is meeting me here . . .” He checked his watch. “Any minute now.”

  “Would that be Julie of the cock-wax-job invention?” Slick wanted to know, a rare smile blooming on his usually grim face.

  “It’s a penile glove, ferchrissake!” Geek exclaimed, then he explained to Thorfinn. “Women in this country have hand waxes all the time in beauty spas. Men, too. People put their hands in warm wax to get a massage kind of thing. When they put their hands in the warm wax, then take it out, it shrinks as it dries and hardens, but not real hard . . . more like a tight, form-fitting rubber glove. But the neat thing is when they pull it off, slowly, starting at the wrist, it’s a really sensual sensation. ”

  Ian and Slick were snickering.

  Thorfinn just gaped at the half-brain fool. “Surely, men are not putting their penises in such a concoction?” Thorfinn was incredulous, but really men through the ages did just about anything if it brought their precious manparts pleasure.

  “Oh, yeah! I helped my friend Julie set up a website when she first invented it, www.penileglove.com. These guys here are just jealous because Julie is now a millionaire, and I made a bundle investing early on.”

  After a long silence, Thorfinn remarked, “My brother Steven would love this sex glove. He’s as half-brained as the rest of you.” Then he asked, “What is a bundle?”

  Everyone laughed, not at all offended, and Geek explained, “A bundle is a lot of money.”

  “How much?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Anyhow,” Ian said, swiping tears of mirth from his eyes, “has good ol’ Julie come up with any new inventions lately?”

  “Actually, yes. We’re working on the new website tonight. ”

  “And it’s called?” Slick prompted.

  “Tentatively, www.niplicks.com. And that’s all I’m gonna say on the subject.”

  More silence as everyone let what Geek had said sink in and draw vivid mind pictures. Then there was a communal smile.

  Before anyone could ask more questions, Geek glanced across the room, then stood.

  The woman who approached was of medium height, compared to Geek’s long, lean frame. She was striking, with short spiked purple and blonde hair. Her curvaceous body, adorned in leather braies and a leather vest, would do a harem houri proud. Not that he had ever seen one wearing braies.

  “Hey, lover!” the vixen said, raising herself on tiptoes to kiss the grinning Geek.

  And Geek—the slyboots who gave the impression of only being interested in books and computers, of being ignorant about the ways of men and their baser urges— kissed her back, with vigor, and surely a bit of tongue. And, yes, that was his hand on her buttock.

  ’Twould seem they had all underestimated the supposedly shy Geek. ’Twould seem they had all just been
given a lesson in making quick misjudgments about people.

  If only that were true in his case! But, alas and alack, he’d seen the proof of his vixen’s perfidy with his own eyes.

  Chapter 14

  She’s gonna wash that man right outta her heart, or die trying . . .

  On Saturday night, Lydia was on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor when she sat back on her knees, slapped the wet rag into the bucket, and exclaimed, “This is ridiculous!”

  She had vacuumed and dusted every inch of her small home, including the closets. She’d rearranged the kitchen shelves, wiped off the window blinds, scoured the bathroom tiles, and baked three dozen chocolate-chip cookies to take for Mike this week. As if her mother didn’t bake on a daily basis!

  All this to keep herself busy so she wouldn’t think about you-know-what. Or rather you-know-who. Okay, you-know-what and you-know-who.

  The rat fink’s look of disdain when he’d looked up at her from the grinder yesterday would be imprinted on her mind forever. What had she ever done to merit such scorn? Yeah, she’d said she couldn’t be involved with a military man again. Maybe he’d taken it personally. Of course he had. But it wasn’t. Really.

  If he’d appeared the least bit hurt, maybe she could understand. Or forgive. But he’d looked at her like she was a piece of crap.

  So, Lydia followed her usual pattern when something happened to her, aside from the fanatical cleaning. First, she was shocked. Then, hurt. Then, angry. And finally she shifted into determination. She would be damned if she would let him make her feel so bad. After all, she hardly knew him.

  But . . . and this was a big BUT . . . she still had to get through a trip to Minnesota and back with him, not to mention two full days at her parents’ farm. She’d purchased the airline tickets yesterday and expected he would reimburse her for his half.

  Okay, she had six days to straighten herself out. Six days to stop thinking about him in a sexual way. Six days to not fall in love with him.

  All thoughts of sex or love or stubborn jerks flew out the window when the phone rang, and her dad announced, “Someone burned down the Denton barn last night.”