“When can we learn to hit moving targets, like birds?” Naddod wanted to know.
“Or runnin’ Saxon bastards?” another boy added, and his friends agreed.
“Bloodthirsty little buggers, aren’t you?” But to Naddod she said, with a laugh, “Slow down, kiddo. You have to master one skill before you move onto another.”
Rita, bored with having nothing to do these past few days, had convinced Geirfinn to let her teach the boys weapon skills. His only condition was that Sigge stay away. Apparently she’d once caused all the arrows in the archers’ bows to go wild, with several men shot in the butt and legs, one even in the penis, which had to be removed very carefully.
Obviously, they had no guns to demonstrate here, but archery Rita could handle just as well. This afternoon, she was going to teach them, and any girls brave enough to join them, how to use karate moves, even in battle.
Just then, someone let out a shout, “Master is back, Master is back!”
Yep! A dozen horses were riding toward Norstead, led by the “master” himself. She hadn’t heard the horns that she’d been told would announce the ships’ approach, ten blasts on a horn, marking the return of each of the ten longships that had left a week ago.
People scattered like sand in the wind, some rushing to greet the horsemen, others getting wagons ready to go unload the longships when they arrived, and still others going to designated jobs required when the soldiers came home. And, suddenly, there she was, all alone, with just one of the horsemen trotting toward her.
Nervous, she began to gather up the bows and arrows and stack them on a wagon, which would take them back to the weaponry room in the castle. The whole time she kept glancing sideways to see Steven dismount from his horse and walk toward her in a menacing way.
“Hi!” she said, giving him a little wave. “Hope you had a good mission.”
Nothing. Not a reply. Not a crack of a smile. Here we go again.
She sighed deeply. “Okay, what’s got your knickers in a twist this time? I got rid of the wet suit. I’ve been a very polite guest while you’ve been gone. I even . . . oh! It’s about the fire, isn’t it? Honest, I never meant it to spread . . .”
Steven jolted to a stop. “There has been a fire here at Norstead? And you started it?”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Just a teeny tiny little fire.” She held a thumb and forefinger about two inches apart. A bit of an exaggeration, but who was measuring? “I needed to do something to get out of that cage.”
Steven’s eyes widened with astonishment. “You set fire inside my keep? Have you no sense, woman? A wood castle would go up in flames as easily as the wind blows.”
He was not going to be reasonable.
He took one step forward.
She took two steps backward. She had to admit he was one prime specimen of hunkiness. He’d ditched the mesh shirt thingee for a belted leather tunic and slim pants, which outlined wide shoulders, narrowed waist, and muscular thighs leading down to knee-length boots. There was a week’s growth of hair on his cheeks. Not exactly designer stubble, but not unattractive. And the silver gray eyes! They were more compelling, more piercing than any she’d ever seen, and there were some incredible contact lenses used in Hollywood these days.
The question remained: Why, after years of working in the movie industry, after a year of working with some very virile SEALs, was she suddenly finding herself drawn to a Viking Genghis Khan? With the face of a younger George Clooney, she immediately amended.
She licked her suddenly dry lips.
“Why do you look at me like that, Ree-tah?”
Ah, so he remembers my name. One point in my favor. “How was I looking at you?”
“Like you would enjoy making a meal of me.”
She shrugged.
“What? Your continually flapping tongue has naught to say about that?”
“What’s to say? You know how good-looking you are without one more woman telling you.”
“I swear, I have ne’er met a woman who speaks so boldly.”
“Maybe you need to widen your circle of . . . friends.”
“And you are offering to be my . . . friend?”
“Sure. Why not? Unless friend means something different to you than to me. Anyhow, if you weren’t all scowly faced over the fire when you got here, what were you so angry about?”
“Scowly faced? You try my temper beyond the bounds of good sense,” he said, shaking his head with disbelief. “You are perchance a spy for our pirate enemy, and you had the gall to not only assess our store of weapons but the layout of our fortifications.”
“Me? A pirate spy?” She laughed and took another two steps back, now that he was once again piercing her with his icy silver eyes. “Listen, you and I have a lot to talk about.”
He moved quickly to the right.
She dodged to the left, leaving the wagon between them.
“Come here,” he ordered, beckoning her with a forefinger, “if you want to talk.”
“Not a chance!”
“ ’Twill go easier on you if you come willingly.”
“Said the spider to the fly.”
His lips actually twitched with humor at that picture.
“What will you do if I come?”
He shrugged. “Throttle you? Blister your arse? Torture you on the rack?”
“Do you have a rack?”
He smiled then. A full-blown, I-can-seduce-you smile that hit her tummy like an erotic punch. “Nay, but mayhap I could borrow one from your pirate friends.”
“Enough with the pirate crap! I am not here to spy.”
“Prove it. Come to me.” He held out a hand.
Oooh, boy, was she tempted! But he wasn’t offering what she wanted, unfortunately. “What will you do? Tie me up? Put me in that cage again? Lock me in a bedchamber? I’ll surrender if you promise to let me go free after we talk.”
“You do not dictate terms to me.”
“Your loss, buddy! You’ll never learn anything about your brother.”
“Tell me one thing about Thorfinn to show good faith.”
She hesitated. “I’m pretty sure that he time-traveled.”
Steven let loose with a roar, like a bear she’d once seen on one of her wilderness sets. “You play with me when it comes to my brother? I really will kill you for that.”
“Here’s the thing, Steven. I’m not playing games. Thorfinn traveled forward in time to the year two thousand and ten, and I traveled back from there. At least that’s the only explanation I can come up with. I know, I know, it’s hard to take in, but after we’ve talked, maybe you’ll understand.”
“Time travel?” He rubbed a hand over his face, clearly losing patience.
She backed up a few paces, planning her strategy for when he made his lunge for her . . . something he most definitely would be doing any minute now.
“You better not hurt me, or you’ll be sorry.” Did I actually say such a wussy thing? Jeesh! She now had enough space between her and Steven. All she needed to do was wait for the right moment.
There it was. He rushed forward.
She took a running leap, grabbed the side of the wagon ’til she was standing on her hands, and then, without pause, turned, and used that impetus to propel her into a backflip over to the other side of the wagon where she faced the other side. Without hesitation, she made a long jump and began to run for her life.
Steven’s jaw dropped, and he just stared at her for a moment.
She headed toward a wooded area. She’d never escape totally, but it would give him time to cool down.
But Steven was something else again. Using the bottom of his boot, he shoved the back of the wagon so it moved away, then he ran after her, making a final lunge, like a football player, which brought her to the ground with him on top.
“Move, you big oaf,” she huffed out when she could breathe again. “You’re crushing me.”
He raised himself enough to turn her on her back, th
en arranged himself on top of her once more. She didn’t fail to notice that he had both of her hands held in one of his above her head, or that his you-know-what was pressing against her you-know-what. With a growing interest she might add.
Then he did the unexpected. He smiled down at her and said, “Well, well, well. What shall we do now?” The whole time he was running the fingers of his free hand through her hair, with a kind of wonder softening his face. Then a forefinger was outlining her lips. The wonder was replaced with lust, pure and simple.
But who was she kidding about him being in lust mode? The whisper of a touch affected her like an electric shock to everything sexy in her body. She had to restrain herself from licking the finger or taking it into her mouth.
What was happening to her?
He murmured against her lips, “Ree-tah,” and kissed her. It was like no kiss she’d ever experienced before.
Hard for her brain to comprehend in this haze of growing arousal, both hers and his by the size of the bulge between her legs. While she lay there, like a stunned cat, failing to kick and scream and attempt escape, she was being very skillfully and very thoroughly kissed by Genghis Viking.
And she liked it!
How to seduce a seductress? . . .
Steven had been practicing the art of seduction since he was fourteen. He knew all the cues and nuances of how to touch the soft skin on a woman, knowing precisely when and where to the best effect. There was an art to it. There was also a line some women needed to be convinced to cross.
This woman crossed the line and then some.
It was now a question of who was seducing whom.
Somehow she had loosened her hands and had her arms wrapped around his shoulders. She even spread her thighs wider and drew her knees up to cradle his hips. Without a doubt, his cock was riding her woman channel like a rudderless longboat.
All this within moments. All this out in the open for one and all to see. All this with so much exquisite pleasure he wanted it to last forever.
I have to stop.
Now.
Soon.
“You taste so good,” she murmured.
She must be referring to the mint leaves he’d been chewing.
She licked his lips from side to side before dipping her tongue inside his mouth
His eyeballs probably rolled back in his head.
Then he murmured back, “You taste good, too,” and used his tongue to show her exactly how good things could be betwixt them. “I have ne’er kissed a mermaid afore,” he mused aloud.
“You still have never kissed a mermaid,” she pointed out.
He arched a brow at her. “So, you are all woman?”
“You would know better than most.” The saucy wench then wriggled her body beneath his for emphasis.
“Definitely all woman,” he gurgled out, then kissed her again, putting a hand behind her waist and lifting her up to better rub their nether parts together.
She groaned.
He grinned.
“You’re laughing at me,” she accused.
“Nay, I am enjoying myself. There is a difference.”
He was finally able to draw away, bracing himself on his elbows, when he heard Oslac calling him from a distance.
She looked stunned. Her eyes, as clear a blue as a summer sky, glazed with arousal. Her mouth swollen from his kisses.
“You know, Steven, if you would stop growling and stomping around making demands, you would gain the information you want. Be nice.”
“Really? Have I not been very nice the last few moments?”
“It was interesting.”
“Interesting? That was more than interesting.”
“Okay, it was more than interesting, it was . . .”
“Incredible?” he finished for her.
She nodded, as if she didn’t quite believe it herself.
He tilted his head to the side. “If I play nice, you will tell me all your secrets?”
“Well, some of them,” she conceded with an impish grin.
“Give me one.”
“Your brother got married.”
Steven shot to his feet. “How can that be? Finn swore he would never wed again.”
“Love happens sometimes.”
“Love!” he scoffed.
“Seeing is believing. If you could see him and Lydia together, you’d believe. They adore each other.”
“Two things you have told me, and both are equally unbelievable.”
“What two things?”
“Finn is a time traveler and he has married again.”
“I admit the time travel is a stretch. I’m finding it hard to accept that, too. But your brother is definitely married to Lydia Denton, owner of a dance studio in Coronado, California. In fact . . .” She let her words trail off, reminding herself that it was best not to disclose any information that was not required.
“Finish,” he ordered.
“No, I’m saving some things for later.”
“Why?”
“Leverage.”
“You will tell me everything I want to know in due time. Do not doubt that.”
“You gonna kiss me until I reveal all my secrets?”
He grinned. “Mayhap.”
Oslac was getting closer. Steven reached a hand down to draw her up to her feet.
“We will continue this discussion later,” he told her, putting his mouth next to her ear, “and I do not just mean about my brother.”
The wench had the nerve to wink at him and say, “I can’t wait,” before walking away from him and Oslac, free as a bird, with both of them watching the sway of her hips.
Then they both burst out in laughter.
Beware of rogues that are prettier than you are . . .
By that evening, Rita was still reeling with shock over the kiss. Even though she had done her best to avoid the tempting lout until she could straighten out her libido, the taste of the kiss remained with her. No, forget about lust, she needed to get her priorities in order: How to go home to Coronado.
Rita had done her best all day to shrink back into the shadows, not to be conspicuous. Oh, some might say her antics, like backflips or archery, were cries for attention, but, really, she sometimes just needed to release tension, and she didn’t think of the consequences.
She had to admire the way Steven and his sidekick Oslac managed the return of three hundred or so men to the estate. He was a born CEO or military commander in another time.
They’d removed and stored everything from the newly arrived longships, which would be checked over thoroughly tomorrow. Apparently, the ships had to be ready to sail at any moment. No one was talking about what had happened on their pirate mission, but it appeared to have been unsuccessful, except for their bringing back a woman who had done nothing but cry nonstop until someone, probably Steven, shoved her into a bed closet and told her to sleep it off, or he would personally toss her off a cliff.
Just then, the door swung open, and there stood the object of her distraction, all decked out in new clothes: tunic over the slim pants known as braies, like before, but this time in dark blue with a leather belt and half boots. He must have shaved and showered recently, because his hair was still wet and pulled back off his face into a queue. Pure male temptation!
She’d bathed also, in the women’s bathing longhouse where the other women kept checking her out. For a tail, or scales, or web feet, she supposed. Clean though she may be now, she wasn’t nearly as pretty as Steven was. Plus, she’d had to put her dirty clothes back on.
“Knock much?” she snapped out from the far side of the small room where she’d been doing exercises . . . knee bends, squats, sit-ups. There wasn’t much else to do.
“Why should I knock?”
“Privacy, for one thing.”
“This is Thorfinn’s bedchamber.”
“No one else was using it.”
“Mayhap there is a reason for that. What were you doing down there on the floor?”
>
“Exercises. To keep my body fit.” There was nothing else to do. No TV. Not a book in the whole darn place, which was truly amazing. She stood up and wiped the perspiration off her forehead with a square linen washing cloth.
He gave her body a slow head-to-toe survey, for fitness she supposed, and grinned. Enough said!
Then he narrowed his eyes at her. “Why do you need privacy?”
“Everyone needs privacy sometimes. What are you doing here anyway? Don’t you have any Viking things to do?”
He smiled. “Viking things?”
“Raping, pillaging, plundering, drinking vast amounts of booze out of animal horns, going berserk.”
“Your tongue . . . how has it managed to stay intact so many years? Surely there have been men who threatened to shut you up by lopping it off.”
She put a fingertip to her chin and pretended to think deeply. “Nope. Can’t say anyone has threatened to lop off a body part until I got here.”
He continued to stand, leaning back against the closed door, his arms folded over his chest, just watching her. He probably hoped to intimidate her by staring her down, but she met his stare and refused to give in first.
Finally, boredom won. “What do you want, Steven? I’ve been a good girl all day. What sin did I commit now?”
“Sin? What an odd choice of words!” he said. “Dinner is about to be served. I came to get you.”
“Oh, no. Thanks a bunch, but no. Really. I’d rather just slip down to the kitchen later and grab a bite to eat.”
“I did not ask you. And since when are you overcome with shyness? Last I saw you, aside from when you skulked about in the shadows all day, was when you walked away from me and Oslac, twitching your arse like a dockside trollop.”
Rita’s face grew hot. “What a smooth talker you are, Steven! Go find some other ‘dockside trollop’ to eat with you.”
“I did not say you are a trollop. In truth, I do not consort with trollops, and I definitely want to consort with you.”
If he thought that was going to smooth waters, he had another think coming. “Why? Because of that one kiss?” she taunted.
“It was an unusual kiss, unlike any I have experienced afore. Well worth repeating, would you not say, Ree-tah?”