“What happened out there? Did you run into some of those . . . things?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“I killed them.”
“Them? More than one?”
“Three.”
“Getting information from you is like pulling teeth. What aren’t you telling me?”
He hesitated to tell her, but what if Zeb should follow through on his mission from Jasper? Shouldn’t she be forewarned that she might be left here alone? “I met someone else. Something else. Zebulan the demon.”
“Whaaat? The demons have names?”
“Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they? Anyhow, Zeb is sort of a double agent for the vangels. He hopes to join our ranks one day, or so he says, and therefore feeds us information on occasion.”
“And why does your meeting with this guy . . . thing . . . Zebulan have you worried?”
“How do you know I’m worried?”
“I can tell.”
“Am I oozing even more peppermint eau de cologne?”
“You don’t have to be so sarcastic.”
“Sorry. But how do you know I’m worried? Do you think you know me so well?”
“I hardly know you at all. But if we’re lifemates, I can probably sense your feelings.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! What leap of faith or logic or insanity made her suddenly believe we’re lifemates?
“Not that I think we’re lifemates.”
Whew!
“You should see the expression on your face. I should be offended.”
“Very funny.” He made a face at her. “Here’s the deal. Zeb has been given orders to bring back one of the VIK, meaning one of us seven Sigurdsson brothers. And it appears I’m it.”
She stiffened and went silent before asking in a small voice, “Can he do that?”
“He can try.”
“What will happen if he succeeds?”
“He’ll take me to Jasper’s castle of horrors which is aptly named Horror.”
“And?”
“And try to convert me into a Lucipire.”
“How?”
“Torture. Endless torture. Possibly for years. Once Vikar was taken, but only for a few days. We could scarce recognize him when he returned. Among other things, he’d been crucified.” Cnut realized immediately that he shouldn’t have been so candid with Andrea.
She had both hands to her mouth. Her eyes were wide with shock. “Can’t you fight him off . . . Zeb, I mean . . . like you did the other Lucipires?”
“I can try, but he’s older and stronger than me. It would be an even match. Fifty-fifty.”
“Cnut! We have to get out of here!” She stood as if it was that simple. Decide to leave and poof, you leave.
“You have to leave. I obviously can’t. But if I should suddenly disappear, this is what—”
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare say that!” She dropped her cloak, and she was nude underneath.
“Oh my God!” he said, and, for his sins, it was not a prayer. Leastways, not a holy one.
Wearing nothing but her blue leather boots, she stepped into the steam pool, stomped down the steps and over to him. Standing above him, she wagged a forefinger at him. “You are not going anywhere without me, is that understood?”
Did she actually expect him to answer when she was standing before him looking like a Playboy Cowgirl of the Month centerfold? The only thing missing was the cowgirl hat. Bloody hell! The boots were enough!
“What are you looking at?” she demanded, putting her hands on her hips.
“Are you kidding? What do you think I’m looking at? I’m looking for staples.”
“Huh?”
He snaked a hand out and grabbed her by the wrist, tugging her forward. She almost fell, but he caught her, and somehow, talented fellow that he was, he managed to settle her on his thighs, astride.
“Ride ’em, cowgirl?” he asked with a laugh.
“This is serious,” she said, pushing against his chest.
He wouldn’t release her, not even when he noticed the tears welling in her eyes. “Hey, I was just teasing. What’s wrong?”
“You,” she said on a sob, swatting him on the shoulder. “You’re an idiot.”
“I know,” he agreed. “Why am I an idiot?”
“You got lost, and I was afraid you were dead, or something, and I was stressed out worrying about you, and about myself, I admit. I didn’t know what I was going to do. And then you showed up, and you looked half dead, and you finally got better, but now you say you have plans to get yourself captured, and maybe crucified, and I’m definitely going to be lost in the past. And what am I going to do without you?” She took a deep breath after her long diatribe, and added, “And I think I’ve fallen in love with you, idiot that I am.”
“Maybe we’re both becoming idiots. Ah, sweetling, I wouldn’t deliberately leave you here.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“What I meant was, I’ve been making plans. I think Thorkel is planning to wed Dyna. I’m going to have a private talk with him. If I should suddenly disappear, I want him to take over as jarl at Hoggstead. I’ve already made him military commander. Even if the famine continues, he’ll have the authority to use whatever money or goods I have left to survive.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” she repeated.
“My next priority is to get you home. Since I seem to have lost telepathic communication with other vangels, I told Zeb to contact one of my brothers and tell them what has happened. You need to be removed from this situation.”
“Seriously? You expect me to leave while you stay here and just wait for the demons to come?”
“Well, yes. This is my problem. Not yours.”
“Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!” she said, smacking him on the shoulder with each word. “Didn’t you hear me say I’ve fallen in love with you?”
“Of course I did, and I thank you for the compliment.”
She smacked him again.
“I was waiting for the right moment to say that I love you, too.”
“Oh, really? And when did you decide that?” Her words were waspish, but he could tell she was pleased.
He was, too. Amazingly, Cnut didn’t recall ever having said those words before. To anyone. “When I was sitting on a stump in the middle of nowhere, lost, and turning into an icicle, I realized that the most important thing I would miss is you. Are you going to cry again?”
“Of course I’m going to cry.”
He thought about putting his arms around her, but she was still in a mood and would no doubt swat him again. “Uh, one question, dearling? Why were you naked under that cloak?”
She wiped her nose on her forearm, then sloshed it clean in the water. “I was going to join you in your bed tonight. I figured you were well enough by now to have a bed partner.”
“You could be right about that,” he said, glancing downward where his favorite body part was standing at attention. And no wonder. He was nude. She was nude, except for the boots. And it had been four whole days since last it got any attention. Then he looked at her and smiled. “Cock-a-doodle-do?”
She was a bloody fool . . .
“I missed you,” she told him with all the heartfelt feelings she’d bottled up the past few days as she’d worried over his absence and then worried over his sickness. “I know, I know,” she added before he could speak, “I’m putting pressure on you right now that you don’t need. You shouldn’t have to think about me when you have all these other problems to face. The famine. The demon thingees. Our time-travel dilemma. The Zeb threat.”
He put his fingertips to her lips and shook his head. “You don’t put pressure on me. I put it on myself. I think about you all the time. Night and day. And that is not a bad thing. Despite my sins, I have been blessed with you in my life.”
“What a nice thing to say!”
He shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“I’ll tell you how far gone I am. If you are destined to stay here in the past, that’s where I want to be, too.”
He nodded his understanding. “Then it is agreed. We are lifemates?”
“What else could it be?”
“Well,” he said, and grinned at her. “Lifemates are all well and good, but I prefer lust mates. At least some of the time.” He spread his knees wider, which caused her legs to spread and open her up to his erection, which was already prodding at her center, as if to remind her of their positions.
As if she could forget! With the warm water under her butt and the warmth of arousal beginning to course through her body, she had to agree. “Lust and love. I’ll take that.”
“Will you?” he asked, and lifted her by the waist up and onto him.
“Oh,” was the best she could come up with, a reaction to both what he asked and what he did.
He smiled and said, “We are going to be so good together.”
His pointy teeth had elongated into fangs, and she didn’t even mind, so far gone in love was she. “Going to be good? Hah!” she disagreed. “We are already good.” She wiggled her hips from side to side to show just what she meant.
“Whatever you say, dearling.” He groaned and rolled his eyes up in his head.
Her eyes were probably rolling in her head, too, like cherries on a slot machine. She already felt like she’d won the jackpot.
A hazy blue fog rose from his shoulder blades then and swirled around them, cocooning them in a scented bubble of peppermint/coconut bliss. They were in this world, but not part of it.
As Cnut leaned farther back and brought her with him, mouth to mouth, it caused his lower body to arch up, and his erection reached higher and wider inside her body’s sheath. When she thought she could take no more, her inner muscles shifted to accommodate whatever he wanted.
Their deep kisses and his deep strokes became a giving and taking of remarkable intensity. The lines became blurred between where he began and she ended, and vice versa. Truly, they became one.
If this was what lifemate loving was like, it was the world’s best-kept secret.
“I love you, heartling,” he said against her open mouth.
“Love you, sweetheart,” she said back.
Their rise to orgasm was a gentle evolution this time, unlike the fierce, tumultuous, previous ones, but no less powerful in intensity. Each time she became further aroused, he halted whatever he was doing. Then she reciprocated with soft caresses and rocking undulations until he made her halt. They kissed ’til they couldn’t breathe for their racing hearts. They tingled. All over.
When they’d reached and backtracked several times from the precipice, she whispered, “Bite me.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” he whispered back, and when he sank his fangs into her neck, her own blood felt as if it was rushing, warmly, in waves through her body, heating her, making her skin simmer with sensation. They held each other tightly while they melted together, then reformed into one joined being. It was an illusion, of course, but no less real to both of them.
As she lay in his arms later, back under the bed furs in his bedchamber, she yawned and stretched lazily before snuggling closer. He was on his back and she lay on her side, half on and half off him. “How come you get to do all the biting? Do I ever get to taste your blood?”
Cnut’s callused palm had been caressing her back, from nape to buttocks. He stopped suddenly, and she could swear she heard his heart thump faster. “You could if you wanted to, I suppose,” he said. “Wouldn’t you consider it kind of . . . I don’t know . . . gross?”
“Maybe,” she replied and yawned widely. “It’s just that it feels amazing when you do it to me, and I just thought . . . never mind. Forget I said anything.”
He rolled over, so fast she almost fell off the bed. With a speed only a vangel could manage, he had her pinned beneath his body and growled, he actually growled. “Forget? Forget? M’lady, there are some invitations that can’t be taken back.”
Chapter 18
A HOMECOMING CELEBRATION
Reindeer steaks au jus
Whole roasted boar
Pickled lampreys, sucking mouths and all! (also known as vampire fish)
Bass stuffed with stale manchet crumbs, chopped venison heart, walnuts, and various other vegetables, including, yes, even turnips
Carrot, onion, and turnip medley
Salted herring
Buttered lutefisk or lye-fish (beaten and broken into fibrous pieces)
Mashed turnips with pork gravy
Manchet bread
Sourdough rolls with butter
Honey oatcakes
And then a Christmas visitor arrived . . .
Cnut kept Andrea by his side most of the next day. Every time she wandered off to the kitchen to help Girda with some task, or to feed her precious sourdough starter, he sought her out. For some reason, he needed her within touching distance. It probably had something to do with the lifemate business, which he could no longer fight. What would be would be.
Andrea asked at one point what Michael would say about their making love, and told her, “You don’t want to know.”
“Why?”
“Vangels are supposed to be celibate.”
“Vikings celibate?”
“Exactly.”
“But you said that your brothers are married.”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen. The only way a male and a human can wed is if the woman agrees to live only as long as her partner does. Vice versa for female vangels.”
That had puzzled her, but only for a moment. “But that could be five hundred years.”
“Or five days.”
“Wow! What will Michael do to you for breaking your vows of celibacy?”
“Oh, probably add another couple hundred years on to my sentence.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He wasn’t.
Throughout the day, even as he held her hand or stole the occasional kiss, and more, he made precautions for Hoggstead to survive if he did not. First, he sat down with Finn and Girda at the far end of his great hall to make an inventory. Andrea was given scrap sheets of parchment, quills, and thick oak gall ink to make their lists. It took several splotchy failed attempts and some modern swearwords that Finn and Girda did not understand before she was able to get legible words down. Her list read:
¾ brown bear
12 boars
14 deer (red and reindeer)
22 grouse (Andrea jokingly asked if the plural of grouse was greese, but Finn and Girda just exchanged raised eyebrows, not getting the joke. He got it, though, and kissed her on the top of her head to show how much he appreciated her humor. She was busy glaring at her inky fingers. He was not about to tell her that it would take days to wash it off.)
6 seabirds
50 rabbits
12 squirrels
3 large bass
2 extra large cod
10 lampreys
62 trout
Dozens of assorted fishes—roach, bream, pike, perch, herring
2 large sacks of onions
1 small sack of carrots
1 small sack of wild celery
1 small sack of endive
1 small sack of mushrooms
1 small sack of dried peas
2 big sacks of turnips (Would they ever escape the dreaded neep?)
25 heads of cabbage
1 basket of dried apples
3 barrels of oats for bread and animal feed
1 barrel of barley
2 tuns of ale
1 small barrel of mead
Assorted spices, small quantities of dill, coriander, cloves, pepper, cardamom, nutmeg
12 honeycombs and 3 jugs of honey
Mustard seed
Vinegar
Plenty of salt
“That seems like plenty to last until spring, even with tonight’s homecoming meal for Cnut, and the yuletide feasts,
” Andrea said to Finn and Girda.
Cnut heard the hope in her voice. She was thinking that, if there was enough food, they could make a concerted effort to go home. He hated to disappoint her, but then he didn’t have to. Finn and Girda did it for him.
“There are one hundred and twenty people to feed here in the castle and more than fifty down below. Closer to two hundred, all totaled,” Finn said. “’Twill be a least four months ’til the longboats can manage the fjords. This will never last that long. And, besides, we are assuming the spring planting will be successful or, truth to tell, whether there is seed enough for planting.”
Finn painted a bleak but honest picture.
Then Girda added to it. “I once worked in the royal kitchen of King Hakon. I was only a girling, and my mother was one of the cooks, but I remember like it was yestermorn. For one of his feasts alone were prepared twenty boar, twenty deer, fifty ducks, and a thousand boiled eggs.”
They all gaped at Girda, but then Cnut said, “Well, we are no royal household, and we are in the midst of famine where we must ration food, not spread it about in a wasteful manner.”
“Hmpfh!” Girda said. “Does that mean soup for the yule feast?”
Cnut saw Andrea bristle and he jumped right in before a war of the cooks started, “Andrea makes wonderful soups, Girda. Did I not eat six bowls of her chicken soup yesterday? But we do not need to serve only soup at the yule feast. It is your decision, after all.”
Girda’s response was another “Hmpfh!”
Andrea’s was an elbow jab at him; she knew how he felt about the vast amount of soup he’d eaten, but luckily she remained silent.
When they were alone again, Cnut said, “Don’t be disappointed. I know you thought there would be enough for us to leave.” Assuming we can leave. “Look how much progress we’ve made so far. Have faith, sweetling.”
“Says the Viking or the vangel?”
“Both,” he said, giving her a quick kiss, and then a not-so-quick kiss.
“If you were given the choice, would you want to stay here in the past? I mean, you seem so contented today.”
“I’m contented today because of you, not my surroundings,” he said, giving her another quick kiss. He couldn’t help himself, even if his men were starting to gaze at him as if he’d lost his mind as well as the pounds. “Seriously, though, I guess it would depend on whether I were a vangel or human in either place. But, no, that isn’t true. Give me a choice between a good French baguette with soft Brie cheese, or a hunk of manchet bread with a smear of skyr, and you know which one I’d take. Or sliced boar with a side of turnips, compared to a rare T-bone steak with a baked potato dripping with butter and sour cream? Then there are the different beers to choose from. And desserts.” He smiled at her.