Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 01] (18 page)

Like a starving man, he’d passed his hands frantically over her body, grasping, caressing, never seeming to get enough. In his ravaging need, he’d jerkily unbuttoned her coat and lifted the hem of her sweater. When his fingertips had found the lace-capped tips of her breasts, she gasped, “Oh, Jack! A-a-h!” Instantly, he’d brought them to hard points of aching fruition with a mere grazing of the backs
of his knuckles. Jack had moaned throatily then with his own intense pleasure.

This had been too fast for Ruby. In the past, it had taken them hours to reach this point of sexual frenzy. She’d started to get frightened, and excited, at the same time. Jack had tried to pull her onto his lap in front of the steering wheel, but Ruby had cried out in pain. The stupid gearshift had scraped her thigh.

They’d both started laughing then.

“Come on. Let’s go for a walk,” Jack had suggested in a hoarse, raw voice. His kiss-swollen lips and passion-glazed eyes had lured Ruby onto the multicolored carpet of crisp autumn leaves which had crunched under their feet. They’d walked, arm-in-arm, into the heavily canopied forest while industrious nut-gathering squirrels scurried out of their path, squealing in outrage at being disturbed.

Jack had stopped abruptly and twirled her round and round in his arms, happily. Like young, carefree children, they’d fallen laughing to the luxuriant bed of leaves. He’d leaned over her and brushed some of the errant leaves from her hair, then held her eyes seriously, “Let’s get married, Rube.”

The abrupt, unexpected words had startled Ruby. “What did you say?” Then she’d whispered, “Say it again.”

“Let’s get married.”

“Is this a proposal, Jack?” she’d gasped, tears of happiness filling her eyes.

“Yes.” His breath had fluttered against her parted lips, soft as a butterfly’s kiss. “Oh, yes!” Then Jack had smiled for the first time that day and begun a sweet assault of kisses. His lips had been white-hot with blistering heat as they’d seared a path from lips to throat and back to lips to pursue deep drugging kisses that had turned Ruby mindless and incoherent in her cries. Over and over, he
had marked her with his stalking mouth.

Impatient, Jack had torn off his jacket and removed Ruby’s as well. Her sweater and his T-shirt had followed quickly after. For a moment, Jack had pulled back to look at her exposed body appreciatively. “Oh, Rube!” he’d exclaimed before lowering himself. “Oh, sweet, sweet, Rube!” By the time his lips touched the tips of her breasts, Ruby had already arched up to meet him, yearning, aching to be suckled. He’d used his tongue to circle and flick, his teeth to rasp softly, his lips to draw her into his mouth rhythmically.

Ruby had been feverish with wanting by the time Jack had stood to remove the rest of his clothing. She could no more have halted him then than stopped her wildly careening heart. All their petting in the past had taken place in his car or on the living-room sofa, with parents nearby. This had been the first time she’d seen Jack naked. Like an ancient Viking, he’d stood proudly, his tall, muscular body perfectly in tune with the autumn background, his blond hair fluttering in the air. His erect penis had grown rock hard and huge under her flattering perusual. Jack’s sheer masculinity took her breath away.

By the time Ruby had lain naked, as well, they’d both been panting. His long fingers had moved expertly in the delta between her thighs to prepare her wetly. She’d budded, then flowered under his fluttering fingertips. When he’d poised between her legs finally, he’d repeated his earlier question, “Will you marry me, Rube?” At the moment she’d whispered, “Yes,” he’d buried himself in her sheath in one smooth stroke. There’d been slight pain, but mostly the overwhelming, wonderful feeling of being filled by the man she loved. After that, she’d been unable to think at all as he’d driven her to the edge of eternity and then over with catapulting waves of pleasure.

When they’d lain in each other’s arms afterwards, Jack had nuzzled her neck. “Let’s get married—now! We can
drive out of state, get married by a justice of the peace and be back at my apartment by Sunday night. I have three hundred dollars in my checking account.”

“Now? Today?” Ruby’s brain had still felt muddled from their lovemaking. He couldn’t be serious, she’d thought.

“Yes. I want you to come back to school with me. I don’t want to be there if you’re not with me. Please, Rube, marry me.”

“This is just lust speaking, Jack,” Ruby had commented, with a shaky laugh.

“Yeah! Ain’t it great?” he’d responded with the drop-dead grin she’d always found irresistible, and Ruby had felt a deep throbbing begin in her center once again. Then he’d begun a new assault on her already weakened senses. “I love you, Rube. I’ll never love any other woman,” Jack had whispered as they sank to the soft autumn bed. “We can make it work. We can…”

Words hadn’t been necessary after that as they made sweet, sweet love for the second time in the most gorgeous setting any bride could ever want.

They hadn’t eloped that weekend, but they’d convinced both their parents of their seriousness. The formal wedding had taken place over Christmas vacation, and Ruby had returned to Jack’s university with him. Thanks to the financial help of both sets of parents, part-time jobs, Jack’s scholarship and some extremely frugal living conditions, including postage-stamp-size apartments, both had managed to graduate from college four years later.

As the fog of memories began to dim, Ruby realized she still lay on the Viking pallet with eyes squeezed shut, her body shuddering with silent sobs she didn’t want her wretched guard to overhear. Jack’s words lingered in her mind: “We can make it work.”

What a fool she’d been!

“Do you weep for want of me or for your sorry fate?”

Huh? Jack hadn’t said
that
.

Ruby’s eyes shot open to the sight of Jack—no, Thork—leaning against the open doorway of her tower room, arms and legs crossed. She hadn’t even heard the door open.

Standing up, she asked him huffily, “How long have you been standing there ogling me? Why aren’t you off sucking up to the tarantula?”

“Sucking up?” Thork questioned on a laugh. “Can I assume ‘tarantula’ is a spider?”

“You got it!”

“Your manner of speaking—’tis ever a puzzle.” Thork shook his head quizzically.

“You think my language is odd. I’ve heard enough ’twas-es and ’tis-es and ’twoulds to last me a lifetime.”

Thork laughed easily.

Ruby narrowed her eyes. What was up now? A short time ago the brute had shook her and almost slapped her face. Now he stood here laughing as if nothing were wrong. He was just like Jack in that regard. A short fuse, quick outburst, and then an equally rapid recovery.

“So, is the torture going to begin now? Will you do it here, or should we move out into the bailey so everyone can watch? If we had more time, we could serve popcorn and slurpees. Hey, why not give the whip to your spider friend? I’ll bet she could do a good job of skinning me alive.”

Thork looked appalled at her words.

“Halt thy wicked tongue, woman. Linette is not as you think.”

“Hah!”

Thork still hadn’t moved from his nonchalant stance near the door. He gazed at her intently, seeming to look for answers to some great mystery.

“Why are you watching me so strangely? What am I being accused of now?”

Thork shrugged uncomfortably. “Naught do I accuse
you of,” he started to explain, then seemed to shift course, “but I wonder what you dreamt of before you started weeping. You were making love in your dreams, were you not? Was it your husband, Jack?”

Ruby felt her face flush and pressed her fingertips to her cheek, wondering if the finger welts from Dar’s slap were still there.

“The tips of your breasts swelled with passion even as you slept,” Thork continued relentlessly. “You arched your womanhood and spread your thighs wantonly. You even moaned.”

Involuntarily, Ruby looked down, then crossed her arms across her chest in embarrassment. The tips of her swollen breasts were, indeed, clearly outlined under her thin T-shirt.

“By the faith! Surely you do not turn shy on me now—after all the outrageous things you have said and done.”

An insufferable grin spread across Thork’s lips.

“All right, what’s going on here?” Ruby demanded to know. “Something has definitely happened. First you run hot, then cold. One day, angry. The next, teasing. Tell me. Do I die or do I go free?”

Thork studied her, as if weighing his words carefully. “Neither. We have discovered the traitor in our midst. One of the hesirs who traveled with us from Jorvik was Ivar’s man. ’Twould seem was him, not you, who sought to entrap Dar.”

It took several moments for Thork’s words to sink in.

Then, shrieking loudly, Ruby sprang at him, pounding his chest, trying to scrape her nails across his face, biting his shoulder when he lifted her by the upper arms off the floor. When she hit his groin with her kicking legs, Thork twisted his body and lost his footing. They both fell to the pallet, which broke with a loud crash under the impact of his weight and the force of their combined fall.

“You bastard! You son-of-a-bitch! You bucket of slime! Let me up. I’m going to cut out your stinking heart. Ouch!”

“Leave off, wench. Your voice—’tis shrill as a sea gull. Oh! Your nails are sharp.”

Thork pinned her down with his hard body, her arms above her head, her legs encased in his thighs. They lay in the midst of the broken bed on the floor, straw floating in the air above them from the torn mattress cover. Ruby tried to heave him off her and realized her mistake immediately.

“Oh!” she exclaimed on a whisper as the juncture of her thighs pushed against Thork’s manhood, arousing him instantly. She tried to correct her error by dropping back and turning her face away.

He wouldn’t allow it.

Wolfishly his lips stalked hers, forcing a response she didn’t want to give. When she fought him, Thork nipped her lower lip gently with his teeth. Ruby parted her lips to scream, and he slipped his tongue into her mouth, filling her with a pleasure she could not deny.

She could feel the smile on Thork’s self-satisfied lips.
The boor!

Palm to palm, he held her hands pressed to the bed above her head, then levered himself up slightly. He moved his body from side to side across her, back and forth, the coarse wool of his tunic-covered chest brushing her T-shirt-clad breasts, the hardness of his manhood caressing the dream-sensitized vee of her thighs. She arched involuntarily, and Thork gasped out, “Oh, yea, sweetling! You do that
so
nice.”

He deftly maneuvered his thighs between hers, then shifted so he lay firmly against her jean-clad center. In an age-old dance of lift, then touch, lift, then touch, Thork undulated against her mercilessly. Meanwhile, his tongue set a matching pattern in her mouth. She tried to moan
her protest, but only managed to open her mouth wider for his plundering kiss.

Unable to utter her protests aloud, Ruby soon gave up, a soaring passion overtaking her. Lost between two worlds, Ruby wasn’t sure if the crackling noise under her was straw or autumn leaves. Or whether it was Jack or Thork. Perhaps they were one and the same. She couldn’t think anymore. She didn’t want to think.

Lost in a time warp, Ruby keened her anguish and fevered wanting into his open mouth. “Oh, Jack! I love you so much!”

Thork pulled back abruptly and stared at her in disbelief—a hurt, questioning expression shadowing his passion-glazed eyes. Then he muttered an obscenity. Ruby couldn’t stop looking at his lips, which she’d bruised deliciously with her kisses.

Oh, my God! She wanted him
so
badly! Thork, Jack, whoever he was—it didn’t matter.

“Jack! You called me Jack,” Thork accused, stabbing her murderously with blue eyes still hazy with desire. “Do you think of another man when you yield to me?”

Ruby licked her lips nervously, trying to think of a way to explain once again that he and Jack were the same man to her. She never got a chance to answer as Dar rushed breathlessly into the room.

“What goes here? It sounded like the whole bloody keep was falling down.”

Following him were Aud, Olaf, Gyda, the girls and a dozen others, including Linette.

Embarrassed, Ruby tried to shift from under Thork, but the stubborn Viking refused. Ruby smiled involuntarily, though, in a pure, unadulterated gloat at the sight of the Black Widow glaring at her in Thork’s arms.

Thork rolled to his side, still holding her in his arms, his arousal pressing disconcertingly into her thigh.

“What happened? Did she attack you?” an outraged
Linette asked, pushing her way to the front of the group.

“Nay, I tripped and fell onto the pallet,” Thork explained dryly, pulling a sheet discreetly over his middle.

“On top of the wench?” Olaf scoffed.

“Shush, Olaf,” Gyda whispered loudly, elbowing him to behave.

Dar snickered as he shooed everyone back downstairs to the hall where the loud noises had been heard. He shook his head in disgust at the sight of the two of them on the broken bed before extending a hand to Ruby, then Thork.

“Methinks the mischievous Loki is having a grand laugh over you,” Dar commented dryly, looking pointedly at Thork’s crotch. “Mayhap you two deserve each other, after all.” He pulled at his lower lip thoughtfully and his eyes narrowed slyly at Ruby. “Is there any chance you truly are related to Hrolf, or that mayhap he would dower you in marriage?”

“
No!
” Thork bellowed. “Do not think it! Never will I marry, and leastways not to this sorry wench!” Obviously, he’d managed to overcome his bout of passion for her.

“Hold it here,” Ruby intervened. To Dar she said, “Yes, I am truly related to Hrolf, and, no, I am not, nor ever will be, an heiress. Forget any ambitious plans you may be concocting in that direction.”

Dar pretended mock offense.

To Thork Ruby snapped haughtily, “As for this ‘sorry wench,’ she doesn’t want you any more than you want her. You and that oversexed spider can live happily ever after, for all I care.”

So why did the thought bother her so much? Why did her eyes linger on the well-developed muscles in his forearms and thighs as he brushed away pieces of the clinging straw?