Page 44 of The Outlaw Viking

Criminey! If I did that, I’d probably look like the back end of a horse.

She stole a sideways glance at Selik and noticed with chagrin that his gaze was glued to the same spot—Blanche’s posterior. She lost it then and blurted out sarcastically before she could control her jealous tongue, “Looking for a root cellar?”

He turned a wide grin her way and winked. Instantly, she regretted reminding Selik of their first meeting when he’d tried to dump her, saying she could easily find another protector among those soldiers more interested in finding a nesting place for their “manroots.”

Selik laughed, unconcerned that he’d been caught ogling the girl. “Are you offering?”

“No, you randy goat.”

“Ah, well, I had not really thought I would score with you…yet.”

“Score? Where did you learn such a modern expression?”

“Your mother. I had much woman-luck in those days, but still Ruby taught me many useful words. Like ‘scoring’, ‘getting lucky’, and ‘striking out’.”

Rain nodded her head in understanding. It was so like her outrageous mother. “Consider yourself struck out.”

He flashed her a knowing “this is only the first inning” smile.

Then Selik’s other word sunk in. “What do you mean, yet? You’d better get one thing through that thick head of yours, Selik—nothing is going to happen between us.”

“Your body says differently.” Selik folded his arms across his chest lazily in challenge.

“That was before I discovered just how brutal you are.”

He straightened his back with pride, and his face darkened angrily. “I promised no more behaettie.”

“Yes, but you still have captives. And you still plan to kill as many Saxons as you can.”

“Yea, I do, sweet pacifist. But that has naught to do with the bedding.”

“Oh, yes, it does.”

Selik’s stormy eyes softened and narrowed craftily as he studied her. She could almost hear the gears grinding in his sly brain. “I heard a voice in my head yestereve as I slept. ‘The wench should make sex with you,’ it said. Methinks it was your god talking to me.”

“Liar,” Rain said, unable to stop the smile which sprang to her lips at his blatant attempt at seduction.

Lord, he was a devastatingly handsome man when the grimness left his face. With his head turned slightly to the side, Rain could not see the white scar zigzagging from his right eye to his chin, nor the broken nose. The sharp edges of his strong profile seemed to melt, leaving only the image of a self-confident, ruggedly virile man. Her eyes held his in the charged silence, and she felt a part of herself that had never been touched by any man reach out to him in yearning.

“Ah, well, ’twas worth a try.” Then he looked back to Blanche with a gleam in his eyes. “On the other hand, perchance the voice was referring to that wench.”

Blanche was stretching her arms overhead to break off some small dead limbs from a nearby tree for her cook fire. Every red-blooded man within five hundred feet was staring, practically bug-eyed, at her large nipples clearly outlined against the taut fabric of her tunic.

Rain saw green. And turned away to hide her jealousy from the too-perceptive Selik.

“Rain?” Selik asked softly behind her. She looked back at him over her shoulder, surprised to see that he stood so close. Gently, he brushed a strand of hair off her face that had come loose from her braid. She turned to face him and almost staggered under the overwhelming pull of his body heat and scent. “Do you know how long it has been since I ‘made sex’ with a woman?”

Startled by his question, Rain shook her head slowly from side to side, unable to speak, her eyes trapped in his luminous gray gaze.

“Two years.”

“Wh…what?”

“And do you know how long it has been since I have even wanted to ‘make love’ with a woman?” He made a clear distinction by his intonation between “make sex” and “make love.”

Mesmerized, Rain’s eyes traveled hungrily over his face, still incapable of speech. She longed to trace the chiseled facets of his sharp cheekbones with a forefinger, to taste the sweetness of his parted lips, to make his eyes close in slow surrender to ecstasy. Oh, Lord!

When she did not speak, he answered his own question, “Ten years. Ten bloody, soul-dead years.”