Page 81 of The Caged Viking

“What do you call that?” she gasped out.

“Rocking the boat.”

She tried to laugh, but it came out as a snort. “Am I the boat, or are you?”

“I am the longship. You are the fjord,” he told her, then showed her some other ways to rock a boat on unruly seas.

She was unable to speak for several long moments after that, except to mutter something that sounded like, “Ahoy, matie!”

He figured “matie” must be another of her endearment terms, like sweetie or darling. As for “Ahoy”…well, that had to be the same as her “Howdy” or “You-Who”! Now that he was learning Ah-mare-ee-can, he was becoming a very modern Viking, if he did say so himself.

Chapter 18

Falling, or fallen? That is the question…

“Stay.”

Kirstin wasn’t asleep when she heard that single, huskily spoken word, or thought she heard it. She was just basking in the afterglow of the most incredible sex she’d ever experienced. If nothing else, she’d never had three bouts of sex with a man in one night.

Cracking an eyelid open slightly, she saw that it was still nighttime. There was a dim light, even though the torch was out and the candles had burned almost the whole way down. But then, her eyes shot wide as she noticed that Hauk sat on a chair he had pulled closer, with the heels of his extended legs braced on the side of the bed, sipping at a mug of what was probably ale. A wool blanket was wrapped around his shoulders and pooled on his thighs against the cool night air.

How long has he been watching me? And why? Oh, crap! I hope I wasn’t drooling or snoring. She raised herself on bent elbows and asked, “Did you say something?”

He nodded.

She tilted her head to the side in question when he didn’t elaborate. “Why are you watching me?”

He shrugged.

His silence was scaring her. And the raw hurt glittering in his eyes…what was that about?” “Hauk?”

“Will you be here when I get back?”

“What? Where did that come from?”

“This is the first time we will be apart since you first came to rescue me,” he said, smiling. The smile she attributed to the fact that he still found it amusing that a woman would be sent to rescue a big, brave Viking man. But she noticed that his smile was rather sad, not reaching his expressive eyes, which regarded her gravely. “Will you stay?”

Ah, so that’s what he meant by that single word I heard. “You think I’ll use this opportunity to go back home?” She realized immediately what a poor choice of word she’d used, how he would interpret her calling another place home. “I mean, back to the future.”

He tipped his mug up and emptied it, then set it on the floor. After that, he just looked at his hands that were folded on his lap, as if thinking of the right way to say or ask something.

She was pretty sure she knew what was bothering the man. “Hauk, I have no plans to leave while you’re gone.”

His eyes speared her with silent recrimination. They both recognized her response as what it was…an evasion. “No plans” didn’t preclude her making a sudden decision to leave.

“First of all, I don’t know if I could teletransport from here, or if I have to be at the point where I entered. I’ve told you that before.”

“You also mentioned that your brother Torolf went forward, back, then forward again, all from different places.”

Good Lord! Is he caching all the bits of information I mention casually, giving them more importance than they probably merit? He didn’t comment at the time.

“You’re right about Torolf. But we…my family…always believed that for safety’s sake, a time traveler should stay close to the portal, or stay away from the portal, for that matter. Not that any of us have deliberately made such a trip, except for Torolf and even then what happened was an accident that…” She waved a hand dismissively. “I can explain later.”

“I thought you came here to save me,” he said, with the same sad/grim smile.

“I was sent here to save you,” she corrected him.

“Ah, the godly mission.”