Page 47 of The Blue Viking

Rurik hadn’t considered that possibility. But then he shrugged. He would set the old man straight on that question when the time came. A wedding with Maire was the last thing on his mind. A bedding with Maire, on the other hand, was foremost in his thoughts.

“And there are other reasons, as well, why we should not do this … thing.”

Talk, talk, talk. That’s all women do. If women had to go to war, they’d probably try to fight their enemies with words instead of swords or arrows. “Maire, you can cite me a dozen reasons, and it will make no difference.”

“Why?” she persisted.

Because I’m so bloody lustful I might just explode. That’s why. Because if I don’t soon kiss those wonderful, moist lips of yours, I might start drooling. That’s why. Because my cock is so hard, it hurts. That’s why.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m a pasture of new grass, and you’re a hungry sheep.”

That’s me, for a certainty… a randy ol’ ram. Best she come here quick afore I start baa-ing … or, better yet, ramming her. He chuckled at his own joke.

She glared, not understanding the source of his mirth. “Rurik, the sex act means different things to women than to men.”

Here we go. First, Old John lectures me on sex. Now, Maire does, as well. Am I a youthling that I need such education?

“Men have no qualms about spilling their seed in any vessel, willing or not, when lust hits. Women on the other hand … leastways, most women … give themselves to a man when there are feelings involved.”

Rurik groaned to himself. He could guess what was coming. Guilt. Like all women with their feminine wiles, Maire was going to employ guilt in hope of getting her own way.

“When I married Kenneth, I loved him … not perhaps as a lover should … after all, we’d known each other since we were bairns toddling over the moors together. The Campbells and the MacNabs were not feuding then. But ’twould seem I did not know Kenneth at all.” She sighed deeply and paused in memory.

Rurik remembered Old John’s words of the beatings Maire had endured from her spouse, and suspected that Maire was conjuring up those dark memories now.

“What has all this to do with me … with us?” he asked with a growl of impatience.

“My love was obviously wasted on you, too,” she said.

“Me? You loved me?” That was a disconcerting bit of news.

She nodded. She actually nodded. Oh, God, he was in trouble now!

“You must think I was naive to have fallen in love with you … a virtual stranger. I realize now what a fool I was to have taken the seductive words of an experienced rogue at face value.”

“You thought I was in love with you?” he blurted out, realizing belatedly how insulting his shock must sound.

But she just smiled in a self-deprecating way. Obviously, she blamed herself, not him.

“Do you love me still?” he inquired, horror ringing in his voice. Love was not the emotion he wanted from the wench now. Lust, yes. Love, no.

She laughed. “I loathe you.”

He exhaled loudly with relief before he could catch himself.

She laughed again.

In the moment of silence that followed, Rurik pondered all that she had told him. To his shame, he could barely bring to mind details of that time when they had made love five years ago. He had been young, perchance under the influence of uisge-beatha, full of his own conceit, and, truth to tell, there had been so many women in his bed furs over the years. No excuse, of course. Another thought came unbidden to him. “Didst think I would marry you because I took your maidenhead?”

“Nay, I was not that lackwitted,” she answered.

Whew!

“But I did think you would want more than one night with me. I had my own ego, Rurik. I thought I would be more than a conquest to you … soon forgotten. I thought… well, that you would take me with you.”