Page 102 of The Bewitched Viking

“I could.”

“So that’s not the source of your sour mood? Could it be your favorite part has shriveled up and died from overuse?”

“Enough!” he said. After several moments, he revealed his dilemma. “I need your help.”

Uh-oh.

“People are starting to believe you are not a witch.”

“And that’s a problem?”

“Yea, it is. No one wants to buy my crosses or holy water anymore. You have to do more witchly things, Alinor.”

At first, she just gaped at him, slack-jawed with surprise. “You don’t believe I’m a witch anymore?”

“Nay. Well, leastways, not every day. Come, Alinor. ’Twould be a small thing to do a few witchly acts betimes.”

She hooted with laughter.

“It’s not amusing. Would it hurt you to waggle your fingers at some other men’s private parts on occasion? Can’t you pretend to boil up a cauldron of bats’ wings and snake eyes? Or”—he grinned at her—“dance naked in the forest?”

“You are impossible,” she stated and soon sent him on his way, grumbling with dissatisfaction.

It was getting late. Deciding to end her chores for the night, she put her spinning materials inside a wide basket, then looked up to see Tykir watching her from across the hall. The usual smoldering glint in his honey eyes struck a spark in her, which she tried mightily to resist, despite the instant sexual fire ignited in her belly.

He crooked a finger at her.

She sat up stiffly. The arrogance of the man, demanding I come to him. I will show him. Alinor crooked her finger back at him, thinking to prompt some adverse reaction.

Instead, Tykir smiled and stood immediately, making his way toward her. How could she hate a man who could be so demanding one instant and so willing to bend the next? Apparently he didn’t care which one did the coming, him or her.

When he stepped close to her, he took her by the upper arms and pulled her to her feet. She felt the heat of his body and the even greater heat of his need of her. ’Twas a heady, heady aphrodisiac, being wanted so much by such a virile man. Mayhap for now that was enough.

“I missed you, sweetling,” he murmured.

Sweetling? “I missed you, too, troll,” she conceded.

He smiled widely, a wonderfully open display of gratitude for her simple concession…a smile that caused her toes to curl and her heart to expand with joy.

Yea, ’tis enough for now.

Then he pinched her buttock playfully as they made their way to the stairway and whispered in her ear, “Have I told you of a bed game I just remembered? ’Tis called ‘The Flaming Lance.’”

She stumbled, then righted herself, causing her bells to jingle. She flashed the grinning oaf a glare.

On the other hand…

It was the best yule season Dragonstead had ever witnessed, and they owed it all to Alinor.

With great satisfaction, Tykir looked about his great hall festooned with holly and evergreen branches—decorations more akin to Saxon homes than Viking. But his people seemed to like them. In truth, his estate had been well run for years, even in his absence, but Alinor had gone one step further and turned his castle into a home.

A dangerous, dangerous turn of events. One he could not dwell on. Best to turn his mind to the merriment around him.

Vikings welcomed any excuse for feasting. And it was a rare good feast Alinor had put on to celebrate the coming of the Christian God-child. There were Saxon and Norse foods alike, and some he could put no nationality to. Plum pudding and Yorkshire pudding, which was really not a pudding at all, but a bread baked in roast meat drippings. He’d insisted with an exaggerated horror that no chicken be served, though they did have many boiled eggs sprinkled with rare eastern spices. Some were even sliced into a jellied aspic rendered from reindeer hooves. No doubt Alinor would make everyone as sick of chicken eggs as she had of chicken broth. Then, too, there was an abundance of the pork sausages and soft cheeses favored by the Vikings…a necessary fare at any feast. But not a speck of gammelost was in sight, he noted with a smile. His Alinor would not permit that.

Tykir stopped his mind-meanderings on that unsettling thought. When did I start thinking of Alinor as mine?

As much joy as there was in his heart these days, there was also turmoil. He felt as if he were caught in a whirlpool and could not escape his swirling emotions. The only remedy was to wait out the storm and see what happened once the waters settled.