by Sandra Hill
“We will be leaving in seven days, even if we have to carry Tykir on a sledge.”
“I will not be dragged about like an old man,” Tykir complained indignantly. “Starting on the morrow, I will exercise my leg every day. T will ride in one week if it kills me.”
“It just may do that,” Rain commented with worry, slanting a look of condemnation at Selik.
“Every day we delay, so close to Brunanburh, brings the danger closer,” Selik explained. “Even now, the Saxons could be gathering forces to come after us. Tykir understands why we cannot wait any longer.”
“Yea, I do, Selik, and I am grateful that you have stayed with me so long.” He cast a gentle look at Rain and squeezed her hand in reassurance, “I come from strong stock. I intend to survive for a good long time. Mayhap I will even dance at your wedding.” He jiggled his eyebrows teasingly.
“My wedding!” Rain exclaimed, dumbfounded. “What would make you think I intend to get married—ever?”
Tykir rolled his eyes heavenward. “A little angel told me.”
Selik looked as if he were going to be sick.
That evening Rain sat cross-legged on the floor of Selik’s tent, a fur under her bottom and another thrown over her shoulders to protect her from the cold. She worried about the captives sleeping outside on the ground. Even though Selik had somehow found clean clothing and furs for them all—and heaven only knew where he had purloined them, probably off dead bodies somewhere—the autumn night had turned markedly cold.
She wanted to ask him if he could find tents for them as well, but his face went infuriatingly stubborn every time she brought up the subject of the captives. She determined to pick her battles carefully and wear him down with kindness.
Rain dumped the contents of her carryall on the ground in front of her, deciding it was time for a little inventory of all she had brought from the present on her unexpected trip.
Aside from her small emergency medical kit, she carried a meager amount of cosmetics—a mirrored compact, mascara, blush, and a tube of strawberry-flavored lip gloss, which would present some interesting possibilities if she ever kissed Selik again. Which, of course, she would not do, she told herself stubbornly, then immediately amended, Who are you kidding?
Other than a comb and brush, her wallet and checkbook, a really handy thing to have in the tenth century—ten thousand dollars in the bank and not a dime to spend—all Rain had was a Rubik’s Cube, which she often used to release tension during breaks between surgery, and two packs of Lifesavers—assorted flavors and Tropical Fruits. She popped a green candy in her mouth and put her belongings back in the bag.
She was fiddling with the Rubik’s Cube, the tip of her tongue pressed between her lips in concentration, when Selik came in a short time later, rubbing his bare arms briskly against the cold.
“Why is your tongue green?”
She stuck her tongue out farther, showing him the tiny circle still lying there. “I’m sucking on a Lifesaver.”
“Is it medicinal?”
“No,” she said with a laugh. “It’s candy. A sweet. Do you want one?”
He looked skeptical but took the yellow one she handed to him. His face lit up with pleasure when he began to chew it, crunching loudly.
“Don’t chew it. You just let it sit on your tongue,” she admonished. “You’re supposed to make it last.”
“I am very good at that,” he boasted, giving her a quick wink. “Making pleasures last, that is.”
With a snort of disgust at his inflated ego, she gave him another one, even though it was her favorite color, red. Selik learned quickly and let it rest on his tongue, savoring the sweet flavor. At one point, he stuck his tongue out very far, trying to see if it was red. Satisfied that it was, he insisted on having two more, an orange and a green. She refused to give up another red.
“How many of these lifecircles do you have?”
“Lifesavers,” she corrected with a smile, putting the half-empty roll away. “That is all,” she lied, crossing her fingers behind her back. Why should she share her Tropical Fruits with the brute? Maybe she would give one to Tykir, though.
“What’s that?” he asked, sinking down beside her on the fur.
“A Rubik’s Cube. Sort of a puzzle.”
He watched with interest as she worked the cube until she finally solved the puzzle. She didn’t bother to tell him she had a particular talent for the game and had once won a state competition in solving the puzzle.
“Let me try.”
She reset it and handed it to him, smiling inwardly with anticipation. He didn’t even comment an hour later when she crawled into the bed furs, fully clothed. She’d been prepared to argue with him about the Viking custom of sleeping naked, and the unfeeling brute hadn’t even noticed. Much later, after she’d been asleep for at least three hours, she opened her eyes to see him still sitting next to the sputtering candle, biting his bottom lip pensively, trying to solve the blasted puzzle.
Toward dawn, she felt him slip in behind her and move closer to her body’s warmth. He pulled her hair away from her neck and nuzzled the sensitive curve, then whispered, “Tomorrow you will teach me how to solve the puzzle.”
“Uh-huh,” she said sleepily.
“Mayhap I will teach you something in return.”
Her eyes shot open at that.
Chapter Seven
“Ubbi—doobie—doo. Da—da da—da da. Ubbi—doobie—doo. Da—da da—da da.”
“Ubbi, stop singing that tiresome drivel over and over and over, or I swear I will cut out your bloody tongue,” Tykir growled from atop his horse. “By the Faith! I am beginning to hear your lackwit name-song in my dreams now.”
“Now, Tykir, don’t unleash your bad moods on Ubbi,” Rain chastised teasingly as she drew her horse up alongside her brother.
After two days on horseback, Rain was actually starting to feel comfortable in the saddle of Godsend, the name she’d given to the destrier that saved her and Selik on the battlefield. When Rain had first announced her horse’s new name to Selik, he’d protested, “The name is as barmy as you are.” Ubbi, on the other hand, had beamed, declaring Godsend’s name “jist perfect.”
Rain looked over at the little man with concern as he rode another of the horses Selik and his men had brought back from the battlefield during the past week. She was glad Selik had insisted that Ubbi ride, instead of walking with the captives. His arthritis obviously gave him considerable pain.
In the bright moonlight, she could see Ubbi stealing surreptitious glances at her back, a habit the dear soul had developed whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.
“Ubbi, is something wrong with my back?”
He jerked to attention. “A thousan’ pardons, m’lady. I was jist admirin’ the trees yonder.”
Rain raised an eyebrow skeptically, knowing they were all damn sick of seeing nothing but trees, especially in the dark. Selik would only let them travel after dusk and before dawn to avoid any encounters with patrolling Saxons.
She rolled her shoulders and said with an exaggerated groan, “Ubbi, my shoulder blades are aching so! I feel like I have a thousand bees under the skin of my back just waiting to burst out.”
His mouth formed a perfect O.
Putting a hand over her mouth to hide a smile, she added, “My back is so tense. Do you think you could rub my back when we stop the next time?”
“Me?” he choked out.
“By the way, Ubbi, I seem to have misplaced something that was in my carryall. Have you seen a round thin gold circlet?” She lifted her hands from the reins for a second to demonstrate with her widespread fingers a circle about the size of her head.
He almost swallowed his teeth and whispered in an undertone of awe, not intended for her ears, “A halo! The blessed angel has lost her halo.”
It still amazed Rain that she could understand the language of these primitive people and vice-versa. But then, there was a lot about this time-travel experience
that astounded her.
Selik rode back then and drew up to her side as the full moon came out from behind a cloud. Clad in leather battle gear, Selik’s powerful body moved in the saddle of his massive destrier with easy grace. His long fingers held the reins lightly while he guided the horse with the flexing muscles of his thighs, evident through his tight black leggings.
Rain licked her suddenly dry lips and forced her eyes upward.
With a jerk of his head toward Tykir, Selik asked, “How does he? Need we stop again afore dawn?”
“Nay, we will not stop on my account,” Tykir asserted, overhearing Selik’s question.
Rain knew her brother had to be in excruciating pain, but the stubborn young man refused all offers of a sledge and rode in the saddle with his leg in a soft brace that she and Selik had improvised for him.
“Can you not force my stubborn sister to teach Ubbi another song?” Tykir urged Selik plaintively, changing the subject deliberately to shift attention away from himself. “My teeth are starting to ache with all these doobie-doobie words.”
Amusement flickered briefly in Selik’s shadowy eyes as they met hers in a warm caress. “Hah! What makes you think your sister would be biddable for me of a sudden?”
“Well, leastways, force her to teach him another song. One less jarring on the senses.”
Rain’s face perked instantly.
“Nay!” Selik and Tykir both snapped out quickly in appalled voices before she had a chance to speak.
“Do not think of starting on that other one—that achy-breaky-heart thing,” Selik ordered with a groan. “Good Lord, do they not have any soft melodies in your country?”
“Mayhap ’tis your shrillness,” Tykir added. “I tell you kindly, sister, you have a voice that could peel bark off a tree.”
“How nice of you to notice that I can’t carry a tune, Tykir. I’ll remember that when I change your bandages tonight.”
Selik threw back his head and laughed, low and throaty, at the bantering between brother and sister. His amusement wiped the lines of rage and pain from his face as it relaxed for the moment, and he looked years younger.
When they finally stopped to camp at daybreak in a thickly wooded glen, Tykir was no longer joking, and Rain removed the dressings on his leg with trepidation. His stitches remained intact and no inflammation marked the wound, but his mouth formed a thin white line of pain. With tightly balled hands, he could barely move from his horse to the pallet they prepared for him.
Rain ordered Ubbi to sterilize her needles over the cooking fire, and within an hour, Tykir slept peacefully, the acupuncture needles stuck in the strategic body points to alleviate pain. A guard sat nearby to make sure that Tykir did not jar the needles in his slumber.
Selik, on the other hand, watched the whole procedure with horror. His golden tan paled and his knuckles whitened as he fisted his fingers tightly.
Rain had no other medical duties to perform, so she went over to the cooking fire and offered to help Blanche prepare the meal.
As Rain turned the large chunks of venison roasting over the low fire, she watched Blanche move with brisk efficiency, preparing dough for the flat manchet bread which would bake in the hot coals. The Saxon girl had cleaned up well. Too well, Rain admitted jealously, as she noticed the men in the camp stop by on one pretext or another to offer their help. One suitor gathered herbs. Another, fresh water. Even Gorm had turned into a rip-roaring Lothario with his clean red hair slicked back wetly into a single braid and his grizzly face newly shaved. If he didn’t smile and reveal the missing front tooth, he might almost be handsome, Rain had to admit.
But the disgustingly petite young woman ignored them all. She had her eyes on bigger game. Selik.
Rain tried to ignore the green-eyed monster that slithered just under the surface of her skin every time she saw Blanche cast her sultry eyes his way or swing her hips when she walked by him with assumed casualness on far too many occasions. Rain had to keep reminding herself that the Saxon Lolita was probably no more than sixteen years old, a child really. Hah! she corrected herself immediately—the brunette’s knowing glances bespoke ageless feminine wiles, ones Rain had yet to learn. And she was thirty!
Even worse was the fact that Selik—the infuriating Viking—looked pleased. Rain watched with jealousy as Selik’s silvery eyes glittered with humor and his sensual lips broke into a dazzling smile when Blanche stood blatantly close to him and displayed in age-old body language what she wanted from him, even as she asked such a simple question as, “Where do you keep the salt, master?”
Not in his bloody breeches, you whore!
Rain glared at Selik with an urge to throttle as his appreciative eyes followed the movement of Blanche’s well-curved derrière bending over a basket of greens she had just collected. A Playboy bunny couldn’t have posed so seductively.
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.”
Rain gasped.
“Oh, I have rutted with women because I thought it was what a man should do, because I thought it would make me forget. But I tired of the meaningless couplings two years ago.”
“But you implied that you might go to Blanche,” she interrupted.
Selik shook his head wearily. “There have been a hundred Blanches in my life. But I have not really wanted a woman for such a long time. Until ten days ago. Until I met a maddening, shrewish angel, claiming to hail from the future, who has damn well turned my life upside down and inside out.”
“Oh, Selik.”
“Do not ‘Oh, Selik’ me,” he warned. “I do not welcome these softer yearnings. I mislike feeling again.” He started to say something more, then stopped abruptly, spinning on his heel and walking away from her.