by Sandra Hill
Selik reached out to smack his butt as he passed, but Adam swerved agilely out of his way. She thought she saw him stick out his tongue.
Selik’s eyes locked with Rain’s then, glittering with silvery amusement. He shook his head despairingly. “Do you realize what a job you have taken on here? That wet-nosed little whelp will cause more deviltry than all the rest combined.”
Rain put a hand comfortingly on his arm. “Honey, I think if your son, Thorkel, had lived, he would have been just like Adam.”
At first, anger flashed across his face at her mention of his dead son, turning his jaw rigid. He clenched his fists whitely at his side. But then he seemed to ponder her words, and his hands relaxed, reaching out for her. He put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her against his side, and chuckled. “I think you are right.”
“And, Selik…”
“What?”
“I think he deliberately sets out to antagonize you, just to get your attention.”
“Hmph! He has more than succeeded.”
“He’s been taking care of his sister for so long. I think he just wants someone bigger and stronger to lean on. Someone he admires, who—”
“Stop while you are ahead, Rain. Even I am not so thickheaded as to believe that.”
Blanche prepared a veritable feast, making good use of the plentiful assortment of foods Selik had provided—beef stew with vegetables and thick gravy, manchet bread, freshly churned butter, crisp apples and pears, and honey still in the comb. The children ate a tremendous amount of food, and Rain knew she would have to find some way of providing for them, especially through the harsh winter months. Perhaps she could come to a better system of payment for her services at the hospitium. She would think this through after Selik left. His departure tomorrow night hammered continually in her mind.
After the meal, some of the children helped Blanche clean up. Others assisted Ubbi in dismantling the long trestle table. The one-piece wooden top was leaned against a far wall, and the benches arranged near the fireplace wall with straw-filled mattresses for sleeping. Other mattresses lay on the floor in front of the fire.
The children yawned sleepily with full stomachs and the heat of the blaze, but still they listened attentively to the bedtime stories Rain was telling them while she ran a comb through one after another of the little girls’ hair. Head lice had been a severe problem in the beginning, but better hygiene had already eradicated most of the pesky varmints. She intended to keep it that way with careful supervision.
“Once upon a time there was a little girl named Red Riding Hood,” Rain started, and as she related the cherished stories of her own childhood for her mesmerized audience, she had trouble keeping her eyes off Selik, who sat on a pile of bed furs with Adela nestled snugly on his lap like a contented cat. The darling little girl even rubbed her cheek against his wide chest every so often in a kittenish fashion.
Selik was peeling apples for the children His long fingers—his wonderfully slender, hands which could perform magic on her body—removed the skins in long, curly spirals and carefully cut the fruit into slices in a manner she must be crazy to find erotic. But she did. With a joyful chuckle, he offered pieces to each of the children, who opened their mouths for him like newborn birds. She imagined those same fingers peeling off her clothing, skimming her body, separating her secret folds. When his tongue flicked out and licked the juices from his fingertips, she imagined…Oh, Lord.
“Finish the tale,” one of the children whined, and Rain realized with embarrassment that she’d stopped midway through her story. Selik smiled at her and held out an apple slice. She reached for it but he held it out of reach, forcing her to open her mouth for him. When he placed it in her mouth, his fingers lingered for a second on her lips, and her tongue licked the sweet nectar from his fingertips. Her eyes locked with his, and Rain saw the deep want in their silvery depths, matching her own.
This is your beloved, the voice said.
Rain quivered inside with deep agreement.
She noticed the children staring at her in question. And Blanche rattling her pots jealously. Trying hard not to stammer, Rain continued with her story. “And then Red Riding Hood said, ‘Grandma, what big eyes you have….’”
While she continued with other bedtime stories she thought might interest them—Robin Hood, Aladdin and His Magic Lamp, Peter Pan—she saw Selik reach for a small block of wood and a paring knife. She even told her own version of Little Orphan Annie, thinking it would have particular significance to these homeless children.
She brightened suddenly on thinking of one particularly relevant tale, Beauty and the Beast. When she finished with, “And they lived happily ever after,” Selik raised an eyebrow and asked, “Hah! Now I know where you get your halfwit notions. Were you thinking to turn my beastly self into a prince with one of your kisses?”
Rain just smiled.
Then Selik related sagas of legendary Norse heroes—Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, Harald Fairhair, and others. As he talked, Selik’s fingers drew magic from the lifeless piece of oak with his sharp knife. First the ears of the wolf emerged, then the eyes and muzzle, even the fine details of the animal’s fur.
The figure that emerged was a crude, quickly executed rendering, the edges rough and unfinished, but his artistic talent shone through. He handed the wood sculpture to Rain as if it were a priceless object of art, which it was to her.
“For remembrance,” he whispered.
Tears welled in her eyes at the reminder that he wouldn’t be with her much longer. And she choked back a plea for him to change his mind. Her time for resistance and fighting to mold Selik into something he was not had ended. Now she just wanted to cherish every minute of the remaining time they had together.
Selik stood and laid the sleeping Adela on a nearby cot, pulling a woolen cloak up tenderly to her tiny shoulders. Then he picked up three of the bed furs and held his hand out to Rain, leading her toward the ladder.
“Yer goin’ to sleep up in the loft?” Ubbi asked incredulously. “’Tis colder than a glacier up there.”
“Rain will keep me warm,” Selik answered huskily, pushing her ahead of him up the ladder.
And she vowed that she would.
Selik wanted this night to last forever. With bed furs piled under and over them, and a dozen candles illuminating their bed place, he paid slow, soul-searing homage to Rain’s body. Meticulously, his fingers explored every part of her form, memorizing, storing pleasures in his mind for future retrieval. With each whimper and mewling cry of pleasure he drew from her, his heart soared. Truly, a woman’s pleasure was man’s aphrodisiac.
No dark shadows of the past haunted Selik tonight. He thought only of now, and the memories he must make and cherish with Rain, his beloved Rain.
“Will I ever see you again?” she asked, her soft voice breaking as she bravely tried to stifle her sobs.
“Mayhap.”
“But, Selik, if you die, then I’ve failed. If I was sent back in time to save you, and I—and I can’t, then what was the point?”
He smiled gently and pulled her into the crook of his shoulder, caressing her gently. He fingered the edges of her hair, tenderly traced the line of her jaw, brushed her collarbone with a whispery caress. “I think your God accomplished all that He wanted—if ’twas He who sent you. Can you not see that you have healed me of my shame? You have melted my heart, taught me to love again. Even if we never meet again, I cannot regret that.”
“If that’s true, then why do you have to leave?”
“Steven,” he said flatly. “I could stop blaming the entire Saxon race for Astrid’s and Thorkel’s deaths, perchance even give up my vendetta, but not against Gravely. I love you, Rain, but honor demands I remove his demon presence from this earth.”
She resigned herself then and gave herself up to their mutual enjoyment.
When he knelt between her legs and lay upon her body, his thundering heart pounded against her breasts. She looked up at him
in wonder, murmuring, “Our hearts seem to beat with the same rhythm.”
“Yea,” he answered softly, putting a hand over her breast, between their two hearts. “They seem to be repeating one word—love, love, love, love….”
He saw the unquenchable pain in Rain’s honey eyes flecked with rings of gold, but he soon turned it to molten desire. He felt the rigid tension of cold regret in her arms and legs, and he loosened them into clinging, writhing vines of mindless heat. When her lips opened to challenge his decisions once again, he silenced her with his consuming mouth.
When he imbedded himself in her sweet flesh, she cried out her ecstasy. He thrust in and out, slowly, slowly, until her body began to ripple with tiny convulsions of mind-shattering pleasure. “Oh…oh…oh…God…please!”
Selik held himself rigid inside her until her arousal peaked and shattered, then began the rhythm again. He controlled her, set the pace. Slow, fast, slow, fast.
“Tell me,” he demanded in a low, raw voice.
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I…a-a-ah…sweet Jesus…I love you!”
Still he held himself in almost painful control, filling her with his rock hardness, surely as far as her womb, refusing to let go of his own tightly coiled, mind-boiling need.
“Now, again,” he said with an exultant cry of masculine pride as she screamed his name, and he stroked her almost continually spasming woman-folds with long, long, agonizingly slow, intensely sensitized caresses of his manhood.
“Tell me again.”
“I love you, dammit. Please…oh, please…”
Selik laughed aloud, a low, masculine roar of pleasure, then arched his back and threw his head back, his veins feeling as if they were about to burst in his neck. Rain wrapped her legs around his waist, tossing her head from side to side, and he slammed into her. His sorely challenged self-control broke loose then, and he poured his man-seed into her with a roar of pleasure so intense that his soul was surely marked forever.
“I love you, dearling. Forever,” he cried out as she vibrated hotly around him in one last shattering expression of her continually peaking pleasure.
“I love you, too.” Then, in the aftershocks of her progressively smaller spasms, she choked out, “You’re killing me.”
He smiled against her neck, panting to regain his breath. “Yea, but what a way to die!”
They fell asleep in each other’s arms then, sated and intensely relaxed. When dawn light crept through the loft window, Selik sat up with distress.
“Wha-what?” Rain asked groggily, sitting up beside him.
“Ah, sweetling, I wanted to make love to you through the night, but I fell asleep.”
Rain laughed and wrapped her arms around his waist, her breasts rubbing enticingly against his chest hairs. “Oh, yeah! Big talk!”
He lowered her to the bed and growled against one hardened nipple, pressing his burgeoning manhood against her. “Big? You want big?” he said, laughing, and he gave it to her.
Hours sped by like minutes the rest of the day. Selik made all the boys come outside to the woods with him, where they pulled one dead tree after another to the barn clearing and cut them into logs. By early afternoon, they had stacked enough wood beside the barn to last for months.
Then he sat down with Rain and Ubbi at the table. While they ate bread and hard cheese, washed down with mead, he told Ubbi, “Go into Jorvik on the morrow. Gyda will tell you where I have coins stashed.”
“Rain, you are not to depend on the culdees and their tightfisted charity for your daily bread. Use my funds, and if you need more, go to Gyda.”
Rain nodded, unable to speak over the lump in her throat.
He handed her a piece of parchment, telling her, “I have deeded over the farmstead to you.”
Rain gasped. “No, I don’t want it,” she cried, shoving it back into his hands in a panic. Selik behaved like a man about to die, getting his affairs in order.
“Take it,” he said firmly, shoving it back in her hands. “The Saxon soldiers may return, and you will need proof of ownership. I have dated it back to last spring so they will not think I have been here.”
For hours, he kept adding details for Rain to remember—the name of a Viking man in Jorvik who might be willing to till the fields for them come spring, a reminder to get the money Ella owed her, a warning to be careful of the roaming Saxon soldiers, advice on how to handle the wily culdees at the minster. On and on he went, when all Rain wanted was to cling to his shoulders and beg him not to go.
Once, when he stood to replenish his goblet of mead, Adam walked up and kicked him in the shin. “What was that for, you bloody imp?” he snarled, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and lifting him high in the air.
“Fer leavin’, ya damn heathen bloody cod,” he said on a sob, flailing out at him. “Yer jist like all the rest. Me father. Me mother. Nobody ever stays,” he blubbered, kicking wildly with his arms and legs.
Stunned, Selik just stared at the angry boy for a moment, then groaned, almost painfully, and drew Adam into his arms, hugging him tightly to his chest. At first, Adam fought him mightily with scratching hands and vulgar obscenities. Finally, he calmed down and buried his face in Selik’s neck.
Selik said nothing, just stared at Rain through his slate eyes, and walked with Adam to a far corner of the barn, where he sat down with him on his lap and talked soothingly for a long time.
Rain’s heart felt like fine crystal shattering into a million tiny pieces. She didn’t know if she could survive without this man—the other side of her soul, the beat in her heart…her forever love.
Dinner was a solemn, silent affair that night, even though Blanche went out of her way to make a spectacular farewell meal—golden crisp chicken, roasted venison, boiled vegetables, egg-and-honey custard, fresh fruit. Even the children sat still, uncommonly quiet, darting frightened eyes from one somber adult to the other, questioning, not understanding all the undercurrents.
Gorm and the soldiers rode up at nightfall, leading the saddled Fury behind them. Selik strode forward and spoke with them, and Rain cringed before the fierce warrior into which her lover had transformed himself. He wore leather braies under his calf-length flexible chain mail. A wool tunic of deep blue covered the armor, and a heavy fur mantle covered all. He attached his sword, Wrath, and his helmet and pike to his saddle, then turned back to Rain.
She walked up to him, daunted by this stranger in fighting garb, but there was not the usual berserkness in his eyes now, only a deep, abiding love. She hoped she hadn’t weakened him with her love.
“Come back to me, Selik.”
“If I can,” he promised in a soft voice, raising his gauntleted hand hesitantly. Then, as if unable to help himself, he caressed her lips with his cold fingertips. “If I can.”
“I’ll come after you if you don’t,” she cried out as he dropped his hand and swung up into his saddle. “Do you hear me? I’ll come after you.”
He smiled grimly, then raised the helmet to his head. He looked down at her and mouthed the words, “I love you. Forever.”
He turned his horse then, without another word, and Rain sank to the ground, her knees giving way. Only then did she weep out all her pain and misgivings over Selik’s departure.
“Keep him safe, God,” she prayed with racking sobs. “Do you hear me, dammit? You gave him to me. Don’t you dare take him away. Please, God, oh please, I beg You, keep him safe.”
Unfortunately, the voice in her head was deathly quiet.
Chapter Eighteen
A cloud hung over the small farmstead during the following weeks as the weather turned bitter and gray. All the inhabitants of the crowded barn worked somberly at their assigned tasks, as if sensing some impending doom. Uncommonly quiet, the children continued to chop and stack firewood, wash clothing, milk the cow, gather eggs, and clean the barn. Rain almost wished for their previo
us shrieks and childish mischief.
Even Adam had turned into a model child. Well, that was an exaggeration, she immediately amended. His filthy mouth spat out the usual vulgar words, but now he often apologized afterward. He played tyrant with the other children, taking naturally to a leadership role, but he tried hard to mellow his orders with compliments these days. It touched her heart deeply, and frightened her, to see the concern for Selik in his big brown eyes.
After two weeks of fretting and endless pacing, Rain decided to follow up on an earlier idea she’d had concerning the smallpox that often plagued these medieval people. She didn’t want to do anything to change the course of medical history, but she saw no harm in vaccinating her small brood. She asked Ubbi for his help.
“Well, now I know ye are truly addlewitted,” Ubbi exclaimed, throwing down the small quern stone he was using to sharpen his knives and sword. He’d been in a bad mood since Selik left because his master had ordered him to stay and protect Rain and the orphans. And his arthritis had been acting up. Her request now didn’t help. “’Tis one thing fer God to send me a message to kidnap the master. But to go and collect the ooze from pox sores on cows? Nay, I will not do it.”
“Ubbi, honey—”
“Do not be honey-ing me,” he warned, folding his arms across his chest adamantly.
“I can go,” Adam volunteered.
“You will not,” Rain and Ubbi both exclaimed in horror.
“Well, if Ubbi fears the bloody cows—”
“Best ye go help yer sister empty that chamber pot she be swingin’ from side to side,” Ubbi sputtered out, “lest I be wipin’ up the soiled rushes with yer face. And stay away from the cows—any cow.” He turned back to Rain with a shake of his head. “Gawd!”
Did you call?
“Did ye hear that?” Ubbi cried out. “Did ye? Oh, now ye done it. Turned God on me, ye have!”