Santa Viking (4 page)

“Good idea, brother,” Eirik said.

They both got up, their weapon care forgotten.

Bolthor was left alone to stare across the hall at the sly woman who was deliberately not trying to seduce him.

Oops, they did it again
 . . .

Two
sennights
here at Dragonstead, two days till Christmas, and Katherine felt as if she was making no progress in her hunt for a new husband.

Katherine was in the storage room gathering supplies for Alinor, the first private moment she’d had since her arrival. If Bolthor did not soon offer some encouragement, she would have to direct her attentions elsewhere. Despite all of Alinor and Eadyth’s claims to the contrary, there were some men who were just not seduceable.

Wearily, she began to climb up the ladder to the high shelf. With a basket dangling from one arm, she began to gather candles of all sizes smelling of bees wax and soaps scented with cloves, roses, even mint. Mayhap she was distracted by all her sniffing because she had not heard Bolthor enter the room, not even the door slamming behind him.

“Milady! What do you up there?” Bolthor asked with dismay.

She jerked up, the ladder teetered, and she fell, arms flailing, with soap and candles flying everywhere. Luckily, Bolthor was there to break her fall. But he was caught off guard, too, and fell backwards, taking her with him to the hard dirt floor.

“I was fetching candles and soap,” she said.

“I was fetching more wine,” he said at the same time.

And they both realized in the same instant how close they were. Katherine closed her eyes to prevent herself from lowering her face even more so that their lips would meet.

She moaned.

Or was it Bolthor?

Bolthor’s hands cupped her face, and he was drawing her mouth down to his. Down, down, down, her head descended bit by bit. A white heat passed through her body, from her brain to her breasts and woman’s place, and most definitely her lips that yearned for his touch.

It was a molding, changing kiss of many patterns. At first. But then, it was not so gentle. He became rapacious, forcing her mouth open with his thrusting tongue. Wet and noisy, they went at each other like starved souls. He sucked her tongue into his mouth. She nipped his bottom lip.

“Katherine, Katherine, Katherine,” he said once when he dragged his mouth from hers. His hot breath fanned her face.

In truth, every little thing he did, even staring at her, fanned her woman flames, making her yearn for something she had ne’er experienced before. “Do not stop. For the love of Mary, do not stop,” she said, forcing him to resume the kiss.

He groaned. “So long, it has been so long.” Then he rolled over so she was on the bottom. Somehow her legs had parted, and he lay cradled against her hips with his manpart aligned with her womanpart.

A ripping sound, and she saw the front of her
gunna
torn and her bare breasts exposed to his feasting eyes and exploring fingers and then his suckling mouth. She did not care. Keening, she arched her hips up with a pulsing pleasure that was so intense it was almost pain. What started as a tingling between her legs soon turned into a knot of overwhelming desire, a desire that pulled and twisted deep inside.

Her hands dug into his shoulders. Not satisfied, her arms wrapped around him, hands sweeping over his back and waist, even his buttocks, wanting so much, wanting him even closer than he already was. “Please,” she kept saying, and she knew not what she was pleading for.

“You are so sweet. My sweet Katherine,” Bolthor was saying in between kisses and hot caresses.

His hands reached down and swept the hem of her gunna higher, then higher. He gasped then. “You are wearing no undergarments, Katherine,” he accused, as if she did not already know that. “In this cold and drafty keep?”

Blushing, she informed him, “I washed my small clothes this morn. They are drying in my bedchamber.”

More information than the man needed, but she did not want him to think she had planned this meeting and came prepared. Which she would have if she’d thought of it.

He was fumbling with the ties of his braies, then she felt his naked staff at her woman’s portal. But did he enter her then? Nay. Instead, he spread her legs wider and stared at her,
down there
. Satisfied with what he saw, he used a forefinger to flutter against a part of her she had not even known existed. She started to scream at the intensity of pleasure that erupted, but he caught her scream with his mouth and resumed deep tongue kissing.

His hands grabbed her knees, spread her yet wider, pushed her ankles up nigh to her buttocks, and then he entered her with a deep, long thrust. And all the while, he continued to flutter her down there. Rocking her gently. She saw stars behind her closed eyelids.

Her woman’s sheath was convulsing around his staff as he began long, slow strokes, in and out, in and out. Once she reached one plateau of inner spasms, new ones started. Over and over, she was peaking. If she were not so dazed by everything that was happening, she might have been embarrassed, but she could no more stop what was happening, or want to, than stop the sun from rising or the winds from blowing.

This went on for what seemed like forever, the strokes becoming shorter and harder, punishing almost, but then Bolthor made a raw sound deep in his throat, arched his neck back, his good eye closed, and slammed into her one last time, spilling his seed inside her molten channel.

As he lay panting on her in the aftermath, smaller and smaller clasps of her inner muscles continued till she too lay panting and well-sated.

Finally, when he raised his head to stare down at her, the expression on his face already turning bleak, she put a fingertip on his mouth and said, “I did not plan this, Bolthor. No matter what you may think of me, I did not set out deliberately to seduce you in here.”
Mayhap, outside, in other parts of the keep, but not in here.

He shook his head. “’Twas my fault. A mistake, but still
my
mistake. I should have had more control over—”

“Nay! Do not demean this beautiful thing that happened betwixt us. Leastways, it was beautiful for me.”

“Me, too,” he said, but he did not appear happy about that fact. And he especially did not appear happy when that soft part of him that was still inside her began to grow not so soft.

She whimpered, wanting to move against him to indicate how much she wanted him again, but knowing he would resist yet another “mistake.”

Instead, he groaned and traced her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “May the gods save me! I cannot resist you.” With those words, he made love to her again, and this time it was slow and deliberate and very, very pleasurable. More and more, she was thinking that she and Bolthor were well-matched.

But what would tomorrow bring?

Dumb men say dumb things
 . . .

He avoided her all that day and the next.

In return, a confused and disappointed Katherine also avoided him, as did her children, except for five-year-old Luke, who approached him once when his mother was helping Alinor in the kitchen. “Mother says we must not bother you anymore. Do we bother you?”

Bolthor tousled the boy’s hair and said, “Nay, you do not bother me, but you must needs obey your mother.”

The boy walked away, feet dragging with dejection, and Bolthor felt lower than a troll.

Something needed to be done. So, he pulled Katherine aside after the evening meal. “We must talk,” he said.

“Must we?” the stubborn wench replied, pulling her arm out of his grasp.

“About yesterday.”

She arched her eyebrows, not about to make this easy for him.

“I have always taken precautions with women.” Spilling his seed outside the body was not a perfect method, but better than none. “I did not with you. You must tell me if there are
 . . .
consequences.” The minute the words left his mouth, he knew he’d misspoken.

“Consequences?” she nigh shrieked. “Is that what they are calling babes these days?”

“Shhhh.” He tried to pull her farther along the corridor where no one could overhear.

Once again, she wrenched her arm away from him. “Know this, you fool, if there are
consequences
, I will take care of them myself, just as I have handled every other
consequence
in my life. Do not worry yourself that I will makes claims on you.”

He wanted to apologize for his ill-chosen words. He wanted to say how much her giving herself to him mattered. He wanted to tell her that he might just want her to make claims on him. He wanted to tell her so much.

But he did not, and that was his biggest mistake of all.

Was it Christ in the manger, or dog in the manger
 . . . 
?

By Christmas Eve, Katherine had given up on Bolthor, and that meant that she truly needed to find another mate amongst those here for the yule celebration at Dragonstead.

A wild boar and two haunches of venison were roasting on spits for the feasts to come. Not to mention twenty chickens from Wickshire. The cook and scullery maids had worked since dawn to prepare a wide assortment of foods and delicacies . . . and to kill and pluck all those chickens. The great hall smelled of evergreen boughs that had been arranged on walls, mantles, and tabletops. Women, married and not, herself included, were kissed numerous times under the mistletoe that had been hung over every doorway. Musicians played lutes. Young maidens sang.

It was a merry, joyous time. Except for Katherine, who was beginning to feel desperate. She could not think about Bolthor and what had happened betwixt them. How could he disregard that bond that she at least knew they shared? Much as she believed that they were fated to be together, she did not have the liberty of time to convince him. As soon as a longship could travel through the fjord, she would be traveling back to Britain
 . . .
and to the king’s orders, whatever they might be.

Taking a long drink of mead from her cup, she turned to her dining companion on her right, Finn Finehair. Of all the unmarried men she had met thus far, he was her first choice
 . . .
after Bolthor. “Do you have a home here in the Norselands?” she inquired.

He shook his head. “I come from Jorvik. My father was a Viking merchant, but my mother was of good Saxon stock. I grew up on a small property of my mother’s outside the trading town. My sister and her family reside there now.”

Hmmm. That made him an even better choice than some Vikings. He would not be averse to living in Britain. “Have you ever wed? Do you have children?” Katherine blushed at being blunt in her questions. “Forgive me. You do not need to answer. Betimes I am too curious.”

“Not at all,” he said, stroking his too perfect mustache. His hair was black and long with colored beads woven into some of the strands, matched by an impeccably trimmed mustache and a short beard that he had trained into a fork. With no stray eyebrow hairs bridging his nose, with teeth as white as snow, with fingernails clipped and clean, she could very well believe the rumor that he also clipped his chest and manhairs. “I have ne’er been married, though I was betrothed at one time. Sweet Millicent died afore the wedding of a lung fever. And I have no children that I know of.”

“Let us be frank,” she said then, deciding that ’twas best to be honest up front, “I am in need of a husband. I have four sons and three small estates that need protection and coin to replenish their stores. They
 . . .
we
 . . .
would be a good investment for the right man.”