Sandra Hill (9 page)

Two hours! They’d been in the supermarket for two hours! Meredith had never spent so much time in a grocery store in her entire life.

Of all the odd things this odd Viking had encountered since arriving so oddly in her life, he claimed that the grocery store was the most marvelous. In the fruit
section, he’d examined each and every different item, and she’d had to stop him from eating as he went along.

“But where does all this come from?” he’d exclaimed.

“From all over the world.”

“On ships?”

“Some of it.”

He’d had the same incredulous reaction in the vegetable department. “Who would have e’er guessed that so many bloody vegetables exist.”

Then it was the boxes that held all the items in the store, whether they were cereals or pastas or ice cream. “I have ne’er seen a land with such a reverence for boxes.”

Hmmm. She’d never thought about it before, but she guessed he was right.

And metal cans, as well, drew his fascination.

But the meat section alarmed him most. “I don’t understand. What do men in your country do? What is their role? If they are not the hunters and protectors of their families…” His words had trailed off in dismay. “Are men not men here?”

“Men earn the money to take care of their families,” she’d tried to explain. “Well, actually, that’s not quite true. Today, in most families, the men and women both work. They share duties equally.”

“Men are not the heads of the families?”

“The roles aren’t defined like that anymore.” She’d stumbled in her explanation, and she could see that Rolf was still deeply troubled. The more time they spent in the giant supermarket, the more depressed he seemed to get.

“What’s wrong?”

“The excess. There’s too much of everything in your land. And it comes too easy. I don’t think I’d want to live in such a land. Surely, the men become soft. It’s all so confusing.”

Meredith couldn’t argue with that.

But now, her cart was overflowing, and even Rolf’s energies seemed to be flagging.

“What are those?” he asked, nudging her to look at a toddler seated in his mother’s cart. The imp was eating Oreos with meticulous detail, taking the two cookies apart carefully, licking the icing with the tip of his little pink tongue, then crunching the outside wafers.

Rolf licked his lips in imitation.

“Those are Oreo cookies,” she said with a laugh. Really, Rolf was like a little boy himself sometimes. She pointed to the shelf behind him.

Rolf put three packs in her cart, then added another.

There was only one more aisle Meredith needed to hit. Personal products. She bought Rolf some deodorant, having to explain its purpose.

He sniffed the open Mennen roll-on. “It’s acceptable, but it doesn’t smell as good as your drek.”

Then she bought him a toothbrush, which he considered a good invention, though shredded twigs had done well enough in the past. She hesitated in one last section, then threw a box of condoms in the cart. Forget about pregnancy…a woman couldn’t be too cautious about AIDS these days.

When Rolf asked what they were, she said she’d explain later. But he was persistent and sounded out the words aloud. “Tro-jan. Cone-dome.”

“Rolf. Be quiet,” she gritted out.

“Why is your face so red?” he asked suspiciously, looking from her to the package. He stopped in his
tracks, refusing to move till she explained. After she did, briefly, he gazed at her in amazement, and then said, “And you bought only one box? Hah!” He scooped two more boxes off the shelf and threw them in the cart.

Smiling from ear to ear, he took the cart out of her hands and rolled it toward the cashier. She finally caught up with him at the checkout line.

“I’m hungry,” Rolf growled. “Let’s hurry home.” He ran a fingertip caressingly along her jaw, tilting up her chin for a brief kiss. The husky tone of Rolf’s voice and the smoky haze of his whiskey eyes told her loud and clear that his appetite wasn’t for food.

And. Lord help her, Meredith shared the hunger.

Rolf kissed her shoulder while the bag boy was stuffing their groceries into paper sacks. Even through her sweater, Meredith felt seared by his heat.

The minute they left the store, he pulled her into his embrace and pressed his lips against the inside of one wrist, then the other. The whole time, his eyes held hers with a promise that ricocheted between them.

After they’d put all the bags into the trunk of her car, Rolf backed her up against the fender, bracketed her face with his hands to hold her in place—not that she had any intention of moving—and
really
kissed her. Mouth against mouth. Insistent. Voracious. With age-old expertise, her Viking brushed and slanted and shaped her lips to fit his perfectly. Then he used his tongue to demonstrate the depth of his hunger for her. Meredith’s knees would have buckled if she hadn’t been braced against the car, pinioned by Rolf’s body. Then he pulled back slightly and grinned, as if satisfied with his work.

She practically crawled into the driver’s seat and buckled up, then inhaled deeply to calm down. Focusing on her driving, she wasn’t immediately aware that Rolf had released his seat belt and moved closer to her. Too late she realized that one arm lay across the back of her seat rest. The fingertips of that hand played with the edges of her hair, and the other hand rested heavily on her knee…unmoving, but dangerous.

“Rolf,” she protested, “I can’t concentrate when you do that.”

He grinned against her ear, whispering, “Exactly.”

She felt his warm breath before she heard the word, and a delicious shiver traveled through the sensitive whorls of her ear, straight down through her body, making erotic pit stops along the way at her breasts and the vee of her thighs.

She moaned softly and turned off the highway onto the local access road leading to her house.

“Do you like this?” he drawled, and used the tip of his wet tongue to trace all the shell-like crevices, then dart inside.

Meredith arched her neck against the too-intense pleasure that caused her breasts to peak into hard points, and throb. “Don’t,” she whimpered.

“Doesn’t it feel good?” he asked with surprise.

That was when she noticed the hand that had been resting on her knee was roving, a forefinger examining the inseam of her jeans.

“Open your thighs,” he coaxed.

She stared straight ahead, trying to convince herself that this lonely road needed her undivided attention. But her legs parted, of their own volition.

Now, while his mouth and teeth and tongue played seductive sex games with her ear and neck, his lone
fingertip traced a slow path along the inseam from knee to crotch to the other knee, then back again. Slowly. Over and over. Until she wanted to screech aloud with her increasing arousal and the urge to grab his hand and hold it where she needed it most.

“How do you feel now?”

She remained silent, not wanting to reveal her vulnerability.

“Your breasts,” he said huskily, looking at her there, “tell me how they feel.”

She made a soft mewling sound of resistance, never having talked like this with a man before. Besides, his teasing fingertip was still tantalizing her with its bold exploration.

“Tell me,” he pleaded. “About your breasts. How do they feel?”

She nodded mutely. “Full.”

“And?”

She didn’t know what to say.

“Are the nipples hard?”

“Very,” she confessed thickly. By now, she was creeping along at five miles a hour. She hoped no neighbors were outside to wonder what was wrong.

“Do you want me to touch them?”

She felt tears well in her eyes; that was how much she wanted his touch.

“I’ve wanted to touch you in that cat fur sweater all day. Every time you moved or stretched, I pictured your breasts underneath, waiting for me.”

She expected he would touch her then, but, instead, he sat back on his own side. She gave him a sideways glance and saw that he was equally aroused. “What?”

“We’re home,” he informed her with a wry grin.

Mortified that she’d lost her decorum so badly, Mer
edith pulled into the driveway. She couldn’t look at him now; he must be laughing at her. She released her seat belt and was about to open her car door when Rolf put his hands on either side of her waist and lifted her so she faced him on top of his lap, straddling him.

“Did you think I would end it so?” he said huskily as he adjusted her against his hardness.

“O-o-oh.” She began to keen—a low, alien sound for her.

He placed both hands over her breasts and circled, crooning over the softness of the angora sweater. “I can feel your nipples,” he whispered appreciatively. “They are large and hard.”

She stiffened against the cataclysmic spirals of pleasure radiating out from the mounds. But, instinctively, she arched her breasts forward, her arms extended backward holding onto his knees. When he took one nipple into his mouth, cloth and all, and began to suckle, they both groaned.

A wetness pooled between her legs, and Meredith realized she’d never in all her life been brought to this point of madness by a man, clothed or unclothed. And certainly not so quickly. Or in broad daylight. In a car.

My brain must be splintering apart
.

Then he moved to her other breast and, at the same time, spread his legs wide so that she moved even tighter into the cradle of hips.

It’s not my brain that’s splintering. It’s another body part. And, damn, it feels good
.

He palmed her buttocks and showed her how he wanted her to move against him.

And she did.

While she began the slow undulation he demonstrated, he held her face with his fingers twined in her
hair, grasping her scalp. Just before he pulled her lips to his, she saw that his parted lips were slack with passion, his suntanned cheeks flushed, and his eyes amber pools of over-the-edge arousal.

As his tongue imitated the thrusts of his hardness against the vee of her outspread legs, wave after wave of a bone-melting climax spun out from her center and she screamed into his mouth. She tried to pull away then, it was too much, but Rolf refused to let her go as he began his own climax, grinding against her from side to side.

He made a low, masculine sound deep in his throat, and, amazingly, Meredith’s arousal, once again, began to build and build and build. When he sucked on her tongue, drawing her into his mouth, and jerked against her hard…once, twice, three times, she exploded, her thighs trembling with the force of her release.

For what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few moments, the only sound in the car was that of their heavy breathing as they fought, forehead to forehead, to calm their racing hearts.

Meredith avoided his eyes. She was absolutely and utterly humiliated. What must he think of her? How could she slide off his lap gracefully and slither out of the car, without having to face him?

“Well, that certainly took the edge off my hunger.” He chuckled. “Now we can take a leisurely time with the main course.”

She made the mistake of looking at him then.

He wasn’t laughing, or teasing. He was stone-cold serious.

She must have gawked because he chucked her under the chin playfully.

Having no way to exit with dignity, Meredith scram
bled off him clumsily. “Listen, buster, there isn’t going to be any main course. This has got to end right here.”

“Why?”

“Because…because I don’t do things like this.”

“And you think I do?” Then, “What kinds of things?”

“Sex with virtual strangers.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah,
that
. You and I have got a business relationship, and that’s all,” she asserted as she opened the trunk to get the groceries. Lord, the ice cream was probably melted with all the heat they’d generated.

Remaining silent, he took several bags, too, and as they headed toward the front door, she thought, Well, finally, I’ve got through to the thick-headed fool. Now he understands.

But he immediately quashed that misguided conclusion of hers by asking, “Would you like to take a shower with me?”

She went slack-jawed with disbelief. Was she talking to a wall here, or just a typical male, who heard only what he wanted?

“I’ll even drek you, if you want.”

An ominous rumble of thunder followed by a streak of lightning put a quick damper on Rolf’s enticing suggestion.

“Ah! Thor must be jealous of my woman-luck.”

“Woman-luck?” Was he referring to her? The nerve—assuming he was about to get lucky! Or was he bragging that he’d already scored? Oh, all right, she admitted to herself, perhaps she had given him a
little
encouragement in the car. Well, okay, a lot. But that was no reason for him to—

“Yea, the thunder god throws his mighty hammer
Mjollnir
across the skies, causing lightning bolts, when mortal men offend him. The gods like to think they are the only ones blessed with the love arts.”

Love arts?
she mouthed silently.

“Best I be careful, or Thor will turn me into a troll.”
He winked at her before setting his grocery sacks on the stoop.

She hated when he winked. It made her feel all fluttery inside. And one thing thirty-five-year-old women should not be feeling was fluttery. “You already are a troll.”

“Oh? You have a taste for trolls then? For a certainty, you moaned your woman-pleasure for this troll moments ago.”

She made a clucking sound of disgust. “I did not.”

He arched a brow. “Perchance you need a reminder.” He advanced closer, running a teasing thumb over her lips.

She backed up against the door, her grocery bag clutched to her chest.

Another clap of thunder.

Rolf grimaced. “You get a reprieve, my lady. I must needs check on that timber afore the rains come.”

She relaxed. But only for a moment.

As he walked toward the sideyard and the longship, Rolf called over his shoulder, “Make ready the drek. This Viking just thought of a few troll tricks.”

Meredith couldn’t help laughing. The light carefree sound carried on the electrified air, surprising her. When was the last time she’d bantered with a man like this? Had she ever?

With a sigh, she turned, scrabbling in her pocket for the key. Before she could insert it, though, the front door swung open. Meredith jumped back, fully expecting another Dark Age intruder to pop out of the woodwork.

“Hi, Aunt Mer,” her niece Thea exclaimed as she kissed the air near Meredith’s right cheek and reached for one of the grocery bags on the steps. “Great
sweater, auntie, but did you know you have two wet stains on the front? Oh, don’t be embarrassed. You’re probably a slob like me. Genetics, don’tja know? I dropped strawberry ripple ice cream on my jeans at the airport.”

Meredith just gaped, too shocked by Thea’s appearance to be embarrassed over her sweater’s telltale spots. What alien being had invaded her darling niece’s body? And, oh, Lord! First a Viking time-traveler, now this…creature.

The twelve-year-old girl’s straight black hair was parted in the center and hung down to her rear, outlining faded jeans and a tie-dye T-shirt. Well, that was normal adolescent fare. But normalcy ended there. Black lipliner framed her full lips, filled in with dark purple gloss. She wore so much magenta mascara, eyeliner, and shadow that Meredith was surprised the girl could raise her lids. Greenish-brown enamel covered her obviously fake, two-inch fingernails. The pièce de résistance was a tiny hoop earring in her left nostril.

“I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in,” Thea went on breezily. “I called from the airport but there was no answer, so I hopped a cab. Geez, did you know it costs fifty dollars to take a taxi from Bangor? I only had thirty, and, like, gol-ly, was the cabbie mad! But, not to worry. I remembered where you hide the spare key and went inside. I had to break your piggy bank. Is that okay? I gave the man twenty dollars in quarters, plus a ten dollar tip in dimes. Good thing I listen to so much grunge rock, or I never would have understood some of his swear words.” Thea ended her rambling discourse with a sheepish grin.

Setting her grocery sack on the kitchen table, Thea made two more trips for the remaining bags. The whole
time, she bit her trembling bottom lip. “It’s okay that I came, isn’t it, Aunt Mer? I mean, Jillie didn’t push me on you, did she? Huh?”

Meanwhile, the girl had discovered the package of Oreos in the top of one bag and was already scarfing them down with little yumming sounds of appreciation.

“Jillie?” Meredith squeaked out, homing in on the most irrelevant of Thea’s words. What she’d like to ask was why her sister hadn’t told her Thea was already on her way when she’d called last night. Hah! Probably because she’d known Meredith would explode. “Since when do you call your mother Jillie?”

“After I started to get boobs, Mom said we should be more like, you know, sisters. She said she’s too young to have a grown daughter. Now we can be best friends. Isn’t that cool?” Thea’s sad eyes disclosed how uncool she really thought it was.

Yeah, real cool!
Frankly, as far as Meredith could tell, the girl didn’t have much of a bust yet, and she was far from grown up.
Jillie, Jillie, Jillie, when are you going to grow up yourself?
“Of course, it’s all right that you came,” she said, giving her niece’s thin shoulders a squeeze. “I love having you here. You’re my favorite niece, honey.”

“I’m, like, your
only
niece,” she said, beaming, “but my name’s not Thea anymore, you know. It’s Serenity.”

“Serenity?” Meredith laughed. “I thought your mother said it was Gourd.”

“That was last month.” Thea waved the air dismissively. “Everyone kept calling me Gordie, which is so-o-o juvenile. Besides, Serenity is more New Age.”

They grinned at each other.

“Aunt Mer, I promise I won’t do any…you know,
stuff…like shoplifting…or, know, get into trouble while I’m here. I can’t explain why I pull such stupid pranks anyway. I’m not really bad, you know. I’m
not
.” Her eyes filled with tears as she pleaded for understanding.

“Oh, sweetie, I know that,” Meredith assured her, using a tissue to dab at Thea’s wet cheeks. Then, seeking to lighten the conversation, Meredith commented, “Your makeup is so…so—”

“Cool?” Thea asked brightly, welcoming the change of subject. “It’s the latest from that new company, Urban Blight. Don’t you, like, just love it? This lip liner is called Mildew, but my favorite is Slime. You can borrow it sometime.”

“Uh, I don’t think so.”

“Jillie does. In fact, I think she stole my Puke nail enamel. I’m wearing Sludge, but it’s not nearly as awesome as Puke.”

Meredith put a hand to her forehead. She might just puke herself with all these disgusting colors staring her in the face.

“Holy cow!” Thea exclaimed then, staring at something behind Meredith. “Holy freakin’ cow!”

Meredith didn’t have to turn around to know what she would see. The troll.

“Oh, my God! Aunt Mer, are you makin’ it with Kevin Sorbo? Wait till the kids in Chicago hear this. Where’s the phone?”

“You’re not making any long-distance calls, young lady,” Meredith declared. She would think about Thea’s implication that she was “makin’ it” with a man later.

“Who’s Calf in Shore Bow?” Rolf asked, sauntering into the room. “You mentioned him afore, Merry-
Death.” Leaning against the refrigerator, he dried raindrops off his bare arms and wet hair with a dish towel. The whole time he watched with amusement as the two of them watched him. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the steady downpour of rain outside.

“You don’t know who Kevin Sorbo is? Gol-ly! You look just like him. He’s the actor who plays Hercules on TV. He is, like, such a boffo hunk.” She blushed at her last words.

“Hercules?” Rolf frowned in confusion.

“You know, the son of that Greek God, Zeus. Hercules was so strong and brave he was called on to do all these amazing feats. Tell him, Aunt Mer.”

“Greek? I’m not a Byzantine. I’m a Viking.”

“A Viking? Whoa! You’re, like, a pro-football player? Aunt Mer-e-dith! I never knew you were into sports.”

“Just the bed sport,” Rolf mumbled. “Leastways, a man can hope.” The poor man was obviously confused by the whole conversation. Luckily, her niece hadn’t heard his remark.

“Do you know Warren Moon?” Thea asked.

“Nay. Only the gods do war in moons. All my battles have been fought on earth, or sea.”

“Huh? I meant Warren Moon of the Minnesota Vikings.”

“Oh. I am of the Norse Vikings. We tend to be raiders, rather than plunderers.”

“Did they sell the Minnesota Vikings to the Oakland Raiders? Hmmm. You’d think I woulda heard of that. Do you have a Super Bowl ring?” Thea checked out his bare fingers and sighed with disappointment.

“I only wear arm rings. What is a bowl ring?”

“Oh, Lord!” Meredith groaned.

“Wait a minute. You said
Norse Viking
. Are you, like, from Norway?” Thea asked.

Meredith’s head shot up, and she gave Rolf a warning glance. She’d already advised him earlier when they were at the mall that it was not a good idea to tell people his time-travel nonsense.

Rolf hesitated and rubbed his belt buckle as if choosing his words carefully. “Yea, I am from Hordaland…the Norse lands across the sea.”

“Thea—I’m sorry, I just can’t call you Serenity, my tongue trips over the word—Thea, this is Geirolf Ericsson. He’s come to help with the longship project. Bear with him a little, he’s having trouble with the language.”

“Your aunt is giving me lessons,” he revealed, his lips twitching with amusement at her discomfort.

“Cool!” Thea said, already heading for the living room, the newspaper TV section in hand. “I’m on spring break for the next three weeks, you know. Maybe I can, like, help with lessons.”

Three weeks?
Meredith felt her stomach churn. She needed an antacid badly. Probably the start of ulcers, or something equally dire, like hormone overload.

Left alone for a moment, Rolf added with a determined gleam in his eyes before he followed after the girl, “And I plan to teach your aunt a few things in return.”

“Cool!” Thea repeated.

Never in a million years would Meredith ask what, but her imagination kicked in with a vengeance. And “cool” didn’t begin to describe her vision.

By nine o’clock that night, Thea was already conked out in the bed up in the loft that she would share with Meredith. Without makeup and wearing a Mickey Mouse nightshirt, she looked like the twelve-year-old child she was. Meredith’s heart went out to the needy girl, but she wasn’t sure how to help her.

Exhausted herself by the day’s events, Meredith carried a pile of linens downstairs to make a bed for Rolf on the sofa. She stopped midstep at the poignant sight of the huge man gazing forlornly into the fireplace. An elbow propped on the mantle supported his tilted head. His free hand held a poker, which he used distractedly to stir the blazing fire.

Meredith knew he was distressed by all the “modern” inventions he’d seen today, from the mall to the television, which he’d watched in disbelief for hours with Thea. But she still couldn’t accept his time-travel story. There had to be another explanation.

The academic in her sought for a logical explanation. She still wanted to believe that her brother Jared or Mike had found this skilled shipbuilder for her, possibly from some primitive region where there were no televisions or malls.

She’d drawn a sketch, from memory, of the talisman belt and its hidden “relic,” which she intended to fax first thing tomorrow morning to Jared, as well as Jillie and her parents. Perhaps they could do a little research on its background. Meredith was convinced that the unique object was more than a trinket. She prayed it wasn’t stolen from a museum collection.

Furthermore, Meredith was considering asking Mike to check with his buddies at the local police station to see if there was a missing-person alert for some escapee from an asylum. Or a con artist on the loose
posing as a Viking shipbuilder. Geez, that second possibility sounded ludicrous, even to her.

The whole time these thoughts ran through her puzzled brain, the man in question watched her silently, like a hawk, his golden eyes smoldering. Having showered earlier, he wore a pristine white T-shirt tucked into a pair of his new jeans. A rubber band held his long hair back at the nape, exposing the strong line of his jaw and the graceful curve of his neck. His big, narrow feet were bare, and looked amazingly sexy. Not that he needed any help in the sexy department. Oh, Lordy, no.

As she approached, he clucked disapprovingly at the sheets and blankets she carried. “I take it that I am exiled to sleep alone tonight.”

A rush of heat filled her face. “That’s right. It wouldn’t be proper with Thea here. And, actually, you and I need a cooling-off period.”

Raising a brow in question, he pushed away from the fireplace. “And if I do not wish to cool off?” he asked huskily. “And if I wish to finish what we started earlier today?”

He moved only one step toward her, but Meredith panicked, dropping the linens and jerking backward, stepping behind the sofa. She needed to put some distance between them. Every time he got close, her brain short-circuited.

Geirolf stopped his advance, but not because of the wench’s measly protest. Every time he got close to the witch, he lost his ability to think clearly. And after all he’d seen and heard that day, more than anything he needed a clear head to figure out how to get back to his own time.

The wench thought to put him off by wearing loose
braies
and a matching oversized shirt of black silk—a type of sleeping apparel called pay-jam-hose. But he already knew what she hid beneath…by touch, if not yet by sight. When the time was right, she would share his bed furs—if he could find a bed fur in this godforsaken land—and she would wear the sleeping garment preferred by most Viking women…and men. Bare skin.

She would enoy the coupling with him, too. Geirolf had a sense about such matters, based on years of experience and a male instinct for a woman’s ripeness. Merry-Death pretended tartness and an inclination to molder on the vine, but he knew better. Her juices were rising and her soft flesh yearned to be plucked.

But not yet. Not tonight. Too much depended on the fate of his mission here. His father’s trust. The famine. His own honor. The warrior in him sensed danger brewing all around, and he had to be alert.