Page 82 of The Caged Viking

She could laugh off Hauk’s misconceptions, but she sensed he was serious, that something important was bothering him. “Are you going to have these fears every—”

“I fear nothing,” he interrupted with indignation.

Another wrong choice of word! “Are you going to have these expectations every time you go somewhere without me?”

“Probably. Until or if…” He let his words trail off and looked at her, waiting.

He wanted assurances, she realized. But she couldn’t commit to that kind of promise. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Kirstin was not usually so bold or blasé about her nudity, but feeling Hauk’s pain, she flipped the bed fur aside and slipped off the mattress to slide onto his lap. Modesty be damned!

He was surprised but opened his arms to her, wrapping the blanket around them both. She could feel his erection under her thighs, but sex was the last thing on her mind, at the moment. She insinuated her arms around his body so that her face rested on his shoulder and they were breast to chest. It was probably impossible, but she could swear she felt his heart beating in a fierce counterpoint to her own. They sat thus, in silence, for several long moments while her hands caressed his back and his hands did the same to hers. They soothed each other.

Finally, she leaned back and said, “I think I know what your problem is, Hauk.”

“You do, do you?” He chuckled but did not argue over her saying he had a problem, as he usually would. “And what, pray tell, would that be?”

“You’re falling in love with me.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. And it frightens you. Not frightens like a warrior before a battle or facing death, but—”

“I do not fear death. Vikings do not fear the journey to Valhalla.”

She tapped his lips with her fingertips to stop his talking. Vikings and their egos! “Love…the kind between a man and a woman…can cause the strongest person to feel anxious, or alarmed.”

“Do not tell me! You are an expert on love, as well as ancient Norse culture, and illness, and jokes, and any other number of things.”

She jabbed him playfully on the chin with a fist and laughed. “No, I’m not an expert on love, but teenage girls in America obsess over the subject. Teenagers are girls between thirteen and nineteen. Anyhow, I think I remember reading an article in a magazine one time about the different stages of love, everything from attraction to infatuation to falling in love to full-blown head-over-heels in love.” She laughed softly and told him, “It was probably Cosmo magazine.”

She could tell he hadn’t understood half of what she’d said. And there was no way in the world she could explain Cosmo magazine without a background on feminism and modern culture.

“And where does lust fit into all those stages?” he asked, telling her that he’d understood more than what she’d thought. “Seems to me you have remarked on more than one occasion that love and lust are two different things.”

“Lust plays in all those stages, with different effects.”

“Truly, you are a font of knowledge, wife,” Hauk said, squeezing her to soften his criticism, if that’s what it was. “Tell me more.” He was probably making fun of her.

She sat straighter, which caused his erection to show it was paying attention, too. Hauk put his hands on her waist and adjusted her position to ease any discomfort he might be feeling. “Go on,” he said then.

“The first stage of love is one of attraction, what I call the butterfly period. In fact, some people get this fluttery feeling in the pit of their stomach, which travels upward, causing the heart to race, just seeing or thinking about the other person. They might even get goose bumps.”

“My butterflies tend to fly downward,” he teased.

“Tsk-tsk!” she chastised him. “But the butterfly effect isn’t just physical. It’s more like empathy. A couple can sense the other person’s feelings, almost reflect what they feel. That empathy can be so powerful that it’s almost painful in its intensity. In the latter part of this stage, the afflicted party would do anything for, would sacrifice anything for, his or her love connection.”

“Hmmm.” Hauk seemed to be contemplating how those descriptions applied to himself. He didn’t agree, but he didn’t disagree either.

“Everything in this first phase feels exciting and new. The air is crisper. The scents more intense and inviting. A person can’t wait to see the other person again, even if they’ve just left. They consider that other person extra special by now, even if others don’t agree. For example, I had a friend who fell in love with a guy who was a head shorter than her, with the world’s worst comb-over on his half-bald head, and the personality of a stump, but she considered him a hottie.”

“A hottie, huh? Am I a hottie?”

“Absolutely.”

“But only in your eyes?”

“No. I’m pretty sure you would be deemed a hottie by most women of my time. If you kept your mouth shut. Your chauvinistic attitude would turn off some feminists.”