Page 30 of The Last Viking

“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.