Page 80 of The Last Viking

“Gee, Rolf, you talk as if you’re a real Viking,” Sonja said with a giggle.

“Yeah,” Thea put in.

Mike waited expectantly for his answer.

Rolf rolled his shoulders. “Who can say what is a real Viking.”

“Rolf comes from a region where they practice the old ways,” Meredith hastily explained. “Sometimes they forget it’s the twentieth century.”

He sliced her a reproving glare. The constant pretense annoyed him, she knew, but, luckily, he said nothing more.

Meredith sighed with relief. If nothing else, the visit to the zoo had brought home to her the danger of Rolf’s presence in the twentieth century. Fortunately, Rolf hadn’t told anyone, other than her, about his time travel. If he had, and if by some remote chance, someone believed him, scientists would cage him as surely as they did those wild beasts in the zoo. And he’d be treated as a freak, too.

She perceived another thing, too. It was necessary for Rolf to return to his time for a reason besides his father’s mission. If he stayed here much longer, eventually he’d let something slip. There were too many hazards for him in this land and time.

“Blessed Thor! You’re going to weep again. Over my growling, of all things! ’Tis naught to cry about, sweetling,” he said, pulling her close. Then he whispered in her ear, “If you are going to cry when I roar, what will you do when I bite?”

She blinked away her tears and smiled. “Bite you back.”

He howled with amusement. “I scarce can wait.”

He wasn’t laughing fifteen minutes later when they entered the house. Mike had taken Sonja and Teddy home, and Thea skipped upstairs to play her music. Too late, Meredith saw that she was trapped between the refrigerator and an angry Viking.

“Wh-what?” she stammered at the menacing figure he posed, fists clenched at his sides, his lips white with vexation. “Do you want something to eat or drink?”

“Nay, Meredith, I do not.”

“Then what do you want?” He was closing in, inch by inch. Girding herself with resolve, she refused to shiver. But inside, she was shivering like a bowl of Jell-O.

“You.”

Oh, boy! “I will not marry you,” she insisted, “under your conditions.” She assumed that was the cause of his sudden fury.

“Whate’er you say, dearling,” he drawled with a mocking grin.

It wasn’t a grin to engender warm, fuzzy feelings.

“What’s the problem, Rolf?”

“Mike isn’t the only one who knows naught of Vikings,” he went on in a voice whose calmness contrasted ominously with his take-no-mercy eyes. “You two study Norsemen in your books but fail to see us true.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nay, you do not. That is a certainty. You have caged the wild beast here, Merry-Death,” he informed her, pounding his chest with one fist, “but it is about to break free.”

The quiver in her stomach escalated to an earthquake. “Are you trying to frighten me?”

“Do I?”

“No.”

He smiled, but it was more a feral baring of the teeth. “Foolish wench. I realized today that I have allowed myself to be caged voluntarily, chained by my excessive lust for you. I have played the tame pet for you overlong. ’Twas my mistake, granting you time to give your free consent to our joining. Enough! If you will not be my wife, then you will be my thrall.”

“A slave?” she twittered nervously.

“Yea, a love slave,” he said softly. “How do you view the prospect of being a Viking captive? Hmmm? Subject to my every whim?”

“Stop playing games with me, Rolf.” She tried to edge away, but he put a palm on either side of her head, his arms braced tautly. She had the coolness of the refrigerator at her back and the heat of an aggressive male at her front. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience, she admitted to herself.