Page 42 of The Blue Viking

“Stop pulling on me. I’m not a child,” Maire complained. They were halfway up the stairs that led to the upper floor and her bedchamber.

He stopped abruptly, and she slammed into his back. They both almost toppled over, but he stabilized them by releasing her hand and turning her so that her back was braced against the wall… and he was braced against her.

A mistake, that.

A pleasure, that.

Too soon, that.

Belatedly recalling her last words, he rubbed himself against her with an agonizing sigh and breathed against her lips, “A child is the last thing I would call you, Maire.” Even that slight friction of his arousal against her belly, separated by layers of cloth, provided the most delicious pain … so intense he had to close his eyes and catch his breath, lest he embarrass himself… and her, too.

“Don’t do this, Rurik,” she pleaded on a moan, turning her head to the side.

“Do what?” he murmured against the soft curve of her neck, the exact spot where a pulse beat with sensual rhythm.

“Your punishment business.”

“Huh?” he said. Then he remembered. “Ah, Maire, I promise you will enjoy my punishment business.”

“Oh, what a lot of foolery you men do spout! As if I could enjoy—”

Rurik used a forefinger to tip her face forward and stopped her words with his mouth. From side to side, he moved his lips over hers till they parted. Then he groaned his raging need into her open mouth and deepened the kiss. Like a madman he was then, devouring her with his insatiable hunger. “You… taste … so … damned … good.”

At first, she tried to push him away with palms pressed against his chest. And then, midway between gentle, whispery kisses and thrusting tongue kisses, she succumbed to the same passion that assailed him. Her arms wrapped about his shoulders and her mons pressed against the cradle of his hips.

“Rurik.”

He licked her lips and encouraged her to do the same to him.

“Rurik.”

She widened her mouth and allowed him deeper access.

“Rurik.”

He nipped her bottom lip in chastisement for her calling his name. Now was not the time for talking, whether it be protests or encouragement.

“It’s not me,” Maire gasped out.

“Rurik.”

Only then did Rurik realize that someone else was saying his name, and it was a male voice.

Inhaling and exhaling deeply to regulate his panting breaths, he pressed his forehead against Maire’s.

“Rurik.”

Turning to the right, with Maire still in his arms, Rurik noticed Bolthor standing at the bottom of the steps, shifting from foot to foot, as he beckoned.

“This better be urgent,” Rurik growled.

“It is,” Bolthor said, nodding his head vigorously. Then he tilted his head to the side and inquired, “Didst you or-gaz the lady yet? I hear tell there is a surefire way to spark a woman’s ecstasy involving feathers and—”

Rurik growled again.

Discerning that he treaded precarious waters by mentioning Rurik’s love skills, or lack thereof, Bolthor rushed quickly to the point. “Fergus, the sheep herder, is beating Vagn to a pulp out in the courtyard. He thinks Vagn is Toste, who was actually the one what poked his daughter, Inghinn. Stigand keeps tryin’ to tell Fergus he got the wrong twin, but Fergus is a stubborn Scotsman, and you know how they are… thickheaded, when they’ve made up their minds, unlike us Vikings, what are open-minded and such. I had to hit Stigand over the head with a wooden shovel to keep him from beheadin’ Fergus. Broke the shovel, it did. And Nessa is threatenin’ to disembowel me whilst I sleep for hurtin’ ‘her poor wee Stigand.’ Can you imagine that? Poor, wee Stigand! Meanwhile, Toste is layin’ as if dead out in the stables—drukkinn, if you ask me—alongside Ian’s wife, Coira—she be drukkinn, too. If Ian finds out his wife’s been opening her thighs to Toste, there’s gonna be a war, I tell you. And Coira thinks she’s lyin’ with Vagn, or so I been told.”

Bolthor took a deep breath before adding one last statement, “And every man in the keep is lookin’ fer thread to measure his cock.”