Page 52 of The Bewitched Viking

Nothing.

With a grumble of disgust, he pulled the bed furs back up to his chin and turned his back on her, as well.

Mayhap she didn’t want me quite as much as I thought.

From the other side of the bed furs, Alinor stopped her fake snoring for a moment.

And what she thought was, Whew!

Eight days later, they finally entered the wide fjord leading to King Anlaf’s royal palace in Trondelag. The blowing of a horn pierced the air, announcing the arrival of new ships.

The crew was nigh frozen to the bone. All of them were bundled up in huge furs or heavy woolen cloaks, even when rowing. Their hands were cracked, and bloody at times, from the harsh elements and the harsher task of maneuvering the ship on winter seas with ice-crusted oars and ropes.

Alinor had lain, practically the entire eight days, curled up under Tykir’s sable cloak, shivering. She would have been bored to the point of insanity if she hadn’t been so cold…and frightened, for her fate would soon be decided.

In this last leg of their ship’s journey, they had been hit with frigid weather—rain, snow, sleet and gusting winds—all of which the men managed to blame on Alinor’s witchly curses. In truth, she had been doing a fair amount of “cursing,” both inwardly and outwardly, but mostly in the form of complaints, not some impossible black magic.

To make matters worse, the farther they traveled north into the region known as The Land of the Midnight Sun, the shorter days became. In just a few sennights, Tykir had told her, it would be dark all the day long, and this would last for several of the winter months. What a dismal prospect!

Assuming she would be there that long.

Rurik had taken to checking his manparts a dozen times a day because he contended that Alinor had been looking at him there with evil intent. She’d smiled at that idiocy, and waggled her fingers in a fey manner, which only made him madder.

One of the seamen had complained that his loose bowels started the night the witch wished him “Good eventide” in passing. Alinor had told him it was probably the gammelost.

Another had developed a fiercesome itch in the hair under his arms, on his chest, in his eyebrows and beard, but mostly between his legs, where he discovered crab lice with claw-like legs. Alinor must have caused the tiny creatures to suddenly inhabit his skin, the superstitious man had wailed. Never would he believe that the poxy wench he’d bedded back in Jorvik could be at fault. Soon the lice spread like wildfire—no doubt lured by all that Viking hair—but this, too, was blamed on Alinor.

Two days out of Hedeby, some of the men had adopted the practice Tykir and Rurik and Bolthor had engaged in at Graycote. They were wearing their braies backwards as a charm against her potential spells. This was a particularly lackwitted exercise, not to mention laughable in appearance, in Alinor’s opinion, and she told them so every opportunity she got. For the seaman with the loose bowels, this new fashion custom was more than demented.

Naturally, they all kept checking her backside on the odd chance that her tail would emerge. And they wore wooden crosses, and splashed themselves with holy water repeatedly, which immediately froze into icicles on their beards and noses. Alinor suspected that Rurik had run out of his cache of holy water long ago, and was filling his vials with sea water, which he sold to his fellow shipmates.

Bolthor had come up with so many sagas involving a witch and her evil doings that he constantly bemoaned the fact that his head was becoming fuzzy and the stories getting mixed up. Although he wasn’t much nicer to her than any of the other men, Alinor was developing a fondness for the gruff giant.

Worst of all in Alinor’s ongoing travail was the Troll-Kisser.

Despite Tykir’s warning to desist, Rurik relished the retelling of how he’d come upon Tykir kissing her in the bed furs. Each time he retold the tale, the details got more exaggerated, to the point where now he claimed to have seen them both naked, down to the freckles on her buttocks and Tykir’s mighty “prow,” which had been just about to dip into her “waves.” The very fact that Tykir would kiss a witch was proof that she’d put a love spell on their master, according to Rurik’s ill-logic.

Alinor didn’t need any reminders of Tykir’s kisses. They were firmly imbedded in her memory. Just the thought of them—and there were far too many thoughts—turned her hot and strangely restless. Never in her wildest imagination, even as a young girl with dreams still intact, did Alinor suspect a man’s kiss could be so…well, exciting. And the last thing she needed in her life was more excitement, she told herself over and over again.

To make matters even worse, Tykir’s leg was bothering him. With the cold dampness that pervaded the air, he could scarce put his full weight on the limb without wincing in pain. He’d taken to limping slightly and often rubbed the scarred thigh through his thick braies. She might have been able to help him, to prescribe some herbal plaster or exercise regimen or—oh, sweet heaven!—massage it herself. On second thought, she misdoubted she could bear exposure to his bare flesh…again…without some dire consequence. She trembled involuntarily at imagining what form that dire consequence might take…and whether it would affect her, or him, or both of them.

She’d been avoiding Tykir as much as he avoided her since the unfortunate kissing incident. But there had been times when she glanced up suddenly to find Tykir watching her, and she knew he was remembering, too. Once he even licked his lips while studying her.

She’d felt like leaping across the ship to slap the wretch.

Or kiss him.

“Well, have you decided how you will handle the situation?” Tykir asked, limping up beside her now.

She stood at the rail, watching the men steer the longships into berths along the banks of the wide river fronting the palace grounds. Hundreds of other longboats, along with smaller vessels and the larger knarrs used for transporting massive cargoes, were anchored midriver or turned upside down along the shore, beached for the winter.

“What situation?”

“The curse. How will you remove the curse from Anlaf’s manroot?” Idly, he reached a hand out and flicked a big snowflake off her eyelashes. Then, to both of their amazements, he put the same forefinger to his mouth and licked.

Alinor felt that lick like an erotic arrow to the pit of her stomach. Luckily, she was able to stifle a groan.

He blinked those big brown, disgustingly thick lashes of his at her, equally affected, she would wager. Or else he played a game with her…a game for which she was sorely ill-equipped and woefully mismatched. Forget about her being a witch. This man had beguiled her, good and proper, with a few measly kisses.