Page 69 of Truly, Madly Viking

" 'Tis not good for the temperament to—"

"Don't even bother with that line," she advised with a soft laugh. "It's as old as the hills, and as ineffective as a butter knife cutting an ice cube."

"I presume I would be the knife and you the ice?"

"Uh-huh," she replied hesitantly.

"Ah, but sometimes the knife is hot enough to melt the ice," he announced with a sweeping gesture of one hand toward his genital area.

"That was so bad." She wagged a finger at him reprovingly.

"I apologize for my crudity, m'lady. I can only attribute it to an overabundance of male need."

She laughed. "That line's as old as the hills, too: 'Testosterone made me do it.' "

"Kiss me," he commanded, leaning closer. All humor had left his face.

And God help her... despite the seriousness of all she needed to discuss with him, Maggie yielded to the demand. He angled his head over hers and put a hand to her throat, just where a slow pulse beat her erotic response to his nearness.

She pressed her lips to his, and let him master her into wet, clinging compliancy. Then he forced her lips open with his thrusting tongue.

The kiss was short... just long enough for him to prove his point: this Viking was hot.

"You are a Viking," she accused.

They were sitting at her kitchen table. Mag-he was sipping a cup of herb tea in a delicate porcelain cup... raspberry, he would guess by the fruity scent. He was sipping a beer, straight from the can.

"Of course I am a Viking. Have I not been telling you such since I first landed in this godforsaken country?" Then the implications of her words sank in. "Do you now believe that I have time traveled here?"

"Yes... no... I don't know what to believe."

She released a long sigh. "Actually, I do accept now that you are who you claim to be. The logical side of my brain says it can't be true, but I do believe in miracles. So that's the explanation I choose to give for it."

"You consider me a miracle?"

"In a way."

He laughed. "See, wench, we really should engage in bed sport. We would no doubt make miraculous love."

She laughed, too. "While I'm thinking of it, Joe... You don't mind my calling you Joe, do you? I've referred to you that way for so long that Jorund would come hard to my tongue."

"I rather like the idea of coming hard to your tongue."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," she said.

"In any case, it matters not whether you call me Joe or Jorund."

"What I started to say was that you really shouldn't refer to a woman as a wench. It's sexist...

comparable to the word babe."

"Babe, wench... I prefer to think of those as endearments of a sort... like heartling." If she believed that, he had a sunny beach on a northern fjord he would like to show her. "But tell me why you now believe my story, but would not afore."

She explained... a complicated tale involving the physician who had healed him and Seafarers' Lament. It was a malady he was already familiar with: his cousin and two of his brother Rolf's sailors had died of it three years past. No doubt he'd contracted the disease from that bloody whale, Thora, who'd made him ride atop her back in the cold, disease-ridden seas.

"Tell me about yourself," she urged all of a sudden.

"What do you wish to know?"