“Do you refer to me? Because if you do, forget it. I am not in the running.”
You have no idea how much I would like to wipe that smirk from your face. “Methinks you don’t have a clue what you want anymore, Toste. Methinks you are clueless.”
“Clueless? Did you call me clueless. I ought to lop off your head… or your tongue, at least. And telling me that you will be on the hunt for a husband. I… do… not… think… so. I know who is clueless here, and it is not me.” Toste practically frothed at the mouth with indignation.
Good. “Blah, blah, blah,” she said. “Just like a man. Always blathering their man-nonsense.”
His eyes almost rolled back in his head with frustration. “Odin’s breath! You dare much, wench, pushing me too far. Be careful when you put your head in the mouth of a wolf. You will get more than you wagered for.”
“Oh, please. You are more like a lamb than a wolf.” Mayhap I am being a bit foolhardy, but the man asks for it. He really does.
“Aaarrgh!” he said.
Another typical male reaction.
” ‘Twould seem there is only one way to shut your teeth. I will show you how much of a lamb I am.”
If he hits me, I am going to hit him back. Lot of good it would do, but I will, anyhow. She braced herself.
With one smooth move, Toste picked her up, tossed her onto the clean straw in the empty stall and came down on top of her.
All right, no hitting. What then? Esme wasn’t sure why she’d provoked the Viking so much. Anger, for a certainty, that he ordered her about like a wooly-witted milkmaid. Retaliation for his heavy-handed tactics. Fear that he planned to leave her. Envy that Eadyth and Alinor obviously got something wonderful from their men. And stubborn determination that, before he left, she would get one more taste of the man to satisfy the hunger he’d kindled with just one kiss. Oooh, that last item just slipped in and stunned Esme with its implications. Definitely a weakening of control, if she let it go too far.
“You torture me, m’ladv, and I am not a man accustomed to being tortured,” he whispered against her ear, then blew softly into the whorls.
She barely fathomed his words, so wonderful did his breath feel in her ear. She girded herself against his temptation and said, “Don’t go tomorrow. Stay here with me… for a while.”
“I have to go sometime. Tomorrow is as good a time as ever. How long would you want me to stay?” The whole time he spoke, he was nibbling little kisses from her ear to her chin and back again.
Delicious was the only way to describe the sensation of his cool lips on her hot skin. “Tykir and Eirik will go to the Witan for me. I trust them to do that. If the Witan denies my petition, I expect my father will demand my immediate deliverance into his hands. Tykir and Eirik could then petition for the return of my mother’s lands to me before I am turned over to my father’s custody. I’m certain that the Witan would not act on the petition at that session… probably they’d wait another month. That would give me till February, only one month from my twenty-fifth birthday. Can’t you wait till then?”
“Two months? That’s all?” he asked sarcastically, raising his head. He had gone back to kissing and blowing in her ear. He gave his attention to her surcoat now, parting it with his left hand and using his right hand to begin unlacing the neckline of her gunna.
She should stop him. She would, in a moment, once she’d said all she had to say. “Nay, that is not all,” she said with a gasp as the backs of his fingers grazed the bare skin of her upper chest. “I would want you to form a bird of soldiers for me… a hundred should suffice, for a start. Mercenaries would be the best choice, I think. While we are waiting for the Witan’s decision, we could establish ourselves at Evergreen.”