“I prefer the word barter.”
“You would take everything from me, including my pride.”
“I would give back as good as I got.”
Whatever that meant!
“Besides, you had no care for my pride.” He stared at her for several long moments, waiting for her decision. When she remained silent, he said, “So be it.” With those words, he walked over to the bed and lay down.
“Now what?”
“Now I am going to sleep, and you are going to be in this hut for eleven more days. I hope Eirik’s noble guests don’t ask to come have a peek at you.”
“How would they even know I am here?”
“Hah! Bolthor has been telling one saga after another about this event. Dost think he will suddenly shut his teeth?”
She hadn’t considered that. Also, she suspected that Eirik and Tykir teased Toste every time he entered the keep about having been hoodwinked by a female. And Alinor and Eadyth, if they were the good women she knew them to be, probably berated the men at every turn for allowing her imprisonment to go on.
Yea, any guests at Ravenshire would know of her ignominious situation.
She decided to try a different approach. “It’s still daylight.”
“Who says it has to be dark to sleep… or swive?” With that, he pulled the fur pelt up over his body and turned his back to her.
“And what will happen to me when my confinement is over? Will you then help me regain Evergreen?”
He shrugged.
“What does that shrug mean?”
“I am not talking to you anymore. I am sleeping.”
“You are not sleeping.”
“I’m trying.”
“You forgot to lock the door.”
“If you run away again, I will add a week to your term of confinement. And I will put a chain around your neck and take you up to the keep like a trained bear.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me, Esme. I am not in a good mood.”
“You are never in a good mood… lately.”
He muttered some foreign word that she was fairly certain was foul.
A long period of silence followed in which she pondered all her choices. There weren’t many. Finally, with a long sigh, she said, “All right.”
At first, she didn’t think he’d heard her. He still lay with his back to her, the fur pelt pulled up to his waist. But then he rolled over onto his back.
To his credit, he didn’t smirk or snicker or say anything demeaning. He just watched her, waiting for her next move.
Hah! As if I know what move to make next. “A little help would not be amiss,” she said snippily.
His only response to her plea for help was to lift the bed fur on one side for her.
She practically dragged her feet as she walked toward the bed.
His hot eyes raked her nude body as she approached. Her nudity no longer bothered her all that much. She had much bigger problems to cope with. Like how to seduce a Viking. Or what to do with that thick pole standing up midway down his magnificent body.
She slid into the bed beside him and felt his body heat like the blast of a bonfire. He pulled the fur pelt up over them both. Enveloped in that warmth, with his chest against her face and her arm across his waist, she felt an odd lethargy. “Mayhap we could sleep for a while,” she suggested.
He laughed, and his mirth rumbled in his chest under her cheek. “Or mayhap not,” he said.
She ran a palm over his lightly furred chest and over his flat nipples. She thought he must like that, because she felt his heart rate accelerate noticeably. When her hand skimmed lower over his abdomen and belly, his heart practically jumped against her face. He must really like that, she thought, smiling to herself. It was kind of fun discovering she could have an effect on him with just the stroke of a hand. When her hand started to move lower, he grabbed her wrist and growled, “Not yet.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you want, Esme?”
She thought a moment. “Well, I liked the kissing you did before.”