“And I have a few things to say to you, as well,” she stormed.
This is your chance, big brother. Don’t blow it.
* * *
Chapter Eight
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What did Adam do when offered the apple?…
Helga was driving Vagn barmy. Full-blown, pulling-at-the-hair, humming-at-the-groin barmy.
How could she do this to him? Tell him she wanted to couple with him… plant that idea in his lustsome brain… then add the piddling little detail that it wasn’t really him she wanted but his seed. The insult of her offer! The sheer offensive insult of her expectation that he would just flit off like a carefree bird and leave a child of his loins behind, like a molting feather.
Not bloody likely!
If it had not been snowing for three straight days, making visibility impossible and the temperature nigh freezing, he would have hightailed it out of Briarstead on his trusty horse Clod the night Helga first made her offensive offer. But he’d stayed… may the gods and all the fallen warriors up in Asgard stop laughing!… and she’d been torturing him ever since. The deliberately seductive sway of her hips as she slithered by. Licking those big, luscious lips of hers when she knew he was watching. Lowering her lashes and giving him sideways glances in a most inviting way. Always leaving him wondering whether she wore undergarments or not. Once she even winked at him… the willful witch.
Aaarrgh!
Gorm had asked him yestereve if he was suffering another headache from his dead brother. What he’d wanted to answer was, “Nay, a cock ache.” What he’d actually said was, “Yea, just a twinge.”
Gorm’s retainers had taken to making a wide path when he headed their way because of his foul temper. He’d heard one man ask another, “What bug crawled up his arse?” He’d wanted to say, “Helga,” but of course he didn’t.
And some of Helga’s ladies… her embroiderers… had taken to snickering when he approached. He had no idea why, and was fairly certain he didn’t want to know.
So now Vagn stomped off toward his bedchamber with a jug of ale in hand. It was barely past dark, but he planned on drinking himself into a stupor. He hoped he didn’t have more dreams tonight. Wherever his brother was—dead or alive—he was hot on the tail of a black-haired beauty. Vagn was starting to feel perverted, intruding on his brother’s sexual escapades… enjoying them, in fact.
But then, the other alternative was dreaming about Helga… mostly about her attacking him in the most incredible fantasies. Tying him to a bed to have her way with him. Licking him head to toe to gain his assent.
Dancing for him, naked. Wetting those hot-as-sin lips of hers. He didn’t know if these dreams fell into the area of perversions, but, frankly, he didn’t bloody well care.
Pathetic, that’s what he’d become. He had reverted back to an untried youthling who got his thrills from damp dreams, not real bedsport.
After stoking the fire, he removed his clothing and crawled onto his bed with only a fur pelt over his lower half. He was about to reach for the pottery jug on the floor when he heard a short rap on the closed door. He had only imbibed two long swallows of ale so far—not nearly enough to withstand another of Gorm’s marriage proposals. Last time, he’d offered him a toll bridge in the border lands as an added enticement. Before that, it had been a Nubian slave girl from an Eastern harem, yet to be bought. That on top of being named Lord of Briarstead, a chestful of gold coins, three horses and one longboat. Gorm is relentless. I wonder, what this latest offer will be. Nay, I do not wonder, because I do not care.
“Go away, Gorm.”
The door opened anyway. It wasn’t Gorm. It was Helga, which was even worse. Ominously, he heard the door lock click behind her.
“Go away,” he said more forcefully, and turned on his side away from her, facing the fire. I am not going to think about her standing here in my bedchamber. I am not going to think about her offer to come to my bed furs. I am not going to let my cock do my thinking. I am resolved—she means naught to me. So there, you wily wench!