Just as Ruby started to turn away from him in embarrassment, Thork raised his left hand to brush a breeze-blown tress from his face. Ruby inhaled sharply. The pinky finger was missing.
She grabbed his hand and tenderly touched the place where the finger should have been. “What happened? How did you lose your finger?”
Thork shrugged. “My half-brother Eric chopped it off when I was five. He aimed for my… male part, but then he always was a poor swordsman.” He grinned at the shock on her face but his eyes told a different, pain-ridden story. “Eric Bloodaxe, they call him. Appropriate, would you not say?”
“Oh, Thork, how sad!”
Caught off-guard at first by her concern, Thork darted her a curious glance, then touched the scar on his face. “He was unsuccessful in removing my eye as well. ‘Twas long ago, though. ‘Tis no longer important.”
Ruby studied Thork, and her heart ached for the pain he must have endured. She yearned to comfort him, to hold the memory of his ugly childhood at bay. Locked in a private hell of recollection, his expression turned bleak for a moment. It occurred to Ruby then that maybe, just maybe, she’d been given a clean slate with Jack in this dream or self-hypnosis or whatever it was. What fun it would be to go back to the beginning with Jack, knowing what she did today! She could avoid all the proven mistakes. She could capitalize on all the good things that had worked with them.
A second chance! Wasn’t that just what she’d prayed for before being hurtled back in time?
Scanning Thork speculatively, Ruby considered flirting mischievously with the fierce Viking to lighten his mood, the way she used to do with Jack. Actually, she hadn’t flirted with Jack in a long, long time. Maybe that was one of their problems. She inspected Thork through lowered lashes and grinned impishly. This dream business might prove interesting, after all.
“Have you ever heard of Kevin Costner?” she asked abruptly in a husky voice, hoping she wouldn’t lose her nerve.
“Who?”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I was just wondering… how do you feel about long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days?” she asked brazenly.
That got his attention!
Ruby recognized the bright flame of desire in Thork’s sapphire eyes before he deliberately shuttered them, but he couldn’t conceal their quick blink of surprise. He opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it, swallowed, then stood abruptly. She and Jack had seen the Kevin Costner movie together. The screen words had aroused them both. At a glance, Ruby saw that Thork was no different.
Their eyes locked. Acutely aware of Thork’s scrutiny, Ruby parted her lips unconsciously in unspoken invitation.
But Thork ignored the temptation of her lips as he regained his composure and swore explicity. “Fine words for a whore, mayhap. Be that what you are? If so, name your price and be done.” He stood and paced, deep in thought, before confronting her again. “Mayhap, though, you really do spy, after all,” he concluded with narrowed eyes. “For a certainty, methinks you treat your situation much too lightly and hope to divert my attention. Your life hangs in the balance, wench, and you speak of… of…”
“Kisses?” Ruby offered impudently. “Don’t Vikings kiss?”
Thork blushed. He actually blushed. Ruby loved it.
“We like kisses fine,” he rasped thickly. Suddenly realizing her game, Thork twitched his lips sensuously as he offered, “Mayhap you’d like a demonstration?”
He obviously expected her to demur. Instead, Ruby decided to play along. “Perhaps. Of course, there wouldn’t be much attraction for you in kissing such a bony-arsed female as me. That is what you called me, isn’t it?”
Thork grinned provocatively, then watched with fascination as Ruby slowly wet her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue. He moved enticingly close. Ruby thought he was about to kiss her, and she parted her lips reflexively. Instead, he placed his lips a hairsbreadth from hers and blew softly until the dewy wetness evaporated.
Ruby’s senses reeled. Thork’s tantalizing sensuality ignited a flame in Ruby’s midsection which hopscotched to all the sweet spots in her body that only Jack had ever touched before. Held prisoner by the magnetic pull of his drugging almost-kiss and the compelling masculine scent that was Jack’s alone, Ruby leaned forward, her heartbeat playing a rapid counterpoint to the hammering pulse in Thork’s neck. Ruby recognized the white-hot sexual desire she hadn’t felt for months with Jack.