***Warning! This is a hotter than usual teaser***

 

Her alluring image burned his ragged brain. Staring at rough wood overhead, he recalled quelling memories, anything to replace the fine picture she made.

Swimming in icy water…hunting muskox…falling in a swine’s pen…

Sestra’s bare legs slipped along his. He sucked a quick breath. A foot lay flush to his calf. She squirmed alongside him and the curls between her legs –eyes squeezed shut, he gritted his teeth— skimmed his hip. Palms driving into the ground, he exhaled slowly and stared again at the shelter’s handiwork above him. Sestra nestled in. Her breasts squished against him, the softest pillows on his chest, his ribs.

Yawning, she wiggled. “The opening here, it’s cold on my back.” Her leg swung across his thighs. “I want to sleep on the other side.”

“Move if you must.” His voice was thick.

Sestra reached across him. Her leg slipped across him, bumping his erection. He hissed at the contact.

“Did I hit your wound?” Her hand settled on his hip below the tender spot where the hammer had struck.

“No.”

She hesitated, her breath feather light on his neck. Pitch black surrounded them, but Sestra read him as if he stood in full sun.

In a weary, all too knowing voice, “I’ll get settled and stop moving.”

Sestra’s skin chafed tantalizing friction on his. Everywhere. Was there a part of her not rubbing him? He tensed from head to toe. Her feminine bush nested at the base of his erection, the tender hair rasping his flesh. The hudfat’s confinement came from the sleeping fur made for one, not two.

She paused, nipples poking his chest her chilled skin flush to his. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take. This called on all his years of discipline and denial; he teetered on the knife’s edge of breaking.

“Ses–”

Cool lips pressed his open mouth, a quick imperfect kiss. “My thanks. For today,” she blurted and settled her head under his chin. “For saving me and for not…not forcing yourself on me. You’ve been nice.”

He winced as much from the pain between his legs as the vice grip on his heart. Nice? He mouthed the word in the dark. The trait wasn’t natural or unnatural, simply unknown. And Sestra’s voice, grateful and honest, chipped away at deep walled-up places.

He knew Sestra the thrall who served ale.

Sestra the flame haired tease warriors sought for a tussle.

There was tart-tongued Sestra who met him in a battle of words, but what else did he know?

Her body molded to his, sharing the warmth. “You’re right. Two bodies together heat up fast. I feel better already.”

Her talking against his skin was intimate as a kiss. He swallowed hard and willed his mind not to think about the lushly curved body molded to his. Or Sestra’s feminine curls snug against his hip.

Swimming in icy water…hunting muskox…falling into a swine’s pen…

“You’re a good man,” she sighed softly. “You deserve good fortune building your ships on Gotland.”

The ache in his loins would linger long, so would the ache beneath his breastbone. Earlier, her hesitation to disrobe, she expected him to pounce on her, but he didn’t.

She trusted him.

He kissed the top of her head, finding strange comfort in their tangled limbs. He’d never lain like this with a woman, two bodies twined together. Stroking her spine, he drew gentle circles as she surrendered to sleep. Outside the shelter, wind stirred the trees, whispering Odin’s truth.

There are few tokens of ill than a man not knowing how to accept the good.  

His meandering circles slowed on the crest of Sestra’s bottom. He knew how to fight, how to scout and protect. And he knew what to do with Sestra’s body.

What was he going to do with her trust?

 

To Find A Viking Treasure

Coming September, 2016.