Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 01]

by The Reluctant Viking

  But it wasn’t really an embrace, Ruby soon realized as Jack smiled against her neck, whispering, “Oh, Rube, you haven’t done anything this outrageous since the time you talked me into shaving your legs.”

  “What? I did no such thing,” Ruby asserted indignantly, trying unsuccessfully to buck him off. “You are the one who seduced me with that idea.”

  She felt his heart hammering against her breasts, and it felt so good. No, darn him, it wasn’t his heart; his chest was shaking with laughter again.

  “Let me go,” she demanded on a sob.

  Jack pulled away, just a little. His knowing look and gleaming eyes told her he’d been teasing. He’d known exactly who had seduced whom, could probably remember every damned enticing word he’d spoken to her that long, passion-filled night. A dazzling smile split Jack’s face as he looked down at her with amusement and…what? Ruby couldn’t quite figure it out.

  “Your wig is all crooked,” Jack observed with a tilted grin, shaking his head in wonderment at the ridiculous sight she must be.

  Ruby grabbed the wig off her head and threw it toward the fireplace angrily. Jack caught it deftly in one hand.

  “I think I’ll save this. To remind me of this night,” he said dryly.

  “Keep it. I don’t think I’ll want to remember anything about this day or night.”

  Suddenly she felt so tired, exhausted to the bone. Lord, she just wanted to get out of this house, away from Jack and her embarrassment and pain, so she could lick her wounds in private.

  Jack put his hands on her hips and expertly maneuvered her so she lay fully on the couch, and he followed her quickly, not allowing her to escape. He pinioned her struggling body down with his own, then held her wrists above her head with his left hand while he reached for a cocktail napkin with the other.

  Gently, almost lovingly, he wiped the smeared mascara from her face with the napkin—a losing battle, because she began to cry in earnest.

  Jack released her hands and rolled to his side, taking her with him. He put one hand on the nape of her neck and held her face in the crook of his neck. His other hand made wide, caressing circles on her back.

  “Shush. Rube, don’t cry. I’m sorry. Please, honey, don’t cry.” He fell silent and rocked her gently for a few moments, then offered tentatively, “Maybe we can make it work. Please, honey, don’t cry. Next you’ll have me crying, too.”

  “You never cry,” she sobbed.

  “Don’t count on it.”

  But the more he spoke, the more Ruby sobbed. She’d been through so much that day—Jack leaving her, the dream, Thork and his death, coming to the lake house and being rebuffed by Jack. She just couldn’t take any more.

  Finally Jack tried to silence her sobs with a kiss. At first he just brushed his lips against her lips, then her eyes, her forehead, her cheeks, her lips again, all the time whispering disjointed words, “Rube…honey…please…don’t cry…so sorry…”

  Then he seemed to lose himself in the process and gripped her head in both hands, holding her firm while he shaped her tear-wet lips to fit his. When his tongue entreated her lips to part, Ruby whimpered and complied. With an answering moan, Jack filled her mouth, and the gentle kiss changed dramatically from sweet and comforting to red hot and demanding.

  With his mouth and husky love words, Jack conveyed all the pent-up hunger of the past lonely weeks. Openmouthed and wet, his lips clung to hers, moving rapaciously, deepening. Ruby forgot her sorrow for the moment and answered his kisses with all the love and passion she felt for this husband of twenty years.

  Between searing kisses and hoarse whispers, Jack eased the spandex off her, laughing softly when he realized it wasn’t going to be an easy task. He smiled and held her eyes intimately when he saw the black teddy, recognizing it immediately.

  “You fight dirty,” he growled.

  When she lay naked, Jack knelt on the floor next to the sofa and examined her reclining body with passion-glazed eyes and tender brush stokes of his fingers. “You’re so beautiful,” he said thickly, touching the peaks of her breasts with a fingertip, then sweeping down over her flat belly, laying a large palm possessively over the down-covered vee.

  “No, I’m not,” Ruby protested. “I’m thirty-eight years old, and I have stretch marks and laugh lines and—”

  He put a loving hand gently over her mouth to stop her words, holding her eyes warmly. “Yes, you are beautiful, sweetheart. Our children put those stretch marks there. I love them. And the laugh lines,” he said, his lips twitching with a grin, “well, I don’t really see them, but if they’re there, I like to think I caused them by making you happy a time or two.”

  He stood then and, for just a second, Ruby panicked, thinking he intended to leave. But he added another log to the fire and began to take off his clothes, slowly, his eyes locked with hers the entire time in a smoldering gaze filled with regret, passion and promise.

  The firelight played shadow games on his muscular shoulders and the ridges of his abdomen. He opened his belt buckle and began to unzip his pants, giving Ruby a seductive glimpse of the soft blond hairs that arrowed down over the hard planes of his stomach and beyond.

  When he stepped out of his pants and then his briefs, he stood proudly in his savage nakedness, like a Viking god. His hard arousal proclaimed his physical want of her; his pleading eyes told of his emotional need.

  “Oh, Jack, we’ve been married twenty years, and you still take my breath away.”

  “Ruby! What a thing to say!” he exclaimed softly.

  “It’s true.” And she started to cry again.

  “Come here,” Jack demanded in a passion-raw voice from where he still stood in front of the fireplace. He held out a hand in entreaty.

  Ruby closed her eyes for just a second, wondering if they were doing the right thing—making love before they’d had a chance to resolve their problems. On one last weak note, she said, “You told me earlier today that we could go upstairs and screw our brains out and it wouldn’t solve our problems.”

  Jack laughed in a low, seductive voice.

  “I changed my mind. Let’s screw each other’s brains out anyway and see what happens next.”

  “I’d rather we made love.”

  He shrugged and grinned wickedly. “Let’s do both.” His voice rasped with the intensity of his desire.

  Ruby got up and walked into his embrace. At first they just stood in each other’s arms, enjoying the feel of familiar skin and body scent.

  “Oh, Rube,” was all Jack said as he groaned and pulled her down to the rug with him. She tried to put her arms around his neck, but Jack told her with soft words and hoarse whispers to lie back, he wanted to enjoy her first.

  With his mouth and tongue and teeth and inventive fingers, Jack paid homage to her body, strumming those points he knew to be especially sensitive, discovering new erotic zones to be examined and tested and heightened to the point of spiraling, intensifying pleasure. He kissed her forever until her lips swelled and grew slick with wetness.

  He spent endless moments adoring her breasts, teasing the tips with flicks of his moist tongue, pulling lightly on the hardened nubs between his teeth and only suckling her deeply when she begged and flailed with loud moans.

  When his fingers moved lower to her cleft, Jack’s eyes shot up to hers in surprise at the wetness.

  “Oh, Rube,” he groaned. “Do you want me so much?”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  Moving between her legs, he gripped her ankles, then pushed up and out. He gazed at her exposed body for a long time with glazed eyes and passion-slack lips, murmuring soft love words. Then he lowered himself and used his tongue in rhythmic strokes against the flowering bud until she shook with mindless want before exploding into an earth-rocking climax. He adjusted himself and was about to enter her when Ruby protested, “No, wait.”

  She got up and huskily instructed Jack to kneel so they faced each other. Then Ruby used all the love and uninhibite
d skill she possessed to pay homage to his magnificent body, from his drugging lips, to his muscular chest, to his deliciously flat stomach, and lower to the marble hardness of his manhood. Love, tested and true, guided Ruby to all the familiar places on her husband’s body.

  Finally Jack broke away from her and choked out, “No more!”

  He placed her back on the floor and positioned her body for his entry. With a long thrust, he filled her, and Ruby held on tightly, wanting to savor the wonderful rightness of being melded with the man she adored.

  Before he began to move, Ruby held his head between her two hands, and whispered, “I love you, Jack.”

  “I love you, too, babe. I never stopped.”

  Then the time for words was gone as he began the sweet rhythm they both knew so well. With each hard stroke, Ruby keened louder and louder.

  She couldn’t be sure in the flickering firelight if Jack’s blond hair was collar-length or down to his shoulder blades, if that sparkle near his ear was a reflection from the fire or an earring. Both men—Thork and Jack—merged into one. Perhaps for all eternity.

  Ruby and Jack both moaned and spoke softly of the intense pleasurable sensations spiraling through their bodies.

  “Slower,” she pleaded.

  “Like this?”

  “Yes…oh, yes!”

  Sweat beaded on Jack’s forehead as he tried to slow his pace to meet her needs.

  “Now harder,” she demanded.

  “No…lie still…don’t you dare move…damn, you’re killing me.”

  “No, you’re killing me,” Ruby groaned, accompanied by a little mewling sound of pleasure. She spread her legs wider and wrapped them around Jack’s waist.

  Then neither could speak as a frenzy of passion took over, and Jack drove her hard, seeming to thrust out the anger and loneliness, frustration and regret that had ruled his life so much of late, but mostly he assaulted her with love and sheer, raw need. When her body stiffened on a cataclysm of progressively increasing spasms, ending with a mind-shattering splintering of all her nerve ends, Jack reared back and shouted, “Aaah, Rube…Rube!” then pressed into her deeply, exploding into climax.

  Much later, they lay depleted in each other’s arms, murmuring softly, touching each other gently.

  “I love you so much, Jack. I’m so sorry for hurting you.”

  “Shush, I love you, too.” Then he chuckled. “Rube, we haven’t made love like that in years,” Jack said in awe. “I felt like we were eighteen again.”

  Ruby smiled against his chest, not wanting to tell him just yet of her time-travel experience, but deciding to reveal a little. “I had this really strange dream this afternoon, and in it we made love five times in one night.”

  “Five times!” Jack exclaimed with a laugh. “And just what did you do to bring that about?”

  Ruby tantalized him with a few descriptions of some of the sexual antics she had tried with her Viking husband.

  “Honey? Now that’s an interesting possibility,” he said with a laugh.

  When he finally stopped grinning at her dream reminiscences, Ruby turned serious. “Jack, I want you to know that I’m cutting back my hours at Sweet Nothings at least half-time beginning immediately.”

  She felt Jack stiffen beside her.

  “I think it would be best if I work three full days and take off the rest of the week, rather than part-time for five or six days. What do you think?”

  “Rube, you don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, if you’re serious,” he said, pulling her closer, “I was thinking that maybe we could merge our two companies. Real estate is doing better, and my profits are up since I expanded into commercial development. I know our businesses are completely different, but I still think we could form a partnership, Then we could both begin to delegate more responsibility and spend much more time at home. What do you think?”

  Ruby thought she should take Gyda’s advice. “Whatever you say. You decide.”

  “Maybe we could even buy a large sailboat and travel with the boys next summer.”

  “A boat?” Ruby asked incredulously and stared at Jack. “A boat??”

  “What? You don’t think a boat is a good idea?” Jack’s puzzled eyes held hers.

  Ruby laughed at the irony. “A boat is a great idea.”

  She rolled over to face the fire, and Jack pulled her close against him, spoon-fashion, one arm under her head, the other over her stomach.

  “What was that? Are you hungry?”

  “What?”

  “Your stomach lurched.”

  Ruby put her hand over her stomach. Sure enough, there was a quickening movement.

  Oh, my God!

  She couldn’t believe it. Ruby realized with sudden amazement that she was still pregnant. She turned around to face Jack, tears pooling in her eyes, and whispered, “How would you feel about doing something else next summer?”

  “Like?” he asked suspiciously, alert to the emotion in her voice.

  “Like having a baby.”

  She placed his palm over her stomach while she spoke, and saw the moment when Jack felt the baby move again. When he finally understood, Jack turned solemn and stood up abruptly. Puzzled, Ruby got up, as well.

  “Is that why you came back?” he accused. “Is that what this whole love scene was about?”

  “No, it’s not. I didn’t really know I was pregnant until just now.” She started to tell him that she’d really known before, in another time, but decided to save that explanation for later.

  Jack smiled then and pulled her into his arms. “A baby? After all these years! I always wanted to have another child,” he confessed, his voice cracking with emotion.

  “I know,” Ruby said, caressing his face lovingly. “I know.”

  “A baby!” Jack repeated with awe. “Are you happy about this?”

  “Ecstatic!”

  Jack hugged her tightly to his chest. “We can make this work, Rube.”

  “I know.”

  Then Ruby jumped and squealed. “Ja-a-ack! Why did you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Pinch my behind.”

  “I did no such thing. I will if you want me to, though,” he offered with a twinkle in his eye.

  Ruby just smiled.

  Then Jack asked with seeming nonchalance, “Do we have any honey in the house?”

  PRAISE FOR SANDRA HILL’S VIKING ROMANCES!

  THE RELUCTANT VIKING

  “I really enjoyed Ruby’s story. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all have these sorts of second chances when we are at risk of losing something as precious as love.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “The Reluctant Viking is a wonderfully in-depth, ambitious challenge for a first time author, and Ms. Hill pulls it off with style!”

  —The Literary Times

  THE OUTLAW VIKING

  “An entertaining battle-of-the-sexes romance that will keep readers laughing to the very end!”

  —Romantic Times

  “A well-told story, funny and heartwarming. Ms. Hill has created characters who will stay alive long after you close the book. This is a time-travel that shouldn’t be missed.”

  —The Paperback Forum

  “Ms. Hill transports not only the heroine but the reader back to the period in this fast-paced story.”

  —Rendezvous

  THE LAST VIKING

  “A fun, fast-paced page turner.”

  —Romantic Times

  “The humor is delicious. Ms. Hill’s Viking stories are always a thrill to read, and The Last Viking is no exception.”

  —Rendezvous

  “Ms. Hill once again shows her talented, witty writing skills in narrative and character development…another winner for Ms. Hill!”

  —Old Book Barn Gazette

  Other Leisure and Love Spell books by Sandra Hill:

  LOVE ME TENDER

  THE OUTLAW VIKING

  THE LA
ST VIKING

  SWEETER SAVAGE LOVE

  DESPERADO

  FRANKLY, MY DEAR…

  THE TARNISHED LADY

  About the Author

  SANDRA HILL is a graduate of Penn State and worked for more than 10 years as a features writer and education editor for publications in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Writing about serious issues taught her the merits of seeking the lighter side of even the darkest stories. She is the wife of a stockbroker and the mother of four sons.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE RELUCTANT VIKING. Copyright © 1994 by Sandra Hill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © June 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-202500-5

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