Page 38 of Viking Unchained

“Thrall?” she choked out.

“Slave,” he said. “Yea, instead of me being your love slave, you will be my love slave.”

He held her eyes with his as he sank to his knees, tugging her garment off and to the floor. Still holding her gaze, he ran his fingertips from the outside of her ankles, up her bare legs to her thighs and hips, waist, and underarms. Then, without warning, he moved up and took one breast in his mouth, sucking hard.

She groaned, and her body folded itself down so that she was on her knees facing him.

“Who are you?” she murmured, placing her hands on his shoulders, as he continued to suckle her.

The answer to your maiden dreams? “Your master,” he murmured back, moving his mouth from the one wet, erect nipple to the other.

She shook her head. “Your eyes . . . they tell me . . . something. There’s a message in them.”

He glanced upward from her breast. “That I want to swive you?”

She shook her head some more. “Somehow Dave is involved. ”

Dave, Dave, Dave, he wanted to chastise her, but the time for talk was over.

She was trembling with need.

He was trembling with need.

And so it was that he played master to his slave on the floor. Up against the mirror. On her back. On his back. All with a pounding rhythm that seemed to go on endlessly.

But, a long time later, he panted for breath and had to wonder who was the master and who was the slave in this particular bedsport.

The things a woman will do

for love . . .

Lydia was in a state of pure shock as she sat at her kitchen table, sipping a cup of black coffee from a mug which read, “Dancers Do It with Rhythm.” What an understatement!

Her visitor or captive or captor or whatever you wanted to call him . . . Finn . . . had allowed her to put her leotard back on, hinting that if she didn’t follow his orders, he would put restraints on her, as she had on him. He was only teasing.

But that wasn’t what had her in shock . . . or only partially. And her dancing had done nothing to clear her mind.

She was behaving in a totally bizarre manner. Bringing a stranger home with her. Engaging in sex . . .

numerous times. Never once protesting the things he asked her to do . . . in fact, initiating some of it herself. Continually seeing him as some reincarnation of Dave, or a messenger sent by Dave, or Dave himself, for heaven’s sake. She was finally going off the deep end. She didn’t even know what he did for a living.

Maybe her behavior was as simple as a reaction to five years with no sex. Or maybe it was a delayed reaction to Dave’s death, not that she hadn’t reacted before.

Her kitchen, dining area, and living room were all one open-air plan. So, Finn could easily be seen sitting on the sofa, back to her. If she were braver, she could creep up on him with a baseball bat and conk him over his thick skull. A skull which was covered with that long hair with those two ridiculous beaded braids framing his face. Men should not have prettier hair than women, she’d always contended.

Barefooted and bare-chested, he wore a pair of Dave’s old gray jogging pants. That was another sign of her shock . . . that she would have allowed him to root through the storage box in the basement, which hadn’t been touched since Dave’s death.

Finn continued to peruse a photo album and all the framed photographs he had taken off the mantel and spread out on the coffee table, not bothering to look up as she walked over. She sat down on the ottoman and picked up the wedding picture, where Dave’s tanned skin was a sharp contrast to his dress whites. His dark hair had been trimmed into its usual high and tight. The lines that later bracketed his mouth and eyes from repeated violent live ops had been absent then. He gazed down at her with a big goofy smile and dancing eyes that promised loveplay later. And she, in white gown and veil— Was I really that innocent and hopeful? —stared up at him as if he were her everything. Well, he had been.

“Why do you weep?”

Her head jerked up to see Finn staring at her.

Setting the picture down, she swiped at her eyes. “I miss him so much.”

“Dave?”

She nodded.