Page 71 of Viking Unchained

They all grinned at his vehemence.

“Uh-oh! Isn’t Lydia from Minnesota?” Geek remarked.

“She is.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but his face must have shown something.

“I thought you two were broken up,” Ian said.

“Broken . . . I did not break anything.” But I would like to break something. Like a Cajun head.

“He means that you and Lydia are no longer involved romantically,” Geek interpreted.

“Romantically? We were never involved romantically, not like Ian and Madrene, for Thor’s sake. With smelly candles and scarves and pole dancing in the dark. We just swived ’til our eyeballs rolled back in our heads.”

Now all eyes rested on the commander, whose red face matched his thinning reddish-brown hair.

“Uh, how do you swive?” Slick wanted to know, but by the twitching of his lips Thorfinn assumed he already knew; so, he did not answer.

But then Geek said, “Finn and Lydia were playing the love-slave game.”

Slick choked on his beer, and Ian’s face turned so red he best be careful he did not burst the bulging vein in his forehead.

“’Twas not a game, lackwit,” Thorfinn said to Geek. “But, ’tis true, Lydia and I are no longer together.

Even so, she promised to take me to see her son, who is visiting his two grandsires in Minnesota.”

“Why would—?” Geek started to ask, but stopped at Thorfinn’s glower.

“How come no woman ever wants to play love slave with me?” Slick wanted to know.

“A lot of women would if they knew about that McMansion of yours in Malibu,” Geek answered Slick.

Then he added, “So how’s the situation with your ex-wife? I hear you were in court again last week.”

“Hopefully, it’s finally over. Five frickin’ years she’s been dragging me through the court system, trying to get more and more money, as if she didn’t about bleed me dry the first time around. What she really wanted, and thank God the Superior Court of California didn’t give it to her, was the Malibu house I inherited from my great-aunt, Lucy. And, no, it’s not a mansion, thank you very much. Just a prime real estate location.”

Slick explained to him then how he was divorced from a coin-hungry wife these many years, but she kept trying to get more and more from him.

“I knew women like that back in my country, but when they get too irksome, we just slice off their blathering tongues. That quiets them good and proper.” When he noticed the shock on everyone’s faces, he added, “You lackwits! I was jesting. Viking women are bothersome, too. The best remedy is to not wed at all.”

“I disagree,” Ian said.

But he was the only one.

“With the right woman, marriage can be the best thing life has to offer,” Ian persisted.

Still, no one agreed with him.

“Hey, Geek, wanna catch a flick later?” Slick asked. “That old Bruce Willis movie is playing at the Bijou.”

“Uh, I don’t think so. I have a date. Sort of. Julie is meeting me here . . .” He checked his watch. “Any minute now.”

“Would that be Julie of the cock-wax-job invention?” Slick wanted to know, a rare smile blooming on his usually grim face.

“It’s a penile glove, ferchrissake!” Geek exclaimed, then he explained to Thorfinn. “Women in this country have hand waxes all the time in beauty spas. Men, too. People put their hands in warm wax to get a massage kind of thing. When they put their hands in the warm wax, then take it out, it shrinks as it dries and hardens, but not real hard . . . more like a tight, form-fitting rubber glove. But the neat thing is when they pull it off, slowly, starting at the wrist, it’s a really sensual sensation. ”

Ian and Slick were snickering.

Thorfinn just gaped at the halfbrain fool. “Surely, men are not putting their penises in such a concoction?” Thorfinn was incredulous, but really men through the ages did just about anything if it brought their precious manparts pleasure.