Page 51 of The Outlaw Viking

“I’m a doctor, for heaven’s sake. And I’m telling you, Selik, that a few moments ago you had a bead of semen on the end of your penis—”

Selik made an inarticulate sound deep in his throat, and his eyebrows arched in wonder, probably at her attention to detail.

“Anyhow, if you made love with a woman then, even if you withdrew early and climaxed outside the woman’s body, she still could have gotten pregnant.”

“I assume that see-man and peen-yes mean what I think they do?” he asked dryly. At her nod, he went on. “But how could conception take place if the seed spills outside the body?”

“Because, you fool, just that tiny drop of semen inserted in a woman’s body is enough to make a female pregnant.”

“You make these stories up as you go along. ’Tis not true.”

“Yes, it is, Selik. As a doctor, I’m telling you, I’ve seen evidence of it over and over.”

Horrified, he stared at her with disbelief, which soon blossomed into alarm. “I never knew,” he whispered, concluding with disgust, “’Tis just luck then that I have bred no more babes.”

To Rain’s chagrin, Selik turned away from her then.

Chapter Eight

“Attend me well, Rain. You will stay here at Ravenshire with Tykir ’til I return,” Selik commanded the next morning in his bedchamber as he was packing a leather bag.

Rain rebelled, not in a good mood after a restless night of poor sleep—prompted, no doubt, by sexual frustration, a problem Rain had never experienced before. And it annoyed her to hear Selik speaking so calmly, his demeanor so unaffected as he gathered his belongings.

Wearing only a brynja, the padded undertunic which would protect his chest from chafing under metal armor, and a pair of heavy wool braies that clung to his muscled thighs, Selik tried to ignore her.

“Why? Why must I stay here? Where are you going? When will you come back? Hey, you’re not thinking of dumping me here, are you? No way!”

Selik put both hands to his ears in disgust. “Freya’s tit! You have turned shrewish with your endless questions. Just accept my orders and be biddable, for once.”

“Me? Shrewish? Hah! And, by the way, I don’t appreciate those crude Viking expressions of yours. Not one bit.”

Selik’s gray eyes widened with exaggerated surprise. “You take exception to my crude words when you told me just a few days ago, in a vulgar fashion even for me, exactly what I could do to myself? As I recall, you very clearly directed me to scr—”

“You don’t have to throw my words back in my face like a damn parrot.” Rain lifted her chin defiantly and tried to pretend that the warm skin on her face was not a blush, that she was not embarrassed by her increasingly sharp, and sometimes vulgar, tongue. Good Lord! She was turning into a woman she no longer recognized. “Well, you provoked me.” Her excuse sounded weak even to her ears.

“You have an answer for everything, wench.”

Not everything, Rain thought bleakly. She watched forlornly as Selik folded several of the strips of fabric he wore as loincloths. Suddenly, an image flickered in her head—an enticing image—of Selik in a pair of men’s bikini underwear. Hey, Selik in boxer shorts wouldn’t be so bad, either, Rain thought.

“Why are you grinning? Do you plot some other mischief to muddle my life?”

“No,” Rain said with a smile. “I was just picturing you in modern underwear, the kind men in my country wear.” She described all the different kinds to Selik, but he wasn’t impressed.

“Why would men care whether they wear silk or linen loincloths? Or whether they had ‘designer labels’ by that Calvin person?” he scoffed.

“Because they want to impress women.”

“’Tis what is inside the loincloth that matters more, wench,” Selik asserted, winking at her with supreme arrogance.

“Yeah, well, I still say you’d look better than Jim Palmer in those jockey shorts ads. Hey, better yet,” she added, fanning her face dramatically, “in a pair of edible underwear.”

Selik stopped his packing completely and turned to stare at her. She had his full attention. “Now I know you jest with me. People eating underwear?”

“Use your imagination, Selik. You, the supposed sex god of the Dark Ages, should have an idea how they would be used.”

Rain knew the moment Selik understood. His neck colored and the flush moved slowly up his face. She loved it! Then his lips tilted in a boyish grin.

“A sex god! I ne’er claimed to be such.”