Page 83 of Viking in Love

“No one ever lets me have fun.”

“Seems to me you were having plenty of fun a short time ago.”

She smirked. “Yea, I was. Everyone knows that Dafydd has a manroot the size of a cucumber.”

Everyone except me! He choked as air went down the wrong throat passage. Way too much detail!

By the time he had everything set in motion that he could in preparation for Dunstan’s visit, Caedmon decided he would try to get some sleep, even if it was only a few hours until dawn.

But then he remembered some unfinished business. Red-haired witchy business.

First he checked his bedchamber. Empty, as he had expected. Then hers. Also empty. But wait, a pillow and some bed linens were missing. He stood in the corridor, tapping his thinned lips thoughtfully. Where would she go to sleep where she thought he would never find her?

“Aha!”

A short time later, opening the chapel door quietly, he saw her lying on a bench, the linen cloth wrapped around her like a shroud, her hands folded together under her cheek, as if in prayer. He was going to give her plenty cause to pray.

Without warning, he went up to her, lifted her high, then tossed her over his shoulder. With her squawking like a chicken facing the cook’s axe, he walked through the hall and up the stairs to his bedchamber. Tossing her on the bed, which still had honey on it—on the side where she would be sleeping, not he—Caedmon walked over to the door and locked it, pocketing the key.

She had a full-blown screaming tantrum while he removed his garments, and she tried to escape her shroud. The more she squirmed, the more she tangled the sheet.

“This is not funny.” She glared at him.

“I beg to differ.”

“And put some clothes on. You are not sticking that thing in me again.”

He glanced downward and saw that he was, in fact, aroused. Nothing new in that. He was always at the ready around her.

“I will stick this thing in you again, if I want to, but methinks I will wait until you beg me this time.”

“When pigs dance!”

“I went to a fair one time where they had a dancing pig.”

She had managed to get out of the linen and was adjusting her bed rail, which was by now half off one shoulder.

He walked over, grabbed the neckline and yanked until it was torn right down the middle.

She gasped. “Why did you do that?”

“Because you annoy me.” And, truth to tell, all your blathering is annoying me, too.

He crawled up onto his side of the bed, facing away from her, and pulled a linen sheet up over his body to the waist. There was no fire, but it was not overly cold tonight.

“This side of the bed is sticky,” she observed.

“I know.” If she keeps on talking, I am going to stick a wad of linen in her mouth…or something else. Hmmm.

“Change sides with me.”

Are you barmy? “Nay!”

“Well, if you think I am going to beg, you are more demented than usual.” He heard rustling noises and assumed she was laying her bed linen over the top of the damp spots. She cursed once, then twice.

What now? “A problem?” he inquired without turning over to see for himself.

“’Tis too wet. And sticky.” Without glancing her way, he could tell that she was now standing. “It seeps through everything.” When he said nothing more, she finally asked, “Where shall I sleep?”