“Ja. Naked is good. You be naked, Lucy.” He reached for her.
It was only then that she noticed his shoulder. The wound was entirely sealed. Yesterday she’d thought it would be days yet before she could remove the stitches. This morning it looked like she might be late.
“Galen, look. . . .”
He peered down at his shoulder, then stared back at her, questioning. She had no answers. “I . . . I heal good.”
“That couldn’t happen overnight. . . .” Was she talking to herself or him?
“Mayhaps last night, it could.”
She pulled away to look at his thigh. It was the same. Really almost healed entirely. “Well, we’d better get those stitches out.” The moment she’d dreaded was on her. And now those stitches were in there tight. She retrieved her supplies and the little nail scissors. She could do this. She could.
He sat on the sofa. She got the disinfectants from the head that opened on his cabin. Chewing her lip, she bore down on him.
“Lucy, I will do this thing.”
Had she looked that uncertain? Well, she wasn’t uncertain. He needed her help, and she could do this for him. “You will not. I took care of these wounds, and I will see this through.”
He raised his brows and held up his hands, palms out, in surrender. “Ja. You will do this thing.”
She’d start on the thigh. That one was the most healed. Pulling out the stitches would probably make him bleed. But it had to be done. She made her mind small as she knelt in front of him, steadied his thigh with her left hand, and cut each stitch with the little scissors. That was the easy part. She let out a breath and grabbed the knot end of the first stitch between the nail of her thumb and fore-finger. She pulled. God, she could feel the stitch pulling through the flesh. Blood seeped out in two bright dots. She let go as though burned and glanced up to Galen. He hadn’t flinched, but this must hurt.
He smiled. “Is okay, Lucy. Swift. Like this.” He made a plucking motion in the air.
Taking her lip between her teeth, she grabbed the knot again and just . . . jerked. Oh, dear. Oh, dear, dear, dear. She realized she’d been holding her breath. Okay. She’d done it. She patted away the drops of blood with a cotton ball soaked in Betadine.
One down and about a zillion to go.
She was so afraid to hurt him. It took all she had to keep at it. Galen wanted to protect her from that. He could have pulled the stitches out faster. But she needed to do something she was a little afraid of, to make her sure of who she was. He knew she was strong. But he wasn’t sure she knew it of herself. He sat, watching her concentrate, murmuring apologies he only half-understood. The bond he shared with this woman made him wonder at himself. Had he changed so much that she could capture and hold him so securely, without even trying?
Perhaps. Or maybe he had always had it in him to bond with a woman. He had just never met the woman with whom he was destined to bond.
He had finished healing, nearly. If he listened, he could feel the knitting of the muscle and sinew inside his shoulder, slow, inexorable. And if he listened to that, then other sensations crept in. Wind, whirling across land and sea. Far away the rumble of an angry earth as the hot liquid iron pushed up through a mountain. An island, its strange trees tossed in a mighty wind like green hair, as a storm battered it. All . . . all wove together into a kind of singing, bass and high, like men and women sang together. A song of the earth.
Something had changed last night. Perhaps many things. Maybe he himself had changed.
“That’s it,” Lucy said, jerking Galen from his reverie. The song subsided.
He glanced down at the scars, now accompanied by a line of dots on either side. Lucy swabbed them with the yellow-orange of her acetum.
“You do good, Lucy,” he said. She tried not to smile. She was proud of herself.
“Now I’m going to feed us some steak for breakfast,” she pronounced, rising. “Or, uh, lunch as the case may be. Then I have something I want to do to you.”
He raised his brows. “Ja? What is this something?”
“You’ll see. Can’t let that shower go to waste.” And with a smug look he found most appealing, she turned into the tiny galley, Vandal sniffing at her heels and poking her, to remind her that his bowl was empty.
Galen could hardly wait to find out what she had in mind.
Chapter 18
Lucy had Galen backed up to the bed, stark naked, or nacod, as he’d showed her he spelled it. She’d just finished kissing him thoroughly and had the satisfaction of feeling his weapon stiffen against her before she took both hands and pushed his chest until he fell backward, grinning in surprise. The grinding sound of Vandal chewing on the beef bone she’d given him echoed comfortingly from beyond the safely closed door. Scars still wound redly over Galen’s shoulder and thigh, but all trace of bleeding from removing the stitches had disappeared. The man was really a remarkable healer.
All last night he had taken the lead in their lovemaking. Vikings probably expected that. But she was a modern woman and she expected reciprocation. Would he allow that? He was still a man of the tenth century. But she had no desire to be a tenth-century woman.
“You are hungry for my body, Lucy?”
Oh, he had no idea. “Yes, my big, buff Danish warrior,” she said, crawling onto the bed between his splayed legs. “I am going vikingr.”
He lifted his brows. “You know what means vikingr?”
“ ‘Plunder. Pillage.’ ” She translated in Latin.
“Or ‘trading,’ ” he corrected.
“I will plunder, pillage, or trade. My choice.”
His eyes darkened. “It is for man to plunder, not woman.”
She shook her head. “Not in my time. You are here now.”
He reached for her, grinning again, his eyes alight with his need. “Ja. I understand.”
She pushed him back down and waved her finger at him, mocking. “Woman is a partner in this time. Equal. Same.”
“You were . . . partner last night,” he said, reproach in his voice.
She smiled. “Ja. And you are partner now. Yet I will say what we do.”
He thought about that for a moment, then reached up above his head, easily, even with his bad shoulder, and grasped the brass railing that lined the box where Jake stored books and DVDs with both hands. There was a lustful glow in Galen’s eyes.
“My body belongs to you, Lucy. Do what you will.”
“You might be sorry you said that,” she threatened. But she’d make sure he wasn’t. This was probably a pretty big step for him. “Hold tight, no matter what I do.” This was going to be fun. She was wet between her thighs just thinking about it. From the looks of things, Galen was looking forward to it, too. His cock lay along his belly, close to bursting. She spread his ankles farther apart and scooted in between his thighs, bracing herself on elbows placed on each side of his hips. Rolling to one elbow, she cradled his balls. She felt him brace himself. She was going to go slowly and enjoy every second of this. She rubbed the place just behind his testicles with three fingers, in little, firm circles. He was having a hard time breathing. Thank you, Cosmo, for all those “Ten Tips to Drive Him Wild” lists. She’d never gotten a chance to try those things. Strangely enough, she hadn’t even cared to drive the men in her life wild.
But Galen . . .
By the time she took the head of his cock in her mouth and sucked it gently, he was gasping like a beached fish and the knuckles grasping the brass rail were white. The bulge of biceps, the hair under his arms slightly darker than on his head, and the ripple of abs were making her grind her own hips against the bedspread. He sometimes closed his eyes tight and sometimes watched her handling his genitals. He couldn’t keep his hips from moving. She loved that. She alternately sucked the head and licked along the large vein that ran along his shaft.