Fantasyland 01 Wildest Dreams (11 page)

He came back while I was fiddling with the
pancakes in one skillet and moving the bacon around in another one.
He stalked right up to me, slammed the kettle down on the stove,
grabbed the percolator, poured himself a hot mug o’ joe and then
stalked to the table where he sat down, one knee bent, one leg
sprawled, king of his rustic-chic cabin, eyes on me.

Dear Lord.

In silence and with a one man audience, I
finished the food, served it up, slapped slabs of butter on the
warm pancakes and it started melting. Then I turned toward the
table. I put a plate in front of him, one in front of my seat then
I went to the cupboards to get honey and silverware. I gave him
his, set mine at my place and put the honey on the table. Then I
moved across the kitchen to warm up my coffee and I sat down,
poured honey all over my pancakes, put it on the table and pushed
it in his direction.

Then I tucked in.

I saw him reach for the honey then I heard
the jug hit the table then I heard him start to eat.

I looked at him. Then I tried again.

“Frey, I think we need to talk.”

His brown-green eyes came to me. Then his
eyebrows rose. Then he shoved a gigantic bite of pancake in his
mouth.

I took the eyebrow raise as a, “Yes,
Seoafin? What would you like to discuss?”

“
I’m not a lesbian,” I blurted for
some
completely
unhinged reason and those raised brows shot together in a
scary way.

He chewed, swallowed and growled his first
word to me of the day, “What?”

“I’m not a lesbian.”

Words two and three came in quick
succession. “A what?”

Oh. Maybe they didn’t have the term lesbian
here.

“I… uh,” Damn you, Sjofn! “I don’t prefer
um… my own sex.”

He froze. Completely. His face. His body.
His hand with pancake on fork suspended in mid-air. All of him.
Frozen. Even the air around him seemed to glitter with frost.

Okay, maybe I should have left that for
later, say, after I learned his birth date, favorite color and
preferred way to down a deer.

I hurried on. “See, I was, well, I don’t
remember it actually and when you told me about it the other… well…
after we got married, I was surprised. I mean, I didn’t even
remember I said that to you. That’s kind of uh… a crazy thing to
say and a crazier thing to, um…
share
. I’ve tried to figure out why on earth I would say
something like that and I think maybe I was drunk and nervous. I
mean, uh…” I faltered. Shit. Think Finnie! “You’re a big guy and
all and I’m… well, I’m not that big and you kind of, um, flip me
out…” His eyes narrowed at a term he clearly didn’t understand. “I
mean, scare me a bit. Actually, uh… you’re doing it, well… right
now.”

He dropped his fork on his plate, sat back,
crossed his arms on his chest and scowled at me in that way it made
me think he wanted to break me in two.

I kept blathering. “And… well,
now.
Actually
more
now. The scaring me part. Since I’m, you know,
sharing.”

He didn’t speak.

Shit! I wished he would talk and not when he
said stuff that freaked me out or pissed me off but when I wanted
him to.

I kept on going. “I thought, with you home
and us being, well, you know, wedded in holy matrimony…” I faltered
again because his eyes narrowed telling me they didn’t have that
and he had no clue to what I was referring so I covered, “of the…
um,
gods,
” Eek!
“that maybe we should start to get to know one another and I
thought we should start off on the right foot, with everything out
in the open. Being honest.”

“Being honest,” he finally spoke and he did
it on a low rumble.

I nodded. “Yes, being honest.”

“So this is you honest, now, and that wasn’t
you honest, back then?” he asked a good question.

“
I can be a little…
crazy
when I have a bit too much to drink.”

“Yes, the wench at the inn said you come in
often, drink much ale and get quite loud,” he remarked, not looking
happy about this but I was sure glad Lindy corroborated my
story.

“Uh… yes,” I agreed. “That sounds like me.”
And, actually, that was no lie.

He scowled at me.

I pulled in breath and said quietly, “Frey,
this really sucks to admit but just the way you’re looking at me
now scares me.”

“The Winter Princess Sjofn of the House of
Wilde does not easily get scared,” he replied quietly right back
but his quietly was distrustful, disbelieving and a bit
frightening.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t. You’re right.
I can usually handle myself but I’m alone in a cabin in the woods
with no one even close with a really huge man who could break me in
two who doesn’t seem to like me much and you have no problem
getting physical and it scares the beejeezus out of me and when it
isn’t doing that, it ticks me off.”

“Ticks you off?”

“Upsets me, makes me angry,” I
explained.

He went silent again.

“Frey –” I said softly but he cut me off and
scarily changed the subject.

“So if you do not prefer women, you wouldn’t
mind if I took you to the loft, stripped you naked and did as I
pleased with you?”

I felt my face get hot, my breasts swell and
my heart start beating faster.

“Actually, I would,” I whispered.

He started scowling again. “Right,” he
whispered back.

He totally didn’t believe me.

“But only because… well, I’d like for us to
get to know one another better. Spend time together. Then maybe
advance to the next level.”

His brows snapped together again and he
asked, “The next level?”

“Uh… the part where you strip me naked and
do as you please,” I whispered. “That’s the next level.”

He scowled.

I waited.

He scowled more.

I didn’t have anything left.

Then he asked in a low, surprised, unhappier
than normal unhappy voice, “By the gods, are you asking me to court
you?”

That sounded crazy. The very idea of this
big, scary guy who was a renowned Raider courting me or anyone
sounded absolutely nuts.

And that must have been why I burst out
laughing.

He did not laugh, in fact, not one thing was
funny to him and he made this obvious so I struggled to control my
mirth, won my fight and suggested, “How about this? We make a deal.
You don’t order me around, throw me over your shoulder and carry me
out of pubs or other locations, toss me into sleighs or on horses,
send me careening through the forest on a horse whose reins I don’t
have in my hands and maybe we share a few meals together. I’ll
cook. Then we’ll see about the next level. Is that a deal?”

“And how many meals would we share,
Sjofn?”

Hmm. He was considering this.

I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“Fifteen?” I tried.

“How about two?” he returned.

Two?

Okay, maybe it was bad.

“Twelve,” suggested.

“Two,” he fired back.

“Nine?” I kept trying.

“Two,” he stated firmly.

Ho boy.

“So, in your two, does this one count as
one?” I asked, pointing with my fork at my plate.

“Absolutely,” he answered.

Ho boy!

“Do I have to answer now?”

“Yes.”

Shit.

I stared at him and tried not to look like I
was breathing as hard as I was breathing.

Okay, this was an adventure,
my
adventure. I’d paid for it and
I knew there were risks. There were always risks. And this was a
risk I had to take.

And, seriously, there had to be worse risks
than sleeping with a hot guy who could kiss really, freaking well
and whose touch could be both light and gentle.

Right?

So I straightened my shoulders and
declared, “Okay, two but only if you throw in not cleaning that
deer in the house. I don’t want to see it or even
hear
it when you clean it and I
certainly don’t want to clean up after it.”

He scowled at me again and then he noted,
“You’re the finest huntress in the realm, Sjofn, and known for
cleaning your own game.”

Gross!

Damn, time, again, to cover.

“
Well, I had an incident that um… troubled
me, uh….
mentally
and
gave that up. I’m not a vegetarian.” This word got me narrowed
scary eyes which meant Lunwynians didn’t do vegetarian so I
explained, “I eat meat I just don’t want to think of where it comes
from. If you agree no carcass cleaning or carcasses on the
whole,
ever
, in the
house except, of course, what I cook when it’s all good and cut up
and doesn’t resemble an animal anymore.” God! How lame could I be?
Time to sum up. “We have a deal. If not, we have no
deal.”

“Deal,” he replied immediately and my heart
clenched, my belly dropped and my breasts swelled again.

“One more thing,” I said hurriedly when he
picked up his fork to start eating.

His head, partially bent over his plate,
tipped back to look at me. “You’ve already tried me, Sjofn,” he
warned then he shoved the pancake already on his fork in his
mouth.

“Okay,” I nodded, “I get that but… I don’t
want you calling me that.”

He did a slow blink. Then he swallowed.

I rushed on. “I… would you...?” I hesitated.
“Actually, I’d prefer it if you called me Finnie.”

He sat back a few inches, his hand came down
to rest on the table and after he did that, he studied me intensely
for a very long time. It took a lot but I sat there and withstood
it.

Finally, he asked softly, “Finnie?”

And shit,
shit
that sounded nice in his deep voice.

“Yeah, Finnie,” I replied softly.

He studied me.

Then he said, “Finnie.”

Yep. Oh yeah. That sounded nice in his deep
voice.

I took that as a yes so I smiled at him and
whispered, “Thanks.”

He kept studying me. Then he shook his head.
Then he forked into his pancakes, cutting off a huge bite and
shoving it in his mouth.

Okay, well, that didn’t go great, as in,
after dinner I was clearly having sex with someone I barely knew,
but it didn’t go badly either.

Shit.

“You’re known for hunting, skinning your own
animals and being a very good archer, wife, you are not known for
cooking well,” he told his plate, I nearly choked on the pancakes
I’d just put in my mouth and I stared at him as his eyes shifted to
me. “I’m pleased to learn this about you.”

There it was. A sign, a small one, but one
like him keeping me warm that said maybe he was a decent guy and he
was going to try.

“I’m glad,” I said softly.

He looked back at his plate and shoved more
pancakes in his mouth.

Okay.

Maybe that went better than I suspected.

Phew.

Mr. Conversation

While Frey’s attention was on the deer, I
grabbed my stuff and nipped to the hot springs for a quick
bath.

One could say the hot springs were awesome
but one could
not
say drying
off afterward was. However, I’d done it so often, I’d made an art
of it so I was out, dried off and clothed in record time. Then I
wrapped my clean, wet hair in the bathing cloth and nipped back
quickly, luckily without him seeing me.

Since I had one day of essentially
semi-kinda-dating my husband before we got down to the nitty gritty
husband and wife stuff, once I got back, I lotioned, powdered and
perfumed as well as put on some light makeup. I mean, I
would
never
go on a
first date without making an effort. And I had at least a couple of
weeks of dates (according to my own personal philosophy of how long
before I considered sleeping with someone) to squeeze in one day so
I made an effort.

As I did this, I planned the dinner I was
going to make that night and therefore drew up a grocery list in my
head of what I needed to get from the store. I wanted something
special so he would notice I was making an effort (and maybe he
would make one too). I also wanted something chewy. He made light
work of those pancakes, chewing approximately twice before each
enormous swallow and I was hoping dinner would last a whole lot
longer than that.

I was in the kitchen, all done up but hair
still wet (though pulled back in the ribbon again) and I was
getting the basket I usually took to town with me to carry my
purchases back when Frey walked in.

I turned to the door and again, like that
morning, when he saw me, he stopped dead.

Weird how he did that.

“Hey,” I greeted. “I’m going to town to pick
up some stuff for dinner. Do you want anything?”

He stared at me a moment and I was hoping he
wasn’t back in silence mode when he stated, “I’ll take you.”

Hells bells. I’d actually wanted some time
alone to psych myself up for what was going to happen after
dinner.

However, time alone wasn’t going to help me
know this guy any better, or get used to having him around, so
maybe him going was a good thing.

We could chat.

“All righty then,” I replied.

His eyes moved to my hair and he moved
toward the living room, muttering, “I’ll saddle Tyr. You get a hat.
I don’t want my new wife catching a chill.”

Hmm.

That was thoughtful.

So thoughtful, I smiled as I followed him
and called out, “Tyr?”

He turned at the front door, answered, “My
mount,” then left.