Free Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 01] by The Reluctant Viking

disgust.
    His cool appraisal hurt Ruby. “You don’t believe we’re married, do you?”
    Thork made a rude, snorting sound. “Humph! Best you forget that lie. Granddaughter to Hrolf, some might believe, but marriage to me? Never!” He flashed a mocking smile at her. “Mayhap you lust after me. Verily, many women do. Perchance your hot blood caused you to follow me from your land to ours. But I never married any women, least of all the likes of you.”
    “Why, you egotistical chauvinist! What’s wrong with me?”
    Thork gave her a disdainful once-over from head to foot. “Thor’s toenails, girl! You be mannish, with your short hair and bold manner. And little flesh have you on your bones—nothing to cushion a man when he sinks into your sheath. A man likes softer, more feminine women.”
    “I saw the look in your eyes when I stood in the hall,” Ruby argued, despite her embarrassment. “You weren’t immune.”
    “Hah! Didst thou expect anything less? Thor’s blood! You raised the staffs on every man in Sigtrygg’s hall when you removed your clothing and flaunted those scandalous undergarments.” His glittering eyes assessed her frankly, reminding her he knew exactly what lay beneath her shirt and pants.
    “Staffs! Flaunted!” Ruby sputtered. Then she grinned and gave him the same once-over. She knew this man inside and out. She’d learned his sexual tastes from yearsof practice. Who was he kidding? “You’re wrong if you think I can’t attract you,” she challenged with her chin raised haughtily. “Or that you’d never marry me. I know more about your sexual libido, buster, than any woman alive. Would you like to make a little bet?”
    “A wager?” Olaf hooted, laughing at the two of them. “Do you not see what Thork means, wench? Men make wagers, not women.”
    “By all the gods, I must admit, never have I met the likes of you afore.” Thork shook his head in wonderment.
    “Well, is it a bet?”
    “Nay, I do not wager with women, especially when it is a sure win for me.”
    Ruby was pleased to see a speck of uncertainty in his eyes, despite his cocky words.
    “Come,” Olaf urged impatiently. “’Tis two years I have been gone from Jorvik and sore anxious I am to see my wife again.” He jiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
    After walking about a mile through the narrow city streets, they came to a less-populated area where the buildings were larger and set farther apart. They stopped before the biggest of these—wattle and daub sides with a thatch roof like the rest, but distinguished from the others by a carved oak door and eaves and immaculately cared for outbuildings. A long, clipped grassy plot led down to the river.
    Suddenly the door swung open and a horde of shrilly squealing young people swarmed out—all girls—ranging in age from about five to fifteen, with every shade of red hair in the spectrum.
    “Father! Father!”
    “At last! At last! You came home!”
    “What did you bring me?”
    “How long will you stay?”
    “Pick me up. Pick me up.”
    “Will you take me for a boat ride like you did afore?”
    With one girl in each arm and the others clustered around him, hugging tightly, Olaf smiled widely, trying to answer each of their questions in turn with fatherly patience. Finally, as he put the two youngest girls on the ground gently, he said, “Girls, I would introduce you to our guest.”
    He motioned Ruby forward and said proudly, “Ruby, these are my daughters.” One by one he pointed them out in order of size, starting with the youngest. “Tyra, Freydis, Thyri, Hild, Sigrun, Gunnha, Astrid.”
    Seven! He had seven daughters!
    A woman standing quietly in the doorway, watching the joyous reunion of father and children, motioned to Thork and whispered something to him. He walked to the side of the building and disappeared out of sight. Then Gyda turned to her husband with a warm smile.
    Olaf’s pretty wife had blond braided hair wound into a coronet atop her head.