Dream of Me/Believe in Me

kitchen. If Loki and his mischief makers had rampaged through it, it wouldn't have been in worse shape. Were that not bad enough, the clear imprint of where they had lain on the flour sacks made the outcome obvious.
    She hid her face against him once more. Still laughing, he carried her from the kitchens. It was time, he decided, for his Saxon wife to experience another kind of pleasure.
    He went into their lodge just long enough to get a few things, then carried Cymbra back outside and across the flat top of the hill to a beehive-shaped building made of rocks and set low in the ground. She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at it in surprise. “The sauna? I haven't been in there yet.”
    “I know.” He eased open the wooden door and stooped to descend the steps. “Any particular reason why not?”
    “You'll laugh.”
    “That's bad?”
    “You'll laugh
at me
. An old monk at Holyhood, Brother Chilton was his name, said only devils could endure the heat of the sauna. He thought it proved what Vikings were.”
    “You believed that?”
    “Well, no, but I did take it to mean that saunas are extremely hot.”
    His smile returned. “They can be. We'll go a little easy.” He bent closer, his lips brushing her ear. “This being your first time and all.”
    A shiver ran down her back. She knew he was only playing with her, deliberately inciting memories of their first time together, but it worked. If she wasn't careful, she would be clay in this man's hands.
    Such large hands, honed for battle, callused by sword and rein, bronzed by the sun. Yet such careful hands as he set her on her feet in the center of the small chamber, lingering for just a moment on the curve of her hips before drawing away.
    She looked around curiously. The stone walls narrowed to a small opening at the top of the structure.
    Directly below it, in the center of the floor, was an iron firebox. A hole in the top of it directed the smoke to an opening in the roof. Around the vent lay several dozen smoothly rounded rocks of a size to fit into a man's hand. The floor beyond the firebox was covered with planks of polished wood. Other planks were set up as benches around the chamber. The air was just a little smoky, smelling mainly of pine.
    Wolf bent down in front of the firebox and began feeding branches into it from the stack set nearby. Over his shoulder, he said, “Take your clothes off.”
    When the fire was going strongly, he went over to the door and pulled it shut, securing it from inside. With the faint remnants of twilight gone, the interior was plunged into darkness save for the red glow of the fire. Slowly, Cymbra's eyes adjusted until she could make out her husband taking his own advice.
    He stripped easily, pulling off his boots, then drawing his tunic off over his head and dropping it onto a bench. His leggings followed quickly. Naked, he stretched without a trace of self-consciousness, the powerful muscles of his back and buttocks flexing. With graceful ease he returned to the fire, went down on his haunches, and continued feeding wood into the flames.
    Cymbra swallowed against the fluttering in her throat and tried, without success, to look at something—anything—other than her husband's magnificent body. She moistened her lips, took a quick breath, and murmured, “Isn't that … uh … hot enough?”
    He glanced up, saw that she was still dressed, and shook his head chidingly. The thick mane of his ebony hair brushed his massive shoulders. “You'll pass out if you don't get out of those.”
    When she still hesitated, he went to her and gently put a hand beneath her chin, compelling her to meet his gaze. “Cymbra, is something wrong?”
    How to explain to him that she felt suddenly, almost unbearably self-conscious? He knew her so intimately and so completely that she felt she had no defenses against him. Life had schooled her to an inner world of carefully crafted serenity. He shattered all of that, plunging her into a turbulent sea of emotions in which she could barely stay afloat.
    Why, in scarcely an hour she had gone from worry to fear to anger to passion and now … to what? She felt utterly drained yet oddly exhilarated. And very confused.
    “Cymbra?”
    She didn't answer, only looked at him. He saw again the shadows beneath her eyes, recalled his intention when he'd found her in the kitchens, and remorse pierced him. She had delivered a baby only a short time before. She needed rest and care, not yet more