BJORN HADN’T truly been insulted. Ja, Chase called him a pig, but in truth Bjorn suffered being called much worse, and deservedly so. It took more than a few ill-conceived words to pierce his thick skin. But of late, Bjorn’s ego had taken a battering. First Jorund the Snot-Eater chased him from his father’s land, and then his near drowning, and now, if Chase were to be believed, he’d been hurtled into a future where nothing was familiar. As a result, his ego was much more fragile than Bjorn would ever admit, and at the moment, it felt as if it was beaten no less severely than raw iron on the blacksmith’s forge.
Everything here was so strange, so out of his realm of experience, that Bjorn had felt his confidence slip with every passing moment since he’d awoken on the beach. The magnificent castle Chase lived in, with its fires that burned without heat or smoke, the incredibly soft sleeping pallet, the pees pie (in Bjorn’s opinion, a thoroughly disgusting name for a food fit for the gods), the tell-his-vision—all these things were unfamiliar, and each new wonder chipped away at Bjorn’s self-confidence. To feel helpless was unbearable for him. He was a Viking! He was Bjorn the Conqueror! Nothing should surprise or intimidate him, and yet he found himself amazed and daunted at every turn.
It was Chase’s opinion the gods had sped Bjorn forward through time. Bjorn didn’t doubt it in the slightest—it was in keeping with Odin’s personality to find such a feat humorous. It was common knowledge that Odin, as well as Thor and Njord and the rest of the Norse Aesir, have twisted senses of humor.
Bjorn could adjust to the idea that everyone he’d ever known was long dead and probably watching him from Valhalla and Asgard, laughing their asses off at him. Well, let them laugh. Given time, he had no doubt he would conquer this world just as surely as he’d conquered his own.
It was a fact that, for the time being, Bjorn found himself completely dependent on Chase—a slip of a man, hardly more than a boy, really—and that was nearly intolerable. Asking Bjorn to take this shower for him, for all that Bjorn had protested, came as a balm to his dented ego. He felt needed, if for nothing else but his strong right arm and his sword.
Refusing to allow Chase to see fear on his face, Bjorn strode into the small room ahead of him.
“By Odin’s Fist, what demon magic is this?” Bjorn breathed, finding himself enveloped in warm, wet steam. A curtained cubicle stood before him, clouds of vapor billowing up from behind the fabric. He could hear the telltale patter of water on the other side. Swallowing his fear, he yanked the fabric aside.
Instead of an enemy, Bjorn found he faced yet another display of magic beyond his ken. Behind the curtain, rain fell. There was no lightning or thunder, no wind, but a steady stream of water that splashed noisily against the smooth white bottom of a large, trough-shaped, oblong bowl. The water fell from a strange, small silver cone, and worse, it fell hot. Bjorn could see steam rising, could feel beads of sweat forming on his skin.
“It’s a shower, Bjorn,” Chase said from behind him.
This was what Chase wanted him to take? How did one capture a rainstorm?
Bjorn growled, feeling inept again and not liking it one bit.
“You’ll need to take your clothes off first.” Chase reached for Skullsplitter.
Bjorn blinked. One needed to be naked to capture a shower? Perhaps a man had need of speed and agility in such a hunt. Being unencumbered by clothing made sense, in an odd sort of way. He nodded and bent to remove his boots, careful to keep his eyes trained on the steadily streaming water and puffy clouds of steam. His tunic and trousers followed in short order, the warm, moist air raising droplets of sweat on his skin. Hardest of all to discard was Skullsplitter, but what good was a sword against a water demon? He allowed Chase to return it to the outer room.
Gathering his courage, Bjorn bellowed out a warrior’s cry as he jumped feetfirst into the white trough, his hands pushing through the hot water to wrap around the silver cone. His feet slid on a surface as slick as ice.
“Bjorn! What are you doing?” Chase shouted as Bjorn wrestled with the silver storm cone. “Stop that!”
It occurred to Bjorn the fight was one-sided, with all of the wrestling being on his end. There didn’t seem to be much sport in combating this shower. The silver storm cone wasn’t fighting back at all, just groaning and creaking and continuing to spit hot water at his face.
“I am capturing your shower!” Bjorn yelled, his fingers wrapping firmly around the skinny neck of the cone, trying to choke the life out of it. Its neck was as hard as its head, and he didn’t seem to be making much progress at all. He bent its neck into a sharp angle, a feat that would surely have killed any other creature, but the damnable thing just kept spraying him.
“Let go of that before you yank it right out of the wall!” Chase shouted, pulling on Bjorn’s arm. “I didn’t mean for you to physically take the shower! I meant that you should get under it and wash up!”
“What?” Bjorn stopped trying to throttle the rainy beast, although his hands remained on its skinny neck, and turned his head to look at Chase. “Wash?”
“Yes! Wash, as in, let the water rinse away some of the grime and stink from your body. For God’s sake, Bjorn, haven’t you ever gotten washed before?”
“Often enough in the summer, in the river,” Bjorn answered, holding his head to the side, out of the spray. He blinked water from his eyes, feeling foolish. His hands dropped to his sides, fists curling. If there was one thing Bjorn hated, it was feeling foolish, and it seemed that he’d felt nothing but since he’d awoken on the beach. “You said to take it.”
Chase sighed and smiled. “Yes, I guess I did. I’m sorry. I should have been more specific. I keep forgetting that you’ve never seen any of this before. I suppose I’d be the same way if I woke up in your time, Bjorn.”
Bjorn was slightly mollified by Chase’s apology—but only slightly. “If you awoke on the shores of Lagarvík, you wouldn’t have lasted long enough to see anything,” Bjorn said with a sniff. “If you weren’t eaten by wolves, then you’d be taken as a slave—if your head remained attached to your shoulders. More likely it would have been lopped off by one of my brothers’ blades.”
“Wow. Sounds like you and your friends are a pleasant bunch.”
“We are Vikings,” Bjorn said simply.
“Look, since you’re in there and already wet, how about you get washed up?” Chase looked hopeful, making Bjorn wonder if cleanliness was a mark of position in this confusing new world. If so, then perhaps Chase was only seeking to allow Bjorn the status he’d enjoyed in his own time.
That brought up a new dilemma for Bjorn. Chase wanted him to wash, but he hadn’t the slightest idea of how. In his own time, Bjorn would sometimes dive into the cold waters of the river on a hot summer day, leaving whatever dirt the river would take from him behind and keeping the rest. After all, a certain amount of grime was the mark of a true warrior. One couldn’t be expected to keep clean and be successful while a-Viking. A warrior had other, more pressing concerns to tend to and no time to primp like a woman.
Under no circumstances could Bjorn allow himself to admit his ignorance yet again. He solved his problem by simply refusing to act on Chase’s suggestion. He stood with his arms crossed over his massive chest and glared down his nose at Chase. If Chase wanted him clean, then Chase could bloody well attend him.
CHASE WAS startled when he nearly bounced off Bjorn’s broad back as they’d entered the bathroom. Good God, the man took up nearly all of the space in the small room, looking even bigger than he was in relation to the narrowed walls.
It had been Chase’s plan to escort Bjorn into the bathroom, point out the shampoo and the soap, and then slip out into the bedroom before Bjorn could manage to shed a single article of clothing. He would’ve had to be blind not to notice the way Bjorn’s body filled out his tunic and close-fitting trousers, and the last thing Chase needed was for Bjorn to notice something rising in Chase’s shorts. His cock was already twitching just thinking about it—Chase had no doubt that he’d achieve a significant boner if he saw as much as an inch of Bjorn’s bare skin.
Unfortunately, things hadn’t turned out quite the way Chase had hoped.
It would have been comical if Chase hadn’t been a) worried Bjorn would tear the showerhead free from the wall and flood the place, and b) mesmerized by the yards of Bjorn’s incredibly sculpted and muscled, if quite filthy, naked flesh.
As it was, all Chase could do for several minutes was stare slack-jawed at Bjorn. Chase’s shorts pitched noticeably, his dick pointing due north as his eyes roamed helplessly over Bjorn’s wide shoulders, finely muscled back, perfectly curved ass, and strong thighs and calves.
Then Bjorn had jumped in the shower—literally—and Chase had been given a good long look at his front side, which he found every bit as compelling as his back side, if not more so.
Bjorn’s chest was twice the width of Chase’s, sleek and hairless, his pectoral muscles as well developed as any bodybuilder’s. Creasing the center of his stomach was an honest-to-goodness eight-pack. Eight. Not six. Eight. Chase counted, just to be sure. He’d never seen one in real life, not this up close and personal, and the twin ropes of ridged muscles fascinated him.
He realized Bjorn had come by his pecs and abdomen through the hard work necessary for survival in his century, not by lifting weights and supplementing his diet with protein powders and the occasional steroid injection. That knowledge made Bjorn seem somehow even sexier, as attested to by the hard-on Chase was now packing in his cargo shorts.
Chase had finally noticed Bjorn was attempting to strangle the showerhead. Bjorn’s rock-hard biceps bulged, and he’d managed to actually bend the stainless steel showerhead pipe like a pretzel.
By the time Chase convinced Bjorn mutilating the hotel’s showerhead was not a nice thing to do, his hard-on had wilted. Unfortunately, then Chase found he faced a new predicament.
Bjorn was being incredibly stubborn about getting cleaned up. Those ice-blue eyes of his were staring imperiously at Chase, and there was a mulish tilt to Bjorn’s chin as he stood stoically under the spray with his arms folded defiantly. As if Chase had a six foot four inches tall, obstinate five-year-old child in the tub instead of a grown man.
Chase realized if Bjorn was going to be washed, then Chase was the one who was going to have to lather him up and rinse him off. How in the hell was Chase supposed to do that without coming in his pants? His dick had risen to the occasion again already, just from looking at Bjorn. What was going to happen when he actually touched him?
Impossible. It would be safer to just let Bjorn reek, Chase thought even as he reached for the shampoo. Chase would be uncomfortable, but the idea of spending the night with a noseful of Bjorn’s body odor was too horrible to contemplate. The stench practically singed Chase’s nose hairs.
Setting his jaw, Chase climbed up onto the edge of the tub and poured a goodly amount of shampoo directly onto Bjorn’s scalp. He began to scrub, slowly working his slippery fingers through the mats and tangles of Bjorn’s water-dark golden hair.
Bjorn made a rumbling sound deep in his chest, a contented purr that made Chase wish he could spend the next week massaging Bjorn’s scalp, if only to hear that satisfied growl continue. It touched Chase on a base level, making him feel oddly proud of himself and not a little possessive. His Viking. Chase’s. Finders keepers.
It took a long time before Bjorn’s hair finally squeaked clean between his fingers, falling in a wet tangle to the small of his back.
That had been the easy part, Chase conceded as he reached for a washcloth and soap. Washing Bjorn’s hair had been innocuous compared to what came next. Touching his skin, his body, was going to be torture.
Working up a thick lather, Chase swallowed hard and pushed Bjorn’s heavy mane of wet hair over his shoulder. He kicked off his shoes and stepped into the tub behind Bjorn. Touching the washcloth to Bjorn’s broad back, he slowly slid it in small circles from one shoulder blade to the other, watching it sluice away the layer of grime to reveal the smooth, tawny skin that lay underneath.
The only things that marred Bjorn’s skin were scars, and there were plenty of them, Chase noticed as he slid the cloth over the knobs of Bjorn’s spine to the small of his back. As Chase scrubbed away a coating of dirt, more and more scars became noticeable. Innumerable minor ones, a few large ones, smooth, bumpy, skinny and fat ones, and a couple wickedly jagged scars that looked like lightning bolts had been carved into his flesh. Chase knew without having to look that when he got around to washing Bjorn’s chest, he’d find more of the same there. The man was a Viking—a warrior, for God’s sake—and he carried the history of his battles imprinted on his body.
Near the small of his back, just over his kidneys, Bjorn sported an especially heinous scar. At least three fingers wide, it started near Bjorn’s spine and wrapped around his hip. My God, it must have nearly sliced him in half! How had Bjorn survived such a wound in a century when herbal remedies stood as secondary to magical mumbo-jumbo? When leeches were the modern medical miracle?
Unable to resist, Chase traced a finger lightly over the puckered skin. How much pain had Bjorn endured? How had it not killed him?
“’Twas a Saxon blade that bit me there,” Bjorn said, his voice soft and deep, with a bit of bittersweet self-deprecation. “My first battle, and ’twas nearly my last. I was still more boy than man, overeager and careless. In my mind I was fearless, a stout warrior, a master of the sword. Pity my hands had not heard the tale spun in my head.”
Chase looked up from the evil-looking scar and realized Bjorn was looking at him.
“It nearly sent me to Valhalla. I was a full year healing.”
Chase cleared his throat, not quite sure what to say. He could only imagine what it must have been like, in a world without hospitals, antibiotics, and anesthesia. The thought of the strong, proud Viking lying twisted on a filthy pallet, suffering pain beyond anything Chase could imagine as healers doused him with foul-smelling, mystical remedies knotted Chase’s stomach, causing bile to burn his throat. He shook it off and returned his attentions to scrubbing Bjorn clean.
Skirting Bjorn’s ass (no way was he touching those tempting twin globes, at least not until he had himself under tighter control), he squatted down next to the tub to start in on Bjorn’s legs.
Chase had to admit he’d never seen a pair of legs quite like Bjorn’s—not in real life, anyway. He was fairly certain he might have glimpsed similar in his dreams, though. Long—Christ, they seemed to stretch forever—and dusted with dark gold hair, they felt as hard as stone under the washrag. It was like sponging down a marble statue of a Greek god. Apollo perhaps, Chase thought as he slid the soapy washcloth over Bjorn’s legs. Who knew Bjorn had been hiding such perfection under all that dirt?
The shower water continued to patter into the tub, swirling around Bjorn’s feet as it made its way to the drain. Chase rinsed and resoaped the washrag several times until the murky water finally ran clear. Finishing his ministrations to Bjorn’s legs, Chase sighed. Standing, he slipped his arm around Bjorn and washed his chest and washboard stomach without looking. He didn’t want to see Bjorn’s front side. He knew getting an eyeful of Bjorn’s privates would sever the last of his self-control and leave Chase with a wet spot on the front of his shorts that had nothing to do with the splashing water.
He pictured his grandmother in his mind and tried to remember her recipe for pumpkin bread as he washed Bjorn’s privates, sight unseen. It worked, but barely. Chase’s erection was painfully hard by the time the washrag rinsed clean.
Finally he ran out of options. Bjorn was as clean as he was going to get, except for that small area between his hips that faced Chase. Taking a deep breath, he squatted down and touched the washrag to Bjorn’s ass.
Bjorn grunted, but Chase ignored him and slowly rubbed the washcloth across Bjorn’s rear end, gently gliding it from one cheek to the other. Golden hair slicked dark by the water was plastered to Bjorn’s skin in whirling patterns. Chase bit his lip, aching to replace the cloth with his fingers, with his teeth and tongue. He wanted to pry apart the perfect globes, discover the treasure he knew lay between them. He grimaced when his cock seconded the idea by hardening even more painfully. If he hadn’t been so certain that Bjorn would spin around, pick him up, and snap him in two like a matchstick, Chase might have indulged himself.
Instead, he steeled himself, forcing his fingers to remain safely wrapped in the terry cloth as they dipped between Bjorn’s cheeks, biting his lip as he washed Bjorn’s most private area.
Above him, Bjorn growled, his asscheeks clenching. In a movement that took Chase by surprise and nearly knocked him onto his own ass, Bjorn spun around, and Chase found himself confronted with Bjorn’s oversized, surprisingly hard, arousal.