Kiss of Pride (26 page)
Authors: Sandra Hill
You could say he was a beach bunny . . . uh, beach duck . . .
I
f it looks like a duck, and walks, like a duck . . . hey, Easy, can you give us a quack? Ha, ha, ha!”
Trond Sigurdsson, best known here in Navy SEAL land as Easy, gritted his teeth and attempted to ignore the taunts military passers-by hurled his way, especially when he noticed that the bane of his current life, Ensign Nicole Tasso, was standing there, along with Lt. Justin LeFontaine, or Cage, who’d been the one teasing him this time. Cage was LeFontaine’s SEAL nickname, appropriate considering his Cajun roots. Cajuns were folks who lived in the southern United States—Louisiana to be precise—and were known to eat lots of spicy foods, drink beer, play loud rowdy music, and were generally wild. A little bit like Vikings, if you asked Trond, which no one did.
He didn’t mind the teasing all that much, but no red-blooded male—and, yes, his blood was still red, and, yes, he was still a man—wanted a good looking woman—even one Trond absolutely positively did not desire or even like—witnessing him down on his haunches, walking around like a friggin’ duck, making an absolute ass of himself. A duck’s ass!
“You’re working Gig Squad? Again!” Nicole just had to remark.
As if it is any of her business!
But then Nicole was a nosy, bossy, suspicious woman who’d made it her goal in life to uncover Trond’s secrets, or improve him, or both.
As if!
Gig Squad was a SEAL punishment that took place every evening in front of the Coronado, California, officers quarters where Navy personnel leaving the chow hall could witness the humiliation of the punished trainees. Squats. Push-ups. And, yes, duck walks.
His infraction? Jeesh! All he’d done was hitch a ride on a dune buggy when told to jog this morning in heavy boondocker boots for five lackwitted miles along the sandy shore. What was wrong with the ingenuity of taking the easy way to a goal? “Work smarter, not harder,” that was his motto. The SEAL commander Ian MacLean apparently did not appreciate ingenuity. Not this time, and not when he’d slept through an indoctrination session, or yawned widely when a visiting Admiral came to observe their exercises, or complained constantly about the futility of climbing up and over the sky-high, swaying cargo net when it was easier to just walk around the blasted thing.
Truth to tell, he was not nearly as slothful as he’d once been now that he was a vangel . . . a Viking vampire angel. Nigh a saint, he was now. Leastways, no great sinner. But Mike—as he and his fellows vangels rudely referred to St. Michael, their heavenly mentor—kept hammering away at him that sloth embodied many sins, not just laziness or indifference. Supposedly, Trond was emotionally dead, as well. Insensitive. Ofttimes apathetic and melancholy. “You have no fire in you,” Mike had accused him on more than one occasion, as if that were a trait to be desired. “Your foolery and lightheartedness mask a darkness of spirit. You are sleepwalking through life, Viking. A dreamer, that is what you are.”
So here he was, more than a thousand years later, still a fixed twenty-nine years old, still trying to get it right. Before vangels were locked into modern times, a recent happenstance, their assignments had bounced them here and there, from antiquity to the twenty-first century and in-between, back and forth. He’d been a gladiator, a cowboy, a Regency gentleman, a farmer, a pilot, a ditch digger, a garbage man, even a sheik. A sheik without a harem, which was a shame, if you asked him, which no one did.
And now a Navy SEAL, even as he continued to be a VIK, the name given to he and his six brothers as head of the vangels. He understood the VIK mission and how it applied here, as it did with all assignments . . . killing demon vampires or Lucipires and saving almost-lost human souls. Still, many of the SEAL training exercises were foolish in the extreme, if you asked Trond, which no one did. Walking around like a duck . . . was that any way for a thousand-plus-year-old vampire angel to behave? And a Viking at that!
It was demeaning, that’s what it was. And PITAs like the always bubbly, always on-the-go, always mistrustful “Sassy Tassy” didn’t help matters at all. By PITA, he didn’t mean a pet lover, either. More like a Pain In The Ass. He tried ignoring her presence now, but it was hard when Cage added to his embarrassment and Nicole’s amusement by further taunting in that lazy Southern drawl he was noted for, “Why dontcha fluff yer feathers fer us, Easy?” He was referring to the exercise where a detainee not only waddled around like a duck but flapped his elbows at the same time. Twice the pain and twice the humiliation. To Nicole, Cage added with a shake of his head, “That Easy, bless his heart, is the laziest duck I ever saw.”
The final insult was Nicole’s smirk at Cage’s remark. Oooh, he did not like it when women, especially Nicole, smirked at him. Then she added further insult by telling Cage, loud enough for Trond to hear, “Maybe he should just ring out and save us all a lot of trouble.”
SEAL trainees could “volunteer out” at any time by ringing the bell on the grinder, the asphalt training ground at the compound. Actually, huge numbers of those who started out in SEAL training dropped out. Quitting was not an option for Trond.
Once Trond managed to control his temper and the huffing of his breath . . . it was hard work, waddling was . . . he duck-walked toward the woman whose back was to him as she continued talking, in a lower voice now, to Cage, who idly waved a hand behind his back for dismissal of the Gig exercise. At the same time she was standing in conversation, she bounced impatiently on the balls of her boots, as if raring to get off to something more important. The blasted woman had the energy of a
drukkinn
rabbit.
Meanwhile, the SEAL charmer was smiling down at Nicole, and she was smiling back, even while she bounced. Nicole had never smiled at him, but then he’d never tried to charm her, either.
Trond noticed that Cage’s eyes were making a concerted effort not to home in on her breasts that were prominent in a snug white razorback running bra with the WEALS insignia dead center between Paradise East and Paradise West. Leastways, they looked like Paradise to a man who hadn’t had hot-slamdown-thrust-like-crazy-gottahaveyougottahaveyou sex in a really long time. Or any other
real
sex, for that matter. Near-sex, now that was a different matter. He was the king of near-sex.
Not that I’m planning any trips to Paradise, near or otherwise. Nosiree, I’m an angel. Celibacy-is-Us. Pfff
! In any case, WEALS—Women on Earth, Air, Land, and Sea—was the name given to the female equivalent of SEALs, which stood for Sea, Air, and Land. A female warrior, of all things!
He shook his head like a shaggy dog . . . or a wet duck . . . to rid himself of all these irrelevant thoughts.
“Are you sure about that, darlin’?” Cage was saying to Nicole.
Trond had no idea what they were talking about, but one thing was for damn . . . uh, darn . . . sure, if he’d ever called Nicole darlin’, she would have smacked him up one side of his fool head and down the other.
Trond was still down in his duck position while the other poor saps had risen, their punishment over for now. Without thinking . . . Trond’s usual M.O., unfortunately . . . he leaned over and took a nip at Nicole’s right, bouncing buttock, which was covered nicely by red nylon shorts. Luckily, he’d been a vampire angel long enough that he could control his fangs; otherwise, he would have torn the fabric.
With a yelp of shock, Nicole slapped a hand on her back side and swiveled on her boot-clad heels. SEALs and WEALS were required to wear the heavy boots to build up leg muscles. Hers were built up very nicely, he noted with more irrelevance, although the shape of a woman’s body was never irrelevant to a virile man. And Vikings were virile, that was for sure.
All this exercise must be turning me into a brain-rambling dimwit. Or is it the celibacy?
“What? How dare you?” she screeched.
I dare because I can, my dear screechling.
Rising painfully on screaming knees, he stood, reaching for a towel and wiping sweat with purposeful slowness off his face and neck. His drab green t-shirt with the Navy SEAL logo clung wetly to his chest and back. “Oops!” he said, finally.
SANDRA HILL is a graduate of Penn State and worked for more than ten years as a features writer and education editor for publications in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Writing about serious issues taught her the merits of seeking the lighter side of even the darkest stories. She is the wife of a stockbroker and the mother of four sons.
Visit her website at
www.sandrahill.net
.
Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Kiss of Pride
The Norse King’s Daughter
The Viking Takes a Knight
Viking in Love
Hot & Heavy
Wet & Wild
A Tale of Two Vikings
The Very Virile Viking
The Viking’s Captive
(formerly
My Fair Viking
)
The Blue Viking
Truly, Madly Viking
The Love Potion
The Bewitched Viking
Love Me Tender
The Last Viking
Sweeter Savage Love
Desperado
Frankly, My Dear
The Tarnished Lady
The Outlaw Viking
The Reluctant Viking
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from
Kiss of Surrender
copyright © 2012 by Sandra Hill
KISS OF PRIDE
. Copyright © 2012 by Sandra Hill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition MAY 2012 ISBN: 9780062063854
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062064615
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1