by Nora Ash
This time, the pang from my abdomen almost doubled me over. This had to be a stomach thing, some virus I’d picked up on the way over. Didn’t they say planes were basically flying cesspools?
“Let her get some rest.” I hadn’t noticed Grim slipping into the kitchen, but suddenly he was there, a cold darkness filling the room and calming the smolder in my blood. “She’s not well.”
Saga let out a frustrated snarl as the two blond men turned to their brother, finally taking their focus off me. Breathing seemed easier all of a sudden.
“We only want to help her—remember?” Saga said, barely containing a low growl to his chest.
“She will let you know when she needs our help,” Grim said, folding his arms across his wide chest as he stared his brother down. “Let her go to bed.”
Saga narrowed his eyes, but Bjarni breathed deeply through his nose and stepped away from me. “He’s right. Go rest, Annabel.”
I glanced from Bjarni to Saga and back to Grim, the tension between them spreading goosebumps along my skin. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but I got the distinct impression Grim had saved me from… something. Something I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to be saved from, yet the creeping of fear up along my spine was impossible to ignore.
“Now.” Grim’s voice was quiet, but the ring of command was unmistakable.
“O-okay. Goodnight,” I croaked. Feeling light-headed yet like lead was weighing down my abdomen, I turned and stumbled out of the kitchen, past the three tense alphas and down the hallway to my bedroom.
I’d barely made it to the door before the cramping returned with a vengeance, my muscles seizing all the way to my spine.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I pushed open the door into my darkened room. Fumbling for the light switch with one hand, I managed to scramble inside and then closed the door and leaned bodily against it. Whatever the hell was wrong with me, it seemed I’d only earned a brief reprieve. Still, I was thankful for it. Better to be sick in my room than in the truck on the way here, or at the stables.
I tried to distract myself by surveying the room. I hadn’t had much of a chance as I dropped off my luggage after visiting the stables, but it was kept in the same luxuriously sparse style as the rest of the Lokisson farm. Warm wood covered floors and ceiling, and the pretty lamps on the walls cast a cozy glow around the room. The dominant piece of furniture was a king sized bed with a gray sheepskin sprawled over fluffy pillow and comforters, and two doors led to the small walk-in closet and a spacious en suite.
At this time, I was mostly interested in the bed—namely how damn comfortable it looked. With a groan, I threw myself upon it, sprawling on top of the sheepskin to stare at the ceiling fan spinning cotton candy shadows onto the ceiling. Why they’d turned it on when the snowstorm was shrieking outside I didn’t know, but I was grateful nonetheless.
Even with it on, it was still hot. It had to be the fireplace. The brothers had probably kicked on the central heating too. But it seemed to be working a little too well; my hair was sticking to my nape, errant strands of it now stiff with salt.
“Gross,” I muttered, sitting up to unpack a few of my things. The moment I did, the world tilted again much too fast. I laid back down as swiftly and carefully as I could. Fine, no pajamas. I’d sleep in the nude. It was too damn hot for flannel.
I tugged off my jeans, instantly soothed by the lack of thick denim clinging to my skin. My sweater came next, and then my bra, and finally my panties. I had to peel them loose; as much as I would have liked to have chalked it up to sweat, there was another layer of slickness between my thighs. An unmistakable one.
Dammit. As much as my brain hated the stunts these assholes were pulling, my body was on a different wavelength. Objectively speaking, they were an attractive bunch—Bjarni and Saga were the epitome of tall, blond, and Scandinavian, while Grim was tantalizingly… not. And that polarity was just as sexy as the similarities between the other two.
Not that the blond brothers weren’t different too. Bjarni was thicker in muscle and frame, a bear of a man with an easy grin and shockingly gentle hands. Saga was leaner, but a little taller too, with a wanting look that made me wonder if he’d ever been satisfied. If anyone could ever fit that bill.
His hands were so rough. Unlike Bjarni, nothing about Saga was gradual or accommodating. When he saw what he wanted, he took it, just like when he’d grabbed my hips as I tried to get into his truck at the airport. They’d fit so easily in his palms, and his grip had been so sure, like he was meant to hold my body, like he was meant not to fit into me, but to mold me to fit him.
I snorted at myself. Wasn’t that typical of alphas? They were no give and all take, men who imagined themselves as conquerors on the lookout for new lands to plunder. In the Lokissons’ case, I supposed that was even more accurate. If they truly descended from Vikings, then that was exactly how they’d ended up in Iceland—through colonization.
My fingers still lingered on my nether lips. I hadn’t even realized until two of them began to play of their own accord, lightly parting and exploring the wet valley between. When I skirted my clit, I just barely stifled a gasp. It was so swollen, so sensitive, so eager to be touched.
But was that even a good idea? I’d just been feeling flushed and dizzy, and I was still so uncomfortably hot. That meant I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep, though, especially with the keening cries of the wind still prowling around the house. Not unless I had something to relax me.
I closed my eyes, and to my shame, the first thought that popped into my head as I dipped my fingers into my entrance was what would happen if one of them opened that door. As I dragged my fingers back up to my clit, glazing it with a little more of my silky wetness, Saga’s eyes flashed in my mind. Namely, the way his pupils had blown wide when he was looking at me in the kitchen.
Oh, this was wrong. But what good fantasy wasn’t? And why did it have to mean anything more than a not-so-innocent reverie about three hot guys tending to my growing desire?
I imagined the backs of my thighs over the tops of Bjarni’s wide shoulders, the sensation of his grin against my pussy as he lapped at the very spot I was rubbing now in earnest. I thought of his low growl, his rippling muscles, and the warmth of his hands as he held me down with one and groped my breast with the other, thumb flicking my nipple to rapt attention.
Saga would ready me differently. He’d have me on my stomach, two of his fingers dug into my channel from the start, my cunt spread so he could watch me stretch around his knuckles. With his other hand, he’d pinch my nipple stiff and sore, tugging it relentlessly as he found the spot inside me that made me squeal into the pillows.
And Grim… what would he do? He was still such a mystery to me, cold not just to the touch, but in manner too. Maybe he wouldn’t ready me at all. Maybe he’d just pull me to the edge of the bed, my hips canted at a steep angle, and open his trousers just enough to get his cock out to fuck me. Maybe the first time he touched me, it would be from the inside.
Fuck. They were huge men; their cocks had to be just as big. How would I be able to fit them? I was sure I’d never been so filled as I would be writhing on one of their shafts, mewling as they gave me every throbbing inch… and then the knot. I’d never taken one before, but right then… God, I wanted to know what it felt like.
Bjarni’s mouth on my tits while Saga swelled to bursting inside me, lodged so deep he couldn’t pull back out….
Grim watching, thick cock in his hand, stoicism broken at the sight of me taking his brother’s load….
Bjarni next, his thrusts deep and almost frantic, his knot threatening to split me in two even though his entry had been eased by Saga’s cum….
Grim in my mouth, throbbing and twitching, his hips giving involuntary bucks as he fucked my throat with all the violence he wished he could lavish on my pussy.
“Oh, shit!” I whined, covering my mouth with my free hand as the first clench of my muscles overtook me.
> This time, it was bliss. Technicolor stars birthed and died before my closed eyes, my spine wracked with tremors as I squirmed against the frenetic ministrations of my hand. In my mind, Grim had pulled out to ram himself inside me, to let my orgasm take him the last mile to forcing his knot past my threshold and spilling against my cervix, knowing I’d be too enraptured to struggle, to try to escape.
I never had thoughts like this. Not this dark, this… twisted.
Then again, I’d never come this hard, either. I was fucking my own fingers, the bed softly creaking as I rubbed myself until the last of the climactic spasms fluttered into nothingness once more. Into a strange sort of emptiness I’d never experienced either.
I should have been satisfied. I should have been able to dash all thoughts of the alpha brothers out of my mind.
And yet, besides the mere suggestion of relief, what I felt was… hollow.
But for the most part, it worked. I was still hot, still sticky, still wildly uncomfortable, but my limbs were leaden and the rush of endorphins, coupled with exhaustion from my flight and all that had come after it, had lulled me closer to slumber than a few shots of whiskey could’ve.
Things would be better when I woke. All I needed was rest. My body was going haywire from the difference in climate, in time zone, in culture and scenery. Plus I’d eaten more than I was used to, and different food. Bjarni’s proud smile as I’d finished my second plate of dinner flickered for my mind’s eye.
No. No more about the brothers tonight. Not when I was in this half-addled state. A fantasy was one thing—genuine desire another. I couldn’t afford to confuse the two, because I had no doubt that the second I let my guard down the tension that’d been between us in the kitchen tonight would snap, and I probably wouldn’t like what came next. Even if my still-buzzing libido currently suggested otherwise.
Hopefully everything would calm down as soon as their parents returned to keep them in line.
I reached for the chain on the ceiling fan, forcing myself to sit up just enough to tug it. The light snuffed. My head hit the pillow.
I woke up to the creak of my bedroom door being pushed open.
My brain kicked into high alert, even as my body was still halfway lost in sleep, I forced my eyelids open a millimeter. The only light in the room came spilling in from the crack of the door, so it had to still be night.
One of the brothers was trying to gain entry to my bedroom while I was sleeping.
I kept my breathing calm and even despite the fear sparking along my spine—and the rush of heat gathering between my thighs. I had little hope of winning a confrontation, but hopefully whoever it was, he’d have enough decency to not molest a sleeping woman. Even if hazy images of being held down and penetrated in the dark made my pulse throb heavily at the apex of my sex. For fuck’s sake, Anna, what the hell?
“She’s sleeping.” The low rumble belonged to Bjarni—I could pick out his deep timbre anywhere.
“Then we talk to him now,” Saga whispered from somewhere in the hallway. “She won’t last much longer after she wakes up again, and Grim’s still being a twat about it. If we don’t all do it tomorrow, we have to wait, what, a month until the conditions are right again? He needs to get on board now.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Bjarni murmured. He said something else, too, but the low whisper got cut short when the door closed again, sealing me inside. Unmolested, but not at all calm.
What exactly were they planning on doing tomorrow that Grim wasn’t fully on board with? That had them sneaking into my bedroom to check that I was asleep?
Despite the lingering heat between my thighs, no good images danced for my mind’s eye.
You’re being ridiculous, I told myself as I stared into the once-again pitch-black room. They’re family friends. They’d never hurt you.
But they could.
I was alone with them, trapped on a remote farm in the middle of a blizzard, and their parents were God knows where.
Quietly, I slid out of bed and fumbled for my phone. If I could talk to my parents, maybe they’d be able to calm me down. Or, if needed, get in touch with their friends so they could rein in their sons.
But even though my phone lit up brightly in my room, the dead signal quelled my plan before I could set it into motion. I wouldn’t be calling anybody—not even 112, Iceland’s version of 911, should I need to.
I drew in a deep breath, trying to calm my rampant imagination as chills that had nothing to do with the temperature traveled up my spine and set the hairs at my nape on end. There was no reason the three brothers would hurt me in any way. No reason at all.
But that didn’t change that they’d been creeping on me while I slept, or the ominous comments about tomorrow.
Moving as quietly as I could, using only my phone’s display for light, I put on my clothes from the day before and—ensuring the hallway was quiet—opened the door.
The hallway was dark now, the house quiet except for the storm making parts of the timber creak now and then. I took a moment to orient myself, then followed the low, flickering light from where the great room was located.
I snuck on my tiptoes, holding back my breath to not warn the brothers of my arrival, but it was for naught. No one was there, only the dying embers from the fireplace showed any sign of life.
Had they gone to bed?
Did I imagine the whole thing?
I rubbed my forehead—still hot to the touch. Even if I didn’t feel sick, I was clearly running a fever. Maybe I hallucinated it?
But no matter how much I hoped for that to be the case, I knew it wasn’t true. I had full use of my mind. They’d been there. They’d said those things.
Just then, a flicker of light from outside caught the corner of my eye. I turned to stare into the darkness, trying to spot where it’d come from.
There! Another flicker of light, almost muted out by the thick swathes of snow still falling from the darkened sky. It seemed to come from one of the big barns by the stables. The wind tore at my hair and ripped at my face and hands as I snuck across the courtyard, doing my best not to slip and fall. My heart pounded in my throat, adrenaline souring on my tongue as I inched closer to the building still casting a soft glow of light from the cracked-open door.
Probably just Grim checking on the horses. Though if that was the case, why was he in the barn and not the stables?
When I made it to the barn, I peeked through the crack and saw stacks of hay bales but no alphas. A wave of relief swept through me—someone just left the lights on in the barn. They weren’t out here, plotting….
A low murmur made my heart jump back into my throat. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, then quickly slipped in through the crack in the door and immediately sank into a low crouch.
I crawled around the bales of hay, toward the murmur of voices and the source of the light, making sure to stay out of view. Only when I could hear them clearly did I still, peeking out through a space between two bales.
All three brothers were there, gathered with an old-fashioned oil lamp in a clearing between the stacked hay, but that wasn’t what had my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.
No, the knot of dread gathering in my belly was thanks to the maybe eight-feet-tall contraption the alphas were facing. It looked to be made of branches and animal bones, tied together in such a way that it vaguely resembled a creature with two arms and two legs underneath a cranium sprouting two abnormally large horns curling up above it. Red smears on the white skull looked an awful lot like someone had swiped a finger dipped in blood between its horns in what I recognized as a runic symbol.
It was an effigy.
I hadn’t studied Norse mythology as diligently as I had the northern countries’ early history, but I’d seen similar drawings depicted in a book before. I remembered it vividly, because it’d given me goosebumps just from the old black and white photograph.
No one had been able to prove a thesis on what such a contraption had been
used for, but the book’s author had theorized such effigies representing Jotunn magic, the dark counterpart to the Norse gods.
I didn’t believe in black magic—of course I didn’t, not even as the storm howled outside the barn, the flickering from the oil lamp casting leaping shadows that danced around the barn, seemingly bringing the effigy alive before my eyes. I was a woman of academia.
But the text that’d accompanied that picture played in my head so loudly it drowned out even the pounding of my pulse: Assumed used for rituals based on human sacrifice.
“There has to be another way,” Grim growled as he glared up at the monstrous contraption.
“You know there isn’t.” Saga sighed, clearly irritated with his brother’s unwillingness to go through with whatever the hell they had planned. “We’ve been over this again and again. She’s finally here, at the last possible fucking moment. We don’t have time for your bullshit.”
“Then why don’t you two do it? Leave me the hell out,” Grim asked, lip curled up in anger. It was mirrored in his mismatched eyes, lending his pale face an even starker appearance than usual.
“Because there’s no guarantee the magic will include you, brother.” This time Bjarni was the one to speak, and his tone was kinder than either one of his brothers’. “We only share blood on one side of the tree, and we’re not prepared to risk your life, you stubborn mule.”
“So get the fuck over yourself and focus,” Saga growled. “Because we need our pretty little house guest to pop, and the Fimbulwinter is already here. This ritual for her heat has to be completed tonight, or we might not get another chance to claim her tomorrow.”
“She had a human life back home,” Grim said, turning to stare up at the effigy. “And we’re about to take that away from her. For good.”
“There is no other way,” Bjarni said softly, clasping a large hand to his brother’s shoulder.
“I know,” Grim murmured. His shoulders slumped for a moment before he drew in a deep breath and straightened his spine. “Fine. Let’s get on with it.”
