He turned, examining the scratch from Nøkkyn’s dagger for the first time. “What? This tiny little thing?”
“Please,” I said. I couldn’t stop picturing his blood seeping through his thick, black fur, staining my mother’s dress.
Fenris smiled at me, then sipped from the drinking horn. As I watched, the bloody cut from Nøkkyn’s dagger closed and vanished, leaving only a thin, white scar between his ribs. I cried out despite myself and leaned forward to run my fingers along the ridges of his ribcage, feeling his warm, smooth skin shudder beneath me.
With a growl, Fenris pulled me into his arms. The drinking horn fell to the mossy ground, spilling the precious mead of Val-hall as we embraced, our tongues dancing as our bodies pressed together. By the stars, he felt so good!
I let myself forget the morning, the feel of King Nøkkyn’s cold, gloved fingers on my thighs, the shudder of Fenris’s enormous body as I rode him through the forest. I surrendered to the warmth of the mead, the strength of my lover’s arms. My head was spinning when we pulled apart, and Fenris’ breath came fast and uneven.
“Oh, Sol, I missed you,” he muttered, burying his face against my neck. His breath made my body ripple with pleasure.
I moaned against him as I ran my fingers down his side, tracing the spot where Nøkkyn’s knife had pierced his skin. The small raised line of scar tissue caught against my fingertips. It seemed both brave and vulnerable, a permanent reminder of how he’d risked himself to come between me and King Nøkkyn.
My heart surged in my chest. I leaned down, covering the scar with my lips. His body stiffened as I kissed his chest and his breath hissed through his lips. I knelt in front of him, hands and lips running over his taut, muscular stomach.
His manhood was stiff and thick, pointing upward at the sky and surging with need. When I wrapped my fingers around the silky skin at its base, a small drop of liquid formed on the soft head. Fenris groaned. I glanced up; his eyes were closed, and his hips rocked against my touch.
The mighty Fenris-wolf of Ironwood forest, I thought, brought low by a mere woman.
I kissed him, bringing the round tip of his cock between my lips and sucking away the pale liquid.
“Sol,” he cried. “Oh, stars, Sol!”
His fingers sank into my hair, and he held my head for balance as his hips pulsed with energy. I took more of him into my mouth, caressing his head with my tongue. My lips moved up and down his length. He moaned, his fingers tightening against my skull. I ran a hand up the inside of his thigh, gently cupping the sac that hung beneath his cock. His entire body shivered in response.
Smiling, I moved lower, kissing the wrinkled skin beneath his manhood. When he groaned in pleasure, I took the sac gently in my mouth, running my fingers along the smooth tip of his manhood. I circled the sac with my tongue, feeling the two delicate eggs inside. He was trembling now, my poor Fenris.
Wrapping my arms around his thighs, I returned to his cock. I took as much as I could in my mouth, licking and sucking, devouring him the way he’d devoured me when we first met. He cried, his legs stiffening against me, his cock pulsing in my mouth.
“Sol,” he panted. “Sol, I can’t stop—”
I pressed my hands into his thighs, bringing him closer, deeper. And he exploded inside me, his cock throbbing as it sent his seed spilling down my throat. I swallowed reflexively, tasting salt and a distant, subtle tang, like greens from the garden once the weather turns hot.
His body sagged against mine, and I looked up. Fenris stared at the shifting birch leaves above us, his eyes unfocused, a dazed expression on his beautiful face. As I watched, he blinked, shook his head, and turned to me.
“My beautiful Sol. You didn’t need to do that.”
I grinned as I let him pull me into his arms. “I wanted to.”
His smile widened. For once, his face seemed open and relaxed, his forehead smooth and his eyes light. He seemed younger, somehow, as if my kiss had eased some deep, nameless fear. He kissed me, first on the cheek, then lower, to my chin, my neck, my shoulder blades, his lips moving over me softly, delicately, like moth’s wings, sending shivers down my skin. Heat built in my core, slicking the inside of my thighs and tightening like a knot in my abdomen. When he pulled away, I realized I was panting.
“Sol,” he whispered, gazing at me as though I were the most amazing thing in all the Nine Realms. “I never thought I’d see you here.”
I broke away from his stare to glance around the clearing. It was a beautiful place, an island of bright green, pale birch bark, and dappled sunlight, hidden in the darkness of the Ironwood’s thick pines. The little river gurgled softly as it curled around the massive boulders at the foot of the rocky hills beyond the birch grove.
“I never thought you’d want to come,” he added, turning away from me.
“Where are we?” I asked.
He met my eyes, his face once again creased in the heavy lines of a frown. “You’ll want to go home?”
“What?”
“Home. Back to that cabin you share with your mother and brothers. I can take you there.”
I shivered, suddenly cool. “But...Nøkkyn said you could have me.”
Fenris snorted and rocked backward. “You’re not property, Sol. I can’t just pick you up and run off with you, like a dairy cow.”
Something dark and sharp cut through my heart, leaving my insides hollow. “I see,” I whispered.
“When you’re ready, I will return you.” His voice sounded oddly pinched. He looked away from me toward the sparkling surface of the river.
“Is this,” I began, taking a deep breath. “Is this where you live?”
He shrugged. “Not exactly.”
I took a step closer to him. When I ran my fingers along the curve of his neck, he shivered and inhaled sharply.
“It’s beautiful here,” I said, pressing my cheek against his chest. “I don’t want to leave.”
He sighed, and his head sank to rest on mine. He raised his arms and wrapped them around me. I closed my eyes, listening to the rhythm of his heartbeat, breathing in his thick, rich scent.
Fenris cleared his throat. “If you—Would you want to see where I sleep?”
I smiled against the warm skin of his chest. “I’d love that.”
Fenris looked almost shy as he led me from the birch grove. We walked straight toward the jagged rocks of the steep hillside, and for a second I imagined we’d climb up into the very mountains themselves. Then Fenris turned sideways, smiled apologetically, and vanished between the rocks. I yelped, and he reappeared.
“The entrance is pretty small,” he said. “Sorry. You can really only get in if you go sideways.”
I stepped around the mess of broken granite. There was a dark crack in the hillside, almost entirely blocked by Fenris’s naked body.
“Just through here,” he said, vanishing again.
Dark, narrow places have always made my heart clench. Still, I ground my teeth together and turned sideways to slip through the opening. Bare rock scraped the skin on my back and thighs, and then I was through the entrance, blinking in the gloom of a small cave.
It was barely bigger than our cabin, with jagged stone walls and a rocky floor illuminated only by the sliver of light that managed to slip in through the entrance. One stone wall was marred by the dark remnants of a small fire, and an enormous fur lay crumpled across half the floor. Several woven bags hung from the ceiling and walls, mostly empty, but a few swollen with loaves of bread. I smiled as my eyes crept around the cave a second time. It looked exactly like the hideout of a madman, or a demon.
“It’s not much,” Fenris said. “I’ve, uh, never had visitors.”
I reached for the closest bag of bread, feeling its hard crust through the woven reeds. “Really? What about your friend from the Æsir?”
Fenris shook his head. “He meets me on the other side of the river. This place is...not for him.” His voice faded, and I turned to him. It was too dark t
o be certain, but I thought he may have been blushing.
“Would you like some bread?” Fenris asked. I sensed he was eager to shift the conversation.
“No, thank you.” I turned to him. “How do you fit in here? As a wolf?”
“I can’t. But I’ve got to sleep somewhere, right?”
I didn’t reply. Another implication from his words slowly sank into my consciousness. I’d been so certain Fenris had other lovers. He was so handsome, and he’d approached me with such bold confidence on the banks of the Lucky river. I’d just assumed I was one of many women he met on the cool moss beneath the trees of the Ironwood. Or perhaps I’d told myself that to assuage my guilt, as I had never once mentioned King Nøkkyn to him.
But if he’d never had visitors— If I was the only woman who had ever seen the inside of his cave, the place where the mighty Fenris-wolf slept—
“You saved me,” I whispered. My voice sounded as rough as the walls of stone surrounding us. “From King Nøkkyn. You rescued me, like in one of Bard Sturlinsen’s stories.”
Fenris shook his head. His eyes were wide and liquid. “I’m no hero.”
“But, you saved me from the wicked king.”
“No.” Fenris shifted on his feet and turned away. “Sol, I— I would have let you go with Nøkkyn. If you’d said that’s what you wanted. But—”
He pulled a sharp breath over his lips. It was almost a gasp of pain.
“It would have felt like dying.” Fenris rocked back and forth, then sank his hands into his hair. “All those stories, those Sturlinsen fantasies. They make it sound like falling in love is something magical. But, stars, Sol. For me, it’s been torture. And, when you leave, it’s going to kill me.”
He glanced up again, just long enough for the thin light streaming through the cave’s entrance to dance along the tears pooled in his pale eyes. Then he turned his back to me and rocked forward, as if his body ached to run.
“Fenris.”
He stiffened as I said his name. It was a small enough cave I only had to extend my arm to touch him, and take a single step to wrap my arms around him. His heart hammered against his chest as though he’d just run the length of the Ironwood, and the words he’d just spoken seemed to hang in the air between us.
Love.
I’d never thought to use that word with Fenris, my mad, handsome lover from the Ironwood. Since the day King Nøkkyn grabbed my breast through the soft fabric of Ma’s green dress and declared my worth equal to twenty cords of purple oak, I’d tried not to think of love at all. Love belonged to girls like Maddie Liefsen who wore ribbons in their hair and had shoes to protect their delicate toes from the mud.
But now everything had changed. Fenris, the monster of the Ironwood, had rescued me. He’d stolen me away from the wicked king and had taken me to his secret home deep in the darkness of the Ironwood.
I was free.
And, yes, by the Realms! There was a word for this feeling, for the ache in my chest whenever I imagined my life without Fenris, for the sense that I would die without him, that I was only truly alive when the two of us were together. Since we’d first come together on the mossy banks of the Lucky River, that moment when I decided I wanted him and not King Nøkkyn, Fenris had filled my waking moments and chased my dreams. He’d brought me more joy than I’d thought the Nine Realms could hold.
That was what people meant when they said love.
“I don’t want to leave,” I said. “I love you, too.”
The words felt so right rising from my lips. As if my love for him had been woven into the fabric of the Nine Realms from the very beginning, lying dormant for the long aeons before my birth, just waiting for me to turn toward Fenris and speak the truth my heart had always known.
Slowly, with every muscle of his body taut, Fenris turned to face me. A single tear streaked down his cheek, cutting a gleaming path along the curve of his cheekbones. I wiped it away with my fingertip.
“Fenris, I—”
His lips crashed against mine, stopping any further conversation. He kissed me with a sudden, desperate ferocity, as if he thought I might change my mind, decide to leave the cave and abandon him.
The thought made me shudder. I reached for him, wrapping my arms around his chest and sinking my hands into his thick hair. I met his storm of kisses with my own fierce need, and all my wild joy at my rescue. We sank together to the stack of furs lining the cave’s floor, our arms and legs entangled, our bodies already slick with sweat and anticipation.
I opened for him with no hesitation, and no words. Fenris gasped as he slid inside me, filling me, completing me. Then his mouth met mine again, and our lips and tongues danced even as our bodies came together. When we drew breath, we drew it as one.
This is freedom, I thought, as his body rippled above me, his pleasure echoing and heightening mine.
This is love.
Fenris and Sol’s Story Continues in The Monster’s Wife
I followed the stream back to the cave, the latent flicker of my arousal growing with every step as I pictured the smooth lines of Fenris’s body, the curve of his neck meeting his shoulder, the spread of his chest beneath my fingertips.
The sound of whistling reached me, and I paused. Odd. I’d never heard Fenris whistle before. He must not be wearing the wolf’s shape, then. I glanced at the little stream and grinned. I could surprise him.
From the sound of his cheerful whistle, Fenris was almost in sight. I walked to the water and dipped my toes in. A twig snapped in the forest, and I lowered myself into the stream, shivering. My hair swirled in the water as I pressed my body against the bank and crawled downstream a pace or two, until I reached a spot where a great mass of roots nearly hid the bank from view. The stream was almost cold enough to take my breath away, but I hunched down motionless beneath the tangle of roots, imagining Fenris’s face when I burst from the river, my nipples taut, my skin glistening and wet.
I waited until the sound of his footfalls was almost on top of me. Then I pressed my toes into the sandy stream bed and leapt from the water.
“Surprise!” I cried.
The man in front of me gasped and stumbled backward. He was not Fenris.
I screamed.
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More from Samantha MacLeod
The Loki Series
The Trickster’s Lover
Honeymoon
The Wolf’s Lover
The Trickster’s Song
The Loki Series Box Set
THE FENRIS SERIES
The Monster’s Lover
The Monster’s Wife (coming Feb. 2019)
The Monster and the Prisoner (coming March 2019)
The Monster Chained (coming May 2019)
The Monster Freed (coming July 2019)
EROTIC SHORT STORIES
Persephone Remembers the Pomegranates (free!)
Claiming Thor’s Hammer
Winning Freyja’s Cloak
Legends & Lovers (short story collection)
URBAN FANTASY & FANTASY Romance
Hel’s Lover (fantasy romance inspired by Norse myth)
The Night Watch (M/M/M/F fantasy romance)
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Acknowledgements
Thank you, first and foremost, to my very patient husband. You’ll always be my alpha reader, honey.
Ravenborn Covers designed this fabulous cover and the rest of the covers in this series. Anika, you do amazing work!
I was fortunate enough to work with two very talented and patient editors who gave invaluable advice and feedback. Kate of BFF Editing and Christine of Round Table Author Services were both incredibly helpful and very generous. I highly recommend both of them.
Thank you, as always, to the wonderful community of writers I've found who manage to blend high literature and erotica. Here’s a shout out to Janine Ashbless, Liz Meldon, Bronwyn Green, Mira Stanley, Torrance Sene, and many others who have encouraged me to keep writing. If you’re looking for your next read, you can’t go wrong with one of those fabulous authors.
Thanks to my family for your patience while I burn dinners, ignore the laundry, refuse to return your phone calls, and generally let my life unravel for yet another smut book.
And, finally, thank you. Without readers, this story wouldn’t exist.
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