“Fersa…,” I growled.
She kissed me again, fixed me with a look, and then she stood up and unfastened buttons at the back of her dress. I watched, rapping my nails on the table.
Gods, I hated myself sometimes. I hated that I would never have the discipline of a human. But I had also worked so hard to deny that, and I had never known as much happiness as I did with her. I was unraveling, grabbing her body before she had finished undressing.
“Oh!” she cried, surprised as I scooped her into my arms and threw her onto the bed, tearing her dress off over her head.
Now I growled low, digging my hands into her hair. “This is what you’ve done to me, Fersa. Fifteen years of control, fifteen years of manners and letters out the damn window. You meant to tear apart my facade. You knew what you were doing to me. The least you deserve is for me to fuck you until you can’t walk at all.”
I quickly unfastened my buttons, shoved her legs apart, and thrust into her, giving her my full strength. Her back arched, lifting her breasts to me, her arms collapsed on the bed with her palms open and her fingers falling open, showing me every creamy inch of her bare skin: her arms, the hollow of her throat, the little indent of her navel between the soft curves of her hip bones. I laced my hands with hers, using my palms as leverage to pound into her. Her inner walls clenched around my cock. “Patrick Rafferty could never fuck you like this.”
“I know it!” she gasped. “I don’t want him! I tore apart your—your facade—“ I’m not sure she knew the word— “because I needed you. I just didn’t know you were the white wolf. Please, don’t be caught! I can’t lose you too. Stop…stop. We have to do this properly…ask Father for…my hand.” She trailed off into heavy panting. “Don’t mess up my grandmother’s bedspread.”
I shut my eyes, feeling her slip away even as she was so close to me. “If I want to be your husband, I will never be able to change into a wolf again,” I said. “I can never take the risk.”
“Agnar…” Her voice was thick. “Then I won’t either. Lock the cuffs around my wrists. We’ll be humans together forever. Just don’t leave me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Fersa
He didn’t say anything, but he picked me up and laid me down on the rug. It was a lot less comfortable than the bed, but I didn’t really care. My life had not been remarkable for its comforts. I shoved his jacket off his shoulders so I could see his fine body, but before I could get any farther, his hands laced with mine and he claimed me again and again with a strength that made me shiver with delight. The primal beauty of him, the complete lack of control unleashed… I wondered how he had ever held back. That made him all the more intriguing to me, that he could possibly have posed as a scholar and tutored other bored young women without doing this to them—that I had been the one to remind him what he really was.
I was pretty much lost to sense at this point. His sharp teeth nipped at my neck and then his tongue raked up my skin, anywhere he could bite and taste me, as he made little growling sounds of desire that drove me insane. My moans were a begging response. No matter how deep he went, it was never deep enough, but the strong and steady motion of his cock—sliding out, then slamming back into my slick folds—was slowly driving me closer and closer to the abyss. I was seeing stars, riding a wave of increasing, delicious sensation.
“Do you mean it?” he grunted. “Is that really want you want? You and me, human forever?”
My eyes were filled with tears, I realized. “I want you.”
“Who will teach our children to be wolves?”
“I—I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. I just want you.”
“You have to think about it. It’s important.”
“It’ll be hard,” I finally said. “I don’t know. But we have to try. You’re my mate and—I don’t think anyone else would ever do. I love my father…my little brothers. I will miss the forest forever, but I don’t want to live there.”
“Ahh…Fersa…I’ll try to do it properly then. Will you marry me?”
“Yes, yes!”
“By day, we can dress up and pretend to be humans…and at night…” He made a satisfied sound deep in his throat, and held me close, my bare skin pressed against the buttons of his shirt. I dug my fingers in his shoulders, crying out as another deep thrust of his rigid manhood brought me to my peak again. I felt like a mess of sprawled limbs and disheveled hair, my body alight with tingling nerves and pulsing inner muscles.
It was only after the last tremblings of my orgasm that I started to realize just how hard the floor was, and how exhausted I was. I panted. “Please…”
“Not yet,” he said. “We fuck like wolves now. Joined until I come inside you. I will teach you different lessons now…like how to please me.”
I knew precisely what he meant, although I had never been able to mate in a wolf form of course. Wolves locked together when they mated, the male becoming engorged as the female tightened around him, unable to break apart until they were done.
“I think I knew that lesson before you did.”
“Maybe you’re right…”
He kept stroking my sensitive body, my skin burning like fire against him. I squirmed. A part of me didn’t want to surrender control even though I grew more aroused the more he ordered me.
And then, as I felt him release inside me once again, something in me broke open and relaxed. I melted like a puddle of wax.
He’s so beautiful.
Day by day, I was beginning to appreciate both sides of his nature: one controlled and bookish, the other wild and intuitive. Maybe I was beginning to appreciate both these things in my own blood too. I saw all of this in him, every moment, and it seemed like magic to me. I treasured every bit of him, how his eyes were alert and intelligent, and his hair somewhat groomed and yet not anything like the other men in town, and the strong forearms against the pale clean cotton of his shirt. I kept touching him like I was discovering the shape of a person for the first time.
He had slumped beside me, stroking my hair in a similar way. “Can you walk?” he asked, with a low laugh.
“I wish I didn’t have to,” I said. “You know, I think I can make Father understand. I’m sure he’ll give me trouble, but I also think he likes you. Sometimes he says things…like he knows that I will never truly adjust to his life.”
“Aye, I think so too.” He kissed my nose. “I think he wants you to be happy.”
I was grinning like a fool as we finally forced our bodies apart and got our clothes back in order. Agnar fastened my buttons, one by one, and tied my apron around my waist, as if he wanted any excuse for his hands to linger on my body. He wrapped his arms around me from behind.
“I’m already ready to have you again.”
“I can tell. But maybe we’d better have something to eat before I have to send you off. We don’t want my grandmother to catch you, now do we? I don’t think it would be the best way to present you to the family.”
“You’re right.” He pulled out a chair, still holding my apron strings in one hand. He tugged me down onto his lap. “Still, no need to part ways yet, aye?”
I handed him a scone and took one for myself. I was half-starved after all that and grandmother’s scones were flaky with butter, flecked with dried fruits. We had our fill of them in no time at all, and it was only afterwards that I realized just how many crumbs we’d scattered everywhere.
“I’d better sweep! Grandmother keeps a very clean table…” I stood up, but my stomach was feeling strange. I grabbed the back of the empty chair and sat down.
“You feel it, too?” Agnar asked. “What’s in those scones?”
“Nothing! She makes them every day! She got the butter from the Donnell farm the other day, but—I don’t think—“
I felt as if my stomach was stuffed with rocks. Agnar turned a sickly color, and then he pounded his fist on the table. “Did you tell her about me?” he said.
“I told her my tutor is a w
olf, and that I have some interest in you. But she doesn’t know you’re the white wolf. Still, you weren’t exactly careful, were you?” Panic rose within me. “Would she poison me too?”
“It’s not fatal, I’m sure. King Brennus wants me alive…”
This didn’t feel like bad food, which I had endured plenty often in the work house. I felt a heaviness in my stomach, and I could barely get out of my chair.
“This feels like magic,” I said. “Can you escape?”
He struggled to get to his feet. He was breaking into a sweat. “I’m sure I can’t change. It feels like a weight is dragging me down.”
“Grandmother…” My head sank into my hands. She must have betrayed me, but I still didn’t understand how she had known.
We were both trapped in the cabin, hardly able to leave our chairs, and before long we heard Patrick’s horse approaching.
“Hide!” I told him. “Under the bed, maybe?”
“It’s no use, Fersa,” he said. “It’s time to face my fate, then. I’m sorry.”
“No—no!” The door opened, and Grandmother and Patrick had barely set foot in the door when I cried, “You can’t take him from me! I already lost my mother! He’s not a criminal!”
“Are you sure about that?” Grandmother said, arching a brow.
And they weren’t alone. A brown wolf came right into the house and sniffed Agnar. Agnar glared at the wolf. The wolf looked back at my grandmother and it seemed as if he nodded.
“Wait! Do you know this wolf? What’s happening?” I was starting to feel cornered. I dug the silver key out of my pocket. My instinct was to change into a wolf myself—and hide. I couldn’t do that, of course.
Patrick sighed. “Little Red, my sweet, I—“
“I’m not your sweet!”
He stiffened. “Fersa—“
“I never wanted to hunt my own kind! I don’t want to be tamed!”
“Patrick, don’t lay it on too thick now,” Grandmother said. “And Fersa, calm yourself down. I don’t know what this man told you and why you’ve decided to trust him, but…you know he’s the third Longtooth brother, don’t you?”
“What of it?”
“What of it?” Grandmother repeated. “You know what he’s guilty of! It’s no small thing! Did you really think you could hide it? When you first came here, I saw the white fur all over the back of your dress.”
“Fucking hell!” I screamed.
Grandmother almost smiled, but then she saw Agnar and the smile disappeared. He was sitting at the table, relatively calm, his hands laced. “So you knew all along. You guessed I would visit and the scones were a trap.”
“Yes,” Grandmother said. “They’re enchanted. As soon as you eat them, they turn to magical stones in your stomach—for a day. Long enough to slow you down, but it won’t kill you.”
Agnar said, “There is nothing I can say to change what I did, but…I killed one blue stag, fifteen years ago. I was a young man, and it was the price asked by the man who agreed to give me an education. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t realize how wrong. I’ve paid for it ever since. I’ve never been able to return to my own clan. And as for my brothers, the last time I saw them, Ergar was eight. Garrin was six.”
“You’ll have to tell that to King Brennus,” Grandmother said, more gently.
The wolf beside her suddenly changed into a man. “Don’t look at me like that, woman, it’s nothing ye ain’t seen before,” he told her as he raised himself on two bare legs.
Grandmother crossed her arms. “Please,” she said.
“Agnar Longtooth,” the wolf said. “I’m the alpha of the Endless Firs clan in these woods. Along with the other nine clans of Mardoon, I’ve made a pact with King Brennus, to find ye and bring ye to him. And in exchange, no wolf will ever be bothering with academies and books and all this trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.”
My stubborn nature immediately bristled. “Wait a minute! Why? Does that mean I can’t learn to read anymore?”
“Yer half human,” he said, a bit dismissively. “The new law applies to pure bloods. First it was this one, and then it was Ergar, and the last thing we need are rogue wolves raping and killing. It puts us all in danger! It gives them an excuse to kill us!”
“I understand,” Agnar said, solemn and strangely accepting.
“No!” I cried. “Please! I don’t know about Ergar, but Agnar doesn’t deserve—whatever King Brennus would do to him!”
“I am sorry,” Grandmother said. “I truly am. But Fersa, he’s the king.” She suddenly clenched the wolf’s arm. “Maybe—she should go with him and plead the man’s case. From what I’ve heard, he really doesn’t seem like a harm to anyone.”
“We don’t need other wolves wanting that kind of learnin’. We’d rather no one plead his case.”
“But—Fendor—do you remember when I showed you around my little homestead?”
“You showed me how to use yer tools and things,” he grumbled. “That’s different.”
“Is it? You told me the gardens saved you all from starvation in that one bad winter. I only knew most of that from my own reading. I didn’t grow up on a farm. Maybe it’s not a bad thing if, once in a while, a wolf feels a pull to learn the things humans know. They could come back and help all of you—if you made them welcome.”
“Well, it’s hardly up to me, is it, woman? You’d have to talk to the other nine clans,” Fendor said, glowering. “And that doesn’t fix the fact that Brennus has a hefty price on his head.”
“I will go with him,” I said. “What do you think—Brennus will do to him?”
“Don’t know,” Fendor said. “The elven kings aren’t as brutal as they used to be. I expect he might get away with a whipping and prison.”
“A slow death sentence rather than a quick one!” From what I’d heard, life in prison was hardly worth living.
Agnar bore all this with a stoic expression, but he didn’t look at me. “Fersa, don’t put yourself in danger on my account.”
“You think I could just prance on home and not even know what happened to you? Ridiculous.”
“C’mon, daylight’s a wastin’,” Fendor said.
Patrick took out another set of cuffs and collar for Agnar, sized for a man’s wrist and neck. He handed them to Fendor without a word, and then he grabbed my arm. “Can I talk to you a moment?”
“Don’t grab me!”
“All right, all right. But can I talk to you outside?”
“I guess.”
We stepped outside. “Fersa…do you think it’s really true, what he’s saying?”
“What?”
“That he was young when he killed the stag. I know he’s your tutor. He doesn’t seem like a criminal, I’ll admit.”
“He’s not!” I snapped.
“Why didn’t you tell me when I asked if you wanted to hunt him?”
“What was I supposed to say?”
He scratched his head. “That you didn’t want to hunt your own kind…?”
I hugged myself. “I couldn’t have told you, Patrick. You would’ve been jealous. You would’ve hurt him.”
“Lord, what kind of a man do you take me for, Fersa? I’ll admit, I’m not well pleased to find that you had your eye on another man this whole time while I was courting you, but I wouldn’t force you to marry me. And I wouldn’t send an innocent man to prison. Your grandmother was worried; she thought maybe this wolf was bribing you to feed him or worse.”
“I—“ My mouth hung open a moment. I had never thought I could trust him. “I was so sure everyone would be furious at me if I told the truth.”
“I doubt your father will be pleased either, but in the end it’s still better to tell the truth. He wouldn’t cut you off for marrying your tutor, I’m sure of that.”
“Oh…” I covered my mouth. “Then…I’ve made a terrible mistake… Patrick. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Here.” He handed me a handkerchief although I wasn�
�t crying yet.
“I never expected you to be…nice.”
He raised his brows. “I wasn’t being nice already? After I saved you out there on the docks and everything else?”
“You said you wanted to tame me…”
“I was trying to flirt. I didn’t think you’d want me to mince words about—you know—bedroom matters. I suppose it’s for the best, because you have my head spun around at this point.”
I dared to reach for his hand. “I have a hard time trusting anyone outside of my own kind. The elves killed my clan, you know. I feel as if my father and Katherine must disapprove of everything I do, even when they’re trying to be nice. But maybe…I have it all wrong.”
“I think you do,” he said. “They love you. And I would never wish you any misery either. I don’t think any Rafferty would. Unfortunately, I don’t know what to do about Mr. Arrowen. He’s wanted far and wide and a few innocent white wolves have been killed in looking for him, so Fendor certainly isn’t going to let him off.”
“I—I see,” I said, finally making use of the handkerchief. “I guess I should have known that it’s my lot to lose the ones I love, over and over…” I started making choked sounds, but I forced myself to keep it together. “But I am going with him.”
“I’ll go too, if you like,” Patrick said. “I’ll vouch for him as a citizen of Pennarick.”
“Thank you. Truly.”
He patted my head. “I guess I’ll just be calling you ‘cousin’.” He sighed and reached for the doorknob.
“Wait—can I ask you one more thing?”
“Of course.”
“Did Fendor and my grandmother—I mean—how do they know each other?”
He chuckled. “I don’t think it’s my place to offer details, because she’s not much for giving them, but to be sure, if you ask her about having a relationship with a wolf she has a lot of opinions on the matter, most of them rather feisty. I know that, because I asked her about you. She said you’re likely to be easily distracted, half-wild, and frustrating beyond words—but also, hard to get rid of once your loyalties are set.” He smirked. “I guess that’s why he keeps coming around, eh?”
Taming Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale Heat Book 8) Page 11
