Kim wasn’t at all sure about Asger having his nose stuck in one of them, the ever present dictionary by his side. With the TV out of action, it meant they’d filled their days, with her sitting in her favorite writing spot, tapping away, and him sitting on the other side glued to her books.
Every once in a while he would look up from reading and just stare at her with the most curious expression on his face.
“What?” Kim had eventually snapped at him. Asger had grinned, shut the book, pulled his shirt over his head, and headed outside. When she followed him, it was to find him chopping wood for her wood burner with far more vigor than had been necessary. She’d stood watching him for a while, admiring the play of muscles in his broad back. His side was almost healed now, further testament to what she knew to be the certain truth. He had to be a shifter. Not that they had that discussion yet, but she saw his inner animal often enough in his eyes, when he looked at her. Add to that the fact that he seemed incapable of not sniffing her whenever he stepped close to her, and yeah…
Kim glanced across at him again now, and cleared her throat. He snapped her book shut, winked at her, and then wandered off into the kitchen. Kim couldn’t help it. She inched across to read what had him so enthralled. Oh lordy, it had to be a sex scene, didn’t it? She didn’t need to hear the floor board creak to know he was back in the room. The fine hair on her neck stood to attention as he came up behind her, and tugged the book out of her hands.
“Interesting reading, minn kona,” he said. Her heart rate kicked up a notch when he put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her back into his solid frame. His breath ghosted across her neck as he bent his head and inhaled just under her ear.
“Tell me, is that what you like a man to do to you?”
His deeply accented voice settled straight in her clit, and she bit her lip to stop herself from moaning out loud. He would no doubt smell how wet she was getting for him anyway, so instead she wrenched herself out of his loose grip and put the coffee table between them. There, that was marginally safer.
“I’m a writer. I make things up.” She hedged the question, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at him. His deep laugh told her that he didn’t believe a word of it.
“Fine, have it your way, kona.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” she asked. Kim wrapped her arms around herself when his gaze drew so intense that she could hardly breathe. “You’ve been holding out on me. Your English is coming along fast.”
Asger smiled, as he cocked his head to one side.
“Amazing what you learn from books. I call you that, because you’re mine.”
****
Asger rather enjoyed Kim’s stunned expression, especially as her breathing sped up and her heart rate increased. Not in fear, but arousal that increased her sweet scent and made him hard as nails. His cock pressed against the stiff material of the new trousers she’d bought him, and he wished himself back into his own clothes. They had far more give in them, which, considering his cock was in a constant flux of readiness around his kona would be much preferable. Resisting the urge to unsnap the buttons on his trousers … jeans, she called them, to free his aching staff, he shoved his hands into the back pockets of said jeans instead.
Kim looked on a knife edge, ready to bolt if he gave into the very real need to touch her.
Instead he settled for quietly studying her, as the seconds ticked by. Her throat rippled as she gave several hard swallows.
“Well, that’s … you have no…” She threw him a somewhat panicked look, and turning abruptly walked over to her bookcase. The thing was heaving with all sorts of books, old and new, and he swallowed a groan of his own when she bent down to rummage through a box of books at the side of it. It tightened the material of her trousers over her delectable ass. His hands itched to caress those globes, to redden them with his hands until they glowed hot and pink, and she was begging him to take her.
Asger groaned and adjusted his dick away from the metal contraption that held his trousers together, just in time before she turned around, clutching what looked to be an extremely old book.
“Talking of books, I’ve been meaning to show you this. I found it in an antique shop years ago, and, well I can’t read it. It’s all in Old Norse … I think … but, I thought…”
She jumped when his wolf took over. He leapt across the distance separating them in one fell swoop. It was the first time he’d truly allowed his wolf to show, as much as he was able to in this realm. The fact that she didn’t scream soothed the churning in his gut somewhat. He recognized that book. The ancient one had something very similar back in his times.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, and a tingle of recognition went up his arms when his fingers touched the worn cover. It was a replacement. He sensed that straightaway, his sensitive nose picking up the slightly different age scents from the covering and the paper contained therein.
He realized he’d spoken in Norse, when she looked up at him blankly, so he repeated the question in halting English. While he could speak it now, having found it relatively easy to pick it up, thanks to the solid base he’d been given when he’d been a mere sveinbarn—his nursemaid at the time had been English—it still felt odd to form the words out loud.
“I—I told you. I picked it up years ago. It was old and dusty, but…” She stopped talking when he opened the old pages and clouds of musty dust rose in the air between them. Asger inhaled deeply and smiled. These pages held the promise of home. If he closed his eyes, he could almost see his village, and the brothers he’d left behind. His mate’s tentative hand on his forearm brought his attention back to her and he smiled at her.
“This.” He flicked through the pages, until he found what he was looking for. It was a depiction of his village. Asger swallowed the immediate longing to be back there down with a whine. “Minn homestead.”
He traced the aged pages with one finger, inhaling sharply when Kim pressed closer into him to see. Her soft breasts cushioned his side. With her head bent over the book with him, it wouldn’t take much to close the distance and claim her lips. Only the certain knowledge that this book would hold the answers to why he was here, and Odin willing, tell him how to get back to his time, stopped him from tasting her.
“Your home?” she asked. At his grunted acknowledgment she smiled and withdrew. He instantly missed her warmth and compassion, but the thirst for knowledge was stronger right now.
“I thought it might be. I couldn’t understand much of what it said in there, but I did recognize Liufr. When you said that was your kin, I kinda put two and two together and…” Again, her words trailed off when he smiled at her. Closing the distance between them he grasped her nape and rested his forehead on hers. Her sweet scent pulled him under, calmed his agitated beast, as he shut his eyes and pulled the smell of his woman deep into his lungs.
“Are you okay?” Her whispered question made him smile, and he released her.
“Já, minn kona.”
“Good, is that why you’re here? I mean, will it help you get back to your time?” There was a slight wobble in her voice when she asked that, as though she was either afraid of his answer, or didn’t want him to go. It made his wolf growl. Her eyes widened, and he knew without doubt that she would be looking into the eyes of his beast.
“You’re not just human, are you?” Had it not been for his sensitive hearing he wouldn’t have caught that breathless and barely audible question. Kim clasped her arms round her midriff when he shook his head.
“Thought not.” She swayed slightly, and collapsed into his arms when he drew her to him. Asger sat down heavily on the settee with his precious bundle in his arms. The book clattered to the floor, and he winced when the spine bent and pages crinkled out of shape. The need to hold his mate, however, to reassure her, took precedence right now. In truth the tender feelings engulfing him took the wind out of his sails.
Lust was a familiar sensation for Asger. Women threw themselves at him bac
k home, and he partook freely of the willing cunt, but that was all it was. Love was reserved for the brothers he fought with, his sister and her kin. To feel these tender emotions interwoven with the very real physical need to sink his cock balls deep into this kona, to make her his in the most primal way was surreal to say the least.
“What are you?” she finally asked. Asger tipped her chin up with his index finger better to see her expression.
“Ulfr.”
She blinked and nodded.
“I thought so. Will you shift for me and show me your wolf?”
She worried her bottom lip as she said that, until he pulled that flesh away and shook his head.
“I cannot, kona. This world … your world, it won’t let me.”
“Oh, well. I guess that makes sense. You’re bad enough as, well, you.” Heat stained her cheeks when he cocked an eyebrow at that.
“Explain, and stop wriggling, or…” He let his words trail off. She went as still as a statue, when he grasped her hips and thrust his rock hard dick into her covered ass. It was only her rapid breathing and the wetness he could smell between her legs that told him how much she wanted him.
“We can’t. I mean, I won’t. This is insane. You’ll be going back soon, and I will not be a notch on your bedpost, so, anyway.” She scrambled off his lap, bent down to pick up the book and gave it back to him.
“So you best figure out how to do that. I’ll go and rustle us up something to eat.”
Before he had a chance to say anything, she’d left him alone. Asger sighed. His mate was a complicated woman, for sure. Besides, she was right. He needed answers, so with that in mind he settled down to read. He would have to find out what exactly notches on bedposts had to do with anything later.
Chapter Five
The shrill ring of her landline roused Kim out of her absentminded stirring of the stir-fry she was preparing for their dinner. In truth, it was finished. She just had to find the courage to walk back in her living room, and tell her Viking warrior that it was ready. Her heart clenched painfully at that thought. Asger wasn’t hers and never would be.
Their conversation, brief as it had been, had made one thing perfectly clear. He had to go back to his own time. The way his nose had been stuck in that book ever since told her how much he yearned to be back there. She’d seen that wistful look in his eyes often enough since he’d recovered his strength, yet she’d put off handing him that ledger. Kim wasn’t exactly sure why she hadn’t thrust it at him the minute she got him home.
No, be honest, you know why.
Last time she’d picked the book up, the night before that fateful camping trip, in fact, heat had traveled up her arms, blood had rushed in her ears, and she’d had the most awful sensation of falling, before her sister had bundled into the room, breaking whatever spell that blasted book had woven over her. The ledger had slipped from her fingers.
Lisa had picked it up with a smirk, berated Kim on her odd fascination with all things Viking, and dragged her away to the kitchen. By the time she had returned to the book and picked it up with trembling fingers, nothing odd had happened, so she’d stored it away in the bottom of the box.
Maybe, that had been the trigger though. Maybe she was responsible for yanking Asger out of his time, and… The phone stopped ringing, only to start up again. Asger appearing in the doorway, clutching that book to his wide chest with a thoughtful expression, shook her out her maudlin thoughts.
She turned off the heat and snatched the phone off the wall before Asger could do it. He had answered that once with hilarious results, as it had been a cold call. His growled monosyllables down the line had had Kim in stitches. Come to think of it, he must have scared that particular double glazing company off for good, because they hadn’t called again. They’d been hounding her for weeks before hand, all because she’d stupidly asked for a quote to replace her old windows. In the end, that salesperson had annoyed her so much, that she’d told him to stuff it, but having got hold of her details they wouldn’t leave her alone—until Asger’s intervention.
He walked over to her Aga and sniffed the food. She got used to him doing that now. It was a subtle move most folks would probably miss, but she recognized the widening of his nostrils, followed by the tiniest of nods that signaled his approval. The fact that he liked her cooking really shouldn’t please her quite so much, should it? She was becoming far too fond of having him around the place. That was dangerous thinking, because he couldn’t, wouldn’t stay. He was a freaking Viking. A wolf shifting one at that. He needed to get back to his own time. The sooner the better, before she did something stupid like throw herself at him. He would be a hard man to forget as it was. It would be nigh impossible if she’d actually had sex with him. She didn’t even want to think of any other implications that might have.
While she didn’t know how that whole becoming a shifter’s mate worked in real life, the connection she already felt to him scared her half to death. Best to stay well away from temptation.
“Hello?” Kim managed to answer the phone before it rang off again. The deep voice of her boss rang in her ears.
“Finally, girl. Look, I know you said you needed some time off, but we’re several guides down, and we have a huge party booked tomorrow. I really could do with your help. I dread to think what would happen to them if they managed to wander off, so…”
Ignoring Asger’s frown and the threatening rumble of his wolf, Kim turned her back on the impossible Viking and nodded.
“That’s okay, Richard. I’m free, so I’d love to help out.” That rumble got even louder. Kim held her breath as Asger stepped up behind her. He was so close that the heat of his body seeped into her back. The vibrations of his wolf’s growl traveled up through the soles of her feet. Lordy me. He sounded furious, and he had no damn right to be. This, right here, was why she couldn’t act on the attraction between them. Being mated to some overbearing alpha type of guy was damn hot to write and read about, but in real life it would be a pain in the ass.
Kim had her life to lead, and no over-possessive Viking was going to stop her from doing so.
“Is it thundering at your end or something?” Richard’s baffled question made her grin. She elbowed Asger in his rock hard abs, swung round to glare at him, and shook her head, when he took a step to close the distance again.
Fire flashed in Asger’s brown eyes, as they bled from his wolf’s yellow back to the molten chocolate of the man. He murmured something under his breath that she didn’t quite catch. To her utter relief, he stepped back however, sat down at the kitchen bench, and opening the ledger started to read. The deep frown pulling his eyebrows together, made a ball of apprehension form in her belly, so much so that she startled when Richard spoke in her ear again.
“Kim? Are you okay? You’ve been acting strange this past week.”
Kim took a deep breath in and forced a smile on her lips for the benefit of her boss.
“Yes, I’m fine, sorry. That was just a heavy goods vehicle thundering past. I really do need to do something about my windows I think. You can hear everything. I’ll be there tomorrow, bright and early. Can’t have you killing the tourists now, can we?” Richard laughed, and his deep baritone instantly soothed her nerves. Richard was more than just her boss. Twenty-five years her senior, he’d taken her under his wing, after her father had died in a climbing related accident, while working for him. Kim had hated having to lie to him about the reason of her absence, but she couldn’t betray Asger’s secret.
“I haven’t killed the darlings yet. I’ll pick you up at first light. We can catch up over breakfast. I gather your latest book must be going well, as you’re being so distant, so you can tell me all about it.”
A giggle escaped Kim at the thought, and Asger’s head shot up. The heated intensity in his gaze took her breath away, as he glared at the phone.
“I might just do that,” she said. “See you tomorrow, Rich.”
Ignoring Asger and her racing hea
rt rate for a minute, she plated up their dinner and set a place for herself and her Viking warrior. He shut the book and put it to one side, when she put two bottles of beer down, and sat down opposite him.
“So, are you any the wiser as to how you get back to your time?” she asked. “And why you’re here for that matter?”
Asger didn’t answer her straight away, just tucked into his food, and Kim followed suit with a small sigh. Maybe he was just trying to figure out how to say things to her in English, but Kim had long suspected that his English was far better than he’d let on. No doubt this was a ploy to keep her on edge, to show his displeasure at the fact that she had been talking to another man.
The longer the silence stretched between them the more her temper spiked, until she bashed her fork on the table and pushed the plate away from her.
Asger’s wolf grumbled under his breath, but the man showed no outward reaction. He just finished his food. It was only when his plate was clean that he pushed it away, and looked across at her.
“Is there a problem, minn kona?” he asked. Kim wanted to strangle the infuriating male.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?” She countered his question with one of her own. A glimmer of amusement showed in Asger’s dark gaze before he once again became the stoic warrior, crossing his arms over his chest.
“If you were in my time, talking to me like that would earn you a hiding with my belt,” he finally said.
****
The way his woman’s mouth fell open in seeming shock, soothed some of his wolf’s agitation and downright annoyance at his mate having joked about with another man. The possessive animal inside him didn’t like her talking to another male one bit, but he knew her well enough by now to know that voicing that opinion would not be welcome at this moment.
He cursed under his breath and wished he was back in his own time, where he wouldn’t feel the need to second-guess his every action. He ignored the little devil sitting on his shoulder, telling him that his time or not this woman was far too strong willed to ever submit to his will without question. That was of course one of the very qualities he looked for in a mate. The paradox of it all was not lost on him, and he grinned at her predictable reply.
Claimed by Her Viking Wolf Page 4
