Viking's Gift

by Anne Marsh

  And yet I can’t pull away.

  I don’t go in slow. There’s no gentle tease, no please-may-I touch of my lips to hers. I’m not a gentleman.

  I slam my mouth down on hers. I’m a hunter at heart and her sweet mouth is my favorite prey. She must not have got the memo on her danger, however, because she doesn’t pull back. Doesn’t try to dial down our kiss or run away. She kisses me back, no holds barred. Her mouth opens wide beneath mine, her tongue driving into my mouth like I’ve just handed her the football for a game winning pass and all she has to do is make it into the end zone to score.

  I drop her on her feet and yank her closer even though she’s just about as fucking close as she can get while she’s still wearing her clothes. We kiss harder, deeper, rougher, our moans filling the chilly air around us. It’s like we were meant to be, as if this was inevitable and we’ve just been marking time until we got around to kissing.

  A first kiss can tell you so much. It’s my promise to her that I’ll be a good lover and she absolutely should want to get involved with me because I’ll take care of her. This kiss is the Titanic of kisses, monumental, epic, fucking disastrous. Instead of holding back, I grip her head with my hands, angling her face until I’m closer. I lick at her mouth, my tongue searching for more, for all of her. There’s nothing gentle about me and she doesn’t seem to mind. She moans, her hands doing some yanking and pulling of their own as she devours me right back.

  I’d kiss her all day and all night too, except I hear the sound of fabric tearing. Fuck. I’ve ripped her jacket. My claws are out, slicing through the fragile nylon. I pull back and take inventory.

  Her mouth is swollen from my kisses.

  Her sleeve sports a brand-new four-inch tear.

  What if I’d cut her? What if I’d sliced her skin? This can’t work between us.

  “C’mon.” My voice is too guttural, almost feral in its intensity.

  She blinks at me, dazed, but in another minute she’ll put it together. She’ll know I’m about to shift, about to lose it. To distract her, I grab her notebook, shoving it into an inner pocket of my jacket, and then sling her over my shoulder.

  Dee

  Biting my rescuer isn’t smart but Carr drives me crazy.

  Literally, I see red when I’m around him.

  While the effortless way he hoists me into the air is flattering, it’s also annoying. He can’t be bothered to talk to me or to convince me to do shit his way—he just picks me up and moves me where he wants me to go. His boots crunch over the snow and for a stunned moment I just stare at the ground and the never-ending snow falling from the sky. When I wriggle, he rests one big hand on my butt as if that’s all it will take to keep me there.

  Fuck him for being right.

  I should shut up.

  It’s not like I have a line of rescuers waiting to help me out here. I’ve dated my way through almost the entire pack and my last shot at a werewolf mate dumped me in the snow and rode off. I really, really don’t want to think about that. People freeze to death out here and no one knew where I was. No one cared—except for this too big, too gruff, downright snarly Viking. Who doesn’t care. I don’t know what his deal is. Maybe he just lives to annoy me. Maybe he’s bored, lost a bet, or owes Calder a favor. There are a million impersonal possible reasons why he came for me.

  So if I’m an item on his to do list, a box he needs to check, why did he kiss me? That was a whole lot of tongue for a white knight.

  Fuck this.

  I’ve never been good at keeping silent. If I see something, I say something.

  I slap his ass hard and try to buck out of his grip. “Put me down, you Neanderthal.”

  He grunts, further reinforcing my opinion of his verbal skills.

  “I mean it. Down now.” I smack his ass again. Damn. The man is seriously built—it’s like slamming my hand into a wall of muscle.

  He doesn’t stop moving. “Dee?”

  Sweet. I definitely have his attention.

  “Shut up.”

  His hand moves over my butt, dropping lower until his palm curves around my cheek. He squeezes. Fire shoots through me. Hello, sexy cause and effect. It doesn’t matter that I don’t want to feel this way for him. Not in a million years. He’s so not my ideal man. He’s big, he’s dependably an asshole, and his loyalty is one hundred and ten percent devoted to his Viking brotherhood. Nope. He’s not Dream Ken Doll and we’re not playing house—or doing anything else. I’m just appreciating his… assets.

  Six feet five inches of really great, muscled, deliciously hard and lickable assets.

  God. I’m so screwed-not-screwed.

  “Put me down,” I grit out. “Do you get off on making me do stuff?”

  He stiffens and not in a good, getting-his-dick-up kind of a way, either. He bounces me on his shoulder, that hard part of him making contact with my regrettably softer stomach. I wheeze.

  “You’re playing with fire,” he growls.

  Yeah. That would be me.

  “Down,” I repeat. “Don’t make me bite you.”

  He snarls something I don’t catch but he doesn’t put me down. Well, he’s been warned. I’m horny, turned on, and pissed off. Any collateral damage is entirely his fault. I lean down and nip his ass. Hard.

  “Jesus Christ.” He dumps me onto the ground by the snowmobile. Okay. So I’m exaggerating slightly. Although I end up by his feet, he controls my descent so carefully that I barely bump my butt when I land. Glaring at me, he swings onto our ride.

  I glare right back. This move is not working out the way I’d hoped or planned because apparently all my pussy wants for Christmas is a Viking werebear—and it’s doomed to disappointment. Not sure where the silver lining is in this one.

  He slaps the seat behind him. “Get on, Professor.”

  He’s such a charmer, this one.

  “I can—” do what? Not like we’ve got extra snowmobiles. The plan was for the pack to double up. The seats aren’t built for three and I’m no delicate flower anyhow. There’s more than enough of my butt to go around. Still, I don’t want to ride with Carr. Why torture myself with what I can’t have?

  “You got a reason why you can’t ride?” His gaze goes straight to my crotch. “Ake hurt you?”

  Oh, my God. I look everywhere but him. We’re so not discussing this. Ake’s a mistake. We’ve agreed on that. Now I’d just like to move on—preferably to somewhere warmer and sunnier. Tahiti sounds good. Mexico works too, along with most of the Caribbean, any sunny part of Africa, or even a nice warm tanning bed.

  Carr reaches out and snags my wrist. Carefully. It’s kind of cute, the way he acts. As if I might break if he’s even the slightest bit rough when I’m the least fragile female in the pack. I’m sturdy. I bounce. I am in no way a delicate flower.

  “Answer me,” he says roughly. Then he sort of grimaces. “Please.”

  Wow. If those are his good manners, I understand why he’s still single. The man has no idea how to ask nicely for what he wants. He’s obviously used to busting in, taking what he wants, fighting—your usual rough-and-tough Viking stuff. And honestly, I kind of like that approach. He’d never say one thing and do another. Granted, that might be because he’s all act and no talk, but I’m in no position to complain.

  “What did he do?”

  “You want to play show and tell?” God. My mouth. It never knows when to stop and it doesn’t take orders from my much smarter head. How on earth am I going to find a mate if I can’t fix my stupid, non-existing flirting skills? I mean, it’s not as if Carr is even on my list of potential guys, but he has a penis. I could practice on him.

  And God knows, I could use the practice.

  Carr stares at me for a long moment and then the corners of his mouth tug upward. Forget using his words—the man is downright lethal when he smiles. My panties practically melt off me. “Lady’s choice, but I heard you tried to bite his balls off.”

  In addition to my general suckage at the
fine art of flirting, my foreplay skills also need work. Maybe I should have let Ake drive the show back there in the snowstorm. I could have played along. Turned it into a sexy game or something.

  Except… yeah. In LBWP (Life Before Wolf Pack), what Ake tried to do was grounds for an assault charge and I had to draw a line. It’s kinda hard not to worry about how Carr is going to react, however. We’re out here alone. He has that aforementioned penis, plus the Vikings have a reputation of playing hard and rough in bed. And while I’ve never actually had rough sex, I’m curious.

  About lots of things.

  “Dee?” Carr tugs and I skate forward, thighs bumping against the side of the snowmobile and the big, muscled thigh straddling the seat. I can feel the heat of him through the denim. Clearly, the cold doesn’t bother the man at all—maybe it’s his bear side. Maybe he’s just tormenting me because I’m freezing, he’s hot, and now I want to scale the man like a mountain, wrap myself around him, and…

  Stop it.

  “He deserved it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Two syllables. Maybe I should quit while I’m ahead. Get on the snowmobile and let my Viking take me back to civilization or wherever it is our pack is headed. We obviously can’t stay out here all night—I, for one, would freeze and I don’t think Carr is ready to be my own personal foot- and finger-warmer. More’s the pity.

  To distract myself, I give him another verbal poke. “You think he didn’t?”

  There’s a pause. Guess the question is harder than I thought.

  And then Carr makes a snarling sound that is far more expressive than that manly grunt he answered me with before. The sound is rough and guttural. It’s actually a little scary because the only other place I’ve heard an angry noise like that is the one time I witnessed a polar bear charging an intruder on its ice floe.

  “Would have cut them off myself,” Carr says in a deep growl. “And then fed them to him. Wouldn’t want to get close enough to use my teeth.”

  He’s seriously pissed off.

  On my behalf.

  “Wow.” I should probably say more but I’m a little busy taking a cautious step backward. Snow crunches underneath my boots. Carr seems bigger, his face harsher, deadlier. Suddenly, being out here alone with him seems like a really bad idea. I mean, I know that the Vikings shift into bears when they go berserk during battle but there’s no fight here. There’s just me and him and I’ve never been good with animals. Newly minted werewolf status notwithstanding, Dogs and cats don’t rush to mob me because I’m some kind of secret pet whisperer—so there’s no way I deal with an honest-to-God bear. He can keep that side of himself to himself.

  He lifts his hands up and there are long, lethal-looking claws jutting through the torn fabric of his gloves. I want to do a little screaming and about-face into the blizzard. My solitary snowbank actually looks real good right now. Or maybe I can somehow outrun him and rejoin the rest of the pack? Or find some secret escape route, ice tunnel, or hiding place? Because if Carr goes berserk on me right now, I’m not a big fan of my chances.

  “No more rending, big guy.”

  “If he hurt you, I hurt him.”

  “That’s very biblical of you.” I shuffle backward another step. I don’t think that’s going to be enough space if he shifts all the way. Maybe the berserker thing is just an exaggeration? Maybe he turns into a sweet, cuddly bear, the kind of toy you take to bed with you.

  Oh fuck me.

  He looks down at the claws and inhales slowly. Exhales roughly. If this is how he regains control of his beast, I’d really like him to put a little more visible effort into it. Like chains or something.

  His eyes narrow. “I’d never hurt you.”

  “Uh-huh.” It’s my turn to be monosyllabic. Let’s see how he likes it.

  “Tell me you know that,” he demands, as if trust is just that simple.

  “The rending thing was a little much,” I admit.

  He scowls. “Ake’s a bastard.”

  He’ll get no disagreement from me.

  And then his jaw tightens. “But the claws scare the shit out of you.”

  He actually sounds… hurt. In a rough, growly, snarly kind of way. Naturally. There is absolutely nothing soft or sweet about the man and yet he’s the one who came for me. So somewhere—hidden deep, deep down inside, possibly under decades of stubborn manhood—he just might be a good guy.

  Before I can overthink it, I step forward and run my fingers over those claws. These are to cat claws what a walrus tusk is to a baby tooth. His claws curve into lethal points, but they also feel smooth and hard. I slide a finger up the ivory length and… they’re really rather pretty. Another harsh sound escapes his throat.

  “You harrumph like an old man,” I tell him.

  “And you like living dangerously.”

  “Not on purpose,” I protest.

  “Ake’s a bastard,” he says, grabbing my hand with his non-clawed one. There’s another one of those tension-filled pauses and then I’m pretty sure his claws… retract. Go away. Disappear into his body or wherever it is they go when he’s not a rampaging, enraged bear. “Calder won’t let this slide.”

  I shrug. I wouldn’t mind seeing Ake get what he has coming to him. At all. “I’m happy to outsource if he wants to handle the ass-kicking for me.”

  Carr snorts. “You’re too small to kick ass.”

  I snatch my hands back and prop them on my hips. “You haven’t heard that good things come in small packages?”

  The snow is coming down so thickly now that it’s actually getting hard to see him and he’s right there in front of me. He reaches out and tugs me toward the seat.

  “Don’t make me chase you. Guarantee I’ll paddle your ass when I catch it.”

  “You just promised you’d never hurt me,” I point out because apparently I love living on the edge of danger.

  Well, at least he’d come after me, right? I ignore the surge of wetness between my thighs at the thought of Carr paddling my butt. Some days—most days—I’m pretty certain I could disappear from the pack and no one would give a fuck. I’m expendable, a bonus female who’s never anyone’s number one. The awkward one who gets lost in her head and overthinks stuff. I don’t function without my lists and I never manage to say the right thing. Hell, some days I don’t manage to say anything.

  “Any day, princess,” my Viking snarls.

  He’s the king of charm, he is.

  I scoot onto the snowmobile behind him. He’s a big guy and there’s not a whole lot of room left for me. I wriggle, trying to get comfortable and he curses. My legs hug his, my pussy glued against his butt. The man radiates heat like a furnace though, so I can’t complain too much.

  He drops a helmet onto my head and then drags my arms around his waist.

  “Hold on,” he grunts. As if I want to plant my ass in the snow again?

  I rest my cheek against his back and obediently squeeze the shit out of him. This close to him, I can pretend I hear his heart beating in his chest. I wanted to have someone to hold. I wanted someone to fill up the empty places in my life and give me a place to belong. I should have found a pair of arms to hold me, love me, keep me. And instead I’m riding double with a Viking werebear. Way to go, me.

  But the funny thing is that listening to the steady beat of Carr’s heart isn’t bad at all. It’s reassuring. The man’s solid, almost downright unmovable, and I guess he does actually check one of the boxes on my list. He’s steadfast.

  Wait. My list.

  “You have my notebook. Give it back.”

  He ignores me and lets the snowmobile rip, springing forward over the snow. Damn it. I want my notebook. I pull a hand free and shove it inside his jacket. Shirt, shirt, jacket, abs of steel… I pat him vigorously, trying to find my notebook.

  “Be good, girl,” he grunts, as if that covers it. Not a chance. That notebook is mine. He hisses when my fingers graze him. My gloves are soaking wet, and instead of fingers, I’m sport
ing icicles. Yeah, I’ll bet that’s hard to overlook. Without missing a beat, he strips off my wet gloves and shoves my hands beneath his clothes, trapping them beneath a soft layer of cotton T-shirt and his stomach. Hello sweet warmth. I curl my icy fingers into his warm skin with a sigh of bliss. I can fight with him later—right now, I’m all about enjoying my own personal space heater.

  He gives another grunt. This one sounds almost… pleased? Whatever. I have yet to crack the Morse code of manliness he communicates in. “Possessive little thing, aren’t you?”

  So what if I am? When you don’t have much, you want to keep what you do have.

  Carr, on the other hand, has it all. When we reach the keep about an hour later, the extent of his possessions becomes perfectly clear. The Viking keep is a big, crenellated, scary monstrosity. Looking at it, I have no idea why these guys are so worried about Armageddon. You could ride out the Apocalypse twice over inside that fortress.

  There’s no sign of my pack. I spot a line of abandoned snowmobiles on one side of the big, open-air courtyard, but no wolves. Everybody must have gone inside already. No one’s hanging out, waiting to sort me out, point me in the right direction. I mean, someone must have noticed I was gone because Carr came for me. That was no accident.

  He kills the snowmobile, parking it at the end of the line, and then he hops off like his very fine ass is on fire. Guess he must have Mighty Important Viking Things To Do because he sort of nods in a southerly direction.

  “Pack’s in there,” he announces.

  Um. Okay. “What, no tour?”

  He glares and then strides off in the other direction.

  I’ll take that as a no.

  I head in the direction he indicated, walking slowly just in case he decides to come after me, but no dice. When I reach the doorway, he’s long gone. From inside come the sounds of feasting and good times. Someone’s having a celebratory welcome home fiesta. So it wouldn’t work between us. He’s Mr. Big, Silent, and Hands-Off. I’ll just have to check him off my list.