Chapter 23
Vanoo replies to Nordin’s question on my behalf. “Saga suggested I invite some Glaciers over to widen Zaskja’s dating pool.”
“No.” Nordin’s response is instant.
“That’s what I thought,” Vanoo murmurs.
Saga sits up, indignant on my behalf. “She’s not a fucking baby, Nord.”
“I don’t think—” Vanoo starts.
But Nordin cuts him off, “She’s not yet twenty-one.”
“And what? Once she turns twenty-one, you’ll get off her back?”
“I love you, Nord, but you can be such an overbearing ass.” Saga stands. “I’m too hot. And hungry. Zas, dinner?”
“I’ll join you in a bit. I want to heat my hands a while longer.”
She glances at them, knowing how much they hurt in the winter. Scar tissue… “Should I wait for you at the longhouse?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” She looks over her shoulder at Vanoo. “Want dinner, babe?”
He nods and walks the jug over to Nordin’s bench. And then he lingers a beat after Saga has left. “Your sister doesn’t know?”
“Know what?” Nordin snaps, which makes his friend flinch. “There’s nothing to know.”
Vanoo’s eyes tighten, and then he nods. “Got it.”
As he stalks out, I can’t help but wonder what it is he got. Not to discuss his suspicions with Saga?
I sink my hands into Nordin’s hair. “I didn’t think you were coming.”
A groan escapes the huge male as I work over his scalp. “I almost didn’t.”
I tug on his locks, which draws another deep hum from his lips.
For a moment, he settles back and lets me play with his hair, but then his neck straightens and he reaches for my hand. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”
“They’re fine, Nordin. The heat already loosened them.”
Still, he digs his thumbs into my palm. I stiffen instead of relax.
He, of course, figures out the cause when I try to coax my bare hand out of his. He folds his fingers around mine, and then he’s lifting our twined hands to his mouth and kissing each one of my fingers…each one of my knuckles.
“Never hide any part of yourself from me, Zas.”
Damp heat that has nothing to do with the sauna stings my eyes.
“Come here.”
I scoot my legs to the side and stand, then climb down. Before I can sit beside him, he sweeps me onto his lap.
“Nordin,” I hiss, snapping my gaze to the door.
“I’m tending to your hands. Hardly a sin.”
“Do you often sit random people on your lap?”
“You’re not a random person.” He gathers my humid hair in one fist and pushes it off my shoulder.
“Would you sit Saga on your lap?”
“Not anymore.”
“My point exactly.”
He grumbles.
I plant my feet on the floor and resituate myself at his side. He tracks my every movement, his cheekbones streaked with a hungry flush. He grabs the jug and takes several deep swallows, the razor-sharp apple in his throat bobbing with each one.
I twist until my back is to the wall, then pull my legs up. I’m about to fold them and stretch them out when Nordin slams the jug back down with such force that the clang of pewter echoes in the dark space.
My gaze bounces to the door. When I find it closed, I glance back at Nordin, who isn’t looking at my face.
Ahh…
He sits straighter, readjusting the bulge punching into his towel. I let him stare his fill.
Instead of closing my legs, I spread them a little wider. I have never felt like more of a woman than in that moment, being devoured by the only man my heart has ever beat for.
“Zas…” He clutches the edge of the higher bench and turns toward me without a single blink.
I slide my hand down my body, which makes his other hand go to his crotch. I can’t tell if he’s trying to choke his cock into submission or stroke it.
“Do you know how many nights I’ve lain in bed, imagining this was your hand?” I slip it under my towel and stay the course, arrowing toward my pulsing center.
“Should’ve rolled around in the snow some more,” he mutters. When my fingers comb through my blond curls, his cheeks hollow around another rushed, “Zas…”
Before he can beg me to stop, I ask, “If this were your hand, what would you do first?”
“Fucking Hel, woman.” He tugs on his towel, but it doesn’t seem to ease the tightness.
“You can take it off. I swear I won’t come anywhere near it.”
He glances over his shoulder at the door.
“I have eyes on it.”
He unknots his towel, and holy Gods, I knew he was well-endowed but hadn’t quite grasped the magnitude of what he was packing.
“I thought your eyes were on the door, love.”
My gaze springs from the veined flesh to the amused kink of his lips before hurtling back toward the point of ingress.
“You asked what I’d do first.” He leans over, his cock bouncing against his abs, then places one palm on my knee and spreads me wider. “I’d check if you were wet by sliding a finger inside of you.”
“I’m wet,” I croak.
“You can never be too sure.”
I dip a knuckle inside, then pull it out.
“Again,” he rasps. “And the whole finger this time. After all, one day, you’ll have to accommodate so much more inside you.”
My eyes zero in on his massive cock, wondering if it’ll even fit. I don’t ask at the risk of sounding dumb.
“Whole finger.”
I sink it inside myself, expelling a sound halfway between a moan and a hiss.
“Let’s see.”
I hold my hand up. The firelight catches on my slickness.
Nordin licks his lips. “What I wouldn’t give for a taste…”
“Not tonight.” I bring my slick finger to the wondrous bead at the apex of my sex and begin to circle it. “What next?”
He fists his colossal cock and tugs on the skin. “Pull your lips wider so I can check that your finger is at the right spot.”
Oh, I’m at the right spot all right. Still, I do as I’m told, slotting my thumb and index finger between my folds and parting them. The growl that vibrates his chest is hotter than the air of the sauna.
I grow so wet that my fingers squeak as they trail up and down my folds. Never have I exposed myself so fully to another. Self-consciousness suddenly nibbles at the edges of my pleasure.
“You are so fucking beautiful, Zas. So fucking perfect.”
My heart whirls at the compliment, at the raw hunger sharpening his features. Perhaps the lighting is too dim for my scars to truly stand out. Or maybe he truly doesn’t find them repulsive.
He pumps his cock faster, harder, letting out a litany of small raucous grunts and curses. “Knead your clit for me, love.”
As I target the magical little bud, I look from his glowing eyes to his bobbing hand.
“That’s it. Just like that.” His raucous voice tears up the hush like fangs through skin, shredding my insecurities.
Between his burning stare, the sight of the swollen head he thrusts harder now, and the muted snarls dropping from his lips, it takes mere heartbeats before I climax.
I come harder than I’ve ever come. And longer.
I’m still coming by the time he gasps my name. His milky seed surges from the purpled head and splashes his slabs of muscles, dribbling down each runnel and matting the dark trail of hair.
For a moment, he just sits there, staring at me, dick in hand, abdomen glossed by his pleasure, chest pumping from his explosive release.
“Bloody fucking Hel,” he murmurs between deep drafts of air. “Twelfth moon feels like a lifetime away.” He lets himself go, picks up his towel, and wipes himself off. And then he grabs a corner of mine, envelops his fist, and tends to my wetness.
My breath catches at the feel of his fabric-cloaked knuckles. “Nordin!” I grab his wrist. “The codex!”
His lips purse. His jaw sets. “I’m using my hand to clean you, not to give you pleasure.”
Except I’m still so tender that the mere brush of his knuckles has my center tightening, tingling…
A small, torturous moan breaks free as he gives my swollen flesh another swipe. “Stop”—I clamp down on his wrist to restrain his hand—“before it’s too late.”
He shoots me a wry smile. “It’s too late.”
“No. It’s not.”
His lips press so hard that they become as thin as the edges of certain blades I’ve forged.
“It’s not too late,” I choke out.
He finally allows me to tow his hand away. As he spreads his legs wide and glowers at the steaming black stones in the firepit, I sit up and tie my towel snugly around my torso.
“I’m sorry for…” I run my lower lip between my teeth. “For what I just did.”
He twists his head to look at me. “For showing me Asgard?”
I snort, but he doesn’t. He looks very serious. Then again, Nordin Stormsson seldom looks anything but very serious.
He snakes his hand around my waist and tucks me close. “I’m going to find a way around the codex because I won’t last eleven months.”
“Distance.”
“What about distance?”
“You’ll last if we keep our distance.” I rest my cheek against his hard pec. “Or if we avoid being alone.”
He pillows his lips on the top of my head. “My sanity won’t last, and I’ll go feral.” He suddenly pulls in a breath, which tips my head back. “We’re about to have company.”
He gives my waist a firm squeeze before letting go and grabbing the honey wine. He dribbles some over his abdomen, probably to remove the smell of his seed, then grips the side of my thigh and holds me in place to sprinkle some mead on my towel.
“They’ll think us drunkards,” I muse.
“Better drunk than in love.”
In love… “You should be careful with your words. I might take them at face value.”
He tips me a frown, but then his brow smooths. “I’m not one to toss out meaningless words, Zas. I’ve loved you for a long time. Granted, not in the way I’m about to love you for the rest of my Fenrir-given life.”
His declaration funnels the heat from my core straight into my lids by way of my heart. He clasps my trembling thigh, squeezing and releasing until the tremors stop riding the muscle, and then he stands and holds out his hand.
I let him pull me up before reluctantly letting go. “We should fake an argument.”
“About?” he asks.
“Just go with it,” I murmur as I grip the handle and fling the heavy door wide.