Chapter 43
Nordin watches me like one watches a flighty animal—with silent caution. When my fingers loosen the wide brown leather belt fastened around my waist, the whole of him sharpens.
I let the leather drop to the floor and then, without looking away from him, I grip both my overdress and underdress and tug both up and over my head before letting them drop too.
His glowing eyes rove over my bare breasts, then down my stomach to the knickers I’ve yet to roll off.
“Do you still want me?” I ask, hoping I sound more confident than I suddenly feel.
He scoffs. “What sort of question is that?”
My skin breaks out in goose bumps from his enduring stare. “One I’d like answered.”
He stalks toward me, his hands ghosting over the sides of my body before curling around my waist. “I want you, love. More than air. More than sanity. More than sleep. More than revenge over all those who’ve harmed you.”
I link my arms around his neck, my throat tightening from the depth of his longing. “Then take me.”
His hands slide to the base of my spine, his fingertips dipping beneath the waistband of my knickers, scraping the soft skin beneath. “Only if I get to keep you forever, for my heart cannot endure another separation.”
My lids sting with relief. Relief that we have found our way back to each other. Relief that he has become Alpha, thus able to transgress the codex without risking expulsion—should my altered year of birth on the beam of life be questioned.
“You get to keep me forever, my Wolf.”
He watches me with steadfast tenderness, his blunt nails dancing along the small of my back. “Am I forgiven then?”
I swallow.
“Zas?”
“Can we leave the past in the past? Start fresh, right here, right now?”
“I don’t know that I—”
“You said you’d take anything I was willing to give. I’m willing to give us another chance. If you’ve changed your mind now that you’re Jarl and can have any female you desire, even the mated ones—”
“The only female I want is you, Zas.” His voice cuts through my rambling like the blade with which he ended Havrik’s life. “But I also want to know that, someday, you won’t hold what I did against me.”
“I understand why you did what you did. That’s a first step, right?”
He slides his lips.
“If that’s not enough for you, then—”
“It’s enough.” The tendons in his neck strain against my hands as he dips. “For now, it’s enough.”
I roll up on my toes to meet him halfway. Our lips collide with such force that I feel the aftershocks in my toes.
Nordin walks us down the wide hallway toward the bedchamber where he unspools me onto a mattress so plush it molds itself to every contour of my body.
And then he stands and devours the shape of me with eyes that grow progressively darker with lust. His fingers move deftly over the metal buckle of his belt. The loud thud it makes when it falls to the floor speeds up my scudding heart.
Before my next breath, his belted tunic is off, and his pants rolled low.
I smile at his haste. “Why in such a hurry? I’m not going anywhere.”
The hunger in his eyes spreads to his cheekbones, deepening their color and lifting his broad chest with gruffer breaths. “I don’t think you understand how desperate I am for you, Zas.”
I slide my fingers down the seam of my ribs, over my belly button, then under the remaining scrap of fabric covering my body. Nordin goes so preternaturally still that it emboldens me.
I stroke myself, then pull my dampened finger back out and present it to him. “I think I have an idea.”
“Fucking Hel, woman.” His cheeks puff as he exhales a slow breath, which I suspect is meant to calm him.
I hope it doesn’t, for I want him out of control. I want him all over me, not to erase the night we crossed the line but to pick up where we’d left off.
When he’s yet to unlock his fists, I roll back up to sitting and tuck my legs beneath me, then press a kiss to his chest, to the skin over his heart, which flutters so hard it has even my pulse beat.
I scrape my nails down the slabs of muscle that make up his magnificent torso, feeling each abdominal flex on my way to his tented breeches.
I hook the waistband, then tug it down his lean hips to set his cock free.
As the linen skates down his thick thighs, I take in every glorious, erect inch of him.
He’s so engorged that when I circle his sex, my fingertips fail to meet. A hiss escapes through his teeth. One that pales in comparison to the sound he makes when I list closer and tongue his slitted, glistening tip.
I look up into his face. The cycle of his breath has grown so ragged that it quarries the hollows in his cheeks and disturbs the heavy white strands that frame his downturned face.
His fingers lift to my head, trembling as they land and caress their way to the peaked shells of my ears. A small moan vibrates off my tongue when he strokes up and down their length. One that echoes through his body when I swirl my tongue over his swollen head.
His fingers trip off my ears before springing back in place and caressing with a vigor that intensifies when I stretch my mouth wide and suck on his taut flesh.
“Holy Fenrir.” His hips jerk.
I think he means to penetrate deeper until he apologizes and folds over me, pulling himself out.
He stares at me again with that unnerving intensity. How I wish I could read his mind to learn all that runs through it.
“Was my mouth not pleasurable?”
He snorts. Guffaws.
I raise an eyebrow at his odd reaction.
“Best fucking feeling of my life. My cock would live there if it could.”
“Then why did you pull out?”
“Because it isn’t your mouth I want to see dripping with my cum tonight.”
My pulse falters before erupting with a cacophony of erratic beats.
“Lie back,” he commands.
I don’t. I can’t. Not because I don’t want to offer myself to him, but because anticipation throbs so hard within me that it’s fissured the connection between my body and mind.
He must sense my loss of ascendency over my body, because his hands plunge into the back of my knickers, seize my ass cheeks, and lift me until my legs slide out from underneath me. And then he hooks my ankles with one hand and rids me of my undergarment with the other.
He bunches it into his fist before carrying it to his dick and fisting himself as though to slick his cock with my scent. A raspy groan escapes through his clenched teeth as he gives his length a few slow pumps.
I palm my breasts, kneading the soft tissue.
It’s only when his eyes latch onto my hands that I remember my blistered skin.
The lighting in his room might be low, but he’s a wolf.
He can see each ugly welt, each hideous, discolored patch of skin.
I move my hands to the pelt beneath me, tunneling them through the thick gray fur.
“Put your hands back on your breasts, love.”
I bite my lower lip.
He tosses aside my underwear, then folds over me and seizes my hands. And then he trails kisses over my thumb, back down, over my index finger, back down, over my middle finger, back down. He kisses his way to one pinkie, then skips to the other before making his way to my thumb.
Only once he’s thoroughly lavished both my hands does he set them on my breasts. “Squeeze.”
He scrapes a kiss on my mouth before pulling back and dropping onto his knees. And then he seizes my ankles again, but this time, it’s to draw my body to the edge of his cot.
The next instant, his mouth is on me, his tongue lashing, swirling. My spine arches off the bed, and I pinch my nipples, intensifying the rippling current that somehow connects my hardened points to my throbbing bud.
My slickness must grow heavier, for I hear him swallow. I roll my head back and stare out his window at the star-strewn sky as Nordin flattens his tongue and licks a hot, precise line from my leaking hole to my tingling clit. I swear every star overhead brightens.
He spears his tongue into me, making low sounds that flow straight into my veins and heat my blood. His velvety tongue turns into a thick finger that’s gentle but not soft. As he begins to work me, to loosen me, he suckles my clit. I come just as he’s adding another finger.
The sensation is so violent that my body lifts. Nordin drapes one heavy arm around my clenching abdomen, pinning my hips to the bed, then fucks me with his fingers, all the while tending to my clit that feels like it’s caught fire. Another lick, and I baste his fingers again.
He slips in a third, stretching me so impossibly wide that I choke on my breaths.
“Relax, Zaskjalill,” he murmurs before pressing a kiss to the inside of my thigh.
I might’ve laughed at his directive if I weren’t whimpering like some wounded animal at how impossibly full I feel. To think his dick is wider still.
He kisses my clit, circling it with the tip of his tongue until I cry out from another orgasm.
I see more stars, as though they’ve shot down from the sky and bled into his walls.
His fingers keep churning, keep stretching as he stands over me once more.
And then he’s drawing them out and painting his bobbing cock with my slickness before spitting into his hand and adding another coat of lubricant to his swollen shaft.
When it shines like his eyes, he picks up my legs and rests them on his chest, and then he’s gliding himself up and down my seam. His gaze goes from my face to where our bodies connect and back.
“Do you want my dick, love?”
“Yes,” I gasp in between ragged sips of air. “Yes!”
He steadies himself right in front of my entrance. “Forgive me for the pain I’m about to cause you. I fear the first time will hurt no matter how many orgasms I wring from your body.”
His thumb lands on my clit and begin rubbing tight circles, rendering the flesh so exquisitely sensitive that I can’t imagine anything capable of causing me pain.
“Breathe for me, all right? Concentrate on your breathing.”
I inhale deeply. And then two things happen at once—an orgasm rips through me just as Nordin nudges himself inside my heat. My walls clamp down around his tip, halting him mid-thrust.
Holy fucking fuck…
“Breathe,” he pants.
I want to quip that he should take his own advice, but the comeback withers when, without ceasing the wondrous massage he’s giving my clit, he penetrates deeper.
I cry out, the collision of pleasure and shock tearing through my loins. My body, soft only moments ago, grips his length so fiercely that I worry my walls will squash him.
“Zas, love, breathe.”
“You fucking breathe!” I growl.
He blinks at me and then he laughs, and even though I love the sound, I don’t love how it vibrates through his body and into mine because it’s making me feel every ridged inch of his massive dick inside a hole evidently not made for such girth.
I lick the salt of sweat off my upper lip and peer down my body to find out how much more he plans on pushing in. Can any more fit?
Tossing me a smug grin, he starts to pull out, and I think, That’s it, that’s as far as he’ll go, but then he rocks his hips and glides deeper.
I gasp because I didn’t think it was anatomically possible. “Is all of it going in?”
“No.” He presses his thumb on my clit and sweeps it around and around.
I try to zero in on the sensation, but all I can feel is that place where we interlock. “No, as in not tonight, or no, as in not ever?”
“Not ever. Fenrir was a little too generous with me.” He keeps caressing me. “Do you want me to pull out?”
“You didn’t come.”
“I can do so outside your body, Zas.”
When he starts to withdraw, I drop my legs around his hips and lock my ankles to keep him in place. “Except you wanted to see me drip with your seed.”
He tenses.
I drive my heels into his ass cheeks, pressing him back into me. “You’ve tunneled your way in. It’d be a shame to stop now.”
Indecision wars behind his pupils. He wants more, but he’s afraid to take more.
“Show me how far you reach.”
He folds over me, holding himself up on his palms. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
His elbows bend to carry his face closer to mine. When our mouths are a hairsbreadth away, he whispers, “You, Zaskja Stormsson, are my whole world.”
Moisture dampens my lashes as he seals his lips over mine and kisses me as deliberately as he thrusts. In and out. Then farther in. And farther. And then he stops, unfastens our mouths, and leans back to watch me.
The whole of him glows as though the stars have gathered in his eyes and studded his skin. Probably an illusion cast by the sheen of sweat that glosses him.
He slows his tempo, pressing a damp lock off my forehead and tucking it behind my ear, the shell of which he begins to trace. Little tingles of pleasure skip down the lofty peak and zip through my neck before rippling behind my ribs.
“Thank you,” he suddenly rasps.
“For what?”
“For allowing me to love you. For loving me.” His brows pull together. “You do, right? Still love me?”
My heart swells, digging painfully into its cage of curved bones. “I never stopped. Not even when I was angry.” I cradle his jaw that’s sharp with tension, as though every ounce of strain in his body has converged there, and pull him low for a kiss.
As our tongues cavort, his hips begin their rhythmic roll once more. I’m so slick from blood and pleasure that the friction starts to feel pleasant, albeit not climax-inducing. I’m hopeful that someday he’ll wring an orgasm from my body through penetration.
He suddenly draws to a stop, sucks in a jagged breath, then expels a sound so raw and primal that goose bumps scurry over every inch of me.
As he fills me with his hot seed, he murmurs a raucous promise against my mouth, one that webs my lashes with fresh tears, “Beyond Asgard. Beyond Ragnarok.”
Not for the first time, the latter’s mention brings the trials to the forefront of my mind. Would I have the courage to enter them should the Empresses not reset my magic?
Especially against Nordin’s will, for there’s no way my protective lover would allow me to risk my life for magic.
He’d sooner risk his.
I think.
May I never find out…
Pressing a lock of hair behind his ear, I finally echo back, “Beyond Asgard. Beyond Ragnarok.”