Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
VIDAR
The leather of the family room couch creaked beneath us.
I could still see the faint scratch on the coffee table from when Magnus and I had wrestled over a game controller.
Years later, I'd sat in the center with my sister's head on my shoulder as the television blared some teen drama about vampires.
Some time after that, I remembered sitting exactly where Addie was now, helping a younger Ivar learn his times tables.
Now, I was going to fuck my wife on the very same cushions.
The room was silent, but my head was a roar of white noise.
I could still scent Dante Lupetto on her.
The cloying, sour smell of an old man’s desperation clung to her skin.
My wolf clawed at the inside of my ribcage, a frenzied, rabid thing demanding that I scrub every trace of that scavenger from her.
I didn't want to talk. I didn't want to think. I wanted to strip her bare and lose myself in her until the world made sense again.
"I want you to mark me."
I wasn't expecting her to say anything, let alone ask for a claim. I had been seconds away from pulling her dress down, my mind focused entirely on the relief I knew I’d find between her thighs.
I pulled back, my gaze dropping to her collarbone. The hunger that surged through me then was primal. I wanted it. I wanted the whole world to look at her and see the jagged, unmistakable signature of my teeth on her flesh.
I dipped my head, my tongue swirling against her clavicle—the traditional, discreet place most wolves chose to hide their claims. I tasted the salt of her skin, the heat of her rising pulse.
Addie's fingers tangled in my hair. She moved my head higher, tilting her chin up to expose the vulnerable, sensitive line of her throat—the place where a mark would be visible no matter what she wore. No silk scarf or high collar would hide it.
She wanted everyone to see. She wanted the Vanes, the Lupettos, and all the packs to know exactly whose scent she carried. Precisely to whom she belonged.
I couldn't wait another heartbeat. The restraint I’d spent days perfecting snapped like dry kindling. I opened my mouth, my canines lengthening into dangerous, predatory points. I sank my teeth into the soft, yielding skin of her neck.
Addie let out a broken, high-pitched cry. It wasn't a sound of pain; it was a pure, jagged burst of orgasmic pleasure that vibrated through her entire body. Her back arched, her chest heaving against mine as her blood touched my tongue, sealing the claim.
The scent of her changed instantly. The Lupetto musk was incinerated, replaced by a flare of gold and iron. She was mine.
My mouth was still anchored to the pulse point of her neck, lapping up the iron-sweet taste of the mark I’d just carved into her skin. The world outside this room didn't exist. There was only the heat of her and the pounding drum beats of our hearts finding their sync.
My fingers hooked into the hem of the plum silk dress and bunched it upward until it was a useless ring of fabric around her waist. Addie’s hands were just as frantic, her fingers fumbling with the buttons of my trousers until she released me.
I was a jagged edge of need, my cock throbbing with a pulse that matched the one in her throat.
I shifted our weight, my muscles groaning as I sat back against the leather cushions and pulled her over me. I gripped her hips, my claws pricking the skin of her thighs as I guided her down. My wife met me in one brutal, singular thrust.
A tortured groan tore from both of us; a sound that was more beast than human, echoing off the family photos on the wall and the awards on the mantle. I set a pace that was punishing, a brutal, driving claim that sought to erase every second she had spent away from me.
Addie didn't just endure it; she matched me. Her heels dug into the backs of my legs, her fingers clawed at my shoulders as she rode the wave of my fury.
I couldn't stay away from the mark. My head dipped again, my teeth finding the fresh, swollen skin of the bite.
I bit down again as I thrust, the sharp sting of the pain sending a fresh jolt of electricity through her.
I sucked the spot before licking the wound clean as we both spiraled toward climax.
I didn't come so much as I fell, hard. Shuddering violently, my entire body locked as I released again, and again, and then once more into her.
I held her tight, pinning her chest to mine.
I knew in that moment, with the scent of our shared blood filling the room, that she wasn't just my partner or my asset. She was my world.
Then it started.
The base of my cock began to swell, engorging with a relentless pressure. The muscles of her internal walls contracted in response, gripping me with a desperate, involuntary strength.
"Vidar?" Addie gasped, her eyes flying wide, her breath hitching as she felt the shift. It was an overwhelming, invasive sensation—the biological finality of the tie between wolf mates.
"Don't move," I rasped, my voice thick and broken. I wrapped my arms around her, anchoring her to my lap so she couldn't try to pull away. "Just... don't move, Addie."
The knot at the base of my cock grew, locking us together in a physical bond that no law or contract could ever replicate.
We sat there in the silence of the family room, breathing heavily but not catching our breaths.
Two predators fused into one, our bodies still shuddering with the aftershocks of the release.
Knotting wasn't the normal conclusion to sex. I'd been fucking since I was a teen, but this was my first time experiencing the biological reaction. This was my wolf letting us both know that this was the woman who would bear us cubs, and the knot was how the animal ensured that would happen.
Neither of could move as I filled her. Neither of could speak as the knot set off aftershocks through both our groins for long minutes afterward. The knot wasn't the man making the claim; it was the wolf claiming its mate. As much as Addie was mine, I was now hers.