Chapter 5
Fenris sat unnaturally still on the kitchen stool, the smooth wood alien beneath him after so much stone and earth.
I shouldn't be letting her do this, he thought, because he hadn't been touched in a long time, and it was sending hot longing through him.
He sat with his back to her, his hands on his thighs, and he told himself, while she took the first careful gather of his hair in her hand, that he should stand up and say he would do it himself.
He stayed where he was because her hands were on him, and that was all his body seemed to care about.
She set the comb down on the counter beside him, made a small, thoughtful noise, and picked up the scissors instead.
The first cold metallic snick of them was so close to his ear that his wolf flinched inside him before he could stop it.
Every muscle locked, a primal protest against cold steel so near the vital pulse of his throat.
Hush, he told it, and it settled once more.
Linnea worked the comb through the outer layer of his hair with careful strokes that didn't falter when she met a knot, just slowed and parted it patiently between her fingers.
He closed his eyes because the alternative was to look at his own hands and find them trembling slightly on his thighs like a fool.
She was humming and didn't seem to know she was doing it. It was a low, little melody like all women sung when their hands were busy.
It was different from the songs she had sung to him in the dark and in dreams while he had lain at the bottom of the void where her voice was the only thing that touched him.
Easy, his wolf warned him, very quiet. She will stop if you move.
I know.
The first mat came away from the side of his head with a soft tearing sound, and the dark length of it fell to the floor beside his bare foot. She picked up the next gather, fingers careful at his scalp, and worked her way through.
Her warm palm pressed against the back of his neck.
"Tilt for me?" she said as quietly as if she were speaking to a spooked animal. "Just a little. Toward your right shoulder."
He tilted, and her thumb rested against the soft place under his ear.
Her four fingers curved across the side of his throat.
Her mortal heart-pulse, fast and ordinary and unafraid, pressed against him through her palm.
The wolf inside him made a sound it had never made before, somewhere between a sigh and a low, broken noise.
Linnea worked slowly. The mats came away one at a time, and the fall of hair built up beside his foot in a slow dark drift.
The kettle began to whistle. She turned without taking her hand from the back of his neck, lifting it from the heat with her free hand and setting it down on the cooling plate.
She came back to him and worked the comb through another section. He had been ready for her to be afraid and for her hands to shake as she worked, but they hadn't.
No fear in her, the wolf said. Not of us.
I know, and I don't understand why not.
When the last of the worst tangles were gone, Linnea set the scissors down, picked up the comb again, and worked it through the length of his hair from scalp to ends, slow and patient.
The comb-teeth on his scalp was so intimate that for a moment his throat closed entirely.
He didn't dare move, in case she stopped.
She showed him something she explained was 'clippers' and used the strange machine to shave parts of his hair closer to his scalp.
"Your hair is looking great," Linnea said, her voice bright. "Beard now. I'm going to come around. Don't move."
She set the clippers down and picked up a smaller pair of scissors. She leaned in toward his jaw, her gray eyes narrowed, and put one fingertip under his chin, turning his face a quarter-inch to the left so the light from the window fell across his beard.
Her scent of sweet cloudberries, honey, and female musk invaded his senses. His mouth watered with an ache that was half hunger, half desire.
Linnea's hands moved through his beard with the same patient touch they had used in his hair. She trimmed the worst of the ragged length first. She combed. She trimmed again, smaller cuts now, trading scissors for the clippers and back again, watching the line of his jaw as it emerged.
Fenris hadn't let himself really look at Linnea in the hours he had ridden in the back of her car, or when he had eaten venison off her palm, or in the long ten-second moment when she had stood in the kitchen doorway and yelled towel at him. To look was to covet, and now he couldn't stop looking.
He gave in and let himself truly see her for the first time. Her eyes were the gray of a coming storm, not a single flat color but a swirl of shadow and light, like the deep heart of a cloud.
The morning sun, slanting through the high window, caught the loose curls of honey-blonde hair that had escaped her braid. They glowed like spun gold against her temple.
His focus drifted lower, tracing the faint, scattered pattern of freckles across the bridge of her nose in a constellation more compelling than any in the night sky. Her mouth was a soft curve as she concentrated on her task.
Her eyes flicked up to his, and her scissors stilled.
She didn't look away like he expected her to, but held his gaze without wavering. She blinked first, her cheeks turning a bright shade of pink. She lowered her eyes quickly to his beard and made a small throat-sound that fooled neither of them.
"Just need to check the line on the other side," she said and stepped around him to his right.
He let her go because if he had reached for her, he didn't trust what his hand would do.
His wolf said nothing. The moment her gaze had held his, the wolf had fallen into a stillness that wasn't predatory but a kind of awe. The man knew the feeling.
Linnea stepped to his right side, scissors still in her hand, and bent slightly to check the line where his beard met the underside of his jaw.
He kept his face forward, looking out the window at the pines in the cold midday light.
She made a small exhale beside his shoulder, before there was the lightest possible touch of her fingertips at the scar on his collarbone.
She said nothing as she traced the woven line down his sternum and across his chest where the ribbon had gone.
It moved from one scar to the next, then to the long one wrapping his ribs three times, just as the cord had been wound to hold him still.
The breath seized in his chest, and the great wolf inside him trembled.
She lifted his hand, and she turned it over and traced the scar across the inside of his wrist with her thumb. A tear fell from her bowed face onto the back of his hand, warming his skin for the second it took to slide off. Another tear followed.
"I know it's not my fault, but I'm still sorry this happened to you," she whispered, not looking at him.
She held out her wrist beside his, showing a fading band of scarring.
Fenris's wolf howled in fury, knowing she had been held as a slave.
"I know it's not the same, not really, but I do understand a little about what it's like to be bound. "
Fenris brushed his long thumb over the pink scarring. "If they weren't already dead, little singer, I would kill them for this."
Linnea looked up, her gray eyes meeting his. "You… You remember that?"
"Parts. I know the smell of the blood when they died. I remember you were upset that they had disturbed me," he said haltingly. He struggled to remember much more than the scent of her. "You…touched my paw. You weren't afraid."
Linnea sniffed, her neck turning pink. "I had been so afraid for months at that point that I think I had run out of fear."
"I did…" Fenris forced his tongue to move, the new human language still finding its shape in his mouth. "I did dream of pleasanter things, like you wanted."
"Good," she said, her hand still in his.
Fenris dared to gently wipe the tear from her soft cheek. "No more tears. Not for me."
Linnea nodded, small and matter-of-fact, and she gave his hand the gentlest possible pat before she set it back down on his thigh.
Her fingers lingered for half a second on the back of his hand before she stepped back, picked up the scissors she had set aside, and made some small adjustments to the line of his beard.
Finally, she set her tools down on the counter.
"You're all done. I'm going to call the gods now," she said, her voice steadier. "Or try to. Don't worry, I'll sort it out and get Havi here as soon as possible."
She squeezed his shoulder in a kind of reassurance and walked out of the kitchen. He listened to her footsteps go down the hall, and a door shut behind her.
His wolf wanted to follow her.
No, Fenris told it, with an effort that surprised him.
She wept. She is alone.
She wants to be alone. Leave her.
The wolf sat down inside him, unhappy, and keened softly.
Fenris licked his fingers still wet with her tears and tasted their sweet salt. He closed his eyes, feeling that small hand again on his paw in the darkness. He never told her that after that moment, all he had dreamed of was her.