Chapter 23
Fenris watched the sun come up from the dark of Tor's lounge, fighting the urge to start pacing up and down the apartment.
He hadn't slept and didn't know if he was going to relax with the noise of the people waking up outside. There were the constant low sounds of the cars out on the streets and the hum of the big cold box in the kitchen.
He wondered if Linnea was still awake or if the day had taken its toll on her. He was so restless, and wanted to go back to the forest Tor and Arne had taken him to and run until he couldn't run anymore.
Go to her, his wolf said.
She wants space. I'm giving it to her.
You're sulking like a pup in the dark.
Fenris rubbed both hands through his hair. The wolf wasn't wrong, which made it worse. He had spent thousands of years in the dark with nothing to do except think, and one upset volva had undone the habit in a single day.
Every hour since Von's kitchen, he had turned Linnea's mood change over and over in his mind. Her laugh going bright and false. Her hands tucked into her sleeves. Her eyes sliding past him like he wasn't really there.
He could survive being feared because he had long practice at it. Being avoided by her was a new injury, and it had kept him sitting upright in the dark like a hound shut out in the snow.
The floorboards in the hallway creaked, and he lifted his head.
Her scent reached him first, cloudberries and honey. She stopped at the mouth of the hallway in her flannel pants and a sweater pulled down over her hands, her hair out and tangled against her neck.
"You're awake," she whispered.
"So are you."
"I could hear you brooding through the wall." She came around the end of the other couch and curled into its corner, her arms wrapping around her knees. "You didn't come in to sleep."
"No."
"Why not?"
Fenris looked at her in the thin gray light. There was a version of this where he said something easy, and they both went back to pretending. He was too tired and too old for it.
"Because you have been upset with me since we first went to Von's place, and I don't know what I did," he replied. "I went over it all night. Tell me what I did, so I can fix it."
Linnea's face crumpled, and she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. "Oh, gods, Fenris. You didn't do anything wrong."
"You stopped looking at me."
"I know."
"You wouldn't touch me at all."
"I know." She dropped her hands into her lap and made herself meet his eyes, and the misery in her face made his chest hurt. "It was never about something wrong that you did. It's about what's wrong with me."
Fenris frowned. "There is nothing wrong with you."
"See, a statement like that is exactly the problem.
" A small, wet laugh escaped her. "You're a god, Fenris.
You woke up, and within a day you were drinking coffee with Havi and Freya like it was a family reunion, because it was one.
To you, that's a normal thing. Do you understand what those names are to a mortal?
I grew up praying to Freya. Now she kisses my cheeks and tells me my wyrd is to stay with you and go and find Loki, and everyone keeps acting like that's reasonable.
It's enormous, and I'm one volva who hasn't even finished her training. "
"You called the gods down to a cottage in Otta on your second day of knowing me," he said, scratching his head in confusion. "That isn't nothing."
"Maybe not. It still doesn't feel like enough.
" Her arms tightened around her knees. "You need to understand where I'm coming from.
I'm a wolf who has never shifted. Not once.
Where I grew up, that made me less than nothing.
My father treated me like a defect he was ashamed to own.
My mother left, and part of the reason was me.
The cult that took me kept me as a slave because the only value I had to anyone was the blood in my veins.
That's a lot of years of being told what I'm worth, and it doesn't disappear because I learned some magic and people started being kind to me.
Trauma is rude like that. It stays around. "
Fenris wanted to do violent things to whoever had made her feel this way, but he kept his mouth shut and let her talk.
"So when you touch me as if I matter, part of me is waiting for the catch.
" Linnea's voice cracked a little. "I have a hard time trusting people at all, Fenris.
Trusting someone in bed is worse, because that's where people are at their most vulnerable, and I have never once let myself be that with a man.
With you, I wasn't even trying to be careful.
I feel safe with you. I've never felt that way with any man in my life, and yesterday that scared the absolute shit out of me.
So I pulled back. I needed space to figure out what I was feeling.
That's all it was. It was never you or anything you did wrong. "
The lounge was quiet except for the noise of the outside and the thrumming of Linnea's heart running faster than a scared rabbit’s.
Tell her, his wolf growled at him.
Not that. Not yet.
The rest, then. She handed you her soft belly. Don't leave her lying there alone.
Fenris moved off his side of the couch, came around the table, and sat down beside her, where she could close the distance or not. His hands stayed loose on his thighs.
"You are safe with me," he said, keeping his voice firm.
"That's no trick to get into your bed for fun and nothing more.
If all I wanted was sex, the club was full of it.
Half the room smelled of humans in heat the night we danced.
I wanted none of them. I've wanted nothing in this new world except to find my father and you. "
Linnea's eyes came up to his. He needed to get rid of that worry and uncertainty from her eyes if it was the last thing he did.
"You speak of being vulnerable in a bed," he went on, the words coming rough and slow.
"I understand it better than you think because I've always been feared for what I am.
So believe me when I say I know what it costs you, and I know what it's worth.
I feel safe with you too, little singer.
You put scissors to my throat on the first day we met, and my wolf went to sleep beside you.
That has never happened to me before. I'll never hurt you, and I will never use you. Not for a night. Not for anything."
Linnea let go of her knees. "Fenris..."
"I'm not finished." He reached out and took one of her hands out of her sweater sleeve, turning it over, his thumb resting on the fading band of scars at her wrist. "The people who told you that you were unworthy were wrong in every way.
Your father was given a daughter with a good heart, a steel spine, and enough magic to make the world quake, and he was too small and too stupid to see it.
You're perfect exactly as you are. The Norns bound our wyrds, and I'm glad for it.
If I could choose any soul in the Nine Worlds to be tied to, I wouldn't want anyone else but you. "
Linnea stared at him, her gray eyes bright and wet in the dawn light, her pulse hammering under his thumb.
"That's the most I've ever heard you say at once," she whispered, with a small sob of laughter.
Fenris managed a smile. "I save my words for things that matter."
Linnea crossed the space between them, took his face in both hands, and kissed him.
It was salt and honey and heat. He pulled her into his lap, and she came willingly, her knees sliding to either side of his hips, her fingers pushing back into his hair.
He kissed her slowly and deeply, one hand splayed across the small of her back, the other cradling the nape of her neck.
"Take me to bed," she breathed against his mouth. "I don't want Tor finding us like this. I'll never live it down."
"He would survive it."
"I wouldn't. They would never shut up."
Fenris stood with her still wrapped around him, her weight nothing in his arms, and carried her down the hall. She muffled her laugh against his throat as he shouldered her bedroom door shut behind them.
He set her down beside the bed, meaning to lay her on it.
Linnea had other plans. Her hands flattened against his chest and pushed him gently until he sank back on the edge of the mattress.
She pressed one more kiss to his lips before she slid down his body onto her knees on the rug between his feet.
His heart stopped. "Linnea?"
"Hush."
"You owe me nothing. I..." He started to say when she reached for his belt.
"It's not about owing." Her hands settled warm on his thighs, and the touch went through him like a current. "You took nothing for yourself last time, and you gave me everything. I want to do the same. I want this, Fenris, so let me touch you."
The last of his protests died in his throat. He was only a simple creature at heart, and his body had been starving for her all damn day.
"Whatever you want," he managed to say. "Always."
She worked his jeans open with careful fingers, and his cock sprang free, hard and aching.
The first slow stroke of her hand dragged a sound out of him that he barely recognized.
Her thumb swept over the head, spreading the wetness already beading there, and she looked up the length of his body with her storm-gray eyes and a crooked, brave smile.
"You're allowed to make noise," she teased softly. "Tor's walls are soundproofed. He brags about it constantly."
A laugh tore out of him and turned into a groan because she chose that moment to lower her head and take him into her mouth.
Wet heat closed over his dick, emptying his skull of every thought he had ever had.
She was careful, unhurried, learning what he liked, her tongue tracing the underside of his cock, her hand wrapped around what her mouth couldn't take.
Her low hum of pleasure at the taste of him, like he was something good, was threatening to undo him completely.
Her scent and his twisted together in the dark until the whole room smelled of them. The deep, possessive animal at the center of him gloried in it and knew she would carry him on her skin for days. Every wolf in Midgard would know who she belonged to.
Fenris's hands found her hair, needing to hold her. "Linnea… Fuck, you are so beautiful. Look at you. Perfect."
She moaned around him and took him deeper, deeper, until he touched the back of her throat, and the world whited out at the edges.
"I'm going to come," he gritted out in warning.
She gripped his thigh and took him all the way to the root again.
Fenris came with a low, broken sound, his body shaking like a leaf in her small hands while she swallowed him down and stroked him through it.
The pleasure went on and on, wave after wave, until he was scraped hollow and shivering.
She finally let him go and pressed a kiss to the scar on his hip.
She let out a yelp of surprise as he hauled her up off the rug and into his arms.
"I take it that was acceptable," she said into his chest with a soft laugh.
"Give me a century. I'll find the words for what that was," he replied.
They worked their way under the covers in a slow tangle, her head finding the hollow of his shoulder, her palm flat over the slowing thunder of his heart. He pressed his mouth to her hair, breathing her in.
Ours, his wolf said, drowsy and certain.
Outside, the gray was warming toward morning. In a few hours, there would be packing, arguing, and the dark paths through Yggdrasil.
If Hel's trials were anything like the story described, peaceful moments would become rare and precious. Fenris kissed the top of Linnea's head and stayed awake, just to hold onto this one a little longer while it lasted.