Chapter 30
The soft knock at the chamber door came long after Linnea had given up pretending she was going to sleep.
She sat up against the carved headboard in one of her oversized sleep T-shirts, the neck stretched wide enough to slide off one shoulder, the hem bunched around her thighs.
She told herself she was staying awake to be sure Fenris came back from Hel's chambers in one piece. It was a lie, and her wolf knew it.
He's here, her wolf sang, doing the full-body tail wag it saved only for him. Let him in. Let him in.
"Come in," Linnea said, ignoring her hyperactive puppy jig.
The door opened, and Fenris ducked under the frame. Whatever Hel had poured down him had loosened something. The grim set had gone out of his shoulders, and his hair was a mess where he had been dragging his hands through it.
"You waited up?" he said, his voice soft.
"I wanted to make sure your sister didn't talk you out of doing the trials with us." She drew her knees up to make room as he sat on the edge of the bed. "How was it catching up with her after so long?"
"It was easy as ever. I missed her. I forgot how much. She's the only one who has ever been able to talk sense into me when I sink my teeth into a bad idea."
"What bad idea? Going to find Loki?"
He looked at her, and the corner of his mouth fought a grin. "No, you."
"I'm a bad idea now? Not going for a trip into Niflheim? Charming." She reached for the mug of water on the nightstand. "Let me guess, she took one look and asked what on earth her big brother was doing with a wolf who can't even manage four paws."
She meant it to come out light, but it slipped free with an edge instead. She tried to cover it by drinking, but Fenris caught the mug and set it back down before she could hide behind it.
"Linnea, my sister has never once cared what shape a thing wears.
" His thumb moved over the back of her hand.
"Don't forget who raised us. We are all shapeshifters, little singer.
Hel wears a skull when it suits her and a crown when it does not.
I'm a man and a wolf and a god, and which one depends on the hour.
The shape we use is the least true thing about any of us.
She didn't ask what you turn into. She asked who you are, because that is the only question she has ever bothered with. "
She would be the only one who doesn't care. The hurtful thought slipped through before Linnea could stop it.
Her whole life had been a tally of the one thing her body couldn't do, and here was a god telling her it was the least interesting thing about her.
It was the same door Gudrun had nudged open in the cabin, the one about gods who weren't like normal shifter wolves.
She kept it shut because what waited behind it made no sense.
"What else did she tell you?" she asked, swallowing the lump in her throat. If he walked away from her now, following his sister's advice, she wasn't sure how she would pretend not to be devastated.
"That her trials won't be kind." His thumb went still on her hand. "That I should make the most of tonight, and I should stop wasting time and seduce you."
Linnea laughed, and the fear of rejection and the lump dissolved. "So? Have you started this seduction, or do I have to wait for you to say go?"
The grin broke over his face, slow and wicked, and she had half a second to regret her mouth before he moved.
In a blink, Fenris had her flat on the bed and pinned under one heavy arm, his fingers digging into her ribs.
She shrieked as he tickled her mercilessly and got absolutely nowhere.
A god of his bulk didn't have to work hard to hold down one volva.
"Cheeky creature," he growled into her hair. "You've been cheeky since the forest."
"Hel's seduction idea is going terribly. Two out of ten. Oh no! Stop, stop. I yield, you absolute menace." She was laughing too hard to fight, both hands shoving uselessly at the wall of his chest.
He stopped. The laughter went on between them for a moment, warm and stupid, before it shifted into something else. He was braced over her on both forearms now, his face close, and the playfulness drained out of his mismatched eyes.
"I might be a complete wreck of a male," he said quietly. "I don't know what I am most days. A man, a wolf, a thing the world built a thousand stories about to keep itself frightened." His knuckles brushed her cheek. "Whatever I am, Linnea, I want to give it to you. If you will have me."
"Of course I will," she whispered, heat burning through her chest. "I've never wanted anyone the way I want you."
She didn't say the big L word because it was too soon and the night was already cracking her open. He didn't say it either, but it hung in the space between them, unspoken and somehow understood.
Fenris bent his head down and kissed her. Linnea opened her mouth for him so his tongue could stroke against hers, and the kiss deepened by degrees until her hands were fisting in his shirt and her thoughts were useless.
Finally, her wolf crowed before it retreated, leaving the moment to only Linnea.
Fenris drew back only far enough to take the hem of her T-shirt in both hands. She lifted her arms, and he stripped it off her and dropped it over the side of the bed. His eyes went down her body slowly, and the look on his face was so hot it made her press her thighs together.
"Your turn," she said, attacking his clothes. "I need to feel all these muscles against me as soon as possible."
Fenris laughed at her enthusiasm as she dragged the shirt up over his head, only to get it tangled, making him laugh harder. He took care of the top half while she aimed for his belt.
"Impatient little thing," he chided, toeing off his boots. "Who is seducing whom here?"
"Good point," Linnea said, lying back down and watching him get naked. The silver scars caught the low light all down his chest and arms. She wanted to map every one of them with her mouth.
Fenris moved over her, and she put her hand over his heart and the pulse hammering there, and his hand came up to cover hers.
"It's racing," she whispered. "Are you nervous?"
"Nervous, excited, afraid that it's been so long, I'm going to blow as soon as I get inside of you because you're so fucking beautiful, it hurts to look at you. All of it."
Linnea could only pull him down and kiss him. She was usually so good with words, but not when it came to him. He turned her into a stuttering mess of a woman.
Fenris kissed his way from her mouth, along the line of her jaw, the wild beat under her ear, the place where her shoulder met her neck.
His beard scraped, and she shivered as he took his time across her collarbone and down.
When his mouth closed hot over her breast, and his tongue dragged across her nipple, the sound that came out of her wasn't dignified.
"Fenris, do…do that again," she begged.
"Mm." He did it again, slower, and her spine bowed up off the mattress.
Fenris stayed with her breasts until her pussy was throbbing and she was fighting not to grind up against him.
He kept moving down over her ribs, the soft skin on her belly, the jut of her hip, leaving a trail that made her squirm and tug at his hair.
He settled between her thighs and pressed them wide with his big hands, and the look he gave her up the length of her body was pure wolf.
"This was worth all of the years I spent in the dark," he said reverently and put his mouth on her.
The first long stroke of his tongue tore the breath right out of Linnea. He licked into her slowly and thoroughly, finding the rhythm that made her hips chase him, and when he found her clit and sucked, she almost levitated off the bed.
"Oh, gods. Right there, don't you dare stop," she panted, her fingers tightening in his hair
He growled against her, the vibration shooting up her spine, and slid one thick finger into her pussy while his tongue kept working. He added a second, curling them, and the coil low in her belly drew tighter and tighter.
She had never let a man watch her lose it this way before. Some careful part of her waited to feel awkward about it, but there was only him, only this. She broke around his tongue with his name in her mouth, shaking, her thighs clamped around his head and her whole body shining with sweat.
He licked her through it until the aftershocks went soft, then kissed the inside of her thigh.
"That was unfair," she panted at the ceiling.
"Was it?" he whispered, his fingers thrusting slowly. "I think this soaked little cunt of yours disagrees."
"Oh fu…she's…liar," Linnea stammered, her body humming with every stroke of his fingers.
Fenris prowled back up her body and kissed her, and she tasted herself on him and didn't care. Ragnarok could start, and she wouldn't even notice as long as he didn't stop. His cock was hard and hot against her hip, and she slid a hand down to stroke it.
"Please." She hooked her heels over the back of his thighs. "I want you. All of you."
"Show me how much." Fenris kissed her once more and moved his fingers out of her.
Linnea guided the head of his cock where she was slick and aching.
Fenris lifted up so he could watch as he gave her an inch at a time, letting her stretch around him, going only as deep as she could take.
He was big, and he was careful with it, his forehead dropping to hers and his breath ragged with the effort of going slow.
"All right?" he rasped.
"Better than that. Give me more." She grabbed the most perfect ass in the Nine Realms and tried to pull him down. "I won't break."
"Is this what you need, love?" Fenris sank the rest of the way home on a low groan, seated deep, and the fullness of it blurred her vision for a second.
"Exactly what I need," she whispered. Nothing in her life had ever been like this, the weight of him, the way their bodies lined up and fit together. She held on and let herself be overwhelmed by how perfect it was.
Fenris moved slowly at first, long deep strokes that dragged through her and built the heat between them.
She met every thrust with her own, always wanting more.
The sweetness of it would have been enough, his mouth on hers, his hands cradling her like she was something precious, but she wanted to see that control of his shatter.
"Harder," she breathed against his jaw. "Fenris, I mean it. Harder. Fuck me like it's your last night on earth. I can take you. "
The growl that answered her came from somewhere deeper than the man.
He braced one forearm by her head and gave her exactly what she asked for, faster now, the careful tenderness burning off into something with teeth, the headboard knocking the wall in time with his hips meeting hers.
She gasped his name and dug her nails into his back, and it was so good that tears slipped out of the corner of her eyes.
She had spent years bricking herself in where no one could reach. He had walked in like the walls weren't there.
His mouth dropped to the curve of her shoulder, his teeth grazing the skin, and her whole body went taut on instinct, bracing for the bite she half-expected and would have let him take out of her.
He licked his tongue over the spot instead, and she could feel the slick swirl of it all the way to her toes.
For someone who claimed to be nervous, Fenris certainly didn't act like it.
He worked Linnea until she was begging to come, changing his angle until every stroke caught the place that undid her, and when she shattered the second time, it took him with her, his hips driving deep and a hoarse sound breaking out of him against her throat.
She held onto him, both of them shaking, and couldn't have said which of them trembled harder.
Fenris kissed her softly as they came down before rolling them so she sprawled across his chest, his arm banded over the small of her back, his heart slamming under her ear and slowing by degrees. His hand moved up and down her spine in hypnotic strokes.
"Nervous, my ass," she mumbled drowsily, grinning at the answering rumble of laughter under her ear.
"I was nervous, little singer," he swore, and she tickled him. "Is this your way of saying you enjoyed it?"
Linnea lifted her head. "What gave it away? Me screaming your name or coming hard enough to almost black out."
Fenris's grin was bashful and smug at the same time. "Just wait until I've had some time to practice."
"What a terrible thing to say to a woman when we are about to have zero privacy," she complained, biting his chest.
"We'll just have to make the most of the moments we do get," he replied, his fingers threading through her hair.
Linnea lay over him, full of feelings tangled up with drowsy contentment. She didn't understand how being with a true mate could possibly be better than this. He was warm and solid under her, and she was so safe and drunk on joy.
Tomorrow they would walk down into Hel's trials, and Fenris's dramatic sister had been clear that they would suck in ways they couldn't imagine.
Linnea pressed her lips to the silver scar over Fenris's heart and shut her eyes.
If this was all she got, if the trials took everything else, then at least she had this.
One perfect night with the sexiest god in creation, in a warm room at the bottom of the underworld, and it was more than enough.