In any case, she was happy he was still out cold when she arrived in his room with the clothes and a basin, which she filled with warm water. She washed his face first, running the warm cloth over it and wondering what he looked like under his thick beard. She already knew his eyes were light gray and she could see his nose was long and straight, but the red beard and his tangled lion’s mane of a hair-do pretty much hid every other feature.
Next she added soap to the water in the basin, before dipping the towel in again and running it over his chest, doing her best not to admire the hard muscles she felt underneath her cloth. Whatever this guy did for a living wherever he was from, it had gifted him with a beautiful body. She had to put some effort into lifting his arms, which were so thick with muscle that getting underneath them in order to wash his arm pits was a bit of a challenge.
Somewhat out of breath, she emptied out the water and refilled it with a fresh batch of warm, soapy water. Now she had to do his bottom half.
Once again she had to put a lot of effort into getting him clean. First she had to tug off his pants, which didn’t have any fasteners on them, so she had to roll them down his hips—quickly averting her eyes when she saw he wasn’t wearing any underwear underneath. She kept her eyes averted, washing around his groin area as best she could without actually looking at it. Still that didn’t keep her heart from just about jumping out of her chest when something long and thick thumped against her arm, like a baton of flesh-covered steel.
Her eyes flew to the maybe-Viking to see if he was awake, but he slept on, apparently unaware of what the lower half of his body was up to.
Chloe finished up with that particular area as quickly as she could, her head turned away, then tugged the underwear and basketball shorts on him—no small feat but worth it if it meant covering up his sleeping erection. She wished she also cover up his chest, but he was chained to the bed, which meant she wouldn’t be able to get his arms through it. So she just put that item on the bedside table, and replaced the now cold water in the bowl.
A few minutes later, she silently cheered when she reached his long and wide feet, giving each a few quick swipes with her towel. All done, and now she could just tip-toe on out of the room, without the maybe-Viking never even knowing she was there.
But then, suddenly, that same skittery feeling from the day before overtook her and her stomach sank. Sure enough, when she looked up, she found the Viking wide-awake and staring at her with enough heat in his eyes to melt all the snow on the nearby mountain.
FENRIS CAME AWAKE SLOWLY BLINKING against the bright light. His body was still heavy with whatever potion he had been given, but for some reason, his manhood was now swollen and constricted in some manner of binding he did not know. Despite this, soft waves of languid pleasure were coursing through his body, starting at his legs.
He turned his eyes in the direction of the pleasurable sensation and found his fated mate, the dark beauty from the day before, giving him, of all things, a bath.
She was once again dressed in a strange costume, some manner of wool tunic top, dyed a pale blue that covered her neck and arms but squeezed her chest in such a way that left little doubt a heavy bosom rested beneath it’s confines. In his land, it was forbidden for both she-wolves and human woman to wear the clothing of men. But her legs were encased in tight black men’s trousers that framed her shapely hips and made him want to rut her where she stood, even if he could smell that she hadn’t yet had her first heat. A strange notion within itself, since she had quite obviously come into her womanhood.
On this day, she wore her bushy hair tied to the side in a long braid that fell all the way to her bounteous breasts. He reached out to touch it, so different from his own, but then he remembered anew that he had been tied to the railing of a strange, mechanical bed with some manner of metal, which somehow held him fast despite it’s light and thin nature.
He once again rattled the bed in a bid to free himself.
But the dark beauty shook her head, frantically speaking to him in her strange dialect, before coming around the bed and laying her hands on his chest.
Her touch immediately calmed him, and soon he found himself falling back against the bed’s soft pillows, his desire to be free of his bonds replaced with the desire to gaze upon her great beauty.
She tried to pull away from him then, but he covered her hands with his own, keeping her there.
“Nay, stay here, maiden,” he said, even though he had gleaned by now that she could not understand his tongue any better than he understood hers.
“Stay here,” he repeated in a whisper, gazing into her wary brown eyes, as he allowed himself to absorb the warmth of her hands on his naked chest, and enjoy the sight of her own chest heaving up and down with quickened breaths.
Then he leaned forward and took the kiss he had been wanting from her since first their eyes met.
For a moment she acquiesced to his kiss, but then she suddenly pulled away, her face aghast as she said something else in her tongue and tried to reclaim her hands from his.
He did not let go at first, and perhaps would have kept her there for a few more sweet kisses, except he suddenly smelled another presence in the room. His smile faded when he looked up and found the wolf from yesterday standing in the doorway. The same wolf who had dared touch what was his.
FOR WHAT HAD TO BE at least the tenth time that day, Chloe cursed the fates that had brought her to this situation. When the maybe-Viking had started rattling the bed again in his attempt to get out of the handcuffs, she had placed her hands on his chest more out of instinct than plan.
“Stop. You’ve got to calm down,” she’d said. To her surprise he’d obeyed her command, instantly calming down, the expression on his face replaced by a look so soft, it sent an unbidden jolt of electricity through her stomach. One she didn’t like at all.
She tried to pull her hands away, but he kept her there, speaking softly in his strange language with a smile that crinkled his eyes and made him look way more handsome than she’d thought he was while she was bathing him.
And then the next thing she knew, he was kissing her. She’d been so surprised by the feel of his lips moving over hers and by the complete lack of heebie-jeebies on her part, that she just froze, all of her senses momentarily overwhelmed.
But then she remembered herself and pulled away from him. “Let go,” she said.
He didn’t, only gripped her hands tighter. But then his eyes hardened as he gazed at something beyond her shoulder. Even if her sense of smell hadn’t chosen that moment to come back online, she would have known just from the look on his face it was Rafe standing in the doorway.
This time she yanked on her hands so hard, they slipped out of the maybe-Viking’s grip, and even then she only just managed to get in front of Rafe before he leaped toward the hospital bed, looking like he was set to tear its occupant apart with his bare hands.
“Rafe, no,” she said, pushing him backwards before he could.
“You were kissing him,” Rafe said, the words thick and feral in his throat.
“No, he kissed me, and it took me by surprise. I didn’t kiss him back.”
“All the more reason for me to kill him,” Rafe said.
“Rafe, please. It was nothing. You have to calm down.” He was pushing so hard to get past her, Chloe was half afraid he’d take her out just to get at the other wolf. And if that wasn’t enough, she could hear the bed rattling behind them, which meant the maybe-Viking was once again trying to free himself to get to Rafe.
Luckily, just when her arms were about to give, Doc Fischer and a stringy man in a tweed blazer walked in. They quickly assessed the situation and took over restraining Rafe, each grabbing him by one of his long arms.
“Now calm down, son,” Doc Fischer said, his voice quiet but firm. “If you’re going to try to take him out every time my back is turned, then I’m going to have to make you wait outside.”
The maybe-Viking chose that moment to start spitting words of challenge and insult at Rafe, which needed no translation. And Rafe jerked forward, all but frothing at the mouth in his effort to get to him.
In the end, Doc Fischer and the professor had to drag Rafe out and lock the clinic door so he couldn’t get back in.
It was all Chloe could do to hold back tears of frustration as she watched them toss Rafe out like some derelict. And even after they locked the door, she could hear her fiancé, who normally tried so hard to hold himself in a manner befitting an alpha prince, yelling like a mad man outside the building.
“Well, so much for keeping this situation a secret,” Doc Fischer said. “As loud as that got, the whole town probably knows what’s going on now.”
“I should go to him,” Chloe said, heading toward the door.
But Doc Fischer stopped her with a shake of his head. “No, young lady, you should sit down. Whatever your fated mate has to say, you should hear it, too.”
“Rafe is my mate,” she said, “You admitted it yourself. I’m not aroused, so the attraction must be one-sided.”
“No, I said
in rare cases
, a fated mate catches the scent of someone who doesn’t return his feelings. I didn’t talk about what happens when she-wolves mate with other wolves only to have a fated mate come along and try to claim her. But I’m telling you now, it rarely ends well. Half the time the she-wolf runs away with her fated mate, sometimes even leaving her pups behind. The other half of the time her current mate has to kill the fated one in order to make him leave her alone. For your sake, I also didn’t mention in front of your fiancé that I suspect the only reason you’re able to resist this wolf is because you haven’t gone into heat yet, and who knows how much longer that will last?”
“I would never—”
Doc Fischer interrupted her with a snort and a roll of his eyes. “I hate when young wolves try to tell me what they’d ‘never’ do. The truth is you have no idea what you’d do until you actually go into heat like a regular she-wolf would have years ago. And God help you if your fated mate is here when you finally do.” He pointed at the guest chair. “Now if you’re serious about telling this guy you don’t want him and sending him back through the portal, sit down so we can get this over with.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and sat. She didn’t like Doc Fischer insinuating she would leave the man she loved the most in this world for some stranger she’d only met the day before, but he was right about one thing. It was better to just get this over with. The sooner they did, the sooner she could go to Rafe. He’d quieted down, but she could still sense his presence outside the clinic, furious, hurt, and brooding.
The professor tentatively stepped into the angry silence of her acquiescence. He looked to be around the same age as Doc Fischer, but had the nebbish quality male wolves who never claimed mates tended to get. He was tall and skinny, and though he didn’t wear glasses, since all werewolves had better than twenty/twenty vision, it looked like he ought to be.
“Hi, I’m Professor Henley,” he said with a small wave. “I teach Viking Studies at the university. Normally I wouldn’t risk travel on a full moon night, but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity.”
He turned to the Viking, who had calmed after they ejected Rafe and now sat watching all of them, his eyes glittering with what looked like a combination of anger, frustration, and curiosity.
“The sword I saw out in the lobby and the fact that he was yelling at your... ah, friend in Old Norse tells me he’s a Viking,” the professor said, running his eyes over the large man as if he were a majestic sight indeed. “Also, his hair is red. It’s rumored the Norwegian Viking wolves all had ‘hair like fire.’ And quite a few of my fellow werewolf history professors believe Erik the Red to have been a werewolf.’” He reached out, as if to touch the Viking’s hair, but pulled back at the last moment, probably sensing correctly that this wasn’t the type of man who would appreciate being petted.
“Thanks for the history lesson,” Doc Fischer said. “Can you talk to him or what?”
The professor held up an Old Norse-English dictionary. “Well, I’ve only used Old Norse in the context of translating or reciting poems and certain texts from that age, but I’ll do my best.”
The professor cleared his throat before hawking up a few words of Old Norse.
The Viking’s eyes widened in surprise, and he answered with a few words of his own, which caused the professor’s own eyes to widen.
He turned back to her and Doc Fischer. “He says he’s called Fenris. Do you know what that means?”
They both shook their heads. “Fenris is the Norse wolf god, the one all Norwegian werewolves believed themselves to be descended from. Only wolves in the alpha line are given this name.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Chloe said, holding up her hands. “Are you’re trying to tell me this guy is also an alpha prince like Rafe?”
The professor asked the Viking another question in the harsh language.
And this time the Viking looked at her when he answered.
The professor gave a nervous laugh, before translating. “No, he’s not an alpha prince. He just commanded me to tell you he is king of the wolves of Norway. He say he’s come to this strange place to fetch you and he’s ready to take you home with him.”
The Viking continued to stare at her as he spoke one more word, which the professor immediately translated. “Now.”
CHAPTER SIX
IT
took Chloe quite a few shocked moments before she was able to speak again. “Well, wow. Um, can you tell him I’m not going anywhere with him and I would like him to return home to his own time period?
Now
.”
After looking up a few words, the professor translated, and the Viking’s eyes shined with amusement as he answered.
The professor translated, “He’s basically saying, no, you will come with him. And even if he was willing to leave you here, which he isn’t, he won’t go back with out you.”
She shook her head. “Who do you think you are?” she asked the Viking directly. “You can’t just step into my time and tell me to come to yours. I have a life here. And that wolf you were trying to fight earlier is the person I’ve chosen to spend the rest of my life with. Not you.”