“What manner of magic is this that you would be able to fill a tub of this size by yourself and in so little time?” a deep voice asked.
She nearly jumped out of her skin before turning to see Fenris standing behind her, still stark naked, and not seeming to be the least bit embarrassed about it.
“Did I frighten you?”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m not really used to having men in my home.”
He gave her a thoughtful look. “In my time, a maiden would not live on her own as you do. Where is your family?”
A pang went off in her heart, thinking about the parents who had abandoned her, and the Nightwolf family she’d been hoping to join.
“This you do not wish to talk about?” he guessed.
“No, not really,” she answered.
He gave her another long, considering look before saying, “Then tell me of your magic bath vessel.”
“Well, we have these things called pipes,” she answered, “Kind of like the Roman aqueduct system, but with hot and cold running water pushed through these metal tube thingies.”
He gave a sage nod. “Your engineers are powerful sorceresses indeed.”
“Indeed,” she agreed. She stood up and pointed at the bar of soap in the built-in dish below the shower head. “There’s the soap. I’ve got to get back to the kitchen to warm up a plate of food for you. But just holler if you need anything.”
“I shall ‘holler’ now,” he answered, capturing her hands and placing them on his bare chest. “I have need of grooming.”
“Oh, you mean like a shave?” Chloe’s eyes lit up. “Are you serious, because I found this old-fashioned straight razor at a flea market that I’ve been dying to try out for an episode of my show, but—“ She cut herself off before saying Rafe wouldn’t let her test it out on him. Instead she finished with, “—but I haven’t had the chance to use it yet.”
“In my time, it is the she-wolf who decides the grooming of her mate. If you would have me bare of face as the men in your land, I shall not argue.”
Chloe could see he was a little reluctant to part with his beard, but she was dying to see what he looked like under all that facial hair, so she didn’t do the polite thing and offer to just give him a trim. “Awesome. Just sit right here on the counter.”
Forty minutes, one towel wrapped around the Viking’s waist, and a few bumbling explanations about how a video camera worked, later, Chloe scraped away the last of the shaving cream to reveal what turned out to be a man with movie star good looks, complete with a square jaw and a strong chin that when paired with his intense grey eyes, somehow made him look even more bad-ass than he had with a sword.
“Wow, you’re really good-looking,” she told him.
“’Tis a surprise, I see,” he said, with a teasing smile.
“No, I just didn’t expect the face to match the body.”
He took the razor out of her hand and set it aside on the counter before, once again, taking her hands in his and placing them on his chest. From what Chloe could tell, this seemed to be his favorite talking position, at least where she was concerned.
“I am glad you are well-pleased with my face as I am with yours.”
He then began to lean his face towards hers.
“Nuh-uh-uh,” she said, averting her lips. “I’ve still got to warm up your food and figure out how to wash your leather pants, and we’ve got to re-run your bath.”
“Do not hie away,” he said, rubbing his nose into the side of the face she turned away from him. “I wish to gaze upon you as I soap, and I would also have you wash my hair.”
She laughed. “I think you can handle washing your own hair.”
“Your skin is very soft. I find it hard to believe you have really passed twenty and five winters as you claim.”
“Well, we have this stuff called moisturizing lotion these days. It’s kind of like a liquid butter for your face. And it helps our skin stay softer longer—”
He took a hold of her chin and turned her face back towards him, cutting off her explanation with a firm kiss. “Your lips are also soft. Is this to be credited to your liquid butter as well?” he asked, before running his own lips down her neck.
“No, the stuff I use on my lips is more like an ointment,” she said, trying to stay firm in her resolve, even though his kisses had her heat smell filling up the small room. “I really should go.”
“And these?” he asked, reaching into her robe and palming her breasts with both hands. “What manner of butter do you use to keep them so soft?”
She bit her lip against the sweet, aching tug his playing with her breast induced. “Fenris, seriously, you need to stop.”
He untied her robe. “You are softer all over than any woman I have ever known. Mayhap even down here.” He cupped her mound, pressing the ball of his palm into her clit.
“Yea,” he said, his voice a deep whisper. “Most assuredly softer.”
And that’s how she ended up sleeping off their third mating in a drained bathtub, waiting for them to unlock.
This time when she woke up, she was starving and she knew Fenris would be too, considering he’d only had breakfast. She left him in the bathtub. Even with her extra werewolf strength, she doubted she’d be able to move someone as large as him by herself. Plus, she was finding out the hard way that when sexual heat was involved, they had a rather narrow window of time between both of them being awake and frenzied boom-chicca-wow-wow.
First she consulted the internet about how to clean his leather pants and spent half an hour gently rubbing the soft suede with white vinegar and a dry cloth. Then she tried to clean his ridiculously heavy sword, partly to be nice, but mostly because who wanted a sword coated with animal blood lying around the house? But she figured out why neither the doctor nor the professor had tried to clean the sword themselves, when her fingers came away burning, the cleaning cloth she had attempted to use on it ruined by hers body’s reaction to the blade. Apparently Fenris did not mess around when it came to getting his sword fight on. The entire blade was covered in silver. So she ended up lining the tub in the guest bathroom with aluminum foil and using baking soda, boiling water, a wooden stick, and a rag to clean the blade without burning her fingers off.
By the time she was finished she had worked up a nice appetite, so she heated up the last two plates of chicken and fennel, but frowned when she set them on the counter. She doubted this would be enough food for both her and the six foot-something werewolf who hadn’t eaten all day. And she cursed herself for not having any easy-to-make packaged food in the house, other than the one emergency microwave dinner, which was already gone.
Technically, she didn’t “believe” in food that wasn’t made completely from scratch, and on the rare occasion she didn’t feel like cooking, she either went out to eat or ordered a pizza.
But she wasn’t sure a pizza would get here in time for her to not succumb to another mating with the Viking. And even if she did call, she doubted the local pizzeria, which was owned by one of Rafe’s high school basketball teammates, would be willing to deliver.
Thinking of the other Wolf Springs residents, who were all shifted back to humans and probably fully aware of what had happened between her and the Viking by now, sent another wave of guilt through her body.
Usually, when a female went into heat and joined with her mate, the town pitched in to keep them fed. She herself had left too many stews and pasta dishes to count outside of doorways, dreaming of the day when it would be her official job to either carry out or organize others to do this duty as Rafe’s mate.
But no one had approached the house, much less left food. No one would dare cross the alpha prince in that manner, even the wolves she had left food for when they’d gone into heat.
She frowned to herself. There was nothing to be done but throw on some real clothes and make a trip out to her chicken house.
A few minutes later, she was overjoyed to find a veritable feast of eight whole eggs. That meant she wouldn’t have to work up the guts to wring a chicken’s neck for the first time by herself until the following day.
The find filled her with an unexplainable relief and for a moment, her guilt and anxiety slipped away. Maybe, just maybe, everything would be all right, she thought, putting the eggs in her basket.
Then she emerged from the chicken house and found her ex-fiancé standing in her backyard, his hair a ragged mess, and an axe in his right hand.
CHAPTER TEN
“RAFE,”
she whispered, going very still. “Put the axe down. Please.”
He looked down at the menacing tool as if just now noticing it. “I’m not going to hurt you with this. I’m giving it back to you. Remember, I borrowed it from you last month.” His eyes came back up to glare at her. “But I’m glad your opinion of me is so low now that you think I’d hurt a defenseless woman. Even one who betrayed me like you have.”
“I’m sorry, Rafe,” she said, clutching the basket of eggs to her chest. “It’s been really crazy, and I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
He leaned the axe against the tree stump she used to split logs. “Yeah well, you wouldn’t have seen me at all if you hadn’t decided to come out to your hen house at the same time I decided to return your axe.”
She looked down at her eggs. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have come out to the hen house if somebody had left us some food. The age-old tradition of helping your fellow wolf seems to have fallen by the way side since last night’s moon.”
His gaze went angry and cold. “Maybe they’re too embarrassed for you. Everybody heard you screaming last night, and this morning, and then again a couple of hours ago. You could barely bring yourself to kiss me, but apparently all you want to do with him is fuck.” He sneered. “If I’d known you had that in you, I might have taken you up on your offer to fuck me before your heat night. You know, the one you made less than forty-eight hours ago?”
Shame curdled her insides. “I’m sorry, Rafe. I don’t have the words to tell you how sorry I am.” She took a step toward him. “As cliché as this sounds, I never meant to hurt you. And I was telling the truth when I said you were my best friend. If he hadn’t been there when I went into heat—”
He cut her off with a rough shake of his head. “I don’t want to hear what happened or any of your excuses. I don’t give a damn anymore, Chloe. We are definitely no longer friends. In fact, my new number one goal in life is to try to forget I was ever stupid enough to fall in love with you.”
He looked so hurt that Chloe felt torn between begging him to forgive her and comforting him as she always did when he got angry. In the end, she reached out and took him into her arms, hugging him as tightly as she could. “I’m sorry. I’d give anything not to have hurt you this way.”
For a moment his arms wrapped around her, too, and he hugged her back, just as tight. But then he said, “I can smell your heat—and his fucking scent all over you.” Rafe’s voice cracked, and that broke her, too.
She cried into his shoulder for what they’d lost, for what they could have been if Rafe had been there when she went into heat and not the Viking.
But he only let the embrace go on for a little while before pulling away from her. “I’m leaving town for a few weeks. I’m going to spend spring with my family in Alaska.”
By “family in Alaska,” he meant the king of Alaska. His father’s best friend was the alpha of Alaska. And though Rafe wasn’t actually related by blood to the king or his three daughters, they’d spent so many summers in each other homes that they referred to each other as family.
She almost told him to say hi to Alisha, her favorite of the Alaska alpha’s three daughters, but then she remembered what Rafe had said about them no longer being friends. Said and probably meant.
As if reading her thoughts, he said, “I want you both gone when I get back. Especially him. If he’s still here, I swear to God, I will ghost him, I don’t care what it fucking takes.”
Her eyes widened in alarm. “First of all, you’re not the alpha yet, and even if you were, you couldn’t just banish me. Second of all, where am I supposed to go if I don’t live in Wolf Springs? This is my home, the only one I’ve ever known.”
“Actually, it’s my home. I own the mortgage, and I never charged you rent. So you have no rights when it comes to this place,” he reminded her. “You can either move to another wolf town or go back to wherever the Viking came from. I don’t care what you do. I never want to see you again.”
“Rafe—”
He turned around and began walking away from her without another word.
“Rafe,” she called after him again.
But he just left without ever once looking back at her. She knew he didn’t, because she watched him walk away, until he disappeared into the distance.
FENRIS WOKE UP HUNGRY AND COLD and slightly sore from having passed much time in a bathing tub. Yet, his body immediately craved his fated mate again. More than food, more than warmth, more than any comfort that sleeping on top of a true bed might afford him.
As a wolf of twenty and seven winters, he had seen many of his fellow pack members go into a mating frenzy with a she-wolf in heat, but of course he had never experienced it for himself.
Though the scent of a female’s heat arousal had intrigued him, it had never sent him over the edge as it did with some wolves, causing good friends to turn on each other and attack the other with battle axes, if it meant claiming the she-wolf they desired.
But the lot of a fated mate seemed to be even worse. He had been more than ready to kill the man who dared to kiss his dark beauty even before they mated. Now the mere thought of that other wolf touching what was his made him want to learn one of his aunt’s darker spells so he might run the man through with his sword, bring him back to life, then so end him again. Morbid thoughts, indeed. And not ones befitting a Fenris.
Fenris alphas did not get into fights over she-wolves. They were Fenris alphas, which meant such was never necessary. Any she-wolf in heat living on his lands would gladly have him as her mate if he would claim her. Indeed, another alpha king in his position would have simply chosen the most beautiful maiden in his village, spoken her name as his for her heat night, and put a pup in her belly.