However, his Chloe made him wish he had uttered the words of the incantation that much sooner. Had ever there been a more exotic beauty? Buxom, quick of mind, well-skilled in the woman’s arts, with an instinct toward losti even though she had never been touched before he. She made him want to dally in their mating frenzy, even if it meant not returning to his own lands forthwith.
And that, he thought, heaving himself out of her white tub, bothered him much. At no other time had he ever thought to put a she-wolf before his own interests. He had often derided both his allies and his enemies for doing so, and he had never been able to fathom finding himself in such place, of wanting to spend more time with his mate for purposes other than putting a babe in her belly. He feared he was already becoming as bewitched by the she-wolf called Chloe as his own father had been bewitched by his own fated mate.
Even more so, when he entered the kitchen, and found not only a delicious meal of chicken and fennel waiting for him, but also his leather pants, freshly laundered and his The King Maker, gleaming under the flameless lights, looking as new as the day he had laid down much coin for it. He smiled to himself, thinking of how his chieftains would envy him this she-wolf who cared not for the magics of her own time but had tutored herself in the arts of his, as if she had some heed she would one day be his alpha queen.
At that moment, he spied her in the kitchen window, standing in the yard behind her house, staring off into the distance with a basket of eggs gripped tight in one hand. He could not help but admire her lovely visage, framed as she was by the setting sun and clothed as she was in the same sort of dress and short wool coat she had worn when they first met outside the gate on the mountain. The dress was frilly on top and edged with lace. It put him in mind of the smocks that she-wolves wore in his own time, mostly under other clothes, but also by themselves in the warmth of the summer. It made her look like she belonged more in his time than her own. Watching her then, he understood the draw of fated mates, why young she-wolves followed his aunt around like puppies, begging her for the spell.
He now rued the time they had spent apart as he felt his heart, which had become icy with cynicism during his reign as king, begin to thaw. And within his mind grew a notion to join her outside and take her against a tree, so as to have the sun set on their fourth joining.
But then she suddenly turned back toward the house. This is when he saw her pass the side of her hand under one eye and then the other.
She had been crying, he realized with alarm, and he made haste to the back door, yanking it open to discover what had happened to make her have tears.
Thus was he unprepared for the smell that assaulted his nostrils. The smell of her heat but also the smell of the other wolf, the one who had dared to kiss her in front of him. It was so strong he thought to re-enter the house to grab his sword, but one glance around the yard told Fenris the other wolf was no longer within sight’s distance. But then from where did the smell come from? He looked down at his fated mate, and received the answer to his question.
The smell was all over her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE sad fact was Chloe was so preoccupied with watching Rafe leave her life forever, and the ultimatum he put down before he left, that it hadn’t even occurred to her to worry about their embrace or the smell it left behind. Over the years, Rafe’s smell had become so familiar that its presence went without real acknowledgement, like the smell of shea butter in the products she made at home to use in her hair. Or the smell of hay in her chicken coop.
But then Fenris opened the door with a worried look on his face, one that shifted to confusion, and then to such anger, it made Rafe’s earlier temper look like an episode of Mister Rogers. Only then did she realize what her hug with Rafe had left behind.
She and the Viking stood there like that, frozen on her back step, each seeming to wait for the other to speak first. The scent of her ongoing heat filling up the air between them.
“You would come to me smelling of him?” the Viking asked her, his voice a cold monotone. “You would give yourself to another while I did sleep then come to me with your need.”
“No,” she said. “That’s not what happened. I was apologizing to him and I gave him a hug. That’s all.”
“In my lands claimed she-wolves do not embrace men outside of their family.”
She pushed past him into the kitchen. “Well, we’re not in your village are we? We’re in mine. And here, women can hug whoever they want to.”
She set the basket of eggs on the counter, and then sprinted to her own room, wishing to God wolf houses were like human houses, where people actually installed locks on the door. Breaking and entering in shifter towns was practically non-existent—who would bother to burgle your house, since any wolf would be able to smell that you’d been there? In the same vein, there was no need to lock the bathroom door behind yourself, because any other wolf would be able to smell you in there. For these reasons, it was rare to find a house with locks on any of its doors in towns like Wolf Springs. The only reason she’d had one installed on the basement door was so she wouldn’t accidentally open the wrong door in the night and take a tumble down the basement stairs.
As it was, Chloe barely managed to strip and push her clothes out the nearest window before Fenris came crashing through the door.
Her thought had been to at least get rid of the scent, so she could reason with the Viking. As civilized as wolves had become over the centuries, she still didn’t know many who could be reasoned with while the smell of a rival lingered in the air.
And to a certain extent, her plan worked. His eyes, which had been almost murderous in their intent when he came through the door, darkened with another type of desire when he saw her standing there naked.
His eyes raked her body, her newly swollen breasts, the hot wetness gathered at the triangle between her legs, and the next thing she knew, she was on her back, underneath him in her bed as he drove himself into her.
There was nothing pretty about this fourth mating, no compliments, no kissing, no gentleness, only the sound of his animalistic grunts as he moved on top of her.
“I am the Fenris, and thus have I claimed you.”
She wanted to tell him again that “claiming” wasn’t really done any more, that mates chose each other in her time. But his knot was working its magic against her G-spot again and she could barely think, much less give him a lecture on modern wolf culture.
She hooked her hands over his shoulders and spread her legs even further, trying to hold on and let him deeper inside of her at the same time.