Then she’d had to apologize yet again for nearly jumping out of her skin when Rafe surprised her with a spontaneous kiss on the back of her neck.
And then later on when they were alone, she’d apologized for what felt like the millionth time for not going into heat yet.
“Your mind has gone quiet. What are you thinking?” the Viking asked her now.
“Nothing,” she answered.
Now his own eyes darkened. “I would know your thoughts.”
And she laughed. “Now you want to start really communicating?”
“Again, though I understand your words, I do not fully glean your meaning.”
“Communication is a big thing in my time. It’s basically couples telling each other everything and being honest about how they feel and what they’re thinking.”
He scrunched up his forehead, “So neither mate does bid the tongue stay while engaged in this act of communicating?” He emphasized “communicating” as if it were a truly foreign word.
“Exactly. But there are rules. You can’t be, like, mean or anything. And you can’t use it to attack the other person. For example if I’m mad at you for something, I can’t say, ‘You’re an asshole.’ I have to say something like, ‘It makes me feel sad when you do blank.’”
“And under the terms of this communication, you cannot insult your mate or make him feel he is not the one you want?”
The mood had suddenly become very serious, and Chloe turned fully toward him. “No, you can’t. You also can’t make your mate feel like her feelings don’t matter to you because she’s a woman, and not the dominant in your relationship.”
“And in this way I would know your thoughts, even when you wished not to give them to me.”
“Yes,” she said. “In my time if both parties agree to communicate then the silent treatment—that’s what we call just flat-out not talking to each other—isn’t allowed.”
He studied the sky for a few moments before reaching over and taking her hand, which he brought to rest on his chest. “Then yea, I will agree to a contract of communication.”
Chloe grinned. To her great surprise, she had found out Vikings were huge fans of contracts. They used them for business transactions, wills, and even weddings.
“You really want to make a contract of communication with me?” she asked.
“If it means I will never have to let another three full moons pass without knowing the inside of you, then yea, yea indeed.”
Chloe found herself unable to suppress her giggles. “Well, you know in my time after the birth of the baby, we let at least three full moons pass before we start having sex again.”
“In your time, you may not use hot springs or drink mead or handle the bog iron in its liquid form or eat uncooked meat or ride upon horses. And now you do tell me there are also mating restrictions imposed after the birth. I would say your people make the coming of pups more difficult than need be.”
She laughed. “You say that but we also have a much lower infant mortality rate than your wolves. For example if a woman went into labor early back in the day, there was a good chance both she and the baby would die, especially if it was breach and she needed something like a C-section. But in my time, Doc Fisher can deliver a healthy baby as early as seven full moons, and if it’s breach, he can give the she-wolf this numbing potion called ‘anesthetic,’ cut it out, then sew her back up. There are also way less miscarriages and even fertility treatments for when a she-wolf goes into heat but can’t make a pup.”
“I stand corrected then,” he said, sounding a little bit sad. “’Tis fortunate to hear you have medicine for all that ails a mother in your time.”
“Well, not everything…” she started to say.
But before she could finish, he squeezed her hand. “Let us return to the subject of communication. Now we have made our contract, I would have your thoughts from before.”
She smiled, allowing the obvious subject change though she was curious about where his mind had gone before.
“I was just thinking it’s nice to be wanted for who I really am. Your family likes the recipes I come up with, your people don’t mind telling me all about their trades and how they do it. And you don’t find it embarrassing that I scream during sex.”
“In truth, I will find it more embarrassing if I am not able to make you do so again,” he said.
He then rolled toward her and claimed her lips with his. And by the time they were done beside the hot spring, he was definitely not embarrassed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IF CHLOE thought the village might pretend that they hadn’t heard her screaming like a mad woman at the hot springs—twice—she was sorely mistaken. The Vikings, she discovered, were a bawdy lot, and many of the villagers called out to them as they made their way from the forest to Fenris’s longhouse.
“Yea, I can see why you took her so far away. Many wolves might have lost their hearing this day if you had not. You are a true Fenris,” called one of the village’s lumberjacks.
“I might try the fated mates spell myself if it wins me a she-wolf as beautiful and full of losti as your own, Fenris,” said one of his warriors.
“Forget the fated mates spell,” cried another. “Let us set sail to Blaland now.”
Unfortunately, Chloe had learned enough Old Norse by that point to pretty much understand everything they were saying.
“Pay them no heed, my queen,” Fenris said beside her. “You shall see the fun of it when another she-wolf has her heat night. In these lands, people do enjoy a good jesting.”
She might have taken some solace in his words if his family hadn’t turned out to be even worse than the villagers. They kept making strange variations on a joke she didn’t understand about Fenris losing his beard. “Surely, we should light the funeral pyre for your newborn beard, our Fenris” and “Do tell your beard to bid our ancestors good-meet when it does join them in Valhalla” and “Has a man ever wanted as much as our Fenris to see his beard not grow?”
They also teased her mercilessly, on and on, until she found herself grumbling out loud in Old Norse to the family she had come to love during their supper, “I would have the full moon rise this day and not on the morrow if it would mean being rid of you.”
Of course, this only caused them all to burst out laughing.
“Me thinks you want rid of us, so you might have the longhouse to yourselves,” said Uncle Olafr. “You kept Fenris pent up so long, our queen, I have no doubt the only ones who will be getting sleep on the morrow’s eve will be we wolves.”