Her Scottish Wolf (Howls Romance): Loving World Read online

  The next day Fenris showed up after her lessons again. This time he took her to the iron fields to see where “much of our metal” came from. That one was a little less hands on, since unlike women of this age, she knew better than to handle anything with questionable chemical content while pregnant. But it was still thrilling to see how people who had no formal classes, internet, or books to guide them, made things day in and day out.

  The day after that, he woke her early in the morning to take her to the farm hamlet just a little ways down the coast to show her where all of their grain came from. The hamlet was relatively nearby, but it was still about an hour away in the small fishing boat he’d procured for the trip, and when Fenris started to tell her stories about the mostly unpopulated lands they passed along the way, she forgot herself and started asking him questions about where the humans lived and how much interaction they had with them. And somehow they ended up talking about the differences between wolf and human interactions in both their times all the way there.

  Then on the way back from the hamlet when Fenris asked her if they had the resting sun for a time in her land, that led to a conversation about how she knew a little about a lot of things due to at first to these things called “books” and then later on to a more recent invention called “the internet,” which was how so many people all around the world were able to know about what they called “the midnight sun” even if they had never seen it in real life with their own eyes.

  He kept asking her questions about “these matters that could be read in books” and “the internet,” until eventually she told him the story of how Professor Henley had figured out he was a Viking back in Colorado, and found a picture of his sword at a museum in a city called Oslo, which might have not yet been founded in his time but was the capital or the main city of Norway in her own. And that led to a discussion about what year they were in, and that never fully got figured out, since the Norse wolves used a calendar that was a mix of moons, summers, and winters, and eras of rule, as in “The time of the second Fenris” and the time of the “third Fenris.” Fenris was the sixth in his own line of kings, but there was another Fenris line before that, which would take “many boat trips for which to account” according to Fenris.

  The day after that, he took her to the beekeeper’s longhouse to see how the honey that sweetened their food and provided the base for their mead was made. And so on and so forth until before she knew it, another full moon was just a day away.

  To Chloe, it felt much like what she’d seen and read about in human mating rituals. Wolves didn’t date and in many cases, they didn’t even bother with getting to know each other. A she-wolf went into heat and then proceeded to have crazy wolf sex day and night with whatever guy she either wanted or had agreed to mate with until she got pregnant. Then if they were lucky she went into heat maybe one or two more times within her lifetime, giving her two more pups before they grew old and died together.

  Everything romantic that happened between wolves tended to come before their actual heat night. And even then, it wasn’t so much dating, as hanging out and deciding if they wanted to be together on their heat night. Not exactly the stuff of romance novels.

  Cases like hers and Rafe’s, where two wolves got to know each other as adults before the she-wolf went into heat, were rare and Wolf Springs was full of mates for life, who grumbled in their later years that they didn’t have anything in common and wished they had chosen more wisely.

  But nearly every day, the Viking took her somewhere for at least an hour or two to let her see how something was done or made. And soon the conversations they had on the trips to and from these dates started to spill over into the rest of her life. They’d mind-chat over breakfast about what each of them had planned for the day, then he’d come get her for their “date” after her lesson with Aunt Bera, then he’d go off and do something else on his never-ending list of kingly duties. And she soon began to miss him when he was away to the point where it felt like the midnight sun inside her chest when he came back through the door for dinner, during which they’d mind chat about both their days just like couples had apparently been doing throughout the centuries in both her and his times.

  It kind of felt like Stockholm syndrome considering she had vowed to stay mad at him forever just four months ago. But who else did she have to talk to about the differences between her time and his? And the Viking seemed just as in interested in hearing about the engineering feats of her time as she was in learning about the DIY features of his.

  “You’re a bit of a sci-fi nut, aren’t you?” she asked the day before the full moon as they walked along the river which ran east from the lake, through a valley bordered by mountains on each side. Their destination was unknown to her. She liked the surprise of finding out, and maybe he liked surprising her, because he never volunteered the information when he picked her up from her Old Norse lessons—which were going much better now she could take an extra five minutes to ask Fenris the Old Norse equivalent for all the missing words that came up in that day’s session with Aunt Bera.

  “I once again do not comprehend your meaning,” he said now, but his voice held teasing, not censure, when he said it.

  “In my time, there are all these stories set in the future. Like we have a bunch of, um... I guess you’d call them ‘tales’ set on these things called ‘space ships,’ which are basically boats that ride through the stars. And a lot of people just love them, love imagining what the future will be like.”

  “But you do not?”

  “I mean I’ll go to a summer movie, but I don’t read it or seek it out. I’m more of a historical fiction person myself, though it’s hard to find historical novels about black people that aren’t set in the time of slavery.”

  They had already had a long conversation on the subject of slaves versus what Fenris called thralls. In both histories, this was fully a human practice, and to her surprise, in both histories this had been one of things that diversified the werewolf population. He’d explained to her all the wolves of Norway sported red hair like he, but when human Vikings started bringing back thralls from far-off lands, that had meant more accidental turnings. In the time before the Vikings took to boat to raid and trade, and before the Norse werewolves taught themselves to remain calm in wolf form in order to be able to do so themselves, the humans who lived in communities nearby knew not to go wandering about on the night of the full moon. But thralls, thinking their new masters superstitious, used this as their one opportunity to escape. Some of them made it out. But many more of them ended up werewolves. That is, if they survived the initial attack.

  This was also how black wolves came to reside in the United States, she told him. Africa, or Blaland as he referred to it, didn’t have wolves, and many of the first black werewolves were runaway slaves attempting to gain their freedom in the north.

  “Yes,” he said, answering her original question. “Mayhap I would have great fondness of this ‘sci-fi’ you do speak. All Viking stories are about the past and told over and over again. Your stories of new things are very welcome to me.”

  Before she could question herself too closely about the warm feeling that rose up inside of her when he said this, he stopped.

  “We have reached our destination.”

  Laid out before them was a sparkling reservoir of clear water with steam rising up from it.

  Chloe clapped her hands together. “I know what this is!” She winced then, realizing this meant their date was pretty much ruined, since she already knew how hot springs worked. “This is awesome, but we actually have hot springs where I’m from, too. There’s a resort you didn’t get to see right down the road that’s situated around a spring kind of like this. Except that one’s all sectioned off with rocks and people have to pay to use it. But that’s why our town is called Wolf Springs.”

  To her surprise, he responded to her confession with a grin. “Good, then we will not have to bother this day with lengthy explanations.”
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  And with that he began stripping off his clothes.

  Chapter 18

  “UM…” Chloe said, quickly averting her eyes when he pulled his blue tunic over his head, revealing the bare chest underneath it, one she hadn’t seen in quite a while. “Actually, as much as I would love to take a dip in your hot spring, I can’t. In my time it’s considered a really bad idea for pregnant women to get in hot springs.”

  She brought her eyes back to him to see how he was taking the news that she also wasn’t going to strip down and jump in the hot spring. But he didn’t seem to be taking it at all. In fact, he was toeing off his leather shoes . . .

  “So I see you’re planning on taking a dip by yourself then. That’s cool. You know, I can just see myself back to the village.”

  “Nay, that is not my plan,” he said.

  Before Chloe could figure out whether he meant he wasn’t going to swim by himself or he wasn’t going to let her walk back to the village alone, he was pulling down his pants, and out sprung his considerably large erection.

  The follow-up questions trailed away and her throat went dry, right before the smell of her arousal hit the air.

  He smiled. “I had begun to wonder if I might ever smell you in this manner again.”

  “This doesn’t mean anything,” Chloe insisted, trying to wave away what was right under both of their noses. “I mean, this doesn’t change anything.”

  “You have turned around your words,” he answered. “Your meaning should be it changes everything. Now we would both have need of each other.”

  He took one step toward her, which caused Chloe to take several steps back, only to have her back slam up against a tree she could have sworn wasn’t there a minute ago.

  The Viking was on her in a second, pressing his large body against hers, so she could feel how hard his cock was as it teased her opening through the skirt of her prairie dress. Before she knew it, his lips were on hers, coaxing her mouth open with his own, and drawing out the kiss with long insistent strokes of his tongue.

  It was actually one of the gentler kisses he had ever given her, but Chloe felt like she was under sudden attack. His hands were everywhere, pulling down the frilly top of her prairie dress and palming her breasts when they spilled out. Then one was under her skirt, pushing two fingers into her soaking pussy, which going with the fashion of the day, had no barrier to protect it from his seeking hands.

  His two fingers hooked inside of her, just as he pressed his calloused thumb against the bundled of nerves at her center. A white-hot spark of bone-aching need went through her and she arched against the tree, all vows of from-now-on-chastity suddenly forgotten. “Fenris!”

  “Yea, declare my name,” he answered out loud in Old Norse. Then he pushed into her head: “Do you know how you have taunted me with this smock? It did torture me to lie next to you in bed this winter, and now that the sun is bright overhead, you doth wear it outside our bed closet as well. If your were of a mind to drive me mad with lust, you have met your aim.”

  Chloe couldn’t think to answer. Sparks crackled across her clit every time his fingers moved into her and she could feel an orgasm blooming inside her womb. Then he took one of her breasts, which had become extremely sensitive in her second trimester, in his mouth, clamping his lips around the hard nipple.

  And all her barriers came tumbling down as the orgasm rocked through her, making her cling to Fenris helplessly until she melted into a pool of jelly in his arms.

  “I had forgotten how pretty you are in your pleasure,” he said. “I’ve a mind to see this look on your face again, but first…”

  Again he moved so fast it put her in mind of a blitz. Her skirt was pushed up and her hands placed on the tree for her right before he entered her from behind.

  As it turned out, getting taken as a woman in lust was even better than get fucked as a werewolf in heat. There was no mating knot now, which meant she was able to also feel every inch of his cock, thick and swollen inside of her, filling her up in every possible way as it slid in and out of her slick opening.

  “That you would withhold this from me for so long. It is because of you I cannot achieve a warrior’s control right now.”

  And as if to illustrate his point he began hammering into her, his damp skin slapping against her own until he went tense behind her and released. It was all so hot and happened so fast, Chloe felt herself struggling to keep up.

  There was now the smell of their combined sex in the air, but still the now-familiar smell of her own arousal broke through that cloud like a tangible thing, insisting on making itself known.

  “You have need of me again.” He chuckled. “I had a notion the intensity of our three moons in your Colorado was due to the mating frenzy. But I see my queen might have a lustier nature than I had originally thought.”

  Chloe, who had put years into learning how to be more of a lady in order to be a good wife to Rafe, wanted to be embarrassed, but the sweet fire of aching need inside her refused to let her maintain her cool, especially when he began rubbing her clit from behind again, as if answering her silent prayer.

  “Please, don’t stop,” she said out loud in English. She begged him. “Just please keep going.”

  And maybe he understood her, because the next thing she knew, she was on her back and looking up at the blue sky as his words pushed inside of her head. “I will give you what you want. I will give you more than that. As you know, baths aren’t as plentiful in our time, because we don’t have the ‘running water’ as you do. But we do have our ways of keeping clean between soap days, especially after a joining. Mayhap this will be our lesson for this day.”

  His tongue entered her pussy, hot and thick, lapping at her with such precise strokes it really did feel like he was cleaning her up in the dirtiest way possible. And soon another climax began to build inside of her, this one crawling through her, until it felt like every nerve in her body was alive with pleasure. Then he sucked her clit into his mouth as if it was one of the hard nipples on her breasts, and it was as if he’d flipped a switch inside of her. She came hard, screaming out her pleasure in English. The Viking continued to hold her most sensitive area sucked tight inside his mouth until she collapsed back into the ground fully spent.

  “Oh, God,” she said, when he came to lie on his back beside her. “They probably heard me back in the village.”

  She couldn’t see his face, but could hear the smile in his voice when he answered, “I did have the notion the hot spring might be far enough so the wolves of our village might not be able to hear. But as you know, werewolves have keen ears and you, my queen, are verily quite loud.”

  She groaned. “I don’t mean to be. I don’t know what comes over me. I had thought it was because I was in heat back in Colorado, but I guess I’m just one of those people who’s loud in bed. I’m so sorry.”

  His hand found her face and turned it toward his on the grass so she could now look into his amused gray eyes. “It is you who would embarrass with too much ease, my queen. And it is only because I did know this to be true beforehand that I sought a place so far from the village. No North wolf would be embarrassed to hear his mate announce her pleasure as you do.”

  Her eyes darkened a bit, thinking of Rafe who she had apologized to for causing him embarrassment often in their seven years together, especially when she was rather clumsily learning which forks to use at the fancy wolf functions she attended as his fiancée. In fact, just a month before the Viking’s arrival, she’d spent what felt like an entire night apologizing to Rafe. First, she had apologized for wearing one of her homemade prairie dresses to a dinner party they threw for the visiting king of Alaska and his three daughters. Then she’d apologized for standing in the corner with the Alaska alpha’s middle daughter, Alisha, for nearly the entire pre-dinner drinks portion. There were way more Hispanic than black wolves in the United States, and Alisha, her sisters, and her mother, happened to be four of the very few she knew. Also, Alisha, being
a history grad student, loved her Black Mountain Woman show and blog, so instead of mingling like they had both been supposed to, they spent the entire pre-dinner party cobbling together a version of how wolves might have lived in post-colonial Alaska.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said to Rafe when he all but dragged her away from the nerdy history professor.

  Then she’d apologized again later that night for defending Alisha’s work as a history professor, when her mother started teasing her about not having an intended for her heat night yet. Correcting alpha queens really wasn’t done, especially by nobodies like Chloe, whose own status hadn’t been cemented yet with a heat night.

  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.’”