After a lifetime spent in service to others, this one thing, this one time, he would do just for himself.
With his knee, he nudged her heavy skirt upward until he could run his hand along the bare, smooth skin of her thigh. Up, higher, to the silky softness of her stomach, where the muscles clenched reflexively under his touch.
Grasping her hips, he settled himself between her knees, where she welcomed him by locking her leg over his.
So close. He was so close to where he wanted to be, buried deep inside her warmth. His body ached to take her fast and hard, but he fought the temptation. This was a moment to be savored, not to be rushed.
He pressed against her, his erection so hard he felt as if his skin might burst. When she lifted her hips against him, he had to force himself to wait. Enter her now and he would be lost. It had been too long, and he wanted her too badly.
A moment to regain his control.
A moment to ensure her passion spiked as high as his own.
He shifted his weight to one side and trailed his hand down to her waist and around to the juncture between her legs.
So hot, so welcoming, her hips lifted and she moaned with pleasure as he slipped one finger inside her.
With one finger inside and his thumb covering the hard little nub, he had but to flex his hand and her moan turned to a breathless whimper, her hips lifting rhythmically to meet the movement of his hand.
Two fingers. Two fingers pressing deep inside, readying her body to accept him. Massaging, slow at first, building in tempo until her body convulsed, her throbbing muscles pulsating around his fingers.
He held her through her climax, his lips covering hers until she gasped for breath.
She was ready for the next step.
With his hands at the small of her back, he lifted her hips and positioned himself against her.
She tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled his mouth to hers, opening for him, her tongue fencing with his in a magnificent dance.
It was now. She would be his.
He’d just begun the exquisitely slow slide into her welcoming sheath when an unearthly scream shattered his moment of bliss.
Not quite human, not quite beast, the sound pierced the night, echoing louder than the rumble of the crashing storm outside.
Hall leapt to his feet, grabbed his sword in one hand and his fur in the other. The sword he raised in front of him. The fur he tossed over the fire, smothering the flames and dousing every last bit of light.
“What was that?” Bridget asked in a whisper, lifting herself up on her elbows.
He didn’t answer, tilting his head to one side in an effort to catch the smallest ripple of vibration for miles. In the silence of the suddenly stilled storm, only one sound reached his ears—the steady beat of massive wings passing through the air, racing away from them.
Fourteen
PAIN FROM THEdepths of Niflheim wracked his body, radiating along the length of his arm.
Fenrir slid from the window ledge into his tower to land on his bare feet. Earlier in the evening, he’d taken the form of the great owl to investigate the odd vibrations he’d sensed from the far corner of his lands.
Half an hour into his flight, he’d spotted it, a strange red glow pulsating up from the ground, flowing out into the night. He’d known that whatever emitted that light was a danger to him, because the five oozing sores around his heart had pulsated in conjunction with the glow. Whatever had caused the wound to Torquil’s body was somewhere down there in the night.
He’d been closing in on the source when a sudden, savage storm exploded the sky around him.
He could find no respite, no safe escape. The lightning caught him, charring his feathers and searing his skin. In his agony, his concentration wavered, and with it, his form. He plummeted helplessly toward the land below, struggling desperately to recover his hold on the transformation Magic.
In his original form, the form in which he had been created, such a near crisis would never have occurred. But his own form was long gone, destroyed by the Elves of Niflheim when they imprisoned his spirit in those accursed scrolls of theirs.
His merging with the laird of the MacDowylt was nearing completion, and his senses accepted the body he had borrowed as if it were his own. And this body, this weak, helpless body, had plummeted from the skies like a boulder when he was attacked.
And it was an attack. No mere storm, no mere coincidence, could have formed so quickly or so viciously to drive him away.
