Page 48 of The Fanged One

The rest, then. She handed you her soft belly. Don't leave her lying there alone.

Fenris moved off his side of the couch, came around the table, and sat down beside her, where she could close the distance or not. His hands stayed loose on his thighs.

"You are safe with me," he said, keeping his voice firm. "That's no trick to get into your bed for fun and nothing more. If all I wanted was sex, the club was full of it. Half the room smelled of humans in heat the night we danced. I wanted none of them. I've wanted nothing in this new world except to find my father and you."

Linnea's eyes came up to his. He needed to get rid of that worry and uncertainty from her eyes if it was the last thing he did.

"You speak of being vulnerable in a bed," he went on, the words coming rough and slow. "I understand it better than you think because I've always been feared for what I am. So believe me when I say I know what it costs you, and I know what it's worth. I feel safe with you too, little singer. You put scissors to my throat on the first day we met, and my wolf went to sleep beside you. That has never happened to me before. I'll never hurt you, and I will never use you. Not for a night. Not for anything."

Linnea let go of her knees. "Fenris..."

"I'm not finished." He reached out and took one of her hands out of her sweater sleeve, turning it over, his thumb resting on the fading band of scars at her wrist. "The people who told you that you were unworthy were wrong in every way. Your father was given a daughter with a good heart, a steel spine, and enough magic to make the world quake, and he was too small and too stupid to see it. You're perfect exactly as you are. The Norns bound our wyrds, and I'm glad for it. If I could choose any soul in the Nine Worlds to be tied to, I wouldn't want anyone else but you."

Linnea stared at him, her gray eyes bright and wet in the dawn light, her pulse hammering under his thumb.

"That's the most I've ever heard you say at once," she whispered, with a small sob of laughter.

Fenris managed a smile. "I save my words for things that matter."

Linnea crossed the space between them, took his face in both hands, and kissed him. It was salt and honey and heat. He pulled her into his lap, and she came willingly, her knees sliding to either side of his hips, her fingers pushing back into his hair. He kissed her slowly and deeply, one hand splayed across the small of her back, the other cradling the nape of her neck.

"Take me to bed," she breathed against his mouth. "I don't want Tor finding us like this. I'll never live it down."

"He would survive it."

"I wouldn't. They would never shut up."

Fenris stood with her still wrapped around him, her weight nothing in his arms, and carried her down the hall. She muffled her laugh against his throat as he shouldered her bedroom door shut behind them.

He set her down beside the bed, meaning to lay her on it. Linnea had other plans. Her hands flattened against his chest and pushed him gently until he sank back on the edge of the mattress. She pressed one more kiss to his lips before she slid down his body onto her knees on the rug between his feet.

His heart stopped. "Linnea?"

"Hush."

"You owe me nothing. I..." He started to say when she reached for his belt.

"It's not about owing." Her hands settled warm on his thighs, and the touch went through him like a current. "You took nothing for yourself last time, and you gave me everything. I want to do the same. I want this, Fenris, so let me touch you."

The last of his protests died in his throat. He was only a simple creature at heart, and his body had been starving for her all damn day.

"Whatever you want," he managed to say. "Always."

She worked his jeans open with careful fingers, and his cock sprang free, hard and aching. The first slow stroke of her hand dragged a sound out of him that he barely recognized. Her thumb swept over the head, spreading the wetness already beading there, and she looked up the length of his body with her storm-gray eyes and a crooked, brave smile.

"You're allowed to make noise," she teased softly. "Tor's walls are soundproofed. He brags about it constantly."

A laugh tore out of him and turned into a groan because she chose that moment to lower her head and take him into her mouth.

Wet heat closed over his dick, emptying his skull of every thought he had ever had. She was careful, unhurried, learning what he liked, her tongue tracing the underside of his cock, her hand wrapped around what her mouth couldn't take. Her low hum of pleasure at the taste of him, like he was something good, was threatening to undo him completely.

Her scent and his twisted together in the dark until the whole room smelled of them. The deep, possessive animal at the center of him gloried in it and knew she would carry him on her skin for days. Every wolf in Midgard would know who she belonged to.

Fenris's hands found her hair, needing to hold her. "Linnea… Fuck, you are so beautiful. Look at you. Perfect."

She moaned around him and took him deeper, deeper, until he touched the back of her throat, and the world whited out at the edges.

"I'm going to come," he gritted out in warning.