That smile turned dangerous. There was nowhere to go. “Perhaps I still plan to eat you all up.”
Rurik took that last step between them and then she was tumbling onto a mattress so soft and fine that for a moment, she could only stroke the deliciously soft material that covered it.
“Silk,” he murmured with amusement. That devilish light still lit his eyes. “Especially for you, Freyja. I have dreamed of you on my silk sheets. Dreamed of what I would do to you.” That hot gaze scored her body. “Wondered how soft your skin would feel against the silk.” He held his arms out, the thick muscle in them flexing as he gestured to the room. “All of this was for you, and you say all I want from you is one night?”
Freyja swallowed hard. He didn’t know what he did to her with those words, or how long she’d dreamed of someone saying them to her. Foolishness. She knew it, and still she’d dreamed about it.
“I do know.” His eyelids hooded over dangerous eyes. “I want to say them all to you—and more.”
Freyja slammed her shields back into place. He wanted her in his bed. He’d pursued her, tricked her, and finally resorted to taking what he wanted. Well, she would let him. He would have her body; he would never have her heart.
Rurik bared his teeth at her, swooping down to pick up the blindfold. Freyja scrambled back, her skirts slipping on the cursed sheets. Then his hand locked around her ankle, burning hot and immoveable. She squealed as he hauled her back toward him.
A hand slid behind the back of her knee, his callused flesh meeting hers as her skirts curled around her waist. The feel of his touch so intimately against her made a shiver run over her sensitive skin. Images from the night before drove into her brain, and she remembered everything.
“I want all of you, Freyja. Not just the parts you choose to share with me,” he told her, the other hand capturing the back of her other thigh. He parted her legs as he stepped between them, and yanked her closer to the edge of the mattress.
The position put her aggressively in front of him. Freyja’s hands pressed against his thighs as if to halt him, her fingers digging into the bare skin there. Deliciously soft skin rode over hard muscle. She looked down, unable to stop herself. A surge of something went through her at the sight of his arousal, leaving her frantically sucking in breath, her fingernails making small half-moon marks in his tanned flesh. She didn’t understand any of this. How could she ache so at the sight of his desire for her? The sensitive skin between her thighs throbbed with it, even as fear circled through her.
He asked too much of her. For he asked not just for sex, or to take what he wanted from her, but to own her. To possess her heart entirely, and make her his.
And that terrified her.
“Well, you don’t get to choose how much of me you get,” she shot back.
“Don’t tempt the dreki,” he said. His hand caught her chin and lifted it, one of his knees pressing into the mattress between her spread legs as he leaned over her. “Or there will be hell to pay.”
Freyja’s fingers flexed against his chest. Heavens, but every inch of him was hard. “You don’t scare me.”
“Really? Then why is your heart beating so hard?”
“Because I’m arguing,” she pointed out.
Rurik gave her a slow, hot smile, amber eyes flaring with golden heat. “You’re always arguing.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t think you ruled this part of the world... and me.”
“You would argue until your face turned blue.” He leaned over her, one hand beside her hip. “You would argue until the world turned to dust. It wouldn’t matter what I said.”
“Then why bother with me?”
“Maybe I like arguing with you.” His cheek brushed against hers, his lips nuzzling her ear. “It gets me all hot under my skin. Makes me think of ways I could win the argument.”
Heat crept up her throat. She felt like she was in his claws again, flying through the air with the wind whipping past her. Any moment he could drop her, and then she’d be freefalling through the air, and damn her beating heart, but the thought almost excited her. “Rurik.”
“Like this....” His mouth trailed across her jawline.
Freyja’s breath caught. His knee came down on the bed between her thighs, pressing her skirts beneath it. She was trapped. And all of this... predatory male heat was spilling over her.
“And this.” Another kiss skated over her cheek, then her mouth. He nibbled at her lips, his tongue darting out to taste her.
Freyja tumbled onto her back as he followed her down, leaning on his elbows above her. That enormous weight came down upon her, pressing her hips into the mattress, and… oh, lord. Freyja’s eyes shot wide, even as he claimed her mouth.
There was no denying him, nor herself. She didn’t want to. She wanted to drink down this memory, to give herself something to sustain her in future days. One night with the man who made her heart leap in her chest.
“Am I winning the argument, Freyja?” he whisper-laughed against her lips.
Damn him. She curled her nails in his shoulder, and a soft groan escaped him. Freyja’s fingers flexed as thought raced. Maybe there was more than one way to best him?
“I offer you this one night,” she managed to say as his mouth brushed hers again.
Rurik’s lips stilled, tension coiling through his shoulders. “I want all of them.”
“We don’t always get what we want.” Some lick of anger stirred in her, and he drew back, hands fisted in the sheets beside her head, his eyes glowing with that strange light.
Freyja waited for him to deny her or demand more. Instead, a slow, wicked smile curled over his lips.
“Stubborn,” he whispered, dropping his head to kiss her throat. His lips burned and Freyja writhed helplessly, a shiver running across her skin. “You throw challenges at me as if they were curses. Haven’t you learned? There is no better way to capture my interest than to challenge me.”
“I wasn’t challenging you. I was setting the rules.” She gasped as his wet tongue dipped into the hollow of her clavicle.
“I don’t like your rules.” As if to prove the point, his teeth dug into the tender skin of her shoulder. Shifting his weight to one side, he slid his roughened hand over the soft wool of her dress. Tracing her hips, her bottom. He thrust into the vee of her thighs, his cock riding over the wool. “There are no rules, Freyja. Not in this. You are mine. I’m not letting you go now.”
She caught his shoulder, her breath catching as he rubbed against her. “You don’t have a choice.”
“No?” Rurik’s lip curled back in a hiss as he lifted his head. “We’ll see. Now you have the dreki to pay, my love. And he is much more dangerous than your devil.”
Another kiss captured the protest on her lips. A kiss full of possession and ruthlessness, a kiss to drown in. It told her more than words precisely what was going through his mind. He staked his claim on her mouth, his tongue thrusting past her lips even as his hips slid against hers again. Somehow his hand slid down her leg, drawing her knee up so that he settled deep between her thighs. The position made her gasp, but there was no escaping him.
Even if she’d wanted to.
Freyja’s fingers curled in the heated skin of his shoulders, her nails flexing against the heavy slabs of muscle. One night she would give him, and she would take everything he had to offer her. She began to kiss him back. Sweet goddess, why had she ever resisted?
“That’s it,” he whispered, locking her ankles behind his bottom. Her skirts bunched between them, and she could feel the rasp of the fine hairs on his legs against her inner thighs. “Kiss me, Freyja.” His voice dropped into a series of words she didn’t understand, yet somehow her body did. The whisper curled in her abdomen, pulling at her, wetting her, making her ache.
She rocked against him, hands sliding up his nape and locking in his hair. This time her mouth met his, cutting off those foreign words. Her tongue darted against his. The taste of him was as smo
ky as his scent. And by the gods, it felt good. So, so good.
Rurik growled deep in his throat as he caught her wrists and pinned her to the bed. He nipped at her lip. “You steal my intent,” he rasped, “and make me forget to take this slowly.”
“I don’t want slow.” A gasp stole from her lips. His erection slid against her inner thigh. “I want you to make me feel....”
She needed to surrender to the storm building between them. Every inch of her body ached in unfulfillment.
Rurik’s gaze half shuttered. He lowered his head and bit the fleshy lobe of her ear. “But you forget,” his whisper trailed down her throat, “that you are not in control here.”
Pinned beneath him, her body spread in surrender, Freyja narrowed her eyes. “I could be.” She slid the soles of her feet down the backs of his thighs, rubbing her hips against him right where it ached the fiercest.
And she felt the response shudder through him, his gasp wetting her skin. “Vixen.” Rurik bit her chin, her lower lip, lifting his hips away from her. “It appears I shall have to take a firmer hand with you.”
Freyja’s nipples hardened. “What does that mean?”
Rurik dragged the woolen blindfold up and tossed it on the bed beside her. Kneeling over her, he smiled darkly. “You’re wearing far too many clothes.”
Freyja rocked onto her elbows, eyeing the blindfold. “What did you mean?”
But Rurik urged her over onto her hands and knees, kissing the back of her neck and trailing his lips over the sensitive skin there as she straightened. A shiver of pure need lanced through her. He tugged at the buttons that ran down between her breasts, popping each free of its loop. The black wool sagged over her shoulders and he tugged it down to her hips, teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her shoulder.
Freyja lost herself in the sensation of his mouth. Rurik yanked the dress over her bottom and out from under her knees. Freyja shivered, practically naked. Suddenly a sense of shyness swept over her.
“And this,” he murmured, starting to slide her chemise up.
Freyja flinched as the worn fabric slid over bare bottom, her cheeks heating. “Rurik—”
“Now this,” he purred, “is better.”
Lips traced the skin of her hip as he slid her chemise up her back. Freyja yelped as his teeth left a mark on the fleshy bottom. Then he was pushing the chemise over her head, tongue trailing up the indentation of her spine.
Blinded by the fabric, Freyja tried to fight her way free. His hair-roughened thighs pressed against hers, his cock dipping between her legs in a teasing movement that had her heart racing. Then she was free, and he was rolling her onto her back, one hand sliding up her throat to capture her jaw as he took her mouth fiercely.
Couldn’t think with him kissing her like that, thrusting against her, dragging her hands up above her head. Stealing her breath until her head spun and she was pinned beneath him, something tightening around one wrist… then the other.
Rurik levered off her just enough for Freyja to catch her breath, and then she realized she still couldn’t move. She tugged at her bound wrists, craning her head back to make sure that, yes, he had tied her to the bed, and now she was naked and lushly spread before him like his own personal banquet. “What are you doing?”
“Taking my time.” That wicked, self-satisfied look was back. Then his gaze locked on her body, and Freyja went still at the hungry look in his eyes. “You are so perfect.” His hand skittered over her ribs as he knelt between her thighs.
Freyja squirmed as his gaze dropped to the thatch of blonde hair between her legs. No man had ever seen her like this.
“I could just eat you all up,” he purred, leaning over her, kissing her breasts, his teeth rasping over her nipples. “After all, is that not what you claimed that dreki do? Devour innocent young maidens....” His breath stirred against her skin.
Suddenly it was all Freyja could do to stay still. “Please—oh, gods, oh!” How could a woman think like this? With his hands and mouth all over her, stroking her ribs, up under her breasts, plumping them up for the heat of his mouth. His tongue swirled teasing circles around each nipple, suckling them, making the ache fiercer.
The pressure in her body almost hurt. She could feel it building, a storm within. One of his palms pressed against her lower abdomen, as if sensing the power there.
“Yes,” he whispered, and heat slid from his hand, sinking down into the molten core of her.
Then those lips were trailing lower, his tongue darting into her navel. Freyja’s eyes went wide. He wasn’t—? Another kiss lower, as he nuzzled into the blonde hair between her thighs, sent a thrill of shock through her. He was. Suddenly she understood all the “devouring her” references.
“Rurik!” His name stole from her lips in a gasp as those broad shoulders nudged her thighs wider. Freyja craned her neck, unable to look away. His honey-gold hair fell across her pale stomach, and then he glanced up with one last smoldering smile, before he lowered his face and licked her.
There.
Volcanic heat sent a rush of power flooding through her body. Freyja’s spine arched at the lance of sensation, her feet digging into the bed. She couldn’t think. Could barely breathe. Sweet goddess, but what was he doing to her? “Oh, my God!”
The wet lash of his tongue left her with nowhere to hide. He nuzzled her, suckling the small bud between her thighs gently, until she could do little more than pant helplessly, straining at the woolen tie around her wrists.
“Am I winning the argument now, Freyja?” he purred.
“What... argument...?”
A laugh, and then Rurik tongued her deeply.
Suddenly it became too much for her. She felt like she stood in the heart of a maelstrom, or as if her own lightning had struck her body. Freyja screamed, hips jerking beneath his tender ministrations as Rurik licked her with slow, purposeful intent, absorbing each and every aftershock until she felt wrung dry.
She didn’t know if she could stand it any longer. Freyja gasped. “Please. Please... I can’t....”
Then he was kissing his way up her smooth abdomen, while she shivered, her inner muscles clenching. Freyja realized the room around her trembled, and Rurik glanced up, then looked at her with a slight frown.
She could barely think, but something about his expression managed to penetrate the fogged state of bliss she existed in. “What’s wrong?”
“You shouldn’t be able to affect this place.” Capturing her face in both hands, he rested between her thighs, the heaviness of his body so abruptly intimate that she sucked in a sharp breath. “What are you?” he whispered, and not for the first time.
“I don’t know.”
“I will find out.”
“Good. Then maybe you can tell me?”
Freyja swallowed, glancing down between them. His skin rubbed against hers, hairs rasping between her slick thighs. She couldn’t even contemplate what he’d just done to her. It seemed... indecent. Shocking. Wonderfully wicked. And she wanted more.
“I would love to know what you’re thinking right now.”
Not quite a question from her mighty dreki, yet nor was it a command. Freyja kissed his mouth gently. “Untie me. Please.”
He smiled, and nuzzled her lips. She could taste the musk of her own body there. “Why should I? I like you like this. Splayed out like some treasure I’m about to plunder.” The smooth rock of his hips showed her exactly what he meant by the word plunder. The heavy length of his cock slid slickly against her, riding over exactly the same spot he’d recently devoured.
“Because I want to touch you,” she cried.
Those amber eyes shuttered. “Hmm,” he said. But he reached up and tugged her wrists free.
Freyja slid her hands over his shoulders. She felt freedom in this moment, unfettered by so many of the unspoken rules that had governed her life. And she wanted to take, just as much as she wanted to be taken.
“Touch me then,” Rurik whispered, and Freyja slid he
r hands down his chest, over the rock-hard ripple of his abdomen. Her finger tangled in the trail of blond hair that grazed his navel, then hovered there.
“You’re not stopping there, are you?” purred her golden dreki. He clasped her hand, and drew it lower. “Not you, my ever-curious Freyja.”
Curious, indeed.
Freyja locked eyes with him as he pressed her hungry touch over the heated steel of his erection. Time to throw caution to the wind. He felt enormous in her palm, and Freyja could barely wrap her fingers around him. Rurik shuddered, his lips parting as he curled her hand around the engorged width of him. “That’s it,” he whispered, eyelids lowering in sleepy abandon. The tip of his erection darted along the slit between her thighs. Freyja froze at the lash of sensation, then cupped him again, learning his most intimate secrets.
Rurik stole her mouth again, and something began to stretch her. She dragged her hand over his hip, curling her fingers in the flesh of his ass, not quite certain whether she could handle this.
“Fate, Freyja,” Rurik breathed, and finally pushed inside her.
It was too much. And not enough. She wasn’t sure what she wanted, but as he thrust inside her, she could feel that tremor building again. Her body pulsed at the ache of the invasion, even as it accommodated him.
Rurik groaned, his mouth slightly parted and his cock plunging within her. Freyja found herself lost to the storm building on the horizon. All she could feel was him. All she could breathe was him.
“More,” he growled, and then he was rolling her over, shoving her onto her hands and knees. She’d barely had a chance to settle herself, when his thighs settled between hers and he was parting her once more, this time from behind.
Freyja cried out as Rurik buried himself to the hilt inside her. He felt deeper this way, and she didn’t know how much of this she could stand, but she was more than willing to try. Power swept through her, threatening to consume her. How she had never tried this, she did not know. It felt utterly pagan, utterly sensual, and right in a way she did not understand.
“Because you were waiting for me,” Rurik growled, and he must have caught the edge of her thoughts. His hands clasped her hips, and he slammed into her again. “Mine, Freyja. Only mine.”
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