“Because he never cared at all.”
“How do you know?”
“He never cared like I did. I know it.” He nipped my ear, his breath hot against the winter air. “You remind me of who I used to be…and you make me want to be more than I am now.”
“Agnar, please…”
“Aye, how do you want me to please you?” His voice was low, his accent sliding back into the wolfkin tones that were somewhere between human and wood elf with a little something else, something gruff and careless on top of it.
I thought I should probably put up at least some pretense of protest. But I didn’t want to. It was stupid to protest. “But aren’t you cold? Take my cloak.”
“I’m not cold at all. Are you cold at all?”
“No, actually. Not a bit.”
He turned my head sideways enough that our lips could meet. He was still pinning me down, his weight not painful but just gently pressing me into the soft snow. His warm mouth was rough against mine, his tongue tasting a little like blood. He’d probably killed his lunch not long before he came across me. The thought of him hunting made me want him all the more. He took my lower lip between his teeth and gently bit me there too, these gentle aggressions assuring me that he was fit to be my mate, a hunter and provider and not just a human toting books around.
“From the moment I walked into the room, I knew,” he said. “And you knew. Someday, I was going to fuck you.”
“Yes…” My breath hitched.
“And that day is today.”
His arms wrapped around me, serpentine, one around my breasts and the other slipping between my legs. I felt his firm hand cup my pussy through my skirts, his fingers flexing, offering me just a tease of what was to come. He pulled me to my feet. My boots crunched into the snow. I tried to turn around to look at him, and he said, “No. Not yet.” He growled, “The hunter has become the hunted.”
“I can’t hunt you now with these.” I shook my wrists.
“Lucky for me.” He pushed me against a tree, my body caught between the rough bark and his tall form. I knew that I was far away from my tutor Mr. Arrowen now. Agnar was a wolf in heat, and nothing would stand between a wolf in heat and his mate.
Thank the gods.
“Lucky for me,” I panted. “This is what I wanted all along. Rough…and hard…”
“Rough and hard?”
“Yes…”
The sound he made verged on a low howl. He took my hands in his and guided them around the trunk of the tree. The trunk was thick enough that my arms could only wrap partway around.
He pulled my hood off my hair and tugged the pins and combs that held my hairstyle in place. My locks tumbled down and he wrapped them around his hand, pulling my head back until my neck was craned. “Don’t move.”
I could see into his eyes, and I said nothing, but I smiled.
“And try not to look so pleased with yourself,” he said sternly. But then he quickly kissed my mouth again. I was almost upside down as we kissed. He pushed my head against the tree again. Rough bark rubbed against my forehead.
The bodice of my dress laced around a stomacher, a flat piece of fabric that went in front to cover the corset. He slowly loosened the laces. Of course, I still had the stays on so I hardly felt looser at all; whalebone still held tight around my ribs. But I felt my bodice fall open around me, and he lifted my pale breasts out of my dress once again, holding their round weight in his palms.
“What luscious breasts you have,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, in my most proper accent.
He bent down. I couldn’t quite see what he was doing, but when he stood up he was holding two snowballs, which he slapped right against my bare breasts.
I gasped. “You—!”
“Don’t move, I said.” He kissed me again, his body warm and close behind me as my breasts were tortured with cold. “That’s for the snowball fight.”
“Ahh…”
He lowered his hands, although I saw him move more than I felt him. I was almost numb.
“And now you have the tightest little nipples I’ve ever seen.” He lifted them up like he wanted me to look. I peered down and saw his hands twisting my nipples and I could barely feel it but seeing it made heat surge down through me and wetness bloom between my thighs. His chest slid down my back, his hands settling on my hips, and he leaned around me and sucked on my nipple. His warm mouth, I certainly felt, breathing life back into my frigid skin. My skin tingled all over as he warmed me again.
I grabbed his head, digging my fingers into his hair, and he immediately returned my hand back to the tree. “Patience, my little pupil…”
Wolves were not known for patience. He was not really an exception despite his words. His fingers yanked urgently at the ties and fasteners of my clothes, trying to figure out how to get them off.
“Bloody pain, isn’t it?” I said. “And don’t ask me. The maid handles all this.”
“I think this is supposed to be part of the fun for humans,” he grunted, ripping a lace. “But it’s not made for wolves.” He shoved my bodice off my shoulders, pulling my arms away from the tree. I didn’t help him at all, but draped into his arms, relishing the feeling of the human clothes being pulled away.
“Don’t rip ‘em,” I said. “Remember I still have to visit my grandmother.”
He growled, tugging the skirt of my dress down over my hips, and then the petticoats. Underneath, I had just a light undergarment that barely covered my ass, my corset, and stockings. I could feel the cold air caressing my skin, and I burned so hot on the inside that it was more stimulating than anything.
Occasionally some sensible thought would scurry across my mind, telling me that a lady would not do something like this. I didn’t really care. I was a wolf. I was happiest when I lived in the moment. Neither shame nor forethought were as powerful as instinct.
He pushed me back up against the tree with a slap to the ass.
“Oh! What was that for?” I asked.
“For having such a beautiful ass,” he said, grinning. He stood behind me, now sliding his hands around my front and exploring my folds with his hand. I was soaking wet, more so by the moment. His hand met slickness and he milked the sensation with slow, deep strokes that drew a guttural sound out of my throat. One of his hands wrapped around my vocal chords like he wanted to feel that sound while his other hand plumbed my depths, his big thumb working up and down my clit while two—no, three—of his fingers found my entrance and started fucking me there with a strong, pulsing touch.
I growled at him. Speech was becoming meaningless. My fingernails scraped the bark of the tree, my nipples still rigid with cold, my breasts feeling heavy with numbness and yet also tingly. I pressed my head into his and licked his ear.
His teeth found the laces of my stays and tore at them as he kept touching me between the legs. It seemed to take forever for him to work the laces free, but finally, they fell away from my body and he pulled the final garment off of me. I was still wearing my cloak and my stockings and boots.
“And this,” he said, “is for sucking my cock while you were supposed to be learning your letters.”
“Ahh…” I could only make urgent sounds of encouragement.
He kept one hand inside me, hooked into my entrance while the other hand grabbed my thigh and pulled me back against his cock. When his hand withdrew, his stiff head was waiting to claim me, nudging me, stirring my wildness. He gripped me and thrust deep inside me, merciless and without any concern for how it felt for me.
“Ah!” I gasped now, and scraped my teeth against his cheek. His hands wrapped around me tight again, enfolding my arms with his, his fingers pushing against my cheek, turning my head to meet his mouth.
“I want to taste your screams,” he said, thrusting deeper.
I did scream, and he muffled the scream with his tongue. I wasn’t exactly in pain, though. It was relief. It was surrender to the most powerful half of my nature.
I couldn’t find any words, not of protest or encouragement. He was my mate and the master of my body. I needed him to take me until he was sated, until I was full of his seed, again and again until we had kits of our own. How my father and Katherine would have gasped to know what I really was, how easy it was for me to stop thinking about anything at all and surrender my will to the beat of nature that made bears hibernate and birds fly south and lemmings jump off cliffs and alley cats yowl.
That was all I was, in the end. All I wanted to be. To hunt and eat and sleep and fuck.
Right now, Agnar was exactly the same. He was gripping me tight, pressing me against the tree, his cock thrusting in and out of me so roughly that it was probably good my cloak covered some of me after all, or the tree bark might have scraped me up. “Ferrrsa…” My name rolled off his tongue, again and again, like it was the only word he remembered. His hands yanked on my nipples.
Lord, the brutality of it! It was such a release. After all those years of following orders in the work house, getting reprimanded, and slapped or locked up if I disobeyed. Of hunching over a tiny needle and denied the outdoors. And then, this new life—better in some ways, even worse in others. I had more to lose now, people to keep happy, and they all wanted me to be something I could never be. Even Agnar.
Until now. Nobody was thinking of the alphabet now, that was for fucking sure. Who’d been teaching who, then?
I was still moaning and growling against his hot breath, still tasting how sweet he was. He suddenly pulled at my jaw with his hand, his fingers in my mouth, tasting of my own cum. He bit my neck, pulling my cloak away from my nape. He thrust harder, and I was already aching. His cock lifted my feet right off the ground and his hands quickly caught my breasts again to support me. I leaned into his arms, the torturous rough caress, the relentless fucking. I loved every moment of it, the cold and the musk of our mingled scent and the grunting and the pain.
I started panting urgently as the orgasm swept over me. “Oh…oh…Agnar…”
“Fersa…yes…so wet…” Besides those few words, he barely even registered my reaction, except that it spurred him on. He didn’t slow down at all.
By the time he started to come inside me, I felt thoroughly spent. His hot seed filled me, he slowed, and then he pulled back, breathing hard. I clung to the tree, feeling like my whole insides must be a giant bruise, but it was the kind of bruise that feels good, like I wanted to poke at it and feel it again.
He swept a hand around my waist and pulled me down into a snowbank beside him.
I rolled onto my side, so I finally had a really good look at him, naked beside me. I’m sure this would have been a startling sight to a lady. But to me, it suited him better than all those tight human clothes. I liked seeing his true self, a wild creature, ready to spring back into fur and claws at any moment. I loved seeing the lean muscle of his long arms and legs, the dark hair that lightly covered his arms and legs and thick chest, the pointless sort of hair that humans had, but I thought it still looked rather handsome.
“Now do you want my cloak?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m even less cold now than I was before.”
“I’m a little cold…”
“Then you’d better keep it.” Of course, it wasn’t doing much good; my most sensitive bits were still exposed to the cold. He pulled me close to him so my head was on his shoulder, his hand stroking my hair idly. His golden eyes were framed by lashes that I realized were lighter than his hair.
“Your hair is really white, then?”
“Actually, almost more of a gray when it’s hair and not fur,” he said. “Silvery.” He sighed, looking away from me. “But I’ve dyed it for a long, long time. And that must continue…especially now that I have more to lose.”
He was starting to think now. I could see that. I didn’t want him to think, not yet. How long could we go before we had to think about what had happened?
“Agnar,” I said, stroking his chest. “Mm, I wish you could become a wolf and keep me warm right now, but then we couldn’t talk.”
“Do you want to talk?”
“No.” I laughed.
“I shouldn’t stay,” he said. “You have somewhere to be.” He shifted position, leaning one long arm forward to snatch up my clothes from where they had fallen in a crumpled pile, and started pulling the skirt up my legs.
He grabbed my stays and folded them around me, carefully tightening the laces. I felt like I was being put back together again—but in what form? A sort of pretty little marionette.
“Men’s clothes are only a little better,” he said. “If it’s any consolation.”
“I doubt that.”
“My cravat feels like it’s choking me.”
I pulled up the straps of my bodice. The wool did feel nice and warm to my poor human self. “Where are your clothes?”
“I have a little spot in the rocks where I put them.” He spun me around to look in my eyes. “Fersa,” he said. “This is serious.”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to have a talk.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“Yes, you should. You definitely should. It was all pent up. And I’m glad I was the lucky girl who got to unpent it.” I grinned.
He couldn’t help but grin back before it faded. “Was it rough and hard enough for you?”
“Maybe. It’ll hurt to walk.”
“Good. Every step will remind you of me.”
My stomach growled. He perked up, so wolf-like in his expression that I could almost imagine his wolf ears moving forward. A wolfkin’s mate was always very attuned to her needs. It was instinctual once mating occurred. I had forgotten about that but I saw it in him now, the protective nature I associated with men of my clan from childhood, and my cheeks warmed with affection.
“You’re hungry,” he said. “I’ll hunt you something before you go.”
I nodded. It warmed my heart to be taken care of like this.
He shifted easily, and I ran my hands through his fur one more time and kissed his forehead before he ran off. “Don’t go far.”
When he was gone, and I was left alone, I straightened out my clothes and held my cloak around me. I started to shiver. I watched him disappear into the forest, his white fur blending in with the snowy landscape. My smile slowly faded, the warmth in my cheeks vanishing against a faint but biting breeze. The silver cuffs started feeling cold against my skin, even when I took my gloves out of my valise and tugged my sleeves down. Father had put them on to prevent me from the life of a wolf…
Or to protect me, I thought darkly.
Because it was easy to pretend my past wasn’t quite real even as I mourned Mother every day. But here in the woods, I remembered how it really was. This was my home, and it also wasn’t safe. Humans and elves feared wolves and took every excuse to destroy them.
No, Agnar is right. We really, really, really shouldn’t have done that.
Chapter Fifteen
Fersa
We had to part ways, of course. I had to move on. We shared a rabbit and by then the light of day was beginning to creep downward.
“Go see your grandmother,” he said. “Spend these days with her, while the heat rises inside you and your restless thoughts race through you.”
“You bastard.” We kissed deeply. “I don’t want to go. I feel much too wild to behave myself for an old lady.”
He laughed. “I don’t have much wealth to offer you, and certainly no good name. I think, if we’re to have any future together, your father has to be able to tell himself that I’m the only man capable of taming you for society.”
“Oh, I don’t want to hear any of that boring human talk now,” I griped, poking the snow with my stick.
“I can’t be a cad in the eyes of the Rafferty clan,” he said. “I must be a bore. Go on with you now.” He pulled me to my feet and smacked my ass again.
I made a face, kissed him one more time, and started plodding down the path.
; Even though my grandmother had made this unusual choice to live alone in the woods, I had a particular idea of old humans. Stooped, doddering, dowdy, old-fashioned… I didn’t really expect her to be fun. Plus I was afraid of Patrick showing up.
I smelled woodsmoke before I saw the cabin, and I heard the whack of an axe before I saw the woman chopping up a huge fallen tree branch.
She was tall and only a little stooped, with white hair twisted in a thick coil of braids, sloppily pinned. Physical exertion had obviously warmed her up, because the sleeves of her blouse were rolled up. She wore a humble brown bodice and her skirt was a good foot off the ground so she could easily move in sturdy boots. She heard me coming from a fair distance and looked up, wiping her brow and planting a hand on one hip, the other perched on the handle of her axe.
I brightened a little. My grandmother was actually magnificent.
“Hello,” she called. “You must be my granddaughter.”
“Yes. I’m Fersa.”
“I have soup waiting for you if you’re hungry, and cakes for tea, but I hope you haven’t gotten too spoiled there in town.” Her accent was still very refined. “It is nice to have company for yule.”
“No, ma’am.” I laughed. “This is perfect.”
“I was just working on a little clean up. This dratted branch came down in a recent ice storm and took out part of my hens’ enclosure.” She motioned to a chicken coop.
“Well, I’m happy to help around the land,” I said.
“You’re hardly dressed for it,” she said, pacing around me with a scrutinizing expression.
I shrugged. “This is all Mrs. Rafferty offered me. I’m not sure she knows what work clothes actually look like.”
“Yes, I know, that’s what passes for country attire in town. And you do look lovely. But there’s no one to see you out here…well, no one you ought to be messing with.” She gave a stern look that made me nervous again. “Come in.”
I entered the little house, which was mostly comprised of one room, but it had a smaller side lean-to that formed its own room, and a loft beneath the steeply pitched ceiling as well. “You’ll be sleeping up there,” she said. “The heat from the stove rises up near your bed and I do think you’ll be quite cozy. Feel free to settle in while I get the kettle on.”
Taming Red Riding Hood Page 9