The Angel Wore Fangs

by Sandra Hill

  “That’s not true!”

  “Mayhap not! Be on alert, though. I am watching you, and so are others.”

  Zeb knew better than to argue with him. Instead, he bowed his head and said, “What would you have me do, my lord? How can I prove my loyalty?”

  Jasper didn’t hesitate. “Bring me a Sigurdsson.”

  He could see the alarm on Zeb’s face. Was it because he feared he would not succeed, or that he did not want to succeed? Jasper hated doubting his most trusted friend . . . or a comrade he’d thought was his most trusted friend. “Go for Cnut, the one who is missing,” he suggested. “Since his brothers are yet unaware of his whereabouts, you should be safe in tracking him down. The vangel will be vulnerable without his brothers’ protection.”

  To give him credit, Zeb did not hesitate. “As you wish, master.”

  Chapter 14

  A-Viking they did go . . .

  Cnut stayed down in the hall as late as he possibly could without falling asleep, face in his beer. And, yes, he’d overimbibed. More intoxicating beverage than he’d drunk in centuries. But it wasn’t the ale that was intoxicating him. It was a coconut blonde who was igniting the fire in his belly, and lower. What appeared to be the biggest temptation of his life.

  He made his way through the tables, those that had not been dismantled for the night, heading toward the stairs. Along the way he noticed Thorkel snoring on one of the benches. Earlier he’d seen him kissing Dyna with the finesse he was known for, but apparently Dyna was playing for bigger stakes than a roll in the horndog’s bed furs. Cnut’s bet was on Dyna in this battle of the sexes.

  As for himself, it wasn’t even a battle. Not like Thorkel’s, anyhow. To wed or not to wed. To bed or not to bed. Well, mayhap the latter. But that would be a foolish argument to have with himself when the future was so unknown.

  But then, when hadn’t the future been unknown for him? Even back when he was a living human being.

  All these questions—should he, shouldn’t he? could he, couldn’t he?—were driving him barmy. Cnut couldn’t put off his bed any longer. In the morning, he and a group of his housecarls would depart for more hunting. He needed his sleep. Andrea would certainly be asleep by now. Leastways, that was the excuse he gave himself for climbing the stairs. He was strong; he’d proven that with centuries of celibacy, except for a few lapses in the early years. He would be strong now, too.

  All his good intentions were for naught when he entered the room and found Andrea still awake. And waiting for him. She stood before the hearth wearing a thin shift that was made near transparent by the small fire that still burned. What he couldn’t see clearly of her body, he imagined, and he had a good imagination.

  “You’re awake,” he said dumbly.

  “Damn right, I’m awake. What’s in the mead anyhow? An aphrodisiac?” A fire was burning in the hearth, but the room was still cool. Even so, she lifted the thin shift that barely covered her chest as if she were overheated. For added emphasis, she fanned herself.

  It took less than a second for her words to sink in. She was turned on? His mind went blank, and his knees almost buckled, forcing him to hold on to the back of a chair for support. Once composed, he smiled.

  “Your fangs are bigger,” she observed.

  So is something else. “That happens when a vangel is in a state of high emotion. Like preparing for battle,” he told her, “or about to make love.”

  “Whoa,” she said.

  Was that a good “whoa” or a bad “whoa”?

  But then she added, “So the booze turned you on, too?”

  Definitely good. “No. You turned me on.”

  “Oh.” She licked her lips as she watched him toe off his boots, then take his short sword from its sheath at his side and prop it against the chair. He undid the belt, dropping it to the floor, but still she said nothing in protest; so he lifted off his tunic and dropped it to the floor as well. He was left with stockinged feet and low-hung braies.

  He raised a brow at her in question. When she just raised a brow back at him, he unlaced himself and stepped out of his pants. He was almost embarrassed by his size. He knew it was due to his long period of abstinence—of the two-person sort, that was—but what must she think?

  “Why are you so suntanned?”

  He glanced down at himself and realized she was right. He was bronzed all over, as if he’d been lying in a Caribbean sun, rather than out hunting, fully covered, in the frigid snow. “Vangel skin develops a healthy glow when we have either saved a dire sinner or vanquished a Lucipire.”

  She arched her brows at that, still not wholly believing what he was, apparently.

  “In any case, you’re beautiful,” she said.

  Cascades of pleasure swept over him at her words like unfurling ribbons. It was New Years’ Eve and a Broadway tickertape parade combined. The only thing missing was the confetti. But wait, were those flakes of coconut and peppermint floating in the air? No, just a misty aura, cocooning them in the subtle, tempting scents that were their personal downfalls. Not that he’d known he had a weakness for coconut before.

  He was getting fanciful, and Vikings did not get fanciful. They clouted their enemies on the head with battle-axes, they swived their women in the bed furs. Expert. Matter-of-fact. No thinking about the pros and cons. No fanciful analysis.

  Cnut closed his eyes for a moment, finding it harder and harder to concentrate and make logical decisions. No longer could he hold a rein on his runaway passion.

  “Are we going to make love?” she asked.

  He didn’t know about love, but it appeared they were going to do something. “For a certainty,” he said.

  The odd thing was, he didn’t feel guilty, now that the decision was made, the line crossed. Maybe this was how his brothers had felt when they met their lifemates. Resistance at first, then a resignation that what would be would be. Inevitable punishment be damned.

  “If you are agreeable,” he added, and prayed that she was. He almost crossed his fingers behind in back in that foolish youthling gesture.

  “I have no choice.” She yawned and stretched as she spoke, causing her small breasts to rise against the thin linen fabric, the nipples engorged.

  His enthusiasm grew by leaps and bounds, lodging with a hot ache between his thighs. He tingled all over, for cloud’s sake! He even put a hand over himself in an attempt to press himself down. It didn’t work. “There is always a choice,” he rasped out.

  “Pfff! Not when I’m under your spell.”

  He was a drowning man. With each of her honestly spoken words, he sank deeper and deeper into the depths of his arousal. If he wasn’t careful, he would ejaculate prematurely like an untried youthling seeing his first naked woman. Maybe that would be for the best. Embarrassing, but an end to this madness. He stepped behind the chair and waited for that to happen. No such luck . . . or misfortune. “You’re no more under my spell than I’m under yours. Face it, we are both ensorcelled by . . . something.”

  “Should we do something to stop it?”

  Oh God, will she never stop chattering? I need silence to think, to concentrate. Still, he asked, “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Go outside and roll in the snow.”

  Is she serious? “Brrr!”

  “Or go jogging.”

  Yeah, in the snow, in a pair of boots, or my wool socks, nude, that would do it! “I could barely climb the stairs tonight; my knees creaked so.”

  “Something besides stare at each other like a warm apple pie after a week of fasting.”

  “Or a coconut cream pie.” He could almost taste the sweet pastry.

  “Or peppermint bark at Christmastime. Yum.”

  Next she will be talking about licking my peppermint stick. Enough of this malingering banter! He made a motion with his hand and said, “Lose the shift, Andrea.”

  She hesitated.

  Smart girl!

  It was a moment of truth for her, too. A line that, once crosse
d, couldn’t be reversed.

  Then she undid the laces at her neckline and let the shift drift down over her body to puddle at her feet. She was slim, as he’d expected, and her breasts were small, but she was perfection. Her hips swelled out from a narrow waist. Her legs were long but with some muscular definition, as were her arms. She must jog, or do some exercise. And her breasts . . . they were like halved peaches with pale rose-colored nipples, a nice size for her slender frame. And her buttocks, what he could see from this angle, would be his undoing. High and round and sweetly enticing.

  He walked over to her and cradled her face in his trembling hands. “I . . . want . . . you . . . so . . . much,” he murmured, and between each word he whisper-kissed her forehead, her jaw, her neck, the side of her mouth. And then he took her lips in a kiss of intense aggression, a reminder that he was man, and she was woman.

  Her breath caught in a soft gasp, and then she was kissing him back, as much as he would let her with his hands controlling the angle of their heads, the depth of their kiss.

  She put her hands on the tense muscles of his shoulders and darted her tongue into his mouth, in challenge? For a brief second, it seemed as if she was licking his fangs.

  A violent shiver swept over him. He raised his head to gaze at her, to see if she was teasing him or if it had been an innocent reflex. Hah! She knew exactly what she was doing, or leastways it was her innocent attempt at seduction.

  She was succeeding.

  He reclaimed her lips in a kiss even more voracious than the last.

  She kissed him back just as voraciously.

  Enough! He cupped her bottom in his hands, lifted her, and walked them both to the bed, lips still locked until he tossed her onto the mattress and came down over her.

  “Tell me, Andrea, have you ever gone a-Viking?” he asked, nuzzling her neck before raising his head.

  “No,” she whispered, a glow of anticipation in her golden eyes.

  “Then you are in for an interesting journey, m’lady.”

  It was true what they said about Vikings . . .

  Andrea didn’t consider herself a sexy woman. Not even close. Oh, she liked sex, except for Pete the Perv, but her experience was limited, and she had to admit to a low sex drive. Compared to her friends, anyhow, who had active sex lives, if they could be believed, and according to Cosmo, which implied that women got laid on a daily basis, multiple times, and loved it. Yearned for it. Did everything in their power to seek, find, and enjoy the perfect bed partner.

  “99 Sexy Ways to Touch Him.”

  “Untamed Va-jay-jays.”

  “Tease Him and Please Him.”

  “Foreplay Men Crave.”

  Jeesh! Talk about one-track minds! Other women’s one-track minds.

  But all that changed since Andrea had met Cnut, who’d somehow tapped into her dormant sexuality. At some point in the past week or so, her libido had kicked into overdrive. And she was off to the races. Yes, she should put on the brakes right now. But she didn’t want to, and probably couldn’t if she tried.

  So she sucked in a huge whiff of peppermint and said to the hunk of burning love leaning over her in the bed, “Has People magazine ever contacted you?”

  She could tell her question disconcerted him, especially since he was poised over her on braced arms, his thighs spread between her spread thighs (how had that happened?), his erection (and, whoo boy, what an erection!) aimed at her lady parts like a dog on point, and he was huffing away like a locomotive in his attempt to slow down the runaway train of his arousal.

  “What? No. Why?”

  She shrugged. “You have to be the sexiest man alive.” And that was the truth. He had a perfect body. Wide shoulders, narrow waist, six-pack abs, muscular arms, and long legs. Not overly hairy, and what was there was silky blond. His face displayed sharp Nordic features with high cheekbones and full lips, a straight blade of a nose. Except for the pointy lateral incisors, he was perfection, and even they rather added to his allure, except they were more pointy than usual now.

  He let out a hoot of laughter, then collapsed on her in a continuing fit of shaking humor. She felt the shaking on her breasts where his chest hairs abraded her nipples, and between her legs where his “dog on point” was jabbing a sensitive part of her body.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “Andrea, I’m fat. Oh, I know I no longer weigh four hundred or more pounds, but to me, I will always look that way. Far, far from anyone’s vision of sexy man. Thanks for the compliment, though.”

  She understood what he meant. It was all in self-perception. She saw herself as the sexless, skinny kid who’d once been wounded by a neighborhood boy when he gave her the nickname Beanpole and it stuck. Hmm. Could that have something to do with her lack of interest in sex? Until now? We are what we perceive ourselves to be. The best sex is when we feel good about ourselves. Cosmo again!

  She was feeling really good about herself at the moment and took the first step by running her fingertips over the breadth of his shoulders and down his arms to his elbows.

  He shuddered in reaction, and goose bumps rose on his skin.

  That made her feel even better about herself. She must have smiled in satisfaction because he murmured, “Witch!” and leaned down to nip at her lower lip. Without hesitation, he came back for more in a kiss so hungry and devouring she could hardly breathe. Then something amazing happened, he was breathing into her mouth, and she was exhaling into his mouth. Back and forth, it was as if they were breathing for each other. Breath kisses.

  She felt dizzy and disoriented. A blue haze rose from his shoulders and swirled above and around them. At the same time, she smelled peppermint and coconut, an odd but wonderfully complementary combination. Nothing overpowering, just a wispy tease to the senses, coming and going.

  She tore her lips away from his and gazed up at him. His eyes were pure silver now, not their usual blue. His lips were swollen from her kisses, and even though he kept his lips pressed together, she knew the fangs were extended inside his mouth. A double whammy for the male of the vangel species, she supposed. Their arousals couldn’t be hidden because they got fangs as well as erections.

  “I want so much to explore your body, to touch you. Here.” He brushed his fingertips over one breast.

  She inhaled sharply at the exquisite pleasure.

  “And here.” He cupped her pubic bone and brushed his middle finger over the wetness between her legs.

  Her heart stopped for a moment, then started a beat/counterbeat with her clitoris.

  “But I cannot wait.”

  And he thinks I can? She was a tingly mass of beating cells that were passing over her body in waves. She closed her eyes and arched upward. She might have moaned.

  Cnut used that opportunity to lift her knees and press them upward, opening her to the sudden plunge of him, hard and big and smooth, into her body. He filled her.

  And she welcomed him with repeated clasps of her inner muscles that moved and shifted to accommodate his size. Her clitoris felt wide open and vulnerable when he drew back and thrust in again, hitting her in precisely the right spot.

  A shattering mass of nerve endings exploded between her legs, causing a reverberation of spasms to pass to other parts of her body. Everywhere. Her breasts. Her toes. Her palms. Even her scalp.

  That preliminary orgasm stretched her inner walls and allowed him to enter even more deeply, so far she swore her womb shifted. And it was preliminary because she felt as if this was just the beginning, and Cnut definitely hadn’t got his satisfaction yet. Sweat beaded his forehead, and muscles strained in his arms as he began a rhythmic thrust/retreat, thrust/retreat, thrust/retreat, in and out of her body, accompanied by a wet, sucking sound down there that would have embarrassed her if she had the sanity to understand what was happening. The strokes started long and slow but then became short and hard, but over, and over, and over, each time hitting her overstimulated clitoris. If she got any more light-headed she wa
s going to faint.

  “Now! Now!” she begged.

  “Not yet, sweetling. Relax.”

  Relax? Is he crazy? But she liked the sweetling endearment, or she would if she had any particle of brain left in her head to recognize what was happening, let alone being said.

  She planted her feet on the bed and tried to arch upward to hasten this maddening assault of tortuous pleasure. That only seemed to arouse him more. He made a raw sound deep in his throat and rolled his hips from side to side when embedded in her.

  She screamed then. Something she’d never done before. But she couldn’t help herself. The orgasm that came over her was so powerful and so long, it shook her entire body. Pulsing hotly between her legs, up through her convulsing vagina, out through all her limbs, causing her breasts to swell and her nipples to ache.

  When she was able to look up, she fully expected Cnut to be laughing at her. So needy and sexually deprived that she would act like this!

  But he was in the midst of his own earth-shattering climax by the look of him. His back was arched back and his teeth were bared, but he seemed to be in some distress. “I can’t . . . oh bloody hell, I can’t come.” His eyes connected with hers then and she saw the pain in them before he whispered, “I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry . . .”

  On those words of inexplicable apology, he unbraced his arms and used his fingers to comb through her hair, adjusting her face to the side. With one last “Sorry,” he lowered himself and sank his fangs into her neck.

  It didn’t hurt, except for a pinprick sensation, and it happened so quickly she had no chance to protest. And then . . . oh my God, then . . . she seemed to swirl up in the air, the two of them entwined in a full-body orgasm. Twirling, twirling, twirling, like a reverse tornado funnel. She felt him ejaculate inside her, and then they seemed to melt together and fall to the earth . . . to the mattress . . . together. It was as if they’d fused into one being.

  She lost consciousness.

  When she awakened, Cnut was licking her neck as if to heal his mark there. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean . . .”