The Complete Fenris Series

by Samantha MacLeod

  “Sol, it’s... It’s been...”

  He froze. A cold breeze prickled the skin on my arms and legs. I raised my head to the forest behind us.

  A monster stood between the trees, a formless nightmare beast made of shadows that reached almost to the sky.

  Don’t think about—

  I closed my eyes and pressed my lips to Fenris’s neck, tasting him. Oh, stars, that scent! Like the forest brought to life and held between my arms. Or thrusting between my legs.

  “More,” I said. “Please. More!”

  He sank his fingers into my hair until they formed a fist, then brought his lips to my neck. His teeth scraped along my skin, mimicking the scrape of stone beneath my thighs, and I cried out with need.

  “Sol wants me,” he growled.

  “Yes!” I cried. “Yes, stars, yes!”

  His back curled again, and he drove into me hard, forcing my hips against the stone. His hand tightened in my hair until it hurt, and he thrust into me again and again. Pleasure and pain danced together, burning through my body until I hardly knew one from the other. Fenris slammed into me in a staccato rhyme, each crest of our bodies bringing me closer and closer to the oblivion of my own bliss. I sank my nails into his back and drove my hips up, pressing against the boulder with my back until it was raw with pain, driving him deeper and deeper into me.

  “Sol...wants...me!” he panted as his hips hammered into the stone. His hair and face were slick with sweat, and our bodies slid together as naturally, as effortlessly, as if they’d been built for this and this alone.

  “Oh, fuck, yes!” I cried.

  My head fell back, colliding with the stone, and I clung to his shoulders as though my life depended on it. My climax burned through me like wildfire, leaving me trembling helplessly as he screamed above me, his cock pulsing seed deep inside my body.

  Fenris collapsed on top of me, his chest heaving for breath as his face pressed to my neck. I wrapped my arms around his body and felt him tremble against my touch.

  Cold. Something felt so cold.

  Fenris stiffened, then raised his head and screamed. A shadow fell across the sun; I shivered beneath him. Somewhere behind and above us, the monster screamed as well.

  “It hurts!” Fenris screamed again. “Ah, stars! It—”

  His voice was lost in another scream, deeper and louder, this time coming from the beast in the forest. Fenris’s body convulsed in my arms, his muscles rippling beneath his sweat-slicked skin.

  “Sol, I can’t—”

  I kissed him. I kissed him as his body shook, as he kicked against the stone. I kissed him until his lips softened and his mouth opened for me, until his tongue crept hesitantly between my waiting lips, until his arms stopped trembling and wrapped around my shoulders. When I finally dared to open my eyes again, the sky above his smiling face was once again a brilliant, flawless blue.

  “More,” I gasped, although my voice was already hoarse from screaming his name.

  Fenris bent over me, dragging his lips and teeth across the fluttering pulse of my neck. His hands closed around my breasts, and the coil of desire inside me tightened once again. As the warmth of his touch engulfed my breasts, he lowered his lips to my chest, first licking, then sucking, then biting the hard points of my nipples.

  I writhed beneath him, grinding my skin against the stone as the strange combination of pleasure and pain surged once again, drowning out all thought, all fear or concentration. There was just us, just my husband and my body and the beautiful ecstacy we created together.

  Still biting my nipple, Fenris trailed a hand down the taut skin of my stomach until he brushed the curls between my legs. I moaned and rocked upward, desperate to reach his touch, but he pressed his legs to mine, pinning me. As his tongue flicked the tight bud of my nipple, his fingers slid between my legs, teasing me, barely touching the hot ember of need burning at the apex of my sex.

  “M-more!” I stammered, almost inchoate with need.

  Fenris grinned above me. He lowered his mouth to brush my lips, my chin, my neck as his fingers slid up and down my sex.

  “My woman wants me,” he whispered. His voice was thick and deep, almost a growl.

  I could only whimper in response. His mouth slid down my neck, and his body bent over mine. His fingers brushed the throbbing heat of my clit as I raised my hips, wordlessly begging him for more.

  “You want me,” he said as I rippled beneath him, aching for his touch.

  It wasn’t a question; it was a statement of fact. The sky is blue. Winter’s cold follows summer’s heat. I wanted Fenris.

  Oh, by the Realms and stars above, I wanted him!

  “Yes, yes!” I managed to gasp.

  His lips pulled back in a smile so wide it was almost a snarl, and he sank his teeth into the skin of my neck. I screamed, and his fingers slid inside me. Pain and shock raced through my system, leaving me dazed and aching.

  Fenris kissed the skin he’d just bitten, his lips cool and gentle as his fingers slid inside me, hitting the same places his cock had just filled. His thumb beat against my clit, and I screamed again as a second climax scorched my body, drowning my senses in a flush of pleasure so intense it felt like dying.

  I sagged back against the boulder, the stone cold against my overheated skin. Above me, Fenris panted raggedly. A long, deep shudder ran the length of his body, and he threw his head back.

  “Ah, Sol!” he cried. “Something is wrong—”

  I sunk my fingers into his hair and pulled his lips to mine, kissing him again. His body pressed against me, trembling in a long, slow rhythm. Somewhere on the very edges of my consciousness, I heard a scream. A long, deep scream, like someone being tortured. Or dying on the battlefield.

  Fenris pulled back, blinking at me. As I watched, thin snake-like tendrils of dark smoke began to float across the blue sky, obscuring the light.

  “Sol,” he moaned, as if I were the only thing in the world. As if my name were the only word he could recall.

  “More,” I begged, above the wild hammering of my heart. “Give me more, my love.”

  His brow furrowed, and he brought his hand to his face, trailing his fingers across his lips. He inhaled deeply, then slowly licked the fingers that had just been buried deep inside me. The sky above his head brightened and sunlight fell all around us as his lips curled into a smile. Heat surged through my body once again at the sight of my husband, his auburn hair falling in waves around his shoulders, grinning above me.

  “More!” I gasped.

  Fenris opened his mouth, growled something, and fell on my body like a wild animal, licking and biting, devouring me. His lips and hands chased each other over my breasts, the curve of my stomach, my trembling thighs. My back scraped stone as he wrenched my hips up and sank his head between my thighs.

  I screamed when his lips found my sex. I’d though he had wrung all the pleasure possible from my body, that I was too exhausted and numb from the intensity of two blinding orgasms to feel more of anything, but Fenris attacked my clit with single-minded dedication. My fingers twisted in his hair as my hips rose and fell against his mouth, his teeth. It was almost pain, the scorching ecstasy he sent racing through every nerve in my body. I tried to say it was too much, that I couldn’t take any more, but my lips refused to work. I could only gasp as Fenris ate me alive.

  The cold granite beneath me may as well have been one of Val-hall’s silken mattresses; the woods surrounding us could have been Asgard, or Midgard, or Thrym’s great, wide entry way, with the doors thrown open and every servant in the household watching my husband fuck me with his lips and tongue. None of that mattered. I was beyond caring, beyond anything but the throb of my own pulse in my veins and the pulsing heat in my sex. My hips crashed against Fenris’s mouth as the pressure built between us, driving me closer and closer to the obliterating explosion of another orgasm.

  Fenris didn’t relent. He pushed me over the edge, and I screamed my release for all the Nine Realms
to hear. My husband pulled away long enough to give me a wild grin before he fell on me again, licking and sucking with exquisite intensity as I flailed beneath him, my nerves burning, my mind destroyed.

  “More?” he growled into the heat between my legs.

  The blue sky swam above me, blurred with my tears. My body felt as enervated as if I’d run the length of the Nine Realms, or swum the entire ocean. Thoughts spun wildly, images of Fenris bending over me, Fenris grinning beside me, Fenris gasping above me in the night. Fenris screaming as the bands of Gleipnir tightened around his massive wolf shape.

  Something dark shifted in the corner of my vision. Fenris’s body shook between my legs. A distant scream echoed through the trees, the sound of someone very far away. Someone being tortured.

  I thrust my fingers into Fenris’s hair and yanked his head up. His pale eyes had turned cloudy and unfocused, and his face contorted with something that looked almost like pain.

  “More!” I cried.

  He blinked and shook his head. His eyes narrowed.

  “Fuck me,” I gasped.

  He shook his head again, knocking my hand to the stone. Then he pulled himself upright and stretched like a cat, his lean, muscular body flexing above me. Bright red lines streaked his skin where my fingernails had clawed against his chest and shoulders, desperate for purchase against the storm he’d unleashed in my body.

  And, oh! There was the beautiful length of his cock, stiff and burgundy against the sweat-slicked skin of his stomach. Despite everything, despite the ache in my limbs and the sheer exhaustion pinning me to the rock, that deep, slow heat inside me kindled once again. I moaned with a desperate, animal longing.

  Fenris sank toward me, moving almost as though he were underwater. He touched my arms first, delicately tracing my muscles until his fingers danced across my neck, my lips. I moaned again, unable to think of the words to say to pull him to me, to show him how desperately I needed him. His eyes slid closed as he leaned toward me and inhaled deeply.

  “I...know your scent,” he whispered, speaking so slowly it was almost as though he’d forgotten how to form words.

  He trembled as my hand caressed his arm. Slowly, I raised my head from the boulder and brushed his lips with mine. His mouth carried the sweet tang of my own sex, just as it had the very first time we’d come together, when I gave Fenris what King Nøkkyn had already claimed as the Lucky River danced in the background.

  What had I said, that first time? What words had I used to claim the man I’d thought was a demon from Múspell, to use my freedom to choose my own lover?

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Take me.”

  I kissed him again, harder this time, pressing my lips against his until his mouth opened for me. Our tongues embraced, dancing together with slow sweetness as his hands ran up my arms and sank into my hair. I closed my eyes, losing myself in the feel of my husband’s body pressed to mine, the embrace of our lips, his scent and heat and soft weight.

  Slowly, without breaking our kiss, Fenris wrapped his arms around my shoulders and lifted me from the boulder. I clung to him as he lifted me and then sank gently to the ground, lowering me onto the soft moss. The floor of the Ironwood felt as soft as the mattress he’d once brought to our cave, the betrothal present he’d presented on the night we wed, and I sighed into his mouth as I sank back with his weight pressed to my chest.

  He pulled away. His eyes were closed, and his lips glistened from our kiss. His body shuddered as I shifted beneath him, opening my legs to the urgent press of his cock.

  “More,” I whispered.

  Fenris entered me slowly, almost delicately. He panted for breath against the delicate skin on my neck as the wet heat of my sex embraced the stiff length of his cock. I shivered beneath him. Every part of my body felt suffused with heat and pleasure, as if I’d somehow swallowed a bolt of lightning, and now I burned from the inside, burned with an unquenchable fire. His body fit mine as elegantly as two pieces of a puzzle sliding together, and it seemed we’d been made thus, created to fit together. Two pieces of a larger whole.

  “Sol,” he moaned into my neck.

  “Yes!” I cried.

  I thrust my shoulders against the soft moss, pushing my hips up to meet his gentle rhythm. He curved over me, our bodies moving together, moving in a slow, gentle dance that filled me so exquisitely it was almost painful. Fenris gasped. Another slow sudder ran the length of his body, tightening his arms around my shoulders and pressing his legs into mine.

  “I—I think I’m dying,” he whispered. “Somewhere, I’m dying.”

  I sank my fingers into his shoulders, clinging to him. “You’re not dying!”

  “I feel like I’m dying—”

  “No!” I cried. “You’re here, Fenris. You’re here, with me!”

  I pressed my hips into him, and the velvet pleasure of another orgasm washed over me, rendering me insensate. My legs shook beneath his body, and I clung to his shoulders as my climax ripped the breath from my lungs. Deep inside me, Fenris’s cock rippled and swelled. He slammed into me, forcing me to the ground. He came like a thunderclap, screaming as his cock surged inside me.

  Screaming. And screaming. My vision swam with tears, then surged with black spots, as though miniscule clouds of smoke were filling the space between my body and my husband’s. I reached for him, tried to pull his chest to mine, but my hands came away empty. Fenris’s body was as insubstantial as mist.

  And, somewhere far above me, far away, he was screaming.

  THE MONSTER FREED: CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I yanked away. My head hit cold stone. A flash of white pain burst across the insides of my eyelids. With a whimper, I brought my hand to the back of my head. It hurt to move my arm, and it hurt to brush the hair on the back of my head.

  I forced my eyes open, wincing at the brilliant glare of sunlight dancing off water. Of course. I tried to breathe, but I felt like the weight of Lake Amsvartnir had just settled on my chest. The dream forest had vanished; now, I lay among the frost-covered stones of the island Lyngvi. And every part of me hurt.

  A scream ripped through the still air; the muscles of my aching body tensed. Although my arms screamed in protest, I pushed myself up and shaded my eyes with a trembling hand.

  The dark mountain of Fenris’s body still lay sprawled across the island. Deep gouges marked the places where his front claws had torn at the rocks, and the scent of blood lay heavily over low, metallic tang of cold water. The bands of Gleipnir sparkled like diamonds in the light, and the beast’s great sides heaved. Thick ropes of saliva fell from his gaping maw, and his eyes were closed.

  I staggered to my feet and took a stumbling step toward him. The scream came again. I stopped, banging my toe against a sharp rock. This time, the frantic voice formed words.

  “Stars damn you, you cock-sucking bastard! Breathe, you worthless piece of shit! Breathe!”

  My vision swam, and the great beast’s body seemed to pulse before me. Slowly, not quite trusting my legs to hold my weight, I turned toward the voice. There, huddled between the stones next to Loki’s boat, was a woman in a brilliant white dress. At least, it had been a brilliant white dress. Now it was streaked with mud and something else. Something unpleasantly red. My vision swam again.

  “Shit-for-brains,” she yelled. “Breathe!”

  She had her hands pressed together, and she threw all her weight against something. Something dark. I tilted my head and saw a wash of brilliant red hair. Loki. But the woman—

  Her dark hair had fallen over her face, and all her attention was fixed on Loki’s inert body.

  This was not the Angrboða who had stood up to King Nøkkyn, or who had bargained with Loki for another child. This woman had a plump, round face with a rather prominent nose. Her body was lumpy and bent, and her dark hair shot with gray. For a moment I thought of Nari’s illusion on the beach of Asgard, and I wondered if the real Angrboða, the elegant and dangerously sexual Dutchess of the Black Isles, was hiding behi
nd a rock somewhere.

  I turned slowly, examining the boulders surrounding Loki’s boat. There! A flash of pale skin stretched out on the dark stones behind the white-clad woman.

  “You!” she barked.

  I jumped, turning my attention back to the woman in the white dress. She glared at me. Her eyes were the same, I realized, even if her face looked like it had been formed from pale dough and her once-grand dress sagged around her meager breasts. Those were Angrboða’s fierce eyes.

  “Get over here, damn you,” she snapped.

  I staggered across the stones, trying to pull my eyes away from the woman who sounded like Fenris’s mother but looked like a stranger.

  “Fenris?” I asked. My voice was little more than a broken whisper.

  “Yes,” she hissed. “Alive. For now. But—”

  Her voice choked, and she waved a hand over Loki’s disturbingly still body. His eyes were closed. Blood ran across his cheeks in brilliant rivulets from his nose and the corners of his mouth.

  “I can’t get this bastard to breathe,” she said.

  “I-I’m sorry.”

  The woman I couldn’t quite bring myself to think of as Angrboða closed her eyes and pulled in a deep breath. She placed her hands once more on Loki’s chest. The air thickened, and my skin crawled as every hair on my body stood. For a moment we were both very still, both focused on the body beneath her fingers. His chest rose. The whisper of a breath passed between his lips.

  “You did it!” I croaked, meeting her eyes.

  The odd woman before me only sighed. “Fuck. I can’t force his every breath for the rest of his life. This is beyond me.”

  A moan rose from the rocks behind her. I looked over her shoulder at the pale figure I’d glimpsed earlier. My heart rose in my chest, almost as though it recognized the body before my mind had time to grasp his identity.

  Fenris. My husband lay naked on the rocks behind the woman. He looked pale and bloody. But he was breathing. Alive!

  “It worked!” I cried.

  A growl shook the earth below me, the dark twin of Fenris’s moan. In the mist behind us, something enormous shifted and settled. The woman’s hand shot forward, and frozen fingers closed around my wrist. She met my gaze with a dark intensity.