Bitten & Beholden (Children of Fenrir Book 2)

by Heather McCorkle

  “There is a path that leads down to the lake. Maybe I will show it to you sometime.” The hint of joy in his voice made me want to ask him to take me to see it now.

  Then I realized he was likely trying to distract me from our earlier conversation. There was something he didn’t want me to ask, didn’t want me to know. I must have been close to touching on whatever it was. And here I had let him sidetrack me again.

  Arms crossing beneath my breasts, I stopped when he did and faced him. I won’t lie and say I didn’t enjoy his gaze wandering down to the cleavage the V of my low-cut T-shirt revealed. “Maybe I’ll let you.”

  A pointed pink tongue darted out to lick his lips. The sight made muscles between my legs clench and it was all I could do to will myself not to get wet. Would he smell it if I did? For some reason the idea sent a rolling tremor through my inner labia. He looked quickly away.

  “You said you have taken martial arts,” he said with a forced casual air.

  “Yes.” My attempt not to sound breathless wasn’t much better.

  Those glacier-blue eyes crawled back to me as if they couldn’t stay away. “Full contact, light, or no contact?”

  Seeing how my mind went somewhere completely different—somewhere his own resided by the hungry way he chewed on his bottom lip—it took me a moment to answer. “Light.”

  One after the other, he rolled his shoulders, the motion having a sort of cleansing effect that left his face blank. “Good. We will do a bit of sparring and work on your anger control that way.”

  I didn’t want to tell him, but that would certainly test me. When sparring, my mind went to a place where the fight was real. My dad had always said we must train like we want to fight because when it comes down to it, we will fight like we trained. And the idea of anyone raising a hand to me really pissed me off. It was part of why I had never taken to the idea of sparring, and hence never gotten very good at fighting.

  “So we’re not going to work on controlling desire?” I asked, making my voice sound teasing to cover the disappointment.

  He chewed on his bottom lip as his eyes traveled the length of my body. “Unfortunately, that is not your strongest emotion.”

  The measure to which his disappointment pleased me was so wrong. If only he knew. Ty led me to where the flagstones circled an area of sand. I had a feeling it was no coincidence the circle was the size of a standard fighting ring. With a wave of his hand, he invited me to step in first. Not knowing what to expect, I kept him in my peripheral as I moved past him. Despite being wet from last night’s rain, the sand was pleasantly warm beneath my bare feet.

  “Varúlfur fight for their place in the pack. Fighting comes as natural to us as breathing and hunting.” As he spoke he paced around me, legs bent in a fighting stance, hands up at the ready.

  I shifted into a stance of my own and moved methodically with him to keep him in my line of sight. “Great. I suck at fighting. No room for pacifists, huh?”

  He took a slow jab at me, one easily blocked with a sweep of my right forearm. “Sure, at the bottom of the pack. But you do not strike me as one who enjoys being on the bottom.” The gleam in his blue eyes as they flashed across my body revealed his double meaning.

  The look alone heated me up more than the rise of my wolf ever could. I returned the smile, and the jab. He blocked mine just as easily, the skin of his arm sliding across mine in something close to a caress. “As long as the person on top is good at what they’re doing, I don’t mind.”

  The husky tone of his voice took my mind to places I couldn’t afford it to go. Drawn by those thoughts, my eyes traveled the impressive V of his lower abs and external oblique muscles to where they disappeared into his low-slung sweatpants. The verða had to be setting my lady parts on fire because there was no way I wanted anything to do with sex after what had happened with Raul. Yes, that had to be it. Was this what madness felt like? The thought sent a shiver of fear through me.

  Ty made a contented sound somewhere between a groan and a growl that made it hard to focus. “Sanngjarn nógur,” he said as he prowled around me.

  Impossibly, his voice sounded even sexier when he spoke Icelandic. Fingers curling into fists, I kept my stance low and stepped as he stepped, keeping him in sight.

  “And that means?”

  The right corner of his mouth quirked up. “You tell me.”

  “Seriously? A language lesson now, when we’re about to fight?”

  “Always.”

  Pulling in the scents of damp sand and grass, I thought hard. “Nógur, that must be similar to nóg, which means “enough. The other words I don’t know.”

  Fast as a snake, he shot in, tapped my midsection with a punch that barely brushed my tank top, and threw a backhand toward my head. Our arms collided with a smack reminiscent of bodies slapping in a far more intimate setting as I blocked the backhand. Dammit, I had to get my mind out of the gutter. I barely knew this guy. Falling into bed with him just because he was hot could be an epic mistake, and I’d had my fill of those. This one, though, this could kill me.

  “The first is actually one word, it means fair. But you got half of it, that is good,” he said.

  But was it? I couldn’t help but wonder. No doubt the phrase was one he had taught me this morning, one I’d already forgotten. To get any of the language down before we went to Hemlock Hollow in a little over two weeks I was going to have to seriously step it up. My distraction must have shown because Ty grinned and kicked out at me. As I sidestepped it, he whipped his leg in the opposite direction, catching me behind the knees and sweeping my legs out from beneath me. Had the impact not knocked the air from my lungs, I would have cursed something colorful enough at him to make him blush. Or at least tried.

  “Ah come on, you made that too easy,” he said.

  I glared at the hand he offered and stood on my own, my guard coming back up the moment I was on my feet.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t realize you were going to play dirty.”

  He licked his lips, making me wonder what they tasted like. “It is no fun if we do not get a bit dirty,” he said.

  “Sanngjarn nógur,” I threw back at him.

  I threw a few punches and other strikes, testing his defenses and reaction times. He blocked swift and smooth in an almost effortless fashion, his eyes locked on mine all the while. The grace with which his movements flowed was something I hadn’t possessed even in the height of my training years ago. But I found that as we danced, my reactions smoothed out, beginning to flow from that place within where no thought dwelled, only instinct. Our bodies collided, arms with arms, arms with legs, sometimes legs with legs in the dance of blocks and strikes. Some of them stung, especially on my shins and forearms where I lacked muscle, but none hurt. He was going easy on me. Oddly, that made me angrier than the occasional strikes that broke through my defenses.

  I sped up and he followed suit. Still, he pulled his strikes, never landing them hard enough to hurt, or even knock the air from me. It made me feel inadequate, which fueled the very thing I was working to control. The combination of his speed and perfect form made it impossible to land even a single strike on him. It had been a very long time since anyone had made me feel like a helpless girl. My skin began to burn and my teeth began to ache. Growing desperate to land even just one strike, I sped up more. Again and again he tapped my side, stomach, back, with gentle strikes, proving my defenses were not keeping up with my speed.

  “Dammit!” I yelled as his fist brushed my T-shirt below my breasts.

  Laughter bubbled from him as he spun around me and landed another strike on my back, this one so feather soft it was obviously meant to tease. I’d had it. Fast as I could, I stepped back, one leg going between his. I slammed into his chest—which wasn’t even slick with sweat, dammit—dropping down the moment I felt the impact, and grabbed his leg. Wrapping my arms around it, I stood and threw my body back against his. Air left him in a whoosh and suddenly we were both on the ground. Releas
ing his leg, I spun around in a half crouch. Before he could get up, I straddled his waist and raised my fist high. Breath coming in gasps, lips curled back from my fangs, I stared into his eyes and realized I was about to lose it.

  The burning beneath my skin intensified until I broke out into a sweat. I teetered on the edge of panic. My breath came in gasps, tongue brushing against the backs of my fangs with each gasp. My nostrils flared, not to draw in scents, but from the onslaught of them: Ty’s delicious sweat and musk, the sweet clover and tang of evergreens. Colors grew brighter. The grass beneath Ty seemed greener. The blue of his eyes became downright glacial as they stared up at me, filled with concern. A soft, steady thudding drew my attention. It took me a moment to realize it was Ty’s heart. The world began to slip away, or rather, I did.

  Along with the panic came the expectation of that feathery touch of madness, but I didn’t feel it. Curious, I searched my mind for it. It wasn’t there.

  “Easy, Sonya, easy. Breathe, relax. Just relax.” Ty’s methodical voice had an instant soothing effect. He kept talking, encouraging me in soft tones much like a hypnotist might use.

  The sound slowly brought me back, working like the North Star to guide me to safe shores. While he had helped, I had been the one to bring myself back. I felt that down to my bones. Soon I could feel him beneath me again, his hips holding my legs apart, his groin scorching against mine. Damn, he was hot. Literally. Considering the pressure I felt against my opening, it wasn’t hard to guess why. Well, it was hard, quite hard, and the length of that pressure was impressive. Heat spread from between my legs, rising upward through me like a tide. The desire to tear Ty’s sweats off and uncover what lay beneath made my hands roll into fists at my sides. Skin crawling and teeth aching, I leaned my head back and tried to catch my breath.

  “Whoa, easy, no jumping lessons here. Breathe and find your center, your place of control,” Ty said.

  Melodic and soothing though his voice was, it also sounded deep and husky with a desire he seemed to be struggling with too. That knowledge made me wet. So much for keeping him from smelling my desire. At the moment I had bigger problems, like how my vision sharpened and how I could suddenly hear not only my own heart beating, but his as well. Colors changed slightly. They didn’t bleed out like I half expected them to, but shifted, as if I was seeing on a different spectrum now. Light became far more intense.

  The moon pulled at me from its position below the horizon.

  “Sonya.” Ty grabbed my arms. “Sonya!”

  Slowly, I forced my gaze from the sky and trees. Ty had sat up and now shook me slightly. His blond brows scrunched together over his worry-filled eyes. My gaze tried to stray down to his bare, broad, rock-hard chest…

  “Sonya!”

  Like a switch being flicked, my attention shot back up to his face.

  “Good. Now tell me why it bothers you that you could not land a hit on me,” he said.

  My face scrunched up into a look that had to be unattractive. “What?”

  “Why did it make you mad that you could not hit me?” he pressed.

  I shrugged his arms off me. He gave in a bit too easily, letting go as if I were on fire. “What are you talking about?”

  He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Do not get angry. You need to focus on the reason for the emotion, rather than the emotion itself. Understanding reason is what keeps us from getting caught up in our emotions. It will help you keep control, and your sanity.”

  Uncomfortable as the idea made me, it also made sense. Figured. Everything about this made me uncomfortable, except for the strong, wonderful-smelling man beneath me. In one awkward motion, I pushed up off my knees and flipped to my feet. He rose slowly, like a predator flowing to its feet, eyes never leaving mine. Damn it was sexy. From beneath my skin a slight hum started. I slammed my eyes shut and tried to focus on what he had said. Reason, it had been about reason…

  The hum slowed and finally stopped. Thoughts became clearer. “I don’t like to feel as though I can’t protect myself,” I finally said.

  Careful to keep his distance, Ty slowly rose to his full height several feet away. “There is no shame in that. It is a bad feeling. See how thinking of that stopped the change?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Keep that reason forefront in your mind when you feel yourself losing control. Knowing what triggers an instinct is the key to controlling it,” Ty said, this time in his teaching voice rather than that soothing, sexy voice that was meant to calm me and did the opposite.

  The way his eyes locked on my chest made me tug at my shirt, wishing I had worn a bra that concealed how much I was attracted to him. Was it really attraction, though? Or a response of the verða? I preferred to think the latter. The wonderful ache in my hard nipples didn’t really care what the reason was, but I tried to focus on it anyway. Once I got through this process and shifted, I’d be in control again. And then, who knew, I might not be attracted to him at all. That both soothed and upset me. The resemblance to puberty wasn’t lost on me. And much like puberty, I just had to get through it without going mad. Today I felt a step closer to that. And to achieve it, I could fight my attraction to him. I knew I could.

  And I did. For a while.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ty

  That calm, happy place of meditation would not come to me today. Well, at least the calm part would not. The happy part, that was another problem altogether. Watching the sunlight play across the silky black strands of hair blowing across Sonya’s closed eyes made parts of me all too happy.

  Something new and wild was awakening inside her and the more it awakened, the more my wolf side was drawn to her. Much more than my wolf was drawn to her. Had it been only the wolf, I could have fought it easier. But fight it I would. I had to. Her brow furrowed after a while, and I had to resist the urge to kiss the wrinkles away.

  “You are scowling,” I said in my non-meditation-inducing tone.

  Those gorgeous eyes of hers slowly blinked in the bright sun. “Scowling?” she asked in a lazy tone.

  “Um-hum. Meditation is supposed to be relaxing,” I chided.

  A bead of sweat rolled down the side of her forehead along her hairline. Gods, how I wanted to lick it from her skin. Thor give me strength, or else I did not know how much longer I would be able to resist. I knew how wrong it was, and on how many levels. But why did it feel so right? Every part of me ached to kiss her.

  “Well, my mind has too much to think about to relax. Besides, it’s hot, makes it hard to.”

  Head cocking to the side, I looked up at the sun. “It cannot be much above seventy. What you are feeling is the alteration of your body temperature.”

  She fanned herself. “What do you mean?”

  “We varúlfur run hotter than normal people.”

  One eyebrow rose into her dark hair as her gaze skittered across my bare chest. The attention threatened to give my lower abdominal muscles a workout. “Hotter?” Her breathy voice guaranteed it.

  I took a moment to gather myself so I did not pant like an animal. “Much like canines run hotter than humans, so do we. But it is more than that. It has to do with the atoms in our body moving and rearranging themselves.”

  After a long drink from the water bottle sitting in the grass beside her, she nodded. “That actually makes sense.”

  I offered my hands to her and she grasped them both. Her small, soft hands gripped mine with a strength that thrilled me. Together, we rose as one, each helping to pull the other up. With a thrust of my head, I indicated the direction of the lake. “Shall we go for a swim?”

  She groaned, a reluctant and completely sexy sound that made my blood pump south. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”

  Head dropping, I gazed at her from beneath my brows—well, as much as a six-foot-five man can at a five-six woman. “No need, it is a private lake. No one will be there but us.” I told myself it was only to help her get used to life as a varúlfur. The problem was, I
was a terrible liar, even to myself.

  Crossing her arms beneath her breasts, she narrowed her gaze at me. “I know what you must think of me because of what happened with Raul, but I am not some easy girl who drops her panties for every great set of abs. I did not have sex with him.”

  The mention of panties made me instantly hard. The reaction gave credence to her fears and made me feel like an ass. I pulled my hands from hers and held them up in a placating gesture. “Whoa, that is not what I think at all. Raul is a master manipulator. I do not think badly of you; I think you were a victim of his.”

  The wrinkles between her brows fell away, taking her scowl with them. “Then why…”

  The turmoil broiling in her eyes made me feel horrible. I had to fix it, to ease her pain. I could not let her believe I looked down on her for this. It could not have been further from the truth. “Every time we shift, which is often, we take our clothes off. Our kind do not think much about being naked. I am sorry if it came across wrong,” I said.

  Her eyes widened and she straightened. “Point made. Lead on,” she said as she gestured toward the lake.

  “It is all right if you are not comfortable with that yet, Sonya.”

  She gave me a little push in the direction of the lake. “I’m burning up, we’re both adults, and I trust you’ll be a gentleman.”

  If only I could trust myself to be. But she needed the distraction. Each day that passed I noticed her aggression grew and she fought harder against her instincts. Hands up in surrender, I started for the tree line. “No pressure, huh?” I said with a laugh.

  We wove down a pine needle–strewn path that went around towering ponderosas, which offered a refreshing reprieve from the glaring sun. Their sweet, earthy scent normally soothed me, but not today. Beneath it I smelled the lake water, cool and fresh, fed by an underwater stream. Birds sang to one another in the branches overhead. Pleasant though their songs were, they only served to accentuate my torment. I pasted a smirk on my face but Sonya kept giving me a look like she did not believe it.