“UM…” Chloe said, quickly averting her eyes when he pulled his blue tunic over his head, revealing the bare chest underneath it, one she hadn’t seen in quite a while. “Actually, as much as I would love to take a dip in your hot spring, I can’t. In my time it’s considered a really bad idea for pregnant women to get in hot springs.”

She brought her eyes back to him to see how he was taking the news that she also wasn’t going to strip down and jump in the hot spring. But he didn’t seem to be taking it at all. In fact, he was toeing off his leather shoes . . .

“So I see you’re planning on taking a dip by yourself then. That’s cool. You know, I can just see myself back to the village.”

“Nay, that is not my plan,” he said.

Before Chloe could figure out whether he meant he wasn’t going to swim by himself or he wasn’t going to let her walk back to the village alone, he was pulling down his pants, and out sprung his considerably large erection.

The follow-up questions trailed away and her throat went dry, right before the smell of her arousal hit the air.

He smiled. “I had begun to wonder if I might ever smell you in this manner again.”

“This doesn’t mean anything,” Chloe insisted, trying to wave away what was right under both of their noses. “I mean, this doesn’t change anything.”

“You have turned around your words,” he answered. “Your meaning should be it changes everything. Now we would both have need of each other.”

He took one step toward her, which caused Chloe to take several steps back, only to have her back slam up against a tree she could have sworn wasn’t there a minute ago.

The Viking was on her in a second, pressing his large body against hers, so she could feel how hard his cock was as it teased her opening through the skirt of her prairie dress. Before she knew it, his lips were on hers, coaxing her mouth open with his own, and drawing out the kiss with long insistent strokes of his tongue.

It was actually one of the gentler kisses he had ever given her, but Chloe felt like she was under sudden attack. His hands were everywhere, pulling down the frilly top of her prairie dress and palming her breasts when they spilled out. Then one was under her skirt, pushing two fingers into her soaking pussy, which going with the fashion of the day, had no barrier to protect it from his seeking hands.

His two fingers hooked inside of her, just as he pressed his calloused thumb against the bundled of nerves at her center. A white-hot spark of bone-aching need went through her and she arched against the tree, all vows of from-now-on-chastity suddenly forgotten. “Fenris!”

“Yea, declare my name,” he answered out loud in Old Norse. Then he pushed into her head: “Do you know how you have taunted me with this smock? It did torture me to lie next to you in bed this winter, and now that the sun is bright overhead, you doth wear it outside our bed closet as well. If your were of a mind to drive me mad with lust, you have met your aim.”

Chloe couldn’t think to answer. Sparks crackled across her clit every time his fingers moved into her and she could feel an orgasm blooming inside her womb. Then he took one of her breasts, which had become extremely sensitive in her second trimester, in his mouth, clamping his lips around the hard nipple.

And all her barriers came tumbling down as the orgasm rocked through her, making her cling to Fenris helplessly until she melted into a pool of jelly in his arms.

“I had forgotten how pretty you are in your pleasure,” he said. “I’ve a mind to see this look on your face again, but first…”

Again he moved so fast it put her in mind of a blitz. Her skirt was pushed up and her hands placed on the tree for her right before he entered her from behind.

As it turned out, getting taken as a woman in lust was even better than get fucked as a werewolf in heat. There was no mating knot now, which meant she was able to also feel every inch of his cock, thick and swollen inside of her, filling her up in every possible way as it slid in and out of her slick opening.

“That you would withhold this from me for so long. It is because of you I cannot achieve a warrior’s control right now.”

And as if to illustrate his point he began hammering into her, his damp skin slapping against her own until he went tense behind her and released. It was all so hot and happened so fast, Chloe felt herself struggling to keep up.

There was now the smell of their combined sex in the air, but still the now-familiar smell of her own arousal broke through that cloud like a tangible thing, insisting on making itself known.

“You have need of me again.” He chuckled. “I had a notion the intensity of our three moons in your Colorado was due to the mating frenzy. But I see my queen might have a lustier nature than I had originally thought.”

Chloe, who had put years into learning how to be more of a lady in order to be a good wife to Rafe, wanted to be embarrassed, but the sweet fire of aching need inside her refused to let her maintain her cool, especially when he began rubbing her clit from behind again, as if answering her silent prayer.

“Please, don’t stop,” she said out loud in English. She begged him. “Just please keep going.”

And maybe he understood her, because the next thing she knew, she was on her back and looking up at the blue sky as his words pushed inside of her head. “I will give you what you want. I will give you more than that. As you know, baths aren’t as plentiful in our time, because we don’t have the ‘running water’ as you do. But we do have our ways of keeping clean between soap days, especially after a joining. Mayhap this will be our lesson for this day.”

His tongue entered her pussy, hot and thick, lapping at her with such precise strokes it really did feel like he was cleaning her up in the dirtiest way possible. And soon another climax began to build inside of her, this one crawling through her, until it felt like every nerve in her body was alive with pleasure. Then he sucked her clit into his mouth as if it was one of the hard nipples on her breasts, and it was as if he’d flipped a switch inside of her. She came hard, screaming out her pleasure in English. The Viking continued to hold her most sensitive area sucked tight inside his mouth until she collapsed back into the ground fully spent.

“Oh, God,” she said, when he came to lie on his back beside her. “They probably heard me back in the village.”

She couldn’t see his face, but could hear the smile in his voice when he answered, “I did have the notion the hot spring might be far enough so the wolves of our village might not be able to hear. But as you know, werewolves have keen ears and you, my queen, are verily quite loud.”

She groaned. “I don’t mean to be. I don’t know what comes over me. I had thought it was because I was in heat back in Colorado, but I guess I’m just one of those people who’s loud in bed. I’m so sorry.”

His hand found her face and turned it toward his on the grass so she could now look into his amused gray eyes. “It is you who would embarrass with too much ease, my queen. And it is only because I did know this to be true beforehand that I sought a place so far from the village. No North wolf would be embarrassed to hear his mate announce her pleasure as you do.”

Her eyes darkened a bit, thinking of Rafe who she had apologized to for causing him embarrassment often in their seven years together, especially when she was rather clumsily learning which forks to use at the fancy wolf functions she attended as his fiancée. In fact, just a month before the Viking’s arrival, she’d spent what felt like an entire night apologizing to Rafe. First, she had apologized for wearing one of her homemade prairie dresses to a dinner party they threw for the visiting king of Alaska and his three daughters. Then she’d apologized for standing in the corner with the Alaska alpha’s middle daughter, Alisha, for nearly the entire pre-dinner drinks portion. There were way more Hispanic than black wolves in the United States, and Alisha, her sisters, and her mother, happened to be four of the very few she knew. Also, Alisha, being a history grad student, loved her Black Mountain Woman show and blog, so instead of mingling like they had both been supposed to, they spent the entire pre-dinner party cobbling together a version of how wolves might have lived in post-colonial Alaska.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said to Rafe when he all but dragged her away from the nerdy history professor.

Then she’d apologized again later that night for defending Alisha’s work as a history professor, when her mother started teasing her about not having an intended for her heat night yet. Correcting alpha queens really wasn’t done, especially by nobodies like Chloe, whose own status hadn’t been cemented yet with a heat night.

Then she’d had to apologize yet again for nearly jumping out of her skin when Rafe surprised her with a spontaneous kiss on the back of her neck.

And then later on when they were alone, she’d apologized for what felt like the millionth time for not going into heat yet.

“Your mind has gone quiet. What are you thinking?” the Viking asked her now.

“Nothing,” she answered.

Now his own eyes darkened. “I would know your thoughts.”

And she laughed. “Now you want to start really communicating?”

“Again, though I understand your words, I do not fully glean your meaning.”

“Communication is a big thing in my time. It’s basically couples telling each other everything and being honest about how they feel and what they’re thinking.”

He scrunched up his forehead, “So neither mate does bid the tongue stay while engaged in this act of communicating?” He emphasized “communicating” as if it were a truly foreign word.

“Exactly. But there are rules. You can’t be, like, mean or anything. And you can’t use it to attack the other person. For example if I’m mad at you for something, I can’t say, ‘You’re an asshole.’ I have to say something like, ‘It makes me feel sad when you do blank.’”

“And under the terms of this communication, you cannot insult your mate or make him feel he is not the one you want?”

The mood had suddenly become very serious, and Chloe turned fully toward him. “No, you can’t. You also can’t make your mate feel like her feelings don’t matter to you because she’s a woman, and not the dominant in your relationship.”

“And in this way I would know your thoughts, even when you wished not to give them to me.”

“Yes,” she said. “In my time if both parties agree to communicate then the silent treatment—that’s what we call just flat-out not talking to each other—isn’t allowed.”

He studied the sky for a few moments before reaching over and taking her hand, which he brought to rest on his chest. “Then yea, I will agree to a contract of communication.”

Chloe grinned. To her great surprise, she had found out Vikings were huge fans of contracts. They used them for business transactions, wills, and even weddings.

“You really want to make a contract of communication with me?” she asked.

“If it means I will never have to let another three full moons pass without knowing the inside of you, then yea, yea indeed.”

Chloe found herself unable to suppress her giggles. “Well, you know in my time after the birth of the baby, we let at least three full moons pass before we start having sex again.”

“In your time, you may not use hot springs or drink mead or handle the bog iron in its liquid form or eat uncooked meat or ride upon horses. And now you do tell me there are also mating restrictions imposed after the birth. I would say your people make the coming of pups more difficult than need be.”

She laughed. “You say that but we also have a much lower infant mortality rate than your wolves. For example if a woman went into labor early back in the day, there was a good chance both she and the baby would die, especially if it was breach and she needed something like a C-section. But in my time, Doc Fisher can deliver a healthy baby as early as seven full moons, and if it’s breach, he can give the she-wolf this numbing potion called ‘anesthetic,’ cut it out, then sew her back up. There are also way less miscarriages and even fertility treatments for when a she-wolf goes into heat but can’t make a pup.”

“I stand corrected then,” he said, sounding a little bit sad. “’Tis fortunate to hear you have medicine for all that ails a mother in your time.”

“Well, not everything…” she started to say.

But before she could finish, he squeezed her hand. “Let us return to the subject of communication. Now we have made our contract, I would have your thoughts from before.”

She smiled, allowing the obvious subject change though she was curious about where his mind had gone before.

“I was just thinking it’s nice to be wanted for who I really am. Your family likes the recipes I come up with, your people don’t mind telling me all about their trades and how they do it. And you don’t find it embarrassing that I scream during sex.”

“In truth, I will find it more embarrassing if I am not able to make you do so again,” he said.

He then rolled toward her and claimed her lips with his. And by the time they were done beside the hot spring, he was definitely not embarrassed.