I Wed the Ruthless Alpha, and Now His Wolf Kneels to Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Sauna

Marja heats the lake sauna and takes Petroc on the upper bench in the dark, telling him not to stop and then to wait, and both times he does as she says; a bent brass check hangs on the porch rail.

The sauna stood on the lake edge below the house.

It was a one-room log building with a stove that had not been lit in nine years.

I lit it at four that afternoon, because Mummu always said the first sauna of a marriage belongs to the wife.

By dark the cedar boards were too hot to touch with a bare hand.

Now I stood in the red glow from the stove door with my towel on the floor.

Petroc sat on the upper bench with both hands braced on the wood.

He was naked, and he filled the small room.

Sweat ran down the dark hair on his chest and over the ridges of his stomach.

His cock stood up hard against his belly.

He had not moved since I came in.

"You said when," he said. His voice was low and rough. "Is it when?"

"It's when."

I dipped the ladle in the birch bucket and threw water on the stones.

The steam came off them with a roar and rolled over us both, wet and thick, until my skin prickled all over.

I climbed up between his knees.

His hands came off the bench and gripped my hips, and I felt every one of his fingers.

"Marja," he said, and it was the first time he had said my name.

"Again."

"Marja."

I kissed him then, hard, with my hands on his wet shoulders.

His mouth opened under mine.

He kissed me back hungrily, one hand sliding up my spine to hold my head.

I bit his lower lip, and he growled.

I kissed along his jaw and down his throat and onto his chest.

I tasted salt and smoke and the sweat running off him.

I found his nipple with my teeth and closed on it, and his whole body jerked under me.

"Marja."

"You like that," I said.

"God, yes."

His hands ran up my ribs and cupped my breasts.

His thumbs dragged over my nipples until I arched into them.

He rolled them between his fingers, rough and slow.

I rubbed myself against his thigh and left a slick wet trail on it.

He groaned into my hair.

"I've thought about this all day," I said against his shoulder. "I stood at the stove and thought about it."

"So have I."

"What did you think?"

He pulled his head back and looked at me in the red light.

"That you'd say it was a mistake," he said.

"It isn't."

I wrapped my fingers around his cock.

It was thick and heavy and as hot as the stones, and the skin was wet and smooth in my palm.

His whole body shook.

I stroked him slowly from the base to the head, and I watched his face come apart.

His eyes closed.

His jaw went tight, and a sound came out of him that I felt in my stomach.

"Look at me," I said.

He opened his eyes.

I held his gaze and rose on my knees.

I set the head of him against my pussy and rubbed it back and forth through the wet.

"Marja." His hands tightened. "Slow."

"No," I said. "Now."

I sank down on him.

It took a long moment.

He was big, and I was tight.

I took him an inch at a time, with my forehead against his and my breath coming in short gasps.

He filled me until I could not hold another inch.

I sat on his lap with my thighs shaking and him buried to the root.

"Oh God," I said. "Don't move."

He did not move.

He sat rigid beneath me with his hands on my hips, trembling with the effort of staying still.

"There," I said. "That's it. Just let me."

I rocked once, and the pressure shot straight up through me.

I rocked again, grinding down so that my clit dragged against his stomach, and I heard myself moan.

"That's it," he said. His voice cracked. "Take what you want."

I took it.

I rode him slow and deep with my arms around his neck.

The heat pressed down on us, and the stones hissed.

Sweat ran between my breasts, and he put his mouth there and licked it off.

He closed his lips around my nipple and sucked.

I cried out and rode him harder.

His cock dragged against a place inside me with every stroke, and the pleasure climbed.

"Don't stop," I said. "Please. Don't stop."

He did not stop.

He fucked up into me in long, steady drives that matched my rhythm.

One hand gripped my ass, and his thumb circled my clit with the other.

"Good," he said against my breast. "Look at you. That's so good."

Nobody had ever said it to me like that.

He said it plainly, and he meant every word.

I felt the climb tighten low in my belly, and then I wanted something else.

I wanted his weight on me.

I wanted to be pinned.

"Wait," I said. "Wait, wait."

He stopped at once.

He stopped so completely that I felt it in my bones.

His hips were still, and his thumb lifted from me, and his whole huge body held in place.

His chest heaved.

"I'm here," he said. "Tell me what you need."

I looked at his face.

There was sweat in his eyelashes and a vein standing out in his throat.

He was shaking with wanting me, and he had stopped because I said so.

I had never been in a bed with a man who could do that.

"Lay me down," I said.

He laid me on the upper bench on my back, with a folded towel under my head.

The boards burned my shoulder blades, and I loved it.

He stood over me with his hands on my knees.

He pushed my legs back and up and open, until my knees were beside my ribs and I was spread wide for him.

"Is this all right?"

"Fuck me."

He pushed into me in one deep stroke.

I screamed.

He gave me everything then.

He fucked me hard and fast, with my legs braced on his shoulders.

His hands pinned my wrists above my head, and every thrust drove the breath out of me.

The bench creaked under us.

The stones hissed.

I could not tell his sweat from mine.

"You're so wet," he said. "You feel perfect. Come on me, Marja. Let me feel you."

"Harder."

He gave me harder.

The pleasure broke over me all at once, and my pussy clenched around him so tight that he swore.

I came with a cry I would be embarrassed by later.

My back arched off the wood and my fingers locked in his.

He rode me through it, deep and slow.

When it ended he was still hard inside me and shaking.

I lay there blinking up at the black rafters, and I knew I was not finished.

"Again," I said.

He stared down at me.

"Turn me over," I said. "Put me on my knees. I want to feel you from behind."

He pulled out of me, and I whimpered at the loss.

He took my hips and turned me.

I got my knees under me on the lower bench and braced both hands on the wet log wall.

His palm ran down the center of my back, slow and heavy.

"Look at you," he said, low. "Spread open like that for me."

He went down on his knees on the cedar floor behind me.

His hands parted my ass, and his mouth found me from behind.

He licked one long wet stripe from my clit back through all the slick he had left in me.

My elbows buckled.

I hit the wall with my forehead and cried out his name.

He did it again, slower, with his tongue flat and his groan humming against me.

My thighs shook so hard I could not hold myself up.

"Petroc."

"Say what you want," he said.

"You. Fuck me. Now," I said.

"Say it again."

"Petroc, fuck me."

He stood, gripped my hips and thrust into me.

I slammed forward against the wall, and the log was slick under my palms.

He took me in deep, hard strokes that slapped our wet skin together, and the sound filled the little room.

One hand slid around my hip to my clit.

He rubbed it fast, with two fingers, and I sobbed.

"There," he said into my ear. "That's where you want it."

"Yes. Don't stop. Don't you stop."

"I won't."

His other hand tangled in my braid and drew my head back.

He kissed my neck and bit down.

I came again, hard and sudden, with my forehead against the logs and my whole body clamping down on him.

"That's it," he said. "Marja. That's it, there."

"Come in me. Please."

"Marja," he said.

"I want it. I want to feel it."

His rhythm broke.

He drove into me once, twice, three times, deep and desperate.

Then he went rigid and came with a groan torn out of his chest.

I felt every pulse of it, hot inside me.

He folded over my back with his face in my neck.

For a long time we stayed there in the steam.

He did not lift his weight, and I did not ask him to.

His hand stroked my wet hair back from my face, over and over.

"Nobody ever told me to keep going," he said at last, very quietly.

"You didn't stop either time I told you to."

"No." He lifted his head. "I wouldn't."

He turned me in his arms and kissed me, slow and thorough.

"You're not the monster they say," I told him.

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Neither are you, Mrs. Bolitho."

I washed off in the lake with the snow falling on my shoulders.

Then I walked back up to the house wrapped in his coat.

On the porch rail something small and bright was hanging by a loop of birch bark.

I touched it.

It was a brass check, bent nearly double, with a number stamped on it that I knew by heart.

It was one hundred and seventeen, my brother's.

A strip of bark was tied beside it.

Someone had scratched on the bark with a nail: Come to the pile tomorrow at dusk, and come alone.

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