Page 53 of Merciless Vow
Then it started.
The base of my cock began to swell, engorging with a relentless pressure. The muscles of her internal walls contracted in response, gripping me with a desperate, involuntary strength.
"Vidar?" Addie gasped, her eyes flying wide, her breath hitching as she felt the shift. It was an overwhelming, invasive sensation—the biological finality of the tie between wolf mates.
"Don't move," I rasped, my voice thick and broken. I wrapped my arms around her, anchoring her to my lap so she couldn't try to pull away. "Just... don't move, Addie."
The knot at the base of my cock grew, locking us together in a physical bond that no law or contract could ever replicate. We sat there in the silence of the family room, breathing heavily but not catching our breaths. Two predators fused into one, our bodies still shuddering with the aftershocks of the release.
Knotting wasn't the normal conclusion to sex. I'd been fucking since I was a teen, but this was my first time experiencing the biological reaction. This was my wolf letting us both know that this was the woman who would bear us cubs, and the knot was how the animal ensured that would happen.
Neither of could move as I filled her. Neither of could speak as the knot set off aftershocks through both our groins for long minutes afterward. The knot wasn't the man making the claim; it was the wolf claiming its mate. As much as Addie was mine, I was now hers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ADDIE
Even after the physical tie of the knot finally receded, the ghost of it remained. I felt heavy, anchored, and utterly full. It had been a twenty-minute climax—a biological siege that left my muscles humming and my nerves frayed in the best possible way. No woman, shifter or otherwise, could be expected to walk after that.
Vidar gathered me into his arms, his touch proprietary and firm. He took the steps slowly, listing a bit near the top of the staircase. His hold on me never once wavered. I expected him to drop me at my door in his wing of the house. But he bypassed my room without a glance, pushing open his own bedroom door with a heavy shoulder.
He kicked the door shut and laid me in the center of the dark silk sheets. Then he took care of me first, undressing me with careful slowness. He didn't rip the plum silk this time; he peeled it away, along with what was left of my bra and panties. His gaze,still the gold of the wolf, drank in every inch of my skin as if he were seeing it for the first time. His eyes didn't wander to my breasts or my hips first; they went straight to my neck. The mark was raw, a dark, pulsing brand that throbbed in time with my heart.
With that mark, no one would ever dare touch me again. Every wolf in the city would smell him on me before I even entered a room. It meant I clearly, undeniably belonged to Vidar Blackwood. It meant I was safe. From my father. From every pack. And every wolf.
Watching my husband—my mate—strip out of his own clothes was one of the most erotic moments of my life. The moonlight caught the scars on his back, pale lines etched across muscle that shouldn’t have been there on a man who claimed to be the mind behind an empire.
He was the strategist. The one behind the desk. So where had those come from?
My gaze followed the movement of his body, lower, tracing the sheer power in his thighs as he stepped free of his clothes. Thick. Controlled. Built for force, not stillness. Not for hours spent behind a screen or at a boardroom table.
Nothing about Vidar Blackwood added up.
I realized that I didn’t know very much about my husband at all. Not really. Not beyond the version he chose to show the world: the polished executive, the calculating mind, the man who had outmaneuvered me at every turn.
And yet…
This was the same man I had just let mark me. The same man whose teeth had sunk into my skin, whose presence had rewritten not only my name, not only my body, but my soul. I was in love with Vidar Blackwood.
Nell would tell me I was trauma-bonding. She might be right. But I knew that this feeling inside me was so big that it wouldn'tfade away in the morning light. These feelings for Vidar were gonna stick with me, just like his mark.
He crawled onto the bed, his movements too smooth to be anything but stalking. There was no rush in him. No hesitation. Just intent.
His hands parted my thighs. Then his head dipped, his breath tracing a path along my skin, his nose following the line of my leg as though scent alone could map me. Heat followed—mouth, tongue, teeth. Man and animal, layered together in a way I couldn’t separate.
Taking. Learning. Claiming.
I could have moved. I could have pulled away, shifted, resisted. There was no reason to run. I let myself go still beneath him, caught by something far more dangerous. Willingness.
Vidar rose over me then, the weight of him controlled, measured, never careless. Even in this, he held back just enough to remind me he was choosing restraint.
He moved with that same precision—steady, unhurried, as though he was testing the edges of control rather than losing it. His big body descended slowly, he fucked me slower. I didn't dare call it lovemaking—not even in the silence of my own head. I was his, but I knew his heart was still a vault I didn't have the key to. As he moved inside me, steady and deep, I didn't care about the vault. I reached the peak once with him on top of me. A second time with him behind me, my fingers digging into the mattress as I shook beneath him.
Just like on the couch, the knot took hold. We lay entangled on our sides, his chest pressed to my back, his arms wrapped around me like iron bands while his body locked us together. The aftershocks were bigger this time, rolling through me in waves that made my vision blur.
Twenty minutes later, when his body finally set me free, I felt him go heavy against me. His breathing evened out intothe deep, rhythmic pull of sleep. I waited a moment, my heart still fluttering, and began to shift toward the edge of the bed. I needed my own space. I needed to process the fact that my world had just fundamentally shifted.
The moment I moved, his arms clamped down around me, hauling me back against his heat.
