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Ragnar sighed. “It’s different for an alpha, yeah? All the lads like to get a leg over when they can. It’s better than killing.”

Leif frowned, and was ignored.

“But the alpha…well, he’s supposed to be building the pack. He’s the one who gets first choice, who gets to properly breed. It’s his pups who the pack looks after, and raises up as the next generation.”

The words hit him hard. A punch in the throat that nearly choked him, and a crippling tightness in his belly that left his cock twitching.

Ragnar noticed, and his smirk widened, his own cock fattening up with interest. “You like the sound of that.”

“No – no,” Leif stammered. “I don’t…” Another measured breath, this one less calming. “I don’t have any intention ofbreeding. I don’t want anything to do withpups.”

“No?” Ragnar’s head cocked the other way. “But you were all set to do your princely duty: marry the girl, get some redheaded brats on her.”

“I never wanted that,” he said, shocked by the bitterness in his tone – by the truth of it. Ragnar, too, going by the way his brows shot up. “It was a duty, and I would have done it, but that doesn’t matter, now. Tessa married Rune, and I’m a bloody wolf. Breeding is the last thing I want or need to do.” He couldn’t bring himself to ask what a child fathered by him would be. A wolf like them? A human? Could the curse be passed down?

He didn’t want to know. It wouldn’t ever matter.

Ragnar looked nearly pitying, which rubbed him raw. “Fine. I don’t care for brats, either, so we’re in agreement there. But it’s not aboutbreedingin the literal sense. It’s instinct. You’re going to be the randiest bastard in the land, now.”

“How do you know?”

Shrug. “Because I was, until you took my place.” Small, bitter smile. “I could still fuck a knothole in a tree most days, but it’s amazing what a loss of leadership does to a man’s eagerness.” His gaze dropped, then, and his hands squeezed tight on his thighs.

Leif refused to feel sorry for him.

In a smaller, defeated voice, Ragnar said, “It’s not good to hold it all in. You’ll get grumpy and snappish. Well” – flicker of a grin, there and gone again – “grumpier and snappier.”

Leif knew he’d already acquiesced – to whatever Ragnar was about to suggest, damn him – but he heaved a sigh, and asked anyway. “What, then? Do you propose to go downstairs and find another girl? They’re probably all in the same shape as this one.” Nod to the sleeping girl on the other side of the bed; he didn’t even know her name, the poor thing. Not that she’d complained at all. Still. He’d had manners, once.

“No.” Ragnar straightened, shoulders back, hands flat. He lifted his head, and met Leif’s gaze with a steady one of his own, his eyes the blue of a pond in spring, clear and unguarded. Brimming with intent. He wet his lips, peek of a fast, pink tongue. “I propose to take care of my alpha.”

Gods. Gods, gods,gods.

Leif’s hands curled to fists in the bedclothes as Ragnar prowled forward until he could kneel right between Leif’s thighs. He set his hands on Leif’s knees, and smoothed them upward, over pale skin and a dusting of golden hair. He stroked all the way up to Leif’s hips – until Leif gritted his teeth and swallowed a growl – and then back down. And up, and down, the rasp of palms against hair loud in the otherwise quiet room. Distantly, he could hear thumps, and muffled moans: sounds of the rest of his pack enjoying themselves down the hall. In here, there was only the sound of Ragnar’s hands against him, the vivid blue of Ragnar’s eyes, and the question waiting silently in them.

Leif resisted a moment, staring back, a growl building in his chest, willing himself to give an order. To shove him away, boot him off the bed, punish him for his boldness. For behaving as though he knew Leif better than he knew himself.

But if he did that, he’d be hard, still, his wolf straining beneath his skin, and he’d either need to finish himself off, or wait until the girl had gathered her wits; rouse her and mount her again.

His nails – his claws, now – pierced the bedclothes with a quiet sound of shredded linen.

The corner of Ragnar’s mouth flicked upward, a fast smirk.

Leif let his head thunk back against the wall. “Do it,” he ground out toward the ceiling beams, and nearly retracted the statement when he heard Ragnar’s low, approving chuckle.

But then Ragnar’s big, callused hand closed around his cock, and he could think of nothing else.

He had enjoyed the softness of the girl’s skin when she’d stroked him, the way she’d teased delicately with her nails, and murmured over his size. She’d been skilled, knowledgeable and not shy. But it was as though Ragnar could see inside his mind; could feel what Leif felt, and touched him with the same rough treatment Leif would have shown himself, the sensation made wildly different, more pleasurable, because it wasn’t his own hand doing the work.

He let out a deep breath, as Ragnar worked him with a sure, firm grip, the tension of restraint and denial giving way to a much more pleasant sort of tension. His hips twitched upward, chasing the movement. It would take him a few minutes to come like this, but there was no sense not enjoying it: the almost too-tight squeeze, the firm stroke of a thumb over the tip on each upstroke. Ragnar knew what he was about, he’d give him that.

A tickling sensation along both thighs pierced the fog slowly rolling through his mind. An insistent one, growing stronger. Leif frowned, and lifted his head, just as warm, damp air brushed the head of his cock.

Not air –breath.

The sight that greeted him was as alarming as it was thrilling: Ragnar tucked down low on the mattress, breathing against him, lips parted as though he meant to take him into his mouth. It was his hair trailing over Leif’s thighs that had caused the tickling.

Leif’s heart leaped traitorously, choked him, and he could only offer an inquiring growl, unable to form words.What are you doing?