Addictive Rimeshade

by Poppet

  “What should I feed them?” I ask Leug when he leans his hip against the counter, lurching to examine me with brazen fascination.

  He wanted me to feel intimidated and afraid, but he doesn't scare me, and neither do his hounds. My bones never lie. My gut instinct is this is a harmonious man with a bad reputation that sticks to him like a shadow at dusk. He's misunderstood and that causes him more pain than anything else. He's a good guy, I'd stake my life on it.

  “They eat what I eat, mostly,” he smiles.

  The suggestion is blatant. He referred to food when he said they eat what I eat... but he referred to me when he said 'mostly'.

  Gee C.M.

  The longer he's here the deeper my sensation of having invited into my home a complication so profound I'll get lost in the maze of his duplicity.

  Ignoring him, not ready to contemplate what he's doing here and what that means for me, I point at the floor, telling Hati and Sköll, “Lie down.”

  They slide down paws first to stare in doggie adoration while I extract bowls from the cupboard, scooping curry into both, depleting my industrious domestic binge, leaving the pot empty when I place the crockery in front of each muzzle.

  “Wait,” I order, unearthing my enormous stainless steel mixing bowl and filling it with water, placing it down in the corner for their parched palates.

  Male laughter pulls my attention back to Leug, and he gives me a sexy shrug, “Sorry Lara. I don't mean to be ungracious, but the boys prefer beer to water.”

  “Beer?” I'm sure the NSPCA would have an issue with that. As do I.

  As if reaching a decision he stands up straight, losing the relaxed slouch to stalk closer to me, leering his aura into mine when he drops his disguise, glowering at me with frigid blue eyes and hair the shade of rime, “They are like me. They are not what they appear to be. It is not animal abuse.”

  Holy shit. It's one thing intuiting subterfuge, and it's quite another to be face to face with a changeling. Now I know I'm right, yet find no comfort in the knowledge.

  “Were my thoughts so easy to read?” I grumble, my heart hammering uncomfortably with his proximity.

  “Yes.”

  It's a soft declaration, embroidered in a tone of affection which gives me a brief flirtation with vertigo.

  His presence is intoxicating and overpowering, as if he is a vortex sucking energy into his core, making anyone in his orbit a little dizzy and breathless.

  Or maybe that's just the affect he has on me.

  Sucking on my lip while I savor the pain inching up my arm from his grip, I stare directly into his eyes and challenge, “So which name are you going by now? Shall I call you Lew, or Loki?”

  “You're either reckless, or nuts,” he smiles, spicy breath tingling my nasal hairs when he breathes across my skin.

  “I'm both.”

  “My name is Leug, with or without the k. That is my name. I don't like Loki. Loki is a title that belongs to the land of the raven, which is not my true home. My home is Skadinavia.”

  “You're a long way from home, stranger.”

  “Am I? I thought home is where the heart is.”

  Well fuck me if that isn't the perfect touché ever...

  Chapter 3

  Eastward dwells the Old One in Ironwood

  And there gives birth to Fenrir's brethren

  There shall spring of them all a certain one

  The moon's taker

  ~ Völuspá

  Lara:

  “Damn you are one smooth dude.”

  He laughs softly, a gravelly chuckle muffled in his throat, the smile this time reaching his eyes.

  Releasing my arm he leans on the wall behind us, curling wide shoulders in brushed cotton to trap me as effectively as the arms now staked either side of my triceps.

  Flexing in a half press, two blue eyes flit back to diabolical black, his little display of dominance sending my pulse skyrocketing for absolution.

  Curried breath grazes my eyelashes when he murmurs, “We should leave the hounds in here, instead I'll start a fire in the living room to dry my jeans. I don't appreciate an audience when I seduce a pretty lady.”

  My ability to breathe has joined the sinner in me up on the ceiling; doing the possessed scuttle. I'm hanging by the noose of anticipation, strangling and unable to inhale.

  I bet you will start a fire. An inferno to rival the great blaze of London.

  This night could use a little nefarious pyre to break the apathetic thermostat. When he dips lower to soulgaze with me, I'm finally faced with the enormous difference in our size. He's a big guy, bulging the sleeves of my 'needs to be ironed' sweatshirt with the pressure of supporting his weight off me... a big guy sucking on my bottom lip, urging me to open the door and grant him admission to my soul.

  It's sexy ... and too easy when neat teeth scissor my lip in the forewarning of discomfort, a little love nip from a priest in possession of the perfect panacea, delicately balancing pleasure and punishment. The equation is tipping my focus into the slippery realm of sadistic surrender.

  I opened the front door and allowed him shelter from the curdled day, mutilated into obstreperous and sour with tempestuous tantrums, but this is personal... I want it too much. I've done nothing but give him signals to stalk this path of depravity, but now that we're on the precipice I'm afraid I'll fall into hedonistic ambrosia only to wake up alone tomorrow morning with a hole in my heart and sorrow in my core.

  Feverish heat wafts off his chest in waves of warmed masculinity, his breath blushing my cheeks when he withdraws to give me the 'why so frigid?' stare.

  Paroxysms of craving are weakening my thighs with incessant pangs of passion; the wanton friction sufficient to partially impede my ability to hear.

  The hounds watch with alert interest and I duck out from between his incarcerating arms, padding to the fridge and withdrawing the other two beers. Popping them open I look at their master, “Do they drink out of the bottle or do I need to pour this into bowls?”

  He gives me a menacing smile, delivering a world of promise and satisfaction, then looks to his mutts, “You two can shift. This lady can handle the truth.”

  Instantly two younger men stand at my side, staring down at me with the same lust their liege is fostering.

  Speechless I hand over the beers, walking back to the larder, muttering, “It's not too early for vodka. No sir. Not too early at all.”

  Bloody hell! Three men in my house! I think I preferred it when they were dogs. The irony of that statement is fucking hilarious.

  Grabbing a beer for 'Lew' and the vodka for me, I pause on the threshold of my kitchen to say, “If you want more beer you'll find it in this fridge. Now if you'll excuse me I think I need a drink and a brief interlude with sanity.”

  Stalking past Leug I hand him his beer, glancing up at him once, gauging his commitment before leaving the kitchen for the safety of the living room.

  Fuckohara this just got complicated.

  Slumping on the dapper couch I glower at the unlit hearth through the gloom, wishing I had the spells in my arsenal to set kindling aflame.

  When I reach for the tartan throw the speed of his movement halts me. While struggling to restart my stalled heartbeat I watch in stunned stupor as he lifts my wrist to his mouth, placing a soft kiss on the veins tangling across slender tendons.

  Brooding eyes watch me intently under their lazy eyelids, waiting for me to pull away, slap him, kick him out, or succumb.

  I'm truthfully too surprised to react.

  The mental quandary his bold move plunges me into is too much thought to entertain, when all I want is to relish the contact. It's reckless, stupid, and borderline insane, but it's not like I'm in a profession to meet eye candy. The muscles I get to touch are flaccid in death, their skin cold and wan, their ability to connect moved on. Rigor mortis and necromancy has never held appeal for me... it's not the kind of hard that turns me on.

  I don't get to stare into eyes watching m
e with searing seduction, calculating my mistakes, plotting my descent.

  Adages of warning regurgitate across the inner mire of thought. Beware of strangers. If something is too good to be true it usually is, et al. Fuck warnings, I prefer the cortisol surge of danger, of the unknown, of plucking forbidden fruit. Danger is a tightrope best walked spontaneously.

  Who wandering this paltry plane can claim they've been given the ocular fuck by Loki? I'm betting no one alive today.

  It's dark and biting outside but the heat in here just ratcheted up twelve degrees. I wouldn't cast him out in this torrid weather because unlike my charges I have a beating heart. Winter's whip is breaking the night with seizures as loud as live defibrillator paddles shocking life into frozen ground; tingling roots in surges of stimulation.

  Or maybe it's just me having tickles of sensation... reaching hibernating places seldom stimulated. It's always too complicated and excruciating engaging in the dating tango. Sometimes I just want a fuck without exchanging phone numbers and empty promises. I just want the culmination without the mating dance and banal conversation.

  Sometimes I want satisfaction in a heartless fashion – sweaty, sordid, wild, manic, and then back to freedom without allegiance or pursue required. My emotions and libido are not married. It might make me a sinner but I've always found sinners way more enticing than saints. Rules and regulations were fashioned to be defied and flexed into disfiguring contortions of endurance.

  His hold is so tight my fingers are going purple, the prickle of his short stubble splintering into skin in a most delightful cocktail of persuasion and discomfort.

  My womb has contracted to a pinpoint of tension, my breath splintered into shaky eruptions, the ache in my hips so severe I squirm deeper into the cushion, watching the stranger defile my complexion in delectable shades of abuse.

  The tip of a tongue slips across my finger-pad, sliding sweetly between my fingers in an obscene parody of cunnilingus.

  Jesus!

  It's so acute I'm getting giddy with anxious desire.

  Fingers reapply pressure the way a guitarist plays a fretboard – my wrist the chords, my veins the strings being pressed into submission.

  Smiling dangerously my guest releases my arm, nudging his head at the hibernating hearth, “I want to show you something.”

  A little numb, needing the vodka attached intravenously, desiring a joint to take the edge off this devilish dance, I nod, wishing the thudding in my ears would calm down to thunder instead of the blitz of madness currently bashing blood against membranes.

  Sliding in a graceful move to crouch on his haunches, Leug faces the pit previously scorched by flirtatious flames, blowing a fey tune across the kindling. Brittle pine cones erupt with instantaneous worship, hissing blue flame to the adjacent tinder, the igniting ensemble sending forth a blast of sparking embers. The fiery flurry dance out of their crypt, becoming living blobs of amber which he snares in his hand, closing his fist around them, knocking the marble lip of the hearth with his knuckle and multiplying the fuel waiting to be consumed with sorcerous flame.

  How did you do that? There's now enough wood in there to burn the entire night.

  Innuendo... right? Good lord, just the thought of it... my palpitations are hemorrhaging my breath.

  Taking four lazy steps back to me he lowers to one knee, offering me his upturned fist, resting it on my legs, the heat contained in his hand radiating a furnace right into my crotch, reminding me of the addictive coma of carnal debilitation.

  “Take it,” he whispers, and it comes out as a coarse order.

  Closing my palms around his huge fist, it stings when he opens his hand to cup with mine, capturing a blizzard of sparks between our bulging hands.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper, using the same hallowed tone he employed.

  “I'm giving you my fire.”

  I frown at him, my eyes watering from the stings blistering our cupped palms and fingers.

  “Fire maintains life, it also takes it away. When you become its mistress the delicate balance becomes instinctual. Only a fool pours petrol on a pyre; which is why the mistress of fire doesn't play with it, she consumes it.”

  The riddle makes little sense when he releases the seal, freeing fireflies to zip around his head in the dark of the room, creating a halo of brilliance, frenzied and euphoric, gifting light to the obsidian shadows by swirling around their master's crown.

  Catching another he offers it to me on his open palm, where it lays docile on his skin, “Take it, Lara.”

  As if I'm about to scoop a broken butterfly I gently nudge it onto my hand, knowing on a cellular level that this is communion of some description.

  The ember melts into my palm, burning up my arm in an obscene transdermal light, traversing to my neck. He smirks at me when it stops at the scar, pulsating a forge against my sensitive skin.

  Tracing the spot with a delicate touch, he leans closer, maneuvering to kneel, coming so close the only illumination is the aura of firelight peeking around his vast silhouette. “That scar is an abomination.”

  That riles me, splicing the spell and bringing me back to reality with a disappointing pinprick of pain, where an impossible ember is chewing an acidic hole through my neck.

  “It's my scar. At least that one you can see,” I say in my scornful tone.

  The dark becomes light when he changes back to blue eyes and rime hair, like a photo flicking through positive and negative polarity. He leans so close I'm forced to retreat against the cushions of the couch, the suction of his lips attaching where the ember burns, almost obliterating my fragile control. Moist heat licks and purges, the administered suck on my neck summoning the sequestered slut.

  The pain is so scorching it becomes violently white-hot, ferrous blood flooding my mouth when I bite down on the whimper of agony, reeling in a tilt of dizziness when seductive lips divorce my neck to claim my mouth. The ember he sucked out of my neck like snake venom is released to skip onto my tongue, escaping between our noses with my surprised gasp, flying up to mimic the triangulation of a ufo above the Bermuda crux.

  Now it's a firefly, a real one. A swarm of them undulate in silent fervor to demarcate the kill zone for their pyromanic pater.

  His laughter is as warm as the flames licking out of the hearth, my prone position now an invitation, the painful point on my neck reclaimed with his curious tongue.

  This time the flood of dopamine is excruciating and fierce, and I know he's biting my scar, refashioning it into a puncture he won't consider 'an abomination'.

  Consciousness fluctuates, the pressure of his hip in my groin the only pleasure in a storm of agony. Unwilling to succumb, to give him the smug triumph of forcing me into orgasm through the application of pain, I sink my nails into his cheek, making him withdraw, panting from the cocktail of endorphins flooding my bloodstream.

  Lazy laughter reaches me across the chasm of darkness, his shadow throwing a bridge across my lounge from hopscotching flames in their cage, a bridge of shade breaching my weakened body.

  Tugging on my legs, I'm slid right off the chair and onto the shag rug, vertigo incapacitating me when he opens my cardigan, spilling cold vodka in my cleavage, a corrupting tongue lapping it up in the salacious sedation of vows sketched in saliva.

  Staring at the ceiling while my body implodes, my womb so fluid and hot that I have lava pooling in my panties, fireflies write runes against the ceiling, scorching the wooden floorboards above with promises I don't understand, but know the tool to decipher them is the same key that's intent on setting me free.

  This time I part my lips when his mouth comes calling, sucking the lime vodka off his tongue, letting it and his weight warm the part of my soul where the rusty trapdoor hinges.

  It's alchemy that has charred my home with his ancient marks and it is magic fizzing my blood under his command, turning my bones into viscous flux.

  For a split second the man with short hair looks like he has thick blac
k hair, his eyes so bright they're binary stars in a distant galaxy, the bite on my neck the bond of a bitch to her mate.

  Yeah, you're making me your bitch, and I fucking like it.

  I like it too much.

  I hope you fuck like an animal too Mister Lew without the K.

  Vodka tilts into my mouth, sucked back out and transferred to my nipple, and the urge to leave my own mark becomes a breathing obsession.

  Chapter 4

  The Snake beats the waves

  the Eagle is screaming

  The goldneb tears corpses,

  Naglfar is loosed.

  ~ Völuspá

  Leug:

  Staring at the twins, I shake my head at Sköll, “If you'd nuzzled any harder you'd have been penetrating my property. Have your beers and dinner, and get back outside.”

  They glance at each other with the wicked smirks of their grandfather walking in on his grandsons having a wanking contest. I swear these two are eternal adolescents.

  “Understand?” I insist, waiting for the acknowledgement of my order.

  Hati nods, his brother following suit, their arms resting in poser grips behind them, flexing the counter.

  “Break her home and I'll break you. Get your snowboarding boards and fuck off home. If I need you, I'll summon.”

  That gets the sun-streaked blondes to glare at me, knowing it's bitterly cold back at the lair in Reykjavik. It's certainly not the alps; our winter is far more moody and monochrome. They don't want to go home, they want to go to Jotünheim, which is a far cry from the Valley of Doom outside of Reykjavik. It is the location of our lair, where the rocks and beaches are black, inside the volcanic caves covered in green glacier. But we have to go to that home, it's the only way to level the playing field when Ewan brings war to our door.