by Eva Chase
The sensation sent a quiver of joy through me, but the quiver turned into a tremor after just a few seconds. I clutched his shirt, trying to lose myself completely in the heat of his mouth, but I couldn’t get control of my body.
Hod eased back, not so far this time. His forehead brushed mine. “Ari?” he said hoarsely.
I burrowed my face in his chest. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
He paused. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
Just like that. Just like he’d asked when I’d randomly burst into tears on him outside my mother’s house not that long ago. Simple and straight-forward and opening the door to anything I could have had to confess. No pushing, no pressure.
This was kindness, no matter how you looked at it. Did he really think it mattered why he offered it?
“I haven’t let myself feel much about anyone other than Petey in a long time,” I said, still talking to his shirt. “It was always safer to keep my distance. So much easier not to get hurt that way. I don’t… I don’t really know how to do it anymore. How to care about people. How to fall in love. But you all are so… I can’t help caring. I can’t help wanting. And it fucking terrifies me. So it’s not you—it’s not you at all. It’s just me being a mess.”
“You’re not a mess,” Hod said, outright fierce now. He tipped my head to press a kiss to my forehead that somehow felt as passionate as the meeting of our lips a few moments ago. “I’m not asking for anything. I don’t expect anything from you. Whatever you want to give, whatever you can—”
His head jerked up. Before I could ask him what was wrong, I felt it too. A shift in the air around us, as if a breeze that shouldn’t exist had passed straight through those stone walls. A breeze with a smell of chemical ash. Our talk had shaken something loose.
The breeze was coming from the doorway. We both dashed into the hall at the same time. The walls rippled before my eyes. I backed up and threw my shoulder at one, ready to grab Hod if the illusion broke completely.
My shoulder thumped against it with a spasm of pain. The wall didn’t even crack. I frowned.
“Maybe we can get the memories to shift while her focus is shaky,” I said. “Think of someplace else, someplace you’d rather be.”
Hod’s jaw set with concentration, and almost immediately the world whirled around us. The breeze that washed over me was sweet with the smell of spring grass, and when I blinked, I found we were standing in a spartan bedroom that held an ebony frame bed and a matching wardrobe, the plaster walls a light mint-green. I might have been confused if I hadn’t recognized the view out the window.
“This is your bedroom in the house on Midgard?” I said.
A thin blush colored Hod’s cheeks. “I wasn’t really thinking,” he said quickly. “It just happened to pop into my head.”
I spun around and found myself faced with a blank wall where the exit should have been. “Muninn managed to steal the door.” But I could get more of a running start at this one. I threw myself forward, fists slamming out.
My hands rammed into the wall. A gasp broke from my mouth at the impact, but it held. I swiveled, rubbing my knuckles.
Hod was already moving to the window. He jerked at the base and heaved again, but it didn’t budge. The glass only rattled when he smacked his elbow against it.
“She lost some of her control over the construct, but she’s got enough to keep us in here,” I said. “Shit.”
“We’re getting closer,” Hod said. “I could really sense the world outside that time. Have you found anything else that affects her focus?”
When had the prison shifted, either against Muninn’s will or because she seemed frustrated with me before? Usually when we’d been talking, breaking down the memories the construct was based on. But also sometimes when I’d gotten too close to knowing more about her. And sometimes…
I stepped right up to Hod. “Let’s see how closely she’s watching.”
I traced my hand up his chest to slip around his neck. Hod’s distant eyes darkened with desire. He lowered his head, meeting me halfway in between.
As he kissed me, it was hard to remember I’d started this to try to shake up our prison. I didn’t know what to do with all the things Hod had said, all the emotions churning inside me, but every inch of my skin ached with wanting.
One of his hands came to rest on my waist, the other sliding around my back to tug me a little closer. He kissed me again, shadows bleeding from his body to shimmer across mine. They licked the corner of my jaw, over my collarbone, across my ribs, sparking of bliss everywhere they touched.
I teased my tongue across his lips and they parted. The heat of his mouth soaked into mine. A pang shot straight through my core. Oh, hell. I couldn’t walk away from this.
“I think her attention must be elsewhere,” Hod murmured against my lips with another caress of shadow.
“Good,” I said, my heart thumping. “Then we can do this.”
I pulled him with me toward the bed, claiming another kiss as we went. He groaned. I clambered onto the mattress, up on my knees so we were almost the same height, and he slid his hands up under my tank top. His thumbs stroked the lower curve of my breasts and the shadows he brought caressed over the top. I wasn’t sure whether he was directing them or they just came of their own accord until one whispered across my back—and flicked open the clasp of my bra.
“Hod,” I said, momentarily startled.
“Do you mind?” he murmured. “I can call them back. My powers—when my feelings are this heightened—”
“No,” I said with a quick shake of my head. “Don’t stop. That was hot.”
He chuckled. “Not something I’ve usually been accused of being.”
“Not an accusation,” I muttered in return. “Take a compliment.” The last word cut off in a whimper as he cupped both my breasts, stroking my nipples into instant peaks.
I shoved my hands up under his shirt, eager to explore him skin to skin in turn. My touch drew a hungry sound from his lungs. He tipped me over on the bed, coming to rest beside me, his lips sliding down my neck.
Hod kissed my throat, my shoulder, my sternum, as if he were worshiping every part of me, leaving no inch of my skin unadored. Then his head dipped lower. His mouth closed over the tip of my breast, and I moaned, gripping his hair. His shadows teased over my lips, others tracing down my spine. I arched against him, wanting so much I couldn’t find the words to say it.
He lifted his head for a second, and my pulse skipped with the thought that he was going to nudge me onto my back. But he just ducked lower, trailing kisses down the center of my chest to my belly. His shadows darted along the waist of my jeans as he flicked open the button. He tugged them down, his breath grazing hot against my panties.
His next kiss, right above them, was so tender that my throat choked up. I gripped his shoulder, tugging him back up, afraid of what might spill out of me if I let him keep going in that direction.
Hod came without complaint, tucking his arm around me and kissing me hard on the lips. My bare leg hooked over his thigh. Another groan escaped him, reverberating around my moan. His erection pressed against my core as he kissed me even harder. His shadows licked against me like an echo of a hundred tiny kisses, and the emotion I’d been trying to hold in tight spilled out anyway.
My chest hitched. Hod eased back from the kiss. He traced his hand down the side of my face and paused at the corner of my eye.
“Are you crying?” he said, his voice raw.
I sucked in a breath and just barely managed not to sob. “Good crying. Happy tears. I’m just… It’s our thing, right? You’ve got to have me in tears at least once or it’s not a full conversation.”
“Ari…”
I tucked my head against his jaw. “I’ve never been with anyone and had it really mean anything before, okay?” Even that roll-around with Loki, as much as I’d enjoyed it, as many of my rules as I’d been breaking by going through with it, had been about scratching an
itch, chasing desire, nothing all that much deeper.
No commitments. No proclamations.
But Hod had already made one.
His tone softened. “Ari. My valkyrie.” His fingers slipped to my chin. He tipped it up so we were face to face, gaze to blind gaze. “I love you,” he murmured, sounding a little choked himself.
I yanked his mouth back to mine. As our tongues tangled together, I wrenched at his slacks. He kicked them off, and I palmed his erection through his boxers. He held me tighter, pouring himself into the kiss. A wave of bliss coursed through me.
One of his shadows wriggled under my panties to lick against my clit. I gasped, gripped by a deeper need. “Please.”
We fumbled our way out of our underclothes together. Then the smooth skin of his rigid cock was gliding against my clit. A wave of pleasure coursed through me. I hooked my leg back over his hip and urged him right into me.
A cry escaped me as he filled me. The giddy burn expanded from my core through every other nerve. Hod clasped my thigh, thrusting deeper as we fell into another kiss. We rocked against each other side by side. His shadows teased over my breasts, tingled against my clit. I whimpered, my teeth scraping his lip, and he bucked into me faster.
My head tilted back, my eyes rolling up. Hod took me deeper still, with a ripple of shadow all across the most sensitive points of my skin, and I came with a moan and a shudder. His breath turned ragged. He thrust with a few more erratic jerks of his hips and followed me into that final bliss.
20
Aria
I clung to Hod, reveling in his heat and his sweat-damp skin pressed against mine, until the afterglow started to fade. He kissed me, so sweetly it sent a fresh wave of longing through me. But I knew we didn’t really have time to relish this moment. My gaze slipped to the window.
“I wish we really were back in this house,” I said. “I wish…”
“A lot of things?” Hod suggested. His arms tightened around me for a moment. “Me too. But we’ll get out of this. I can’t imagine anyone keeping you caged for long, valkyrie.”
I had to nuzzle him again, my mouth finding his for one last kiss. “Next time no crying, I promise,” I said.
A smile crossed his face at the mention of a next time. Hod was always handsome, like all the gods were, but when he smiled… I couldn’t look away.
I sat up and fumbled my bra back into place. My jeans and panties lay in a tangled heap near the foot of the bed. I squirmed into them with a glance around the room. “I’m not sure getting it on helped us much in the way of getting out of here, sadly.”
Hod muffled a laugh with his hand. “Maybe if we tried again right now,” he said with an uncharacteristically playful gleam in his eye.
I stuck my tongue out at him, even though he couldn’t see it. “Don’t get a one-track mind on me. Let me see—”
I hopped off the bed—and right through the floor.
Apparently our hook-up had affected Muninn’s construct after all. The wooden boards gave way beneath me with a sigh. I plummeted down into darkness with barely time to let out a squeak.
My wings shot out from my back automatically. I whirled around, trying to grab hold of something, to fly back to Hod.
“There you are,” Muninn’s voice murmured as if inside my head. “Thought you could hide away? Here’s something you should see.”
An unseen force threw me against a stone wall. I slid to the ground in a low-ceilinged cave. The scent of rot filled my nose. I flinched, bracing myself against the rough stone.
I knew this place. It was Nidavillir, where I’d first come looking for Odin—the home of the dark elves.
The thought had only just crossed my mind when a woman tumbled into the cave through an opening I couldn’t make out. The same opening I must have come through. She landed on her hands and knees, chestnut waves falling across her face, wings just like mine flexed above her back—and several dark elves hurtled out of the darkness to fall on her.
I clapped my hand over my mouth to cover a cry as one of their knives sank right into the other valkyrie’s skull. Blood gushed out around it, painting her hair even darker. She crumpled to the ground. One of the dark elves spat on her before wheeling his short stout frame to stalk away.
“That’s what happened to the others they sent,” Muninn said. I had the impression she was perched just above me, even though there was nothing really there to perch on. “That’s what your gods sent them to. Off to do the hard work for them, off to the slaughter.”
“Only because the gods couldn’t get to Asgard themselves,” I said, closing my eyes against the sight of the murdered valkyrie. “They would have come themselves if they could.” Freya’s anguished voice rose up in my memory, talking about how much she wished she could go for her husband.
“And then they summoned you up.” The raven woman’s voice was disdainful. “And you followed the trail too well. If you’d just let it go, not tried quite so hard, I never would have needed to shut them away.”
“Oh, so now this is my fault?” I shoved myself to my feet and spun on my heel, but I still couldn’t see her. “You want to talk about taking responsibility for your own problems—how about you take responsibility for the shit you’ve thrown us into?”
“My offer still stands,” Muninn said. “It won’t for much longer. Do you really want to see how much worse this can get?”
“It’ll only get worse for you, you—”
I raised my fist, and the force of her illusion smacked me across the head. I stumbled backward through the cave wall where I was whipped around and tossed to the side. My gaze leapt across the darkness, searching for some sign of Muninn.
A flicker of an image passed by my eyes. The raven woman hunched on a stone ledge, her head in her hands, her hair hanging lank through her fingers. A murmur slipped from her lips. “So damned tired of this.”
My hand snatched out, and the image whisked away. I couldn’t have said whether it was a glimpse of the present or the past. Whenever it had been, Muninn had been faltering. I felt her in that moment, her emotions radiating through the space around me. She was nearly exhausted.
A spark of triumph lit in my chest for about two seconds. Then I was hurled to the floor on the same stained carpet I’d found myself skidding onto what felt like days ago. The sour-stale odor of my mother’s house wrapped around me, thicker this time. Thicker than I thought it’d ever actually been in reality.
Oh, no. We weren’t doing this again. I sprang to my feet and heaved myself at the wall, meaning to break straight through it the way I had in the hall before.
My shoulder jarred against the solid plaster. I almost tripped over my feet landing back on the ground, holding my arm.
Muninn wasn’t letting me go that easily this time. However exhausted she was, she’d been ready for that trick. But she couldn’t be ready for everything. I just had to keep pushing.
The door. That was how I’d gotten out of this house the first time. I swung around toward it—and my mom appeared in the mudroom doorway. She planted her hands on her knobby hips.
“Sneaking out again? Can’t be bothered to give your own family the time of day anymore, can you? I don’t know how I raised such a selfish brat.”
My chest clenched up. I didn’t want to hear this. I really didn’t want to find out what it might lead to. Jerking around in the opposite direction, I dashed for the other doorway.
She was already there in the kitchen, hunched over a chipped mug of coffee. “I’ll do the laundry tomorrow,” she muttered. “You can wear those pants another day. No one’s going to be sniffing your ass.”
I darted past her to the front hall. A different voice, a slightly flat tenor, carried from behind me. “Ari? Won’t my favorite little lady spend some time with me?”
Trevor. I remembered those times way too well. The pat of his hand against the sofa cushion. The too-eager gleam in his eyes. The way he’d sit a little too close his knee pressed next to mine. The m
ovies he’d pick—not porn or anything, but with more sex and violence than any other parental figure would let a nine-year-old watch.
I’d known from the first time he’d called me over that something wasn’t quite right. He just hadn’t shown me how wrong he could get until a year later. All I’d known then was that when I’d refuse, he’d vent to Mom, and Mom would lay into me even harder.
My pulse scattered. I ran toward the door—but there wasn’t any door. Just one of those damned blank walls.
I didn’t slow down. No, I sped up. I hurtled forward and rammed into that wall with a heave of my valkyrie strength.
My body slammed against it and toppled backward, pain radiating through my bones. My breath came out in a gasp.
“Ariiii.”
The stairs. Maybe I could fly from a window. I swept around the bannister and charged up the creaking steps. Mom’s bedroom. Muninn wouldn’t be thinking about that. I’d barely ever gone in there.
I pivoted at the top of the stairs, leapt for her door, and Muninn’s guiding force battered me across the head as if I’d been hit by a cast iron frying pan.
I fell, and fell, not onto the worn boards of the hall floor but into a thin mattress with a bulging spring by the small of my back. A scratchy wool blanket was pulled over my body up to my chin. The bedroom lay dark and silent around me. A cricket chirped outside.
A heavy footfall sounded on the stairs. One creak, and then another, and then another. Panic blared in my head. I moved to push myself off the bed and found myself paralyzed.
Just like I’d always been back then. Frozen with fear and dread, sweat beading on my forehead as my heart hammered at my ribs, listening to him climb those stairs. Only this time Muninn must have had a hand in this, pushing me down.
The blanket glued me to the mattress as if it were a layer of cement. A wave of fatigue trembled through it, but she held me there with all her strength. I’d be willing to bet she wasn’t paying attention to anyone but me right now. She wanted her vengeance for the ways I’d challenged her.
