by Eva Chase
Loki’s attention had completely shifted to the Allfather. He propped himself against one arm of the great chair. “Is it?” he said. “You didn’t seem all that pleased with me when we last met down below.” He gestured toward the city beyond the tower’s windows.
“You know how it goes,” Odin said. “We need a sense of order.”
“While you’re encouraging chaos behind their backs.”
“Now wait a—” Thor growled, stepping forward, and Loki jerked up his hand to stop him. He was playing out the conversation of the past, I guessed, but this was still his present self, fully conscious of both us and Odin.
“You wanted answers,” he snapped at the thunder god. “Watch and you’ll get them.”
I tugged at Thor’s arm, even though a nervous ache was forming around my gut. “I think we need to see this,” I murmured.
Thor drew back beside me, his mouth set tight. At my other side, Hod stood stiffly. His blind gaze was low, but I could tell that every particle of his attention was focused on the scene in front of us. Near the other side of the chair, Baldur and Freya stood silent and tensed.
The construct of the Allfather was shaking the dust from his cloak. “It’s not chaos I’ve asked of you,” he said. “Stir emotions. Spark passion. Start the flames burning.”
Loki rolled his eyes at Odin. “You and your damned poetry. Spark a passionate desire to see my head on a pike is about the size of it.”
Odin paused and turned fully toward the trickster. “Are you unhappy with your situation?” he asked. “When we met, when I offered you a place here in Asgard, you remember the oath you took.”
“I swore my loyalty to you with my blood,” Loki said. He ran his thumb across his slender palm. “You didn’t tell me how much that loyalty would require.”
“I haven’t asked much of you before now, have I?” The Allfather arched one thick eyebrow. “You’ve had the run of the realm of the gods. You’ve gotten to play your games and work your tricks.”
“While nearly every god and goddess out there still treats me like I’m an evil stowaway in their midst.”
“And that’s exactly why you’re the one for this role.”
Loki’s hands clenched at his sides, the knuckles turning an even starker pale than the rest of his skin. “They already hate me, so why not let them hate me more? Brilliant logic, oh king of the gods.”
“You can mock the logic, but it is sound.” Odin looked him up and down. “I’ve not gotten the impression you even mind letting out the hostility I’m hearing right now, when the situation calls for it.”
A rasp crept into Loki’s voice. “I mind. I mind that I need to be angry at all. If I find ways to take a little joy in the dung-heap lot you’ve given me—”
“Loki.” For the first time, Odin’s full power thrummed through his words. Even now, even faced with just a memory, the trickster flinched. The ache in my gut dug deeper.
The Allfather straightened up even taller, looming beside his chair. “I asked this of you as one oath-brother to another. Do you think it doesn’t pain me too? But what must be done… it must be done. I need you. I thought I could count on you. Was I wrong?”
Loki wet his lips. “No,” he said, quieter now. “You weren’t. I just don’t understand. Why does any of this have to happen at all?”
“I’ve read the signs. Gleaned the omens. Unpuzzled the Norns tangled prophecies. This age is going to run itself down whether we like it or not. All we can do is end it well. A clean break. The realm cleansed in fire. I know you’ve got the spirit to lead that charge, don’t you, trickster?” A dark gleam lit in the Allfather’s one eye. “They need a villain. Who better could I have asked to play him?”
A chill ran down my back. Freya covered her mouth with a noise of shock. Thor’s hand closed around mine so tight it almost hurt.
“And if I don’t want to play that part?” Loki said.
“Then our fall may be that much more painful. Is that what you’d rather instead?” Odin’s gaze didn’t waver.
“I never wanted any of it!” Loki shouted, shoving himself off the side of the chair. “There wasn’t really any choice, was there? Be your villain or be a villain by betraying my oath to you. Either way, the world falls apart and it’s all my fault. While you stand there with your damned knowing smile…”
Odin didn’t even stir at his rant. I suspected the Loki back then hadn’t been quite that scathing. Faced with that unwavering calm, the trickster’s rage deflated. He looked suddenly beaten in a way I’d never seen before. The sight tore at my heart.
“You’ll stay the course?” Odin said.
Loki swiped his hand across his face. “You see everything, don’t you?” he said. “Past, present, and future, from the mouths of the Norns, from your fragments of prophecies… Somehow I think you already knew I would.”
“Good.” Odin set his hand on Loki’s shoulder. “All Asgard will thank you in the end.”
He picked up his hat and vanished back into the shadows. Loki raised his head to watch the Allfather go.
“Funny,” he said. “That particular end is taking an awfully long time coming.”
I couldn’t stand to hang back any longer. I pulled my hand from Thor’s and hurried across the room to Loki. He turned at the sound of my feet, hope and apprehension both flashing through his expression—as if he thought I might shy away from him again at the last second. My lungs contracted. I slipped my arms around him, tipping my head against his lean chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Whatever for, pixie?” Loki said in his more usual light tone. “For believing me when I asked you to? For drawing the intended conclusions from the information you had? I don’t see any crime in that.” But his hand quivered a little as it stroked over my hair. I had the feeling the confrontation had taken more out of him than he was willing to show.
“Loki,” Hod said, his voice rough, and then didn’t seem to know how to go on.
“I didn’t really let myself wonder why he stayed so close with you, after everything,” Baldur said. “I never… I never would have thought he’d have wanted…”
“I don’t think he did want any of it,” Loki said. “He just saw it as the lesser of two evils. Fortunately for him, he had someone to deliver those evils and deflect the blame.”
“When I can talk to my father for real…” Thor said gruffly, and Loki nodded.
Freya made a startled sound. “The walls,” she murmured.
I looked up. As I did, the window across from me quavered. A waft of that ashy smell drifted in, along with red-tinted darkness. The real world beyond the construct.
All the gods could see it. They turned toward it as I stepped from Loki. But before I’d reached that breach, it shimmered away again.
Thor smacked his hammer against the wall. The stones held. He frowned. “We’re still just as trapped as ever.”
Another spot on the wall twitched briefly open before my eyes. “No,” I said. “We’re not. She can shut us away in one place, but her prison is still breaking down. She’s exhausted, and we keep changing our memories, and— If we could just wear them down a little more… We’re almost out. I’d bet she can’t do anything except hold this room in place as well as she can now, or she’d already have thrown us apart.”
“What are you thinking, Ari?” Hod asked.
“I don’t know. We get closer every time we shake up how we’re thinking about the past. But I don’t…”
I hesitated. There was another element to it. I’d seen it. Muninn hadn’t opened up the floor in Hod’s bedroom after we’d been together. The rush of emotion must have shaken her constructs too. Just like the illusion had fractured a sliver when I’d kissed Thor, when I’d started to get hot and heavy with Baldur. Because it focused us so completely on the sensations of the present? Because those feelings gnawed at Muninn’s mind in some other way? I thought of the scene I’d witnessed, her curled up against the dying man.
&nb
sp; There were people she’d cared for once. A man she’d loved.
But in the end it didn’t really matter why. It only mattered that it worked. My heart started to beat faster.
We’d been through so much together. I shouldn’t be afraid of this. I knew every man—every god—in this room. I knew they would never take anything except what I gave them freely. So why did the past hang over me like a goddamned anvil?
I dragged in a breath. We all had these stupid ideas about who we were, what we could and couldn’t, do, weighing down on us, didn’t we? I’d heard it from everyone around me in this room. Remembering that, an idea lit like a flame inside me. A flame that sent a flush of heat over my skin and a pulse of desire down through my belly.
“I need you,” I said, looking to each of the gods in turn. “I need all of you.”
The heat inside me carried through my words. Freya gave a soft cough. “I’ll just be getting out of your way then.”
Loki smirked as she slipped away into the darker side of the room, behind the chair. He stepped up beside me. Baldur and Thor joined him in a semi-circle around me, watching me with curious anticipation. Only Hod hung back, but just a little, his head cocked as if he were waiting to see where I was going with this.
Even though I’d already committed to this plan in my mind, I had to swallow before I spoke to make sure my voice didn’t shake. “We aren’t what anyone thought we were, are we? And we can show just how true that is.”
“What did you have in mind, pixie?” Loki asked in a liquid murmur.
I balked, but only for a second. The second it took me to realize I knew exactly where to start. I grasped Baldur’s hand and gave him a little tug to come even closer, holding his bright blue gaze so he’d see just how much I meant this.
“Baldur can be wicked.”
Desire sparked in the light god’s eyes. He bent to claim my mouth so swiftly I barely had time to breathe. His tongue teased my lips apart in an instant, his hand coming to my breast to pinch my nipple through my clothes. I gasped against his mouth as I arched into him. Urging, pleading with every movement for more.
He grazed his teeth down the side of my neck, offering shivers of pleasure with every nip, and I locked eyes with my trickster.
“Loki can be selfless,” I murmured.
A grin stretched across his face. “Any time you like, my darling Ari.”
As Baldur tugged up my shirt for better access to my breasts, Loki knelt before me. The light god rolled my other nipple, and Loki kissed the sensitive skin just below my belly button. He lingered there, flicking open the button of my jeans. A sudden flash of panic shot through me, but I shoved it down. I closed my eyes as he slid my jeans and panties down.
His lips charted a scorching path down my thigh and then up it again. By the time he reached the apex of my legs, I didn’t have a shred of anything but wanting left in me. He brought his mouth right to my core, slicking his tongue over my clit, and I moaned.
It still wasn’t enough. I looked to Thor through my haze of desire. His normally warm brown eyes were blazing as he gazed back at me. One of my hands was tangled in Baldur’s shirt. The other I held out to the thunder god.
“Thor can be gentle.”
He dropped his hammer on the floor and reached me in one quick stride. But when he rested his hand on my waist and brought his lips to mine, there was only tenderness in his touch. I lost myself in his kiss, in Baldur’s strokes of my breasts, in Loki’s hot mouth against my core. Bliss rippled through me from every direction.
When Thor raised his head to kiss my cheek, my temple, my gaze found Hod. And suddenly I wasn’t sure what to say.
As if he’d sensed my dilemma, Hod smiled a little wryly. “Hod can bear witness,” he said. “Without bitterness.”
A sense of rightness settled in my chest. Then Baldur swept the peak of my breast into his mouth, testing it with his teeth, and Loki dipped a finger beneath the swipe of his tongue to hook up inside me, and Thor’s large but careful hands caressed down my sides with the slightest shimmer of electricity. In that instant, I trembled with nothing but joy.
“And I am not a victim,” I said, clutching Loki’s silky hair, leaning into Thor’s solid frame. “Not anymore. I take what I want.”
And I wanted all of them. Oh, fucking yes. For the first time, the thought filled my mind without a hint of shame or fear. I gave myself over to it, to whatever would come next.
24
Thor
Ari moaned as she rocked in our joined embrace. I caught her mouth, keeping my kiss soft but sure. Her fiery sweet taste filled my senses. The feel of her naked skin against my bare chest misted my mind with a haze of lust, almost as potent as my battle rage. Lightning tickled through my veins, eager to spark from my fingers.
But I could hold my coarser urges in check. I could be the gentle lover she’d asked for from me. Baldur provoked a pleased cry from her with a squeeze of her breast, and I drew a whimper after it as I grazed my thumb over the other. When I trailed my mouth along the side of her jaw, she tipped her head to the side, offering better access to the pale line of her neck. Trusting me implicitly. My heart swelled at that gift.
Loki eased her thighs farther apart with a slick of his tongue I could hear. Ari gasped as he worked her over with hands and mouth. Her body started to tremble against mine. I held her, supporting her, drinking in the eager shivers with the press of my lips against the crook of her shoulder. She arched back with a clenching of the muscles all through her body. One hand clamped around my arm. I felt her release course through her.
The trickster kissed the side of her leg and straightened up with a sly smile. “And I ask nothing in return,” he said.
He looked ready to step away, but Ari made a disgruntled sound and grasped the front of his shirt. She pulled him to her, into a kiss.
I’d come to women alongside Loki in the past, during our travels, but never for anything more than a quick roll in the hay. Ari was more than that—to all of us. But not even a flicker of jealousy rose in my chest. We’d all come together to bring her into our lives, and now she was a part of us just as we were a part of her. We were bound together in some strange way, both in battle and in desire. Watching Loki cup her face and kiss her back only made me wish I’d contributed just as much to her pleasure this time.
Maybe I could. When Ari let go of the trickster, she turned to me and tugged me into a kiss too. Her hand roamed over my chest, tracing heat everywhere it touched. My erection pulsed even harder in my pants. Damn, this woman was more intoxicating than any mead.
The valkyrie’s hand slid all the way down to the waist of my pants. My breath hitched when she brushed her fingers over my groin. “I don’t think we’re done yet,” she murmured, and kissed me again.
As my mouth melted against hers, she unfastened my belt. I couldn’t hold back a groan. With a yank, she sent my jeans to my knees. Gentle. She wanted gentle. It should have been a challenge, but instead the thought sent a thrill of exhilaration through me. I could be the man she needed, even in this.
Baldur slid his arms around Ari’s waist from behind. “Here,” he said, with a smile that did look wicked, and hefted her onto the arm of Odin’s high seat. The perfect height for her body to align with mine.
Ari grinned and wrapped her fingers around my straining cock. Hunger flooded my body. I kissed her tenderly but with all the longing I had in me, stroking her breasts, easing her hips a little closer to mine. Gently. Gently. Every soft movement, every second stretched out as I took my care with her, only made the heat of desire inside me flare brighter. Our tongues tangled, the faintest spark of electricity leaping between them, and she whimpered.
She was right. This was a part of me too: this passionate but steady man who had her quivering hungrily with just a brush of my fingertips. Right now, it was the only man I wanted to be.
Baldur knelt on the seat behind her. He nipped her shoulder as he gripped her ass, and Ari gasped into my mouth. Her
body canted forward. She urged me to her, her hand still tight around my length, and rocked against the head of my cock.
Her frame was so small I had a moment’s worry about whether I could give her what she was asking for without any pain, but her wetness slicked over me, her folds hot and ready, and skies above, there wasn’t any bliss better than this.
I set one hand on her hips and let the other fall to the sensitive nub at her core. My thumb teased over it with another soft spark, earning me a moan from her. She arched toward me, and I sank into her, just the head. Her slick heat closed around me. I groaned into her hair.
“More,” she said, gripping my shoulders. I let out a rough chuckle and shifted my hips. Inch by blissfully torturous inch, I slid deeper inside her. Then I eased back and plunged into her again. Ari gasped, clutching me tighter.
I found a rhythm, slowly building speed, penetrating her a little deeper with each thrust. Ari bucked to meet me. Her legs wrapped around my thighs and her mouth found mine again, our kisses ragged, broken by sounds of pleasure we couldn’t contain.
I was bringing her that pleasure. I was sending her further into ecstasy with each measured roll of my hips. I sank into her all the way to the hilt, and she gave a cry that had nothing but joy in it.
“Next time I’ll take the fierceness,” she murmured against my shoulder. “I want every part of you.”
The words sent a giddy tremor through me. I thrust faster, drinking in her scent, losing myself in the feel of her, and Ari came around me with a sharper cry. The clamp of her body around my cock stole the last of my control. My balls clenched, and I released my own ecstasy in a rush of crackling heat.
As the orgasm crashed through me like a wave, the walls around us toppled. The construct of the chair disintegrated into the air. I caught Ari against my body as we fell, slamming one arm out to deflect the impact. We pulled apart with a shared gasp.
