Every Breath You Take

by Chris Marie Green

  “You don’t mean that.”

  But I did. I hadn’t realized how much until now. How could I exist with myself if my friends were being tortured because of me? If I wanted rightness and justice in Boo World and the earthly plane, I had to make sure I wasn’t causing any of the damage.

  The sound of the door closing caught my focus. Wendy had left us alone, taking her computer with her, maybe even fainting in the hallway.

  But Dean . . . Loki . . . was still standing on that bed, and I had to look up at him like he was on a pedestal. Yet didn’t that make sense now? He was a god.

  A god, for God’s sake.

  Then why did he seem just as uncomfortable as I was?

  Stepping to the edge of the mattress, he jumped down, absorbing the impact by bending his knees. When he straightened up, he pushed back his blond hair with one hand like the beach boy I’d always known him as. He lowered his gaze at me. Was he wondering if I’d run now that I knew the truth?

  He had to hear my crazed heart hammering away in my chest. And he had to know that I was finally understanding how he’d been able to give me a body in his presence—a god could do anything he wanted to, including making me feel whole again, right?

  He stood in front of me, all shoulders and arms and chest. His flesh gave off that tempting sand-and-sun tang. “I saw the writing on the wall when you met that Wiccan. She started talking about gods and goddesses, and I knew it’d only be a matter of time until you put everything about me together. Most of my stars only got as far as thinking that I’m a more powerful spirit than normal before they agreed to stay in my limbo, so—”

  “You thought I’d also give in before I figured you out.”

  “Hell, why not?” He was still so damned at home in old Dean’s guise. Maybe he just didn’t want to freak me out with his unfamiliar god look.

  “I can’t be the only one who’s ever held out against you that long,” I said.

  “No, you are. With you I made the error of being attracted to a ghost who had too much to live for, so she didn’t want anything to do with being a hanging star.”

  An error. That’s what I was to him? Hearing him say it bruised me inside, where he couldn’t see it. And this bruise was almost as bad as the one I’d gotten when I’d offered myself to him so he’d go after a murderer on the loose, and he’d turned me down.

  I’d always told myself that fake Dean . . . jeez, Loki . . . didn’t mean anything to me. But that wasn’t true. The quiver buzzing along the lining of my belly testified to that.

  I waited a moment, thinking that the mist in me was bound to kick in at any time, forcing me to say something stupid, ratcheting up my temper. But was the mist around when I had this god-induced body? It didn’t seem like it . . .

  “What should I call you?” I asked. “Fake Dean? Just Dean? Loki?” The last one still wigged me out.

  “No one’s called me Loki in . . . Well, aeons.” He laughed softly. “I haven’t even had a serious Wiccan call on my name, even though I was a Norse god. I could be very helpful, if the mood struck me. But they think I’m too much of a trickster, chaotic and unreliable. They’d rather have steadier goddesses and gods, like Aphrodite or Thor. Joke’s on them, though, when they find out the god with the hammer is a douche bag.”

  I waited for thunder to roll through the sky outside, but nothing happened.

  “I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t give me your name,” I said. “Does it really take away that much power for me to know it, like you kept telling me? Or was that a lie?”

  He sat on the bed, his shoulders hunched, a golden sheet of straight hair covering one eye. My stomach lining melted into a liquid heat that spilled down, pooling between my legs, throbbing.

  Just a look from him. That’s all it ever took.

  “Jenny,” he said, “why don’t you tell me what happened after you found out my name and called it, and then we’ll have an answer as to why I kept it to myself.”

  “Okay. After I finally got your name right, you . . . appeared.”

  “Now imagine if I gave out my name to every ghost I encountered in one guise or another. And if they believed I existed.”

  I got it already. Need someone to see all? Call Loki. Need to feel human again so you could taste a hamburger just one more time? Ring him right up.

  “I understand.”

  “I refuse to be at anyone’s beck and call. Except for yours now.” His light brown eyes seared me with their intensity and that yearning he’d never hidden from me. “But there’s an even better reason I wouldn’t tell you my name. Knowing who I am means you know my weaknesses now, and I’ve never made myself vulnerable like that to anyone over the centuries. For good reason.”

  What did he mean? Dammit, I wish I’d taken a class that’d delved deeper into world mythology in high school so I knew his story. Or that I’d furthered my studies beyond that. Might’ve come in handy about now.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you know very much about the real me?”

  I shrugged, a little embarrassed. “Only from some movies I watched on Amanda Lee’s TV a few weeks ago.”

  “Ah, let me guess. The Thor movies, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Naturally.” His grin was bitter. “The guy has his own comic books, his own movies. And there’s not a lot they got right about me in either of those. I’m not that ass’s brother, first of all. Then again, there’s been a lot of bullshit about my life over the centuries. But who puts stock in the gods anymore, besides a few minor religions, anyway? Who but a few fringe believers matter?”

  “Why don’t you tell me everything?”

  “Because it’s a long story, Jenny.”

  “We’ve got some time. At least I think we do, if those protective spells around this cabin’s perimeter work.”

  He kept looking at me with that skin-tingling gaze, and, without even thinking, I took a step closer to him, until I was about a foot away. Now he had to peer up at me, not the other way around.

  My pulse scampered, going to my head as he dragged his gaze from my face to my neck, down over my chest, my belly. I could only guess what he was thinking, but his power over me paled next to even Gavin and his life force. But maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

  The entity in front of me lifted his hands like he was showing me that they were empty. “I’m known as a liar, a mischief maker, a shape-shifter. There’re renderings of me as a grotesque in some places, which ticks me off, but what’s a guy gonna do? Besides destroy the buildings they’re housed in, of course.” He was giving me a roguish look beneath that slice of hair, but he got serious again in the next heartbeat.

  None of this was funny.

  I said, “Right now I have no idea if you’re lying to me. I’ve never gotten a good bead on you.”

  A pause exploded between us, and he tentatively reached up to my waist to touch the knot I’d tied in my shirt there. My tummy flipped, and he hadn’t even come close to making contact with any skin.

  “Every once in a while,” he said quietly, “I would tell you the truth because you needed me to, and I sincerely did want to help you. But I also wanted to see what kind of consequences there’d be for helping you, if the gods were still watching me to see that I behaved and . . .”

  Don’t stop now! I thought.

  But I’d take it one question at a time with him. “You always told me you weren’t allowed to interfere in earthly business.”

  “Not on a scale that would change the course of human events.”

  “But once you saved me from a time loop, after I solved Elizabeth Dalton’s murder. That was pretty major.”

  “And that was foolhardy of me. Afterward, I promised the gods I’d never overreach like that again. They must have believed me, because here I am.”

  The breath stole out of my lungs. But why was he here n
ow—to help?

  Or not?

  “So when I talked you into giving me information about my parents,” I said, still testing, “just so I could have peace of mind about them, did you lie about them going into the glare?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Loki?” I said it like I owned it.

  And maybe I did. Maybe he was like a genie out of a bottle now, under my control. But there was only one big wish he could grant for me: helping me get rid of Dennis Smith.

  “What I told you about your parents was the truth,” the man/god finally said. “The lie came only when I said I didn’t know what comes next in the after–Boo World life. That was a revelation too big to test the gods with.”

  “Valhalla.” At least I knew that much from school. “That’s what you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “In my experience, Valhalla comes next. The lotus pool I have in the star place would have been my way back.”

  “And telling me that would’ve helped in giving your identity away to me.”

  He smiled gently. But he was still a trickster and a liar, wasn’t he? There’d been times in our private history when I’d thought that I’d won a battle of wills between us, like when I’d kicked him out of my Elfin Forest cottage and he couldn’t enter again because I’d wanted it that way. I had the feeling he’d just been making me think I’d won.

  “Why are you telling me the whole truth now?” I asked. “Is it because I know your name?”

  He sighed roughly, resting a forearm on his thigh, then sending me a lowered gaze again. “I haven’t told you everything yet, Jenny. There’s a price for hearing what you want to know, as well as price for any help you called me for. You need to ask yourself if you’re willing to pay it.”

  “I’ve already been paying one with the dark spirit.”

  His hesitation told me that he acknowledged my point.

  Then he went on. “I will tell you this: I was forced to leave my regular life with the gods, and sometime after that—about five centuries or so—that’s when I started collecting spirits as stars. I was lonely, and I still had some god power in me, so I battled the solitude in the only way I could.” He sat up. “As Loki, I was known to have a balance of life in me—some said I was a devil and a god at the same time—but they all gave me too much credit. Having that kind of split in you makes even a god long for the whole good in himself, and since I did so much bad, the scales had to eventually tip the other way. It was bound to happen after such a long time left alone to think . . . so many aeons that time began to mean nothing to me.”

  My pulse blipped. “So, that’s why you’re willing to do some good for my sake now? Because the balance has gone my way?”

  He slid his fingers around my waist, and I gasped. But when he pulled me closer, I couldn’t even hear my own breathing. There was just my heartbeat pummeling my eardrums, setting an erotic rhythm.

  When he leaned forward, resting his forehead against my chest, I almost fell against him. No willpower. No going back if I . . .

  Resisting the urge to touch him, I let him talk.

  “When you banished me,” he said, “so many feelings about leaving my old life rushed back to me. Emptiness, a long string of endless days, dark and hopeless.”

  My heart . . . hurt. “So that’s why you have a star place. Because you were banished from being with the rest of the gods.”

  He didn’t answer, just ran his other hand to my waist, his thumb nestling by my hipbone, rubbing, making me bite my lip.

  But then I got ahold of myself. “Are you telling me more lies?”

  “No. I’m trying to tell you that I had only thirty-nine more human years left in my star limbo. The gods who banished me the first time from my old life said that if I behaved down there, I could go back to Valhalla. But the main conditions they put on me were these: no godlike interference with life outside my new home, no cruel tricks on the unwilling. I’d done too much of both before, and . . .”

  “Tell me,” I said, digging my fingers into his hair. Soft. Real. Beautiful. “Just tell me.”

  He murmured against me. “If I sacrifice this, I get a promise from you, Jenny. It’s the price I was talking about.”

  Anything, I thought. It was so easy to give in to him now, with his mouth pressed to my belly, my pulse pounding brutally between my legs.

  He traced his fingers over me until his hands flattened against the small of my back.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  “You’d promised me one night. It’s all I’ve thought of ever since, and I’d sacrifice those thirty-nine years I have left doing penance for you in exchange for it.”

  No one had ever said anything like that to me before. Not on this scale. My body rang with the depth of the emotion in his voice.

  “But . . .” I said. “Don’t you want to go back to Valhalla . . . ?”

  I could feel his sad smile against me. “It wasn’t ever that great in the first place—most of the gods and goddesses could never keep up with me mentally. You’d call it Boresville. Besides, it’s been millennia since I’ve been there, and now it’s more of a dream and a goal than anything. You’re more real than any of it.”

  He’d really give up his version of home for me?

  He squeezed me, but it was with a tightness that felt possessive. “I think you know what you’ll give me now in exchange for my protection, Jenny. If I turn aside from paradise, you become mine.”

  The side of me that still thought like a human asked, Will you change your mind in the morning? But he wasn’t talking about a one-night stand here. This was my Armageddon, and he was putting himself on the line to prevent it.

  He, out of everyone else, was willing to do that. But what got me the most was that I just plain wanted him, and I was all out of nos.

  He must’ve felt the yeses burning out of me, because he pulled up both my tank top and long-sleeve shirt, baring my torso. He lazily sucked at my skin below my bra, nipping it with his lower teeth, his stubble adding an extrarough sensation.

  I winced, feeling myself going damp.

  He stopped but kept his mouth against me. “Am I your champion?” he asked, breath moist, marking me.

  “Only if you tell me everything else . . .” I was about to call him Loki, but I couldn’t yet. He wasn’t exactly a god to me, but he wasn’t fake Dean anymore, either. He was something I’d never encountered before, and I couldn’t let him go.

  “Are you mine?” he asked again.

  “Will you tell me the rest?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  He eased his hands up my back once more until he palmed my shoulders, bringing me down until I was straddling his lap, facing him.

  His lips were a whisper from mine.

  “Yes,” I finally said, pressing my mouth against his, kissing him. A slow, excruciating, wet kiss that made me strain toward him.

  He groaned, and I thought of the wolf-dog he’d been in that dream. An animal.

  But he was really a being with bottomless dark eyes, high cheekbones, wild hair. He was a balance of more than one thing, and I was trying to take it all into me.

  I let him untie, then yank off, my long-sleeve shirt, exposing my arms to the air, my nipples going hard against my bra and tank top. He took the tip of one of my breasts in his mouth and worked it until I squirmed in his lap. When he began to pull off my tank, I stopped him.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  I thought he might say your champion again, and even though it turned me on to know that he was going to fight for me, I wanted him to give me more than that.

  His breathing came hard as he grinned wickedly at me. “You drive a hard deal.”

  “I can make it harder.” I shifted, nudging myself against his erection.

  He pressed me toward it, bringing a soft, needful sound from m
y throat.

  But he knew he wasn’t going to get out of this.

  “I’m the son of two giants,” he said. “That’s who I am.”

  The air cut out from my lungs as he lightly swirled his finger in my belly button. Sharp heat combined with the screaming ends of my sensitive nerves forced a moan out of me.

  Without asking permission, he whisked off my tank top and tossed it to the floor. Hungrily, he gazed at the swells of my breasts coming out of my bra. He gently hooked his thumbs under my straps.

  “Another piece of information,” I said. “That’s the price of the bra.”

  He gave me one of those serious looks. “We’re getting into dark territory. If you hear the rest of it, you can’t unhear it.”

  His ominous tone sank into me, but I couldn’t stop now.

  “Talk,” I said.

  As he drew down my straps, he said, “I had a wife. Children. Do you want me to go on?”

  I grasped his wrists, looking into his eyes, seeing if there were lies there. No. None that I could find.

  “Her name was Sigyn,” he said, a catch in his voice, even though I was sure he was trying to level it out. “She was the most faithful wife anyone could ask for. But . . .”

  He lowered his hands, and my straps slumped over my upper arms. I let go of his wrists, cupping his face instead.

  Such sadness. The pain in his eyes was as real as real got. My heart twisted inside me, hurting me much more than anything I’d felt in that area as a ghost.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He paused, tightening his jaw, then went on. “There was a god named Baldur, and he dreamed that he would die. So his mother, Frigg, made every object on earth promise never to harm her son.”

  I must’ve looked confused, because he added, “In my pantheon, gods are mortal.”

  It was like I’d run into a glass wall. Loki . . . Dean . . . could die?

  He smiled with a hint of melancholy. “We live a long time, but we never know how long we have. And if I’m going to die, I’m going to do it in a guise I’ve grown quite fond of. And I’m going to do it for you.”