chapter seven
giselle
T he gods are fed.
The altar still drips.
And me?
I’m feral with it.
Every scream from earlier still echoes in my bones. Every drop of blood still sings across my skin. But what’s worse—what’s driving me rabid—is him. Bjorn. Standing there with his axe still wet, his braids matted with sweat and sin, his chest rising like he’s just torn through a battlefield of sinners.
I want him.
Not later. Not slow.
Now.
I find him where the shadows burn deepest behind the altar. Kneeling, silent, soaked in red like he’s been born again from it. His eyes are closed, mouth moving in whispers—Old Norse prayers that sound like violence shaped into music.
“Pretty little thing like you shouldn’t sneak up on monsters,” he murmurs without opening his eyes.
I drop to my knees in front of him, giggling. “Monsters don’t kneel, my god. They devour.”
He opens his eyes. And gods, they look like war.
“You came to worship?” he asks.
I nod, smearing someone else’s blood across my thighs like paint. “Came to offer myself.”
“To the gods?”
“No,” I whisper. “To you.”
He surges forward like a beast unchained. His hands tangle in my hair. His mouth crashes to mine, not soft, not sweet—claiming. I taste ash and copper and divinity.
He pulls away just enough to growl, “Then offer yourself properly, ma petite mort.”
I crawl backward, still laughing, until my back hits the blood-warmed altar stone. I lay myself bare. Open. Legs parted, arms out like a sacrifice laid for slaughter.
“My life for yours,” I whisper, voice breathy and cracked. “My soul for your teeth. My body for your use.”
Bjorn stands, looming, silent.
Then he grabs a handful of blood from the altar basin and drips it over my chest. It trails between my breasts, down my belly, into the heat between my legs.
“I accept,” he growls.
And then he’s on me.
His mouth is at my throat. His fingers bruising my hips. He slides between my thighs like a sword sheathed in flesh and I scream his name into the air like a fucking hymn.
He doesn’t start slow.
He doesn’t start gentle.
First, he tears me open.
Not skin—clothes.
The leather crisscrossing my hips is shredded in his hands, torn away like parchment under fire. He rips the buckles, yanks the fabric aside, and tosses it to the blood-drenched ground. I gasp as the cool air kisses my exposed skin, as he forces me back onto the altar, bare and ready and shaking.
Not from fear.
From need.
He looks down at me like he’s about to carve a rune into my soul. His chest is streaked with red, his fingers still sticky from his last offering. That blood is on me now, too—smeared across my thighs as he pushes them apart and settles between them, dragging two fingers through my slick heat.
“Already soaked,” he murmurs. “You liked watching me kill him.”
I giggle through a moan, eyes half-lidded. “I came when you cracked his ribs open.”
He grunts. Not in disapproval—in pride.
His fingers move deeper, curling, stretching. I buck against them, needy and wicked, a living prayer writhed in sin. But it’s not enough. He knows it. I know it.
And then?—
He pulls his hand away, wet and shining. With his other, he reaches down, yanks his cock free, and wraps those blood-slick fingers around himself. He strokes, slowly and deliberately, eyes locked on me like I’m a vision rising from the battlefield.
His length glistens—veined, thick, heavy—his movements greedy, reverent, and almost cruel.
“You want it?” he growls, still pumping himself while my thighs tremble.
I nod, breathless. “Please.”
“Say it.”
“Fuck me like I’m your altar,” I pant. “Use me. Spill in me. Mark me.”
And that’s when he thrusts.
Hard. Deep and without mercy.
The altar rocks beneath us. My scream breaks into laughter. My nails scratch over blood-warm stone like I’m trying to claw my way inside him. He doesn’t slow—doesn’t stop—his grip on my hips turning to bruises, his breath ragged in my ear.
“You were made for this,” he snarls. “Made to take a god. You’re mine,” he snarls, fisting my hair. “Say it.”
“Yours,” I pant. “Always yours. My god. My monster. My madness.”
His mouth is everywhere—biting, marking, branding. He drives into me like he’s carving runes into my bones. I come once, then again, and I’m still begging.
His voice is ragged, like thunder fraying at the edges.
“Everything else belongs to the gods.” He grabs my throat, eyes burning like firelight on an altar. “But not you. Never you. You’re the one thing I’ll never give them.”
A pause. A whisper. A vow.
“You’re mine, ma petite mort. My little death. Only mine.”
He pulls out too soon.
“Up,” he snaps. “On your knees.”
I obey, giddy, shaking, hair a mess, and lips swollen. He strokes himself in front of me—slick and red, and dripping with the proof that I’ve undone him.
“Open,” he growls.
I do, grinning like the obedient little monster he made me.
He finishes across my tongue, hot and heavy, breath torn from his throat like a war cry. But before I can swallow, his blood-streaked hand fists my hair and yanks me back up.
Not done. Not yet.
His mouth crashes into mine—brutal, hungry—and suddenly he’s taking it back. The taste, the heat, himself, claimed right off my tongue.
He groans into me, kisses me deeper, and then spits it back between my lips with a filthy grin.
I swallow it down like it’s the holiest thing I’ve ever tasted.
My lips are smeared with spit and sin. My throat burns.
And I smile like the good little darkling I am.
It’s not sweet. It’s not pretty.
It’s twisted. Wet. Hungry.
He presses his forehead to mine, still breathless. “Ma petite mort.”
“Say it again,” I beg, giggling into his mouth.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he smirks, lays me back on the stone and starts again.