Chapter 25 Rada
RADA
I’d always been fast, usually faster than the enemies I faced. Being quick on my feet in the streets as a child had kept me alive long enough to meet my boss, who’d given me a job, which meant enough food to eventually get strong, too.
I’d trained over the years with all kinds of experts in the areas I needed to master: spycraft, poisoning, herbs and tonics, history and politics, and more.
Knowledge was a road to power, but I knew that even if I wasn’t small for a woman, there were plenty of assholes out there big enough that it didn’t matter how much I knew if they could overpower me.
So I’d studied fighting techniques as diligently as anything.
Alexios, in particular, had been a superb teacher. He wasn’t much bigger than me, and he’d been extremely happy to teach me his style of moving in a fight. I used it now.
Skadi had been leaning over me, one hand to my mouth, one to my back to hold me still so he could keep his ice tentacle doing whatever inside my stomach.
The thing had hooks of its own, and I was afraid I’d tear something by pulling away from that, but this ice bastard has a lesson to learn, and I was the only one here to teach it.
So I swung one leg out, far harder than I normally would using this move, and swept it behind his massive thigh, catching him at the knee.
Then I threw myself toward him with a twisting motion, exaggerating everything Alexios had taught me about forcing an opponent to lose his balance.
It probably helped that Skadi hadn’t gotten used to his human form yet, and that he’d obviously expected me to try and escape, not attack.
He made a weird, “Oof?” noise as he toppled over to one side, rolling as I pushed up with both feet on the ice floor.
He slid easily onto his back. The damned ice needle was still buried inside me, though he moved his hand away from my mouth to catch himself.
The other hand stayed on my back, but I wrapped my own around his throat as I rose over him, my legs straddling him above his waist.
“What are you doing?” he gasped as I tightened my grip on his neck.
“Teachin’ you a lesson,” I shouted into his face. “You don’t just stick a tentacle—or whatever that thing is—into a woman without asking. I don’t care if you’re an ice god or the king of the universe or a fucking sentient ice lolly! Consent is always necessary!”
“Consent?” The word was snapped out like a curse, and I squeezed even tighter. I didn’t know if this thing needed to breathe, but I obviously had his attention.
“Yes. You ask, before you use another… being’s… body for anything. You ask permission, and if it’s given, then you can… ah.” My jaw closed with a click as I realized that the ice needle had been removed while I spoke.
But another, larger, icy appendage was almost knocking on my lady door. Literally. Kind of pulsing, but cold.
How was that possible? He was nearly twice my height, so the gap from my exposed privates to his cock had to be two feet or more, but somehow, I felt something moving toward my core.
I wanted to let go and look. There was no way his cock could stretch that far, right? Even fully erect, it wouldn’t just… I loosened my grip on his neck, but didn’t release my hold. I’d been told more than once that my curiosity was what would get me killed.
But I’d also been warned to keep my eyes on an opponent’s weapons, and what I was feeling down below had to be classified as a longsword of some kind.
“Tighter,” he whispered, his eyes blazing blue, one hand moving over mine and pressing my fingers into his throat. I obeyed, swallowing hard as the appendage below nudged my inner thigh.
The ice room filled with my scent, and Skadi’s nostrils widened as he drew in a slightly labored breath. I was suddenly extremely aware of his cold, naked body, and my own warm one, the places where they met tingling with something that danced on the edge between pain and pleasure.
“Tighter,” he repeated, gently squeezing his fingers over mine. I narrowed my eyes, but still squeezed, knowing it was a very bad idea to encourage him. His lips curled up as he rasped out, “Continue.”
“Continue?” I parroted like an idiot. A very horny idiot. I felt dampness forming at the juncture of my thighs and wanted to close them, but that would trap his enormous glacier cock between them and… Oh, hells. I felt my slick slide down my thigh as I thought about that scenario.
Felt the droplet fall from my skin to his.
He made a growling sound that sent vibrations through my entire body.
At this point, the whole room smelled like a mint patch, and he drew breath after labored breath into his lungs, exhaling short puffs of iced mint back into my face.
Without even being touched, I felt a series of pulses move though my core as a small orgasm crested.
More of my slick formed and dripped onto him.
His cock slid along my inner thigh as he lifted his hips slightly, rubbing the enormous head through the mess.
“Continue teaching me the lesson, little enemy,” he said, his smile widening, his slightly sharp teeth dangerous and enticing.
I slammed my eyes shut. His laughter made us vibrate again, even more, and I had to force myself to pull away, placing my hands on his broad, cool chest instead.
“Not that kind of lesson,” I said, struggling to scowl.
I opened my eyes slightly, just as his smile transformed his features again.
He was so handsome. So big and pretty and dangerous and Alpha.
And I’d sworn off knots, so this one was twice as off-limits, I reminded myself, rolling off of him. Except he rolled, too, grabbing my waist so we ended up reversed, with him hovering over me, and my back on the ground below me.
“Consent, you said? You believe a god should ask for consent from a weak human like you?”
I blinked, hearing the confusion in his tone. He was asking honestly, so I answered the same way. “It’s even more important, when the balance of power is unequal. If a god just takes what he wants without asking, or won’t stop when the weaker person does ask, then they are an evil god.”
“Taking without asking is what the world thinks is evil now?”
“Wasn’t it always?” I wondered aloud.
For some reason, that made Skadi let go. He moved away, and I noticed a series of small ridges on his back. Not wounds or scars, but… the shapes were peculiar and familiar. Small vials? I moved closer, reaching out to touch one, but he turned to face me.
“Stealing is evil, then?” When I didn’t answer, he went on. “Taking without asking, without receiving permission. That is what the world sees as evil. What do you see as evil?”
I made a face. “Well, I don’t know about stealing in general… So, the thing is, stealing things like gemstones versus stealing a woman’s, or man’s, bodily—” I had to stop trying to explain, because he’d collapsed into laughter.
“Yes, little enemy, I remember what you said. You stole from a dragon’s hoard.
I would love to hear how you are not evil.
” His arm wrapped around me again, and he pulled me close.
“Let me watch those small pink lips tell pretty lies to make your misdeeds seem like virtue. You cannot deceive me, though lies come easily to your kind.”
“How would you know?”
“You are not the first human I’ve met. But you are the first to attempt to hold me to your own petty moral standards.”
“My Goddess holds to them,” I stated, not reacting to his skin on mine at all this time.
“When I told Her I didn’t want Her to use my body, even though there’s pretty much no one else in the world who could do what She needed, She listened.
We bargained, and She gave me what I asked for: ten years off to live my own life, before She steps back in to get back to the grand plan. ”
“Grand plan?”
“She’s remaking Her lines. The world, really.”
His head tilted slightly. “I want to hear this story of remaking. Much has changed while I slept. Why were these lines unmade? How? The seal man—selkie—spoke of plagues.”
“I’ll make you a deal, then. I’ll tell you the story. You agree to ask permission to touch me, or any other Omegas—other humans,” I clarified before he could answer.
“I am the wind, little enemy. I touch the world itself.”
“Right, then with your physical body,” I agreed. “You agree to get consent before you touch them with your physical body.” I didn’t know why that made him smile, but he agreed.
“Now, story,” he demanded, moving as far away from the fire as he could go again, and settling with his back against the wall.
I fought a grin. “Now, story,” was what the youngest in my crew of street rats had demanded at bedtime for years.
This story was one I’d told a thousand times, though it had changed as I’d learned the truth of how the lines had been broken.
I moved closer to the fire and felt a tiny burst of answering heat and pain inside, which was quickly blotted out by a small lick of ice. Huh. Pain relief on the inside.
I decided Skadi might be useful. I wouldn’t kill him today.
“They say the root of the human Omega Plagues stems from the betrayal of the Goddess by Her kraken mate. That his jealousy of Her dragon mate drove him to murder and caused Her to flee the world with Her remaining lovers. They say She cursed the kraken with endless hunger as She left. But that’s not the truth.
“She never cursed him. She only left him, and his kind, alone. Of course, loneliness could be felt as a curse, I suppose.”