24. Nicholas #2
Her pulse throbs when our skin touches and my attention latches to the side of her neck. I fixate, suddenly starving.
“How much are you prepared to handle?”
“All of it.”
My smile is grim. “Don’t ask for things you’re not ready for.”
“I’m ready and I want to hear it. From you.”
Her voice slides through the quiet space between us, velvet and soft, something made for prayer, and a body designed for blasphemy.
The dichotomy has always tantalized me.
“It’s pain,” I murmur at last. “And it’s love. It’s something older than memory.”
Restraint costs more than proximity. Unease still thrums inside her skin, but there is recognition along with it.
“The gods of Asgard aren’t divine, my ruin. They never have been.”
Even my low tone sends the light from the screen flickering, as though those same deities haunt this room. Listening.
“They were hungry. We learned to worship their hunger, but greed became too much to bear. You and I were enemies, first. We clashed against each other on the battlefield. Stubborn. Prideful. My order demanded I fight. You said it was with honor.”
Begrudgingly at first. Until we moved past those few exchanged words and acknowledged a hunger of our own.
Even then, there was something about her. Something my brotherhood hadn't prepared me for.
She was unlike any Visigoth woman I’d experienced. Hellevi fought with the power of the sun itself, her ferocity tempered by compassion.
Superimposed over Helene is the last time I saw her face as a mortal, and I glance down, but not before noting the tears blurring her eyes. They smudge green and gold and brown into an interwoven masterpiece.
She’d cried then, too.
Crimson dripped from the corner of her mouth, and from the wound in her gut, my ax buried too deep inside her to survive.
Oh. Shit.
My breath catches as Helene drags her nails across the calluses on my palm to anchor us both. She links our fingers together and her heat, her heart, becomes mine.
“You don’t feel like my enemy now,” she admits. “I’m not sure what you feel like yet.”
Laughter is bitter medicine. “I’m the one who struck a blow meant for another, and you turned into the hit. Only we were both mortal then. My blade took your life.”
I turn to her.
“In every lifetime, I will find you. I will love you. And I will lose you.”
There. The truth in its acrimonious glory, devastating and raw and real.
She’s silent for the longest time. Odin’s curse landed harder than any of us realized when we petitioned for Hellevi’s spirit to be returned.
I watch the words coil around her and sink through her, into her soul, a whispered promise of destruction. It’s one I’ve never managed to break.
And in the pause I reach back for her as well. “I’m sorry.”
Her gaze flicks up to mine. “Why would you apologize? I’m alive.”
For now.
My skin tightens, prickled by awareness, as if the gods themselves are holding their breath for what comes next.
“Everything,” I murmur. I won't stop. “I’m sorry for all of it.” Another beat, then, “Odin came down to claim you himself.”
Helene turns my hand up to study my knuckles and the cracks that will never mend, the rough parts I’ll carry like reminders.
Odin doomed the four of us. I can turn others to immortals, but never her. My blood will heal mortal wounds on everyone but her.
“Experience is a harsh teacher. I am the cause of your death time and again.”
“In other words, we shouldn’t be this close,” she whispers. “So why can’t I stop touching you?”
The lump in my throat expands. It cuts off every assurance. “I don’t want to hurt you.” Why would she believe me? “I promise this.” It’s my concession. “I will do everything in my power to keep you alive this time.”
“Kind of hard when you’re fighting fate. And hunger.” Her lashes flutter down to her cheeks. “I know how it feels to want something bad enough to taste it, even when you know it’s wrong for you.”
“And what do you want, Helene?”
“A lot of things.”
A tense smile pulls, but I stay rigid, detached. As detached as a man like me can be with an inch between us, nothing more. Nothing less.
“Like what?”
My spine flexes as I push against her, heat rocking up where our palms meet.
Her throat works, and her scent changes. Deepens. The primitive part of me that first roared in recognition of her wakes.
“Like I said. I want a lot of things.” She moves slowly toward me. “I want a real house, a place to put down roots. Stability. I want to go to the grocery store and not count pennies.” And in a smaller voice, she adds, “I want to feel safe.”
She’s too near for me to keep fighting the thrall.
And she’s not going anywhere. Neither am I. No matter how much it kills me to be this close without tasting her.
I’m so fucking hard my cock rubs the inside of my pants like another punishment from the gods.
And I relish it. The flood of emotion, the anticipation of what might happen.
Alive. Damned.
“You can have all those things,” I reply.
“I don’t see how it’s possible, Nicholas...”
“At least you’re taking this well. It’s a start.”
She stares a hole through the wall, like this entire place will crumble around her and give her a different vantage, a better view. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“Illusions of control aside? I like to think there’s a choice.”
“Is it so wrong to want something more? To want something magical?” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Love, maybe?”
My throat closes.
“But this...all of this, and all of you...it is magical. It’s insane and fantastic, and I want it.” She glances down to our entwined hands. “I think I want it.”
“You think or you know?”
What I do from here depends on her answer.
Hunger burns hot holes in my abdomen when her thigh brushes mine.
She’s my ruin. My temptation. There is nothing supernatural about heartbreak. Or the pain of loss and having to survive with your chest hollowed out, suffering without end.
Why do I need her to say it?
Snow quiets the world outside, and in the bedroom, the past matters much less than the present. A new story begins right now. What we do and what we say now carries more weight.
She lifts her face to me. Those freckles, her eyes, the warmth of her skin and the delicious scent of her blood—
My head spins.
“I think I want to kiss you, Nicholas.” Her gaze snags on my eyes before she drags them south to my lips.
There is no question now.
She leans closer, her pulse drumming in her chest. The long moment stretches tighter, and her attention flows over my face. I feel it touching me, lighting a fire, a high I’m always chasing and never able to catch unless I’m with her.
And the looming risk of death isn’t scaring me this time.
I draw my hand from hers and glide it up her forearm, leaving a trail of goosebumps behind. I cup the back of her neck but I don’t move or pull her forward. Not yet.
She thrums, vibrating.
“It makes sense, you know,” she whispers, her eyes shut. “The whole soul theory. How people can be connected beyond something more than...wanting.”
“Does it?”
She shivers again, and her heartbeat throbs against my fingers. I tighten my grip, claws sheathed and aching. It’s agony to stay this way. To watch her smile soften and stretch, wicked, before her lips fall back into place.
“When I first saw you…god. Was it days ago? It hit me. It was a lightning punch in my stomach. And it wasn’t recognition, like you’d think. It was a voice in my head.”
Should I ask? Will I be able to stop myself? “What did the voice say?”
I hold my breath and wait for poetry or pain.
“It said—Oh. I need to be with you.”
Elation erupts, and my muscles clench, seize. The groan forces its way free from my core. Every tick of her heart tortures me. Hunger vibrates through my skull, and the seconds I’m not touching her are wasted.
Blood and yearning pulse through her in an intoxicating combination I feel.
She licks her lips, expectant.
I lower my head and graze against her and swallow her whimper like the sound is a muffled plea to give her everything she’s never gotten this time around.
I cup her face steady between my palms and press my mouth to hers. The sway of her blood knifes through me as I pull away, and Helene moves with me.
An ache claws its way up my throat and despite the pain, there’s much to savor in this moment. The look of her, the feel of her heat against my skin.
How close am I to losing all I have again?
But Helene is here with me with her rosemary scent and freckles standing out like dried inkblots of blood across her nose.
She tries to smile, lips pursed as she reaches for an embrace she isn’t sure will come. I press my mouth to the space beneath her chin where her pulse catches, skimming up and stealing comfort from her scent.
I angle to deepen it—
“God, Helene. Having a first kiss with three men in two days is a little much. Don’t you think so?”
Audra’s voice hooks me like a harpoon.
Helene jerks from my hold. “Audra.”
Surprise and embarrassment sours her tone, and I reluctantly pull my hands free. Before she rises and goes to the sister who lingers in the doorway, I grab her wrist.
“It’s not the first time you’ve kissed all of us on the same day,” I whisper. “And while all three would prefer to be your only...we’ve grown tolerant of each other over the years.”
“Tolerant?” she whispers back.
“Excuse me? I’m feeling let out of the conversation here.” Audra limps into the room, holding tight to the wall, her gait uneven.
“We know how to share,” I clarify. “We've found ways to use it to our advantage.”
I raise up and lean in close to her ear, loving her shiver. “There are certain things that can only be accomplished with three talented and dedicated lovers.”