Chapter 20 #2
I stepped backward, perched on the edge of the cliff as she lifted her chin. Piercing blue eyes gazed at the village below. Unfeeling, she replied, “It’ll be gone by nightfall.”
“Excellent,” replied the man’s voice. “Come back to bed.”
Fuck that. The gods didn’t care that I was here? They danced in the city’s destruction? Then surely one more life wouldn’t matter.
I pushed past Love without drinking her in. It could wait.
By the time she returned to the pile of furs warmed by the fire, the nameless warrior, husband, owner, male, presence, was relieved of his ghost. I was still holding him by the throat, savoring the final hiss as his eyes went glassy, when she returned.
She left the door open as she made slow, intentional steps toward the lifeless body, as if she knew what she was approaching.
A pale slice of gloom created a perfect rectangle around the man’s slack-jawed, limp frame.
Her blue eyes had the dispassionate whitecaps of an unfeeling sea as she looked down at him.
She didn’t check him for signs of life.
She didn’t even call his name.
One long emotionless minute was wasted staring down at his corpse before she drifted toward a barrel beside the ornately carved table.
She fetched a lathed cup from the table, examined the remnants within, humphed, popped the barrel’s wooden top, then plunged her entire fist beneath the liquid.
Her fingers dripped with sickly sweet mead as she brought the drenched cup to her lips, sucking down the entirety of one cup, then returned her forearm to the barrel for another.
The honeyed alcohol ran dribbling down her chin, soaking the fur, dripping onto her feet as she finished a second, then a third.
She smacked her lips, wiped her face, took two wobbly steps towards the man’s corpse, then flung the empty cup at his skull.
It struck with a dull thunk, bobbling on the floor unceremoniously as a thin dribble of blood seeped from the shallow wound.
I didn’t need a mirror to know my breathy, grinning laugh set my eyes ablaze.
Gods above and below did I love this woman in all her forms.
She was fierce, she was a force, and she was aggressively, bizarrely, uniquely her, no matter what shape it took.
Her unceremoniously liquored-up disdain for the dead man who’d shared her bed was simply sugar atop an already perfect dessert.
Sigrid—Love—my perfect, magnificent, incredible human, left the house and walked toward the cliff once more. This time, when she surveyed it, she spoke.
“Claim your offering, Loki,” she said with the same disinterest she’d offered her late husband. “Your fire and mischief have done more than I’d prayed. What once was mine, is yours.”
A mortal may have jumped at the preternaturally tall figure who appeared upon the cliffs.
The surprise I felt was not for myself, but alarm at my human’s nearness to a god of such bedlam. Lithe shape, red hair, cracked, smirking lips, scarred face, the half-Jotnar giant turned to me with glimmering eyes.
“She’s a force,” he said. The whirl of sleet continued to twirl Sigrid’s untamed hair, but Loki’s didn’t move. He jutted a thumb toward her. “Yours, right? Big meetings, hundreds of gods, pomp and circumstance and all that? This is the one?”
I blinked speechlessly at the god’s harsh silhouette.
He shrugged. “I get it. She seems worth it.”
We were an odd triangle of power atop the cliff. I had no idea what to make of him as I asked, “What did she promise you?”
He laughed. “I don’t care. I’m in it for the love of the game. And for what it’s worth?” He made a sweeping gesture to the wreckage below. “We’re rooting for you.”
“…thank you?”
A wink. “Oh, this is delightful. The wolf-mother would kill to be here. She’d want to do this. Which, of course, means I have to get it done before she gets here. What’s life without a little chaos?”
I was impatient enough to grab a prominent entity by his throat and shatter relations between our realms forever. I didn’t care for his riddles. I didn’t want to know what games they played. I just wanted her.
He took a step toward my human. “Wanna see something cool?”
Loki, among other things, was a god of deception. I wasn’t sure that I did want to see whatever it was he considered cool.
He reached an eerily long hand toward Sigrid’s back, slid his unnaturally thin fingers down the golden strands of her hair, and leaned toward her ears.
His lips brushed against her hair, whispered just loud enough to rise above the wind as he said, “Open your eyes.”
My sentiment remained: I loved my human in all her forms.
I loved her soul no matter its body, no matter its personality, no matter how life had shaped it.
She’d been wise. She’d been compassionate.
She’d been patient. She’d been insightful.
Some souls needed protection. Some needed guidance.
Some needed gentleness. Then holy fucking shit, there was Sigrid.
Whatever had shaped the woman who watched the collapse of the Viking empire had formed a desire I honored. She didn’t want a spirit guide, a listening ear, or whatever responsibilities I’d carried every time I’d stepped from beyond the veil.
Sigrid—my human—Love—wanted a cock.
From the moment Loki showed her the world beyond the veil, she turned to me with an immediacy, a thirst, an insatiable appetite that no nymph, no goddess, no demon had matched.
We tore each other’s clothes to shreds as she shoved me so close to the fireplace that the flames licked my thighs. I was throbbing for her the moment she touched me but hadn’t expected the dripping desire between her legs as she commanded me, body and spirit.
I was hers to use as she jumped into my arms, rocking against me as I grasped every unholy sensation. I kissed her neck, then sucked, then grazed my teeth against her throat.
“Bite me.”
I sucked harder, teeth sinking into her flesh.
“I said fucking bite me!”
I would never cause my human pain—and denying her pleasure was pain. I broke the skin, drawing blood as she released an earth-shattering moan.
“Fuck me,” she said. “Fuck me like you hate me.”
I ripped her off my cock and dropped her to the floor. In a swift motion, I had her against the wall, hand to her throat. Warm blood dripped from the gash I’d left over my fist as I pressed into her arteries, watching her eyes roll until she saw stars.
“Hate you? Oh, my Love…” I crushed my weight into hers, forcing her against the stony hearth. “Anyone can fuck you like they hate you. But me? I can fuck you like a demon.”
My free hand went to her head, scraping against her scalp as I took a handful of her hair.
“Yes, yes,” she pleaded.
I dragged her to the table, and she clutched the far lip greedily.
I slammed into her, salivating over her moans, but it wasn’t enough.
She needed more. Deeper. Harder. She rocked backward, ass slapping into my hips until she got the depth she craved.
Cheek pressed against the wooden table, she issued her next command.
“Hit me.”
I slapped her perfect, pale ass so hard it left a welt.
“I said fucking hit me!”
And so it went.
We fucked in the snow, scraped raw by the ice.
She grabbed my still-wet cock, dripping with her juices, and sucked me clean while she straddled the open mouth of her not-yet-cold husband’s face.
She grabbed my hand, pushed it to her hair once more, then plunged her face into the mead as she drowned with her next climax.
Seven times the first day.
Three times the next.
Twelve times the day that followed.
“You have to eat,” I gasped the morning of the fourth, shocked by her stamina.
“Then give me something to swallow,” she murmured before her lips swallowed me whole.
There were demons.
And then there was Sigrid.
Love wore many faces. No matter how it looked, one thing remained the same: her life was hers. She could be curious. She could be sweet. She could be violent. And to love her meant to hear her, believe in her autonomy, and embrace her in every form.