Chapter 2 #4
Her footwork was impeccable. She never telegraphed a movement before it happened, never let her weight shift prematurely, never wasted a single motion. She was economy and devastation all at once, and when she finally opened her wings-
He exhaled.
They were enormous. Broader than he remembered from the old days, from the battlefield, from the beautiful and terrible sight of a Valkyrie in full flight.
They caught the air and lifted her with an ease that made it look effortless, and in the sky she was no less precise than she’d been on the ground.
She carved through the blue above him in long, banking arcs, the sword a bright streak at the end of her arm, her body turning and dropping and rising again like something born for this.
Like the sky had been made for her rather than the other way around.
He watched until she folded back to earth without a sound, the grass bending under her feet, the wings tucking closed behind her.
He stepped out of the trees.
It was instantaneous. One moment she was in motion, and the next completely still, facing him with the sword leveled at his chest and her eyes fixed on his face with an expression that was not afraid, not startled, just- ready. The point of the blade as steady as the ground beneath them.
“Who are you?”
Her voice was exactly the same. Low, unhurried, stripped of any invitation.
“No one,” he said.
She studied him. The sword didn’t waver. Her eyes moved instead, tracking his face with a precision that made him feel like a map being read.
“You're familiar to me.”
“I have one of those faces.”
She didn’t buy it, but she didn’t press it either, which told him how her mind worked: she filed the information away rather than confronting it. Tactical. Even here, even in this sun-soaked dreaming field, she was tactical.
“Do you want to spar?” he asked.
She laughed. Not a polite laugh. A real one- short, bright, and amused- it speared him in the gut like a thrown blade.
“I’m a Valkyrie,” she said. “I train officers.” She tilted her head. “I’ve been doing it for two hundred years.”
“That’s impressive.”
“It is,” she agreed, without any false modesty. “So do you think you can beat me, or are you just bored?”
He considered the question with the gravity it deserved, which was none.
“Want to bet?”
Her eyes sharpened. “What kind of bet?”
“If I win,” he said, “you give me a kiss.”
A pause. The breeze moved through the wildflowers between them.
“And if I win?”
“Whatever you want.”
She lowered the sword a fraction. Not in concession- in consideration. She turned it over, looking for the angle, the trick, the catch. He kept his expression open and easy and gave her nothing to find.
“Deal,” she said.
“What do you want? If you win.”
Her chin lifted. “That’s my secret.” A beat. “Do you want to back out?”
“Absolutely not.”
He pulled his blades from the air, the two short swords that manifested by his own magic, blue-edged and luminous in the daylight. Her eyes tracked them, then moved back to his face, recalibrating.
She raised her sword and came at him fast. Faster than he’d braced for even knowing what she was.
The first exchange was brief and rang out across the field with a sharp metallic crash, ending with both of them stepping back a pace after the testing.
She attacked again, no hesitation, no circling, just a clean and committed strike that he deflected, redirected, and turned into a half-spin, which put him behind her for half a second before she wheeled and drove him back with three strikes in rapid succession.
He grinned. He couldn’t help it. She was extraordinary.
He parried, slipped, and countered. He kept it light, easy, genuinely enjoying himself.
He couldn’t remember the last time fighting had felt like play.
Even the bouts with Baldur were obligation in motion.
But this- following her, reading her, staying one breath ahead- was the most fun he’d had in longer than he could calculate.
Not only that, sparring with her told him more about who she was than weeks of talking ever would.
She noticed his relaxed nature.
He saw it happen. The moment she registered he wasn’t struggling, something shifted in her expression. Her jaw set. Her strikes came faster, harder, less fluid, and more insistent.
He smiled again, though he tried not to. Anger was sexy on her. It made her cheeks flush and her mouth purse in the most adorable way.
The tempo climbed. She stopped holding back and came at him with everything.
Suddenly, he had to actually work, had to move his feet and engage properly.
The field rang with the sound of steel on steel as the wildflowers swayed around them, and the sunlight caught the edges of their blades.
Her wings flared for balance when he pushed her back, and he used the distraction to change the angle of his attack, which she recovered from in half the time it should have taken.
She was furious and magnificent.
She came at him in a rush, all restraint gone, her body wholly committed, and he stepped into it rather than away from it, let the collision happen, and for one suspended second they pressed together- his forearm against hers, her shoulder against his chest, both of them locked and straining- and the heat of her skin real.
Even in the dreaming the warmth of her radiated through the torn fabric of her top, and her breath came hard and fast against his jaw.
Her eyes loomed so close he caught every shade of blue layered inside them.
She shoved away.
He let her.
She came again, faster, and this time he dropped his weight, swept her feet, and took her down with him into the wildflowers, rolling once before he pinned her, his hips bracketing hers, one hand catching her sword wrist against the ground, the other braced beside her head.
Both of his blades dissolved in the grass.
They both breathed hard.
Her eyes blazed, but not with anger.
In that moment, he couldn’t hold back, and he kissed her.
He’d told himself he wouldn’t, that it was just a bet and the bet was enough. But feeling her breath on his face and smelling the scent of her musky and sweet did something to him.
Her mouth was warm and real, and she tasted like honey and something wilder.
He forgot every measured intention he’d arrived with as his hand moved from the ground to her jaw, her hair, then down the line of her throat to the bare skin of her waist, tracing the hard, smooth curve of her where the torn fabric ended.
She made a sound against his mouth that undid him.
Then she bucked hard, and the ground came up to meet his back.
She’d used his distraction against him with a hip roll that flipped their positions, and before he’d fully processed the sky above him, cold steel pressed at his throat.
She straddled him, her thighs locked around his hips, her chest still heaving, her hair loose around her face, and her eyes not angry but something else.
“You were only supposed to get a kiss if you won,” she said, her voice and sword hand steady. But her cheeks remained flushed, and she hadn’t moved off him, and that told him everything.
“You’re right.” He didn’t attempt to shift the blade or her. “I apologize.”
She stared at him.
He held her gaze and kept still, which took tremendous effort, because she was warm and solid above him, and her hair hung over one shoulder, and she smelled of wildflowers and steel and something indefinably her. He fought to remember why restraint was supposed to be a virtue.
“So.” He kept his voice even. “What do you want?”
She looked at him for a long moment. The sword stayed at his throat. The breeze moved through the flowers around them. Somewhere above, a bird called once and went quiet.
She leaned in close to his ear and licked up the side of his throat, making his pants suddenly much too tight.
“That’s my secret,” she whispered. She bit his neck and then sat up.
Her expression fell, and anger flashed across her face.
“Loki.”
He opened his mouth, but the dreamworld cracked.
It happened the way dawn happened- not all at once, but in a spreading, irreversible bleed of light at the edges. The wildflowers lost their color first, bleeding to grey and then to nothing, and the warmth of the sun went with them, and the weight of her above him dissolved.
He reached for her. Instinctively. Stupidly. But she sifted through his fingers like smoke.
Loki opened his eyes to the white ceiling of his bedroom and lay still for several seconds, listening to the hum of the air conditioning and the sound of his own pulse.
His erection fought the cool air as if still reaching for Val as well.
He blew out a breath and groaned, throwing his hands over his face. That had not gone as expected… Now he was even more pent up.