Chapter 11
Tonight was the best night of her life.
Ama swung the bowling ball and shuffled forward in her super cool rental shoes, releasing the ball down the long lane leading to the ten pins teasing her. The ball veered straight into the gutter and continued its solitary path.
“Woo!” She threw her arms in the air and twirled before skipping back to the group and falling into Arkyn’s awaiting arms.
“I think you just might have a perfect game, Ama.” Lucia smiled as she pulled her own ball from the return area.
Ivar tapped Lucia on the bottom for good luck. “Too bad we’re not bowling for beer tonight. I’d be in heaven.”
“You’d be drunk.” Eydís pointed at him with her own beer bottle.
Ulrik shrugged. “Toe-may-tow, toe-mah-tow.”
The scoreboard showed a straight line of zeros extending from Ama’s name, proving YouTube tutorials weren’t always dependable. But that didn’t matter. She was surrounded by people who didn’t look at her funny or ignore her, and the handsomest one of the group held her against his chest like she was something precious.
She didn’t need beer or bowling; she was already in heaven.
The best part of the whole night was the blacklight glow of the stains on Arkyn’s pants. Stains she’d accidentally put there during their ride or die sexy time in his truck on the way here.
She should have held back her desires and waited until after the date instead of practically attacking him while he tried to drive. Her mother had always warned Ama against being too open and forward with her feelings, especially the sexual ones, not that she’d ever before experienced those with even half the intensity Arkyn inspired.
Honestly, she’d never been good at hiding… anything. Pretending was painful, like trying to hold in a sneeze so the pressure exploded in her throat instead and exited as a hiccup-burp yet still left her nose runny and her eyes watery. She’d realized long ago that her life was actually easier if she just stayed her awkward, spastic, weird self.
It was also lonelier. Which might explain the surge of happiness now that she’d met Arkyn and his family. For the first time in her life, she was grounded, settled. Comfortable. At ease with herself and those around her as if this was where she was meant to be. Her mother would admonish her for such fanciful thoughts, especially considering this was her first date. But Ama couldn’t pretend.
Fingers threaded through her hair and warm lips brushed against her temple. “Watcha thinking about?”
She turned to look at Arkyn. “Astra’s comfy in her front-row seat.”
He glanced at the fluffy little face sticking out of his shirt pocket, watching the world through wise eyes. “Yeah she is. But that’s not what you were think about.”
Ama nibbled her lips and his lifted into a sly smile. His voice dipped to a whisper meant for her ears only. “You’re thinking about what we did in the truck, aren’t you?”
Desire incinerated her insides, as if she needed a larger hollowed-out area to accommodate him. She swallowed, then nodded.
He smiled. “Me too.”
“Is that a good thing or bad?” Please say it’s a good thing.
He looked confused as he gently swiped his thumb across her cheekbone. “If it was a bad thing, I’d have ended the date already.”
“Believe him, Ama.” Ulrik interjected around a mouthful of pizza. “He’s done it before.”
The truth dawned on her. “Is that why you wanted to talk Wednesday night?”
Arkyn looked momentarily constipated before nodding. “Yeah… That date was… not one of my smarter decisions. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing to me?” She tangled her fingers in his beard, loving his Easter Egg Hunt aroma. “I’m not the date you ended early.”
Before Arkyn could respond, Ivar jumped in. “Wait, he had a date mere days ago with a woman who wasn’t you, and you’re not jealous?” He swatted Arkyn upside the back of his head. “Marry her, Fífl.”
“That would be a mistake; I’m not marriage material.” Ama laughed as she shook her head. “And why would I be jealous? We hadn’t even had a date yet.”
“True, you were my date to the Drekison cookout.” Eydís bragged as she sipped her beer.
Arkyn squeezed Ama’s thigh through the thin fabric of her pants. “I guess I’m just accustomed to women being a little more…”
“…Greedy?”
“…Bitchy?”
“…Batshit crazy?”
“…Willing to throw their own mother under a bus if it meant you might look at them?”
“Like I said, batshit crazy.”
The others offered a chorus of suggestions before Arkyn could finish his sentence. He patiently waited for the unsolicited interjections to dwindle, his hand warm and unmoving on Ama’s thigh and his soft smile for her alone. “I was going to say a little more like a lioness on the hunt.”
She giggled at his reference to their previous conversation, then wiggled her fingers to show her short, non-claw fingernails.
“Ama, how about you and I… end this bowling date early?” One side of his beautiful lips tugged upward in a meaningful smile that seared her lungs. The deep purr of his voice stoked the embers of her arousal still smoldering beneath the ashes of the desire he’d fanned to an inferno in the truck, sated, and cooled yet not doused completely. The others objected to the suggestion, but Ama paid them no mind, her focus on the gorgeous Thor who was already unlacing her bowling shoes so they could go somewhere and—she nibbled her lips at the hope—further explore the explosive passion that simmered between them.
Their good-byes and the drive to her apartment were a blur among heated touches and promising glances. She stayed on her side of the truck rather than distract him again, every nerve a livewire. They spoke words to each other, but she forgot them as soon as they were said, too focused on the sensation of emerging. Of growing, connecting… inhaling and exhaling as if from a slumber so lengthy one had forgotten what air smelled like and how its weight felt in the lungs.
Something deep inside her was waking up. Was it her own sexual awareness? Hopefully, because by the time they entered her apartment, the need pulsing in her was too potent to contemplate much else.
They stood in her living room, illuminated only by the light of the night sky streaming through her windows. She’d left her shades up and her windows open for fresh air. Now, a cool waft of spring evening threaded through the warm room, sultry with the perfume of the blossoming Bradford pear trees. She opened the door leading to her tiny balcony, reveling in the fragrant cool air kissing her sensitized skin, the stillness of the evening. Not a bird chirped nor a car passed, as if all the cosmos held its breath in anticipation of their coupling.
She had such fanciful thoughts sometimes. She turned to share them, but all that came out was the one word her universe orbited. “Arkyn.”
Her body glitched. He had removed his shirt to build a nest on her couch for Astra, miles of pale muscles mapping his back and Ama’s tongue wanted to meander the trails. When he turned to face her, she lost her breath. His bare torso was stacked with even more rippling muscles. She’d never considered herself a sucker for an amazing physique, but the gods had sculpted Arkyn with true inspiration. Broad shoulders dipped to a narrow waist, leaving vast amounts of skin for her to explore, including the most notable part: the large tree tattoo on his left pectoral, its branches unfurling across his shoulder and its roots stretching deep down to nearly the bottom of his ribcage.
In a daze, she traced the tattoo with a fingertip. She’d longed all her life to have roots. Yes, she had a family that cared about her… in their own way. But she’d always felt more like an invasive species than a part of those strong branches. Her connection to her parents and sibling had never seemed very solid, as if her roots were independent of theirs and grew in shifting, drifting sand instead of rich, stable earth. Arkyn bore the symbol of that which she’d desired for her entire existence. Was there a meaning behind it? What did that image symbolize for him?
“Why did you choose a tree tattoo?” She tried for seductive, but her voice came out breathy and desperate instead.
He clasped her hand in his and pressed it firmly against his tattoo. His muscles bunched beneath her fingers as she breathed in his autumn harvest scent.
“Obviously, it represents family. Our ancestry and our future growth.” His low whisper was a hypnotic wind through spreading branches. “But more importantly, it represents Yggdrasil. The Great Tree of Life that holds the nine realms and connects the universe. It represents power and wisdom and the grace of the gods.”
Arkyn spoke as if he paid homage to his Nordic heritage by inking his body thus. But Ama knew better: his tattoo represented him as an individual, selected not because of hubris or hope, but because he’d been guided thus by a wiser entity. He might laugh if she said this. So she merely smiled at him. “How many women have invited you to show them your thick trunk?”
Laughter burst from his throat and his blush was evident even in the dark room. “Too many.”
Then he palmed her face, his humor morphing into an intensity she felt to her toes. “Ama, I don’t want to talk about tattoos or other women. I just want you in my arms and on my tongue.”
“Bacon—” her brain blinked offline as his mouth descended on hers, pulling the oxygen from her cells and replacing it with his own essence. His tongue danced against hers, his hands cupped and caressed her small curves. His skin beneath her fingers was silk-covered stone with soft moss patches of hair beneath her fingertips. He undressed her with all the care and reverence one might give a delicate glass sculpture. Except she wasn’t delicate and she wasn’t glass; she was a raging, panting inferno. Every cell in her body, particularly the ones near his mouth and hands, screamed for him. For more.
She couldn’t kiss him hard and fast and deep enough. She couldn’t touch enough of him to satiate her hands. When his lips and tongue slipped between her thighs, she melted into the carpet of her living room, his strong hands bracing her and holding her so she didn’t evaporate. She trembled and moaned and clutched at him like an anchor in a turbulent ocean even as he was the one churning the tempest of her rising pleasure. She rode the tidal crest of her release and the searing detonations of her body.
And he did the same.
“Odin’s beard, you’re amazing.” He panted the words in her ear, but she felt them in her soul. His powerful body grounded her as she floated, his tongue sliding along hers in kisses sweet as nectar and?—
“Is that me I’m tasting?” She blinked, trying to focus on the man who had just shattered her world and pieced it back together. But she couldn’t. Because something large and insistent pressed against her core.
Arkyn trembled, holding the bulk of his weight on his forearms, gazing at her with a question in his eyes. “Ama?—”
“I want it, Arkyn.” She cupped his face and wrapped her legs around his hips. Whatever he was offering, as much or as little of himself as he wanted to give—because everyone pulled away from her eventually—she would gladly accept because being with him was the most perfect, complete alignment of her universe. “I will never not want what you gift me.”
He groaned and his eyelids fluttered closed, as if he was the one surrendering to the promise of utter bliss. “Bacon.”
Then he eased into her, stretching and filling her, completing her on a molecular level she had no idea was possible. As he thrust and retreated, caressed and kissed her, setting an undulating rhythm that was brand new and yet achingly familiar, her mind scattered into millions of tiny points of distant light.
She floated, rocking, flying through a sparkling cosmos. Nebulous gases and crystalized particles swirled around her as if summoned, coalescing into form. Light grew until it burned her eyes and warmed her flesh. She twirled, rotating, orbiting, swirling in a giant, glittering mass of matter and space and light and life. Pleasure condensed where her body surrounded Arkyn’s, growing in power and intensity until it detonated in a brilliant burst of blinding white light and shimmering atoms, her very soul arching and crying out in ecstasy.
Arkyn kissed her tenderly as her mind drifted back to her living room. His panting breaths matched hers, his body also slick with sweat and effort as he held her once again like she was delicate glass. When her eyes managed to flutter open and focus on his handsome face, he huffed a small laugh. “I think we gave the neighbors a bit of a concert.”
Her windows and door were open. Anyone passing would have heard them make love. They’d look at her funny tomorrow. Well, more funny. She couldn’t bring herself a moment’s regret or concern. Not when this wonderful man lazed his fingertips along her naked, exhausted body. He might be used to the energy sex required, but she wasn’t. Sleep quickly overtook her, like night pulls a blanket over the day.
Ama kissed him once more as her eyelids dipped to darkness. “I love you.”