He hammered hard and fast, skin slapping against skin, while he pressed on her windpipe just enough to further fuzz her thoughts. The frantic need behind it all pushed her into another orgasm. She was lost in the clouds when he peaked, spilling inside her.
He let her stay in the pleasant buzz, his touch turning tender as they slowed to a stop.
This was all so perfect. It made a whisper of terror linger in the back of her head and heart. Not of what they’d done—that was incredible and so worth the wait—but of how far inside her heart Starkad was.
She’d trusted him for years, but this was a whole new level of close. One they didn’t even have in her first life. She didn’t know how to define it, but it scared the fuck out of her.
Chapter Seventeen
Kirby hovered in a pleasant haze of post-coital bliss. Starkad was gentle after the sex, helping her clean up and taking care of her, the way he always had. It didn’t matter that they were in her room; he gave her his shirt, to make up for ripping hers.
It smelled like him and soothed her soul further. She pulled his arms tighter around herself as they sat on the bed. If she went to sleep, would this all vanish when she woke up?
He promised it wouldn’t.
“I think the pizza got cold.” His chest rumbled against her back when he spoke.
She smiled. “I told you it would. Why did you bring it?”
“I wanted to hang out. To spend time with you without the walls up.”
If only a bit of rough sex and some verbal foreplay were as effective as a wrecking ball. “The walls are still there.”
“Then let’s start building some ladders over them.”
Cheesy line. She liked it. “I used to do this with Brit—order takeout in the hotel, be silly, screw.” And just like that, she’d jumped off a cliff into the awkward territory of bringing up the ex. It didn’t sting the way she’d expect it to.
“I didn’t mean to summon trigger memories.”
She laughed at his wording. Her recovered memories were behind so much of this. “That’s exactly what you meant to do. Maybe not tonight, but you’ve been pushing for that—”
“No, I haven’t.” Starkad’s voice was firm.
True. She’d made an unfair accusation. He’d specifically kept her away from Gwydion for years, to keep her from remembering before she was ready. Correction, before Starkad thought she was ready. But they were moving past that. She leaned back, to rest on his shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about Brit. I have three immortal men vying for my attention, and at least one and a half of you are trying to see this from my perspective.”
“I take it I’m the half?” Starkad asked dryly.
She turned her head to the side, to look at him. “Five eighths. No one’s perfect.”
He rolled his eyes and brushed his lips over hers. “I appreciate the concession.”
“Damn straight, you do.” Everything about this felt so right.
“If you don’t want to get into... her, you pick what you’d like. What’s on your agenda, besides enjoying this finest of cold gourmet pizza?” Starkad managed to reach over to the other bed, to grab the box, without completely displacing her. He straightened again and set the food in front of her.
She was reluctant to leave his embrace behind, but a little eye-contact would do her some good. And make it easier to eat. Her stomach was growling again, now that the intense sex-hunger was sated. “I want to do something we’ve never done before.”
“Oh?”
She knew so little about him. There were the memories of their few times together—who he was in each one, and like he’d said about her, who he was at his core was always the same. He knew so much about her, though.
“Tell me a story about your life. Happy. Sad. Anything.” Just show me you’ve done more than pine for me for more than a thousand years.
“Ah.”
Kirby was going to smack him if he kept doing that. Rather than launching into another tirade to fill the silence, she grabbed a slice of pizza and took a huge bite. It was pretty good, even at room temperature.
She nudged the box toward him with her knee, and finished off the first slice in record time. Two bouts of marathon sex broken up by fights with a goddess and two exes made her hungry. She took the second piece more slowly, plucking off a few pieces of pepperoni to eat by themselves.
“Would you like to know why you never found me when you were in Kuwait? After?” A hint of somberness mingled with his light tone.
It snagged Kirby’s attention. “I would.” She, Gwydion, and Min had tried to reach him back then. It wasn’t as easy as dropping Starkad an email or text, but Min and Gwydion had connections, and not a single one could point them in a direction.
“I’d decided not to look anymore.” Starkad’s words were like a knife to the heart.
So much for wanting to hear he hadn’t been obsessing.
STARKAD SAW KIRBY’S hurt. Then again, he almost always did. He was glad he’d come here. There was going to be a lot of pain involved, but it felt good to finally move past the secrets. “The thing is ignoring their calls was devouring me. I couldn’t forget you. I was trying. But I had to know, if I walked back into your life, I wouldn’t lose you again.”
“I was kind of hoping for a story about how the all-consuming love waned for a little bit.” She was smiling again, though.
Worth it. “Okay... 1692.”
“Oddly specific.”
And he remembered every detail of that time of his existence. “To catch you up, from when you died the first time—Odin destroyed Ruby, and I lost my shit. I fought in every conflict I could find, hoping to discover that I wasn’t actually immortal after all.”
“I can’t imagine what that’s like,” Kirby said sarcastically.
He’d called her reckless and self-destructive so many times, but he’d been there too. The feeling had faded enough with time that hindsight let him see his actions weren’t the smartest, but she was still coming out the other side of being stuck in the middle.
“I either wanted vengeance or to be destroyed, finding it,” he said.
“I feel like someone just walked over a dozen of my graves.” Kirby shivered and rubbed her arms.
Starkad started in on a piece of pizza, using it as an excuse to collect his thoughts. “Odin said you’d be reborn again and again, but what were the odds I’d be the one to find you? I only had his vague curse to go on. Would you be mortal? Norse? What would you look like? I had no idea his less-than-detailed damning would yield such specific results. I swore I saw you during the Battle of the Trees, but I couldn’t find you again. I figured you were either dead again, or a ghost, taunting me by keeping me safe.”
“The truth isn’t nearly so noble,” Kirby said.
The Battle of the Trees was when she met Gwydion for the first time, and that war was the stuff of legends. “It didn’t matter how many battles I fought. How many should-be-fatal wounds I suffered. I was still here, and you weren’t.”
“Wow.”
This was harder to fall back into than he thought. None of these thoughts occurred to him when he was watching Kirby struggle after he pulled her out of TOM. Now the parallels between how he dealt with losing her and how she dealt with Brit’s betrayal were painfully clear. “You have drinks in the fridge?”
“Always do.”
Starkad made his way to the mini fridge tucked under the counter. “Water or cola?”
“Water.”
He grabbed himself a cola and a water for her. “Heads-up.” He tossed her the bottle.
She snagged it out of the air without fumbling.
He cranked the lid off his drink and downed half of it in a single gulp. The delay didn’t help him assemble his thoughts. He leaned back against the counter. “It all blurred together as science and art advanced, and suddenly no one wanted a crazed warrior fighting with them. The gods were stories, and a berserker... I was just a word. There were no others like me left. Pe
ople wanted knights and meat shields. I was tired. Looking for a new purpose. And I was friends with a wonderful woman in Rome. She didn’t care that I was a little... uncivilized. And she was nothing like you.”
Kirby frowned.
“Don’t be hurt.” He returned to the bed and sat next to Kirby, his leg pressed into hers. “I thought I wanted docile and timid. Someone to tame and domesticate me. She and I talked about marriage. I told myself she was what I needed, to reset my place in the world. She had money and prestige. Introduced me to so many people in high society.”
“Sounds positively... lovely?” Her doubt was mild, compared to what his had been at the time.
“I was withering from the inside out. And I thought I should be. That was what normal people did. Until one night...” The centuries after Ruby’s death were a giant blob of battles, but that party in Rome was vibrant. The colors. The scents. The flavors. Her familiar laugh.
“It was a party for her father’s associates. Some of the gods had adapted. Blended in. They moved through society like anyone else. One of them was there. His Italian was horrible. Kept slipping into Celtic. He captivated the room with his jokes and stories. People migrated to him.” He looked at Kirby. The same face in every life. The same voice. But never quite the same woman. I was more interested in the stunning woman on his arm.”
She gasped. Her eyes were wide. “That was... Oh geez.”
Starkad nodded. “At the time, I told myself there was no way it was you. She was another ghost, haunting me for falling for someone else. Mary Margaret and I went home. I tried to forget about you.” He’d fought so hard to shove the evening to the back of his mind. To force it to blur with rest of his past. “The longer I thought about it, the more I convinced myself it was you. The nagging grew over days and then weeks.”
“I didn’t know who I was.” Kirby picked at the blanket. “I had an amazing Welsh boyfriend, who doted on me and worshiped me. Then I saw you at that party, and everything started to fall apart in my head. He was sympathetic. Had a doctor look at me. But they didn’t know what was wrong. Why I was hearing things. Seeing things. Had horrible headaches. Gwydion wanted to take me out of Rome before someone decided I was possessed. He was going to take me to a specialist.” Pain rang in her words. “I died—was killed—on that trip.”
Starkad would find that out later. “I reached a point where I couldn’t think about anything but that party. I told Mary Margaret that she deserved someone who would love her as much as she loved me, and I left to find you. By the time I caught up to Gwydion, you were gone. He told me he’d had another life with you and introduced me to Min. We put the pieces together.”
“And hello, eternal search for a pretty blonde.” Kirby’s voice cracked.
Starkad rested a hand on her thigh. “It wasn’t like it had been before, but finding you again did change my perspective. It proved you were out there, and that I hadn’t forgotten about you, the way I hoped.”
She leaned against his arm, her head on his shoulder. “I thought tonight was going to be death number thirteen. When Hel pinned me to the wall... I was certain she was going to kill me. No. She just wanted to torture me a little. Cut my wounds open. Rub salt in them. Tell me I should have killed Mark. That she was waiting for me to do exactly that at the academy.”
“She would have punished you for it. They would have made you suffer regardless.” Because that was what Starkad hadn’t seen. One of his bigger mistakes. If Hel and Loki either broke Kirby or made her theirs, she wouldn’t kill Hel, the way the prophecies said.
“But she has a point.”
“That’s wouldn’t be you, though. You put yourself on the line for others. It’s never been about saving yourself.”
She relaxed against him. “I brought you back for selfish reasons.”
“I thought you did it for me.”
“I did it for us. I couldn’t imagine life without you,” Kirby said.
“And now we each understand how the other feels.” Starkad sighed. “It only took us a thousand years to get back to this point.”
She laughed dryly. “That’s nothing, in the span of eternity.”
But having her here was everything. And he couldn’t lose it—her—again.
Chapter Eighteen
The longer Brit sat in bed, huddled under the blankets and letting the night play on a loop in her head, the more her muscles tightened and protested.
She wasn’t falling asleep anytime soon. If The Hooded Spirits knew where to send her, who else could find her here? Did she need to move hotels? Was Starkad going to send someone after her, for breaking her promise?
It wouldn’t be Kirby, so it didn’t matter, on so many levels.
And if ancient gods could find and send her anywhere, was there a point in hiding?
She wouldn’t be this stressed if Starkad had agreed to her terms. She wouldn’t be this stressed if Mark were still here.
Her gut revolted. She’d be an entirely different kind of stressed. Just because his presence was familiar and kept her from being alone, didn’t mean it was something to miss.
Brit didn’t like this isolation, though. The reality jarred her in a way she didn’t want to ponder. Living in the dorms, in the officer apartments, she’d always been surrounded by people who had her back.
Why did Starkad turn her down? She had good intel to share. She’d provided him with reliable information for years, and that asshole had the nerve to tell her he didn’t want her help. He had the balls to tell her she was selfish. He was as bad as Kirby had been on the plane, refusing to accept Brit’s apology or give her any closure at all.
Brit had done so much for them. Even before she discovered Kirby was still alive. They owed her.
And Starkad paid. Cash and a new life. Just like you asked.
She winced at the internal argument.
I helped them to help me. To get me out of that place. To save my ass.
Sure, that was part of her goal, but she could have left in other ways. Instead, she chose to right the wrongs she’d been trained into.
I’m not that selfless. I was eliminating those they might send after me.
No. They didn’t send TOMs after TOMs.
They let Mark and I stay to eliminate Kirby. Would they really tell me if that was standard operating procedure?
Yes. Because Brit would be the one doing the hunting. She’d been their best sniper.
Besides Kirby.
Wrong. Brit shoved back on the argument with conviction. She might be doubting a lot of things, but even Kirby knew Brit was the best sniper TOM had.
Why wasn’t that enough? Why wasn’t I enough?
The voice in her head wasn’t hers anymore; it was Kirby’s. Great. Now Brit was having imaginary arguments with the woman who didn’t love her or want anything to do with her.
Because you betrayed me.
This was worse than talking to herself. Brit threw the blankets off, suddenly too warm and constricted. The world was closing in around her, squeezing the air from her lungs and gripping her mind in an ever-tightening fist.
Did you see me tonight? So happy on his arm? You and I used to have that.
Brit definitely didn’t like this Kirby-voice, living in her head.
Before you picked a little extra security over me. Over us.
It was more than extra security. Mark had tortured Brit. Bullied her. Raped her.
And we would have stopped him together. You just had to say something.
“You never did,” Brit screamed in the empty room. “You left me alone.”
Someone hammered on a shared wall, jarring her. Why was she so hot? She needed to get out of these clothes, but she didn’t want to. They were comfort and safety. No one else gave her that. She had to find it herself.
She stumbled into the bathroom, humming loudly in her head, to drown out Kirby’s voice, and cranked the water on as cold as it would go. The cold spray hit her face first, numbing her skin but not her though
ts. The water pounded against her body and clothes, soaking into the fleece until the fabric hung heavily on her frame.
Brit let the weight drag her to the floor of the tub. The shower beat against her, steady and predictable, and giving her a beat outside of her head to focus on.
The heat evaporated, replaced with an icy sensation that clawed over her skin. Now she was thinking about Hel again. Fuck. She tried to sob, but she was too tired. Too cold.
She hugged herself more tightly, and clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. No one was coming for her. There was no lust-worthy authority figure to walk into her room and cradle her. No one to strip her out of the wet clothes, then dry and comfort her.
Kirby would have done all that for her, but she was gone. Because Brit was a coward.
Because your own life matters to you more than anyone else’s. Survival instinct, bitch.
Great. The Kirby voice was still here. And if what she said was true, why had Brit let Mark get away with so much?
Because his torment was predictable. Routine. Because you were terrified of it getting worse.
Brit couldn’t be blamed for that.
You can if it means you sold me out. Remember? The woman you swore you loved?
Reality crashed around Brit, and her body shook with the cold. She’d fucked up so bad. There was no way to make this right. She’d been selfish, egotistical...
And she pushed Kirby away, because Kirby was above that kind of bullshit.
Because she’s a perfectly self-righteous—
No. Brit silenced her own mental voice. Kirby had flaws, the same way Brit had good points.
Maybe it’s time to let me off this pedestal.
Maybe.
Brit pushed to her feet on wobbly legs. It might also be time to stop pretending she had any possibility of being effective in this fight. She changed the water to lukewarm, to keep from shocking her system, and stripped out of the soaked clothes.
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