by Evie Kent
She withstood me, much to my surprise.
And it shouldn’t have.
This was a firebird who had made a god bleed twice; she could endure, and she did so beautifully. One hand still on the wall, Nora ground back, rocking to meet my hips, knees spread wide for balance. Yes, she moaned and whimpered, cried out incoherently, tried in vain to pry my fingers from her hip, but she took, too, her body proving just as greedy as mine. Just as hungry.
Her hand shot back, swiping at my chest with nails that had proven their worth, their fury still seared up my neck. Teeth gritted, I twisted out of reach and pounded hard, driving her into the bed to a symphony of breathy groans and cries.
You make me drink, because I fucking hate you.
Clear as day, her voice rattled around my skull like she had said it again, spat it out at me with all her drunk venom. Why had it stung so much before? Annoyance flared in my chest—both at myself for letting a human’s emotions affect me, then at her for being so fucking influential without even realizing it. She had such power over me, this human, my consort, my plaything.
None of them had ever had power over me before. None of them had ever made me work, made me feel. She was like fucking air in the way I needed her, and that drove me mad.
“Tell me again,” I urged, tone cruel, hips fierce as they slammed against her over and over. “Tell me how you hate me. Go on, firebird. Do it. Say it again.”
Nora buried her face in the blankets, one arm thrown protectively over her head, the other still planted to ensure she didn’t knock into the wall with every vicious thrust.
“Do it.” Why did it matter? What did I, a god, blood brother of Odin, father of monsters, have to prove here? That she—this orphan, this dancer, this slip of a girl—had no real influence over me? Pathetic. Always so pathetic. I twined my fingers through her hair, then steered her upright so she had to prop herself up on her elbows, gentler with her black waves than I was with the rest of her body.
“I h-hate you,” she gritted out, her words punctuated with every thrust. My smile turned vicious, my heart bitter, and I fucked her harder.
“You want to know one of my secrets?” I slipped my arm around her chest and yanked her to me, slowing briefly from ravenous to concentrated, grinding against her ass, toying with her sensitive little clit, my mouth to her ear. Nora blinked hurriedly, her cheeks a deep plum, her nipples harder than diamonds, bouncing—trembling—with every ragged breath. My tongue flicked at her earlobe, a wretched secret dangling from its tip—something I had never told anyone. Not my wives. Not my sons. Not my blood brother. “I hate me, too.”
With every fiber of my being, I despised all that I was, all that I had done, all that had transpired by my design. Death, destruction, heartbreak, loneliness. Everything. All your fucking fault, Laufeyjarson.
I let her go, nudged her back down to the bed with a hand between her shoulder blades, then resumed my previous pace. Usually when I fucked them, I could forget; Nora brought it all to the surface somehow, and a sick part of me admired that about her. Lesser men would have pounded into her as a punishment, ravaged her body to put her in her place, but it wasn’t her fault.
She didn’t realize the sway she had over me…
What a sharp tongue and an untamable spirit did to me.
So I fucked her with her pleasure in mind, eventually hoisting her hips to access her clit again, grinding into her until she shattered in my arms. She came with another shriek, breathier this time, strained, fisting at the blankets and bucking against me like a wild thing. Her body danced around my cock, her inner walls shuddering through a climax that made her curse under her breath, made her spit fire and swing at me.
On the brink myself, I eased out of her, intent on switching positions so that I could look into her eyes for the next release.
Only out of nowhere, as soon as we disconnected, she rolled off the bed and blitzed out of the room with a speed that surprised me.
Then thrilled me.
Did she really think she could bed a god for, what, fifteen minutes—and then it would be over?
That I would only make her shriek twice tonight in unearthly pleasure?
Smirking, I clambered off the bed, self-loathing temporarily forgotten, and set off to reclaim my prize.
15
Nora
I had no idea sex could feel like that.
So… So…
Good.
Phenomenal.
Mind-blowing.
Just… fan-fucking-tastic.
It never had before, and it probably never would again; Loki had ruined me for mortal men, and that just made everything worse.
Because my body desperately wanted to get back in that bed with him, let him do whatever he wanted to me so long as it always felt like that. But my head screamed, Girl, get the fuck out while you can. And my heart…
My heart was a disaster, drunk on whiskey and Loki, a riddle beyond understanding in my current state.
No time to think.
Just run.
He knew the insides of this hellhole better than me, but if I could just evade him long enough, maybe the message would sink in. What that message was—unclear. I want you, but I hate you and everything you stand for, but please just do that thing with your hips and fingers again—
Ugh. With a shaky hand to my forehead, I stumbled down the calendar corridor, away from the bedroom, past the bathroom. Although my feet were still way less coordinated than I was used to, my mind had cleared up a little—from the whiskey, at least. Coherent thoughts and sentences and logic trickled through the drunk fog, but everything else was a mess. I was a mess—
A familiar silhouette loomed at the end of the tunnel, blocking the light, naked and proud, his face cast in shadows. I yelped; Loki could move swift and silent as a shadow, but never like this. Staggering to a halt, I stumbled back around, but then there he was again, a darker outline than the black around him, backlit by the lights from the main foyer. Behind me. Two of him. One had to be fake, right?
I whirled around, struck by a sudden wave of dizziness, and planted a hand on the wall to steady myself. The one guarding the door to the waterfall and lake—he couldn’t be real. Or…?
“Fucking hell, you goddamn prick,” I growled, lunging toward the shadowy version of the god who had just pounded me through another one of the best orgasms of my life. Then stopping. Then spinning back and staggering toward the other. One real. One fake. One had to be—
For the first time all month, light blasted through the calendar corridor. My heart leapt into my throat at the onslaught of bright white, and while it threw me off-balance, I craned my head up, mouth hanging open at the dozens of strings stretched taut across the ceiling, dotted with tiny bulbs like starlight.
Then…
“Oh my god…” I pressed a hand to my mouth, eyes watering. There, engraved in the walls, were countless little tick marks, deep notches that had to stand for all the days he had been stuck inside this place. Thousands of them, everywhere, with no order, no strike-through at five—all around me. On both walls. On the ceiling behind the strings of light. At the foot of the steps by the main hall, he had started slicing into the floor, a good dozen stretching toward the bedroom—toward the real Loki’s feet.
I’d always thought the calendar corridor was such a fucking dumb name…
Now I got it.
And it broke my stupid drunk heart.
Swallowing hard, I forced my stiff legs to move a few paces closer to the end of the corridor, the constant crash of the waterfall growing louder, until an arm like steel snaked around my waist and yanked me back. I collided with a wall of muscle, lightly perspired, the heat of sex rising off him and bringing with it a distinctly masculine odor that made my mouth water. This time, I went without a fuss, too wrapped up in the burst of light and the depressing number of carved lines that I just couldn’t…
Like a fist to the gut, it took the breath right out of me. Eight centuries was
so hard to conceptualize—until now. Until it was just there, visual as hell, a reminder that he had been a caged animal for a very, very long time.
Taking me firmly by the arms, Loki yanked me around and steered me into the wall, my back and shoulders protesting the too-solid surface as soon as we touched. Closing in, towering over me, it was easier to really take him in. Effort kissed his pink cheeks, his shiny forehead, and he smelled like the air right before the sky broke and battered the earth with a storm—the storm to end all storms, the kind that reminded us nature would always win. It wasn’t a scent I could put a name to, but more of a feeling, his eyes dark and heavy, fixed so wholly on mine that I just wanted to sink to the floor and curl up in a ball.
But at the same time, I never wanted him to stop looking at me like that, like I was the center of his whole fucking universe—like there was nobody else but me. No one had ever looked at me like that, intense, totally one hundred percent present, as if they weren’t thinking of what they needed to make for breakfast tomorrow, or when to pick up groceries, or did they need a haircut.
Both scenarios, the feared and the desired, made me melt.
Angry red lines stretched up his neck, across his chest, and he let me touch them tentatively, just a whisper over his skin. I’d done that. I’d hurt him again, marked him up. No golden blood this time, but I wasn’t completely powerless—just like he wasn’t totally indestructible.
When he’d had enough of my cautious exploration, Loki ducked down and hoisted me up, settling between my thighs. Without a word, eyes fixated on my swollen lips now, he speared me with his cock, filled me with one swift, brutal thrust that made my eyes roll back into my head. Exhaling a stuttering breath, I endured the spark of pleasure and the subtle dart of pain. My arm wove around his neck like it had a mind of its own, and while lifted up, I could reach the ceiling, thread my hand through the light strings, brace myself for what I knew would be a hell of a ride.
Only he started slow this time, pumping in and out, stretching me with a shaft I thought I’d never be able to take. Far bigger than I was used to—a few inches above average, and I let him in, clenched around him, gingerly rocked my hips back and forth to chase the delightful tickle in my core.
The tenderness didn’t last; I expected nothing less after what had happened in the bedroom. Loki was a savage lover, working us both up to a frenzied pace that had him pounding me into the wall, his smiling mouth sucking and nibbling and licking at my neck and shoulders. He fucked hard. He fucked fast. He hit all the right spots without guidance…
Devlin had never been able to manage this pace, this frantic rhythm that made my pussy sing like a world-class soprano. He always fizzled out just before I could really get going, whereas tonight, on the crest of my third orgasm, Loki showed no signs of slowing.
Just one of the many, many differences between a man and a god, apparently.
Try as I might, I couldn’t rock my hips up to meet him anymore, couldn’t twist and wriggle the way I usually did to drive my own pleasure; the ferocity of his body was impossible to match. I kept my arm around his neck instead, clinging to him for dear life, my fingers working into his surprisingly soft hair. Every thrust of his hips caught my clit, the collision setting off little sparks of sharp pleasure inside, like flint crashing together to start a fire. Slowly, darkness crept into the edges of my vision, everything around us fading away until it was just Loki and me, the violence of our union, the symphony of my cries and his harsh groans echoing through the corridor, filling this whole fucking mountain…
“Oh, fuck!” My third climax detonated like a nuclear bomb, slamming into me and exploding through my every cell. The shock waves plumed up and out, bringing with them a delicious heat that flared brightest in my chest and my cheeks. Wildfire scorched under my skin, spreading fast and furious, the pleasure pinwheeling around inside different than the last two orgasms—sharper, more poignant. Maybe I was just sobering up, or maybe every climax with a god was like a fucking snowflake.
This one hit the hardest, but like all impossible highs, it was followed by a swift and vicious low. Pain crept into my hips, my lower back, my thighs. The world around us sparked, all of it in such finite detail that I squinted. Too bright. Too much. Sure, it was grey and black and white, but even that was overwhelming for me.
Sadness struck like a dagger to the heart, sorrow bursting the dams inside—flooding through me, extinguishing every last ember. As Loki dragged a sharp openmouthed kiss up my neck, I shuddered and snapped my lips shut, muffling a sob.
Was this what alcohol did to you? Fucked with your emotions, amplified everything you didn’t want to feel? Because, hot damn, I had enough sadness and sorrow in my day-to-day existence—I didn’t need a whole tidal wave of it now out of nowhere.
Warmth cut down my cheeks, and as Loki’s merciless pace tapered to a slow grind, I realized I was crying. A lot. He straightened, his cheeks dark, his forehead shiny, his eyes alive—and he frowned when the sorrow exploded out my mouth in a stuttering wail. Humiliated, I wiped at my cheeks, still chasing my breath, a dull ache rising between my thighs.
“Is this it?” I hiccupped and smeared my nose across my forearm, a total disaster, the furthest thing from sexy as I blubbered—as panic closed an icy fist around my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter with every ragged breath. “Are you done with me now?”
For the first time all month, Loki’s whole expression softened. No cruelty. No sneer. No rage. He brushed my hands aside, effortlessly steadying my sagging frame to the wall with his body, and then wiped at my cheeks. Gently. Tender touches, featherlight and thoughtful. As his breath warmed my lips, his forehead found mine, and he cupped my chin, holding it for a moment before kissing the tip of my nose.
Then he laughed.
Kissed me deeply, sharply, in a way that made my toes curl and my breath catch. Made those two idiot butterflies in my chest dance.
And as Loki carried me back to the bedroom without a word, I figured that was answer enough.
16
Nora
Oh.
Oh shit.
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohfuck.
Mouth sweats. So many mouth sweats.
I peeled my eyes open, only to be met with a throbbing headache and a gut two seconds away from emptying everything I’d ever eaten right onto the bed. It certainly didn’t help that Loki’s two-ton arm had, at some point, flung itself over my waist while we slept. The god snored on softly behind me as a cold sweat rippled across my skin from head to toe.
Swallowing hard, I yanked the covers off, shoved his arm away, and pushed upright—only for the room to spin. Who would have thought a pitch-black room could spin, but somehow I saw it bleeding to the right, my head topsy-turvy again. I was just sober as hell this time. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.
Sweaty, shaky, weak, I scrambled out of bed, grasping into the dark, but my legs gave way as soon as I was on my own two feet. Knees buckled. Thighs screamed. I collapsed to the floor with a soundless wail, pain knotted in every muscle. Reaching back with a trembling hand, I gripped the wood bedframe in an attempt to find my footing.
We’d had a lot of sex in this room over the last however many hours, and it didn’t surprise me one fucking bit that I couldn’t stand in the aftermath. Not at all. Loki’s snore snagged in his throat, and the linens rustled as he rolled in my absence. The guy was insatiable; no way the women who gave it up on night one lasted longer than a week in here without literally falling apart.
And the whiskey was just insult to injury. Oh. I swallowed down a surge of bile, and as I struggled to stand, the next wave was actual vomit. Oh fuck me.
Twelve-hour rehearsals kicked the shit out of dancers. We spent a lot of our free time icing injuries or soaking in a hot bath to calm our raging muscles—and that was with our bodies primed for that kind of abuse. Show season was a nightmare, and you came out of it exhausted and exhilarated, the thrill of performing for a paying crowd more than enough to carry y
ou through the physical toll.
But I’d never felt like this.
As I limped out of the bedroom and took a sharp right down the corridor to the bathroom, I felt like I’d been hit by a fucking bus. Everything hurt. My head. My stomach. My poor, battered pussy. Thighs, arms, calves. All of it ached, burned, throbbed—I couldn’t even stand upright or I’d burst into tears.
Somehow, I made it to the toilet, collapsing onto it and shoving up the lid just in time for me to hurl my guts out. Never had a hangover before—not from alcohol, anyway. Grief, rehearsal, having your heart torn in two by the man you thought you loved and your supposed best friend: the feelings of dealing with all that bullshit combined simulated what I had imagined a liquor hangover might feel like. This was worse. So. Much. Worse.
Hugging the porcelain bowl, I puked until it was just dry heaving nothingness, my abdominals working overtime to squeeze out every last drop of poison. Never again. Never again. As I slumped against the wall, a cruel little voice at the back of my mind sneered that Mom and Dad would have been so disappointed in me for breaking my vow…
But my parents had been cool as fuck.
They would have understood—the circumstances I found myself in, the overwhelming sadness that had followed me around since Opa died…
I was allowed to mess up. Everyone I loved had always taught me mistakes happened. Acknowledge them, learn from them, grow as a person.
If I survived the night, I guess I’d have to grow as a person. Ugh. Like I had the energy or the emotional capacity for that.
I sat there for ages, stuck between the toilet and the wall, naked and hurting and dry heaving. By the time it finally ended, exhaustion had set in. I needed about a gallon of water to feel even remotely human again, and then a full year of sleep. After rinsing my mouth in the sink and splashing some cold water on my face, I shuffled and whimpered my way to the main hall an inch at a time. Full granny posture engaged, my shoulders rounded, my arms curled into my chest—the slightest wobble of my breasts with each step fucking hurt.