by Evie Kent
“Loki! Loki! Loki!”
Uncapping my water bottle, I sat up straighter and watched as the crowd of five-year-olds abandoned their moms for someone far more interesting. Every Tiny Tot class for the last three years absolutely adored my husband; he was the biggest distraction of all, and no matter where I was in the building, no matter which studio, I always knew when he turned up from the shouting. Little alarm bells, my girls.
He sauntered into the room with his shoes off—having been shouted at about hard-soled shoes countless times in the beginning by all the dancers, he finally knew better—then crouched low to greet the girls. Moms chatting nearby, the class swarmed, and I could barely get a look at him beyond the crop of neatly swept-back dark auburn hair on the top of his head. There was a brief snap of silence, then another explosion of laughter and shrieks, and I shook my head with a sigh.
He was doing something he shouldn’t.
Some trick, with legit magic or just a sleight of hand, that would only endear him further to this generation of tots.
It happened every time, and not once had he ever revealed his trade secrets.
The show only lasted a few minutes this time, before he finally stood and waded through the battalion of tiny ballerinas. He flashed the moms a smile in passing, which had them all whispering behind his back as he carried on toward me. Not that I could blame them: Loki was the subject of all the hot gossip around the studio. They thought I didn’t know, but it was so fucking obvious the way they looked at my husband—the way men and women everywhere looked at him, utterly infatuated with this ridiculously handsome creature. Outside of the cave, he gave off an aura of power and influence, easily charming and beguiling all who came into contact with him.
But he only had eyes for me.
I knew that now.
Me—and the occasional third we let into our bedroom here and there, just to keep things interesting. But he never looked at our casual friends-with-benefits the way he looked at me. Even now, after two weeks in Italy, he stalked across the studio with a hunger in his eyes, like he wanted to devour me whole over and over again despite the fact that I had ballooned up—that my ankles and feet were just big balls of swollen nonsense.
He never had to pretend that he desired me, wanted me, needed me.
And neither did I. Just the sight of him walking toward me now made my heart so fucking happy, made my belly loop at the thought of his mouth on mine. He looked sun-kissed and refreshed, but two weeks on the Amalfi Coast would do that to you. Dressed in a pair of dark slacks and a plaid green crewneck sweater—Loki was partial to Armani these days—with sleeves scrunched up to his elbows, forearms corded with muscle, my man looked good enough to eat.
Two weeks apart, surging with baby hormones, I was fucking starving.
Thankfully, this was his last trip abroad for the remainder of my pregnancy. Loki was and forever would be a wanderer, and after relocating his old consort Lucille from Ravndal to a stunning cottage in Italy, he liked to pop over every so often to make sure she was surviving well on her own.
To all her coastal neighbors, Loki was her rich, breathtaking son who doted endlessly on his aging mother. Her seaside home was a classic for the region and stocked with every modern amenity. Her garden was lush but manageable, with a few olive and lemon trees that were always in season, always bearing fruit. After living out most of her life in that fucking village, both Loki and I agreed that she deserved the best, and he had charmed—bewitched—everyone on her street into taking care of her when we weren’t visiting. That poor woman wanted for nothing, surrounded by her countrymen, reconnecting with lost family, covered financially by a god who gifted her with infinite luck, and it would be like that until she drew her last breath.
“Hello, firebird,” he rumbled, swooping down to kiss my forehead, then my lips. His natural scent—woodsy, earthy, masculine, and intoxicating—was the only one that didn’t make my stomach turn. Lately, every other cologne or perfume had me running for the bathroom. Today, I inhaled deep, eyes fluttering shut as I breathed him in, welcomed him home to my body, and when I opened my eyes again, I found him crouched in front of me, both hands on my bump beneath the flimsy maternity workout top. “Why are you still working?”
“Because I’m fine,” I insisted, this quick back-and-forth a conversation we’d had almost weekly from the day we found out I was pregnant. It hadn’t exactly been planned, but five years in, two officially as husband and wife, it felt right. Loki had wanted me off my feet from the beginning, but I’d stood my ground: absolutely not. No fucking way. I planned to be here, with my dancers, with my business partner Annabelle, until they forced me on leave.
All my protesting didn’t exactly wipe away the skeptical look that flickered across his features every time I said it—I’m fine. He wore it out in the open until I gave him a chastising tap on the nose, which then had him grinning.
“Well, I’m home now—for good.”
My eyebrows shot up, and I let out a scoff. My turn to be skeptical. “Uh-huh. Sure.”
Loki went here, there, and everywhere in a flash. He had always been on the go before Ragnarok, and after eight hundred years of confinement, it didn’t feel right for me to stand in the way of his true nature. He liked to roam, and for the first two years, he had taken me with him. We roamed together: every country, every continent, every uninhabited island. The far reaches of the globe were new to the both of us, and we had explored them together. When it came time to settle, we chose California.
No more bitter cold for us. Not for a while, anyway.
Over the last three years, he occasionally took me on weekend trips to different realms, but those were few and far between. Cool as it was to see other supernatural creatures, to meet elves and dwarves and the few surviving Norse gods scattered around Asgard, I was still painfully human. Immortal, sure, but immune to literally nothing. Loki feared for me out there, and while I knew he went into hard-core protective mode off Earth because he loved me, there was also a sliver of self-preservation to his behavior.
If I died, he died. No coming back for either of us. That was the deal he’d struck to save me from death after I freed him from that curse. After sacrificing for the life and happiness of each other, we faced eternity together.
Which was still a lot to process. The full weight of it hadn’t hit me yet, but it would in maybe a decade or so—when our kid had aged but I hadn’t. When friends and family noted that I looked the same then as I had in my twenties ten years prior. Then we would have to move on. Start fresh. Keep everyone at a distance, if only to maintain our secret. After all, if Loki picked up an enemy or two along the way—and his personality had always suggested he would—it would be a disaster if they learned that killing his very human wife would kill him, too.
But for now, we had settled into relative normalcy. I’d opened a dance studio in Malibu a few miles from our secluded beachfront home with an old ballet friend from New York. Annabelle was sick of the Manhattan scene, unable to move up in her company and looking for change. Loki and I were majority owners of the business, but she was a great partner all the same. Our studio had blossomed since it opened three years ago, and many of our senior dancers joined competitive companies. One even danced in London now, while we had a few championship titles from competitions. There was a waitlist to enroll, and our students enjoyed themselves.
After all the shit I’d gone through before Loki, things were actually… good.
Great.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Especially when Loki upheld his end of the bargain. We hadn’t heard from Helga since we left Norway, but my man did good when he could. He had healed people around the world, always in secret, their memories altered so their sudden recovery was a medical marvel, a miracle, rather than the work of a god. Locally, he worked as a consulting investigator specializing in missing women and children cases. His solve rate was one hundred percent, which was suspicious, but it wasn’t like I could ask him to,
hey, maybe don’t find the little girl stolen by some disgusting pedophile. Maybe don’t split his skull in half when you find them.
No way in hell.
Occasionally he slipped. Loki enjoyed gambling and fucking with humans—and other supernatural creatures—who deserved it. He had a standing relationship with crime families in LA, Chicago, Tokyo, Rome, and New York that I didn’t approve of, but one step at a time. For the most part, he did more good than harm, and that was a vast improvement on his past life.
“Are you done for the day?” he asked, our baby kicking at his hands and then my bladder in the span of about ten seconds. Wincing, I sat up straighter to adjust, while Loki just peered down at my belly like he could see the little gremlin inside.
Loved the kid already, of course, but if he could leave my bladder alone, that would be fucking swell.
“I have one more class—”
“Firebird,” Loki purred, flicking that seductive gaze up at me and tipping his head to the side, “I think you’re done. Annabelle can handle it.”
Ever the charmer, his influence didn’t work on me like it did the others. Maybe because we were bound together, he couldn’t make me do something if he tried.
Well, no. That was a lie. His tongue, fingers, and cock were still all very persuasive tools at his disposal.
“Is that so?” I shot back, eyes narrowed. Of course Annabelle and all our instructors could handle the studio without me, but—
“Hmm, yes, I think so.” My husband sidled closer, skimming his hands down my legs and wrapping around pointe shoes that were really just pretend pointe shoes, all looks and no substance anymore to accommodate for my grumpy feet. “I think you could use a hot bath and a very long massage…”
I sucked in my cheeks to hide a smile, every muscle begging me to concede. Because, yes, I could absolutely do with one of Loki’s massages—best in all the realms. Drumming my fingers on my bump, soothing our shifty boy inside, I pursed my lips and fluttered my lashes, as if really taking the time to consider his offer.
“Yeah,” I admitted finally, making him wait as long as I could. “You’re right.” Before he could ease away and help me up, I caught Loki by the chin, keeping him at my knees. “Hot bath. Massage. Pint of cookie dough ice cream.” I squeezed when his lips parted and he drew a breath, stopping whatever was about to come out of his smiling mouth. “The good kind of cookie dough—from that shop in Brussels.”
He could travel across the globe with the snap of his fingers, which meant he could—and frequently did—appease the cravings monster inside me in a heartbeat. One of the many perks of marrying a god, apparently.
Ducking his chin down, Loki pressed a hand kiss to my palm, then grinned at me, the twist of his lips both impishly and unabashedly affectionate. “Your wish is my command, firebird.”
“Damn straight,” I said with a giggle. He then heaved his pregnant wife onto her swollen feet. We said goodbye to the dancers, to the instructors, to Annabelle, to Roslyn at reception. Loki brought the car around to the front door, and I sidled into the mint-green 1962 Mercedes-Benz that Loki babied in our garage on weekends, secretly very glad to be off my feet, and popped my sunglasses down beneath the beaming four-o’clock California sunshine. Then stole a quick, fiery kiss from my man and let my hair down as we drove off into our very own sunset, a hot bath, a massage, and a pint of the world’s best ice cream on the horizon…
I mean…
What more could a girl want in her happily-ever-after?
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Amanda, my editorial GODDESS, who is always ready to read my latest concoction. You know just how to punch my first draft fears in the face, and that’s a valuable skill. Props to Sandra, my phenomenal proofreader at One Love Editing. You may specialize in contemporary, but I’ll bring you over to the dark side yet. And lastly, to Linda. Thank you. You catch typos better than anyone out there, and I’m so grateful for your help on every single manuscript.
Thank you to all my many Liz Meldon readers who followed me on this dark romance adventure. I’m so grateful for your continued support and excitement about all my new projects. You make this easy. You make this fun. Here’s to all the dark and beautiful HEAs in the future.
Much love to my friends, my family, and my sun and stars for always supporting my author dream.
And finally, thank you, dear reader, for taking this journey with me. To Love a God was an emotional book for me to write. I drew a lot of inspiration from my own experiences with isolation and depression with my chronic brain injury situation, and Loki and Nora both experienced many of the exact same emotions in that fucking cave that I did in my own life over the last four and a half years. Finding a way out of the darkness is really important to me, so writing their happy ending has been oddly cathartic. This book really was a passion project, and I hope the strength of these characters touches you in some way. It did for me.
Don’t forget to leave a little review, either on Amazon, Goodreads, or your social media. As an indie author, I rely on reader squees to help spread the word about my work, and I appreciate every word you write!
See you in 2021 for my next dark paranormal romance standalone novel: In the Demon’s Debt!!
xoxoxo
Evie
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About the Author
Evie Kent is a dark paranormal romance author who loves a possessive anti-hero and a strong-willed heroine. She has been #teamvillain for as long as she can remember, and thinks the dark side definitely has more fun.
Her work errs toward soft dark, and features soulmate-level romances with dubious beginnings, along with a dash of angst and a dollop of kink.
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