For some reason, she didn’t.
Thor peered down at her.
Reaching out with his fingers, he caressed her throat with a muscular hand, tracing the spiral and circle on her skin.
The symbol. That’s what interested him.
“Jörmungandr did this,” he said.
He didn’t voice it as a question.
“Do you know what it is?” he asked her, his eyes flicking up, his voice grim.
She shook her head.
“We call it Andvaranaut.”
He didn’t stop caressing her throat, and now the careful, sensual, insanely distracting stroke of his fingers was making it hard for her to listen to his words.
“I looked for any record of it on Earth,” he said absently, still focused on her throat. “After I left you this morning. I found your people have a myth of this object on your world, as well. It didn’t really tell me where Jor might have brought it, however.”
He paused, shrugging his massive shoulders without taking his fingers off her neck.
“Of course, your Earth myth is highly inaccurate,” he added, matter-of-fact. “I expected the story to be wrong, or mostly wrong. Yet I still had some hope that the myth, or else the oracle I spoke to, might spark something in me. Give me a place to start.”
He met her gaze, his blue eyes seeming to look through her.
“They did not,” he said grimly. “It is unfortunate.”
Silvia cleared her throat, her head still tilted back so he could caress the design burned into her skin.
“How is it wrong?” she asked. “Our myth. The one on Earth. What did we get wrong?”
Somehow, that was the thing to get him to withdraw his hand.
Silvia cursed herself silently for opening her big mouth when he pulled his fingers away, taking a half-step back.
“Your story has it that the Andvaranaut is a way to find gold,” he said.
She lowered her chin reluctantly, realizing he probably wasn’t going to start touching her again, at least not anytime soon.
“And that’s wrong?” she said. “The Andvara-thingy doesn’t find gold?”
“Andvaranaut,” he said, correcting her casually. “And no. It does not. I suspect it was a translation error. In Asgard, this form of alchemy uses much symbolism. ‘Gold’ likely came from words along the lines of ‘the most precious thing,’ or ‘that which has ultimate value.’ For those on Earth, gold was much coveted, particularly in days past. But it means little in Asgard. In the immortal realms, trinkets are pleasing, but not considered particularly valuable. Not unless they are power objects, like the Andvaranaut.”
There was a silence.
Silvia cleared her throat.
“So what does it do?” she asked.
Thor met her gaze, stunning her again briefly with those pale irises.
“It grants one who wears it invulnerability from physical harm,” he explained. “One is safe from all physical wounds, even when one ventures from the higher realms into a dimension such as yours, where the gods are forced to assume some of the risk of manifesting as material beings. The Andvaranaut makes one impervious to those risks, on any plane of existence.”
“Ah,” Silvia said.
There didn’t seem to be anything more to say to that.
“So you can see its value?” he pressed, quirking an eyebrow.
Silvia nodded.
There was a silence.
She cleared her throat a second time.
“And he put that inside my neck?” she clarified.
Thor nodded, his expression grim. “Yes.”
“This… displeases you.”
“Yes,” he said, sighing, resting his hands on his hips. “My nephew has spelled the Andvaranaut in such a way, I fear I will need his help to release you from it. I fear if I tried to do it on my own, I could harm you greatly.”
Her eyebrows went up as he spoke.
“But doesn’t it protect me too?” she asked, a little alarmed. “You said it makes whoever wears it invincible. Didn’t you?”
He nodded, but in such a way that she definitely didn’t have a lot of confidence that it was an enthusiastic “yes.”
“You are not a god,” he explained apologetically.
She nodded.
“Gotcha.”
The silence that time felt awkward.
Silvia wasn’t sure why, not until the god cleared his throat.
“There is something,” he said, his voice suddenly stiff, verging on uncomfortable. “Something we could try.”
“Oh?” She quirked an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“I could share my essence with you,” he said, shrugging. “Here. In Asgard.”
“Share your… essence.” Silvia’s lips pursed. “Not totally following you.” Then her mind caught up with the rest of what he’d said and her eyes widened. “Wait. We’re… in Asgard? As in, that mythical heaven place? Where the gods live?”
“My home,” he affirmed. “Yes. I took us outside the city. I thought that might be less shocking for you. But yes, we are in my world.”
She blinked, staring around.
Well, that explained the weird trees.
And the lack of Starbucks.
And airplanes.
And really any hint whatsoever that anyone human might live near here.
She’d just assumed they were in Norway somewhere, maybe in a Norwegian national park, or some kind of nature preserve, with a kind of tree she’d never seen in any book or postcard. Which now struck her as a bit weird.
It also bypassed the whole “how” end of things, as in, how she’d suddenly been transported from Golden Gate Park to a cliff in Norway in the blink of an eye.
“So, you are amenable to my proposal?” Thor said, clearing his throat. He motioned with a broad hand over the field. “We could do it here. Or somewhere more… conventional… if you prefer. Perhaps on a more comfortable surface.”
“Proposal?” Silvia’s mind had been stuck on the Norway versus Asgard thing. Now she found herself staring at him, feeling like she missed something. “What proposal?”
“My proposal,” he clarified. “That we have intercourse. I am thinking it is something to try. As a way around my nephew’s spell. If I share my essence with you, here, it might allow me to remove the Andvaranaut before it can cause you harm.”
The silence that time felt physical.
Silvia found herself replaying his words, sure she must have misheard him.
When he didn’t break the silence after a few seconds more, she took a breath, meeting his gaze.
“Wait. Are you saying if we have sex, you can take this out of me?”
“Yes,” he said.
He paused, then shrugged, his voice growing stiff once more.
“Well. It is a possibility only. I cannot say for certain it will work.”
“But you want to try?”
“Yes.” One of his thick eyebrows rose as he glanced over, his eyes flickering down her body surreptitiously. “I would like to try.” He gave her a short bow. “Only if you are amenable, of course, Silvia Hope.”
Her heart felt stuck in her throat.
At the same time, a kind of electric charge went through her, from the pit of her belly all the way out to her fingers and toes. As she gazed up at him, feeling his ice-like blue eyes stare into her, she bit her lip, in part to keep from touching him.
“Sure,” she said.
She shrugged like he had, doing her best to make it look remotely casual, as if this was the most normal, non-bizarre conversation in the world.
“I’m game to try,” she added. “…If you think it will help.”
There was another silence.
Then slowly, Thor’s expression changed.
His lips twitched, right before the severity of his striking features softened. Those blue eyes met hers, and he gave her a wicked smile, winking, right before he took her hand.
“Good,” he murmured, squeezing her fi
ngers.
7
The Experiment
B efore she could wrap her mind around what they’d just agreed to, Thor gripped her hand tighter––
––and everything around them disappeared.
Once more, Silvia blinked, and found herself someplace new.
This time, however, she wasn’t outdoors.
Thor had whisked her to a location inside a building.
She stared around, fighting to get her bearings, and found she now stood with Thor inside a cavernous structure made of wood, with high ceilings that consisted of thick beams that looked like full-grown trees, some of them as big as redwood trees she’d seen driving up the California coast. More tree-sized beams held up the roof of the building in regular columns, carved and painted with unusual symbols and hieroglyphs of animals and mythical-looking creatures.
It reminded her of longhouses some Native American tribes used to build, usually for their high council meetings, or for large ceremonies.
This building was bigger, obviously.
It also had positively enormous tree trunks forming the brace beams on the ceiling and holding up the roof. Whatever kind of tree that was, that they’d used for the massive poles down the center of the high-ceilinged space, it wasn’t anything Silvia knew from Earth.
On the polished, wooden, plank floor, thick rugs had been spread, made from the pelts of enormous animals. Some looked like animals she knew, like bears, and enormous mountain sheep, and what might be a mountain lion.
Others… Silvia really didn’t have a clue.
She only knew those few because several of the rugs still had the heads attached, including one gray and white mountain sheep that sported its massive, curved horns.
Right next to where they landed, a stone fireplace stood in the middle of the floor, dividing the longhouse in half. The hearth was so large, Silvia could have walked all the way inside without dipping her head, assuming a fire wasn’t burning there.
Now, that wasn’t an option.
A huge bonfire filled most of the stone cavity, throwing off so much heat, she took a half-step back in instinct, even though the temperature inside the building wasn’t too hot. In fact, it was more or less perfect.
She looked at Thor, only to find him watching her.
“Asgard still?” she queried.
He nodded, smiling. “A hunting cabin.”
“A hunting cabin,” she said, not really voicing it as a question. “It’s big.”
He laughed, nodding. “I suppose.”
“Yours?”
He nodded again, still smiling.
Silvia found she was nervous.
She didn’t know the precise instant, exactly, when she started to believe that her new, muscular friend really was Thor, God of Thunder, versus some crazy naked guy in the park with a pyrotechnic hammer, but that time had come and gone.
She believed him now.
She couldn’t explain what that meant. She couldn’t explain any of this.
Maybe that was why she believed him.
Or maybe she’d believed him already, and just told herself she hadn’t.
She was ninety percent sure she’d believed him before he somehow teleported her––twice––to a whole different dimensional plane. If she was being honest with herself, she probably started to believe him before they’d left Alamo Square.
She’d definitely at least started to believe him while watching him interact with Morty. Somehow, that convinced her even more than the lightning storm in the park, or his “nephew” turning into a snake.
Whatever the exact trigger, by the time she woke up the next morning to find him gone, she already viewed him differently.
Now, faced with the prospect of having sex with an actual god, Silvia found she was struggling to breathe.
It didn’t help that he was staring at her again, watching her minutely with those shocking, ice-blue eyes of his.
This is an experiment, she told herself.
This isn’t recreational.
It’s for science.
God science.
She cleared her throat, meeting his gaze again with an effort.
He was already moving, walking towards her with long, confident strides, closing the distance between the two of them without an ounce of hesitation. The fact that he didn’t give her the option, or the time, really, to full-blown psyche herself out, made things easier.
Sort of.
He walked up to her and wrapped a thick arm around her waist, pulling her up against him so fluidly, she didn’t make a sound.
She found herself pressed up against him instead, looking up at his face, noticing details in his high cheekbones and ice-blue eyes, down to the shape of his mouth and the blond and red beard he wore over a strong jaw.
He didn’t hold her too tightly, but she found herself struggling to breathe.
What was this? Was it the god thing?
Why was she this nervous?
Thor had already made it abundantly clear this was functional sex only.
It was hardly love.
She couldn’t even be reasonably certain there was lust involved.
Thor made it sound more like a task he’d committed to, in the service of his goal of foiling his bizarre, half-reptilian nephew. Like having sex with human women was just all in a day’s work, one small piece of whatever back-and-forth schemes gods got up to with one another.
“You are sure you are agreeable to this?” Thor said.
She blinked, meeting his gaze.
She hadn’t really realized she’d looked away until that precise moment.
In that same moment, it occurred to her this could still go either way.
Thor was giving her a graceful way out. He was making it clear she could veer off this road if she wanted to. All she had to do is say the word.
The offramp was right there, right in front of her.
The thought brought a pain to her gut. It wasn’t just a disappointment feeling, or even a wow-am-I-a-coward feeling.
Whatever it was, it felt deeper than that.
She didn’t want to take that off-ramp.
Dumb as it might make her, she didn’t want to jump off this particular road.
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
Seeing his eyes flinch, it hit her that she’d answered in the wrong direction.
She’d answered way too decisively, and in the wrong direction.
Flushing, she shook her head a second time.
“No. I meant yes. I meant I don’t want to not do this. I want to try it.” Feeling her words get weirder instead of more normal, she added, “…you know, if you think it will help. With the invulnerability ring thing. I’m totally good with giving it a go.”
Thor’s eyebrow rose in another questioning arc.
He didn’t say anything, though.
She saw a faint twitch of humor in his mouth, right before his eyes went deadly serious.
She saw the change even as he was lowering his mouth.
Somehow, that seemed to happen in slow-motion, too.
When his mouth found hers, she sucked in a little breath.
The contact shocked her, even though she had all that time to see it coming, even though they’d discussed this––even though she knew she was supposed to be taking this as a kind of god-experiment, maybe-favor that had the bonus of possibly saving her life.
She still didn’t really get that part.
She didn’t get how an invulnerability ring might kill her, versus making her invulnerable, but she wasn’t one hundred percent confident she’d understood what Thor told her about that. In fact, she had zero faith she’d understood most of what Thor said about that Andvaranaut, magic-object-invulnerability-ring thing.
That little bit of panic went through her mind…
…then her lips parted, and she was kissing him back.
For a long-feeling few seconds, her mind went completely blank.
His fingers tightened on
her side.
She felt every individual finger when they did.
He kissed her again, pulling her closer. She still felt caution in Thor’s hands, even in his mouth. They just stood there, kissing.
That could have gone on for a few minutes.
That could have gone on for a lot of minutes.
Silvia wasn’t exactly sure when things changed.
Suddenly, both of them were breathing harder.
They were breathing harder, and Silvia’s skin felt too hot. Her chest felt too tight, like some part of her was fighting for control. Thor wrapped one of his massive, muscular hands around her ass and she melted against him, right before he yanked her up into him, fisting his other hand in her hair.
She let out an involuntary gasp.
He kissed her again, pressing the length of his body against hers as he massaged and squeezed her ass, pulling her closer, sliding his hand to her thigh and tugging her leg around him.
He gripped her behind the knee, and brought her with him down to the floor, to a giant, black, bearskin rug.
It was thicker and softer than she would have imagined.
When he started removing her clothes, tugging the white peasant shirt over her head, unfastening the front of her jean shorts while she wrestled with her bra, she started feeling light-headed. Some part of her still couldn’t believe this was even happening.
The urgency in his hands was affecting her, though.
Whatever he’d said to her, this was feeling less and less like some kind of academic god-science experiment.
He didn’t seem anywhere near as blasé about this as she’d been bracing herself for.
Maybe some part of her had even been hoping for that, just because him being this way instead made everything so, so much more complicated.
Thor shoved his hands into her shorts, forcing them down her hips, pulling them past her ankles even as she tried to kick them off her feet. She tugged on the back of his T-shirt, pulling it over his head, then helping him wrestle it off his enormous arms. She noticed for the first time he was still wearing Morty’s shirt from high school.
She reached for the front of his pants.
He wasn’t wearing Morty’s sweats. She couldn’t quite figure out what he was wearing, or how the front part unfastened, but luckily, Thor didn’t wait for her to figure it out. He tugged hard on one piece of it, and the whole front opened.
Gods on Earth: Complete Series (Books 1-3): Paranormal Romances with Norse Gods, Tricksters, and Fated Mates Page 7