He paused long enough for both of them to catch their breaths… or to take a breath at least… then he kissed her again, longer that time.
By the end of that, by the time he pulled back for real, returning his ass to the leather seat on his side of the booth, Silvia was panting, flushed, fighting to catch her breath.
Thor grinned at her. Above that grin, his eyes gleamed with a harder, more serious look as he assessed her appearance, along with her overall demeanor.
“You were angry with me,” he observed.
She shook her head. “No.”
“You thought… what? That I wished to leave you here for so many hours? While I resolved things with my father and my brothers back in Asgard?”
There was a silence.
Silvia met his gaze. “You went back to Asgard.”
“Of course.”
“You didn’t go with your father, though?”
“My father took Jörmungandr back to our oceans, to remind him of his place and to discuss things with him privately. I was not meant to go with him there. I waited for him in the palace at Asgard. Along with my brother, Tyr, who will aid my father to find Loki.”
“Loki,” Silvia murmured, staring at Thor. “Tyr is being sent? Not you?”
“Yes,” Thor said grimly, resting his thick arms on the table. “And I don’t envy my brother the task. Loki is by far the cleverest of us. It is too bad he so often uses that cleverness for the stupidest and most nefarious of aims.”
“Then the ring definitely was for Loki?” Silvia mused.
“Yes.” Thor’s blue eyes grew serious. “My father thinks Loki has the ring already. Some switch he performed on Earth… which might actually explain the lost time you had in the park. He was there, apparently, in the park with you and Jörmungandr… but not perhaps in a form either of you would recognize.”
“A cat,” Silvia said, her eyes and voice distant. “A black cat. With green eyes.”
Thor’s mouth hardened in a frown.
After a pause, he nodded.
“It is likely you are right,” he said, a touch of anger reaching his voice. “It is the sort of deception my brother would pull.”
“So the ring wasn’t in me at all?” Silvia said, frowning.
“Not the real one. No,” Thor said. “Or, perhaps it was, and Loki somehow extracted it… replacing it with the counterfeit version. Either way, somehow the real ring fell into Loki’s possession.”
Exhaling in annoyance, Thor combed a hand through his long hair.
“My brother has been obsessed with owning this world for thousands of years,” he said, gruff. “He and Jörmungandr apparently came to some sort of agreement to do this together. Jörmungandr told me he explained this to you… about using a human-god hybrid?”
Silvia nodded.
“Well,” Thor said grimly. “Apparently Loki deceived Jörmungandr in this, too. He desired to rule this world himself. It is why he wanted the ring. Loki used you as a distraction for both of us––me and Jörmungandr.”
Thor’s gaze grew visibly harder.
“Apparently, Jörmungandr desired you for his own. I had not realized this, or I never would have let him touch you on that bridge, Silvia Hope.”
“It’s not your fault,” she assured him.
“It is partly my fault,” Thor insisted. “I should have seen this. I should have realized he was far too focused on you, that this was not normal. We are lucky, really, that you and I are bonded… and that my father got Loki to confess at least part of his nonsense before he escaped. Most of what Loki told our father was apparently true. Of course, it is Loki’s way to mix truth with fiction, or simply to leave out the most important parts… like the fact that Loki already had possession of the Andvaranaut.”
Thor sighed, holding up his hands.
“It is out of my hands now,” he said. “But I have no doubt my brother, Tyr, will find Loki, and likely in not too long a time. Tyr is quite a good tracker, and Odin has already consulted the oracle. He told me he is relatively certain where Loki is hiding himself.”
Silvia nodded. She tried to feel triumphant for Thor.
They’d won, after all.
Well… mostly. Loki still had the ring, but it sounded like Tyr and Odin had that mostly under control, or would soon.
They’d stopped Jörmungandr, and returned him to his place on Asgard.
Thor’s smile faded for the first time, his brow growing severe as he looked at her.
“I have been given a new task, Silvia Hope,” he said, his voice as serious as his eyes. “It is what I wish to speak to you about.”
He leaned closer to her, studying her eyes.
The ice-blue of his grew more serious, but also calmer.
“Tyr is tasked with finding my brother, it is true,” Thor said. “I have all faith in my brother succeeding in this task. So does my father.”
Thor sighed a bit tiredly then, pursing his lips.
“Yet this will not end the problem with Loki. He will not stop after this attempt. My father knows this. I know this. Tyr knows this. Since Loki remains strangely determined to violate this world… and to solicit the aid of his children in this endeavor, and not only Jörmungandr… Odin has asked me to act as guardian here for a time. He has named me protector of this world. At least until Loki has overcome his fetish with disrupting Odin’s work here.”
There was a silence.
In it, Silvia blinked, staring at him.
“Guardian… of Earth,” she said slowly. “He’s made you the guardian here? What does that mean, exactly?”
Thor’s smile crept back, at least one corner of it.
His voice turned deceptively nonchalant.
“My father figures Loki cannot conduct his crazy plans to conquer this world, whatever those may be, with me here, watching over Earth. There is some thought he would try to replace one of the leaders of this world, so I will need to do some traveling while I am here, making sure he does not try to slip in under my radar, but other than that, I can more or less live where I want… and how I want.”
Silvia nodded, keeping her face as expressionless as Thor’s now was.
“I see,” she said.
There was a more pregnant-feeling silence.
Then Thor quirked an eyebrow at her.
“Do you?” he said, his face back to that deceptive stillness. “Do you see, my love?”
Silvia looked at him, hesitant.
Thor broke out in another grin, staring at her.
“So…” Silvia said, keeping her voice casual with an effort now, especially in the face of the grinning God of Thunder. “How long will you be here? ‘Guarding’ things? Making sure Loki doesn’t try to overthrow the world or whatever?”
Thor shrugged with his hands.
“As long as it takes,” he said seriously.
“Which is how long?” Silvia pressed, scowling at him a little now.
Thor belted out a deep laugh. “I do not know, Silvia Hope. We gods are patient. It could take many years for Loki to act on his schemes.”
“How many is many?”
Thor leaned closer to her, grinning in her face now.
“A hundred?” he teased. “Is that long enough? I could do a hundred years. Perhaps two hundred, if my woman demands it.”
She rolled her eyes, shoving at his arm. “You won’t be here a hundred years.”
The blue eyes lost their twinkle, turning deadly serious.
“Why not?” he said. “Would you rather if I didn’t stay that long?”
She stared back at him, lost in that pale stare, lost in the intensity behind it.
After a moment, she found herself looking away.
“What if Loki comes before that?” she said, clearing her throat. “What if he came in six months? Or two weeks?”
Thor didn’t answer at first. He didn’t move from where he sat on the other side of the booth, his thick, muscular arms resting on the wooden table top.
Then he reached over, gently taking her hand.
“I’ll scare him off,” he said softly, so soft, she barely heard him over the sound of the surrounding bar. “And I’ll stay. Just in case he comes back.”
She nodded, swallowing. “Ah. Okay.”
There was another silence.
“Silvia,” he said, softer still, his words somehow still reaching her despite the clank of glasses, the shouts of bar-goers around them, the normal sounds of any night in a neighborhood bar on Market Street in San Francisco.
“Silvia,” he said, his words like a blown kiss. “Don’t you want me to stay here?”
She looked at him, in spite of herself.
She saw him smiling at her again, but his eyes were as deadly serious as before.
“I could stay on some other part of the world––” he began.
She smacked his arm, before he could get it out, and he laughed, throwing back his head. She smacked him again, doing it more out of impulse than real thought, and he laughed louder, throwing up his arms in mock self-defense when she smacked him a third time.
“One hundred years,” she told him, giving him a level stare.
Grinning at her, he crossed a thick finger over his chest, right where the human heart lived.
“One hundred years,” he assured her.
There was another silence, then she nodded, getting up from the leather bench.
“We’re picking up ice cream on the way home,” she informed him. “And maybe some more cheeseburgers. Because Morty’s going to freak out and we might need to sedate him––”
Before she could get the rest of that out, Thor was around the table and to her, standing right in front of her in a blink.
He wrapped a muscular arm around her waist, yanking her up against him.
For a few seconds, he only studied her eyes. Then the God of Thunder lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her tenderly that time.
He raised his head, studying her eyes a second time.
“My father gave this to me, because I asked,” he told her. “I haven’t asked for such a thing in a few hundred of our years… Asgardian years… and those years are a great deal longer than yours.”
She swallowed, fighting to comprehend this.
In the end, she looked up, facing those stunning, ice-blue irises.
“Why me?” she said. “I mean… you barely know me.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “In this one thing, you are wrong, and Jörmungandr and Loki are right. I do know you. I recognized you that first night, even if I was too afraid to believe it was anything but a trick of my mind.”
“How?” She stared up at him. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you do remember me. But I don’t remember. I mean, obviously I like you. I like you a lot. I wish I remembered you… but I don’t. And as much as I like you, I’m never that sure about anything.”
Thor’s smile widened.
He slid a hand in front of her, a hand crackling with blue-white light.
It illuminated their part of the bar, but no one looked over, no one paused in their murmured conversations, or even seemed to notice Silvia and Thor were there.
When his hand passed in front of her eyes, the bar disappeared.
She saw a landscape unfold behind her eyes. In it, the sky was blue, far bluer than today. It curved upward to a dizzying height, with horizons twice as far as any she remembered from any part of the United States or Earth she’d been.
She rode a giant white horse, and someone rode a dappled gray next to her, equally large, with black hoofs and a black mane.
The man laughed as she watched, his long hair hanging loose down his back.
Thor’s voice spoke to her from outside the dream.
“I come to Earth sometimes… and to other worlds. I have done this as a god, but far more often, I’ve done it as a regular mortal, living in obscurity to survey my father’s realm. I have made friends. I have even taken lovers once or twice. Just once, however, I have stayed for the span of an entire mortal life. That was with you. That was because of you, Silvia Hope.”
Silvia swallowed, watching the man in her dream laugh, knowing it was Thor even though his face was different.
Only his eyes were the same, that stunning, pale as ice blue that seemed to look through her, to see more of her than she could see in herself.
“I wasn’t Silvia Hope then,” she murmured.
“True. But it is you, none the less. Just as it is me.”
The image shifted, showing them in that field, and she was on top of him, naked, and he lay below her. He gripped her breast in one hand, his face taut as he thrust up into her, and she could practically feel him there, the memory so strong she nearly groaned aloud when she saw him losing control––
“It’s impossible,” she breathed.
“It’s not.”
“So I… what? Reincarnated?”
“That is one word for it, yes. I may insist you do this in Asgard next, after this life.”
She blinked to clear her eyes of the vision, which was only growing more intense. She saw them talking to one another, speaking some other language, right before he flipped her over, gripping her shoulder tightly as he entered her from behind.
She forced her mind clear of the dream he’d sent her, frowning up at him where he held her in his arms in front of the booth in the Market Street bar with the fish tanks and the motif of ships and the sea.
“And you really remember me?” she demanded, staring up at him. “All of it? That whole life?”
Thor smiled. “Yes. Wouldn’t you like to remember me?”
“And you say I’ll reincarnate in Asgard next? Or is that a god’s joke?”
His eyes grew serious. “It is no joke, my love.”
She was breathing harder, fighting to control the pounding in her chest. Her voice somehow grew more demanding, not less.
“How?” she said finally. “How could you possibly remember me from then?”
He tilted his head, smiling at her shrewdly, without letting go of her. That deadly serious look had returned to his eyes, and he studied her face, gripping her tighter.
“You know I remember you,” he said, his voice matching his eyes. “You are already remembering me, even more than I showed you, even more than the bare details of that life. I can see it in your eyes.” He paused. “I swore I saw it in your eyes when I first saw you, in that other tavern. I told myself I was imagining things––”
“Maybe you were.”
“I was not.”
“Maybe you were.”
“I was not, Silvia,” he said, his voice a touch warning.
There was another silence.
He gripped her tighter, and she found herself breathing hard, gripping his arms in both hands. She had an overwhelming urge to burst into tears, but she held it back by sheer force of will, refusing to let herself go there. No part of her understood this, yet she understood everything. As much as some part of her was screaming NO, a much larger part saw that fear for what it was, and knew it was the real reason she’d never found anyone here on Earth.
Some part of her had been waiting… always waiting.
She’d been waiting for him to return.
Tears came to her eyes before she could stop them that time.
She had no idea why she was crying.
…She knew exactly why she was crying.
The stronger part of her had no decision to make. That part of her refused to deny herself any of it, to let any of this go by when she’d waited so long. Like Thor said, that part of her remembered Thor, without remembering a thing. That part of her knew he belonged to her, even as the other, louder part of her tried to shout it down, to tell her she was crazy, that this whole thing was crazy, that he’d only rip her heart out and stomp on it, however good his intentions.
He was a god.
Thor caressed her face with one hand, kissing away the tears.
“One hundred years?” she said, bringing her eyes up to h
is. She swallowed, clenching her jaw. “One hundred years? Not six months? Not until you get bored?”
He chuckled, but the smile faded when she glared at him.
“One hundred years,” he assured her. “Or until you are gone. Until I can coax your soul to Asgard with me, and make my father happy.”
Winking, he added, his smile creeping wider,
“…Maybe, just maybe, if you’re really good, I’ll stay for one hundred and one years. If you live that long, with your puny mortal life.”
She smacked him on the arm, and Thor burst out in a laugh.
Before she could give him the piece of her mind she wanted to give him, he bent down swiftly and swept her up, throwing her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
She had the weirdest feeling he’d wanted to do this since he’d walked into the bar.
Maybe he’d wanted to do it since Lucille’s.
In either case, in front of every person in that bar… and likely the gods watching bemusedly from Asgard… Thor carried her to the front door and out onto the street, and began walking with purposeful strides in the direction of her and Morty’s apartment.
Silvia couldn’t help grinning as they passed people on the street: club-goers, women in tight dresses and high heels on their way to clubs, an old guy out walking his dog, a bouncer sitting on a stool outside a leather-covered door, a couple of homeless guys, and even someone Silvia knew, one of the women she worked with at her graphic design job.
Silvia grinned like a fool at all of them, watching them gape at her, and gape at Thor, numbly waving back when Silvia waved to them.
They would just have to get used to him, she told herself.
Her parents, friends, co-workers, her baby brother, her art buddies, her neighbors, they all would just have to get used to him, and his big hammer, and his strange way of speaking, and his strange clothes, and his booming laugh, and the sheer enormity of him. San Francisco would just have to get used to him… or they’d move somewhere else.
Somewhere with fields, maybe, and dense, shady trees, and winding streams.
Somewhere they could have horses.
And soft grass where they could lie for days.
Somewhere with cold nights and colder winters, so Thor could wear furs and thick pants, knee-high boots and furred capes, and carry a heavy silver hammer out into the forest, and no one would notice or mind. Somewhere he could hunt and wield axes and wrestle bears and make lightning fill the sky with his magic, and drag home a massive bull-elk for dinner, single-handed, if he so desired.
Gods on Earth: Complete Series (Books 1-3): Paranormal Romances with Norse Gods, Tricksters, and Fated Mates Page 16