Marion didn’t take offense.
Honestly, face-planting into the carpet felt like a real risk.
After she’d yanked off the gold and red bedspread, she stood there for a few beats longer, trying to decide what came next.
She looked down at herself, at the drenched, cable-knit sweater the nice woman at the clothing store gave her, the hiking boots, also drenched, and now coated in ice and snow, her drenched socks, her drenched jeans.
Not only was everything soaking wet, but the jeans and sweater were decorated with rips and blood. Even the new socks and boots had spots of blood on them.
Her face stung.
Marion touched a few spots that throbbed with pain, and winced.
Glass cuts, most likely.
It hit her again that their car had been totaled, hit by two separate vehicles, right before someone opened fire on them.
She probably needed tweezers and a bottle of disinfectant or alcohol to deal with that. At least a few shards of glass would still be stuck in her skin, given everything, possibly even pieces of metal or plastic from the crunched car.
Sighing, Marion raised her eyes to Tyr’s.
“I think I need a shower,” she said.
He stared at her for another beat, gauging her face warily.
Then he nodded, stepping out of her way.
When he moved, Marion saw the bathroom door behind where he’d been standing.
She took a step away from the bed, wobbled, and her tall friend with the black hair and the beautiful, blue and green tattoos lunged towards her.
That time, he caught hold of her arm, steadying her as she fought to regain her balance.
“Thanks.”
She glanced up at him, feeling her cheeks flush, that time at his nearness.
His voice was gruff as he led her towards the open bathroom door.
“I’ll do something about clothes,” he said.
She looked at him more closely that time, and not just his face. His arms were tattooed too, she realized, with the same type of pale, glowing, blue-green marks. They were also cut up a lot worse than she was. Blood trickled down one of his biceps from a slash across the muscle. His hands were cut, so was the side of his neck and his ribs on one side. She saw bruises forming on the dark skin, and a few areas that looked swollen.
She had to force herself not to try to touch each one of his wounds.
“Are you okay?” she said finally, forcing her eyes back to his.
He blinked, looking briefly as if her question confused him.
The look was there and then gone.
“I’m fine,” he said politely. “I had to find a coat to check us in. I left you on the roof. In the snow. That’s why you’re so wet.”
His voice grew worried, more worried than apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Marion,” he said.
She shook her head, quirking an eyebrow at him. “For what? Saving my life?”
“For leaving you on the roof for longer than I wanted,” he said. “I didn’t want anyone looking for us to see your face. I didn’t want any of the Syndicate people to pick either of us up in a casual scan. I also thought it was better if the front desk thought I was staying in this room alone. I did my best to disguise my appearance while I was in the lobby.”
Marion frowned at that, still limping alongside him towards the bathroom door.
They walked inside.
She gripped the wall in one hand, and he released her, leaning over to switch on three sets of lights, including lights over the mirror, a heat lamp, and an overhead light with a fan.
She winced a little as each one came on, adjusting to the change in illumination.
Then she was glancing around at the space in front of her.
Briefly, she forgot what Tyr had said about changing his appearance.
For those first few seconds, she focused only on the bathroom itself, bewildered by the sheer size of it.
After taking it all in, she realized she had to make up her mind. Her eyes went from the sunken bathtub on its raised platform to the enclosed glass shower, which had jets coming out of both sides and a sunflower nozzle on top.
After looking between her two main options to get warm and clean, she decided a bathtub, and a bath, were way, way too complicated right then.
Letting go of the wall, she walked carefully over to the shower.
Tyr let her go, watching her cross the space on her own.
Reaching the glass cubicle with the built-in tile shelves, she leaned on the metal frame once she’d opened the shower door, using the silver handle to turn on the water, pushing it all the way over to crank up the heat.
Only then did she remember what Tyr had said.
He’d said he disguised himself.
Physically.
So the surveillance cameras wouldn’t pick him up.
“How did you do that?” she asked casually.
Still leaning on the metal shower frame, she turned to look at him over her shoulder.
“Disguise your appearance,” she clarified. “How did you do that?”
She knew, somehow, he didn’t mean a putty nose and a Groucho Marx mustache. He meant something else, some supernatural thing.
She wondered if he would tell her, if so.
He must have seen some hint of both things in her expression.
“I have told you the truth about me,” he said. “Up until now. In most respects.” His voice sharpened. “…an Asgardian tankard’s more truth than I tell most mortals. Too much for you to assume I would lie to you now.”
Glancing back at him, Marion nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “So tell me the truth about this. How did you get past the cameras?”
“I told you. I changed my appearance.”
“You made them see something that wasn’t there?” she clarified, frowning. “How does that work? You get into their minds somehow? How would that fool a camera?”
“I cannot glamour people,” he said, frowning back at her. “Glamours, illusions, mind confusion… those are my brother Loki’s gifts. But I can do other things. I can make myself… different. Inconspicuous, if I so desire. I can change my eye color, the contours of my face, my general appearance. Even my size.”
“How is that different from what your brother, Loki, does?” Marion said.
“What I do is not a glamour,” Tyr said. “It is an actual, physical change. Therefore, cameras pick up the exact same image as human witnesses. There is no confusion in the minds of humans. They simply see me as I am. It is I who changes.”
There was a silence.
Then Marion frowned, looking away from him.
Tyr’s voice contained a harder edge.
“I do not do this simply to deceive people,” he added. “My brother is a Trickster God… I am not. Our gifts are suited to our function in the world. My ability to change form serves a purpose, just as Loki’s glamours do for him. For me, the ability to change my appearance isn’t so that I can deceive people, per se. It is so I can operate freely in the world… so I can do my job without being noticed or recognized.”
“Recognized?” She frowned. “I don’t think most people would recognize you, Tyr.”
He shook his head, once.
“Not recognized as myself. That is not what I mean, Marion.”
Exhaling, he rested his hands on his hips.
Watching him, she grew acutely aware of his lack of a shirt.
“I am aware I am not a well-known god on your world,” he said, exhaling again. “I do not expect anyone to recognize me here. That is part of my function, too.”
Something in the words sounded borderline embarrassed that time.
Marion might have found it funny, but Tyr seemed genuinely agitated.
“Truthfully, I prefer this,” he admitted. “It has certainly never bothered me before. But I confess, I am finding it slightly frustrating now. With you.”
Marion frowned.
She opened her mouth
to speak, but Tyr held up a hand.
“I am not worried I would be identified the way my brother, Thor… or my brother, Loki, for that matter… would be identified or recognized by those of your world.”
Exhaling again, he went on in that frustrated-sounding voice.
“Normally, it is history books that concern me. Photos. Paintings. Now video and other means of image capture. These have grown increasingly bothersome.”
At her blank look, Tyr’s voice grew more explanatory.
“There are times when I must be present for large, important events, Marion,” he said. “Historical events. The type of events that tend to be documented. Even hundreds of years ago, there were painters and artists who attended to such things. Now they are photographed. And video-taped. And recorded. Now, far more than in centuries past, everyone is a documentarian. It is not only professionals who capture such things. It is surveillance cameras. Drones. Anyone with a modern phone. Anyone with an iPad.”
Sighing again, he combed a hand through his thick, black hair.
Again, Marion found herself overly aware of every detail of the gesture, every line of muscle when he raised his arm, the expression on his angular face.
“It is worse now, of course, but this has always been an issue to a degree. I alter my appearance… physically, that is… to keep from being compared across generations. I did not want my true image to be recorded, to show up across various occurrences in human history.”
Marion stared at him.
She understood what he was saying now.
Tyr didn’t want some unusually-observant historian noticing the same guy had been alive and visiting Earth for hundreds, possibly even thousands of years.
He was saying he was immortal.
He was saying he was an immortal shapeshifter.
With wings.
Marion fought with what to say to that.
In the end, she looked back at the shower, sticking her hand under the water to check the temperature. She pulled a few nobs on the tile wall, getting the various jets to turn on, including the sunflower-shaped showerhead in the center.
When she slowly straightened, wincing at the pain in her leg, Tyr took a step in her direction, leaving the opening at the door.
Then, as if thinking better of it, he stepped back.
He stood in the doorway, looking at her from across the long bathroom with its two sinks, its jacuzzi bathtub against the wall, its pale blue rug.
She could feel his eyes on her.
“Do you need help?” he said, gruff.
She turned to look at him, only to find him looking at her, his eyes scanning over her body, focusing on different parts of her ripped, soaked, and blood-stained clothes.
She met his gaze when his returned to her face.
“…Undressing,” he finished, clearing his throat.
He motioned vaguely towards her.
“You’re hurt,” he clarified. “I would help. With the clothes. With the cleaning.” He cleared his throat again. “…with bandages.”
She watched his complexion darken, right before he shrugged.
“Or you could do it,” he finished.
She might have found his strange, awkward, clearly embarrassed speech funny on anyone else. She might have teased them, or laughed… or at least smiled.
She might have found it charming at least, or sweet.
Somehow, she found herself struggling with how to answer him instead, fighting reactions to his presence, his voice, his physicality––pretty much everything about him. All of those things made it difficult to take anything he did or said lightly.
Some part of her was seriously tempted to say yes.
At the same time, she felt strange about doing it.
It felt like she’d be asking him for something, and she felt strange about asking him for anything right then, after he’d just saved her life.
She felt strange asking him for that, in particular.
Asking him to stay here, with her, while she undressed and showered, wouldn’t just be casual flirting, not anymore. She’d more or less be asking him for sex, and despite what she’d done with him––or really, to him––in the car earlier, she wasn’t sure she should be doing that.
She wasn’t sure she should do that to herself, much less to him, not until she’d wrapped her mind a little more concretely around everything.
As it was, she had practically no mooring left.
Given everything that happened over the past few hours, she wasn’t sure she could trust anything about how she saw him, or how she felt.
He’d saved her life. More than once.
Clearly, that was confusing things.
Yet, with everything that she’d seen, him saving her life was the least of it.
She’d seen him with wings, right?
He’d flown.
He’d actually flown her here, to some fancy hotel in downtown Washington D.C. That was after he’d busted through the dented door of an insanely expensive sports car, either using his wings, his arms, or some combination of the two.
Which brought her back around to the beginning of this logic circle.
Tyr was a shapeshifter.
Who flew.
It didn’t help that something about him created an insane, totally irrational, mind-altering, unbelievably intense want in her––a want that didn’t feel remotely within her control. There was nothing reasonable, logical, or explainable about that want. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever experienced or felt around a man before.
It wasn’t like anything she’d experienced with anyone before, period.
Marion didn’t fully realize she was just standing there, silent, as she thought all of that.
She didn’t fully realize she hadn’t moved, or said anything.
It kind of blew past her that she’d never answered his question, either––meaning, his question about whether or not she needed his help getting undressed––not until Tyr suddenly moved in her direction.
She turned when he moved.
She wasn’t afraid. Truthfully, she was relieved.
She remained exactly where she was, the shower door propped open by her arm and shoulder, watching him approach.
He was all the way across the room.
Then he wasn’t.
Then he was standing over her, those dark eyes seeming to look through her.
His mouth hardened as she stared up at him.
He didn’t look angry, or annoyed.
She could almost see him thinking, too.
Something about that brought a tremendous relief.
She wanted him to decide this. She wanted him to tell her what was happening between them, how she was supposed to make sense of all this.
More than anything, Marion wanted Tyr to tell her whether or not it was okay. She wanted to know if it was all right for her to want what she so desperately wanted from him. She wanted him to explain to her why everything about him pulled on her so intensely. She wanted to know if it pulled on him just as much, if he wanted it like she did.
She wanted to know why it wiped everything else out of her mind, including her mother and sister, which nothing, up until now, could even touch.
She wanted him to tell her not to feel guilty about that.
She wanted him to tell her it was okay.
She wanted to know if she could just let herself fall––if he’d catch her in this, like he’d caught her when she unhooked the seatbelt in the McLaren.
She wanted him to tell her if she could finally let go.
16
Surprise Me
W ith all the thoughts swirling around her head as he stood over her, Marion really had no idea what he would say.
As usual, he didn’t say even remotely what she might have guessed he’d say.
He looked down at her with those dark eyes.
Then those eyes shifted away.
His complexion seemed to darken too, right before he cleared his throat.
>
“I have… thoughts,” he said, gruff. “I would like us to talk. But I’m not sure the best way to do that is with one of us naked. Or both of us. As pleasant as that might be.”
Marion blinked.
Tyr’s dark eyes met hers.
The intensity she saw there grew.
“Perhaps, if you don’t need my help,” he added, just as gruff. “I could go get clothes for us. Dry clothes. And some food. When you finish in here, we could talk. Clothed. At least at first. We could be clothed in the beginning. During the talking.”
Marion felt her own cheeks warm.
She wasn’t normally a tongue-tied person, but she found herself struggling to speak to the tall man covered in faintly glowing tattoos, his dark, longish hair framing his angular face.
“You might want a shower,” she blurted. “After, I mean. After me.”
As soon as she said it, she felt her face grow hotter.
“…I just mean,” she added. “If you can find us clothes, I can find us food. And maybe deal with the clothes we’re wearing now. They have to have a cleaning service here. Or something. You can shower. I’ll take care of those things.”
Tyr frowned, looking away to think about this.
Then he nodded slowly.
“I’m not sure we should avail ourselves of the cleaning service,” he said. “Not right away. I don’t think either of us should interact with people apart from one another until we’ve had time to talk about how to reach your father.”
Thinking about that, feeling her more logical, strategic mind click back into gear, Marion nodded, more decisively that time.
“You’re right,” she said. “I guess we should just toss them in bags for now. Or even take them down to the dumpster. I feel a little bad. That woman… at the store. She was kind. But I think we likely need to just get rid of them.”
Realizing she was overthinking what amounted to a trivial detail, given what they were facing, she looked up at him, embarrassed.
Tyr didn’t look remotely annoyed, or judgmental.
Instead, he caressed her jaw lightly with his fingers, running his other hand down her neck and shoulder as if holding up her head to explore her skin. Marion closed her eyes without thought, leaning into him.
Gods on Earth: Complete Series (Books 1-3): Paranormal Romances with Norse Gods, Tricksters, and Fated Mates Page 43