by Nora Ash
I slid my middle finger form Annabel’s clit to her entrance and dipped it inside, testing her. She gasped, but her sheath yielded easily for my shallow intrusion. Had things been different, I would have continued stimulating her, would have drawn her pleasure out until she was begging for penetration. Memories of our nights together on our way here made my cock jump and my heart ache. My name had spilled freely from her lips then, fevered kisses peppering my skin whenever I let her face me.
This time, she was offering herself out of necessity.
I pushed it down—all of it—and slipped my finger from her pussy to grab for my cock, aligning it.
Annabel’s breath hitched again as I pressed my cock head up against her now-splayed lower lips, and her thigh muscles tightened for a second before she spread her knees wider, inviting me in.
There was nothing but darkly throbbing need filling my head as I pushed into her, spreading that delicate, soft flesh inch after yielding inch.
“Gods!” She was so tight! Her flesh was willing and slick, but her body wasn’t as open as I had become accustomed to, and she mewled and threw her head back as I slowly sank deep.
“Grim.” My name was a plea urging me to be gentle, but it fueled that dark possessiveness, that instinctive response to her that took over my entire being whenever I let myself give in.
“Mate,” I groaned, falling on top over her once more as my cock found its home nestled against her cervix. I wrapped an arm around her and held her tight as I steadied us both on my elbow. Stars above, she felt… she felt like life, like the sun, the moon, the stars—like oxygen and everything I needed to breathe. “My mate.”
Annabel whimpered and clung to my arm wrapped around her ribs, nails digging in. It hurt her, our joining, but when I gave her a slow thrust, her entire being rippled underneath and around me, and I felt her pleasure shudder through her body and into mine.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped against the shell of her ear as I rolled my hips again, giving her more of that slow, agonizing bliss that had her quaking against me.
I was. Sorry that she hurt, sorry that I caused it, sorry that there was no way around it. I forced myself deep into her again, shivering with her at the brutal pleasure cracking up my spine as her cunt squeezed on me. Talons of fire and bliss raked the shield I had put between us, threatening to break it down with each shuddering breath I gasped against my mate’s skin. Gods, she was life. She was life, and I needed her, needed to meld with her, be absorbed by her…
Annabel gave another mewl, and then I felt her pressing against that shield. A plea for entry.
“No,” I grunted, a flicker of awareness bursting through the haze of bliss. “Annabel, no. You don’t… Not that. Not this time.”
But she was persistent, my mate, and our bond hummed violently in my chest as she brushed against that wall of flimsy will and desperation.
Something wild and uncontrollable rose from my gut—terror and euphoria and dread. I couldn’t. Not now. Not when I was this raw and dark and ugly.
“You don’t want so see me!” I snarled, giving her pussy a hard thrust that had her choking out a cry, some of the pressure in our bond shifting as her attention was diverted to taking my too-thick cock without the balm of gentleness. Again I took my desperation and despair out between her thighs, and again she cried out, nails scratching at my arm. And again, until her pussy surrendered, and I fucked her mercilessly deep and hard in smooth, fast strokes that had the glade echoing with the wet thwacks of our flesh joining and Annabel’s broken moans.
Only when I no longer felt her pushing at me through our bond did I relax into the sensation of primal purpose. I groaned and reared up behind her, grabbing her round hips to pull her back on me. Her sheath accepted my presence fully now, and Annabel’s cries were no longer tinged with pain as much as carnal delight. She was as lost in the sex as I, and when I released my grip on her right hip and reached down to rub at her clit, she gave in.
Her keening moan of release was followed by her muscles fluttering along my cock, the slick flesh sucking me in. I groaned with her, my hips stuttering to a halt to let her ride out her orgasm.
“Fuck, Grim!” she whined, one hand coming back to clasp onto my wrist as I continued to rub her clit, forcing her pussy to milk me through her first climax and straight into another. Before she could try to push me away from her swollen bud, I wrapped my other arm around her torso and pulled her up against my body, distracting her with the new angle of penetration.
Annabel stiffened as my cock head pressed firmly against her cervix, hands flailing back to clasp onto my body in a plea for mercy.
“I’ll never hurt you,” I rasped into her ear, still rubbing circles on her clit to ease any discomfort of how deep I was in her. “Not like this. Never like this. No matter how deeply you hate me and how much I deserve it, I won’t ever… Not like this.”
I don’t know why those words burst from my lips, but I could do nothing to stop them, nor the conviction tightening my gut somewhere past the fog of desire. Whatever small hurt she endured to open for me was fine—a sliver of pain that felt good for both of us. But to truly harm her, harm my mate, with the only act that allowed me a few moments of bliss?
Never. Never.
Annabel gasped out something that could have been a word and clung to me for dear life, but I held steady, allowing her body to feel nothing but pleasure. Soon she relaxed in my grip, her pussy easing into another climax. It was softer this time, but it still shot lighting up my spine as her muscles massaged my length, and I groaned and gritted my teeth against the swelling threatening to expand. Not yet. I wasn’t ready to return to the bleakness of reality. Not yet.
Annabel slumped fully back against my torso, and I eased off her clit and focused on my rough breaths to stave off my knot. If we had been among the living, if her beautiful scent had wafted into my nostrils, I would have had no chance, but Hel’s dampeners worked out for me this time.
I was almost in control of myself again when Annabel asked, “Grim?” in a soft and sex-drugged voice.
“Yes?” My own voice was rough and raw.
“I want my final truth.”
It took me a moment to get enough blood to my brain to remember what she was talking about. The bargain. Three truths for her healing magic. She’d had two, and admitting to both had ripped me apart.
“Now? You want a truth now?”
“Yes,” she said, determination creating a hard edge to her softness. “Right now.”
I spat a curse and clenched my hands into fists, willing my flaring testosterone under control before I surrendered to the urge to pin her in the grass and fuck her into oblivion. “Then ask.” There was more threat in my growl than intended, but Annabel was not cowed.
She sucked in a deep breath, and still staring straight ahead, speared on my throbbing cock, she asked, “Is what you feel for me love, Grim? The genuine kind? Or is it… something else? Just… hormones or instincts, or whatever? Something that gets twisted by this… bond we share?”
The genuine kind. I scoffed and opened my mouth to tell her there was nothing genuine about that dark, twisting possessiveness that throbbed in my chest where we were connected and threatened my sanity with every second that passed… but no words would leave my throat.
I frowned and tried to force them out. Only a rattle escaped my tight windpipe.
“Grim?” Annabel asked, concerned now. She twisted her neck to look at me, eyes darting to mine.
“You swore to give her three truths, Lokisson,” Mimir said from somewhere outside our cocoon of pleasure.
I jerked my head up and saw the prophet sitting several yards from us, face turned away. It seemed Annabel had had the wherewithal to ensure he wouldn’t be watching us fuck before she came to me.
Three truths. The bargain bound me to answer her truthfully. My frown deepened.
Is what you feel for me love? The genuine kind?
What I felt for Annabel was all-cons
uming and destructive, and I knew into the marrow of my bones that it was anything but genuine. It was forced on me by biology and Fate, perverted into something terrible by my own darkness… But when I again tried to tell her as much, the words wouldn’t come.
“I…”
I stared down at the soft woman in my arms as ice-cold terror mixed with a sickening realization. Was this…? Was what I felt…? This was true love? This unending need, this intimate knowledge that I was nothing without her, that I would break myself into atoms for her—it was not some befoulment of nature. It was… genuine.
It wasn’t forced on me by a manipulative Norn, wasn’t the result of primitive instincts wired into my DNA to ensure procreation.
“You are my soul,” I told her, horror lacing my every word as the truth of them speared into me, into that soft, weak place I had always known was still there, but refused to acknowledge. “I… I love you. With everything I am.”
And what was I? I had killed for my convictions that what I felt for her was a lie. Killed a goddess. Killed her.
“Grim,” she whispered, but the rushing in my ears drowned her out.
Gods. What had I done?
I gasped at the truth staring back at me across the abyss that opened in the cavity of my chest, next to the muted bond I shared with her.
“Grim!” she repeated, digging her fingers into my arms, and I dazedly realized that I was crushing her to me, clutching at her as if she were my only source of oxygen in the ever-tightening void closing around my mind.
I pushed her away—face-first down into the grass—but my cock was still inside her, and the squeeze of her muscles as she fell forward reawakened the roaring, mindless beast in me. I needed her. I needed her right now, or that void would swallow me and never let me go.
Annabel whimpered in protest when I fell on top of her, making her take more of my weight than was comfortable and hilting my cock in her depths once more.
I buried my face in her hair. “I need you. I need you, Annabel. Please… Please!”
She mewled when I rolled my hips, but it wasn’t a sound of protest this time. It was acceptance.
Relief blasted through me, and I clung to her small body as I thrust into her, desperate to burn away that black void with her light. My magic burst through the barrier between us as I cried out her name.
She was light; light and love and everything warm, everything good. I lost myself within her, lost myself to the caress of her soul. I wanted to disappear within her and never emerge.
“Annabel. Annabel. Annabel!”
My knot swelled, yanking me back into myself with the tight burst of pleasure and Annabel’s sharp cry as the physicality of our joining overtook us both once more.
I groaned as I came with everything I was, the sensation blissful beyond words. Beyond reason. I was blind to anything but my mate and her tight, fluttering pulses as she cried and coaxed every drop of seed from my body and into her own.
Utter stillness embraced me. Only shivers of phantom pleasure from where I was so intimately joined with my mate hummed underneath the silence. She was still too, underneath me, around me—one perfect moment of nothing but a quiet sensation of being home. Whole.
I love you.
It was only a thought—I didn’t have the breath to voice it. One simple thread of awareness shared through our still-open bond, pulled from me without my conscious effort.
Annabel shuddered underneath me, and then… then the most awful sob broke from her lips, slicing through my pleasure and right to the marrow of my bones.
“Annabel,” I whispered, panic and despair flushing away the last remnants of afterglow. “Don’t cry. Please, don’t.”
My essence flowed through our bond and spilled into her of its own accord, every instinct in me yearning to find the cause of her distress and soothe it. What I found when I melded my soul with hers made shame clutch at my throat and rip at my lungs. She was crying because… I loved her. Because someone who truly loved her had doomed her to this existence, had ripped the last shred of hope from the world and killed a goddess so pure of heart she had begged Annabel to forgive me even as she lay dying.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as something deep in that black pit that was my soul shattered. I had thought I could make her Queen of Hel. I had taken this woman who embodied everything that was life and light, and I had doomed her to death and darkness. “I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head, but in our bond I felt her emotions whirl: sorrow, despair, longing, pity. Fear. She feared me?
Loathing, I would have understood, but fear? “I won’t hurt you. I can’t,” I rasped, willing her to understand. “Not like that, not… not physically. Not you. Never you.”
“I know.” Her voice was so tiny it made my heart shudder.
I clutched her closer to me and skimmed my lips over her bared shoulder. “Annabel,” I murmured, not knowing what to say, how to put into words what I barely grasped through the horrible realization of what I’d done. “I… I am…” My voice died off as my gaze fell on her right hand sprawled over her lower abdomen.
For a moment, I thought she was simply pressing against where my knot forced her wide to ease some of the discomfort, but no. Her hand would have been lower for that.
Her touch was… so tender. Protective.
I trailed my hand down to brush against hers, and she trembled and held on tighter. Fear shot through our bond in a sharp spike before she willed it away. Yet her arm was stiff as she lay silent underneath me.
“You’re… You’re with… child?” It came out as a question, but I knew. With a bolt of clarity so bright it nearly blinded me, I knew why she feared me.
Nausea made me jerk up off her. She let out a cry of dismay when I pulled on our tie, and I forced myself to still, resting up on one elbow to stare down at her.
“You think…. You think I might hurt your baby?”
She didn’t look back at me, but I saw her bite her lip and look down to where her hand still splayed on her soft skin. “Won’t you? If it somehow hinders your plans, if there is risk… to me?”
I curled my lip. “I would never harm your baby, Annabel, never! I can’t—"
My voice snuffed when the obvious hit me. I don’t know why the realization wasn’t immediate, but as I stared down at her hand, I remembered her heat—and the tantalizing scent of blood and woman a few weeks before that, when her period had come.
Not her child. Not Bjarni’s or Modi’s. Not Saga’s. Not Magni’s. Our child.
She was carrying… our child.
Distantly, I found some humor in how concerned I’d been with keeping her safe from those of Hel’s creatures who would have gone to great lengths to sire offspring with she who could create life in the realm of death. Yet I had been the monster to impregnate her.
Ignoring her frozen muscles, I placed my hand on top of hers with firm pressure and buried my face in her hair. She carried a spark of me, of a man who had proven to her that there was nothing but darkness and horror in his veins.
No wonder she was scared.
We were both silent in the few minutes it took my knot to deflate. I forced my mind into blank nothingness, into that core of ice and mist, because I knew what I had to offer. What I owed her. Even if I couldn’t bring myself to move my hand from hers until my knot finally released her.
I pulled out with a low groan, allowing her to sit up and pull her legs underneath her. My semen flowed from her swollen opening.
I forced my gaze to hers. “If you wish to terminate… I will help you. I can ensure it is painless.”
Annabel’s eyes widened, both hands immediately fluttering to her abdomen. “What do you mean, terminate?”
“If you do not wish to keep… our child.” It took everything I had to force those last two words out. “You do not have to. I can… take care of it. Safely.”
Annabel stared uncomprehendingly at me for a full second. Then outrage and horror settled across her pretty
features. “You are not touching this baby!” It was a snarl—fierce and underlined with the promise of violence. “I swear on everything there ever was and ever will be, Grim, if you try to harm her, I don’t care what it’ll do to me, nor the nine fucking worlds—I’ll kill you!”
I drew in a shuddering breath as her words sank in. Her protective posture. The snarl curling her lip. The threat.
“You want to keep…?” I breathed in again. Something felt tight and light in my chest. Painful. “Any child I sire… will be like me.”
She stared at me, still uncomprehending and her teeth bared, but uncertainty clouded her gaze. “What do you mean, be like you? Of course she will. She’s half of you. I don’t care if she’s cold, or—”
Her voice died mid-sentence, and then grief, understanding, and empathy cracked her face into a pained grimace.
“Oh, Grim. No. No, no, no.” She crawled to my side and cupped my face in her hands, those soul deep eyes searching mine. “Whatever you have done, whatever you have chosen to be… no. I do not fear the life we have created together. I want her with everything I am.”
I stared at my mate, trying to comprehend that emotion laid bare in her eyes, but it seemed… almost impossible. Because what I saw there was something I never dreamed I could have had. I’d hardly known it existed, until her.
She would have given me a family—a true one. Someplace warm and safe and mine. She would have filled my life with love and my dark and fractured soul with peace. I stared at her, and I finally saw what I had not been capable of recognizing before.
Somehow, some way, I would have found the strength to share her with her other mates, because Annabel had enough love to give herself wholly to all of us. Even now, she still loved me. She couldn’t help herself, though we both knew that I deserved nothing but her hatred.
But I had ruined everything. There would be no eternity of warmth and happiness—not for me and not for her. Only death and cold, dark regret.