“You are still young. Young, frail, and deceptive, little spy.”
I ignored his tone. “I wanted to help Omegas like Lachlan and me… well, like me, anyway. I’m not sure there are any others like him out there. But I planned to go all over and help them become more powerful. Give them safe homes and secret jobs. Medicines and herbs they needed to stay hidden. But then, I started… showing signs of my own Omega nature.” I did my best not to think about the helplessness I’d felt in those first, truncated heats with Goran, but I had a feeling he saw more than I wanted him to. “Anyway, I told the Goddess if She let me off the Omega hook for ten years, then I’d be fine with being Hers again.”
“So you lied to your own Goddess?”
“Of course not. I’ll stop traveling; I’ll stop taking the herbs and let my body do its stupid thing. Even if I hate it. Even if it makes me feel like… like I’m not my own. I swore I’d let Her have me, and I will.” I snarled, but he only lifted a thick, frosted eyebrow. “So I went my own way, and She held up Her end of the bargain. A little too well. When I tried to call for Her in the fire, She wasn’t there.”
“Are you certain?” Something in his tone had me wondering what he knew.
“Why?”
“Gods and goddesses don’t give up their children easily.” He straightened when I rubbed at my abdomen again, groaning in pain. “Itchy, yes?” He managed a rueful smile. The expression on his otherwise sharp face was unfairly attractive, even when he scratched his nostril right after.
“Yeah. Not sure I can reach where it really itches.”
“Let me,” he said, and reached across the space between us, not with his hand, but a tendril of ice, a long, whiplike, silverthread that came from somewhere behind him, embedded itself in the skin of my stomach, and burrowed in.
“What in the holy fucking—” I began to scream, but then fell silent. Not because I’d stopped screaming, but because he’d placed a large, cold hand over my mouth.
“Quiet, little enemy.”
I kept screaming and tried to stab him with my sharpest fingernail—since that was the only weapon I had left—but it was more for the principle of the thing. From the moment his ice needle had pierced my skin, the pain had started to abate, like there was something cold and numbing spreading inside me.
RADA
I’d always been fast, usually faster than the enemies I faced. Being quick on my feet in the streets as a child had kept me alive long enough to meet my boss, who’d given me a job, which meant enough food to eventually get strong, too.
I’d trained over the years with all kinds of experts in the areas I needed to master: spycraft, poisoning, herbs and tonics, history and politics, and more. Knowledge was a road to power, but I knew that even if I wasn’t small for a woman, there were plenty of assholes out there big enough that it didn’t matter how much I knew if they could overpower me.
So I’d studied fighting techniques as diligently as anything.
Alexios, in particular, had been a superb teacher. He wasn’t much bigger than me, and he’d been extremely happy to teach me his style of moving in a fight. I used it now.
Skadi had been leaning over me, one hand to my mouth, one to my back to hold me still so he could keep his ice tentacle doing whatever inside my stomach. The thing had hooks of its own, and I was afraid I’d tear something by pulling away from that, but this ice bastard has a lesson to learn, and I was the only one here to teach it. So I swung one leg out, far harderthan I normally would using this move, and swept it behind his massive thigh, catching him at the knee. Then I threw myself toward him with a twisting motion, exaggerating everything Alexios had taught me about forcing an opponent to lose his balance.
It probably helped that Skadi hadn’t gotten used to his human form yet, and that he’d obviously expected me to try and escape, not attack. He made a weird, “Oof?” noise as he toppled over to one side, rolling as I pushed up with both feet on the ice floor. He slid easily onto his back. The damned ice needle was still buried inside me, though he moved his hand away from my mouth to catch himself. The other hand stayed on my back, but I wrapped my own around his throat as I rose over him, my legs straddling him above his waist.
“What are you doing?” he gasped as I tightened my grip on his neck.
“Teachin’ you a lesson,” I shouted into his face. “You don’t just stick a tentacle—or whatever that thing is—into a woman without asking. I don’t care if you’re an ice god or the king of the universe or a fucking sentient ice lolly! Consent isalwaysnecessary!”
“Consent?” The word was snapped out like a curse, and I squeezed even tighter. I didn’t know if this thing needed to breathe, but I obviously had his attention.
“Yes. You ask, before you use another… being’s… body for anything. You ask permission, and if it’s given, then you can…ah.” My jaw closed with a click as I realized that the ice needle had been removed while I spoke.
But another, larger, icy appendage was almost knocking on my lady door. Literally. Kind of pulsing, but cold.
How was that possible? He was nearly twice my height, so the gap from my exposed privates to his cock had to be two feet or more, but somehow, I felt something moving toward my core.
I wanted to let go and look. There was no way his cock could stretch that far, right? Even fully erect, it wouldn’t just… I loosened my grip on his neck, but didn’t release my hold. I’d been told more than once that my curiosity was what would get me killed.
But I’d also been warned to keep my eyes on an opponent’s weapons, and what I was feeling down below had to be classified as a longsword of some kind.
“Tighter,” he whispered, his eyes blazing blue, one hand moving over mine and pressing my fingers into his throat. I obeyed, swallowing hard as the appendage below nudged my inner thigh.
The ice room filled with my scent, and Skadi’s nostrils widened as he drew in a slightly labored breath. I was suddenly extremely aware of his cold, naked body, and my own warm one, the places where they met tingling with something that danced on the edge between pain and pleasure.
“Tighter,” he repeated, gently squeezing his fingers over mine. I narrowed my eyes, but still squeezed, knowing it was a very bad idea to encourage him. His lips curled up as he rasped out, “Continue.”
