Gods above and below did I love this woman in all her forms.
She was fierce, she was a force, and she was aggressively, bizarrely, uniquelyher, no matter what shape it took.
Her unceremoniously liquored-up disdain for the dead man who’d shared her bed was simply sugar atop an already perfect dessert.
Sigrid—Love—my perfect, magnificent, incredible human, left the house and walked toward the cliff once more. This time, when she surveyed it, she spoke.
“Claim your offering, Loki,” she said with the same disinterest she’d offered her late husband. “Your fire and mischief have done more than I’d prayed. What once was mine, is yours.”
A mortal may have jumped at the preternaturally tall figure who appeared upon the cliffs.
The surprise I felt was not for myself, but alarm at my human’s nearness to a god of such bedlam. Lithe shape, red hair, cracked, smirking lips, scarred face, the half-Jötnar giant turned to me with glimmering eyes.
“She’s a force,” he said. The whirl of sleet continued to twirl Sigrid’s untamed hair, but Loki’s didn’t move. He jutted a thumb toward her. “Yours, right? Big meetings, hundreds of gods, pomp and circumstance and all that? This is the one?”
I blinked speechlessly at the god’s harsh silhouette.
He shrugged. “I get it. She seems worth it.”
We were an odd triangle of power atop the cliff. I had no idea what to make of him as I asked, “What did she promise you?”
He laughed. “I don’t care. I’m in it for the love of the game. And for what it’s worth?” He made a sweeping gesture to the wreckage below. “We’re rooting for you.”
“…thank you?”
A wink. “Oh, this is delightful. The wolf-mother would kill to be here. She’d want to do this. Which, of course, means I have to get it done before she gets here. What’s life without a little chaos?”
I was impatient enough to grab a prominent entity by his throat and shatter relations between our realms forever. I didn’t care for his riddles. I didn’t want to know what games they played. I just wantedher.
He took a step toward my human. “Wanna see something cool?”
Loki, among other things, was a god of deception. I wasn’t sure that Ididwant to see whatever it was he considered cool.
He reached an eerily long hand toward Sigrid’s back, slid his unnaturally thin fingers down the golden strands of her hair, and leaned toward her ears.
His lips brushed against her hair, whispered just loud enough to rise above the wind as he said, “Open your eyes.”
My sentiment remained: I loved my human in all her forms.
I loved her soul no matter its body, no matter its personality, no matter how life had shaped it. She’d been wise. She’d been compassionate. She’d been patient. She’d been insightful. Some souls needed protection. Some needed guidance. Some needed gentleness. Then holy fucking shit, there was Sigrid.
Whatever had shaped the woman who watched the collapse of the Viking empire had formed a desire I honored. She didn’t want a spirit guide, a listening ear, or whatever responsibilities I’d carried every time I’d stepped from beyond the veil.
Sigrid—my human—Love—wanted a cock.
From the moment Loki showed her the world beyond the veil, she turned to me with an immediacy, a thirst, an insatiable appetite that no nymph, no goddess, no demon had matched.
We tore each other’s clothes to shreds as she shoved me so close to the fireplace that the flames licked my thighs. I was throbbing for her the moment she touched me but hadn’t expected the dripping desire between her legs as she commanded me, body and spirit.
I was hers to use as she jumped into my arms, rocking against me as I grasped every unholy sensation. I kissed her neck, then sucked, then grazed my teeth against her throat.
“Bite me.”
I sucked harder, teeth sinking into her flesh.
“I said fuckingbite me!”
I would never cause my human pain—and denying her pleasurewaspain. I broke the skin, drawing blood as she released an earth-shattering moan.
