He folded the note along the line she’d made, stowed it with reverence beside his other vital possession, Loki’s Locket.

  Then he rang her loft’s intercom.

  In seconds, the line opened. He heard clanging followed by her breathing as if she’d come running. Then her voice poured from the machine, stripped of its inimitable nuances, but still her voice. It cascaded over him in a wave of violent longing.

  “Yes?”

  It took him seconds before he could only mutter, “Vidar.”

  Everything ceased. Time. The sounds in the background. Her movement. Her breath.

  He gritted his teeth, bracing against the answer he dreaded.

  Please go away.

  What would he do if she said that? He couldn’t walk away.

  But if she said it, he had to respect her wishes.

  The intercom line went dead.

  His heart punched his ribs, the blow feeling it would leave both bruised.

  What had he expected? She’d asked for just one night, insisted on neutral ground, woken up first and left. Her silent rejection now told him all he needed to know. His presence was unwelcome. He should leave her alone. It was over.

  A tidal wave of black dejection crashed on him.

  And he finally admitted it to himself. Finding her had rejuvenated his will to exist. More. Sparked something unprecedented, an unquenchable desire to live, an unknown kind of life, with passion as its fuel, with her as its driving force.

  It didn’t matter that he wouldn’t have had much time with her. Any time he could have had would have felt like forever. Far better than eternity without her.

  He’d thought he’d reached his lowest point when he’d invoked Loki and demanded death. He hadn’t. She’d been able to drag him out of that abyss, just by wanting him. Now that she no longer did, nothing could bring him back.

  He turned, descended the dozen stairs leading to the building’s porch.

  The door burst open, slammed against the wall.

  “Vidar.”

  He swung around. Kara.

  She flew down the stairs, literally. She knew he’d catch her.

  He did, crushed her to him, feeling as if he’d caught everything worth having, the whole world.

  Her hug and the kisses she stormed over his face were frantic.

  Shaking with the reprieve of knowing she reciprocated his desire in full, he felt everything fall away as he carried her up to her loft, homing in on her bed. What followed was a new level of abandon, their lovemaking frenzied, their pleasure blinding.

  Endless hours later, she stirred over him, raised a head unsteady with the enervation of fulfillment. Her curls tumbled over his chest, those eyes that had rekindled his soul pouring emerald fire and the absoluteness of her desire over him.

  Then she blew every expectation out of the water all over again when she murmured, “You shouldn’t have come.”

  A disconcerted moment passed. Then he said the same words she had the night he’d sought her out again. “I came, anyway.”

  She gave him back what he’d asked her. “Why did you come?”

  When he’d asked, he’d already known the answer, wanting to hear it from her. She wanted the same now.

  He’d give her anything she wanted. “Because I couldn’t stay away. I’ve starved for you. Have you for me?”

  “Were you here these past six hours while I was bingeing on you?”

  His delight with her honesty rumbled from his depths. “You can binge on me in an open-ended buffet.”

  “No, I can’t. You know it can’t work. It’s why I walked away. It’s why you let me.”

  “I have another explanation for why I did. I was an idiot.”

  “No, you weren’t. The problem is, together we’re so mind-blowing that you want more, against your better judgment.”

  “Judgments change, and mine wasn’t better—I just thought it was better. It isn’t. Also, mind-blowing is a problem I want indefinitely. I want us to be together.”

  She stilled, frowned. “Define together.”

  “Be together. Live together.”

  Those elegant eyebrows rose. “On the strength of one night?”

  “Two now. Three. We started our relationship by almost dying and killing for each other. Then we proceeded to almost die or kill each other with too much pleasure. I think we’ve hit on the perfect combination.”

  She shook her head, started to put distance between them. “Vidar, I’ve spent the past week writhing in withdrawal. I want you with such an intensity it’s a literal pain….”

  He plastered her against his sizzling flesh. “And now I can be there to relieve that pain day or night.”

  She again braced her palms against his chest. “It’s not that simple, and you know it. You’re…immortal, a warrior of some sort…”

  “And you’re afraid I’d drag you into mortal danger.”

  “Will you let me complete my own sentences?” He raised a hand in concession. “From the way you call people ‘mortals,’ it’s clear this…perishability is what defines us to you. I’d be a liability to you.”

  That was her concern? Would he ever chart her unpredictability? He gathered her tighter. “You were a lifesaving asset that first night.”

  “Only because I put myself in ‘mortal danger,’ and you survived to save me. What if next time you had to die to do it? I can’t be your Achilles’ heel.”

  “You won’t be. I’ll take every precaution so that no one will ever tie you to me.” She began to shake her head again and he stopped her with a solemn look. “I’ll walk away in only one instance. If you don’t want me.”

  “Oh, I don’t. As I just spent hours proving.” She bent for a compulsive kiss, drew away, sighed. “We were foolish to think one night, or two or ten, can quench this fire.” Exactly what he’d thought. “So if you promise I won’t be a handicap, we can be…together until it burns itself out.”

  Exactly what he didn’t think would happen. This would only burn brighter.

  But he’d let her find that out for herself. And that he’d keep her safe.

  She threw him another curve. “And promise, if I leave again, you won’t come after me.”

  His heart compressed. She was already planning the next end.

  But he had to promise her freedom. If one day her desire burned out, he had to let her go.

  “You have my word.” She nodded, her tremulous smile tinged with melancholy. She knew her desire wouldn’t end, too, was only making provisions for his best interests. His heart expanded again. “Now, don’t you want to know everything about me?”

  Her lips quirked. “Being together doesn’t mean poking my nose into your affairs.”

  He glided a hand indulgently up and down her silky back and bottom. “What if I want that delightful nose there?”

  She arched into his caresses like a feline. “You don’t strike me as the kind who opens the book of his life to others.”

  He laughed at the understatement. “You could say that again. One of my job descriptions is Trickster.”

  She grinned at him. “Then this truthful compulsion has to be a side effect of a blow to your head that night.”

  “I want only you to know the truth. To know me.”

  “I know enough, so don’t sweat it.”

  As she started kissing him again, he stopped her. “What do you know?”

  She sighed, as if in resignation that she had to satisfy him before he would her. “You call yourself a Lokian, and since you’re a Viking and a shifter, you clearly follow a religion founded around Loki, the trickster, shape-shifting Norse god.”

  “It’s not a religion, but a Legion, sworn to uphold Loki’s code. That of protecting and fostering outcasts.”

  “Loki was—or, now that I know he exists—is an outcast himself, right? According to the comics and movies, he’s also a villain.”

  “That’s what is advertised by his rival Asgardian gods, mainly Odin and Freyja. They, and those who believe in them in Midgard—Earth—consider Loki and his followers abominations.”

  “Because of their shifting, right?” He nodded. “So the villain part is bad press that stuck.”

  “Pretty much. Loki’s eternal battle isn’t about gaining power through deceit, as they say, but fighting for his right to be different, to maintain his rightful place among the gods without conforming. To that end, he formed his Legion of like-minded mortals a few millennia ago. He started with the Originals, twelve Legionnaires with the strongest shifting and illusory powers. I am one of those. He granted us immortality and sent us out to recruit outcasts like us, to foster the Gifts that had made Normals reject them, and bring them under Loki’s protection.”

  “And that’s something, I bet.”

  “Loki is very generous to his followers, yes. The problem is, throughout the ages we’ve had to initially gain our recruits’ trust through trickery. Apart from the paranormal element that would make most freak if confronted with the truth up front, the paranoia against Loki is very well established.”

  “And that helps your enemies paint you as villains.”

  He squeezed her breast in appreciation. “You got it. Sharp and brilliant. Is it any wonder I constantly want to ravish you until you faint with pleasure?”

  She reciprocated by nipping his chest. “I constantly want to ride you to oblivion, too, so we’re even. So, you trick people into signing on to your Legion?”

  “No. Once the hurdle of approach is over, it’s our code to leave them free to make the decision, even though that ensures that few throughout the ages pledge allegiance, even with the possibility of immortality as one of the perks.”

  “So not everyone in the Legion is immortal?”

  “Being a candidate for immortality takes specific power levels, personality traits and something that only Loki can determine. Most recruits with psychic and shifting powers are candidates for one level or another of longevity, though.”

  “So how many immortal Legionnaires are there? Beyond the twelve Originals?”

  He exhaled in remembered frustration. “Too few. Though mortals dream of immortality, few can handle it. Among the thousands I have recruited, only dozens had survived beyond a couple of hundred years. Only one of the dozens I judged capable of being inducted into the Lokians’ inner circle survives to this day. The others gave in to insanity, excess, depression, and ended their lives or caused their own death, most times along with that of others’.”

  Her eyes grew thoughtful. “You feel you’ve failed them, and Loki, don’t you? And since you’ve lived for millennia, the toll of time and loss has grown too much. That’s why you wanted to die the night I first saw you.”

  A surge of fierce emotion spread inside his chest. He cupped her cheek tenderly. “Seems you do know a lot about me.”

  Her smile was impish, even as her eyes misted. “Told you. I also know that you more than foster the Gifted. You fight other gods’ followers. The night we met they were after your ‘Endowment.’” She suddenly giggled. “Oh, the mental image that brought!”

  He tasted her smiling lips. “They thought they could suck out the part that makes me immortal.”

  She went still. “And that’s not possible, right?”

  “No. Not that it stops goons from trying. But when they’re not coming after us like junkies, they go after our recruits, to prevent Loki from gaining more followers.”

  One eyebrow rose. “What does Loki want with followers, anyway? He sounds like a cool god and the ego trip of amassing worshippers doesn’t suit him.”

  “Followers are not worshippers. Loki is not my god but my lord and general. I swore allegiance to him, and I believe in his goal. For the Gifted to have their rightful place in the world.”

  “Ruling it?”

  He shrugged. “Just leading it where their Gifts make them fittest for the job. Certainly ending discrimination against them. To that end, Loki needs to survive Ragnarok, which is allegedly the Final Fate of the Gods. It’s supposed to be a showdown where all gods end up killing one another and dying. We’re working on making sure Loki walks out of it alive and victorious. And though we remain a tiny minority, with all of us being Gifted, we are a huge threat to the other gods’ masses of worshippers. Even those they Endow are originally Normal and no match for us.”

  “Wow. Just wow.” Her look of wonder gave way to teasing. “And you are a white knight, after all.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not. We Original Lokians take ‘the end justifies the means’ to very dark-gray realms.”

  She grinned at him. “Sounds like my kind of guys.”

  He swung her around, flattened her beneath him, loomed over her menacingly. “Guy. Singular.”

  “You are that.” She wound herself around him, seeking his invasion. “And you are that to me. Now fill me. Singularly.”

  He slid inside her, bottomed out on that single thrust she demanded, swallowed her cry of welcoming shock, shouted with exultation as her flesh enfolded him like it was made to fit him.

  This woman. This flesh. This union. This was what he’d waited an eternity for. A good thing he hadn’t known, though, or he would have gone insane while waiting.

  But now that he’d found her, he wouldn’t lose her again.

  And if reason insisted he would, one day, to mortality, he silenced it.

  For now.

  Chapter Seven

  Vidar watched Kara saunter into her loft. He’d entered through the window as usual, observing the secrecy of their relationship. For the past six weeks, it had worked perfectly.

  They did.

  They synchronized their working hours, sharing every minute between. When she had a long shift, he arrived before her to pamper her when she came home. He had her favorite lasagna waiting for her tonight.

  “Mmm.” She inhaled as she approached him with a smile that made his very being tighten. Sensual and wicked, delighted and delighting. “Now what do I devour first?”

  He bent to take her lips. “Food will get cold. I won’t.”

  “Let’s eat fast, then, since you get hotter.”

  He chuckled, swept her off her feet and took her to the table. He sat her down, served her.

  She looked up as he started massaging her stiff shoulders. “Won’t you join me?”

  “I snacked on endless rubbish while on stakeout with Daven.”

  She grinned. “Good thing you have this nuclear metabolism, or Daven and his atrocious eating habits would get you fat over a weekend.”

  She turned her attention to her meal, dug in appreciatively, hungrily, and started telling him about her day. He told her about his, marveling yet again at how she discussed his battles as naturally as she did her cases. She wiped her plate and rushed to shower.

  He watched her streak away, sighed his pleasure. She was more magnificent than any goddess. Addictive passion on two gorgeous, endless legs, between which he’d found a heaven far better than any mortal had dreamed or god had promised.

  He’d never truly lived before she’d wanted him.

  And he now understood what Alvar had gone through. Wondered how he’d recovered. If you could call being a morose, unstable son of a bitch “recovered.” But Alvar had survived.

  He wouldn’t survive losing Kara.

  He had to make her immortal.

  But to become so, she had to be not only Gifted but one of a rare minority. Even if she was all that, not many had been able to withstand the reality of living indefinitely. He himself, before he’d met her, had been ready to end it all. And he didn’t even feel a Gift in her.

  But he was working with the conviction that her effect on him eclipsed his Gift-detecting ability, that a part of what had attracted him to her initially, and her to him, had been her Gift. Why else had she been there? She’d admitted she hadn’t known why she’d entered the nightclub, had no idea why they’d let her in. He was betting it was something she didn’t realize she had, pulling her to him, swaying those bouncers.

  What remained was to uncover that Gift. He’d then make sure she was one of the few who could attain and withstand eternity.

  She’d come back, was lowering herself over him, fresh and hot and urgent, her knee rubbing his erection, her eyes devouring before her lips sank into his. She always came home from work starving for him, didn’t want foreplay in that first slaking of hunger, wanted him wild and rough and assuaging. He always gave her what she needed.

  But after the nightmare he’d had last night, he had to settle this tonight. He’d dreamed himself standing at her window, gazing down as she looked up to wave goodbye. Out of nowhere, a car had hit her.

  It had driven home that he couldn’t assume he had time to find a solution, counting on her youth and health. An accident could rob him of her. He needed insurance, right now.

  He weaved his fingers through her hair, pulled her from worshipping her way down his body to the cock that wanted nothing but the embrace of her hot, talented mouth or her snug, welcoming body.

  “Hey!” She looked up in protest. “I’m hungry.” She rubbed him through his pants. “You…feel ravenous, too.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. But we need to talk.”

  The change that came over her was spectacular. One moment she was the incendiary lover who drove him out of his mind with a glance, the next she was a stranger. In another second she was sitting at the far end of the couch, her face unreadable.

  “You don’t need to talk. You don’t owe me a talk. You want to leave, just walk out and never look back.”

  He blinked in stupefaction. “What? That’s not what I want to talk about.” His heart thudded in disappointment. “By Loki’s Leer, Kara, you’d just let me go that easily?”

  She shrugged, face still shuttered. “You’ll leave sooner or later. I accept that.”

  “Well, I don’t accept it. I don’t want to leave. And I don’t want you to leave me, either. I won’t let you go.”

  She tipped her face. “Are you going to hold me captive?”

  “A very willing one. But I meant I won’t let you go, ever.”

  “Uh, you do know I come with an expiration date, don’t you? And if that’s in fifty years, I doubt you’ll hang around till then. You’ll maybe stick with me to my sell-by date.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9