A/N: 18+

I always wanted to explore a jealous Loki, although I don't think I did it very well in this one. Frankly, I don't like this story.

"Loki, no!" Why she bothered to waste her breath saying something so utterly useless and futile to him she'd never know, but it was the first thing that fell out of her mouth as one large hand wrapped around her arm just above her elbow and he began to drag her along behind him with what she knew was a scrupulous attention to the amount of force he used to do so.

"Quiet." One word, softly spoken, but there was no mistaking the pure steel behind it.

At first, her mouth snapped shut with an audible click, but as he pulled her into the house, down a long hallway and pushed her into their host's master bedroom, closing and locking the door with a flick of his hand once he'd pushed her before him into it, Vicky turned immediately and tried to barrel past him and back out it - like that was ever going to work, either - hissing, "We cannot be in here - "

"We can and will be anywhere I want us to be," he returned with truly annoying calm as he continued to stride confidently into the room, corralling her away from the door simply using his body - as well as Vicky's sure knowledge that he didn't give a flying fuck about what anyone else saw or heard them do.

So rather than cause a fuss and possibly draw even more very unwanted attention from the other partygoers, she backed away from him as he stalked forward, her hands up as if to ward him off - yet another completely futile gesture - as he fixed her with the same annoyingly frightening, arousingly intent look he'd given her from across the patio a few seconds ago, when she'd seen him lower his chin to his chest and gaze out at her with those cold green eyes and she knew she'd let Craig unintentionally poke the God one too many times for him not to do something about it.

It had taken her a lot just to get him to come here. Craig was one of her friends from work and he had agreed, if somewhat reluctantly, to allow Loki to come to the annual cookout he threw for his fellow employees.

Loki had been unimpressed by the invitation, and Vicky had done everything short of threaten to get him to accompany her there. The only tactic that had worked was tears, which she hadn't been proud of doing, but they had been completely genuine.

They had just made love, and instead of letting him hold her tight to his side in the aftermath - something he knew she adored - she had risen and gone into the bathroom instead.

It had taken him a depressing amount of time to notice how long she'd been gone, and that just added more fuel to Vicky's fire as she sat on the toilet seat with her head in her hands, willing herself not to cry and failing miserably at it.

She was in love with a God. He was in love with her - by his own - if much more possessively than tenderly motivated - words. He would do anything - well almost anything, apparently - for her, give her anything she could think of wanting - not that she'd ever asked anything of him until now - how could she possibly be unhappy?

But she was. Being Loki's woman was amazing and always full of surprises and heartbreakingly angst ridden on occasion and the sex was so good she knew for a fact that he had ruined mortal men for her completely.

He was all she saw or felt or breathed. He could bring her to the heights of ecstasy with a look, a word, and he could kill her the exact same way, if the mood struck him - although with her he was much more likely to punish her, and that was bad enough.

And with Loki, one was never really certain which way it was going to go.

She was addicted to him, just as surely as she was addicted to breathing.

But it was also a lonely existence,. The only people she saw besides Loki were her coworkers, whom she loved. They were truly a family. Before he had come into her life, she had spent a tremendous amount of her off time with her girlfriends, with whom she also worked.

But as soon as he appeared, he had consumed her and all of her spare time.

And, as exciting as it was to be around him, she had the gall to want more - to want something a little more mundane than she experienced with him, to pull him into a world that was more familiar to her than to constantly have to adapt to the strange newness of his. She really didn't think that was too much to ask.

By the time he deigned to notice that she had been gone for an inordinate amount of time and came to stand outside the bathroom door - only because she had gone off on him one time when he had simply walked through it to get to her - she had had to turn on all of the faucets as well as the fan to try to drown out the sounds of her sobbing.

"Victoria?" He almost never called her by her nickname, which was what everyone else called her. Trust Loki to always be that one in the crowd that refused to conform. Come to think of it, the only time he ever used "Vicky" was when he orgasmed - she hoped because she'd reduced him to the same level of incoherence as he did to her.

"What?"

This was going to be interesting. He wasn't used to asking for anything. He was used to taking what he wanted - and he wanted her. She knew it was a mark of how deeply he felt for her that he was willing to remain where he was, and she did appreciate this effort - as well as all the other ones - he was making for her.

There was a long silence, and she knew he was running various scenarios through his head, trying to discern which would be the most palatable to her.

What he came up with nearly had her opening the door to throw herself into his arms. In a voice she'd never heard from him before - one that was soft and tender and almost wistful, he said, " I do not wish to be in our bed alone. My arms grow cold without you in them. I do not ever wish to be away from you, most especially not with a closed door between us."

Not wanting to let him know just how powerfully his words affected her, Vicky stood up and splashed cold water on her face, drying it off quickly and opening the door.

He stood there, gloriously, uninhibitedly naked - and Vicky felt that familiar ache that never really completely faded from her begin to unfurl its tendrils from her loins out to the rest of her body, nipples that were barely recovering from already having been avidly suckled and thus were just that much more sensitive, coming to full bud, suffusing her skin with a light pink blush and making her bite her bottom lip as she fought against herself to keep her eyes on his.

Loki's gaze - sharp as ever despite his pretty words - missed nothing, but she was surprised on what he commented on. One long finger barely touched the bottom of her chin as he inspected her closely. "You have been crying."

Vicky snorted softly. "Yeah. I'm a woman. It kind of comes with the territory that I'm going to cry occasionally."

She tried to brush past him, but his arm caught her, pulling her to him despite her efforts to resist until they were plastered together. As much as she tried to ignore what she knew he wanted, he was patient and waited until her eyes found his.

"I would know what has made you unhappy. Whatever it is, I will see it put to rights."

Vicky shook her head. "It's nothing."

He was still as a statue, and she knew from experience that he could stand like that for much longer than she could, knowing he considered it to be ridiculous that she would try to put even the smallest of prevarications by him. He would wait for her answer as long as he needed to, knowing she would always cave.

"All right, all right. I just get . . . lonely, sometimes," her eyes slipping from his to a point on the floor. "Not that I don't love you," she rushed to reassure him, but just got a raised eyebrow that she didn't find encouraging in the least, "I just . . . miss my friends occasionally, that's all." Had he been a mortal man, she would have walked away from him at that point, but she couldn't from him.

Loki had suddenly realized that the person on this pimple of a planet that had asked him for the fewest things when he would have given her anything she'd asked for had finally asked him for something - something that required him to give of himself, not to give her things - and that he was horrified at himself that he hadn't realized that fact sooner and had refused such her request out of hand because he was in the habit of refusing to extend himself for almost anyone but his brother and his mother. He seemed to be considering her reply, then said in a measured tone, "I have reconsidered my rejection of your invitation to your colleague's party."

Horrified, Vicky found tears filling her eyes again at his gesture. She couldn't discern any derision or snark or sarcasm in his tone or his expression at all, which surprised her. But she lowered her eyes nonetheless. "You don't have to say that, Loki. I know you don't want to go." Two big fat tears rolled down her cheeks and she found herself quite embarrassed by them, her hands coming up to brush them away impatiently. She hated to cry in front of him, for some reason.

His free hand, which had been at her mid-back, caught her hands on the way up, holding them fast in one of his as he bent to kiss away each tear then took her mouth so that she could taste her own tears on his lips. "I know I do not have to. I am a God. I do what I want. And I want to make you happy. I would do anything in my power to accomplish that, and you are the most annoying of Midgardians in that you refuse to let me give you much of anything at all."

His tendency to want to use his powers to give her stuff she didn't want was often a sore point between them; he truly could not understand why she refused his money - the complete wardrobe he had whipped up for her one day out of nothing, the cars and extravagant jewelry had all been flatly refused.

"Attending a party with you will not be a hardship." He buried his lips against her neck, nibbling avidly as he rumbled against that delicate skin. "In truth, I will be the envy of every man there to have you on my arm."

She didn't know about every man, but Craig was definitely going to be jealous. Vicky was aware that he had a slight crush on her, but she did her best to ignore it, keeping things between them on as professional a level as she could, which wasn't always easy. If Loki hadn't been in the picture, she had admitted to herself, she would definitely have been dating Craig.

Unfortunately, Loki picked up on Craig's interest in her immediately. Gentleman that he could be when it suited him, Loki had allowed her to precede him into Craig's house when they arrived, and Craig had taken full advantage, pulling her into a big bear hug and dropping a kiss on her cheek.

She could tell he was well on his way to smashed already even though the party was just beginning, and that made him just that more gregarious than usual.

Vicky had extricated herself from his overzealous greeting as soon as she could - seeing the frankly lethal look on Loki's face - to wrap her arm around his waist and introduce the two of them. Craig had offered his hand, and - despite all of the common courtesies she had tried to gently acquaint him with, that kiss had sealed Loki's opinion of Craig, unfortunately for him - and Loki had all but sneered down at it. She tried to pinch him, but there wasn't an spare ounce of fat on him, so she settled for burrowing her fingers beneath his casual armor and digging her nails into his side.

Not flinching in the least, and having dismissed Craig out of hand, he stared down at her, his eyes promising retribution. "You will have to pay for that later, little one," he threatened in a tone that belonged in their bedroom, not in Craig's foyer or his ears, where she knew with great certainty his words had reached. Feeling a blush scalding every inch of her flesh, Vicky hastily guided Loki away from Craig before he came to a tragic end at the hands of the God he had just challenged, however innocently.

They began to mingle and everyone seemed extremely interested in meeting Loki.

As Craig disappeared into his kitchen and Loki apparently perceived no threat to his possession of her from any other quarter, Vicky felt him relax a bit. She knew he was seeing this gathering as a sociological study - okay, probably more like he was Jane Goodall observing chimps, but without the respect or empathy she had for her subjects - but he remained relatively well behaved and was as malleable as he usually got as long as she stayed by his side.

Her girlfriends were positively agog over him, and, resplendent even in just his casual armor, he preened visibly at their overt fangirling - some of them went so far as to kneel to him without ever having been asked, while Vicky rolled her eyes and knew that he was going to be impossible to live with for weeks afterwards, and would probably try to demand that she do the same thing, which was not going to happen. When he wanted to be - and he wanted to with the women who surrounded him apparently - he could be disgustingly charming and he was an inveterate flirt, reaching down to help each woman up as he kissed their hands, proclaiming that he should be the one on his knees before such feminine beauty.

Vicky, who was still held to his side by a hard arm around her waist, whispered into his ear, "Laying it on a bit thick there, don't you think?"

As he turned to look at her, his attention settling heavily on her like a hand, touching her everywhere at once, arm contracting to haul her sharply up against him.

She heard his agog audience gasp at his potent gesture and frowned up at him.

"Is that jealousy I hear, my sweet?"

Vicky's eyebrow rose. "You should talk, considering what just happened between you and Craig. As for me, I always knew you preferred the pushovers to any kind of a challenge."

More oohs and ahhs from their rapt audience as she danced away from him, surprised he'd let her go at all but perfectly willing to take the opportunity to circulate alone while her co-workers lost their minds fawning all over him. She'd never done that and she never would.

She didn't see the look on his face as his eyes followed her for a very long while - his expression full of unmistakable hunger - before he turned back to the women before him. And even though he smiled down at them and patiently answered their inane questions, they knew they only had part of his attention, as his eyes frequently sought her out in the crowd and each of them fervently wished they had a man who looked at them like that - much less a God.

He grew bored rather quickly - as she'd undoubtedly known - and worried - that he would - and excused himself, having lost sight of her, which was the more primary reason he was on the move. If anything had been amiss with her, he would have known it immediately; she had refused to allow him to use any kind of magic on her except occasionally in their bedroom, but with the enemies he had acquired he wasn't about to let her roam around with no protection whatsoever, so he had bent her rule for her own protection - without telling her he had done so, of course - and cast a relatively simple spell that would alert him any time she felt scared.

His promise meant that he couldn't just send out mental feelers to discern where she was, he actually had to look for her, and he began by circling the perimeter of the property first. It was then that he found her, on the patio, talking to their host, a situation which he immediately was not in favor of. He could hear her tinkling laughter at something he'd said and he noticed that she was standing entirely too close to the mortal bastard who then had the gall to reach out and put his hand on her upper arm as if he had every right to do so.

Loki's jaw and fists clenched at the same time and he had all he could do not to swoop over, grab Victoria up in his arms and raze the house - hell, the entire city - to its foundations as he spirited her far away from here - to a realm of his own creation where he could deal with her in his own time and in his own way.

And there would be no one to hear her scream.

Instead, he began to stride purposefully towards them, and, at the look on his face the revelers parted like the Red Sea before Moses. He didn't say a word when he got to them. He simply looked at Craig's hand where it still lay on Vicky's arm, then down at Craig.

Once.

It was more than enough.

Craig took his hand off her so fast you would have thought he'd burned it.

Loki put his own hand over the exact spot that Craig had dared to claim - just above her elbow - and began tugging her down the long hallway, completely ignoring her mortified protestations.

Now, backing away from his deliberately intimidating, advancing form, Vicky found her back all too quickly pressed up against the far wall of Craig's bedroom, and with a twist of his fingers, she also found herself doing so completely naked but for the impossibly high heels she was wearing that she knew Loki particularly liked.

They were green and gold oxford peep toe spectators that even with five inch heels barely brought her level with his shoulders.

"Loki! Stop this imme -!"

His palm clamped none too gently over her mouth rudely interrupted what she was practically yelling at him.

A dark green and gold scarf appeared in his free hand and she found herself quite efficiently gagged in a matter of seconds - and both of his hands were now free to do with her as they pleased. Her wrists were bound behind her with something silky, but she never saw him do it - he'd captured them magically and rendered her that much more susceptible to him just that easily.

Vicky then found herself turned so that her back was to his front, those big, demanding hands running boldly over every inch of her that he could reach as he whispered into her ear just before he nipped the lobe, "I will not stand idly by as another man lays his hands on you, Victoria. I should have taught him that lesson when he began to manhandle - and kiss you - the moment you came through the door."

She tried to protest, but nothing came out but moans that left her blushing. She was a bit worried about the idea of Loki teaching Craig a "lesson" because there was no telling exactly what that meant. But she was too far beyond caring enough already to do anything about it, not that she could have anyway.

"I care not how innocent you think his intentions might have been." His husky words rasped across her sensitive flesh as surely as his fingers did. Big hands cupped her breasts, squeezing them just shy of painfully, rolling her nipples in a manner designed to draw sighs of ecstasy from her, and although they were stifled, he was not disappointed, especially as she arched her back to press them further into his palms. "I saw how he looked at you - as if he wanted to do to you what I am doing now, and what I am going to be doing in a few minutes. He lusts after you. He wants you. You might not see it - you tend to see only the good in people."

Loki guided her across the luxuriously thick carpeting to stand in front of the floor to ceiling mirrored door to what was probably Craig's closet, and she gasped at the sight, seeing Loki's face twist into a truly evil smile at her stark surprise, which had her heart beating even faster and heavier than it had been.

His long, elegantly fingered hands were full almost to overflowing with her breasts, and she could see - as she felt it - when he began to pluck at the turgid nipples.

Vicky's eyes drifted shut against the images, her head turning to tuck her eyes away against his neck until he reached up and turned her head - none too gently - to face forward. "Oh no, you don't get to hide from this, Victoria. I want your eyes on me in the mirror - on my hands or my mouth or my cock, but you are not -" he stepped to one side as his hand landed on her behind with enough force to leave a full handprint behind on the creamy white skin of first one cheek, "to close - " then the other " - your eyes." then across both at once.

She thought it was over then, until he administered another five searing swats, growling as he did so, "And do not ever try to pinch me or dig your nails into me again or I will make certain that you are made to truly regret it."

He caught a hold of her chin to force her to turn her head and look in the mirror at the livid red reminders he'd just left her with, saying, "This is how your bottom should always look - freshly spanked," as he reached down and squeezed each cheek, making her try to arch away from his hand and ending up pressing herself against the long length of him, against the metal and leather that she would always associate with him, even more so as his hands lingered there, fingers delving and probing between her legs as she squirmed and squealed.

After magicking away the gag just long enough to give her a long, hot, wet kiss before it was automatically replaced, he flipped her back so that her now sore bottom was pressed into his unmistakable prominence, the hands that had claimed her ribs, just beneath her breasts began to travel slowly down, following the curve of her waist to converge just below her navel and begin their descent to much more interesting territory.

Vicky found herself unable to look away from their reflection. He was so tall and powerfully masculine behind her, head to toe in armor while the nearly nude woman he held in his arms - that she could hardly believe was her - seemed very small and delicate and defenseless with in the circle of his arms.

And the things he was doing to her that she not only felt but saw happening at the same time - it was unutterably intoxicating.

As the fingers of one hand cupped her womanhood, Loki whispered hotly into her ear, "Open your legs for your Lord and Master. I would touch that which is mine."

Vicky was panting heavily, whining and whimpering behind the gag, her eyes beseeching him not to do this - in Craig's house, with her friends not twenty feet outside the door, in Craig's bedroom, for crying out loud - but she could see in his eyes that he would not relent.

Slowly, with severe reluctance, she did as he commanded before he decided his patience with her was at an end and decided to give her more than the eight hard swats she'd already received.

Lord knows he'd never stopped at such a small number before. She should have been counting herself lucky and doing exactly what he said instead of trying to find a way out of it.

As it was, she knew his patience with her hand ended when she felt his strong thigh split her legs abruptly apart, knocking her off balance - as had been his goal, of course - and forcing her to straddle its leather covered length.

"Now there is a truly beautiful sight," he breathed as he rocked his leg up against her, hitting her unprotected clit each and every time, holding her forcibly still to receive his efforts, grinding the stiff leather forcefully against that little bud and reaching up to yank the pins out of her hair, letting it fall down her back - unfettered, as he preferred at least that part of her to be - winding it around his fist and using his hold to yank her head back for his deep kiss.

Suddenly his knee was withdrawn and she almost sank to the ground - having lost both the potent mixture of pain and pleasure she had been forced to endure as well as the support he had become.

He caught her, of course, and then Vicky found her legs spread - through no overt touch of his own - obscenely wide, so that she could feel the air circulating around her exposed privates as his right hand began to claim and plunder those delicate parts while his left hand molded itself around her neck almost as if it were a collar, forcing her to hold her head up almost uncomfortably high, while still maintaining eye contact with him as he molested her body at will.

The contrast between the sight of those graceful fingers delving between her folds and the rough manner with which they were handling her was a dichotomy she would never tire of seeing, as much as she wished he would permit her to close her eyes. Those fine hands groped her painfully, pinching and rubbing as they made their way down her furrow to discover that which she knew he was looking for.

"Ahhhh. For all your protestations, for all your mewling and squealing and trying to escape or even just preserve your modesty - which you know you are not allowed to do - I always find this, don't I? I always prove to you that your body knows that what I do to you - what I demand from you - is what's best for you, what arouses you the most. And here is my proof." He held her head fast, held her helpless as he drove two fingers deep inside her, ignoring her keening wail, then removing them abruptly to show her how they glistened in the mirror, the proof of her hypocrisy literally dripping down the side of his hand before he brought the generously coated fingers first to his own mouth, then to hers to be licked clean.

When they returned to her little cunny, Vicky was unable to stop herself from groaning against it, not that he seemed to notice her small protest. Instead he drove those fingers back up inside her again, retracting them slowly to drag them up to her clit. As he began to worry that not so tiny bud, he bent his head to capture her mouth, his lips slanting across hers, tongue delving into her open mouth, teasing hers then biting the end very gently only to hear her squeak in protest.

She was breathing so heavily he knew she was close - closer than he wanted her to be, not that he eased off in the least. She knew better than to cum without permission.

He had had to repeat that very hard lesson for her several times until she truly learned it.

Loki plucked at her nipples, marveling at their constant hardness, knowing it was because of him and the thought pleased him enormously. He knew he had nothing to worry about from that mere mortal, but seeing that pudgy Midgardian hand on his woman had made Loki more jealous than anything had in a very, very long time.

Perhaps ever in his long lifetime.

And he liked the idea of forcing Victoria to come to terms with the fact that he would have her anywhere, anytime, anyway he liked. He thought it quite fitting to do so in the bedchamber of the man who would have loved to have possessed her himself in this very room.

Suddenly they were no longer standing but rather were lying on the big bed, Loki on his back, stretched out beneath where Vicky lay atop him. She was still bound and gagged, and she began to moan in protest as he raised his bent legs and spread them, then reached down to do exactly what he knew she didn't want him to do - hooking her legs over his, pulling them up and back until they hung over his knees and she was entirely unable - without any bonds whatsoever - to move them, they were held so far up and back, splaying her beautifully in the mirror that appeared above them.

"No!"

Despite her gag, he could clearly hear her cry of protest and chuckled softly into her ear. "Apparently you need another scarf."

Vicky felt her mouth being forced open further the moment the words came out. She tried to scream, "No!" again, but it was unintelligibly muffled.

"Perfect," Loki breathed, reaching for her breasts.

Vicky made the mistake of allowing her eyes to drift shut, but she opened them on a well stifled scream when Loki reached down and swatted her exposed clit with the tips of his fingers. She would have jackknifed up in protest if he hadn't been holding her so tightly.

"Oh, no, you are not going anywhere, angel. Not until I have used you most thoroughly. I have been craving you since I watched you dress this evening, and I will wait no longer to have you."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him wave his hand and she knew that whatever spell he had cast had removed the impediment of the front portion of his leather uniform - although she could still see anything missing in that blasted mirror - leaving his hard on poking insistently against her, lying threateningly between her folds, seeking her warmth like a moth to a flame.

Vicky renewed her protests, only to have it proven to her yet again that she was entirely at his mercy - as if she hadn't already known that.

The hand that had been holding her breast traveled inexorably down between her legs to grasp himself and nudge his broad tip against her opening.

"He will never have you, you know," he hissed low in his throat. "I will never give you up. You are mine." At that word, he drilled himself up inside her all at once, not giving her a chance to get used to him but forcing her not only to accept him within her body but also forcing her to watch it happening to her. She could see him thoroughly enjoying her whimpering protests against his treatment of her, watch her own head whipping back and forth against his shoulder as she tried unsuccessfully to arch away from him.

He closed his own eyes for a moment, reaching for strength to resist the orgasm inducing feel of her tightness as it reluctantly gave way to him, of how he could feel every single little spasm as she shuddered and contracted around him in her efforts to literally come to grips with his presence within her.

Loki didn't give her much time to do that, though. His eyes snapped open and found hers as he began to move almost immediately, making her gag disappear permanently this time and claiming her mouth with his lips, a generous breast and nipple with one hand, the other hand finding a clit to flick and pinch that had been cruelly exposed by his latest and most intimate possession of her - his enormously long, thick cock ramming into her harder each time he thrust up into her.

He was surprisingly close himself; she always did this to him. Loki nipped the spot where neck became shoulder, then placed his lips at her ear, growling, "Cum for me, my little love. See the beauty of your own - and my - ultimate bliss above us. I will hear you scream with it. I want Craig to hear me bring you to uncontrollable ecstasy, to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are owned by a God and that his own pitiful lust for you is a lost cause."

She both saw and felt his fingers flicking relentlessly over the barest tip of her clit, his cock fucking her harder than he ever had before, fingertips plucking and pinching her nipples as his tongue plundered her mouth - all of these things were more than enough to bring her off and combined they forced her - as he had planned - beyond any reticence she might have felt and well beyond the bounds of propriety. She could feel that coiling begin within her and knew he did, too, when his mouth gentled and left hers as he turned her head so that she had no choice but to watch it happen, his fingers on her little jewel became somewhat less demanding - although he continued to ram himself into her just as furiously - as he sought to draw out her pleasure, those beautiful green eyes of his locked with hers in the mirror as he devoted everything he had to driving her completely out of her mind with the euphoria he brought her.

And he damned near succeeded.

He had gotten her to a point where there was nothing else she could do but to surrender any remnants of control she thought she still had over her body to him as her orgasm hit her slowly, as he preferred, but with such undeniable power that the scream that bubbled up and out of her throat sounded other worldly, inhuman, and it went on for a long, loud moment as her entire body spasmed around him - from the roots of her hair to her toenails, she became taut as a bowstring, not surrendering to the pleasure as he would have her do, but almost fighting it - fighting him - fighting herself.

He held her easily, forcing her to accept what he brought her to, not letting up in the least, bellowing his own release seconds later when he lost his own battle to prolong it, but she always did that to him - the sight of her - wild in raw ecstasy - always triggered his own.

When she tried to move off him he held her still, his other hand drifting down to spread her lips further apart so that his skilled, already wet fingers could dip down to moisten themselves again, then return to rub her more lazily, if insistently, slowly, thoroughly, patiently bringing her to five more peaks before he took pity on her, turning her over so that he could cradle her head to his chest and she could stretch her legs out, both of them still panting heavily.

Suddenly she tried to sit bolt upright, not that he allowed her to. "Son of a bitch - the party!"

"Will wait for us, I promise."

Vicky gave him a dubious look, wondering what magic he'd worked but not at all sure she wanted to know. But he wasn't going to let her up, so she figured she might as well relax against him.

Not too long afterwards, he finally allowed her to get up and instantly dressed the both of them. Vicky went up to the head of the bed and began to try to straighten the mess they'd made of the bed, and that was when she noticed the big damp spot in the middle of the bedspread. "Son of a bitch!"

His eyes flickered to the sizeable dark spot and back up to her now blazing cheeks, but then he held his hand out to her, saying sharply, "Come."

"But -"

One eyebrow rose and that was all she needed to see because she knew it was all the warning she was going to get. Her butt was still smarting from the extremely short - but definitely not light - spanking he'd given her; she was going to be horribly embarrassed Monday at work, but she would prefer that to getting a real punishment from the God himself where anyone else could hear her getting it.

He led her out of the room and directly to Craig, noting with a small, self satisfied smile how red her face was as he apparently had remembered - had inconveniently decided to remember - only one tenet she had introduced him to about how to be courteous at a party -the part about saying goodbye to one's host before leaving. He said their goodbyes for the both of them somewhat curtly, his arm securely around her waist as he then escorted her out the door.

Vicky was just as happy not to have done all of the usual goodbyes. She didn't know how she was going to face any of them ever again.

Loki allowed himself that small, knowing, self-satisfied smile all the way home. He didn't take pity on her until Sunday night, when he finally deigned to inform her that he'd made certain that her friends hadn't heard anything at all - indeed, hadn't even noticed they were gone. She, of course, had done her best to pummel him into dust, he was sure, but he'd easily caught her wrists and subdued her in his favorite manner, rolling the two of them to tuck her beneath him and himself into her.

"I can't believe you did that to me!" she wailed, despite the way her breath caught when he seated himself deep within her.

Loki chuckled, his voice one of teasing reproach. "You know with whom you are consorting, Victoria."

"The God of Mischief and Lies. I do know, dammit."

She thought she did, at least, until what she expected was going to be much less of a horrible Monday morning turned out to be excruciatingly embarrassing when Craig came into her office first thing in the morning and handed her something that was long and ornately carved metal.

One of Loki's bracers.

She swallowed hard.

Craig couldn't look her in the eye and she could hardly blame him. "I found it in the -in the middle of my very rumpled bed after the party," he informed her before closing the door behind her.

She remembered the condition the bed was in when she'd been made to leave it and exactly what else was in the middle of the bed. Vicky buried her burning face in her hands, wondering if she'd ever get used to - or even really survive - being Loki's woman.