* KINK INBOUND *
Inspired by Leathers – Deftones
AN: Apologies again for the delay - the world is still trying to kill me, this time it was a car crash (Every plot point in my life is a punchline in a cruel joke).


Part 4


Sigyn shifted in the Queen's chair uncomfortably. She was distracted, her attention tugged incessantly to a point she couldn't place. Behind Loki's susurrant tones at the end of the dining table, beneath the steady thud of his heartbeat between the shallow pulse of her own, something drummed.

She could usually detect one other heartbeat over her own with clarity. A third or more became a cacophony she couldn't identify. Her own heart now accelerated with dread to a staccato, muting her haematurgical senses.

'Are there any servants here?' Sigyn cut in over the King, ignoring propriety.

The cascade of Loki's words halted and his gaze narrowed on her quizzically. 'In the hallway –'

Her eyes went wide with alarm. He tensed as her stare darted above him – to where a tapestry shifted against the wall.

Sigyn sprang to her feet, throwing the chair to the ground behind her as her arm shot out toward a figure clad in black now flying at the King – who ducked and rolled to the side. The flash of a curved blade lit a fuse on Sigyn's subterraneous fury, and her fingers stiffened, rendering the assassin rigid as though turned to stone as she seized control of his blood, paralysing his circulatory system. She twisted her palm up with a jerk and sent a torrent of blood through his arteries to his head, felling him with an aneurysm in one brutal instant.

The assailant collapsed with a clunk and a clatter. Sigyn drew closer while Loki knelt to examine him, pulling the mask back to reveal an Aesir face with blood streaking from the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

'Norns, that's the second one this week.'

Following his brother's departure from Asgard, Loki had held the All-Father's guise just long enough to announce his own Odinsleep in mourning, pardon Loki on account of his heroic defence of the Realm on Svartalfheim, and appoint him Regent in Thor's absence and Frigga's passing to oversee the restoration of the citadel. To his chagrin, the people of Asgard only bought this turn of events for so long, having yet to forget his destruction of the Bifrost and invasion of Midgard. If the unrest continued, he was loath the bring 'Odin' back out of hibernation to quash it.

'He was very calm. It took me a while to discern the interference with our heartbeats.'

Loki peered up at her.

It was not the first life Sigyn had taken. That occasion had been the one that disturbed the Queen into reassigning her to medicine. Frigga had seen how it seduced her – more than the flex of power that hummed through Sigyn's muscles; her enchantment with the beauty of it. The stare Loki turned on her was not his mother's horror, but one of intent fascination.

'Would you have preferred to question him?' Sigyn murmured sheepishly.

He gave an unconcerned shrug. 'If you keep on saving me like this I'll owe you half the Kingdom before long.'

'Mother would be most proud,' she replied grimly.

'Do you … hear anything else?' Loki quested.

Sigyn clenched her eyes and stretched her senses. 'I can only really tell whether or not I'm alone,' she admitted. 'I can't hear very accurately over your heart. Unless I stopped it for a moment, if you really want to know,' she offered.

He hesitated, understandably – mistrust was second nature to him. Sigyn saw the calculation click over in his eyes as he deliberated whom he trusted least – the woman who kept saving his life though she could easily take it, or those who conspired to end it. Finally he said, 'I want to know.'

She lowered herself beside him and Loki reclined against the table leg, watching her warily as she raised her fingers to hover timidly over his chest. 'Deep breath,' Sigyn advised. With a tensing of her fingers his heart cramped, spasmed, and was still; his mouth fell open in suffocation as what little colour his face held vanished. Sigyn held her own breath and listened …

Silence stretched between her breaths. They were alone. Sigyn released her hold on Loki's heart and he gasped deeply, the surcoat straining across his heaving chest. 'We're safe,' she reported swiftly while she revived him. She wafted her fingertips upward, stoking his pulse to a state of elevated vigour to compensate for the enervation she'd inflicted. His wilted frame straightened with renewed strength, greater than what he'd lost, and he regarded her with sharpened curiosity.

'As you were, Lady Sigyn,' said Loki. 'Guards!'

Sigyn returned to her upturned seat while guards dragged the corpse from the room, and tried to ignore their suspicious glances. She clasped her hands in her lap and waited for her composure to return as power coiled back within her muscles like a curling dragon.

'A spot of murder not enough to work up your appetite?' Loki asked as she poured mead into her goblet.

'Afraid not,' said Sigyn as she put the cup to her lips, her thoughts following a different direction.

'What troubles you?'

She met his stare with uncertainty. 'You haven't asked.'

'Asked what?'

'If I've somebody who needs to permit my attendance here,' she pointed out. 'Someone else I should be spending the evenings with.'

Loki's brows furrowed. 'I care not who's left waiting for you. None but another King can object to my wishes. Are you questioning my authority?'

'I suppose not.'

'Your place is here. As always – though I didn't always know,' he added. 'How you passed by my notice all those years will never cease to mystify me.'

'In the shadow of my more luminous sisters,' she offered, and felt that by the slight softening of his gaze, the second son understood.

'I couldn't tell them apart,' Loki claimed earnestly. 'Tell me, why did you never appear at the balls? The feasts at least.'

'I swore an oath, I dared not take such a risk –'

'No – before that.'

Sigyn gestured to her own noisy heart with a tap of fingertips to her breast. 'I'm ... not fond of crowds,' she explained of the clamorous cacophony of hearts and voices that beset her in the great hall like a hornet's nest. 'Besides,' she shook her head, 'even if I'd caught your eye, or shared a dance, or entertained a flirtation – Princes choose Princesses. Not handmaids.'

His lips twitched. 'My Lady, you wholly underestimate my capacity to do what I want.' He stood from the chair and stalked the length of the table, coming to a stop at her elbow. He outstretched a slender hand. 'Dance with me.'

Their fingers brushed and twined together. 'But there's no music,' Sigyn protested as he lifted her to her feet.

'Listen,' he bade her, his other hand pulling her waist against him.

A distant rhythm echoed up from the great hall, where revelry played on without them. The melody of the tune was lost on the air but the beat of the drums carried to the chamber, guiding their feet as they began a slow waltz. Loosely at first, and then with growing harmony as they adjusted to their heights. Sigyn thought of him up here every night alone, listening to the company below, and her grasp tightened on his hand.

'Lady Freyja and her daughters are famed for their conquests,' Loki mused as they circled the floor. 'You could have made a puppet of me. What stopped you, Sigyn – from exploiting your influence?'

'I'm not my family, any more than you are,' Sigyn bristled irritably, her steps halting. 'I've no desire to enslave men or women … I know only slavery in love.'

His jaw clenched. 'What prospects will you pursue now that your service has ended?' he asked with a forward nudge.

'I'm due to take a sabbatical in Vanaheim.'

'Don't,' he said swiftly. 'I'll retain you.'

She cocked her head. 'In what capacity?'

'On my vanguard,' Loki offered. 'You've proven rather adept at keeping me alive. You'd be an invaluable asset.'

He watched her expectantly, and Sigyn observed that he seemed genuinely invested in her taking the position. Supposedly he realised she was someone who may actually care about protecting him beyond the gold they'd earn for it. Something more peered out from his stare as he awaited her answer, which reminded her of fear – but was blinked away as she fixed on it. She considered how tonight's attempt on his life within such a protected part of the palace could have even occurred, and it hit her – he couldn't trust his own staff.

'I would be honoured,' she accepted. 'If only you'll allow me to continue my projects.'

'Of course.'

'Is that then how I shall earn your forgiveness – in bloodshed?' asked Sigyn. The conditions of her atonement kept shifting, but they were about to shift even further from a night of dining and dance.

'No.' Loki lowered her hand, but kept hold of it. 'For my forgiveness ... I'm afraid death nor dinner won't be reparation enough, Lady Sigyn.' His tongue moistened his lips as he watched hers. 'I'd take you as my consort.'

With a predatory sway of his shoulders, Loki had danced her against the edge of the dining table. With a bump she pressed back against it, but stammered in protest, 'The All-Mother would have my head –'

At this Loki reached up and took her by the chin, tipping her face up to his. 'You're sworn to obey me now – yes?'

His eyes were pinned to hers with deadly intensity, paralysing her limbs with a look as she could only do with seidr. A tingle shivered up her spine that left her weak in his clutches, and she could only nod.

'Then it's my judgement you live by. And I'd see you redeemed on your knees. Something that should come naturally to you.'

Sigyn shakily released the breath she was holding. Her palm felt sweaty in his hand. 'It's more than I deserve,' she admitted. 'But I'm afraid I'm unfit for such a role.'

He flashed a sharp smile. 'And why would that be?'

'I found ruin long before I wrought yours. I'm afflicted with … corrupted impulses. I've tried to enjoy natural desires, but my dalliances have been unsatisfying …' Her eyes were fixed at his boots, cheeks now burning with embarrassment.

Loki leant in slowly, a grin twisting his lips. 'Show me yours,' he solicited in a velvet purr, 'and I'll show you mine.'

'Are you certain?' she whispered up at him.

'Unreservedly.'

Her voice was frail with disbelief. 'When do we start?'

'Whenever you're ready to be forgiven.'


Sigyn pulled her fingers from his and turned her wrist up to him. Loki slowly rolled up her sleeve, to uncover an incision.

'I need to bleed,' she confessed, her voice muted by shame.

Loki all but rolled his eyes. 'Is that all?' he chuckled. His gaze travelled downward. 'Where else?'

She slowly pointed to unseen sites beneath her breast, on her stomach, her thigh.

Loki unsheathed a finely-sharpened dagger from his surcoat and her eyes swung to it. He lifted the hem of her gown and ran the blade to her hip in one fluid gesture, splitting the material at her thigh. 'Don't worry,' he said at her shock, 'I'll have any number made for you. But only in green.'

She settled on the edge of the table and fell silent, her breath quickening as he continued to slice the gown to shreds until he'd carved her curves from the cloth. When he leant back to admire his work, his grin widened at what he found. Here and there lingered more clean cuts made by a blade too sharp to scar. His fingertips were drawn to them, and as he traced each one he imagined the ex-healer nicking herself with a lifted scalpel, her fingers working below to the rhythm of her frustrated instincts.

'There was more to that day in the gardens, wasn't there Sigyn?' he realised quietly. He stared back into the past for a moment, reliving the way each frantic gasp and desperate whimper from her had made his pulse pound in a new rhythm that compelled him to heroism he'd never worn before.

She shivered under his touch, her heart beating heat through her numb veins. 'No encounter I had ever came close to what I felt there with you,' she conceded.

Loki softly set the blade to her skin and her eyes flew to his, terrified and yearning. 'I don't deserve –'

He clasped her throat. 'You don't. I do.' He pulled her to his chest and lowered his lips to her ear, breath ghosting her pulse as he explained, 'It would please me to see you in pieces, mindless with need.'

Then he drew the blade against her thigh. Sigyn winced and sagged against his shoulder, emitting a sigh of such deep relief that the back of Loki's neck prickled sharply.

'Another?'

She nodded. Soon time escaped them as Loki painted a portrait of his memory of her with his knife, until next he knew the sorceress was once again stung with strings of crimson ribbons bejewelled with glistening garnets. She bloomed under his attention as firelight glimmered on her sweat-dewed skin, a dusky flush rose in her cheeks, and her lips ripened to cherries. When he was done, Loki caught her jaw with his thumb. He recognised a desperate mesmerisation in her eyes once more, the same tremble in her knees. It was still he, the nimble-fingered Prince she trusted to touch her as she bled.

'Just as I remember,' he soughed sweetly as he gazed down enraptured by the dishevelled pet suffering for his love. 'My, how wild you've grown. Be mine, little Briar-rose.'

Sigyn stared back up at him in sly reverence, amber fire in her eyes daring him, begging him, to do anything he wished. Her focus dropped to the dagger in his fist – and she nudged her cheekbone against the blade, marking herself by him.

His jaw slackened in awe. He fought to remind himself that she was just a plaything, weak and impressible. He'd planned to break her in to servitude slowly, toying with her over a series of encounters. But his blood howled for her, impelling his nerves. Only distantly he noticed the touch of her seidr, a thirsting moon that reached beneath his armour, pulling the tides of his blood down his body. Her blood sang to itself in him, calling him home.

Loki dropped the dagger onto the table and grasped her in his hands, capturing her mouth with his. And the moment he did, madness erupted in his chest, making a volcanic return that dragged a pained moan from his throat as craving ached in his bones. Norns, it hurt just as deeply as it had years ago – except this time she was his to soothe it, with nowhere to run, and her lips were the sweetest solace. He gripped her tighter, painfully so, as mead met wine on their tongues. His weakness was hers, he recited as it stabbed and twisted.

Gasping, Sigyn reached into his coat, seeking the claspings – but he stilled her questing hands. 'That's mine,' he confessed between her lips.

His twisted instinct. A need to possess while remaining shielded by a maze of strapped layers. To watch his conquests respond like puppets to his manipulations with uncompromised composure from the safety of his armour. He couldn't bring himself to be the one to break and beg under another's touch. Indeed, he'd spared no gratitude for the maids who'd made an exception for him after failing to score Thor, giving nothing of himself as he defiled them, those who'd only chosen him second.

The one who'd chosen him first all along now ran her hands over his metal-clad shoulders and down his armour, undeterred. She leant in to press her lips to his leathers, and her tongue darted out to dab at the material as one would taste a man's skin, ignoring the barrier he maintained. Loki gaped at her worship. How could Frigga have denied him this? he marvelled. 'Show me how sorry you are,' he purred. 'Convince me.' He felt himself go faint when she began to nip at the pleats and seams with her teeth, gently at first and then hard enough to tug him against her.

Loki fell upon her ravenously and proceeded to take his teeth and tongue to the rest of her, until she ripped the zipper of his surcoat and clawed at the fastening of his breeches. He draped her legs around his hips and took her face in his hands again. 'You did the right thing, darling,' he hummed. 'What matters is I'm alive to punish you for it.' Then he melted into her, as perfectly as his fingers splayed the pages of a book, as the nib of his quill dipped into an inkwell, as his blade sheathed in an enemy.

The moment of agony that dawned on his features then made Sigyn wonder how long it had been for him. Loki recovered with a ferine huff, briskly banishing whatever wracked him with a toss of his unruly hair.

'Am I all you imagined?' he teased with a wicked smirk, chin smeared with blood.

'More,' she breathed limply. 'More –'

Loki pushed Sigyn down onto her back, obliging her give and take. With a deep rumble, the sky outside was rent by lightning and heavy rainfall came spilling against the fogging windows. His bloodstained fingertips stroked and teased and dug. Soon the air was tinged with their panted breath between the creak of leather over the lush slicking of their movements and the drip of rain from the gutters. After a period of thorough experimentation, Loki found the rhythm that made her writhe and whine his name in a way that undid him. Sweat dropped from his forehead onto her stomach. 'Witch,' he cursed with relish as he followed her into rapture, carelessly unleashing in her suckling clutch.

When his spent flesh ebbed from hers moments later, warmth flooded the space in his wake and in an instant Sigyn was gripped by dread. 'Oh no,' she moaned and scrambled back from him as though it would do any good. '– You shouldn't have –'

'But you begged so very sweetly,' he countered, wiping himself off on her rags.

'I didn't –' she began to protest, but he only quirked a brow.

'Not with your mouth.' Loki fisted her hair and dragged her up against him. 'You're mine,' he vowed, and Sigyn had never known such peace.


Sigyn blinked and was stunned as the warm light suddenly dimmed to the flicker of a single brazier – now cast upon the marble walls of an opulent bathroom. She glanced downward to find a cool countertop in the dining table's place beneath her.

Loki remained before her, his damp features fixed in concentration. He combed his fingers down through her mussed hair, and then set to work erasing all evidence of their depravity. Tugging off the remnants of her gown, he smoothed his hands over every inch of her skin, sealing each injury with a touch of seidr.

When his thumb rose to her cheek Sigyn sucked in a breath. 'Leave that one.'

His thumb hovered over her cheek as he paused in consideration. He relented, retracting his thumb into a fist before continuing. With a soaked cloth he wiped away every streak of blood smudged across her skin. His touch was tender now, stirring her pulse with a subtler grace. Under such care Sigyn was assailed by guilt so terrible it left her quivering at the thought of Frigga's wrath. Her eyes pricked with tears.

'What's the matter with you?' Loki asked as her breathing sharpened.

Sigyn masked her mouth with a shaking hand. 'She'd be so disappointed in me. She'd hate me.'

He threw his head back. 'So virtuous,' he mocked through a gritted grin. 'I killed her, Sigyn. I'm unworthy of her protections – your oath is void,' he argued. 'Finding you was my punishment.'

'And mine?'

'Whatever indenture I design.' And with those words he tugged her off the countertop and turned her over it, pressing her down by the small of her back. He pushed her hair aside and leant to sweep his tongue across the nape of her neck. Sigyn felt the press of leather against her backside and heard the clink of a buckle.

'What are you doing ...'

His voice dropped to a silky hiss beside her ear. 'Every time you speak of her I'm going to fuck you again.'

Teeth sank into her neck and Sigyn gaped as he helped himself to the weeping wound he'd made between her legs. Her shuddering gasps echoed back to her as his swollen flesh corrupted hers once more, mocking the flimsy shreds of virtue she clung to. The tears cooled on her lashes.

'There's no-one left to stop you, Sigyn,' he implored as his fingertips crept to the throbbing bud of nerves below her navel. 'And no-one to stop me. I know what's in your blood.'

They both knew he couldn't do anything she didn't want – not without an equally matched fight at least. She could paralyse him, or render him impotent entirely the moment he moved in a way that caused her true displeasure. But Loki knew too that the trick to keeping her on her knees was in making it worth her while. Sigyn arched against him, and he slowed to long strokes that soon stoked an intolerable ache within her until she was squirming and mewling in his grip once again. Her mind was blank, awash with indulgence and the comfort of compliance as his satisfied sigh crashed like a distant wave.

'Every time,' Loki warned her in a cool whisper as they parted. Sigyn whimpered as she runneth over, and cream spilled down her thighs, spattering on the marble between her toes. 'Understood?'

'Yes Sire,' she breathed in acceptance, and his hands retracted.

He knelt and wiped her sullied legs clean, before rising to return to his earlier ministrations, carefully restoring her with meticulous detail. Finally he brushed his hands from her collarbones to her knees, and an imitation of her gown glimmered into place. Sigyn touched it only to feel her damp bare skin, and her heart raced at the prospect of walking back to the townhouse clothed in nothing but an illusion.

Another blink returned her to the dining room, with not a piece of cutlery out of place save for the aromas of their sweat and the lukewarm food they'd abandoned. To Sigyn's surprise, a growl of hunger gnawed at her stomach. She found herself approaching the table, considering a leg of pheasant.

'Do you mind if I …'

'Not at all,' said Loki. 'In fact I … find myself somewhat – peckish.' He joined her, tasting at a hunk of bread smeared in sauce.

Sigyn reached for another morsel, and Loki another mouthful – and then suddenly they were both stuffing themselves, picking over the banquet like a pair of vultures. Sigyn pulled away, sucking juices off her fingertips. 'I – I don't know what came over me ...'

Loki's hand trailed through her bordeaux tresses, twining the ends round his fingers. 'Life becomes you, Sigyn.' Her bruised lips trembled into a smile that his gaze openly savoured. 'But I'm afraid I've exhausted you. You may retire for the evening, and I hope this time sleep finds you.'

'Am I forgiven?' she asked.

'Maybe tomorrow night.'


Sigyn returned home to find Lofn waiting in her bed. She spied the cut on her face before Sigyn could tip a fall of hair over it, and shot up sharply.

'This is his thanks?' raged Lofn, glaring at the mark the King had made on her sister.

Sigyn ran a hand through her hair as her web of untruths began to unravel. 'No Lofn, his punishment; for the curse I laid on his blood to restore it. He suffered though he survived.'

'But you didn't do anything wrong!'

Sigyn's voice rose more harshly than she intended. 'His forgiveness means everything to me Lofn! I'll do anything to earn it. And he's going to let me.'

'This is madness,' her sister croaked, shaking her head.

'And I'm a madwoman,' she declared, pushing past her and crawling onto the bed. 'Leave me be. I'm exhausted, I had a lot to eat.'

'He got you to eat?' Sigyn dimly heard Lofn remark as she collapsed into a nest of blankets.