I would never stop finding it funny how the tables had turned. There was a time when I swore no one would ever be in my head ever again. After the brutal violations I had suffered at the hands of my captors, my mind was a mess. It was a twisted labyrinth of my own creation that I had used as an escape from the torture, and then it was turned from a sanctuary into another instrument of my torment when my captors discovered it and decided to add their own touches.

It didn't help that I had suffered extensive neurological damage not only thanks to the torture, but to the bombardment of psychic despair I was bludgeoned with the moment my universe was destroyed. The damage didn't heal completely with my transformation. Stephen Strange was pretty sure that my brain was constantly undergoing and then rehealling the wounds. That explained a lot, from my sometimes inability to regulate my emotions, my moments of instability, to the blackouts I often experienced.

Needless to say, I had been pretty damn defensive at the mere suggestion of anyone poking at my mind. Then I fell in love with the God of Mischief.

Loki had some psychic ability, and as our relationship had deepened, he started to have more and more trouble restraining himself from initiating a psychic bond with me. Just touching me lightly on that level was enough to send me into a panic attack. It was frustrating because I trusted him on every level, but my PTSD addled brain didn't give a flying damn. I involuntarily flinched whenever Loki's control slipped and he brushed against my mental barriers.

Over a year and some change later, not only were we married, we now had that bond and were a part of each other. Part of me was still getting used to it. Most of me felt complete, as though there had been a space there and Loki fit perfectly in it. It was now hard to imagine him not being part of me.

I was rummaging in the kitchen at Avengers HQ, making a shopping list consisting of the necessities along with any munchy requests from the team. I was also writing some nastygrams that I tore off my notepad and sent to certain people with a spark of magic ("If you want a whole goat, you can get it yourself. There's plenty in New Asgard."; "I am not handling durian, Steve doesn't pay me enough, that's all on you."; "Foie gras? Don't make me come after you."; "NO FUCKING DURIAN!" which I underlined three times and circled twice before letting it flutter away in a cloud of sparks that would reform into paper when it landed on the desk of the stinky fruit lover, who requested it twice) when the door to the kitchen opened.

I didn't turn around and I didn't need the solid weight of the body at my back, the breath tickling my ear as he leaned his head down and kissed the joint where my jaw met my neck, to know who it was. I could feel him. Thanks to the bond, I always felt him, but it was nice being in his actual physical presence. He had come in just as I wrote the second durian note and sent it off. "I understand that is quite delicious."

"You have to get past the smell first, and there is no way I am putting that in my car, let alone putting up with it sitting here in HQ, where I'll be smelling it all day no matter where it's stored."

"You could put a shield around it."

I turned my head and raised a brow at Loki. "Have you ever smelled it?"

He blinked while looking back at me. "No."

"Didn't think so. If you ever had, you would know that nothing is going to take care of that stench."

Loki took a peek at my shopping list. "What is a Wacky Cake and who is requesting the ingredients to make one?"

"Two people are requesting them, actually, and the recipe is from the Great Depression. I'll let you have three guesses which two team members who grew up during the Great Depression are requesting it."

"Ah," Loki was looking at the list with a little trepidation. "I have seen how those two eat. I am not certain I would trust their palates."

"They both swear it's the shit. They want to make a couple for the team as a treat." I shrugged. "It's got chocolate in it, so it can't be all bad."

"There are ways to make chocolate unpalatable, Pet."

Before I could tell Loki that someone would have to try really hard to accomplish that, the kitchen door opened and Tony, who was visiting in order to do some stuff around HQ, stormed in. He had both of the notes I had sent him in his hand. "Don't knock durian until you've tried it, Princess."

"I don't care about the taste. It's the odor, especially with my sense of smell," I retorted.

"I have a specially built container that'll take care of it!"

"You mean like it took care of the surströmming you finished off two days ago, much to my relief?"

Tony blinked. "You smelled that?"

"I smelled it."

"Even with..."

"Even with." I felt a flash of sympathy from Loki. He actually knew what surströmming was. I also felt bewilderment that anyone, let alone Stark, would willingly eat the stuff. "And anyway, I am not putting the durian into my car. I'd never get the smell out of the upholstery."

"That may not be a bad thing...then perhaps you would finally get a better vehicle," Loki muttered under his breath. He ignored the dirty look I gave him.

"You can't cast any sort of spell...?" Tony asked, but he saw the look on my face. "Fine. I'll get it myself, but you'll just have to suck it up because it'll be here."

"Bring it in here, and I will order some to be delivered straight to your house."

Tony pointed at me with the crumpled notes in his hand. "You aren't allowed to have anything delivered to my home anymore. Not after the drum set!"

If Loki were a dog, his ears would have perked up. "Drum set?"

Aw, shit.

Tony turned on Loki. "You didn't know about the drums?"

I kept my eyes fixed firmly on my notepad and gave the pantry much more of my focus and attention than it needed.

"No," Loki purred. "I didn't know about the drums." I felt his eyes on me.

Tony sniffed. "To get back at me for all the cat videos, your wife decided to give Morgan a present for her birthday. She had a child sized drum set delivered to my home."

I felt Loki take pause at this. "What is so bad about that?"

"Six-year-old girl. Big shiny instruments that make a lot of noise when smacked."

"Ah," I knew Loki was nodding in sympathy, although I also felt his attention was still on me. I also knew his sympathy at Tony's plight wasn't genuine. "Could you not have the drums returned?"

"Not after your wife had the box wrapped in bright pink wrapping paper with images of the human version of Pinkie Pie playing her drums printed on it, along with a pretty bow and ribbon, and a card telling Morgan that her Auntie Tracy was looking forward to seeing her first rock concert one day."

Loki's eyes were still heating me up with their gaze even as I felt his amusement...and something else that made me shuffle my feet nervously. I didn't look back at him. He'd have to make me.

"Really," Loki said in that purr that always made me weak in the knees.

"Pepper and I managed to get Morgan to stick to a schedule," Tony continued. "But even then, the drumming's been driving us insane." I now felt his glare on my back. "So, you owe me. Get the fruit."

Tony then left, leaving me alone with my husband, who was still making me squirm with his gaze. He didn't say a word. He didn't need to. I felt his irritation...not about the prank itself, but the fact that I didn't tell him about it nor let him in on it.

It was a few more minutes with the only sound in the kitchen the scratching of my pen as I made doodles on my notepad. I had actually finished the list a long while ago. Loki was doing that thing where he would stare at me until I finally cracked and confessed to whatever I did that he was annoyed about.

And since that damn stare always worked, I cracked.

"I was going to tell you about the drums," I blurted out. "It just slipped my mind."

Loki just continued to gaze at me.

"Come on, you know he deserved it! There were the cat videos... then all the times he kept remotely changing my ringtone," the last time Tony had changed it to that irritating "Fox" song that made the rounds in the early 2010s. "All the times he ever remarked on our, erm, extracurricular activities..."

There was a twinkle in Loki's eye as he choked back a laugh. "'Extracurricular activities'?"

I felt my face burn. "I really need to get going if I'm going to beat traffic to the market."

"That can wait," Loki grabbed my hand and pulled me out the kitchen door. "I find myself interested in partaking of some 'extracurricular activities'."

I winced, picturing a quickie in one of the mansion's bathrooms.

"Nothing so crude, Pet," Loki scoffed, because of course he had caught it. Good, because I really wasn't into that sort of thing. Our own bathroom, no problem, especially since we were both fastidious about keeping it clean. Bathrooms that other people used? No.

I was letting him lead me along like a puppy on a leash when a voice from upstairs shouted out "Hey! What's wrong with foie gras?"

I froze, and my temper washed away most of the tingles Loki had given me. Before I could open my mouth and let the idiot know exactly how I felt about them asking me, of all people, to obtain a food item that was sourced from a poor goose that had been force-fed corn through a tube shoved down its throat, Loki wrapped an arm around my waist and lifted me up. "You have gotten yourself into enough trouble today," he tsked as he opened the door to one of many private studies scattered throughout HQ.

I sniffed in indignation. Enough? I hadn't even started. It wasn't even 8 for fuck's sake.

Loki caught that as well, because he planted me on a solid oak table with a thump that knocked the wind out of me. "I think someone is a little too wound up this morning," he purred, standing between my legs. If he kept talking, I was going to make a mess on this nice table and I would have to go home and change.

I was blushing all the way through my scalp. "The others are going to know what we're doing in here," I hissed.

"We will not be doing anything in here," Loki replied. I looked at his face, which was never a hardship even on a bad day. Loki was breathtakingly gorgeous. His raven hair fell to his shoulders, framing a face that was too beautiful to be called merely handsome, with a bone structure that was as far from rugged as you could get but was still savagely male. He had porcelain perfect bone white skin, and oceanic blue eyes that could turn dark and stormy in a heartbeat. Like me, he had a temper.

Women, and quite a few men, drooled over him. He literally stopped traffic, and not just because people remembered him from when he invaded New York over a decade ago...an act that he was not wholly responsible for and for which he had atoned many times over. He was tall and lithe, and moved with a feline grace. Combined with a body that was muscular yet wiry and trimmed, he sent pulses racing, and that was before he opened his mouth. He possessed a deep, cultured voice that left those who heard it breathless.

He could have anyone he wanted. His wedding ring was the only thing that kept those women and men from throwing themselves at him sans clothing where ever he went. I don't think even that would stop some of them if he didn't phrase a refusal in such a way that the would-be Juliets were immediately shut down and discouraged from trying again, which he did when he was feeling bitchy. Most of the time, he ignored the advances and attempts at flirtation.

He could have his pick. For some strange reason though, he had chosen me. I still had trouble believing it.

He was making me shiver now with his hands stroking up my back. One hand came up and brushed the curtain of dark brown hair that had fallen into my face aside. I had been wearing my hair loose more since he loved it that way. I loved the way it felt when his hands were in it.

"Close your eyes and relax, Pet. Open your mind to me."

A year ago, those words would have sent me running from the room, out the mansion door, and burning rubber as I raced out of the driveway in my Rabbit. Even six months ago I would have started hyperventilating and I'd have withdrawn away from Loki for even suggesting it.

But I trusted him completely. I obeyed and let him take me where he wanted.

I opened my eyes and found myself standing right outside of the entrance to my labyrinth. The hedges were as tall as I could see, a wall of tangled thorny vines, ivy, and shrubbery so thick I couldn't see the other side. The hedges were living, the thorny vines slithering like snakes while the leaves on the ivy waved, trying to beckon me closer. I had created it, in an attempt to escape my torture, to go somewhere where my captors couldn't follow. It hadn't worked completely. They had been very skilled psychically wise, figured out what I was going, and found ways to turn my construct against me. The tops of the walls disappeared into a thick bank of clouds. Some of the clouds turned dark, almost looked like they were rotting, and then they became normal white clouds again. Didn't take a genius to realize those stood for the parts of my brain that were going through a constant cycle of dying and then being healed.

I gazed at the labyrinth entrance, shuddering. I knew there were still pockets in there full of horrors.

I felt Loki's hands squeeze my shoulders. "No, Pet," he whispered in my ear, gently but firmly. "We are not going there today."

I made myself look away and turn into his chest, breathing in his scent. He always smelled like the frozen crispness of the air after a heavy snowfall with a touch of leather, with just a hint of peppermint, plus a slight musk. The musk changed when he went into his femme presenting form, and it became stronger in his Jotun form, but the rest remained. That aroma was my anchor, what I clung to when things got rough.

The scene shifted around us, changed. Now we looked upon a beach at night, standing on the deck of a beach house that I recognized as the one we had gotten married and then honeymooned at. There was a large mattress, the kind that would normally go on a very large lounge, on the floor of the deck, and the only light came from the endless stars that floated in the midnight blue sky, the entire Milky Way working with the sea to soothe my frazzled self.

Loki was good. It was so realistic. I could even feel the tiny grains of sand that floated on the breeze land on my skin.

"We will need to make time to take another trip to the oceanside," Loki murmured, leading me to the mattress which now sported a pile of blankets and pillows, making the whole thing into an inviting nest. He lowered me to the blankets and held me close. His hands began roaming my body stroking my sides before caressing my breasts. I moaned and my hands weaved themselves through his silky hair. Loki pushed me down so I was now reclining among the soft blankets and plush pillows.

Both of our clothes melted away while he leaned in and sucked at the skin of my neck. I arched my back to get closer to him, my legs wrapping around him and my hands stroking his back. I could smell the ocean, the faint scent of brine and fish, the aromas of the various plants and animal life you could typically find on a seashore. My ears could pick up the sounds of crabs scuttling on the sand. A nest nearby had hatched and I could hear the small new lives struggling and digging their way out of the sand, the dragging pitter patter of the tiny fins of the newly hatched turtles as they made their journey to the water. I also heard the sound of water being expelled out of the blowhole of some large marine mammal a few miles away. Loki had not skimped on the details when he created this particular psychic landscape.

I reached between us and grasped his length, the uncircumcised cock hard and begging to be stroked. He made an impatient sound in his throat while giving me a small reprimanding bite on my neck, then pulled his hips out of my hand's reach. When I returned that hand to his back, he pushed himself forward and inside. I groaned his name while relishing the burn that accompanied him stretching me.

I had a brief thought that this might have to be quick after all. Even though this wasn't in the "real" world, the others would realize something was going on.

Loki gave me another reprimanding nip on the side of my neck. "No Pet," he told me in a husky voice. "We will take our time. Don't focus on what is happening out there, focus on us here."

He pumped his hips in a torturously slow manner, and I rocked my hips with him, gazing up into his eyes, feeling his pleasure just as he felt mine. We knew each other inside and out. We knew exactly where and how to touch each other, when each of us were close. Loki proved it when he sat back on his heels, lifting one of my legs to press it against my shoulder, pumping his hips with a little more force while his fingers reached down rub my clitoris.

My orgasm hit like a bullet, and I cried out while his movements became more urgent. I could feel that he was close as well, but he wouldn't let me hold off on my next climax until he came. Stars that matched the ones in the heavens exploded behind my eyelids right before he stilled and collapsed on me with a groan.

He rolled off me and cuddled me close with his lips on my forehead. His arms wrapped around me while I trembled with aftershocks.

Then the scene slowly faded away.

I slowly opened my eyes and had to brace myself on Loki's shoulders with my hands. He was still holding me, running his nose along the side of my neck. I wrapped my arms around him and held on, still trembling. We had never done anything like that before. My eyes looked at the old-fashioned clock on the wall. It told me that we had been in this room for less than five minutes. It hadn't seemed like five minutes in that mindscape.

I felt Loki smile against my cheek. "Time does work differently on the mental plane, Pet. I told you there was nothing to worry about."

"Says you. I'm wet," I had lowered my voice to a whisper so no one else in HQ could hear.

"I am sorry for that," he replied, in a tone that said he wasn't sorry at all. "If it makes you feel any better, I am suffering as well, and will be until we are home tonight."

I didn't need to look down at his crotch to know that. I did feel a little better. I gave him a kiss, which he returned with interest, and sighed. "Can't put it off any longer. If I'm going to beat rush hour, I need to go now."

"I will accompany you," Loki said, which didn't surprise me. "Perhaps I can help with the durian."

He had been a little too eager with his offer of help, and I pulled back, narrowing my eyes in suspicion. "No. You will not let the smell leak out to embed into the upholstery of the Rabbit so you can buy me a new car when the stench becomes unbearable for me."

Loki rolled his eyes. "Fine," he grumbled in the voice he used when he was pouting.

"What you can do is teleport the stuff directly into Tony's room here."

"I suppose that will depend on if the fruit really smells as bad as you say it does."

I was going to witness Loki's first time smelling durian. Wouldn't that be fun?

"Well, off we go," I hopped off the table, prepared to go to my desk and grab my purse and the Avengers credit card before I gave in to the urge to jump my husband's bones now that we were back in the real world.

"I just have one question before we leave," Loki informed me before I opened the door.

I paused, expecting something flirtatious or suggestive to come out of his mouth.

What I heard him ask instead was "Who is Pinky Pie?"