Excitement burst through Aemilia's veins as she left her home early one afternoon, under the guise of meeting her friends in the city for a few hours. She did not take her horse as she would to venture to the city, but stepped down the cobblestone pathway that led to the gate at the property's edge, a small smile lingering on her face as she glanced up at the bright, warm sky overhead. Loki had told her to dress comfortably, so she was wearing one of her simpler, looser dresses, a light coral colored one that felt like nothing as the skirt grazed her ankles while she walked.
It was a short, slightly bouncy walk away from her home, and she didn't really know where she was going. He had simply told her to start heading East on foot after she'd had a full lunch, and that he would take care of the rest. She walked along the path that centuries of carriages and horses had created in the earth beneath her feet and waited patiently, maybe five minutes passing before she heard the sound of hooves clicking up behind her.
She turned and saw a large, gorgeous black horse approaching, carrying a dark hooded figure on its saddle, and she let her stubborn smile spread a little bit. As the horse came closer, she looked around, making sure that no eyes were around to see, and none were - her family's property was relatively secluded, something she was grateful for now as the horse came to a stop beside her.
A flash of green eyes under the black hood was all she saw before a pale hand extended down to her, a silent offering, and she took it without hesitation. Then, dizzyingly quickly and smoothly, she found herself pulled up on the horse and nestled between the rider's legs before the horse trotted off briskly towards the woods.
It was all so very theatric and unnecessary, she thought as they neared the trees, since all Loki would have had to do was tell her where to meet him and she could have easily found her way on her own horse, but he'd insisted on picking her up and being very vague about where they were going today to begin her magic lessons. It would have been thrilling enough just to meet him in the daylight hours, outdoors for once, but then he'd turned it into a highly clandestine sort of thing, and the fact that it was all surrounding magic made it unbelievably exciting.
As soon as they'd slipped into the forest and were cloaked by the trees and their green leaves, Loki dropped his hood and gathered the reins in one of his hands, freeing one to take her waist as he pressed a kiss to her neck. She smiled and held on to the saddle with one hand while she turned towards him, eyes alight as she met his gaze and kissed his lips when he raised his head from her neck.
"So dramatic," she noted as they navigated down a narrow path in the woods. She kept her eyes on him, suddenly wondering if this was the first time she'd seen the Prince this closely in the light of day. He was dressed in black with small accents of dark green on his sleeves and chest, and the sunlight brought a soft warmth to his pale face that she hadn't seen before. Her gaze had travelled to his hair that shone as black and luminous as the feathers of Odin's ravens by the time he spoke.
"My nature does not allow for dullness, as you well know," he replied, hand moving from her waist to her side, then down to her hip and finally her thigh. She smiled, and he smiled lightly in return, watching rays of sunlight flicker through the trees overhead and light up her features. She watched him study her as she had studied him, and she wondered why they'd waited so long to venture out into the sunlight together.
"Dull is a word I would never dare associate with you, my prince," Aemilia replied, reluctantly then tearing her gaze away and fixing it on the path they were traveling. "Do I get to know where we're going?"
"We are going somewhere we will not be seen, bothered, or disturbed while we work," he said. "Are you eager to begin?"
"Yes," she smiled, enthusiasm filling her voice as she leaned back into his touch.
"Should I remind you that today will not be any sort of fun, whether the outcome is successful or not?"
"I know you said it will be difficult and unpleasant," she replied, "but I am so excited to be trying at all - and to have one such as yourself to teach me."
He grinned at her flattery, knowing she meant it sincerely. And she should be excited to have his help - Loki had been turning down apprentices for decades, not caring or having the patience to deal with teaching a student his tricks and secrets, but he actually liked the idea of teaching Aemilia. He thought it might have been a side effect of watching her play an enchantress on stage, since that had been quite the intriguing sight, indeed.
Their trek was not brief, and Aemilia watched as they left the forest and headed up a rocky, uneven hill, Loki's hand rarely leaving her leg even as he navigated the uneasy terrain. The hill led to a small depression on its other side, and they crossed a quietly-flowing brook on their way up another, larger hill. Gravity forced her to lie back fully against him as they ascended slowly, and she didn't mind it at all - every now and then he'd brush his lips across her cheek or along her ear, and a comfortable silence surrounded then until they reached their destination.
It was a clearing on top of the big hill, surrounded by a thin but effective cover of tall trees, and at first, there didn't seem to be anything remarkable about the area. But, as Loki halted his horse and Aemilia scanned the clearing, she noticed craters that littered the ground. Some were substantial and others were small, and then she looked at the trees to find that some of them appeared to have been singed and burned at some point, some more recently than others.
Loki slid off the horse first, then wordlessly held out a hand to help her down. She took his hand and asked, "What's happened here?"
"I did," he smirked as her feet hit the ground. "This is where I go to, shall we say, test new spells."
"Oh," she said, eyes drifting off to the largest crater again and widening slightly - what had he done to cause that?
Then she realized something else about the area - it was completely quiet. There was no chirping of birds or rustling of wildlife, seemingly no sound at all coming from anywhere. Before she could comment, Loki walked past her and said, "Come along."
She did as he said, now unable to ignore the almost eerie silence as she followed him to the middle of the clearing. She stopped when he did, and looked up into his eyes when he asked, "Are you ready to begin?"
She had no idea what "beginning" entailed, but she nodded anyway. "Yes."
"You don't seem as eager as before," he noted with amusement.
"I... no, I am only wondering what exactly you mean by 'begin'."
"Ah," he said, gesturing to the ground in front of him before adding, "Sit." When she eyed the ground as he sank down to a sitting position himself, he raised an eyebrow. "Do not tell me you fear a bit of dirt on your dress."
"No," she shook her head quickly, moving to sit in front of him. "I'm only wondering why you brought me out here rather than taking me to your room to do this."
"Because," he replied, "it is far safer to be in an open space when you are playing with energy that you do not understand."
Aemilia blinked, suddenly wondering if she should be fearful of what was to come. He seemed to sense this and added, "You won't be in any danger while I'm here. But I'd rather not risk the integrity of my chambers, which is why you are here and not there."
That made sense. "All right. So how do we begin?"
He drew a breath, looking at his hands for a moment before looking back up to her. "You remember what I said before, about magic being present in all born of Asgardian blood." She nodded. "It's an energy that you were born with but have never noticed. The key to you being able to harness it is learning to find it within yourself now and distinguish it from the rest of your being."
"Okay," she replied, hoping he would give detailed instructions of how exactly to do that.
He held out his hand to her, and she looked down at his palm as a faint green light swirled around it. "Take my hand."
She did, and immediately she felt a warm, thrumming sensation spread from his hand to hers. It pulsed like a heartbeat, and she stared at their joined hands as he spoke again. "This is what it feels like. You feel this every day, only at a much lower level. It beats with your heart. It's there, though it is faint, and you must find it and grasp it."
He let go, and Aemilia blinked at the loss of contact. "That was... remarkable. Is that what you feel every day, inside of you?"
"I've never known anything different," Loki replied with a slight shrug. "Much like you haven't until now."
"How do I... grasp it?"
"I will help you try," he said, "but first you must close your eyes and allow yourself to relax completely. Focus on the silence, on the peace around you, and let yourself... become a part of that peace."
She stared at him for a moment, wondering if she could even get this part right, but she straightened and folded her hands in her lap before closing her eyes and exhaling. She let her shoulders drop a little bit and told herself to relax, but she could feel Loki's gaze upon her, and only a moment later she cracked open her eyes and smiled. "I cannot relax with you watching me like that."
He smirked and then vanished before her eyes. She didn't know if he was gone or just invisible, and neither was any more comforting than the other, so Aemilia closed her eyes again and decided not to think about it.
She focused on her breathing first, the dull monotony of breathing in and out, in and out, and let her mind empty of all conscious thoughts as she did. She tried to relax as if she were drifting off to sleep, the only sound in her ears belonging to her own breaths, and just as she felt as if she was truly starting to relax, two hands on either side of her head nearly broke her concentration.
"Keep your eyes closed," she heard Loki whisper as his thumbs pressed gently into her temples. Then she gasped at the strangest thing she'd ever felt before, something she could only describe as something brushing against the outer edges of her mind.
It was soft and gentle at first, like the brushing of a feather, as if it were trying to gain her permission to enter. She nearly spoke aloud to demand to know what Loki was doing, but then the sensation switched from a brush to an invasion, and she felt like she was being pulled out of her body and into some other realm of consciousness with the invader.
Stay calm, she heard his voice say within her mind, and she almost jumped out of her skin in response, but she simply squeezed her already-closed eyes and then shuddered when he spoke again. Your heartbeat. Listen to it. Focus on it. Nothing but your heartbeat.
She felt dizzy, almost like she was floating away from herself, and he was gently skimming through her thoughts - how she knew that, she didn't know, but the sensation was unmistakable - but she did as he said and focused all of the energy that she could on her heartbeat.
Now feel it. Search for what I showed you with my hand.
She tried. She really did. But all she could feel was the increasingly hard drumming of her heart, and none of the thrumming of magic that she'd felt through his palm.
It's there, Aemilia.
She believed him. But it must have been far too faint for her to sense, and a wave of discouragement that she couldn't help washed over her. She was too distracted to notice the pause in the other presence in her mind, and with her eyes closed she couldn't see the way Loki's own eyes slowly opened and looked at her as her own disappointment infected him through the proximity of their consciousnesses.
She was stubborn, however, and she did not stop trying, and she didn't let the looming hopelessness she felt stop her from searching out the energy. After all, Loki had said that this would be hard and unpleasant, and she was prepared for this. Somewhat. Ether way, she wasn't about to give up.
Loki literally watched her dismay turn to determination, within the depths of her mind, and he found himself smirking lightly as he closed his eyes once more and delved back in. He had an idea of how to help her, though he had no reason to think it would work, as he'd never done this with anyone before, but it couldn't hurt to try.
The erratic thumps of her heartbeat were beginning to lose all meaning, sounding more and more foreign the more she listened to them, but she kept pressing on. So wrapped up she was in searching within herself for what she sook that she didn't feel the tendrils of Loki's mind slithering about like long, harmless fingers, searching as well and finding what she searched for with utter ease. She only noticed a change when she suddenly felt it, the warm thrumming from his hand earlier, except this time it started in somewhere near her chest, behind her heart, and radiated outward like blood pumping through her veins. It seemed to have burst forth out of nowhere, and her eyes flew open as the warmth consumed her entire body.
Loki's smile was the first thing she saw. He let his hands fall away from her head, and she felt his mind withdraw from hers, but the pulsing energy within her remained strong and steady. She breathed heavily as she asked, "Why did you not do that from the beginning?"
"I did not know that I could," he answered honestly.
"What exactly did you do?"
"I took the magical energy inside of you and amplified it, for lack of a better term," he explained. "It will not feel this way all of the time - it is temporary while you are learning."
That was a relief, because Aemilia felt as if she might burst. "What do I do now?"
"Now that you can feel it," he said, "you must focus wholly upon it, gain a feel for it, and try to move it."
"Move it?"
"Yes. Focus, Aemilia. Focus on the energy."
Still breathless, she nodded and closed her eyes.
What followed were several hours of exhausting trial and error, equally frustrating for both involved. Loki told her to focus the magic to one area of her body, such as her hand, and she tried, but Loki found that detailed instructions on exactly how to do so were difficult when it had always simply been second nature for him. But learning to exert control over magic was a delicate thing, he knew, and really, there was little he could do - this part was largely dependent on Aemilia's own abilities.
She stood, sat, walked, and wandered about the clearing as she worked up a sweat trying to push the magic to her hand rather than let it course throughout her entire body. It was still a shock to feel such a thing within her, and she found it nearly impossible to believe that it had always been there, only at a much lower volume.
Loki stood and watched her, his hands behind his back and green eyes curious as she reached a standstill in the middle of the clearing, her right hand outstretched as she stared stubbornly at it, as if willing it to behave and do as she wished. He noted the furrow of her brow, the droplets of sweat making their way down her temple, and he knew she'd collapse from exhaustion soon. He was shocked that she'd made it as long as she had without a break.
But, just as he stepped forward with the intent of suggesting she take a moment to rest, her eyes suddenly widened and he followed her gaze to her hand, where her skin was glowing. A small smile crossed his lips, and as the faint golden glow grew brighter, she looked up at Loki and smiled widely with pride.
"Good work," Loki said, watching as she dropped her concentration and allowed the glow to fade. "Now you must rest for a bit."
"I'm fine," she shrugged, but when she tried to take a few steps, she swayed on her feet. Loki's sudden grip on her forearm caught her attention.
"You do not understand what your body and mind have endured for the last several hours," Loki said firmly. "You will faint if you continue."
She quickly decided to believe him when she realized how dizzy she suddenly was. Her limbs felt like limp noodles and she was sweating as if she'd been been doing intensive labor for hours, though in a way, she supposed that she had been.
She barely realized that Loki was walking her out of the clearing and down a pathway off of the hill until her legs nearly gave out from under her. "Where are we going? I thought I needed to rest."
"You do," he said, still gripping her arm as he marched her quickly down the path. "Can you continue to walk?"
She nodded. "Yes, I think so. Will it always be this exhausting?"
"No," he shook his head. "I do not believe so. It was a shock to your body to bring your magic to the forefront as I did; but you will quickly adjust."
Your magic. Despite her sickeningly light head, Loki's words made Aemilia smile to herself. As exhausted as she was, she couldn't wait to begin really learning magic - she suddenly felt as if she'd been waiting her whole life for this, and maybe, in a way, she had been.
"Why are you helping me learn magic?" Aemilia suddenly asked, looking up at Loki as they began to near level ground once more. She was half-leaning on him now, her limbs growing ever weaker as they continued to walk.
"I believe you asked me to, did you not?" he retorted, and she thought she detected a trace of irritation in his voice.
"Yes, but... I did not think that you would say yes."
She glanced up at him again, even as stars danced behind her eyes, and he gave her an unreadable look before they came to a stop at last. She forced her eyes away and looked out at what lay before them, and even in her mild delirium, realized why Loki had brought her here.
Thin wisps of steam rose and swirled from the surface of what appeared to be one of Asgard's more well-hidden hot springs. It was circular and surrounded by neat piles of large steel-gray and white rocks, and Aemilia's shoulders sagged as she realized relief was near. One dip in there, or any of the other springs that the realm boasted, and her strength would be restored twofold.
He caught her when her knees tried to buckle, and she didn't protest when he made a slightly exasperated noise and swept her up in his arms like she weighed nothing. She let her heavy eyes flutter shut and only opened them when she felt him setting her down upon the edge of the rocks.
"Shall I undress you?" he asked with a smirk, kneeling in front of her and holding her chin up with a lone finger. "I doubt you have the strength to so much as lift your hand at the moment."
Now that she was sitting, she didn't feel quite as faint, but he was right. Still, she did retain her wits despite her current physical and mental state. "You first."
She watched his smirk grow, then held on to the rocks beneath her to remain steady as he rose to his feet and took a few steps back. He could have waved a hand and vanished every layer he wore before she could blink, but instead he began the old-fashioned way, dropping his jacket - carefully, so as to not damage or soil it - to a pile of rocks near his feet. He kept his gaze on her, though her own eyes were quite distracted watching his hands move about his several other upper layers with ease. It was dizzying to her already-spinning head to watch, and it occurred to her that she'd never had the pleasure of undressing him herself - and that she needed to pay attention to what his fingers were doing so that she would know how to in the future. But she lost track of the number of buckles, buttons and zippers that he did away before his top half was bare to her, and by then she wasn't thinking much about the mostly-black pile of leather growing on the rocks anyway, but of how spectacular he looked standing half-naked in the sun.
Her hand then slipped on the rock beneath her, and she almost went tumbling head-first into the spring, but Loki's hand caught her arm with shocking speed and righted her before she could fall.
"You can finish watching from the spring, if you'd like," he grinned, reaching behind her with the hand not supporting her to unlace the back of her dress. "Otherwise you will surely faint at the sight of the rest of me."
She scoffed lightly but allowed him to undress her, raising her arms when he tugged her dress up and over her head. When his hands reached the hem of her slip, she quickly began to protest. "If someone were to see -"
"Nobody will see, I assure you," he said firmly. "I've been taking precautions to keep this place private for a very long time."
"Am I to believe that I am the first woman that you've brought here?" Aemilia asked, half-mocking and half-sincere. She found such a thing hard to believe.
"Your belief either way does not negate the truth," Loki replied evenly, again pulling at her slip and this time removing it when she didn't fight him. His eyes swept unashamedly over her newly exposed flesh as one of his hands moved down to her sandal, removing them with two tugs of his fingers. "Now let's get you feeling better, shall we?"
He spun her around on the rocks, and her toes grazed the water for a moment before he gently eased her down into the spring. The water was warm, beautifully so, not so hot to overheat her but enough to instantly send a wave of relaxation through her body as she sunk down to her chin.
As soon as she was submerged, the water's healing and restoring properties immediately went to work. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the bank, letting her limbs float as her energy was renewed and her mind cleared and steadied. She could feel magic swelling within her again, the warm pulsing in time with her heartbeat that made her feel so alive and vital that she wondered how she'd made it three centuries without feeling this way. It was enough to make her envy Loki, having this coursing through his body since birth and thus not even realizing how remarkable it truly was.
She dunked her head down into the water and then rose back up, pushing her dark hair back and out of her face as she looked around but found no sign of Loki. She'd been too distracted by the healing spring to remember to finish watching him undress, which was disappointing, and now she'd lost track of him.
The spring was still working on her even now that she felt restored to her usual health, making her blood pump and flow through her veins with such a renewed vigor that it made her heart feel as if it may burst, but it was not at all an unpleasant feeling. Her vision was sharper, her senses stronger, and when combined with the magic now flooding her from within, she felt amazing.
She held up her hand and easily pushed her magic to her fingertips, something that had seemed so difficult just twenty minutes ago now seeming rather easy. She smiled and pushed it back and forth between her hands, then let it slide up her arms and chased it down to her toes. Though she had no idea how to actually use the energy yet, just being able to manipulate its movement like this left her feeling exhilarated, and a joyous laugh left her lips just as something yanked on her foot underwater.
It startled her, but she knew better than to be fearful - instead, she kicked her foot out and caught something that felt a lot like a hard chest before her ankle was seized and gently bitten. She laughed again, still smiling when Loki sprung up a second later, looking every bit as good as she felt.
He floated just a few inches in front of her, jerking his head back to flip his wet hair out of his eyes, and as Aemilia took in his appearance - green eyes full of mirth, droplets of crystal clear water running down sharp cheekbones and lingering on his faintly grinning lips, just begging her to kiss them off - she became aware just how hard her blood was really pumping. His pale face was tinged with just a bit of color now, and she could almost feel the energy rolling off of him like waves.
"Feeling better?" he inquired, steam rising around them as she leaned back against the spring's edge once more, letting herself float and her feet graze his sides.
"I feel marvelous," she admitted, not surprised when his hands found her ankles and then slid to her knees as he moved in close, his tongue licking up stray drops of water from the base of her neck as she closed her eyes and enjoyed how he felt against her.
"You look marvelous," he purred, his hands now on her waist as he pinned her against the bank with his weight. Just the sensation of having him against her nearly made her gasp - everything was so heightened and warm and sensitive, and he hadn't even kissed her yet.
But, there was still an unanswered question lingering between them, and she felt just courageous enough to press him about it. She waited until he moved in to kiss her, then asked before his lips touched hers, "Why are you teaching me, really?"
Irritation flashed briefly in his eyes before he masked it with false innocence. "Why, I suppose it is out of the kindness of my heart that I've agreed to teach you magic, my dear. Now hold your tongue and kiss me."
She smiled and dodged his kiss again, this time by turning her face at the last minute, forcing him to kiss her cheek. "Tell me the real reason and perhaps I will."
He growled as his lips trailed to her ear, trying not to notice how her hips moved teasingly against his. Sometimes he thought he'd taught her certain things a bit too well, like the art of teasing. "This is not how one shows gratitude to their teacher, little one."
"You are correct - I've never found myself in this position with any teacher before," Aemilia replied playfully, all of the energy swirling within her spurring her on as she continued to tease him with the slight rocking of her hips and light scratches of her nails down the back of his shoulders. "But I've also never had a teacher browse through my thoughts without permission."
He looked surprised for a moment before he cracked another grin. "Ah, you sensed that."
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
He gave a light shrug and turned his eyes up skyward in false thoughtfulness. "The mind is an extraordinary thing. Our thoughts linger even when we aren't thinking on them, like pages of an open book waiting to be turned."
"How poetically vague," she smiled.
"Yes, unlike your very vivid thoughts," he said, devilish amusement coloring his tone as he smirked. "I've been curious what occupies your mind on the rare nights you don't share my bed, which thoughts arouse you the most in my absence. I confess myself surprised."
"You truly have no shame violating my privacy as it suits you," she said, not having to feign the edge in her voice.
"Just as you have no shame imagining yourself open-mouthed and on your knees for me when I am not there to sate you," he grinned, savoring the slight color that filled her cheeks at his words. "You could imagine my mouth on you, all of the pleasures that I lavish so generously upon you, and yet you choose to think of that."
"And what do you think of?" she retorted, refusing to shrink away like some shy girl from his words. "A good, hard slap to your face as I rip out your hair from your head?"
"Perhaps," he shrugged. "Or perhaps how you would look leather-choked and cuffed to my bed. Maybe even how I would in yours." Her mouth fell slightly open at his words, and it only made his grin widen. "But such things are expected of a man like me - your thoughts, however, would shock those who think they know you. What would your dear mother say?"
"If my mother so much as knew where I was right now, and with whom, I would be disowned and banished," she replied sharply, "while you would suffer no consequences because you, after all, are merely a young prince behaving as young princes do."
His smirk didn't falter. "And yet, here you are. Now, shall we leave this spring so that you may set that mouth of yours to its favorite task?"
She pretended to think it over, then slipped through his arms and floated away from him, towards the opposite side of the spring. "I'm rather enjoying this water, so I'm afraid my answer is no. Unless you decide to finally answer me. Perhaps then I could be persuaded."
Aemilia floated carelessly on her back, hoping against hope that he would pounce on her soon and end her playful resistance, since her pride wouldn't let her do it herself. She closed her eyes but continued to feel his gaze on her, sensed it becoming more predatory, and she could have cried in relief when she felt arms enclose around her waist from behind and yank her backwards against Loki's body. The sharp jabbing against the back of her thigh was jarring but not unexpected, and he yanked her hair and brought his lips to her ear before whispering in a silken rasp, "Enough games, girl."
He wrenched her face to his and kissed her hard, though she managed to chuckle in between his rough caresses, "Ironic, coming from a trickster."
He then spun her around, restoring them to their previous position from before she'd floated away from him, and she smiled up at him before pulling in him for a bruising kiss of her own. She was bursting with energy, and she needed an outlet, needed him, and she couldn't hold back any longer. Any retort he may have been about to throw at her was forgotten in the hard collision of lips as she locked her legs around his hips, pulling him fully against her and making her bounce back against the rocky bank. It hurt, but she barely noticed.
He was just as desperate, it seemed, as he held her close with one arm and braced the other on the bank behind her head, then thrust swiftly inside of her without breaking their kiss. She let out a choked moan into his mouth, one hand clutching his soaked hair and the other wrapped around his neck for support as he drove her forcefully against the hard rocks, and yet she still felt as if it wasn't quite enough.
As if he sensed this, he grasped a handful of her hair in his hand and broke the kiss as he jerked her head back and swooped down on her neck, biting her hard enough to leave a mark and make her let out a strangled cry as he pushed even harder. The water felt hotter, the steam thicker, and it soon became overwhelming, unlike what Aemilia had felt before with him because now, there was so much energy and life flowing and crashing within her that she felt his every touch, every kiss, every harsh thrust more than she had before, and she knew now beyond a doubt that she could never, ever, truly have enough of the dark prince in her arms.
A hand on her throat snapped her out of her revelry, as well as a voice that commanded in a whisper to her ear, "Look at me."
She opened her eyes, saw the nearly frightening hunger in Loki's eyes and wondered if it was reflected in her own, then kissed him as hard as her swollen lips would allow. The hand on her throat drifted down to her breast, sliding in and out of the water as he squeezed it and mercilessly teased her hardened peak with his thumb as he gasped between kisses, "Scream for me."
Her insides simultaneously melted and flipped as his words reached her brain, and she looked at him in alarm just before he spoke again. "None will hear but me, I promise." He shifted her just slightly back further, allowing him to drive up harder and faster, and she could only hold on to him and let him do as he wished - which was exactly what she wanted.
His voice melted against her ear again, demanding and desperate as it shook with his fading restraint. "Now, Aemilia. Scream, scream my name."
It all came together then, in a blinding explosion behind her eyes that left her utterly unaware if she had complied with his wishes or not, because it was too powerful and too consuming to be aware of what she was doing with her voice. Her nails made him bleed and her fingers nearly ripped out his hair as she fell apart, and the only thing she registered beyond her own otherworldly ecstasy was the sound of Loki gasping against her open mouth, losing himself as deeply as she had lost herself. And for one long, shared moment, they were both lost.
When she came back to herself, Aemilia opened her eyes and felt the tickle of heavy, lazy breaths on her neck, as well as limp arms loosely clutching her as they simply floated. She lifted her hand from the back of his head and found a small handful of his black hairs broken off and tangled around her fingers, and on her other hand that lay on his back, her fingertips were smudged with the blood that her nails had drawn.
A tiny sense of guilt had very nearly washed over her when Loki's fatigued voice against her neck startled her. "Don't you dare apologize, silly girl."
She rolled her eyes as he raised his head and kissed her jaw, then her lips, before drawing away to look at her with slightly hazy green eyes. "It's better when it hurts, isn't it?"
She probably wouldn't agree when her back and thighs were aching for the next few days, but for now she merely shook her head with a small smile and kissed him.
They stole a few more moments in the spring until the heat started to get to them, and Loki emerged first, sitting on the edge of the spring as he helped Aemilia out as well. The cooler daytime air was a relief to her heated skin, though her relief turned to slight confusion when Loki shifted and laid down on his back on the ground next to the spring.
The rays of the sun were falling upon him like some sort of dream, and Aemilia sat perfectly still as her eyes drank him in. He was without inhibition, still wet and thoroughly relaxed as he lounged in the grass, and she had no idea how long she'd been gawking at his form before one green eye cracked open and fixed upon her. "Come lie next to me."
So this was how he intended for them to dry themselves, she thought as she lowered herself down at his side. He surely could have waved a hand and had them both not only dry but dressed as well, but all things considered, this wasn't so bad.
"You're sure that nobody will... venture here, or ride through here?"
Loki turned his head towards Aemilia and gave her a tired but amused look. "Do you truly think I would risk allowing another to see you like this? To see what is only meant for my eyes?"
Whenever he said something like that, she would feel a ripple of strange warmth but also of unease. He spoke of her as if he had a true, legal claim upon her, and yet she had yet to see him show any motivation to legitimately end her looming engagement. If he really felt that way, truly believed that she should belong to him and him alone, he could have begun courting her himself months ago, when all of this began. But he didn't, and she wouldn't dare be the first to bring it up as a possibility, for fear that he'd laugh so hard at her foolishness that she would never forgive herself for opening her mouth.
So, she did what she always did when he spoke possessively of her, and she simply ignored his words, turning her eyes to the sky as his own drifted from her face down to the rest of her. A twinge of discomfort poked at her, as she found this to be more intimate than sharing a bed in a dimly lit room, but it passed when she glanced at Loki and found his gaze to be more than appreciative as it swept over her.
She blinked slowly when soft fingertips reached out and slowly wiped away a few lingering drops of water above her belly button, and it suddenly occurred to her how only a few months ago, if someone had told her that she would have been comfortable enough with a Prince of Asgard to lie bare in the sun with him after having had him in a hot spring, she would have laughed for days. Now, however, there was nothing to laugh about, because reality loomed ever closer, numbering the days that she had left to live like this.
The frightening thing was how terribly her chest ached to think of this coming to an end. To not see the maddening smirk on Loki's face every day, to not feel his demanding, rough touches, to lose the decadence of his kisses on her lips. With each day that passed, it became more and more unthinkable, and yet she still did not regret the affair.
She supposed it was better to have had him for a little while than to never have had him at all.
"What has you so quiet, darling?"
He was angled slightly more towards her now, his damp black hair falling into his eyes and pale body glistening tantalizingly in the sun as his hand wandered along her skin, to her stomach, her hip, her leg, her side, the space between her breasts, and now her chin as he tilted it towards him.
She shrugged, giving him a small smile. "You are beautiful, Loki."
She expected him to smirk, chuckle, or proclaim how very obvious her words were. He did none of those things. Instead, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and she thought that he looked momentarily slightly confused before his expression shifted to unreadable.
A moment passed, and then he took her hand in his and brought it to his lips for a tender kiss. She squirmed inside at the contact, but in a different, much more frightening way than usual. When he did not release her hand, but instead let his lips brush her skin again, this time over her knuckles as his eyes fluttered shut, she felt her eyes sting.
Then his eyes opened, and he gripped her wrist and pulled her close as he shifted to his side. She met his eyes, the still-unreadable depths of emerald green, as he released her wrist to slide his fingers through her hair. They lay a breath apart, facing one another, not saying a word, only touching. She traced his cheekbone with her fingers, ran her thumb over lips that parted a little under her touch, and through it all, the discomfort inside did not ebb.
When his eyes drifted to her lips and he began to lean in slowly, she met him in the middle without hesitation. They kissed just to kiss, just to feel, just to explore while they still could, and she thought it was beautifully, wonderfully cruel.
Her realization from a bit earlier was confirmed. She truly would never, ever get enough of him. There was nobody else who had ever made her want to lay in his arms and simply be kissed slowly, thoroughly and sweetly until the daylight faded to darkness. There was nobody else who could inspire such misery and rapture within herself, nobody who could make her feel mad and beautiful and safe and dangerous all at the same time. There was, simply, nobody else.
And she feared there never would be.
Never in his life had a woman looked at him the way that Aemilia was now.
Since he had reached adulthood many, many years ago, he had learned to catalog the several ways that women tended to look at him. There were the star-struck stares of younger girls who dreamed of marrying a prince and becoming his princess, naming their future children in their minds as he walked past them in the city streets. They ogled he and Thor with equal opportunity, so he paid them no mind. Then there was the look of desire, of seduction, that more courageous women wore, and he was picky about those he chose to entertain. But, if a woman was not staring starry-eyed at him nor imagining what lay under all the leather and metal that he wore, then she usually was looking at him with either fear or benign, sometimes judgmental, curiosity; the former because they feared he would randomly decide to turn them into a toad, and the latter because they wondered if he truly could turn people into toads. There were also those who dared to look upon him in ridicule when they didn't think he was looking, and they would whisper and jest with their friends about the supposed femininity that his delicate features and affinity for sorcery apparently belied, and those women he would turn into toads, if he could be bothered. There really was very little in between, and he had grown to expect nothing else.
He used to have Aemilia filed under the "desire" category, and to be sure, she looked at him with more hunger and want than he had seen from another in centuries. But now he was seeing things in her eyes that he couldn't define or explain.
When she told him he was beautiful, his first gut-reaction was to take it as ridicule, as a jest at his expense, like the ones he'd been listening to since he was a child trying not to wither under Thor's hulking shadow, but he quickly realized that she had been serious. There had been no malice, not a trace of insincerity or sarcasm behind her words, no agenda beyond merely expressing what she felt in that moment.
Her words alone would have been enough to shake him, but with the added mystery of her eyes as they sparkled up at him, he found himself lost for a few moments.
Her gaze was tender, sweet, thoughtful and even soft as she smiled at him. He wished that he could read her thoughts again, that he could just slip into her mind without her noticing and see firsthand what was causing this. It made him feel... strange, out of his element, unprepared. He'd felt this way once before, when she had kissed him tenderly after torturing him at the banquet, and he did not enjoy feeling like this.
He made sure his own expression was unreadable, utterly blank as he searched her eyes for the meaning that he knew must lay somewhere within them. It took him some time to realize that the answer that he was looking for was deceptively, painfully simple.
She was looking at him with affection.
He'd kissed her hand, then, because he had no idea what to do with his revelation. He felt uneasy, confused, and wholly unsure if he should say something cruel to wipe the warmth off her face before it burned him, or if he should say something sweet that would feed it, allow it to grow and engulf him. In the end, he chose to close his eyes to escape it, even as he contradicted his instinct to pull away with the continued brushing of his lips against her hand.
It was when he allowed his eyes to open that he felt his already-pathetic resolve crumble. A sadness had overtaken her eyes, a shadow that was subtle but clear to him, and he felt an unexpected pang within. Again he wished that he could slip inside of her thoughts, see what had made her gaze turn that way, because he couldn't - or maybe more accurately, wouldn't - ask her.
Her soft touches to his cheek and his lips were as foreign as her words and gaze had been. Had he ever been touched so softly, so reverently, like he was a wonder to behold, a privilege to touch? And yet, with each passing moment, her eyes grew sadder.
When he couldn't take it anymore, he kissed her. He kissed her the way that he knew she liked it the most, the way that he could usually never bear to. It made him ache to kiss her so slowly and intimately, but for some strange reason that he could not and would not identify, he needed it then just as badly she did.
It was like drowning, in the most miserably thrilling way imaginable.
He didn't know how long they stayed like that, adrift in confusing need and dangerously soft touches, but he did know what jarred him out of it. It was her hand, small and gentle as it moved through his hair to his neck, then down, not resting until it had reached his heart. There her hand stilled, feeling the erratic thumping of his heartbeat through his skin, and suddenly, he could no longer bear it.
His hand enclosed gently around her wrist as he wrenched his lips away from hers. She looked up at him as he pushed her hand away, placing it at her side before letting go. Confusion flickered across her face, but he had to put distance between them before he did something stupid. Like wrap her up in his arms and kiss her until she fell asleep.
He rolled away from her and rose to his feet, not casting any glances back at her as he dressed in silence. He only looked at her when he gathered up her clothes and handed them to her, and she searched his once again unreadable eyes as she took the dress from his hands. He looked away quickly, then began marching back towards the hill once she was dressed.
She followed him in silence, and he tried to ignore how his hands continued to tremble at his sides.
His mood swings were going to be the death of her.
The ride home was quiet, and seemed to pass by faster than the ride there. Loki didn't say a word the entire time but he wasn't wholly distant, as he would periodically nuzzle her hair or drop a kiss to her shoulder as they rode through the woods. He kept one arm around her waist and it felt possessive. It also felt good.
He seemed to be a constant, mildly chaotic mixture of push and pull, and she was certain that even he had no idea what he truly wanted from her. Everything he said and did contradictory, and it left her in a strange limbo that she wasn't sure how to navigate.
Logic would tell her to forbid the intimacy they had flirted with, to not dare seek it for both of their sakes. Something else that was steadily growing within told her to take what she could get while she still could.
He dropped her off in the same spot that he had picked her up from, with a parting kiss and a whisper in her ear. "I'll come for you tonight."
She nodded and gave him a tight smile as she slid down from the horse. He was gone in the next moment, and though his absence left her feeling an immediate hollowness within, she also felt so full that she feared she would implode.
The magic rushing within her had calmed down some, as Loki had told her it would, and she shifted it around her body as she walked home. She still wasn't used to it, by any means, but it felt good, and it was a distraction from the confusion swirling around her head.
When she walked inside of her house, she walked unknowingly into a bustling boon of activity. Servants were darting to and fro, and in the middle of the buzzing was her mother, who was barking commands and gave Aemilia a sad smile when she walked into the sitting room.
"Oh, dear, there you are!" Ayre said, drawing Aemilia into a hug. "We've just received word today, your great uncle has died."
"Oh," Aemilia said with furrowed brows. Her sole great uncle had been exceptionally old, and his death did not come as a surprise. She had also only seen him maybe four times in her life and shared a few sentences with him two of those times, so she felt no real grief for his loss.
"We will be departing tomorrow, for your grandmother's house," Ayre said. "I've already had two bags packed for you, but you may want to go and make sure you don't need anything else."
Aemilia nodded and trudged off towards her room, knowing that this meant she would be away for two weeks. Two weeks of mourning and celebrating a man she didn't know, surrounded by family and forced to spend precious time away from the person she really wanted to spend her days with.
"Oh, and darling, Dagr will be coming as well - he offered to keep you company during this difficult time," Ayre called after her daughter with a smile.
Fantastic. Aemilia didn't say another word as she continued on to her room.
She walked into her bedroom to find it perfectly clean and most of her loose belongings packed and gone, as she expected. It took her a moment before she noticed the enormous black leather-bound book sitting on the exact middle of her bed.
She didn't have a book that looked like that, so she looked at it curiously as she walked to her bed and reached out to pick it up. It was old and worn, and if there had been a title on the cover once, it was long gone by now. She opened it, carefully, and sank down on the edge of the bed as she realized what it was.
It was a book of magic, both basic and more advanced, and it was literally covered in tiny but almost calligraphic handwritten notes on each available edge of every page. She'd never seen Loki's handwriting before, but she didn't need to to know that it belonged to him.
She smiled and crawled up into her bed, her souring mood now temporarily gone as she flipped to the first page and lost herself in Loki's gift. She didn't look up from the book once until hours had passed and he appeared in front of her, hand outstretched to her and ready to take her away.
She didn't have the heart to tell him that she would be gone for two weeks until he'd already had her twice, once on his desk and once in his bed. She didn't know how he would react, if he would merely shrug and send her away or if he would be irrationally furious, so she waited until the last moment possible to open her mouth.
He was half-lying on top of her, half-sprawled at her side, his head on her breast as his breaths came evenly and slowly, telling her that he was tired now and would be taking her back to her room soon. They still had yet to ever fall asleep together, and at this point, Aemilia thought it would simply never happen.
She feathered her fingers through his hair as she finally spoke. "Thank you for the book."
She felt his lashes flutter against her chest as he blinked his eyes a few times. "It will teach you what I do not have the patience to. I'll test you as you learn. And do heed my notes."
She nodded, biting her bottom lip as his fingers toyed absently with the breast that he wasn't using as a pillow. She decided to just blurt it out.
"My great-uncle is dead. I leave tomorrow for my grandmother's home. I'll be away for two weeks."
His fingers stilled instantly, but she kept hers moving through his hair as she awaited his reaction. She waited for what felt like an eternity, and when he finally spoke, what he said threw her.
"Sing for me."
This time, her fingers faltered while his resumed their idle touches. Where had that come from? Where they having the same conversation?
"Please."
He said it more like a command than a plea, but she couldn't deny him, even though his request was the absolute last thing she expected to come out of his mouth. She was starting to think that denying him simply wasn't in her nature.
"I... what do you want me to sing?"
He paused only briefly before answering, "Anything."
She quickly shuffled through some songs in her mind, all of Asgard, all songs that he surely would have heard a thousand times by many different singers in his lifetime. She didn't want to sing something so common, and only so many kinds of songs felt appropriate to sing in the dim light of a Prince's bedroom as he lay sleepily in your arms.
Her thoughts shifted to the music of other realms, eventually landing on that of Midgard, and after a moment, she slid her fingers through his hair once more as she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Silence all your lonely cries
Sleep until your tears are dry
Darling, you'll find peace in time
As I sing this lullaby
Though I'm leaving you, my child
I wish I could stay by your side
And when you wake here all alone
Think of me with this lullaby
He didn't recognize the words, but he recognized her voice as it reached out to him like the soft fingers in his hair, washing over him as he closed his eyes and lost himself within it. The vibration of her voice through her skin against his was more soothing than he could have imagined it would be, and her voice - it was different from what he had heard before, more raw, less perfectly controlled, simply and purely her.
Her voice was full of sorcery. It had to be.
The now-familiar ache in his chest was returning, ebbing and flowing with each note and each word of this song that was meant for a child, a lullaby. The words flowed effortlessly from her lips, words meant to calm and ease the flow of a child's tears, assure them that they were not alone, and would be forever loved, despite the singer's impending necessary departure. His eyes opened slowly as it brought back memories, pleasant ones of when Frigga had sang to him when he was small. Then, as her voice reached a few higher notes, he let his eyes close once more.
And our love through darkness
Don't forget to keep believing
With love forlorn
In love we'll find our way
My love
She sang those sweet words, and it made his ache throb yet more.
He could believe so easily in that moment, so lost he was in her, that the words were truly meant for him. How strange it would be to hear speak the words my love and mean it for him.
He opened his eyes
This solemn day has turned to dark
I leave you, dear, with heavy heart
When I return, with you, I'll lie
And I will sing this lullaby
Yes, I will sing this lullaby
As her final note faded, so did his pretense of caring little that she would be away for the next few weeks. He wanted to stamp his foot like a child and demand that she stay, throw a fit that would accomplish nothing but make him look foolish, but instead, he raised his head from her chest and kissed her.
"Beautiful... I could listen to you sing for hours," he murmured against her lips, unsure of why he was telling her such a thing. It was true, but it did him no favors to let her know.
"Thank you," she said quietly with a smile, and he swooped down for another kiss.
After a moment, he drew away again, but only by a few inches. "Where is your grandmother's home?"
He didn't miss her hesitation to answer. "It's... in the south, but -"
"But?" he repeated, one brow raised.
"... But, I won't have a room to myself there. My entire extended family will be there and I will be sharing a room with my cousins. If you... visited me, someone would notice my absence. And D-" she quickly caught herself, remembering Loki's admonishment to not say her intended's name in his bed, "he will be there as well."
He tried not to let his irritation show, but his jaw clenched anyway, both at the mention of him and the fact that she was forbidding him to steal her away at any point in the next two weeks. He didn't like that she could see how her absence would affect him, so he did what he did best, and put a cold smile on his face and lied. "That is not why I asked, silly girl. Do you really think that two weeks without your company will wound me so?"
Hurt flashed through her eyes for a split second, and he found that his lie had left a bitter taste on his tongue, though it could not compare to the disgust he suddenly felt for himself.
"We've not spent a night apart for weeks," she said, not looking him in the eye as she spoke. "Forgive me for presuming that time apart would displease you."
"I shall endeavor to survive until we are reunited." He couldn't seem to stop himself. The words left his mouth as a scoff, as little more than ridicule, and the woman beneath him stared at him in confusion.
He clenched his jaw and rolled off of her, fearful of what would come slithering out of his mouth next if he didn't put space between them. He didn't expect what she said next.
"I truly do not understand you," she said quietly, tugging his sheet up to cover herself now that he was no longer laying on her. "You speak and act in such contradictory ways... I'm unsure of what you want from me."
He chuckled utterly without humor, and lied some more. "What I want has not changed since first you fell into my bed, Aemilia. I desire your ruin. I want you to walk amongst your kin and your idiotic intended over the next two weeks and pretend that you don't bear the marks of my teeth under your dress or carry the shame of your own lust in your mind. I want you to -"
"Sing to you? Learn magic from you? Hold you and kiss you as a wife would her husband, night after night, when we both expected you to tire of me long ago?"
Loki's mouth hung open, suspended in mid-sentence after she had interrupted him. She had actually interrupted him?
"I don't believe you, Loki," she said, and he could hear the trembling beneath her voice. "I don't believe that you know what you want, not for a second. I only hope that you can figure out before it doesn't matter one way or the other."
To his shock, he found that he had nothing to say in return. He watched her as she left his bed and dressed, silently took the robe that she handed to him and shrugged it over his shoulders without so much as blinking. She held out her hand to him when he stood, and he grasped it, then vanished them to her room, as he did every night.
As soon as their feet touched her bedroom floor, she grabbed him and kissed him. His arms hung useless at his sides, his eyes not even closing fully as she poured herself into the kiss.
Nothing made sense. His words had hurt her, and yet she seemed to have seen through them, and had also called him out on them. Now she was kissing him, and it felt like a plea, but he didn't know if it was one he could answer.
He needed time to think. Perhaps it was a good thing that she would be gone for the next two weeks.
Their gazes met as she finally pulled away, and Loki found that he still had nothing to say. He managed one muttered goodbye before dissolving before her eyes.
Left alone in her room, Aemilia shook her head and closed her eyes in frustration. Just as she knew she'd never stop desiring Loki, she was quite sure that she would never truly understand him, either.
A/N: it be getting angsty up in here :) HUGE thanks to midnightwings96 who wrote original lyrics for the lullaby used here. We originally used lyrics from a well-known lullaby but for copyright reasons, I had to take them down, and she came to the rescue and wrote the gorgeous one used here instead :D as if I didn't already owe her a TON for all of her help with this story :D Also. my usual big huge heartfelt thank you to everyone who reviewed/faved/alerted, thank you so much for reading and helping keep the muse going :D I'd send everyone cookies, but instead, I'll just keep giving weekly doses of Loki smut :D it's an okay trade, right? :p