Rowan stepped back from the magic barrier separating her from Loki. She felt outside of herself, as if she was standing just to the right watching the scene unfold. Loki placed his palms flat against the force field, leaning in as far as he could. He had not recovered from his astonishment, though his eyes had returned to emerald.

"Well, what have we here? What sorcery is this?"

Rowan gently tapped on the barrier. She placed her palm against it. Nothing. She banged on it with her first, and it did not yield.

"Looks like you have much to learn"

Rowan looked him in the eyes and said quietly, "I don't know…how…I was… so angry…"

"And it was lovely to feel your touch my dear".

Rowan stared, gasping for breath.

"Tonight darling? Same time?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Rowan Vinter!" greeted Thor as she exited Loki's cell. "How does your work with my brother go?"

Rowan, completely unsettled, nearly gave him an honest answer. Oh well, I don't know, let's see, you brother is still an unleashed sociopath who escapes his cell during the night to lie between my legs and I let him even though he killed my dearest colleague. And you?

"He is…a tough nut to crack". Thor raised an eyebrow. "It's an Earth expression".

"Ah! Yes. Miss Winter? You are pale. Are you unwell? Rowan?"

Everything went black.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

When she woke, Thor was looming in her window with his back to her.

"How long was I out?"

"Three hours." Thor turned to look at her, his face tense.

"Have you been here the whole time?"

"Yes. Miss Vinter, you must assure me that my brother has not touched your mind".

"My lord…" Rowan struggled to sit up. "I have not slept well, and the journey from Earth…"

Thor's face did not soften. "Of course. Please excuse me, but I am one of the few who hold out hope for my brother…"

"It's quite alright my lord." Thor bowed slightly and strode out of the room.

Liar. You are no better than that monster. The journey from Earth…really?

Rowan shut her eyes.

The journey from Earth.

She had no recollection of it.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Rowan hugged her knees to her chest as she watched twilight fall outside her window. The Director's last words to her and then…waking up in her bed here in her quarters in Asgard. She breathed deeply, calmed her mind, surely it would come to her…

She was so deep in thought that the first evidence of Loki's arrival was his hand brushing her hair from her ear.

"Good evening my dear"

Rowan leapt out of bed, startled. "I just can't escape you can I?" She growled. "If you're not out of your cage I'm somehow getting into it. Can you explain that to me trickster? Because I'm beginning to find there are more than a few things that need explaining."

"You are angry".

"You have a real talent for stating the obvious."

"Come, sit", he said patting the bed beside him. "Tell me a tale".

"What kind of tale?"

"Tell me of Midgard. Of your family. How you came to be here"

Rowan, exhausted in both mind and spirit, collapsed next to him. "Well…I was adopted, like you. My parents worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. They were both brilliant scientists. I looked up to them, wanted to be like them. They were killed during a botched operation. Collateral damage, as you like to say. I was fifteen. Afterwards, Phil…Agent Coulson took me under his wing. He made sure I did well in school; made sure I had birthday presents. He vouched for me and made me an agent by twenty-two. " Rowan realized there were tears running down her face. "He wasn't just my colleague. He was like a second father to me. And you killed him."

"You cry for your lost fathers." Loki rose from the bed. "But what have they ever done? Choose favorites? Not see the truth? You are better off without the lot of them."

"Did they teach you this cruelness? "

"Did they give you your weakness?"

And with that she was on him. She would never remember how it started.

Did she punch him? Kick him? She remembered beating her fists against his chest. Throwing various objects at him. It was around the time she smacked him upside the head with a heavy candlestick that she realized she was inflicting damage. He was bleeding from the corner of his mouth.

He was weakening. She knocked him to the ground and straddled his chest, punched him, slapped him, and then she realized…he was smiling. He was enjoying it.

"That's right my love. Punish me."

Panting, she held his hands over his head, just as he had done to her that first night. She could hold him down. That was new.

He really was extraordinarily beautiful, especially when he wasn't smirking or killing someone.

"Punish me."

Rowan imagined bonds, the strongest bonds in the universe, encircling his hands and feet, holding him down so she could do what she wanted with him. She let his hands go.

"Touch me." She whispered.

He couldn't. He was bound as if weighted to the floor.

"What have you done?" For the first time since meeting, he looked scared.

"Punishing you."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"You know, you really are quite lovely. Of course, you are a god. Gods not only are reflections of our best selves, but also our worst tendencies." As she said this, she trailed one fingernail down the side of his face, drawing blood. He smiled nervously.

"Do with me what you will."

"Oh I will." She kissed him, tasted the blood in the corner of his mouth. "Tell me, how many have you bedded here in Asgard? How many friends of your father's? Their daughters? The serving wenches? The stable boys? And they all came willingly in the end, just as I did, did they not?" He shifted uncomfortably underneath her. "I'd ask you how it feels to have the shoe on the other foot, but you're so hard I already have the answer." His cock was straining visibly beneath his breeches.

She stood up and wiggled out of her panties, and then in one fell swoop hiked her skirt up and straddled his face. She plunged her hand into his hair and sneered, "Do not disappoint me, my king." His tongue danced around her clit, but she wiggled her hips so that he could not hit his target.

"Oh no, this just won't do", she complained, removing herself from his face. "You seemed to be so good at this just last night. Have you forgotten everything?" She banged his head lightly against the floor.

"My love if you would just…" Rowan followed his line of sight to his cock.

"Just what?" She unlaced his breeches and his member sprang forth, fully erect. It really was a glorious thing, seemingly chiseled from stone, elegant in its' length. "Suck on it?"

"Oh my love, please…I want to feel your mouth on…"

"No".

"But…"

"I said no. You have used me Loki Laufeyson." Again she straddled him, took him in her hand and rubbed the tip of him in her wetness. He was hard and cool as marble. A low moan escaped from him. "Now I will use you". And with that she slowly but insistently slid her self onto him.

For a moment she saw stars, not in pain, no it wasn't quite that. She had never been so beautifully, perfectly filled before. She ground herself into his hips, making sure he was inside of her to the hilt, making tiny circles around him.

"Please free me. Let me touch you" Was that desperation in his voice?

"No"

"For the love of the gods woman!"

"No"

She leaned over to lie on top of him, still moving herself slowly on him. He frowned back up at her. "Are you enjoying this trickster? Am I not a tight fit?"

Breathing hard through clenched teeth, he said, "Very tight my love."

"Why the frown?"

"I want touch you."

"What else?" She leaned back , her palms on his chest.

"I want you naked, to feel your warm skin against mine, to feel your nipples harden under my tongue."

"And?"

"I want to rub my thumb on you clit while you ride me."

"Mmmmmm, that does sound nice."

"Let me go then!"

"No". She started to move her hips back and forth now, picking up speed. "I think this is all I require right now, this lovely cock of yours. It does get me so wet." She rode him, back and forth, back and forth, moaning and biting her lip. She knew she didn't have much longer to make him frustrated before his cock, that amazing cock robbed her of all logic.

"I wonder, is your brother as big as you? Does he get as hard? I wonder what it would be like to ride him like this."

"You bitch! You dare bind me like a common thief and ride me while your quim gets wet thinking of my brother?"

"Temper, temper darling. Just lay back and enjoy it". The trickster can't even see the game I'm playing. Rowan leaned further back, her palms on the floor behind her to steady herself. His hips lifted off the floor as he drove himself deep inside of her. Mmmmm, that's it, she thought, as he hit the delicious spot he'd found with his fingers the night before. Their rhythm was quick now, her sliding down on him while he bucked up into her. Reason truly left her now, and all she could think of was how he felt inside of her, against that most sensitive part of her, tightening herself around him…

"Rowan," he panted, "please…release me…"

But all she heard was the blood rushing though her ears to the beat of her heart. There was an all-enveloping shimmer that came over her, and she felt the warmth of his seed inside of her. In her mind's eye she saw the glimmer of snow falling in moonlight, vast fields of ice…and when she opened her eyes, she saw everything through a veil of red.

She looked down at the god trapped beneath her, both of them all astonishment, their eyes the same shade of blood.

"My love…you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

And again, blackness gripped her.