Oh, I had fun writing this! Definitely a chapter that ended up better than I had hoped. Here's hoping y'all like it, too-and thanks to all of you who reviewed! MWAH!
.
Loki awoke in a soft but unfamiliar bed with his arms full of warm, alluring, sweetly-scented woman.
It was certainly one of the most pleasant awakenings he'd experienced in longer than he'd care to recall.
The events of last night arose in his mind and Loki couldn't help but smile. He'd come to Taryn exhausted and aching and needing the rest that his fractured mind would no longer allow him. It had been a desperation play, he would willingly admit that. She had given him no sign that she would welcome him into her room at all, much less allow him into her bed. But after those kisses beside Selvig's lab…
Oh, those kisses! He'd kissed her twice before–both times for magic, once to plunge her into sleep and once to share memories–but neither of those kisses had been like this. With no spells to cast, Loki had been able to give all his attention to her mouth, and for long, glorious minutes the madness driving him had been drowned out by a sweet overload of pure sensation.
While her lips and tongue slid so sensually against his, his body had known something other than pain and wretchedness. While her little whimpers and gasps of surprise and pleasure filled his ears, he hadn't been able to hear echoes of the screams the Chitauri had torn from him. While her scent, clean and light and delicious, filled his nose, he hadn't smelled the cesspits of hell where he'd been held prisoner for too long. And while her taste saturated his mouth in shades of mint and chocolate and desire, he forgot the flavor of his own blood and shattered teeth.
His visions of that other life had promised that heaven awaited in this woman's arms, but knowing it and experiencing it were very different things. Loki had bedded a thousand maidens–his reputation as the Seducer of Asgard was a well-earned revenge, after all–but never had he been the one swept away. Never had he been the one overtaken by his body's demands. No, he had always played his lovers like a symphony, directing each kiss, choreographing every caress until they were lost to his sensual music, but Taryn's kisses… oh, those kisses had pushed him to the very edge of his control.
And Loki, who prized control over everything else, wanted to experience that again. Wanted to feel his control strain, crack, and finally shatter, wanted to lose himself in taste and touch and scent and sound, wanted to immerse himself in heat and desire.
Loki wanted.
So when Taryn stirred a little in his arms and her hair fell away from her neck, Loki didn't even try to resist the urge to bend and kiss a path across that smooth, exposed skin. Mmm, he hadn't tasted her skin before, and he wasn't surprised to find her flavor ambrosial on his tongue. She shivered in his arms and he smiled against her throat, pressing another open-mouthed kiss beneath her ear before drawing her earlobe into his mouth.
Taryn made an impossibly sexy sound in the back of her throat, a sleepy, throaty little purr that bypassed Loki's ears and hit him straight in the groin. He growled and suckled a little harder, needing to provoke her to make that sound again–when she did, it drove the air from his lungs. What was it about this woman that she was able to affect him so profoundly with such a little thing? It was a mystery he couldn't wait to decipher.
But right now she was still asleep and he wanted her mouth, more kisses, her taste on his tongue and her breath in his lungs. Loki nibbled his way along the delicate shell of her ear in hope that the sharpness of his teeth would awaken her. She shuddered, back arching in unconscious invitation, and the soft swell of her ass suddenly pressed against his aching erection. He swore shakily, hardly aware what language he spoke, much less what word fell from his lips, and he caught her hip in his hand and couldn't help but rock against her.
He swore again, a deep groaning plea torn from him at the surge of almost shocking pleasure the movement caused. Sweet Yggdrasil, had anything ever felt so good?
Loki stilled–to continue that would have him mindless far too soon–but now that his hand had moved once, it wanted to continue to do so. His palm ghosted over her waist, down her thigh, beginning to learn her dips and curves, and he breathed in her ear, "Wake up, my lady. Wake up and kiss me," in a voice that trembled.
The sudden stiffening of her spine told him that she had finally awakened–awakened and realized who was in bed with her, and exactly what she'd been doing in her sleep. He didn't allow her time for second thoughts, or first thoughts either, if it came to that. Shifting with lightning speed, Loki trapped her beneath him with one leg across her thighs and her hands caught in his, fingers interlaced, arms stretched above her head and pinned.
And pausing only to steal one glance for his memory–her hair a tousled crimson cloud around her face, color high in her cheeks, whiskey-dark eyes wide with arousal–Loki captured her mouth and claimed the kiss he'd been aching, aching for.
Her cry of surprise died against his lips. Loki groaned again as he exploited that opening to slide his tongue deep. She gasped at the invasion and her body quivered beneath him in a way that made him feel powerful and exhilarated and so desperate he thought he might explode all at once. He kissed her again and again, getting lost in it, in the way her resistance at first wavered and then melted, at the way her tongue slowly stopped fighting and began dancing instead. More kisses, still more, and he was so hard it was painful but even that was exquisitely pleasurable.
Some endless time later Taryn abruptly broke the kiss and turned her face aside, denying him that delicious, addictive mouth, but Loki merely transferred his attention to her throat again. Her pulse fluttered beneath his lips in a fast pace to match his own. "Loki–wait," she gasped, breathless, and he decided he liked her voice like that. Oh yes, he liked that very much, and liked the knowledge that he'd brought her to that breathlessness most of all.
"Mmm," he replied, not waiting at all. Her skin, soft and sweet and just a hint of salt; he needed to lavish his attention on every inch of it. He nipped the corner of her jaw, soothed it with his tongue, smiled with almost savage satisfaction at the little moan that brought from her. Did it again.
"Wait," she said, more firmly this time, and Loki sighed in resignation. It was so unfair–he was burning alive with a passion he'd never before experienced, and she wanted to talk.
But because she could do this to him, could reduce him to nothing more than a shivering, burning ache, he would humor her. "What could possibly be worth talking about now?" he asked, his own voice hoarse and needy in a way he'd never heard. No longer kissing but nuzzling his way along her throat, feeling her shiver, he murmured, "I can think of oh, so many more pleasurable things to do with my mouth." He bit the juncture of neck and shoulder, thrilled at the cry she couldn't quite stifle. "You'll like them all," he promised against her skin.
She swallowed hard–he felt it. "You said–you said you just wanted to sleep," she blurted, still breathless in that way he was coming to adore.
"Mmm," he agreed, reaching her collarbone and flicking his tongue over it. "So I did." Another bite, then his tongue dipped into the little hollow at the base of her throat.
"Loki!" she gasped, and oh, that did dangerous things to his pulse, hearing his name on her lips like that. "You gave your word!"
Reluctantly–very, very reluctantly–Loki abandoned her neck and raised his head to look down at her. And a very pretty sight she made, too, with her lips puffy from his kisses and her cheeks pink and her pupils blown, so distracting that he had to concentrate to form words. "I gave my word that all I wanted was to sleep beside you last night," he said, wondering if his own mouth was as red as hers or if his eyes betrayed the same desire, and if so, did she find it as alluring as he did? "But last night is over, and this morning… this morning, my beautiful, delicious Taryn, this morning I want more."
She frowned a little. "It was a trick?"
"No," Loki answered at once. "Last night was real. But so is this." And she wanted to talk, did she? Well, he could do that. He smiled, knowing it wasn't at all a reassuring sight, and prepared to put his silver tongue to good use–not the one he'd prefer, but one at which he still excelled. "Perhaps last night I was not specific enough. I can be specific now so there are no misunderstandings," he said, voice low and dark, almost hypnotic, and he took her lack of refusal for permission to go on.
Bending closer, almost but not quite brushing her lips with his, Loki murmured, "I want to touch you, kiss you, tease you. I want to find every place that makes you gasp or moan, first with my fingers, then with my tongue. I want to bring you to the edge again and again, feel you come undone beneath me, give you more pleasure than you've ever imagined." Her eyes, already dark, had widened to the point he thought he could fall in and drown. She was already shivering beneath him and Loki licked his lips, watched her watch the movement, wanted so damn bad it hurt.
"I want your hands on me," he whispered, and now his lips did caress hers with every word. "I want your mouth on my skin. I want you to make me beg, Taryn, and I will beg. I will beg for you."
Her breath came in short gasps now. Arousal rose from her body like heat from a fire and everything in Loki yearned to answer its invitation. "I want, Taryn," he breathed against her mouth, "and only you can give me what I want."
He kissed her again, stopping any reply she might have made, hoping to stave off further conversation–for once, the Wordsmith had no use for words. For a moment he thought he might actually be able to derail her protests because she kissed him back with a passion that made his entire body shudder.
But it was not to be. Taryn tore her mouth from his too soon and pulled her hands from his grasp–he allowed it or she never could have broken his grip–breathing hard but with her jaw set in determined lines. "No," she said, pushing at his shoulders. "Stop. Please, I want you to stop."
Everything in her body cried out to him that she didn't want him to stop. Even her hands trembled despite pushing him away, but Loki had never resorted to force in the bedroom, not once in his long, long life, and he would not start now. Especially not with Taryn, the woman who would understand, the one who would choose him. He rolled onto his back, releasing her. "Damn," he sighed as his body cursed him.
Taryn was out of the bed in a flash, snatching up her robe and pulling it on as if that would offer any sort of protection from him if he did decide to have her despite her protests. Loki looked at her, smiling sardonically at that thought, but then he noticed that beneath the desire on her face lay something almost like terror. "You have nothing to fear from me," he said, the realization wiping the smile from his face and cooling his desire. "I would hardly expect to gain your love by rape, Taryn."
She clutched the robe tight but raised her chin proudly. "You won't get it by trickery, either," she shot back, and he mourned the loss of breathlessness in her voice.
Loki swung his legs out of bed and stood, rising to his full height and savoring the renewed strength of his body. Truly she was good for him if one night in her arms had restored him this much. "Then tell me how to earn it," he murmured, walking slowly toward her, giving her ample time to move away–she didn't, not even when he stopped less than a foot away from her and cupped her cheek in one gentle hand. "Tell me what you want, Taryn, and it will be yours."
She stared wide-eyed up at him, seeming almost hypnotized. "It doesn't work like that," she whispered. "You can't bribe me into loving you back."
And at those words, the last of the spell broke. Loki sighed as he caught her hand and raised it to his lips. "You misunderstand me. I don't love you, darling," he breathed against her skin, and she jerked with shock at his softly spoken words. "And I never will."
And with one final brush of his lips over hers, Loki took a step back and vanished in a flash of green light.
