***Hliðskjálf (pronounced "HLITH-skyahlf," with the "y" being a slide vowel like the "y" sound in "few") is a high vantage point from which Odin can see everything that happens in the cosmos.***
The thoughts and feeling vying for supremacy were manifold and varied in intensity. Uppermost in Aila's conscious, amidst the clamor and confusion of these equivocal sensibilities, was the awareness of two antithetical emotions: desire and fear. The latter was doubtless compounded by the ominous intimations evoked by his strange warning.
The vicissitude of passions were such that she knew not what to say in answer to him. Howbeit, no response had been required. Loki's thoughts were now, even as she watched him, inclining swiftly towards a more amorous predilection.
Before she thought to question his sudden movement, he had already positioned her effortlessly — with supernatural speed — so that she was now straddling his hips, each now searching the other's gaze for what might lie behind their veiled looks. Aila had no doubt as to what her countenance revealed. She could easily hear how her heart lurched violently in her chest, and had no doubt as to his perceiving it too. But whether it stemmed from alarm or ardor, she knew not; indubitably both. With a light touch to her furrowed brow, he released the tension there and smiled ruefully at her.
"I will not force you, Aila," said he grudgingly, resignation lacing his every word. "It is not too late for you."
"Do you want me to go?" She felt that he was both pushing her away and luring her in, as though he were two different entities instead of one.
"No!" Loki's lips compressed marginally, as he further pondered her question. "And yes."
"I would not wish to be anywhere but here; with you." She sighed her determination and realized, with dawning insight, that her declaration was absolutely true.
"But you...fear my touch?" He raised a single brow.
"I do not. I fear your caveat of earlier." His premonitory words yet rang tangibly between them. 'I gave you leave to run away; I warned you. Remember that...'
"Yes." He brushed a finger lightly across her cheek and down her neck.
"I would be foolish not to heed them." Uttered as they were by a god, no less.
"Yes."
"Tell me what will happen. Please, Loki."
"I have told you. I cannot know for sure, and I would not wish to deceive you of all people." His face was now wholly devoid of aught that might hint at what he was thinking or feeling.
The way he sat watching her, so like the god portrayed in the legends of old, unsettled her where she had been calmed by him before. His azure eyes flashed their unearthly, intent vigilance, his dark hair seeming to float eerily as it framed his marble-hewn features.
"I wonder that you are deemed so terrifying and distrusted by everyone. I cannot seem to correlate that which I have heard...with who you have revealed yourself to be." Although, one had merely to look at him to know why he was afeared.
"Aila," he murmured bitterly, "I have walked this earth, and others, for millennia; what being remains uncorrupted and irreproachable after so interminable an age? Even the Allfather's hands are imbrued with the blood of many. He is not loved, but feared."
"But Thor is loved, as is Balder and Frigg..." She might have continued listing the beloved Aesir, but his brows lowered sullenly.
"Yet someone must be hated and blamed for all the world's afflictions." He then relaxed his features once more. "And that blackguard must be me."
"Loki..." She worried at her lower lip, placing her palm to his face, but he caught it, ere she could touch him where she sought to, and held her wrist away.
"Do not pity me," he smirked. "I not only wear the villain's mantle quite easily, I embrace it completely. It is, after all, in my nature to be dissolute and callous."
"But not to me!" she countered fiercely.
"No," he murmured, his eyes roving over her as though to memorize each detail of her face, "not to you." He brushed his thumb across her lips. "I would protect you even from Odin himself."
Aila tilted her head up towards the stars blinking behind the shadows of the giant conifers superimposed against the festooned and inky sky. She wondered if the Allfather was, even now, perched atop his throne, Hlidskjalf, as he scanned his single, omnipotent eye across every realm beneath Yggdrasil's branches.
"Is he watching us now?" She didn't care much for being scrutinized at present. Would he disapprove of her actions thus far?
Loki shrugged his shoulders. "I doubt it."
However, his words did not completely allay her misgivings. She searched the caliginous boughs carefully, wondering if Huginn or Muninn, Odin's watchful ravens, might be lurking from some shadowy point of espial.
"What are you waiting for?" His voice held both amusement and impatience, so she lowered her gaze from the heavens and brought her widened eyes back to his enigmatic regard. Loki was staring at her lips with keen hunger, his lids half-lowered seductively. "You are protracting the inevitable."
The rich, enticing timbre of his words flowed athwart her puckered skin, beguiling her with their sweetness so efficaciously that she ignored the redolence of presentiment contained within them. However, he remained motionless, unwilling to make the first move except to lean back on his elbows and, thereby, allow her to have the benefit of height over him. He had already done enough, she supposed, by repositioning her on is lap.
The whisper of an ariel fluttering within her belly urged Aila's attention swiftly back to where the heat of his thighs burned through the layers of linen and wool that separated his flesh from her hers. He was right, she had been procrastinating. And for what? She yearned for more than merely the chaste kiss they'd shared heretofore.
Having finally reconciled herself to the fact that she would never forgive herself if she left him now, Aila placed her hands at his chest and leaned forward, touching her lips to his gently. At the contact, she felt Loki's lips relax into a wolfish smile as she was left to her sedulous exploration of his warm, sensuous mouth. Her attentions were at first hesitant and diffident, but erelong she became more sure of herself, allowing her hunger to vent itself through impatient fingers and deeper kisses.
When she made to nip at his lower lip, he growled his contentment and swiftly flipped her onto her back, effectively switching their positions so that she was pinned to the ground as he took his turn venerating her mouth as she had done to his. But where her lips had been almost timid, his were eager and insistent. His tongue delved confidently twixt her teeth, urging hers to follow suit as he released the straps of her apron-skirt from the silver brooches above each breasts.
That done, he stood and removed his long, black, shaggy cloak as she watched him, her chest heaving erratically. He lay it over the leafy bed beside Aila and then reached for her hands to pull her up from the ground. Once she stood on teetering legs, he removed her outer gown as the clink of the brooches knocking together disturbed the silence still pervading the darkness. The long under-gown soon followed so that she finally stood bared to him, yet still adorned by her arm bands and rings, whilst he glutted himself on her young body with hungry, lambent eyes.
"Are you cold?" he asked softly, before fixing his gaze to hers once more.
"No." And she wasn't. How could she be when a man — a god — such as this one looked upon her so worshipfully. She had never felt so nervous nor so powerful as he drank of her lush curves with a heady glance. It was intoxicating.
Loki, after divesting himself of all his raiments — a sort of leather cuirass, bracers, his woolen tunic, trousers and tall, fur-lined boots — moved purposefully towards her as she endeavored to calm her breathing. Smiling archly at her, he settled his hands at her hips and leaned down to kiss her, his tongue gently teasing hers apart once more. When he had gorged himself on her mouth, he trailed his way down her neck and across her shoulders, moving slowly behind her while the fingers of one hand played over her taut belly as the other grazed her breasts.
Aila, consumed by the sensations he so deftly educed, closed her eyes and lifted an arm to hook behind his neck as he pressed his chest flush against her back, nuzzling the underside of her jaw. She heard naught but their heavy respiring and her clamoring heart; she felt naught but his lips, his hands and heated flesh. She was utterly reduced to a mindless, sensory creature.
She met him beat for beat, and touch for touch. When he became less gentle she was thrilled by his lack of restraint and, equally, moved by the few moments he became gentle. However, there was a keen frustration building inside her because he still had not joined his body to hers; not in the sense she was now desperate for. At length she could take no more and dragged her nails ruthlessly down his back.
"Now, Loki!" she demanded with a fierceness she had not thought herself capable of.
He only chuckled wickedly, pushing her down onto his cloak. "Gladly, my lady," said he looming over her.
He lowered himself to kneel on his haunches, between her bent knees, his smile utterly sinful until he focused his eyes to her belly. Her brow furrowed as she watched his expression darken from lust to ire in the space of a blinking eye.
"What is it?" She swallowed nervously, thinking that perhaps she had displeased him somehow.
Loki hooked his hands behind her knees and pulled her abruptly toward him so that the backs of her thighs came to rest suddenly over his. He remained silent as he moved his finger in lazy circles around abdomen. Finally he spoke.
"No one will ever harm you again." His lip curled over his teeth almost viciously and she thought she noticed his canines elongating, but the notion was a fleeting one as his lips compressed into a grim line all too soon.
"W-who has harmed me?" But her question went unanswered as he pushed himself onto his knees and leaned forward to stretch out between her legs, his elbows at her hips.
The muscles at her pelvis twitched and tightened the while he lavished her stomach with soft kisses and then moved down to pay homage to the region that most sought his attention. Aila fisted blindly at his cloak and whimpered fretful moans as he sipped at her core.
Her earlier question had been effectively caressed from her mind, however, later she would attribute his strange asseveration to Harald's having ignored her; he was, after all, the only one that had caused her any emotional harm, surely. Was that what Loki had inferred?
As the pressure built and thrummed where he laved rapturously, Aila arched her back and reached wildly for that ever evasive apogee. But before she could leap from the precipice she was now hanging from, Loki ceased his ministrations. He pulled himself up along her fevered body, wresting cries of frustration that precipitated her fingers to dig painfully into his powerful shoulders.
"Not without me," he whispered against her ear.
When he finally eased himself within her, she halted her breathing until he was fully sheathed by her warmth. Then, releasing a ragged breath as he began to move urgently against her, she matched her rhythm to his, their motions syncopating naturally and concurrently as if they had always known each other.
Loki locked his mouth to hers as the fervor and tempo increased piecemeal. She was blind with feeling; deafened by the tireless way he innervated her flesh. But at last he relented, relinquishing the meed she had craved since he first touched her. Together, their muscles seized as they found release, his teeth clenched against her shoulder the while she cried out her delirium.
She was spent and lay boneless as Loki rolled them over, reversing their positions. Her head now lay atop his chest as he ran his fingers through the damp hair at her temple. Fingertips circling the twin scars she felt over his heart, Aila's eyes fluttered closed.
❅
Aila had compassed naught since awakening in Loki's arms in the small hours of the frosty morning. It had been impossible to feel the cold as he held her, stroking her flesh to wakefulness as he had done countless times throughout the night.
She smiled shyly recalling the sweet kiss he had planted on her lips ere he'd begun their love play anew.
Love? Did she love him? Did she dare? It was far too soon for that nonsense, but theirs had been an emulous love at least. However, that was of no moment, for she was happy besides. She could still feel him on her lips, still smell the spice of his scent infusing her skin, even though it had been hours since their farewell in the forest. Arriving home before the cockerel had even opened its eyes, she had crawled into bed, but not been able to sleep. Of Brynja or Harald there had been no sign.
Perhaps she had need to expiate for her betrayal of Harald, yet she felt no guilt. Strange. She had not done what she had to spite her husband — he had been far from her mind since encountering Loki in the forest. She had thought only of her own impulsive need, as awful and selfish as that sounded, and the profound longing to feel wanted and cherished by a kindred. Though she should bear its burden, she felt nary a hint of shame; no regret had lingered to cloud her felicity.
The sigh she released was bittersweet; she was thrilled by her thoughts of him, but loathe to think on the distance that separated them now — wherever he was. Asgard mayhap? She worked the warp and weft threads on the vertical loom with a distracted mind, uncaring of the mess she was making of the weave. So preoccupied was she that the sound of footsteps behind her went wholly undetected till a voice wrenched her suddenly from her musings.
"Where did you go last night?" Epona had moved to stand beside her, drawing a frown from her mistress' brow.
"Why do you ask?"
"I worry about you!" she stated impatiently which almost wrung a smile from Aila for the woman was perversely resistant to the fact that she was only a slave; and an impertinent one at that. "You are the only one I care about, so take a little care with your own safety!" Then, lowering her eyes to her rounded belly, she added, "You and Brenna are my only family now."
"I would rather you didn't take the trouble of worrying," Aila muttered.
She loved the girl as dearly as she loved her own brothers and despite that she was bound to slavery, but there was something odd about the southerner that had ever niggled Aila. She knew her baby's gender, she had a piercing, direct gaze that made even the men uncomfortable, and she had learned a foreign tongue in only a few months of living among Aila's people. Aye, she is an odd one. She always seemed to know things; strange and inconceivable things.
"Where were you?" Epona queried again with narrowed and suspicious eyes. "You were with him, weren't you?"
"Who?" Aila turned around to glare at the thrall, folding her arms combatively over her chest.
"The dark one; the daemon." Epona shook her head, disbelieving her own assertion, her mouth gaping at the implication.
"If you think for even a moment that I am answerable to you-"
"By the gods!" Epona's harsh gasp instantly silenced her as the thrall fixed fearful eyes at Aila's midriff. "I don't understand..." She shook her head again and pointed a trembling finger at her mistress' abdomen.
"Verily, Epona, you are scaring me!" Aila backed away cautiously as the outlander finally raised her eyes and gaped accusingly.
"What have you done?!"
The horror that charged the air between the women raised the hair from Aila's neck — where Loki's mouth had only just this morning bruised her skin.
⭐️ Not long now till the end of Part One. Let me know what you think *bites nails* Thanks for the votes and support...You know who you are!⭐️