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We are sprawled together on Loki’s enormous pale bearskin, which together we had hunted and caught, in a traditional way for once, his sword and my seithr (and how pleased was Odin Allfather as we dragged the carcass back to the palace) — we are sprawled before the fire, and he is lecturing me about shapeshifting, a skill which he has mastered and I have not. But I have stopped paying attention to the words, and I listen only to the smooth flow of his voice. Already he is being called Silver-tongue, for the elegant shapes of his words and honed perfection of tone.

For myself, I do not think often on Loki’s voice. I only revel in it, as flowers do in sunlight.

“Synne?” The change of tone is what captures my attention. My awareness slips back to reality from fantasies I hesitate to admit, and I realise that I am staring at him, and he is very close. I hope desperately that he thinks the heat of my face due only to the flames, and something small, and new, and precious inside wonders if it would be so bad for him to think differently.

I can’t bear to look away from his eyes now, so green against his pale skin, even paler framed by black hair. I’m sure everything I’m thinking is written on my face. I’ve never yearned for a mind-reading spell so much in my life.

“You look so serious,” he says now, frowning very slightly. “Were you even listening to me, Synne? Though you struggle with these spells, I did not think it required such concentration. Where has your thought gone?”

“I did let my mind wander,” I reply slowly.

“Your gaze … I thought for a moment … but it is of no moment.” Loki smiles at me, and it is almost his familiar grin, full of mischief, but it has an edge now, an edge that is both new and familiar. It is the smile he wears, these days, as he accompanies Thor, and the Warriors Three, and my old companion Sif, now a warrior among warriors. I pretend to myself that only I, of Loki’s friends, see him most truly.

I return his smile, and ungovernable instinct leads me to say, “What did you think I was thinking of, Loki?”

“Me,” he whispers, so low I can ignore it if I wish, and I realise, tardily, what that edge on his smile is made of.

It is always being second. It is learning seithr, and being half-shamed that his aptitude is for magic and not combat. It is feeling inferior, and always comparing himself to his brother, and always, always wanting to be more and not knowing how.

And now there is a new thing I want deeply, more than anything in my life, and it is to blunt that edge on Loki’s smile and blot the sadness from his eyes. Nothing but the snap of the fire fills the room now, and if I let myself think about what it is I am going to do, it won’t happen, so I don’t think, I just lean upward and hold Loki’s gaze, and brush his lips with mine. Almost instantly his arms are about my shoulders, and everything fierce and hungry fills the kiss.

I want to laugh, tasting the desire he pours into the meeting of our mouths and yet the restraint he is exercising not to simply take control. If there is anything a daughter of the Vanir knows, it is seithr and sex. This may be my first personal taste of the latter, but I am not uninformed, merely inexperienced. When Loki lets go, I know, it will be as so much else between us, a heady struggle for leadership.

For myself, merely initiating this kiss is all the letting go I need. Everything is Loki and there is no more pain. Trusting my weight to his grip, I wrap my hands into his hair, growing long and curling about his shoulders, and set my teeth gently into his lip. The gasp he makes into my mouth is very rewarding. I can feel his shoulders beginning to tremble, and even as he is returning the favour he lowers me to the rug and braces his hands either side of my head.

“Synne, are you sure?” There is so much tangled in his tone, wonder and fear and anguish and yearning and need, it is almost a blow. “Is it not my brother you want?”

This, now, is foolishness, and I intend to make certain he knows it. I mind myself of a trick or two Sif has taught me, and turn the tables on Loki. His shock at my manoeuvre is plainly writ on his face as I kneel over his prone body. I laugh, soft and low, and stroke my fingertips down his chest. Beneath my hand, his jerkin and tunic fade away, leaving naught but undershirt. Bending over until our noses touch, I whisper, “Your brother doesn’t deserve me, Loki Odinsson.”

“And so I do?” His tone is sardonic, but without the cutting edge with which he is wont to flay the slower-witted in Asgard.

A smile crinkles my eyes. I remind him, drawing back slightly, “I could quite easily fend off any unwanted advance by your so … impetuous brother. He has made none.”

“As to that, neither have I,” Loki ripostes.

“Until now,” I say. “You appreciate me, and I appreciate you. Let us form a mutual appreciation society, and leave your brother out of it.” I do not leave him time to argue further; the war of words is one in which Loki revels, but it is not that type of combat in which I wish to engage. So I stop his mouth with mine.

There is no question of force when he responds enthusiastically, pulling me down to him. There are no worthy comparisons for the way his mouth tastes, or the caress of his hands along my bare skin. I smile into this kiss, recognising the same spell with which I partially disrobed him but a moment before. Spilling me over onto the rug again, he smooths hair out of my face and presses kisses into my hairline before rising over me, silhouetted against the firelight.

It throws golden shadows onto his white skin and lays a canny, catlike sheen in his green eyes. “You are so beautiful, Loki,” I murmur, breathlessly watching him remove the rest of his clothing. Every inch revealed makes me long to possess him that much more, to exchange marks and dominances and every other thing we can think of.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” he says, sly, and I laugh and tell him, “You are a delight to my eyes. No one else matters.”

For that I earn another kiss, slow and hot and probing. The flicker of desire that fuels my daydreams is swiftly being fanned into conflagration; I want Loki. I let my eyes slip closed and learn him with my fingertips – the soft arch of his ears, perfectly sloping down to the line of his throat; the hollow of his collarbones, too thin in some eyes but perfectly suited to his lean build. The faint marks of combat-scars on his arms, some of them made by me, stand out like brands under the blind sensitivity of my hands. With the lightest possible touch I glide down over his chest, tracing the outline of muscles in his abdomen, and feel him tremble.

All the while, he is lavishing my upper body with kisses, shaping the line of my jaw with his lips, gently biting at my earlobe, licking the hollow behind my ear and drawing his teeth down the curve of my shoulders. A faint hum of magic accompanies the tingle of tiny sparks along the nerves of my collarbone. “Look at me,” Loki whispers against my skin, and so I do.

His eyes are enormous and crystal-dark, his mouth flushed pink, and I cannot help the hum that escapes me. It brings a smile to his face, different than any I have ever seen, and which I cannot describe. His hands capture mine, pressing them against the floor. I resist, to start with, but he gives a minute shake of his head, and I allow him to overpower me.

“What are you doing?” I ask laughingly. My hands are pinioned, but my legs are free, and I twine them about his calves, tracing with my toes idle runic patterns. He lays his forehead against mine, and his hair, dark as a starless night, falls to curtain our faces.

“I wish to possess you,” he murmurs, his tone rough.

“And yet you hesitate, and restrain me,” I tease, kissing the tip of his nose.

“I … ” he begins, and falters into silence.

Intuitively, I think he must feel the same as I: there is ever trepidation when embarking on a thing never before attempted. “I, too,” I tell him, very quietly. “But I had rather not beg. No thought of consequence has ever given you pause before; shall it now?”

“No,” he responds sharply, challenge-light flaring in his eyes.

My smile curves in response, and I use my legs to pull him closer to me, though my arms are yet held in his grip. Our hips meet, and his eyes roll closed at the sensation. There is heat and pressure and wetness in even this limited joining, and I rock my hips into it. “Please,” I whisper involuntarily, “please, Loki.”

“Not here,” he manages at last, releasing my wrists to support himself over me. “You deserve better than the floor, Synne of the Vanir.” A twist of his hips and thighs frees him from the cage of my legs, and he thrusts himself to a kneeling position at my side. “My Synne,” he says tenderly, and pulls me up into his arms.

I bury my face in his hair, breathing in deeply. My heart is pounding, my limbs trembling. Despite my mother’s teaching, I nearly feel my body has betrayed me with this near-uncontrollable desire. We kneel, clasped each in the other’s hold, for a brief moment.

Then Loki springs to his feet, pulling me along, and I do not resist, and we stumble along the floor, pausing every few steps to plunge into heady kisses, our hands seeking every opportunity to touch the other. In the shadowy reaches of Loki’s rooms, I cannot see the low bed until he tumbles me upon it, crawling up the length of my naked body.

The heat of our closeness is nigh unbearable. His long fingers wrap around my hips, and I fumble to grasp and direct his phallus. Poised, we pause, gazing, hardly daring to breathe.

Then he pulls my hips upward to meet his, and slides deep within me. Every fibre of my being focusses to that point of meeting, and I am distantly aware of lunging toward his descending mouth and locking my arms about his neck. He is growling, faintly, deep in his throat, and I cannot resist giggling into the kiss. Loki nips at my mouth, each one punctuated by a thrust, and it doesn’t take very long before I am helpless to giggle, moaning into his chest and curving my fingertips into his shoulders.

We ride a rhythm like the wild crashing of the seas, and the tension I feel gathering in my body I can liken only to the thrumming of the Bifrost’s power. I find myself grasping his hair, and half our kisses, frantic and gasping, land far elsewhere than mouths. Loki’s eyes, green and black and fierce, remain fixed to my face, and mine to his.

Freeing one hand, Loki brushes his fingertips along my cheek and traces into my hair. His pace slows. “Synne, ah Synne,” he whispers, and the pleasure the slower pace engenders in me is excruciating. I know we have come to this joining untouched by any other, and I cannot think enough to comprehend how he came by this knowledge of how to please a woman. I throw my head back against the thrilling of my nerves.

Somehow, Loki manages to roll us over, and now I ride above him, and he thrusts up into me, bringing a new blaze of ecstasy into my body. Now that he need no longer support himself above me, his hands roam my skin, tracing runes over breasts and abdomen and sliding over my hips. I reach one hand toward him, and he clasps it tightly and brings it to his lips, dragging kisses full of teeth over my knuckles.

I bite my lip, overwhelmed by sensation, and once again throw my head back, trailing my hair along his thighs. I feel him chuckle against our joined hands, then his other hand is between my parted thighs, doing I know not what. I know only that in conjunction with his phallus within me and his mouth against my fingers, I am utterly drowned in sensation, and the coiled tension whiplashes up my body.

His name tumbles from my mouth as I climax, and mine draws him pulsing within me, his lips shaping my name against my hand.

Gasping, I struggle not to collapse against Loki, but he draws me down to rest on his heaving chest. I nestle my face into the curve of his neck, kissing away the fine sweat there. One arm holds fast about my shoulders. He brings his other hand to his lips, licking at the fingertips, and I cannot help hiding my blushes.

His body vibrates with his laugh, even while he repositions us once more, side by side and facing one another. The motion disengages our bodies and I whimper. Loki’s hand to my mouth silences me. He tips my face up just enough to capture my mouth in a passionate kiss, and another tremble wracks my body.

“I do not know what to say to you,” he murmurs, breaking the kiss. I put my hand into his, and smile in utter happiness.

“Whatsoever is said of your skill with a sword in combat, you and I will know of your prowess with the sword of the loins,” I whisper.

His eyebrows arc upward in surprise before a pleased smile curls his mouth. “I don’t know how to return that compliment,” he tells me.

“Then put your mouth to better use,” I suggest.

Smiling with more contentment than I have seen in a long time, Loki complies.

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