So many of those in my life were content to take and take from me, leaving me a barren well. Bjorn alone had taken nothing, asked for nothing, but given me so much. Around him I felt so full, so alive, and I burned with the need to give all of myself to him. To hold nothing back, not my heart, not my soul, and most definitely not my body. I traced the tattooed lines down his stomach to where my pelvis pressed against him. “And now?”
“All of me is yours, Freya.” His head was tilted back, eyes closed, the light from my magic casting shadows over the chiseled lines of his face. His beauty was as otherworldly as I’d ever seen it, as though it had been Baldur, the loveliest of all gods, who’d gifted him blood rather than the god of war. “It may not be equal measure to your value, but it’s all I have.”
“It’s all I want.” All I could ever dream of.
I caught hold of his face, kissing him fiercely, needing him to feel my words as much as he heard them. Then, loosening my legs’ grip around his waist, I reached between us and took hold of him. Bjorn groaned my name as I stroked him root to tip, and heat that had nothing to do with the hot springs surged in my core. The side of my hand brushed my slick sex as I pumped his length, and I leaned back, pressing into it even as I felt my climax rise.
“I want you in me,” I breathed, but Bjorn caught hold of my wrists, his voice a growl as he said, “I think first I must prove my worth, love.”
In that moment I might have sworn that nothing could stoke my need higher than the way he’d said love, but then Bjorn carried me deeper into the cavern, laying me down on a slope of rock worn smooth by water running from another chamber above. It was nearly hot enough to burn, running in rivulets of fire over my throat and breasts, between my legs, but I barely felt it as Bjorn parted my legs wide, exposing me.
A breath, held too long within my lungs, shuddered free as I gazed at him, large and strong as a god between my thighs, waiting for him to push into me. Waiting for him to claim me as his.
Instead he consumed me.
Bowing his broad shoulders, he bent, rough cheek brushing against the inside of my thigh and making me gasp. He only spread me wider, lowering his head, tongue parting my sex. My back bowed, my legs wrapping around his neck and my hands finding the lip of the basin behind me as I held on.
“I’ve wanted to taste you for so long,” he growled, licking me again. A sob tore from my lips, because the gods strike me down, nothing had ever felt this good. “Do you have any idea the madness it drove me to, sliding my fingers into you that night and feeling how fucking wet you were but not being able to have you on my tongue?”
As though to remind me of that night, he let go of my right knee and slid a finger into me, curving it to stroke my core. “Show me what you wanted to do to me,” I gasped, rocking my hips against his fingers, driving my pleasure higher. “Please.”
He said nothing, only closed his mouth over my clit, tongue circling it with small little swipes. I bucked beneath him like some wild thing possessed, crying out his name as he sucked on me, fingers slick with my wetness as his caresses found a rhythm, stroking me harder. Higher.
I was so close. So close that I wanted to scream. Wanted to beg for more. Wanted—
Bjorn slipped a third finger into me, and my body shattered, release washing over me in a fiery flood that made me cry out, the muscles of my legs contracting, binding him to me. The waves kept coming, like a storm unleashed against a shore, leaving me gasping and spent.
This was how it was supposed to feel. What I’d always dreamed it would be like. Not to be used as a means to an end, but to be worshipped as a woman beloved. To matter to my lover.
Bjorn unhooked my legs from his neck, moving them around his waist so that the water once again poured over me. “You’re so beautiful, Freya,” he whispered. “Like a goddess.”
I opened my eyes, blinking at the brilliance all around me.
Magic poured from my hands where they gripped the edge of the pool above me. It clung to the water as it swirled down, painting my body with rivulets of silver light, spilling over the curve of my hips to fall into the pool below where it spiraled away on the current.
Bjorn bent over me, kissing my lips with such reverence that my heart broke and re-formed. Gods, but I loved him. Wanted him. Couldn’t imagine ever being parted from him, the very thought of it sending a slice of panic through me. I wrapped my arms around his neck, my magic spilling over his skin as I tangled my fingers in his hair, my tongue in his mouth. He tasted of salt, every breath I took filled with the scent of him.
“I want you in me,” I whispered, pressing myself against him, a whimper pulling from my lips as his thick tip entered me. “I want all of you.”
“Not yet,” he murmured, lips tracing fire down my throat even as he slipped a hand between my legs, holding my hips down against the rock, thumb stroking the throbbing knot of my clit. “I want you wet and ready when I take you.”
I moaned as he stroked me, his other hand on my breast, teasing my nipple and sending sparks of pleasure through my body. My breath came in rapid pants, my back arching off the rock, and my muscles clenching around his tip, which teased the inside of me with the promise of more. “I’m no maid,” I hissed, the need to be filled surpassing my need for breath, wild and desperate. “I’m ready.”
“Not ready enough.” His teeth caught the curve of my shoulder and marked me, claiming me as I cried out. “I want you hot and wet and so desperate for my cock in you that you beg for it, Freya.”
All featherlight touch was gone, his thumb rubbing me hard, throbbing pulses spiking down my legs with each stroke. Another climax was rising, my breath rapid pants, the need so intense it bordered on pain. I opened my mouth to scream, Please.
But he already knew what I needed. He always did.
Bjorn’s arm slid under my back, lifting me off the rock and dragging my hips forward as he thrust into me.
A sob wrenched from my lips as he buried himself deep. So long and thick it seemed impossible I could contain him, but my body took him in like the first breath of air after too long under water.
“Gods, you feel good,” he groaned, withdrawing and thrusting into me again, the sensation driving me to the brink. “And you are mine.”
I was his.
Every part of me for all of eternity. I clung to his neck as he drove into me again and again, with each stroke the base of him rubbing against the spot his thumb had abandoned. My nails clawed his skin, my heels digging into the hard muscle of his arse as I pulled him into me, my climax teetering on the brink.
Bjorn kissed me, our teeth knocking together with the force of it, his tongue chasing over mine as he plunged into me, breath hot and rapid. Then his hands gripped my hips, nearly pulling me off the rock as he drove deep.
Release surged over me like a storm. Like a tempest that would tear the world apart, my body shuddering as it drowned me in pleasure, dragging me back under each time I broke the surface. Never had I felt anything like it, the sensation washing away sight even as it drowned me in color, my ears filling with the sound of my name on Bjorn’s lips as he climaxed, spilling into me in a flood hotter than the waters we swam in.
He buried his face in my neck, rocking against me, leaving me boneless and spent. “I love you,” I breathed, allowing my magic to dissipate, leaving us wrapped in darkness. “You are all I want.”
Bjorn shuddered, fingers tightening around me. “I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you from me.”
I shouldn’t like it, the violence, but it was men wishing violence upon me who would try to tear us apart, so I relished his words. Relaxed into the protective embrace of them as he lifted me down into the water, holding me close in the darkness.
“How long can we stay here?” I asked, beads of condensed water and sweat running down my cheeks as I nuzzled his throat. Part of me hoped he’d say forever because I never wanted to leave. Never wanted to step outside to face the world, despite the knowledge it was a different world we’d walk toward.
“We should leave in the morning.” He traced his finger over the curve of my hip. “I want to get you out of Skaland.”