I smiled, extinguishing the magic, only to relight it on my other hand. Brushing my lips over his and curving my palm over the roughness of his cheek. Wrapping a stray lock of his black hair around my glowing fingers, painting him in silver light. He didn’t like to cede control, I knew that. Yet I could also see the rapid throb of his pulse in his neck, hear the low groan that tore from his lips as I trailed my fingers down his throat to his chest, feel his cock growing harder still where it rubbed between my thighs.
“Why wouldn’t you ever let me touch you?” I murmured, leaning back to trace my glowing fingertip over the intricate tattoo of runes on his chest. “Didn’t you want me to?”
He made a strangled noise. “Gods, woman. It was for the exact opposite reason to that.” His fingers tightened, digging into the curve of my arse. “Touching you had me on the verge of breaking. Having your hands on me would have snapped my control entirely. And…” He drew in a breath. “I didn’t want to take from you, not knowing if I could return it in equal measure.”
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.