The Sweetest Rose-LokixOC

Chapter 23

A few hours later one of the monks brought Cassandra a brown tunic and pants to change into. With some difficulty due to her injured shoulder, she shed the hospital gown, dropping it on the floor.

Someone cleared their throat behind her. She tensed and slowly turned around. A certain trickster was sprawled on the floor watching. Joy filled her. "Loki! You're back!"

"And in one piece." He said dryly then froze as he looked up at her with a strange look on his face.

Cassandra glanced down, realizing she was topless giving him a free show. A quip ready on her tongue, she paused to reconsider saying something snarky. With greasy hair and stinking of antiseptic from the hospital, she did not imagine Loki found her particularly sexy at the moment.

Hell, she didn't feel sexy either. She thought running a hand self-consciously over her oily scalp. She really should go pop into the shower.

Loki's eyeballs were still fixed on her naked chest. His thin mouth pressed in a tight line, a muscle flexing in his jaw.

Blushing, Cassandra hurriedly reached for the tunic and pulled it over her head, biting her lip against the fiery pain that knifed through her shoulder at the sudden action. She blinked back tears that stung her eyes. "Uh, sorry."

Loki regained his composure quickly lowering himself onto one of the narrow beds in the medieval cell. "How long have I been gone?"

She reached for the sling, studying the complicated straps. "A few hours. Wong said he placed you in something called the Mirror Dimension. What was that like?"

He braced his arm against his knees, breath a little unsteady. "As the name implies, the dimension is the mirror of this one. Except I was alone."

"Huh." Cassandra slid her arm into the base of the sling and worked at the straps or tried to. The straps kept twisting.

Rolling his eyes, Loki came over and helped her before she aggravated the gunshot wound again. He smoothed the straps over her shoulder, his fingers pressing lightly against her shoulder blade. "I can see the uses of the Mirror Dimension. One can experiment with unfamiliar spells and not damage the main reality."

Cassandra leaned back against his chest, loving the solid feel of him pressed against her spine. Her heart quickened at being in his arms. "Wong assigned me that giant heap of books over there."

Loki drew away, the warmth of him vanishing from her skin in an instant. He lifted the first tome in the stack, arching his brows. "Fundamentals of Control." He rifled through the books muttering to himself. Once he read the final title he nodded. "This mortal is wiser than I thought."

"You agree with his choices then?" Cassandra asked in patent disbelief. Loki had gone on ad nauseum about second-rate sorcerers and charlatans and the inferiority of human sorcerers. "What changed your mind?"

A devilish smile scrawled across his face. "As Strange so generously pointed out Kamar Taj is the center of all magical knowledge on earth. With the ability of sorcerers to travel between dimensions I can only imagine the wisdom gathered in these walls." Leaning against the desk, he laughed. "If the sheep wish to invite in the wolf who am I to quarrel?"

Cassandra heaved a frustrated sigh. Loki had a one-track mind sometimes. "And you are going to use the opportunity to learn the Mystic Arts and how to use it against them. Really, Loki? Is it the time to be worried about petty grievances when we have a dangerous sorceress threatening to bust into this world and conqueror it?"

The god shrugged indolently and inspected his fingernails for imaginary dirt. "I am a master of multi-tasking, darling." He slanted her a coy look. "Among other things."