of shadows in darkness that i used to own

vi. another planet

She leads: naked jaw to baited fingers, and brings them to his drooling lips.

His face is streaked scarlet where the fetter left its mark. As the iron mask winks from a considerable distance, his mouth hangs his agony. She'd traced for him the ready path of his desire, trailing flame from cheek to poised tongue. Had Loki the disposition to listen, he might hear the soft breath restrained by Sif's teeth, or the loud snoring of guards in the embrace of sleep. Instead, as those fingers sink deep into his throat, his mind becomes utterly, blissfully blank.

Neither of them can afford to suffer what the scene would reveal—that Sif has grown ever more daring, more reckless, even as his ember mouth brands scars into the skin. Taking what she gives, deeper than deep, as to devour her outright through that singular choke-point—to swallow that sun whole. No matter that Loki's hands are still bound; he coils to her as a serpent, and serpents need not touch with hands. Pitted in the shadow of this blessed trance, he dares not speak, dares not break the spell. Loki will hold his sacred ground, and feast on every stolen second.

He holds his gaze, transfixed, as Sif shucks off her leggings, enlisting the hand not so indisposed. He knows that she savors the face that he wears: a face that spells of his utter destruction. Then, pursuant of her own punishment as much as his, she withdraws from his mouth with a slick, obscene pop that runs all his blood down. Where she left, his throat aches. Crudely guiding his head, she leads him—down, down, down, to the center of her shore.

The serpent has a silver tongue. Loki drinks like a wasteland, lapping her folds fervent as a planet starved. Sif unfurls to his tongue and teeth, biting down, pushing inside with a maddening tempo. He thrusts a flicker of curling flame, shallow inside, teasing; he soaks up the sobs she can't quite stifle. Sif's body convulses with need for that icy heat, the swell of Loki's silver in her. He would bury himself beneath her sea.

She drenches him in holy water, casts sound and sin away like sand. And when she folds to that mouth it is like a dam breaking, like every ache she's ever pushed down deep rushing back to her surface all at once, spilling, dripping from her open maw. He drinks her leaking lips, bites his curses into her cunt; she presses death to his wrists where they're shackled like a prayer, and crashes her release.

When the tide subsides, she shoves him to his back; and he awes her with such a wretched face that Sif can hardly bear it. She reaches a hand to touch his hair, wild like a bed of snakes; she cradles his head in her raptor claws.

And when Sif pinches the hard line of Loki's cock in his trousers—he would asphyxiate by that bolus of raw desire.

This war that they wage is more than just blood or victory or the subjugation of gods. As Sif frees and palms the weeping head, Loki's eyes burn in her orbit—as though Sif is a celestial body, a fascinating, far-off world. He makes a beautiful carnage, wrecked and battered blue, wolf-mouth not snarling but wide-held in offering. His face, her supplication.

Sif ceases her movements as abruptly as she began them. Not without effort, she pries herself up with hands still slick and trembling. Soundlessly she steps over the wounded animal pressed into the floor and retrieves the discarded fetter that would mask his rapture, glinting like a spoil some way from his head. With minimal resistance, she fastens it over the mischief-god's mouth.

She is victory.

The conquest is hollow; it does not satisfy. It is barren land usurped in a holy crusade; it's fire from the heavens, destroying everything Sif is and everything she has, licking up the wreckage, leaving nothing in its wake. The war that they wage is power, endlessly wrested, smothered and shoved. It is the wine of retribution, righteous anger, spoiled love.