of shadows in darkness that i used to own

ix. in the throats of gods

And another time.

She sampled the wine that soaked his tongue, as sanguine as those desirous lips—well-aged and full-bodied, and dripping sweetly from his mouth.

Loki's bedchambers breathed to accommodate their entry. This time, Sif dragged him in behind her; and this time, she took a moment to spare a few glances. The space suited him, with its sparse but artful arrangement of fine woods and furs, giving way to an absurdity of books; though they full-stocked the shelves and spangled the writing desks (plural), not a single tome appeared out of place. Arrays of ornate wooden statues neatly stood atop a nearby table. A few among them caught her eye: a fork-tongued serpent with scales like fish, the fat bulge of a bovid's hip, a raven's smart-curving claw.

"I see no goats here, for one who so loves them." She raised her brow to him and grinned.

(In response, his arms encircled and his tongue touched to her nape; a flare of liquid pleasure trailed fire to her stomach, shooting rapture to her cunt.)

They scrambled for his bed without ceremony, all animal facsimiles forgotten; there, they tangled in the soft caress of silk and furs. Sif might pause again to admire their richness, if not otherwise disposed.

Her body over his cast a splendid shadow. Sif couldn't remember when her clothing left her head; only the way his naked form drove her to distraction. There was something austere and alluring in his slender shape, the white-blue skin, the way it blossomed by her hands—by turns defiled and pure, as beautiful and debaucherous as her fingers in his throat. Loki permitted her to pin and touch him, to look and taste; he drank her impatience, her worried fingers in the wefts of hair, the sticky seal of bruising lips.

(She bruised to keep, to steal, to suck the poison from his heart.)

From Loki's goblet poured the wine; and once she drank, he shifted them to lay her down, forging a space between her parted thighs. Loki pressed freshets into Sif's bare skin. His pupils flared and his tongue clicked when she made a fist and shoved it, not toward him, but into her own gasping mouth. The hand that remained grasped his hair like a plea, pulling him down into her water.

"You crave this," Loki murmured; he sucked magic with his teeth before she could retort.

His tongue stroked braided silk; unblemished silver; cool whisper-currents of undiluted bliss. Sif choked and pitched breaths, pulling his teasing hand from her breast to tend to the ache; Loki laughed like tinkling bells, his fingers blooming in her, nose grazing the sparse swirls of unspoiled hair.

(Gold, like her hair had been. So there were some places his wicked want could not reach.)

Sif scratched at his scalp, gripped as to crush; he knew, as she spilled for him, the hot fount of her want. From Loki's lips and hands and tongue flowed magic; he pumped and sucked and soaked her release, again and again and again. He made sustenance of every scream.

(Sif didn't know and didn't trust whether this act, to him, was thrill or favor; no more than she knew how to conceal the bitter truth—that Loki, his silver and his darkness and his flaws entire, were exactly those things she craved.)

When he surfaced to face her, she hooked him at once: clambered into his waiting lap, fitted dauntless legs around his slender waist. Her hair outpoured into and between them, as leaves from a rain-doused tree. He explored it, twined fingers in it, unabated, fascinated. Flush to them both, Loki's cock trembled. She took it; angry and stiff, it wept by her hand.

Loki hissed at the precipitous pace, but felt himself taken by it even so. By Sif's ever-impetuous play. By this game they played together. His eyes fell shut; her laughter shook his branches.

"See how you like it," she mocked, her tone playful, breathless. "Which among us is the craven one?"

Like a vulture she swooped to take his lip between her teeth—harbinger of death, his auspex, her augur. It burned where their hips met, the angle, muscle and bone and the wet path his cock left to the unsullied skin. The awkward jut of her movements only aroused him further; he throbbed to see the haughty Sif so unversed. "You are a sublimely undisciplined lover," Loki whispered, long and lethal in her open mouth. "And you burn for me."

Sif's sinking spelled chaos; her darkness engulfed all of him. Loki filled her with cold fire, choked the limit of her light. Sif arched; her breasts swelled; Loki took his tongue to the pearls formed at her neck, pierced her with his needle teeth. She flexed up to him desperately, back to bowed limb, her shadow-wreath hair so fine in his hands. Sif bit love and defiance into Loki's mouth; her mutiny debased him, he who would incite the gods and she who would let them both be struck.

She besieged him; he razed her. He drove into her endlessly. Cloaked in his sheets, Sif bonded him to her; with self-sought fury, she laid him to waste. Her mouth scorched his face; her fingers, his lips. Every inch of her sealed him. Everywhere, she labored—her breath, her hands at Loki's throat, her ankles beating his drum.

The greater gods above would forsake the Nine Realms to behold her as she moved.

(I will bind you to me), Loki breathed-not-breathed into Sif's drowning locks. (You will be mine and mine alone.)

Resistance, always. She pried herself up and slammed back again. Her flesh, her will, swallowed him whole.

When Sif sighed (Loki), with not teeth but mind, he shot into her a flood. It unraveled his tongue, so fine and fierce as she was, so drenched by his seed, her blood. Gleaming, hungry, like a wink on a blade. Sif's fingers held tight to his parted lips, her face dissembled by his hair. He dragged her up by the chin so that he could look as she came. The realms retracted to her alone.

When they returned to their bodies, Loki continued to fondle her hair. Too spent to fight, or to give chase, Sif imprinted stars in his skin. She buried herself in his silver, her shame.

(Before she fell to sleep, Sif swore she caught something metal and glinting in the far corner of the room; but when she looked back, it had vanished.)

- x -

"Your supper," she barks, setting the chrome platter before his wanting eyes, releasing the restraints with an automated ease.

He looks to her expectantly.

"Have you something to say?" she bites. Sif's posture is indecipherable, but there is comfort in her torrid face.

Loki says nothing, reveals nothing; but he siphons Helfire from Sif's eyes. As he does, his mind conjures an unbidden image of a fire-haired woman with whom he had once bartered, behind the glass walls of a prison not unlike this one.

(He disremembers the bit where the Widow had fooled him.)

"Oh, how we have soaked these ledgers." Loki's tone drips venom. Sputtering his amusement, he laughs and laughs.

The fetter and cuffs fall from Sif's hands with a devastating clang. Blades snap to her palms faster than Loki can see.

"Love is for children, indeed," he spits. (The last thing she hears before the guards burst in.)

- x -

Night falls. Far beyond the golden palace a young buck watches as a single star blinks its last breath and dies, fading soundlessly into the all-entrenching sky.