Curse Of Blood: Gods & Monsters

Chapter XLVII - Heida

Roth's hands slid up her thighs and around to her backside, his fingers digging fervently into her flesh as he tightened his grip and fused their bodies closer. The iron flesh that lay between them pushed almost painfully at her belly — an enticing promise of what was to come.

Heat pooled in her core. Despite the insistent press of steel she began to move against him, becoming frustrated by all the clothes that barred his skin from her.

"Wait," he murmured against her lips. "There is one thing to be seen to before I make you mine." He sat up to face her so that she was still straddling his lap. "The Blood Bond."

"The Blood Bond?" It took a moment for her to understand him, she was that distracted by the hooded look in his eyes and the lambency pulsing there like blue flame.

"Few have been the times I have encountered, much less spoken to, Loki; but the first time I met him — or rather, when he told us he was our father — he was very emphatic about the Blood Bond." Roth removed his seax from where it was sheathed at his belt and nicked his thumb at the razor edge to test its bite. "He said that when I found the woman I chose as my life mate, I was to forge a bond of blood.

"To that end, there has to be a bond already in place." He brushed the crook of his index finger gently along her jaw. "There has to be a foundation, he said."

"Have you done this before?" She wondered if he had forged this bond with Frida.

"No. I scorned Loki's advice the first time ... and it was to Frida's detriment. Whether or not it might have worked, I shall never know, for I resented her. But I owed her a chance at least and in that I failed. I will not risk your life by disregarding the Blood Bond again. My father did not specify if it had to be done the first time we joined, but I must take no chances."

"What will this mean for us?"

"Loki said it will protect you."

Heida watched on, appalled, as he therewith sliced the blade across his right hand without another word, as though the very mainspring of his existence was her protection.

"Not so deep!" she cried. Blood sacrifices were no mystery to her, but surely he had no need to make the cut so deep.

"It has to be," said he, "or the wound will heal before you have had a chance to open your own flesh."

"My blood sacrifice is required too?!" But she already knew the answer.

"Quickly now," he said, giving the blade to her, "your left hand."

Even as he sat waiting, she could see his wound knitting itself together and she was utterly enthralled by it, so much so that she hardly felt the seax's keen edge glide through her palm as she applied steel to flesh. Once the blood began to seep from her hand in earnest, Roth pressed their palms together and met her eyes.

"I take you as my life mate, Heida," he said, gravely, almost seeming to inhale of her scent. "I bind myself to you with a kiss." And he pressed his mouth to hers, his tongue soon joining the ardent play of his lips. At length he pulled back. "Your blood is now my blood." He then released her hand and she saw that her wound was healing as quickly as his own was doing.

"Oh!" she stared curiously at the residual blood already drying over the pink mark.

"And now ... the third and last link."

Heida had no need to ask what the third 'link' of the rite entailed, for his meaning flared keenly in his pale, blue eyes, the scar at his lips making his grin even more wayward than it ordinarily would have been.