Master of Miasma (The Valhalla Series) (12 page)

The cord taps the rock endlessly as he hops from one foot to the other. I wonder what he's training for?

Undetected I savor the chiseled calf muscles, so tight and rigid they're traps for deep shadows, trailing appreciation to the deep hollows above the waistband, all the way up the cords lining his indented crevice of a spine, stopping at the zenith of mounds scrolling from shoulder to neck. Holy fuckness.... the sheen on him gilds his body,
making it a masterpiece of exquisite art demanding worship, beckoning to be lavished with a curious tongue and salacious fingertips.

The metronome is meditative and I tense the second it stops. He turns, either sensing me or already knowing I'm here.

“Giants can't go running in the forest so we keep fit indoors.”

I nod, staring at the necklace I hadn't noticed before. It would be well hidden under a shirt and it piques my interest. He walks closer and I'm fascinated by the dull metal of it. It looks ancient.

“What's your chain made from?”

“
Arrow heads.”

Oh god! Is that the harii equivalent of notches on a bedpost? Is it one for every man he's killed in service to Odin?

I start counting but his brisk cologne hits me with proximity, radiating off him in exercised gloss. Honestly I am trying very hard not to perv because just his nearness is drilling my heartbeat.

“
Emma,” he says, sounding grave, stopping next to me to look down at the top of my crown, our right shoulders facing each other meaning I have to turn my head to look up.

“
Mmmm?” I murmur, anticipation scratching lazy nails down my vertebrae, trickling a slow dance to throb my pulse in sensitive regions.

The chemistry between us is generating tangible friction, caressing and touching without bodily contact. Eager and palpable.

“They belong to a legend. A warrior uses the arrow ladder to step onto Bifrost's bridge. It's the key into our home beyond what the eyes can see here. I am not a bloodthirsty savage needing a trophy to hang around my neck.”

“
Oh,” I mumble, ashamed I keep thinking the utmost worst about him when all he's been is assertively thoughtful.

“
Come here,” he orders, dropping his skipping rope, and grabbing my hand to haul me behind him whether I want to go or not. “I need to show you something.”

He forces me after him with a tight grip on my hand and I dare to resist, resenting the imposition of titanium fingers wrapped so tightly I'm sure he can sense my erratic pulse jabbing into his veins. I'm running with my short legs just to keep up with him.

Leaving the gymnasium behind we traverse through a brief wide tunnel into a cavern so enormous and high it imbues the air with sacred secrets. The atmosphere is immediately degrees cooler, tranquil, resonating tender delirium to a searching soul, exhaling nirvana into the light, writhing its ecstatic glory on every dust mote and surface, softly fingering the entire chamber with its diffusion of reality.

Drawing me with him, slowing his pace, he puts a restraining arm around my waist, dominating my direction in his silent manner, walking me directly to the diaphanous vision at the far end of the vast cathedral.

Reaching it I'm stunned. I stare at the iridescent water sparkling with inner radiance, pouring silently into a deep long pool of serene perfection. It's carat clear and I'm mesmerized by the hundreds of crystals the water cascades over in its descent. They prism rainbows the way a teardrop diamond does, dancing clarity in psychedelic dazzle, and it instills an instant soul passion and reverence.

“
Wow,” I whisper, staring up and up to the source, the sunlight coming from way up high is refracting through an enormous fiery crystal. “It's stunning.”

The water looks like runny honey until it flows over the clear crystals imbedded with spectrum after spectrum.

“These are rainbow crystals, this is what Bifrost looks like. Do you want to know how it feels to be home?”

I nod in answer to Mac's question, still unable to pluck my enraptured gaze away from the living wonderland hidden in a mountain. It's hallowed, precious, spiritual.

Staring up at it, I ask, “What is that? A citrine?”

“
It's a love crystal.” He shoves me so hard I teeter, windmilling madly only to plunge straight off the alabaster marble lip into the pool. It's refreshing, shocking, and my instinct is to panic. Still swimming up to resurface water explodes in my ears with a blast of berserker bubbles, frothing everything around me when he joins the celebratory fizz, turning my underwater vision into carbonated rainbow-orbs.

Breaching the surface, dipping my head to scoop my hair back, his jubilant laughter hits me as the first sound when my ears unpop. He has a delectable laugh, flirtatious and throaty.

“Feel it, Emma. Just close your eyes and feel it.”

Able to stand on the smooth pale bottom I obey, wallowing in the odd sensation of instant peace. My heart is engorging, my soul exploding, my spirit inflating, I feel twenty mountains tall and as free as a soaring meteor.

“Welcome home,” whispers huskily in my ear, and before I can open my eyes to the sensual voice my lips are sealed with warm nubile skin; delicate, careful, soft.

Caught by the arm still hard from exertion, divine fingers press into the small of my back, zipping our torsos together in a feint of fate. It robs my breath, my lucidity, my tenuous control.

Snapping my eyes open as craving melts arousal through me, his kiss hits its target when my desire begins to roar carnal ache into delicate flesh.

My thoughts are as scattered as the endless flares of lazy light tickling the room. I cling, touching, inhaling, kissing him back.

Instinctively I plant my right hand on his chest, it's a natural born act of subconscious defense in an unexpected snare, yet now it pounds a tattoo into my anchoring hold, coursing his heartbeat into the oversensitive palm still tender from the handshake which sealed our destinies in a fusion so arcane I experience it on a visceral level, my spirit constantly reaching out, pouring through my hand as if he cut a tunnel through the rock protecting its sanctity. Direct access to a part of my person which is uniquely private, the invasion is both erotic and exhilarating.

The tongue exploring mine and the tender tease of his teeth when he breaks the contact bursts my aorta into juicing love potion down every vein in my body. Gasping, my chest instantly a chasm, I dare to reopen my eyes, aware that I'm holding on to a standing pillar of supreme strength.

You're magnificent.

He's staring at me with his eyes bright, the left now a myriad of kaleidoscope colors endlessly spooling into the next vivid mandala, visible through the dark lens regardless. “Emma, your eyes, they're … oh baby...” Hands fold my face into their frame, pulling me onto tiptoes to be blessed with another scintillating promise of devotion. “You are a Thur,” he whispers across my numbing lips, “and your eyes shine in the pool of Asgard with the power of your forefathers.”

“A thur?” I gasp, my legs trembling, my knees rubber, my attraction pounding a brutal gong from my g-spot to my nipples.

“
Thor and thur are interchangeable, but that doesn't matter, what matters is you have blossomed into the most beautiful harii.
My
harii.”

My smart mouth wants to snap 'sap' at him but my conscience won't let me ruin his sincerity and adoration.

I'm feeling altogether too lightheaded in here.

He pivots, still holding me close, lining me against his body, both of us drenched, and I know my nipples are poking into his stomach, “Look Em, look at the rainbow crystals. Never forget the gods promise of home. The rainbow lies down, letting us step onto it, and then it raises up like an elevator. To call it down we have to shoot an arrow at the moon. We are shadows so we call home at night. We all wear a chain of arrow heads to remind us how to get home if we should ever need an emergency escape.”

Lifting my hand he kisses the middle of my valhalla triangle. God! Instantly robbed of skeletal support I am a female amoeba smeared against his balmy body by his strength alone.

I can't feel anything but the volcanic purge of debilitating release, euphoria gushing in instant catharsis at the spirit-deep penetration he has hooked in my soul. Wet heat leaks sticky evidence into my yoga pants.

The atmosphere presses into my awareness in oscillating waves. My nerve endings are frayed, vision impaired, the only coherent conditioning in the spiritual tempest seizing my body in forceful exploration is mild shame that I had an orgasm from his valhalla mark clamping tight over mine.

Squeezing my eyes shut I attempt to stabilize my breathing, hoping he doesn't know. Of course he fucking knows, I'm weak, trembling, simpering in submission to the primal claim. My exhalations are an endless litany of arousal.

“This shape,” he purrs enticingly into my ear, still holding my hand and running his thumb over my palm, “It is the shape of an arrow head. The triangle on your palm, and mine, is an ancient symbol meaning many things to different ages, but it is a promise from our god to us, from Valhalla and Asgard, from me to you, from chief to warrior. This links us, it is a portal to call down the ladder to fly us to safety.”

Unstable, spiraling, I can't withstand a second longer with him tracing the sigil on my hand. Desire is oozing uncontrollably and I'm unable to focus my pupils. We're simply holding hands, how is this possible?

“Emma...” croons the master in a hot breath, skating stimulation down my throat to my painfully erect nipples.

“
Mmmm?” I shudder-moan.

“
It joins my soul to yours. No matter where you are you need just touch it and I'll find you. You will never be alone to walk this earth in solitude. I will never let you cry yourself to sleep ever again. I will feel you, you will feel me.”

“
You feel really fucking good.” My mind is twirling and whirling, I can't pry apart my lethargic eyelids, I am drunk from angelic water, or from him, the supernatural shackle he has on me, catching my hopes and dreams in his harii subjugation and using them to channel my arguments into a rampaging need for deeper... naked... carnal... intimate... plunging... ruthless... contact.

“
This close it's hard to resist the bond between our palms. We're two poles pulling to connect, like magnets we can only fight the increasing pressure for so long,” he says, three shades deeper, as if making a promise, a threat, a prediction.

Pressure. Oh god yes!

In answer to my frivolous wish he presses our left palms together so they seal as one and I fold into myself, obliterated, rocked by the spasm of my entire body vaporizing in explosive orgasm.

I'm caught, cradled gently, lowered to sit on the edge of the font, commandeered to smother his chest, given the eternal embrace of soulmate protection.

Holy madness, how do I open my eyes and face him after
that
! I'm enslaved, still suffering aftershocks of exquisite seizures.

Supported by his arms I curl into him when his radiating body covers me, my head in his hands protecting me from the rock beneath us when I'm laid back, and die another magnificent death when he trails warm wet kisses from my chin to my neckline.

A devout worshipper in the celestial gallery he tantalizes my nipple with his right hand, inflicting prayers and purgatory with every polish of his thumb over the rosary bead belonging to my breast.

It prompts insanity, blasting bolts of revelation in a direct channel to my swollen pressure point. My nerve endings have become strings for the poet to play, delivering absolution and damnation over and over until I keen, kneading my tumid need against his, pleading in the depraved writhe of a soul in desperate thrall for mercy, annihilation, disclosure.

My mind morphs to catatonic as I'm overwhelmed by instinctive surrender to passion. I'm no longer sober. My nipples are worry beads now targeted by teeth through my translucent white tank-tee, rendering me an incapacitated serf incarcerated by fevered lust.

His naked skin is a delight I'm indulging in with random caresses. Smitten hands trail over muscles, tracking the mountains of his shoulders to ski in slippery exaltation down his back, applying
plea
-sure, begging through contact... for more. Much more.

Quaking from the erotic exorcism induced by his touch, entirely seduced, I lick – kiss - trace adoration over the salty strength I can reach, yearning with every heartbeat imploding my nervous system. Urges overpower me, voracious, consuming; my libido barbaric, animalistic.

Insistent, I pin nails into his back, the effort to force him deeper, closer, inside – depleting my reserves. My need now adamant and sadistic.

Lifting his head, plotting my cardiac frenzy with a sure thumb inflicting domination through a masterful hold in the hollow of my throat, he ceases my ability to draw breath, forcing me to open my dilated eyes, lucidity such a far away dream I'm resisting the demand to meet his impervious stare, his harii eye boring into my skull with the stark brilliance flaring out of it when I do.

Succumbing, pulled from the sphere of primeval parrying I meet his plundering gaze, my body lame and soporific, imbedded deeper into submission with the asphyxiation now sludging my blood to pound up through my temples.