The Magic Queen (6 page)

“Here, give me your hand, shrew.” Laughter echoed in his words.

His voice was like dark, rich whiskey rolling across her flesh and breaking her out in a wash of wanton and heady desires. Her nostrils twitched, recognizing the pattern of seriously strong magick behind it. Eyeing his long, strong fingers and equally strong-looking hand with haughty disdain she said, “Touch me, male, and I’ll skin you and turn you into next year’s dress.”

Her threat might have been more terrifying if she hadn’t sounded like a breathy kitty-cat saying it. Damn him.

Tossing his head back, he laughed mightily.

This was crazy. He was crazy. And gods, he was gorgeous.

She hated him already.

Chapter 3

Freyr

Freyr watched as the foul-mouthed, gorgeous personification of beauty itself bent over to retrieve yet more twigs. He’d offered to help build the fire. She’d refused, telling him that if he so much as got to within a foot of her, she’d forget her promises to turn over a new leaf and eat him.

She was a sassy thing, all lush curves, slim of waist, big-breasted with a slender swan’s neck and such creamy pale skin that he’d yet to see even a freckle mar the ivory perfection of it. She had silky nut-brown hair and a pair of vividly green eyes. She reminded him of a prickly pear: pretty and tempting from a distance, but get too close, and one discovered it was covered in rows of thorns.

He scrubbed his palm down his jaw. The past night was somewhat of a blur. All Freyr knew was that the goddess Aphrodite of the Greek pantheon had come to him with a proposition: sex for life with a woman he was supposed to woo into believing he wanted as his life’s mate in exchange for his willingness to be part of some foolish game she and Calypso had concocted. Really, there were no advantages in this for him. He wasn’t even really sure why he’d agreed to it. Maybe there’d been a curiosity to meet this woman they’d chosen for him.

It wasn’t often he interacted with the gods of other realms, though he knew Aphrodite well as she was his female counterpart. He didn’t hate Aphrodite, though she often teased that he did, merely because he never threw himself at her feet.

Considering he himself was a god of lust, her charms were nothing to him, likewise the charms of the females from his land. He’d sampled and tasted his way through them all and then some. More often than not, his cock didn’t even bother to rise without the use of magick for such pedestrian fare anymore.

In truth, Freyr had agreed to come for one basic and very simple reason. He was bored. His sister, Freya, thought him a fool to leave his fjord for the unknown lands and customs of these strange peoples, but the way he figured it, if he didn’t like it, he could always whisk himself home.

Aphrodite and Calypso might be gods, but so was he. There were always ways to get around a god’s enchantments, such as turning on the charm. Speaking of turning on the charm...

He leaned back on his hands as the woman dropped to her knees and yanked on something. Her actions caused her nice, plump arse to wiggle enticingly at him. Wetting his lips, he smirked and decided he’d had more than enough of his one-week dry spell. She was here. He was here. The time was ripe for a little seduction.

“Damn you, filthy little bugger. I’ll rip you out by the balls if I must, but you will obey me!” She yanked harder, almost falling over.

She was a foul-mouthed thing, wasn’t she? He chuckled softly. That was okay; he’d always been rather fond of the bad ones.

“
Mmm
,” he murmured, mouth curving into a large grin.

Her movements stilled, her spine stiffened, and she glanced over her shoulder at him with a look of incredulity on her pretty face.

“Excuse me?” she said huffily then blew a tendril of long brown hair out of her eyes.

“Would that I could paint.”

“What?” she snapped, clearly cross with him, which, oddly enough, caused him to chuckle again.

At this point in the seduction, women were generally tripping over themselves to get their hands on him. Was it possible that, in all of the cosmos, there was actually a female who wouldn’t fall immediately in love with him? Not even Hel herself could resist him, and that was saying something when one stopped to consider she was about as sweet and docile as a gray wolf at feeding time.

Deciding that maybe the time wasn’t yet as ripe as he’d imagined, he stood and swaggered toward her without talking because refusing to talk while approaching someone increased the air of mystery. If there was one thing Freyr was well versed in, it was the art of seduction. All women were the same. They might share different personality traits here and there, but strip them down to the core, and there was one basic affliction they all suffered from: Love or rather, the need to for it.

They wanted to feel loved, feel like their partner was devoted to them, like he, or she, might hang the moon for them.
Et cetera. Et cetera
. It wasn’t that Freyr was absolutely opposed to love. He wasn’t. He merely thought the premise to be more myth than reality.

There was lust. Desire. Need.

Those things, he’d experienced aplenty. There’d been a few females in his day who’d sworn it was love. He’d merely smile, stick his cock in them, and make them forget such foolish notions.

Freyr was not and would never be a one-woman kind of man. But he could play along for a little longer, he supposed. The woman’s defiance of the goddesses had amused him, and her obvious disdain for him intrigued him. This foul-mouthed female might not know it yet, but when he did finally make his move, she’d fall into his arms most willingly.

“Do you plan to stare me to death or say something, you good-for-nothing waste of—”

Chucking drily, he gently but commandingly pushed her to the side and kneeling, he took the root in his fist and yanked it up with one mighty heave. Too bad. He’d rather enjoyed watching her tight arse wiggle for him. But there was something to be said for playing the gallant knight too.

“Is this what you were after?” He eyed the dangling, dirty, star-shaped root dubiously.

Standing, she slapped her hands across the back of her legs, cleaning off the dust. And without even so much as a “thank you,” snatched it away.

“Didn’t need your help.” She sniffed.

“Didn’t say you did.” He grinned, which caused her to twirl on him, her face an unreadable mask. Normally, Freyr could figure out who a person was within moments of meeting her. The only thing he knew about this one was she had a temper worse than a shrew’s and a dirty tongue he desperately wanted wrapped around his cock.

No, he’d never claimed to be profound.

“
Grr
.” She stomped her foot, hugged the root to her shapely breast, and flounced away.

There wasn’t really
away
out here. There were no trees to be had, not even shrubbery. What few twigs she’d managed to secure had come from the funnel they’d been transported through. All there was, was sky, grass, and weeds.

Cupping his mouth, he called to her back. “You know you can’t escape me, love, much as you might try.”

That evil eye was back on him, and it was ridiculous that this mere slip of a woman entertained him so by barely doing anything. But she did. He found himself smiling more than he had in weeks.

Lifting up the long hem of her moss-green skirt, she stuck out her shapely ankle. He perused it, grinning with the thought that maybe all the thorns and prickly demeanor had been little more than bluster. His blood rushed through his veins as she slid her hand down her thigh, giving him a come hither look. Licking his front teeth, he decided to wait a second, make her anticipate and heighten her eagerness. Freyr had known he’d eventually wear her—

But then that hand slipped to the inside of her thigh where a leather strap was tied to it, and with a jerk, she pulled out a wicked-looking knife. His brows rose, and this time, she smirked. Eyeing him with a look that said clearly she knew exactly where his thoughts had been, she snorted and began peeling the root with said knife.

He chuckled. “
Touché
, love.”

Pointing the knife his way, she sneered, “I’m no one’s love, least of all yours.”

Freyr held up his hands. “Ignore my idioms. They mean nothing. So if not love, what should I call you?” No need to tell her that he had no plans of stopping, especially not when every time he did it, blood rushed up her swan’s neck and turned it a pretty shade of pearl pink. Mostly, he was just curious who exactly was this woman the goddesses decided was
his
type.

To be honest, when Aphrodite approached him, Freyr had sensed an air of desperation about her. Something in her entreaty led him to believe he had
not
been their first choice for this foul-mouthed wench. But maybe they it’d all been in his head because there was something about this crazy female that both repulsed and mesmerized him. She was a mystery he was growing increasingly curious about.

For several long minutes, she said nothing and only occasionally tossed him a sidelong glance.

She tested him. The woman was smart.

Maybe she figured that if she kept her silence, he’d grow bored. And normally, that’s exactly what he’d have done. But he liked her look, and until he got into her panties, he’d keep up his seduction tactics, confident in the fact that once he tasted of the honey between her thighs, his attraction would fizzle out as it always did. She’d be just another lay, exactly like all the rest of them.

Freyr had decided long ago that what he enjoyed more than the sex was the chase. There’d only ever been one who’d taken him on a merry chase and given him good sex. Not great sex. There was a difference. And she’d died long ago.

Root peeled, she tossed the bulb over her shoulder.

Pursing his lips, he shook his head. The woman boggled his mind. “Why did I go through all the effort of showing off for you, for you to only toss away my gift, woman?”

Rather than snap at him, as he’d expected, she laughed. The sound so shocked him that all he could do was stare at her in awed silence. Her entire face had transformed. The shrew was gorgeous even when scowling, but there was an almost magical, ethereal quality to her that made him incapable of looking away, a softening to her features and form that made her seem far less attainable than the prickly pear aspect had.

The idea so startled him that he frowned. No one was unattainable to him.

Never knowing the way she’d just tilted his world on its axis, she said in her musical cadence, “The root is of no importance, male. The magick’s in the skin.” Dropping to her knees, she gathered the skins still coated in layers of dust into a tight pile.

Curious despite himself, Freyr walked toward her watching studiously. Her movements were nimble and dexterous as she tugged on the pendant around her neck and tipped it forward. A glowing purple powder filled her palm.

“Crushed dragon scale tossed onto a bed of peridragon thorn shavings. Extremely flammable and able to burn steadily for hours,” she said absently, like a teacher instructing her student. Tossing the powder onto the pile, she scooted quickly back, jumping away from the raging glow of amethyst flame that soared into the sky. The heat that rolled off it was intense and very much appreciated in the growing chilliness of the night.

He’d seen magick aplenty among his own people and so wasn’t all that impressed. But he sort of was because hers was purple.

“You’ve provided us fire, love.”

She hissed, and he chuckled.

“Wish me to cease with the pet names? Give me your real one. Otherwise, I’m liable to keep—”

Slapping her hands onto her hips, she stared at him unflinchingly. “Baba Yaga.”

Now that name did make his heart stutter. There were few witches in all the realms as powerful as this one claimed to be. Looking at her with new eyes, he murmured, “Baba—”

“Yaga! Yes,” she snapped, giving him a defiant look that made him realize she truly could be none other. “Changed your mind yet, male?” She lifted an arch brow, and his flesh tingled,

He paused introspectively.
Hmm
, he’d never experienced flesh tingling before. Interesting. It’d felt...good. He’d need to study that sensation further. Planting a hand to his chest, he bowed deeply and intoned, “Freyr. Though you may call me Frey.”

If he’d expected a dawning light of recognition to rush through the bright greens of her eyes, he’d have been sorely disappointed. Her look was as blasé now as it’d been previously.

“Awesome.” Her pretty lips thinned.

His nostrils flared, and laughter caught on the back of his tongue. “Do I detect a note of sarcasm?”

“So they send me the god of fellatio. Who the hell do those women think I am?”

Blasting out a laugh, he wrapped his arm around his stomach and thundered his hilarity to the winds. “Did you really just call me that?”

It was the way she’d said it that had undone him.

Baba watched him dispassionately, but there a definite note of humor danced through her eyes.

“And don’t think I don’t know who you are, old witch.”

“Notorious, am I?”

Allowing his gaze to travel suggestively up and down her body, he smirked when her fists curled—unaffected, his arse—and he snorted. “Even among my own people, we’ve heard of the iron-toothed one, though I confess, you look nothing like the tales.”

Twisting her lips, she returned to studying the ground, stooping to pick up rocks as large of her palm and tossed them around the fire. “Oh, I did. Stringy hair. Loose skin. Moles.”

With each word, his nose curled with disgust. Gods, that was unattractive.

“Liver spots. Rheumy eyes. A rather camel-like hump on my back.” She pointed over her shoulder. “Oh, yes, I’m rather vile in my other form.”

She sounded proud of it. He lifted a brow. “So the old crone changed her skin just for me. I suppose I should be flattered.”

“Please.” She tossed another rock at the fire.

He realized she was creating a ring with them to shelter the flame and not to let it spread. His brain told him the sexy woman before him was probably a mirage, but she was one sexy mirage. He could do worse. Picking up some rocks, he helped her to finish the circle.