“Just listening to Agis’ stories.”
“He’s a good storyteller.”
“He’s a good truthteller.” The word story implies it’s made up. He doesn’t leave much out.
“Is it hard to listen to him?”
“I don’t need to relive those days. They were challenging enough the first time.”
She tilts her head and the flicker of the candle on the table casts her face in an angelic glow. “When we arrive in Valhalla, the warriors and Valkyrie love to sit around and tell exaggerated tales about the battles we’d just experienced.”
“Did you?”
“Carrying the dead, although an honor, is exhausting, dirty work. We choose their souls before they’re gone. A witness to their final moments—last words—deepest regrets. I always just wanted to wash the blood off my hands when the job was done and rejuvenate my spirit among the living.”
“How did you do that?"
“Sometimes I’d drink. Other times I’d dance.” She gives an example, gyrating her hips. I don’t need a reminder of how sensual she looks moving her body like that. “Then, there were the times I’d find a warrior that needed to take off the edge, and we’d work though it together, you know, in a totally virginal kind of way.”
The idea of her with another warrior sets my blood to boil. It shouldn’t. Hildi has had a long, fulfilled life. Obligations and desires. Just like I have. Just like the others. I don’t judge her, but I don’t like it. It triggers a long-dormant possessive streak.
She’s still standing before me, hips swaying to the beat of the music. She takes a sip of her drink, the motion making her shirt rise up, revealing her stomach. Never in my life have I wanted to touch something so badly. To know the softness of her skin. I lean back and spread my arms over the back of my chair, watching her watch me.
“Can I ask you something?” She walks around the table until she’s wedged between my body and the table.
“Of course.”
“If we’d known one another back then, in that other lifetime, do you think we would have helped one another?”
I look up at this woman, this temptation, feeling my resolve unravel like a thread. I’ve already done it once, under the guise of “helping” Hildi through the venom. It’d awakened something in me that I’ve since tried to manage and control. But the bond is real and fighting it seems futile.
“I’d like to think so.”
She moves quickly, confidently, straddling her legs on each side of my body and sitting in my lap. Heat pools between us.
“I think it’s time we stopped resisting one another,” she says, running her fingers down my jaw. “Can we agree on that?”
“Yes.”
“Then kiss me.”
I clench my jaw. “Once I cross this line, Valkyrie, there’s no going back.”
Her eyebrow raises and a small mischievous smile tugs at her lips. “Promise?”
I run my hand behind her neck, pulling her mouth to mine. Her lips are warm. Her tongue tastes like the alcohol flowing from the bar, and all the noise and stories and tales being told in the main part of the bar vanish as we focus on one another.
I sit up and reach around her, fingers meeting the tie holding back the curtain. I yank it and the fabric falls, closing out the tavern, our friends and allies. Right now, it’s me and Hildi and what we’re about to do to one another is between us.
32
Hildi
There’s an instant thrill to doing something taboo. Fucking Miya a few feet from the rest of my allies is deliciously off-limits. It leads to a different sort of arousal—a quiet perfection that Miya’s years of meditation has prepared him for.
Elizabeth, the smarter of the two of us, knew what she was doing when she told me to wear a skirt. Maybe she’s clairvoyant. Whatever it is, I don’t care. I’m just thankful that there’s no complicated barrier between the two of us—the mental and emotional one was hard enough to knock down. I shiver when Miya pushes my panties aside and guides himself to my core. He’s ready for me, probably has been for weeks, the tip of his cock slippery and warm. I’m soaked, spurred on by his mouth, his fingers, his hands.
I don’t waste time lowering myself on Miya’s hard arousal.