Odin's Murder

I push against his chest. He doesn’t budge. “I’m not.” I shove again.

Ethan grabs my wrists, fingers loose enough for me to break away. “It’s who you are. This crazy-hot chick, who uses her mind and body as a weapon. You’re smarter than these poor bastards you hook up with. You lure them in, hoping one of them will be up to the challenge, and they never are. They’re never enough.”

I wriggle free, but move closer, half-climbing on top of his chest. “So where do you fit into all this?”

“I’ve got no idea what you’re doing with me.” His eyes are wide open, fixed on my face. He swallows, Adam’s apple moving up and down under a gold shadow of stubble.

“I think you do,” I whisper. His lips are fuller than they should be on a guy so rugged. I lean forward, close enough I can feel his breath.

“It’s a bad idea,” He tells me but his hand is already on my back, touching the skin between my shirt and skirt. “That kiss was deadly, Cherry.”

“Since when do you and I care about something being a bad idea?” I kiss his jaw, gently, avoiding the bruise. No sparks zap my brain.

“I’m not big into pain,” he lies. He’s a glutton for pain, but his voice has a catch in it that strips the flirtation from the room. I kiss him again, soft, promising something, I have no idea what, a delicate kiss between his eyebrows, and one bolder, close to his mouth. My hair hangs between us, and he pushes it away. “Do it,” he whispers.

So I do. Right on the mouth.

21.

Enervation

“Good?”

Her lips curl into a smile. “Good.”

“Again,” I dare her, hand still tight on her hip in preparation for the blast that doesn’t come. She leans forward, breasts on my chest, heat and soft and fuck, she smells good. A different fire comes, a slow burn that starts in my stomach and warms lower, where Cherry’s legs are splayed over my groin, skirt bunched at her waist, boobs threatening to fall out of her shirt with every move. Yeah, I’m hoping.

She kisses me again, teasing, sucking, tongue and teeth and she’s killing me, and I’m more than willing to let her. Her shirt is damp with sweat, mine and hers and the summer’s humidity, sticking to her skin, straining the buttons as she moves. Another pops open like it’s doing me a personal favor. Thank you, very much.

Her nipples are the palest pink, half-moon coins rising out of black lace, and I wonder if she’s really blond underneath it all. She reaches for another button, and I force my gaze up, to her smile, bold, lips parted, watching my eyes.

“Wait,” I say, cursing myself even as I continue, because we may only be four kisses deep, but we both know where this is going. I sit up. “Are you sure about this? Things aren’t really in control right now.”

She stares at me for a minute, eyes narrowed, lips twisted in a pout. She’s striking a pose, but there’s hurt underneath it all. I look at the door, ready to bolt from her need and my hypocrisy and this whole mess when she slides even closer, takes my hand in one of hers. “Maybe this is how I take back control,” she says, “The same way you do with these.”

She brings my fist to her lips, kisses my busted knuckles, and I have no secrets left anymore. I want her as much as she wants me and it’s not as much about control as it is about comfort and contact and the dead certainty that the moment I walk out that door tomorrow morning, I’ll never see her again. So I push her back on the bed and my hands find her hair and my mouth lands on hers. “What about—”

“Faye?” She tugs at my shirt, slides her hands underneath, palms on my chest, fingernails trailing over skin. “I doubt she’ll be back until the library closes. We’ve got an hour.”

I pull my t-shirt over my head, with her help. “I meant protection.”

“Oh.” She rises to her knees, digging in a bag on the shelf over the bed, and I’m treated to a spectacular bottoms-up view of her breasts in the clinging shirt. She settles back down, ass cuddled over my erection. “I’m on the pill, but—” She thrusts a small pink box into my hands, condoms, packaged for girls, still sealed. “If you think we should—”

“I’m clean,” I tell her. “It’s been two years.”

“I am too,” she says. “I got tested. I had a physical. Before I came here.” She fiddles with her shirt tails, looks away from me, the first time I’ve seen her nervous, and Jeremy’s parting shot about her reputation breaks through my hormone-fogged brain. I drop the box on the floor, and grab her, pulling her down to kiss her smile. She undoes the button on my jeans as I undo her shirt. “No boyfriends in the cell block? You’re awfully pretty,” she teases.

“I’m six foot four, Cherry. No one would dare.” I slide my hands up her thighs, and I know I’m going too fast to be a gentleman, but goddamn, she’s just as eager as I am, and I thank all that is holy because there is no way I’m going to last long at all with this girl grinding on me as she tears at my clothes and hers. I work her with my hands, hoping to calm down, but she’s already slick. Her little whimpers and the way she reaches for me, legs sliding around mine, have me groaning. She catches my wrist and pushes me back, and climbs over me, guiding me, wet push deep inside.

The white heat explodes behind my eyes.

For one groan of a second I think I’ve come too quick, but no, the flash is the same as our first kiss, only this time there’s pleasure, not pain. Memory gasps. I open my eyes and images flicker through my mind, our mind, filtered through a hazy li

ght.

I run my hand up over her stomach, and see runes on a cut stone, ancient and dark. She sits up, hands on my chest, and ebony feathers shade my sight. With every touch, every connection, images pass between us. “What is th—” I try to ask, but she bends back down for another kiss.

“Don’t stop,” she whispers against my mouth. “Don’t you feel it?”