“Good,” he said. “Because we will be married first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she murmured, smiling at rowdy villagers when they raised their mugs in passing. Most everyone was outside celebrating, enjoying that they no longer had to run for cover because of godly storms. For the first time in over a decade, they were free in a way they hadn’t been in far too long.
“Oh wow,” Raven whispered the closer he got to his lodge.Theirlodge. “I started remembering more about this place earlier. I never came here. Never haunted you here.”
“No, you didn't.” He lowered her to her feet at the door of their lodge, remembering the last of their memories as well. Those safeguarded by Cian until the very end. “It wasn't just a matter of Mt. Galdhøpiggen housing your Vanaheim best. Your spirit refused to haunt us in places where immediate kin resided. You didn’t want Mórrígan’s focus swinging their way.”
“Definitely not. It might have been too dangerous.” She frowned. “But what about Revna?” She shook her head, troubled. “I steered clear of yours and Cian’s actual homes but not poor Revna’s. I brought the heart of everything directly into her mountain.”
“And now Loki’s there with her,” he reminded. “So all will be well.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because, whether he’ll admit it or not, and despite their antics, he’s fallen in love with her.”
He had, too. Tor knew it like he knew he needed to be inside Raven and soon. The God of Chaos had somehow fallen from lust into something unfamiliar to him, and for that alone, Revna would be all right. Well, as all right as a woman could be being loved by a god who thrived on creating mischief. A god who, at his core, was so very deceptive.
“Oh,” Raven breathed when he opened the door to their lodge only to find the unexpected. “Revna reallyisokay.”
It seemed she was based on what awaited them. From the misty fire crackling on the hearth to the sparkling black mist wrapping around the room, his lodge reflected Vanaheim. Yet, to his eyes, it also reflected Raven. All the beauty around her.Withinher.
Revna had made sure Raven felt at home in a new place, and he couldn't be more appreciative. Nor could he keep his hands off Raven for another second. She was the first and last piece in all this. The love that saved him, lost him, then would bring him back again.
Because he wasn’t all the way there yet.
He needed her flesh like a dying man needed a cure. To feel her all around him. To soak up her vitality. To fill the emptiness left behind by such a deathly realm.
“And so you’ll have it,” she whispered, chanting away their clothes. She lay on the bed and welcomed him between her thighs. “All of me. Until you’re back. Until you’re....”
She might have talked after that, but he heard very little as he climbed over her, wrapped his arms under her knees, spread her legs farther still, and sank into her. Sank into her like a man determined to take back all that had been lost to him.
No one but Raven, so deeply entrenched in his mind, could ever know what it felt like to go so far into the abyss of purgatory. To separate from mind and body until one's identity no longer existed. To be on the verge of losing one’s soul. To never get a chance to go back.
Raven knew, though. And what she didn’t know, she took on as he drove into her like a man tilling the earth back to life. Like a dragon clawing his way back to the surface. It was terrible and erotic all at once. Desperation mixed with love in its rawest form.
Deeper than death.
Further than life.
Calm and easy yet forceful and violent.
He slammed into her again and again, loving her so hard it hurt. Yet all the while, she was there for him. Wrapping her legs tight. Panting in pleasure. Crying tears of happiness that he was with her again. Sobbing because he nearly wasn’t.
Wailing because she wanted more.
She needed him back with her like he should be. Refused to accept anything less. And it was that, feeling her pull him back, not taking no for an answer, that finally allowed him to break free. Immersed in exquisite pleasure, grounded firmly in her perfect body, he released and started letting go of the darkness. Released so hard, for so long, that the last of the empty abyss fell away, and there was nothing left but her.
Nothing but Raven and the life that lay ahead.
After that, the night was theirs.
They didn't bother with food or drink but made love over and over. Released time and time again. Never more grateful for life, forher, he buried his cock in her as often as he could. A storm eventually raged outside, but for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t godly, and they kept the windows open. Let the rain’s cool spray slick their skin and wash away the last of the war.
They must have dozed at some point because the next thing he knew, an angry female voice strode by outside.
“You might have helped my kin win this war, but that doesnotmake you my alpha, Torc,” his cousin Liv roared. “And itneverwill!”
“What’s going on?” Raven cracked open an eye. “Why does it feel like a battle’s raging inside me when all that’s behind us?”
