“Why is this a problem?” Sifa asks after a moment.
I shake my head, pushing those demons—well,thatdemon—aside. “It’s not,” I assure her, as I stand, my hand still resting on the table. “I’ll get what we need.”
“Wregen is here?” Svend’s whiny voice pierces into the room as the door slams open, banging into the wall. “Why did nobody tell me that he’s come for us?”
Turning my head slowly—struggling to control the burst of anger that rises in me at whoever let thissecretslip to Svend of all elves—I shift my gaze toward the frustrating male. “Because it’s not a single bit of your business,” I yell.
Maybe “yell” isn’t the right word. I scream at him like he throttled Sifa’s cat, Thor.
Not that he’d be able to do that because Thor is a badass.
But it feels like the little shit is strangling the cat we all adore and fear in equal measure, spewing his longing for Helheim into this room. Especially with Wregen dragging a physical reaction from me that Iloathe, I don’t need to hear about Svend’s poisoned obsession with Hel’s realm.
“It is everyone’s business,” he bellows back. “We belong to Hel. She sent him to take us home.”
A shiver ripples down my spine as “home” spills from his mouth, my body betraying me in this too. It tells me he’s right, that our days in the sun belong in the past. That those grim circles of Helheim own us, and we won’t be satisfied until we give them back their due: our bodies and, eventually, our souls.
This is why I can’t be around this frustrating elf. Because fuck that. I will never go back there.
“I want to go home,” he tacks on in a whimper, and I can’t restrain the burst of pity that pushes back most of my ire.
“I won’t have this conversation with you again,” I tell him in a steady voice. “And I’m warning you. Stay away from Wregen.If I get a single hint, a whiff of a hint, that you’ve been to see him, you’ll be in a cell too. And it’ll be far enough away from him that you can’t talk, so don’t get any ideas.”
Svend stares at me, the pleading in his eyes saying more than words could. “But he could take me home,” he says after a few seconds. “He may be my only way there.”
“No.” I don’t elaborate, but it wouldn’t matter. Nothing I say will change his mind. We need to make sure he doesn’t get close to the demon beneath us.
Looking again at Sifa, I release the grimace I’ve been holding back. “I’ll get what we need from him,” I assure her. And then I spin and stride through the doorway, glowering at Svend on my way out.
As I stalk down the stairs, my mind goes further than my feet will, drawn to him the way Svend feels drawn to Helheim. But that’s easy to explain. He confused the fuck out of me with his bizarre declaration and sucked me into a game of wills I need to win. I won’t sit on the ground with him, but I think I know how to get what I want without giving him what he demands.
When I enter with my tray the following day, Wregen’s smirk is the first thing I see. He’s standing next to the chair I asked Fhord to have placed in his cell, leaning against the bars dividing him from the table that will hold his meal, with a chair for me by its side.
“My defiant skjaldmær,” he murmurs, his gaze searing into me. “Youwilllisten to me. You’ll heed my commands. Perhaps not today, but sooner than you realize. And you’ll be grateful for the order, the balance I’ll bring to your life. You’ll find it’s freeing to give yourself over to someone else completely, as you will to me.”
“I’m not your anything,” I remind the asshole as his words drip into my core, waking up the depraved part of me that responds to him. “You need to stop with this bullshit. I’m here for information. Nothing more. And I will never kneel to you.”
“The first time will be to take my cock between those pretty lips,” he breathes as even more of me comes to life, “but that will be the first of many.”
“If your cock ever finds its way into my mouth,” I force out between clenched teeth, “I’ll bite the bastard off.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” he responds with a wink. “I can be patient, but the image you’re painting is enough to rip away all of my restraint.”
I don’t know how the fuck to respond to that, so I don’t. Stalking forward, I set the tray on the table and sit down, glaring at him. He refuses to look up at me. Fine. But I refuse to sit on the ground with him. He’ll accept this compromise or he’ll go hungry.
“Will you dine with me?” Wregen asks as he takes a seat and reaches a hand out toward the tray. “I’d love something different in my mouth but this will do,” he adds as he takes a piece of meat, chews and swallows it, and then places twofingers between his full lips and sucks, his smoldering gaze never leaving mine. Dark hair falls onto his forehead, and it only adds to his appeal. I was fascinated with Wregen in Helheim, but the tousled, relaxed male now sitting in front of me is sexy in a way that uptight, controlling bastard never tried to be.
My treasonous body has no fucking idea what to do with this image. I’m as repulsed as I am turned on, the depravity of my attraction to him triggering something I refuse to acknowledge. Shaking my head as I focus on keeping my expression flat—because I will not reveal my reaction to him—I grunt out a refusal.
He nods as his fingers slowly slide from his mouth and then reach for another bite.
Dragging my eyes down to look at the food instead of him, I will my stomach to stop tumbling. I’m not this elf. I won’t let an alluring male get into my head, and definitely not this male.
“Do you know how I found you?” Wregen asks, pulling my attention back where he wants it.
“You said you detected Helheim within us, followed that,” I respond. I detest the idea of any part of that accursed place existing within me, but something led him to us.
“That was not the complete truth,” he says, before moaning as he bites into a piece of cheese. “This,” he adds as he slowly chews and reaches for another piece, “is what I missed the most. Eating is a sinful pleasure.”
