You'd known, every moment, what was at risk when you'd walked back through the portal into Loki's world. You'd been half in love with him when he'd been your captor; once he'd become your lover you hadn’t stood a chance. You couldn’t claim that you’d been deceived. You’d known exactly who and what he was, had walked into this with your eyes wide open when you’d accepted his invitation into his home and his bed.

You couldn't blame Loki for the fall; you'd been a willing and eager participant. You'd never accuse him of withholding informed consent. He was a villain and you'd known it, but still, you'd chosen to dance with him on the edge. Now that you were broken at the bottom of the ravine, you wouldn’t complain that you’d taken damage. He'd made you no promises, had told only the expected number of lies.

He was the god of mischief, after all; you couldn't expect him to be anything but himself.

You'd never asked him to be anything but himself, dammit, which is why you were so angry that he'd left you without ever giving you the one thing you'd ever truly wanted from him: the truth.

You'd wanted him to admit, even if only once, the full truth of his feelings for you. You wished with all your heart that he could have told you the whole truth, could have offered you the emotion that lived in his eyes. You'd seen passion, of course, but you weren't a child, and you knew the difference between lust and love. There had been more than simple physical want, and you'd wanted to hear him name it. If he had, perhaps you could have given him the emotion you'd had to lock inside.

You'd always known the day would come when he'd walk away, either through boredom or necessity; you'd never been delusional about the long-term viability of your relationship. Still, you'd also been this close to certain that he loved you, at least for the moment. That you were forever denied the confirmation of that love stuck in your craw, made it difficult to grieve. When you couldn’t properly grieve, you couldn’t let go and move on, as you'd done with previous relationships.

You'd never loved anyone the way you'd loved Loki, though.

Somehow, something about him had drawn you out of yourself, helped you see sides of your personality you'd barely acknowledged. He was uninhibited to the point of wickedness, of madness, and you'd been able to indulge any urge, any whim, any fantasy that had come to mind. Under his patient and corrupting influence, you'd explored a world with him that you'd never known possible. With that newly expanded perspective on life and the universe, you understood yourself better than you ever had before.

If he had told you he was on the run and had asked you to go with him, you knew, now that it was too late to offer, that you would have thrown everything away to stay by his side, to see more of his universe, to see who else you could be there. You wouldn't even have considered the risk, what you’d have to leave behind. You knew now that you wanted him more than you’d ever wanted anything in your life. You’d do things you’d never before imagined in order to reach for the life you could have had with him.

In your time together, though the normal flow of time had only taken a couple of months, you'd changed. You'd spent a year in Loki's pocket dimension, in aggregate, and your normal life had become nothing more than interludes, something you had to tolerate until you could get back to your fantasy world. You didn't know how to go back to the slog of everyday life now that you'd been tempted and tantalized by magic and mystery.

You didn't make the adjustment with anything resembling grace. You were listless, bored, on the verge of depression, and everyone in your circle of acquaintances noticed. A few, like Emily, even asked you if you were okay, if you'd thought about talking to someone. You appreciated the concern, but what could you say? Who could you talk to about this? You'd fallen in love with the would-be tyrant of Earth, the usurper of Asgard's throne, the God of Mischief, and he'd ghosted you.

You simply trudged through it. There was nothing more to be done.

You couldn't chase him down, couldn't drag him back and demand he explain himself. Even if you could, it didn’t mean that it would matter, didn't mean you could change the circumstances that had caused him to leave you in the first place. You were, sadly, powerless, and so must accept what fate had brought you.

For now.

Months passed before you didn't feel like every moment moved at a crawl. Despite the speed at which normal time moved relative to time in Loki's realm, it felt like every day dragged. During the time you'd spent with Loki, every moment on Earth had been marked by the anticipation of seeing him again. The sudden end to that anticipation was virtually the same as quitting cold turkey. Your mind and body cried out at the abrupt loss.

Now that it was all over, now that Loki's stimulus was no longer a part of your everyday life, you had a hard time finding joy or anticipation in anything. You tried, not very hard, but you did try to push through it at first. But now that you could not expect to find him waiting for you, every moment was marked by pain and disappointment. It was too exhausting to pretend like you weren't broken, and you soon fell into isolation and depression.

The first few months were the worst. You were wracked by grief, but you couldn't help but hope that he'd come back. As he had come out of nowhere to begin with, the romantic, optimistic part of your mind tortured you with whispers that he might do so again. Though you repeatedly scolded yourself about basing your life on what Loki may or may not do, your heart still yearned and grieved and sobbed. It took a long time to silence that optimistic, lovelorn voice in your head.

A big part of why it was so hard to move on was because you couldn't talk to anyone about the wasteland in which you'd been deserted. None of the people in your life knew about your double life with Loki; you hadn't dared to tell a soul. Only you had known about the secret portal on your linen closet door, the one you had leapt through dozens on dozens of times, your heart racing in joy and excitement.

Only you knew why your heart was broken.

You were empty and alone in your misery, unable to explain, even to those closest to you, why you'd gone from on top of the world, if a little secretive, to utter desolation. Rather than try, for those long months you isolated, going out only for work and necessary errands. No one could pry you from your nest, because no one knew what was wrong. Eventually, most stopped trying.

How could you tell anyone that you hated to leave because you didn’t want to miss the God of Mischief on the off chance he came back?

You'd finally broken down and told your friend Emily a very little bit about why you'd been so despondent. The secretive nature of the relationship made her suspicious, but you couldn't explain further without giving too much away and you knew her suspicions had led her to the conclusion that you’d had some kind of illicit affair.

You didn’t love that she thought you’d been someone’s sidepiece, but it was easier than anything closer to the truth. Trying to disabuse her of the notion would only invite questions you didn't want to answer, so you let it stand. She wasn't judgmental about it; in fact, she was kind and supportive and made you feel better, but you could also tell that she thought you were better off.

You didn't have an argument against that when you could barely hide your despair. You loved Loki, grieved the loss of his presence in your life. Each day without him only made you feel worse, hurt more. The end of it, the way it ended, was only one part of the pain you were going through. That he abandoned you out of nowhere hurt less than the fact of his absence.

With that little bit of support, however, you slowly stopped thinking of him every other minute. Even letting just one person in, telling someone how you felt, helped get you out of your own head. Spending time with her forced you to stop wallowing in memories, pushed you back into living again. Speaking of what you’d had, what you’d lost, even obliquely, bled off some of the poison in your veins, the dragging days starting to move when you did. Emily's wry, no-nonsense voice helped you drown out the one wailing in your heart for your lost love.

A little over six months after you’d last laid eyes on Loki, you pulled the leather-bound journal from the shelf for the first time. You’d wanted to look, but you hadn't felt strong enough to face it, to tally up once and for all what you'd lost. You hadn't been able to bear the possibility that he'd found this hiding space as well. You had been too afraid to see that you'd been left with nothing the night he walked out of your life.

Heart pounding, you let it fall open, half expecting to find only blank pages, almost certain you could not have really brought anything from his world into your own. Your life was so completely unchanged by what you'd experienced with Loki, sometimes you couldn’t help but wonder if you'd dreamed the whole thing. The only thing that was different between the day you met him and the day he left was you. That dissonance had kept you from the book, unable to look within, too afraid that this would be yet one more disappointment.

The sight of your own handwriting made you a touch light-headed with relief. The book was intact, every page you’d filled with your own writing and rough sketches of the shimmering code you’d seen in Loki’s realm, in Loki’s presence. You paged through, each leaf still holding your own meticulous notes documenting the sigils and symbols of Loki’s magic. Meticulous drawings and carefully labeled diagrams still sat side by side with the suppositions and theories you had crafted while in his realm.

You hadn’t lost everything, after all.

Having the intact journal revitalized the project you'd started in Loki's realm. Knowing that you hadn’t dreamed it, that a life of wonder and awe was at your fingertips if you could only figure out how to reach out and grab it. When you began the work of deciphering the script of his magic it had been for purposes of escape, but now it was something else. You hoped to find the pattern that would allow you to recreate it, not that you really knew what you’d do if you could. You weren't really sure what you were trying to accomplish, as using his magic may bring exactly the kind of attention you hated and Loki avoided. That didn't mean you could resist exploring this one connection you still had to him, too tempted by memories of ecstasy. You weren't quite ready to let go of your own brush with magic.

Despite yourself, this wasn’t the only way you kept the connection with Loki alive. Once you'd become Loki's willing accomplice rather than his prisoner, he'd begun to worry about your ability to defend yourself. He seemed convinced that you were painfully vulnerable, and it was clear the idea bothered him a great deal. It bothered him enough that he began teaching you some of his tricks with knives. While in his palace, you'd spent hours with him in his training room. The memories haunted you.

'No, no, darling,' Loki said as he stepped behind you, his arms coming around you to adjust your grip on the knife. You smiled as his feet adjusted your stance while his erection pressed against your back. His head dipped so that his lips were against your ear. 'Your stance, your grip, is everything.'

You didn't know if you were overthrowing or underthrowing, but the handles of your knives kept bonking into the target and falling to the floor. When you got it right, your aim was off, pulling to the left. You were starting to get frustrated and annoyed, so when Loki's arms came around you, an opportunity to move on to a more satisfying activity was too much to resist and you snuggled back a little bit.

When he didn't step away, when his lips pressed to the tender skin behind your ear, your body warmed and yearned and you pressed back against him firmly, temptingly. 'I'm never going to learn if you can't keep your hands off me," you purred as you tilted your head to the side to give him better access, your now time-worn invitation, offering yourself to him.

'You're absolutely right.' His free hand slid around your waist and up until he was cupping your breast, pulling you back against him. You gladly gave him your weight, your head falling back on your neck against his chest to offer him your mouth. He took it with a feral smile, using his grip on your breast to press you against him.

After kissing you breathless, and to your utter shock, he let go of you, using the front of his body to push you back upright. You stumbled forward, then turned to stare at Loki in offended surprise.

'Do it right,' he commanded, his mouth crooked with amusement, eyes hot with lust, as he nodded toward the hated target.

You narrowed your eyes and glared at him in mock fury, long accustomed to his half-hostile kind of affection. 'Then you'll do me, right?' You lifted a brow as your mouth twitched.

Loki's smile spread with lecherous greed. 'As my lady wishes.'

You turned, took your stance, shifted your grip, and narrowed your eyes. With a quick breath in you cocked your elbow back and with a slow breath out you let go with what you could feel as it left your hand was the perfect amount of force to send it directly into the target, only a couple inches from the center.

You looked over your shoulder at Loki to find him beaming with pride. Already in motion, he had you in his arms before you could blink. He bore you down to a floor that had gotten a lot softer between when you left your feet and when you landed on your back.

'But I didn't hit the middle,' you protested with a laugh even as you wrapped your legs around his waist.

Loki buried his face in your neck, his mouth already skimming over your throat, his hands skimming up your legs. 'All you had to do was get a piece of it,' he murmured, his voice wry and full of fun. 'But I'm gratified my touch is so motivating.'

Though the memories of your lessons were painful, you couldn't let that get in the way when you were all too aware that he had been right: you were vulnerable. Loki himself had proven the weakness of your incognito strategy. Safety in anonymity had turned out to be an illusion. You couldn't be certain another magic being wouldn't discover your second sight unless you were on your guard. You only wanted attention from the God of Mischief, as ridiculous as that was.

You bought a small archery target and put it at the end of your hallway, along with a few throwing knives that felt good in your hand. You made it a habit to practice every day, no matter how the memories haunted you. Plan A remained staying off anyone's radar, but you made sure Plan B was viable by keeping yourself honed to a razor edge. Instead of your beige armor, the kind you'd used to stay invisible, you went out wearing the spiked armor of a flat-eyed, dangerous stare, a visible willingness to engage in violence if provoked, and at least one knife on your person.

At this same time, you’d started admonishing yourself that you couldn't sit around and wait for Loki to come back. You didn't know he was going to, and even if you thought it possible, you couldn't know that he'd be able to do so within your lifetime. You couldn't put everything on hold because of a possibility, and a slim one at that. You wouldn't waste your life on a broken heart.

You'd last seen Loki when the trees were blossoming and the weather was turning warm. It wasn't until spring's warmth had come and gone once again before you gave dating a try. The poor man hadn’t had a chance, a normal man from a normal life with normal problems and normal experiences that could never compare to the things you'd seen and done at Loki's side. He was a nice man, with warm blue eyes and a sweet smile, but you were still in love with sly, wicked emerald and snarling passion.

You'd left beige behind; you could no longer be satisfied by anything less than technicolor.

You didn't try again until the leaves were turning colors and falling to the ground. The only reason you even agreed to the date was because Emily had badgered you into letting her set it up. It was just your luck that your blind date was in a celebratory mood because he'd just gotten a job with the Avengers.

You'd resisted the urge to bang your head against the table in frustration, braving out the rest of the date with enough charm and pleasantness to keep you out of trouble with Emily, but no more than that. Certainly not enough to encourage him to push the subject when you declined his offer to see you home. Still, even if you'd been interested, you would not put yourself within so few degrees of separation to Loki's brother.

"Emily." Your voice was stern as you spoke into your cell. You were walking the last couple of blocks on the way back to your apartment building. For all intents and purposes in your own neighborhood, you'd relaxed enough to call your friend, but you were still on your guard. You kept one hand next to the knife strapped to your thigh and your eyes scanning your surroundings while your long strides ate up the sidewalk. You didn't realize it, but the months with Loki had changed how you moved through your own world. You had a fierce confidence now, one that subtly moved others aside with smooth ease.

"Do NOT set me up with anyone connected to the Avengers ever again, got it?" You glared down a man walking toward you that was starting to do that backward head tilt that signaled he was about to interrupt your day without provocation. His open mouth closed, his eyes dropped to the street, and in the next moment you were past him and focusing in on Emily's exasperated questions.

"I don't want to get into it, but Mystery Man makes the whole thing awkward," you replied, using the title she'd given Loki when you'd told her what little you could spare.

"No," you huffed out in frustration, skirting around a couple of lost tourists to cut into your building, "I did not fuck Iron Man." The words came out of your mouth as you were walking through the door and a man checking his mail looked up, met your narrowed eyes, and immediately turned his gaze back to his own business, too intimidated by your fierce stare.

You sighed as the elevator doors closed behind you, tired of being in the world, exhausted from wearing the invisible armor you had to don to go out into it. "Listen, Em," you let that exhaustion creep into your voice now that you were alone, "he was a nice guy, but the Avengers thing has to be a dealbreaker."

You were smiling at Emily's pithy opinion on the subject when the elevator doors opened to your floor. She never liked it when you admitted you were avoiding something because of Loki. She also could not resist any new information that might lead her to Mystery Man's identity. She meant well, and she genuinely loved you, but she was incurably nosy. You put up with it because you knew it was pure curiosity that drove her. Loyal to the bone, she wasn't the sort who sought information for gain, but for the sake of information alone.

"You know if I was gonna nail an Avenger, it'd be Captain America," you cut off Emily's probing questions about the rest of the date as you neared your door, "but as that isn’t an option, for now I'm gonna eat some ice cream in bed."

Tired to the bone and heart aching, you put your key into the lock on your front door and felt a familiar tingle of energy shoot up your arm into your head, putting you on instant alert. He'd come back!

He'd come back.

He'd come back?

How dare he ever come back?

(Oh, god, he'd finally come back!)

You were going to kill him for coming back.

Shaking, you paused and closed your eyes, concentrating on sounding as normal as possible for your friend. You didn't want to alert her to your tension. She was too good a friend; you wouldn't risk her getting dragged into all of this, for both your and her protection. "I'm okay, Em," you sighed with a wry amusement, "and I'm safe home, so I'm gonna let you go."

You sounded even and calm, and Emily didn't question it. As the two of you bade your goodbyes, and after a promise to tell her the whole story later, you pushed your key into the locks on your door and braced yourself. You took a deep breath as you dropped your phone into your purse and let your hand fall to your thigh.

Movements smooth, as though you'd been practicing for this moment your entire life, you pushed open the door, took in the scene at a glance, and threw the knife you'd pulled from the holster under your skirt. You aimed at a target a foot to the left of where Loki sat on your living room couch, not ready to draw blood just yet. Not pausing, you stepped into the room trembling with rage and reeking of fury.

You stepped forward as you threw the door closed behind you and dropped your bag to the floor. You moved slowly, carefully, watching him for even the slightest movements. He remained motionless, staring at you with eyes that glittered and burned.

Loki thought you glorious, authority and anger in an A-line skirt and kitten heels. When the knife thumped through the cushion at his side, he felt himself harden immediately in response. His blood heated at the sight of you, so long denied him, as you sauntered forward and leaned over him.

“Still pulling a little to the left, my love.” He breathed it, light-headed with the thrill of being with you again.

You pulled the knife from the couch, watching Loki's eyes, bright with love and lust, follow the movement as you slipped it back into its sheath at your thigh.

"I hit what I aim at." Your voice was a murmur as you straightened. "Consider it the only warning you're going to get." You turned your back and began the walk toward your bedroom. "Since you saw yourself in, you can see yourself out," you tossed over your shoulder, dismissive and cold.

You didn't look back as you walked away, down the hallway to your bedroom. Once you were behind the closed door, you started shaking from head to toe, your body reacting to the emotion you'd had to hold inside. You'd barely stopped yourself from throwing yourself into his arms, begging him to never leave you again. The effort it had taken to treat him like dirt turned your knees to jelly.

You sat on the bed and put your head in your hands, trying to decide how you felt about Loki walking back into your life just as you'd started to accept that he was gone.

Back in your living room, Loki was taking slow breaths, trying to calm himself. It was killing him to not follow you back to your bedroom, but he couldn’t be certain whether he’d be able to stop himself from kicking the door in, demanding you stop pretending you hadn’t missed him with the same ache he’d had for you. He could also see himself barging in only to immediately beg, willing to do whatever he had to do, say whatever he had to say to have you back. He had spent every free moment of the past year and change working his way back to you. To have you this close, but not close enough, was infuriating.

He reminded himself that the way he had left you was unforgivable, that he had already been on a second chance when he'd done so. That he'd had no choice was something he hadn't yet been able to explain, so he could not blame you for the dismissal. He had to acknowledge that he was lucky you hadn't actually stabbed him. He would have deserved it.

He looked to the cut in the cushion next to him, smiling at the image you had presented as you’d stalked into the room. Not only had you been beautiful, sexy and shining, as you had stridden in, but he also approved of your form. You'd been a lovely sight, a knife leaving your hand smooth and swift with your eyes firmly planted on your target, the spot next to him. He hadn’t moved because he'd been able to see clearly that your aim hadn't been on him.

Light-headed relief made him feel almost giddy, thrilled at the sight of you. That you hadn't tried to kill him on sight told him that what he feared most had not yet come to pass. You didn’t hate him enough to want him dead, thus the possibility still existed to convince you to give him another chance. He would stop at nothing to persuade you that he was sincere in his remorse, to charm you back into his arms. He could not entertain the thought of failure.

Faster than he would have believed possible, the mere scent of you seeped into his head and made his heart slow and his mind ease. Waiting for you had kept him on tenterhooks; now that you were here, he could relax into the warmth of your presence. Surrounded by your smell, your things, the very air you breathed, he found himself at peace, only now noticing how tense he'd been until the tension had been alleviated.

As Loki had walked away from the cabinet that had held your portal, he'd made himself a promise. He'd do whatever must be done to see you again. He could not let you spend a moment more than absolutely necessary doubting how he felt about you. He loved you, would never have willingly left your side. He needed you to know that, would not allow anyone to tear you from him forever. To that end, he'd spent every waking moment scheming, lying, planting evidence, doing whatever had to be done, down to expelling two of his brother's closest allies, inviting both suspicion and instability.

Heimdall had been a spectacularly powerful watchman and guardian, and Loki knew his absence put all of Asgard at risk. But his strength as an ally was predicated on keeping him ignorant, an impossible task on a long enough timeline. Heimdall could not be fooled indefinitely, especially not if Loki wanted to have any freedom. Once Heimdall had taken an interest in you, and had inexplicably remained interested, Loki had found his hand forced; Heimdall had to be removed.

Once his brother had left Midgard, off on whatever quest held his attention for the moment, Loki had put into motion his plan to remove or imprison Heimdall. Sif had been an unintentional casualty there, but she'd gone into exile while Heimdall had gone on the run, branded a traitor, and Loki's loyal stooge was installed as guardian of the Bifrost. Skurge was only the first alarm in an elaborate system designed to warn Loki well in advance of any attempt by Thor to return.

As soon as he'd thought it even remotely safe, he'd raced to your side. His heart had been pounding like a drum as he'd cast the spell to recreate the portal in his cabinet. He hadn't given it a thought, too excited to see you, as he leapt through only to face the depths of disappointment when he'd discovered you weren't home. He'd already spent the hour he'd waited for you thinking about how much he'd risked because of this dangerous attachment to you.

He deliberately stilled his jiggling foot, straightening the crease in his suit trousers. Impatience crawled up his spine, made him wonder what you were doing in there that was taking so damn long. He didn't believe that you thought he would leave that easily. Hell, a thrown knife was practically a greeting in his world.

A knife that deliberately didn't hit him was flirting. You knew that.

"Ugh," you scoffed behind him, and his neck muscles released. "Fine, you win, I'm bluffing. I don’t even know if steel can puncture that skin and if it does, I sure don't want to spend the rest of the night cleaning blood out of that sofa." You kept talking as you walked past him, ruffling the air around him and making his already painful erection that much worse. "I just bought it."

You'd spent the time in your bedroom taking more deep, calming breaths and changing into casual at-home wear, soft lounge pants and a tank top with built in support. It took a lot less time than you liked to come to the conclusion that you didn't need to be convinced to listen to his, what would probably be, lies. You wanted to know why he left, why he'd come back. If his explanation was sufficient, you'd take him back, consequences be damned.

That didn't mean you didn't intend to make him work for it. Just because you knew it was practically a foregone conclusion didn't mean he had to know it, too. He deserved to sweat a little, to make up for how he'd left, if nothing else.

You took your time rummaging around in your refrigerator, ultimately settling on the first things to have caught your eye, but you examined most of the other contents before you pulled out the bottle of tea and the plastic container of leftover pasta. You opened the microwave, mentally debated the merits of rewarmed versus cold creamy pesto, took a bite of the cold pasta, ruminated as you chewed, then took another. After you took a third, you figured you'd stalled enough and closed the microwave door.

Grabbing your tea, you sat on the chair perpendicular to the couch where Loki sat. You snatched up the remote and turned on the television as you began to eat the pasta. You hadn't really liked what you'd ordered at dinner and the company had not been stimulating enough to distract you from the disappointment of that. You were genuinely hungry.

You were not, however, genuinely more interested in the TV than your unexpected companion. Still, you kept your eyes on the screen as you opened the first app you saw and started flipping through Netflix, unwilling to let him think for a moment that you cared that he still sat there. It didn't matter what passed in front of your eyes; you were more focused on moving through the options at the right speed to suggest that the choice had your attention.

Loki grinned openly at you, delighted to find his beloved as fierce and defiant as he remembered, grateful that his love remained the sharpened blade he knew you to be. He adored you, knew he would willingly beg if necessary to win you back. "I love you," he said, instead, as he watched your face, so infinitely precious to him, snap toward him in shock.

You had never once heard the words leave his mouth, no matter how close he seemed to be to letting them tumble from his lips. As long as he had held back, so had you, and when he'd left, you'd given up on ever hearing them. To hear them now was dizzying, but not for good reasons. The juxtaposition between the joyous cries of your heart to finally hear confirmation of what you had known to be true against the pure, undiluted rage that he'd dared to say the words now brought up an ungodly amount of emotion. You felt vaguely sick to your stomach even as your heart leapt and leapt.

You stared at him, not moving, not smiling, for a long, long moment, your eyes searching his face without ever meeting his eyes. Inside, you were melting down, screaming crying, exulting, but every ounce of effort you possessed was being used to keep him from seeing that. Your voice bored, you blinked slowly, then asked, as though he was an unfortunate acquaintance who showed up from time to time asking for money, "What do you want?"

"You," he breathed, his heart racing in excitement. He could see the struggle to contain your emotions at the corners of your mouth, knew you more moved than you appeared. He had nearly broken and stormed into the tiny closet you called a kitchen to demand you stop ignoring him, but the thrill of sparring with you again was too delicious to resist. He'd had to see what you'd do next.

You hadn't disappointed, your dull disinterest a delectable feast after over a year of starvation. He dropped one foot to the floor, leaning forward to lean his elbows on his knees, linking his fingers loosely together and grinning wickedly at you. He hoped he wasn't imagining the feigned aspect to your apparent indifference to his reappearance in your life. He knew the pure truth would be the last thing you'd expect, and thus the most effective way to win you back.

"I only want you," he purred, gratified to see your eyelashes flutter in reaction. "I would never have left you willingly, and I've spent the last four hundred and ninety-seven days removing every obstacle between us."

"Loki…" you trailed off, afraid, unable to believe, but incapable of turning him away, either. He knew down to the day how long it had been. You hated that you’d already known that, too, but it warmed your heart to hear him confirm you weren’t alone in this madness. The cynical voice in your head that had kept you fairly sane throughout your ordeal first dealing with Loki and then deal without him told you not to be so easily swayed, that it would be easy enough for him to have that information ready to manipulate you.

"I will never willingly leave you," he went on, certain he was right, that the truth was the most potent spell in his arsenal with you, since you saw so clearly through all of his illusions. "I will always risk everything to return to you."

His voice was silky smooth, his eyelids lowered in a look that had turned your knees to jelly from the first time he'd turned its power on you, back when you'd been his captive. You'd never had a defense against him when he looked at you like this and since discovering first-hand what he was thinking of doing to you when his eyes glittered and his jaw twitched, you had never developed an immunity.

"I'm going to need more of an explanation than that," you retorted, but even you could hear the weakness in your voice, the yearning underneath it.

"Let me kiss you first, love." The tenderness in his tone matched his body language as he leaned forward. "I’m parched for you."

You took a halting breath in, only to release it in a huffing laugh, wry with a shadow of the grief you’d endured when he left you. You kept your gaze on his smile, searching for deception in the creases around his mouth, in the tension of his jaw. You were tempted, but he knew that you would be. You knew you couldn’t trust him, simply because of who he was. "Give you an inch, you'll take a mile, Loki."

Gathering every last scrap of courage you could muster, you met Loki's eyes for the first time since he'd said the words you'd so needed to hear. Words you'd craved for months, but words you’d needed to hear before he left, not when he came back. Loki was looking back at you, soul bare, and you would swear he was telling the unvarnished truth. You wanted so to believe, however, you couldn't trust what you would swear to.

"I will," he murmured, his lips curving in a smile that reminded you of those months of stolen time, stolen pleasure. Your heart was racing in desire, in dread. "I'm never satisfied, will never get enough of you."

Your problem was that you wanted what he wanted, his mouth on yours, his arms banded around you tight enough to make you feel like maybe there was a way two souls could intertwine when hands and bodies and breath did. If you hadn't missed him with every fiber of your being, if you didn't have a little voice in your head singing hallelujahs that he was back, you could so much more easily stand up for yourself.

You'd wobbled, shown too much emotion, revealed that you were vulnerable too early in the treaty negotiations and you knew it. The smug covering his face made it crystal clear that he thought you as good as seduced, was expecting you to fall all over him, grateful for his return. If you were being honest, he was helping, with his smug, entitled prince attitude, to resolidify your backbone. You lifted a brow, sneered, then settled back into the chair to begin flipping again.

You dug into the last of the pasta, spearing a rotini on your fork and using it to gesture him into silence when you saw, out of the corner of your eye, his mouth open to begin telling more of his silver-tongued lies. "You left me," you said, your voice somewhere between exasperated and bored, "without a word," you paused to slip the morsel on your fork in between your lips, continuing when you'd swallowed, "in a sketchy part of the city, by myself."

You continued to plow through the pasta, taking pauses to chew and swallow. "When I got home," pause, chew, swallow, "safe, by the way," pause, chew, swallow, "not that you cared, you had removed every trace of evidence that I had ever known you." You glared him into silence when he started to speak the same way you'd quieted the man on the street as you finished your cold dinner. Motions calm and deliberate, you stood, taking the container with you to the kitchen to place it in the sink.

When you came back into the room, you leaned over the back of the couch to murmur in Loki's ear, "Then you show up with this lame-ass bullshit and expect me to swoon?" The sight of goosebumps erupting over the skin your breath was caressing made you want to lean forward and taste him, but you restrained yourself. You'd be damned if he got off that easy. "You're fucking parched?" Your voice dropped to a whisper and Loki didn't know whether curse or beg, his aching dick arguing with his aching heart, when you said, "Die of thirst."

You mimicked the unconcerned tones he'd used on you, for most of your time as his captive, as you straightened and gave him your back. As you walked away, back toward the bedroom, you tossed over your shoulder with every ounce of disdain you'd learned from him. "Turn the lights out when you leave, won't you, darling?"

Part Eleven here >>