Page 78 of Challenge Me

Amir came into the room, shirtless with his damp hair cascading over his shoulders. Suddenly, I didn’t care about the answer to my question. There was a stunning creature in my presence. I was convinced he’d walked directly out of Álfheimr, and I couldn’t understand why he’d come here, to me.

“Should I not trust you?”

I blinked, but he was still there. Not a dream, then.

“Bro, this is your spawn,” I pointed out. “I wouldn’t trust a damn soul with a being that I created.”

“Even Odin?”

With a grimace, I glanced around the room. “Now you’re just trying to get me in trouble.”

He chuckled as he dropped his knees to the bed. When I realized he was coming toward me, I refocused on my phone.

“I did a background check when you signed that NDA, remember?”

“Mmhmm, sure, but you didn’t do a psych eval.”

“I’ve been evaluating this whole time. Anyway, I’ll have eyes on you just about every second. But in case you don’t know, if anything happens to my daughter, I will call on that one-eyed god of yours and make sure he teaches you all about divine retribution.”

My mouth was open, in shock or maybe in awe. He kept a foot of distance between us, which I suddenly found unacceptable. Tossing my phone to the side, I turned onto my knees. We faced each other silently, lost somewhere in the space between us. I felt drawn to the fire in his eyes, the same flame that had once stoked my desire to the point that I couldn’t resist him.

At the same moment, we surged forward, and our lips collided. I knocked him backward, and he twisted so that he fell onto the mattress with me on top of him. I groaned into his mouth as he sought my tongue. The taste of mint and the smell of his soap dominated my senses.

His hands moved up my bare torso slowly, like he had all the time in the world to touch me. I wondered if he believed that.

“Fuck, baby,” I said, tearing my mouth away from his. “We shouldn’t do this.”

“We should.”

“It isn’t going to work.”

“It is.”

“You don’t know that. And don’t say you do.”

“We don’t know anything,” he replied. “But if I die tomorrow, I’d like to know that I went for what I wanted. Even when the one I wanted made it goddamn hard.”

Rolling my lips inward, my mind pulled me in a dozen different directions. “I liked it better when you threatened me with Odin’s wrath. It was the hottest thing I’ve seen in a while.”

“Hotter than when I got you off after you swore that I couldn’t?”

I cocked my head as I thought about the way he’d sucked my dick on that pool table. “I guess it’s debatable.”

He hummed as he kissed my chest. “This is real for me, Remi. I need you to know that.”

My head tipped back while his lips created a path of fire on my skin. “Because I was your first. That’s all.”

When he grabbed my jaw and forced me to look down at him, I gritted my teeth. Fighting my instincts, I dug my fingers into his shoulders.

His grip softened slightly. “Because you’re worth it.”

It sounded so ridiculous that I almost laughed. “Let’s not get sentimental.”

“I have to, otherwise you won’t believe me.”

I wondered if this was how pilots felt when their systems went haywire, informing them that a collision was incoming. Unlike them, I didn’t need to make peace with any god. Mine built the world from a corpse and traded an eye for truth.

What would a being of such divine wisdom tell me to do?