He brushed his fingers seductively along hers as he relinquished one half of the pomegranate to Aila's open and waiting palm. She sucked in an audible breath as a charge of static stirred her flesh the way a storm might pull at the fine hairs on her body. The momentary shock of contact was such that she dropped her share of the fruit as she yanked her hand from his, watching in dismay as the seeds fell atop the sand before being quickly washed away by the foamy brine.

"Forgive me!" she gasped, kneeling down to salvage what she could. Why did he make her so nervous? She was not normally so restless and oddly aware of herself.

"Leave it," he murmured insouciantly. "They are gone now, let the ocean have her portion." Loki had jumped instantly from the rock and was now crouched down beside her, pulling her hands from the sand. "I said leave it." His lips were quirked in obvious mirth.

His pale hands, now that the initial shock had grounded her, were warm and soothing despite the strange pulsing between their skin. The whole experience was at once calming, yet exhilarating withal. She allowed him to pull her up and thereafter stood studying him as he unabashedly did the same.

How dazzling were his eyes; she had never seen their like. The irises were as pale as glaciers and no less formidable in their otherworldly beauty. Only a faint tinge of blue stained their depths and she found herself staring into them for an inordinate length of time, barely blinking lest the effect be muted. But when his hands tightened perceptively on hers, she glanced away and, curling her hands into tight balls, pulled her fingers free of him as the blood rapidly suffused her frowning visage.

"I must go." She bit her lip as she moved back a pace. "I am sorry." For what she was apologizing, she knew not; perhaps the shameless way she had stared, or the wasted half of a rare fruit. The silence had been far too stifling and she had needed to fill it somehow, even with a banal platitude.

"Verily, do not agitate yourself over it...there is more where that came from," he assured her.

Aila nodded and managed a tentative smile ere she bade him farewell and turned to leave. The pressure of his eyes along her back was both disturbing and thrilling. She could not remember feeling so alive in a man's presence, and it unsettled her despite that it was exciting. When would he pass through these lands again? The palpable energy that had thrummed and arced betwixt their bodies, she realized suddenly, had been a stimulating force that she was now achingly bereft of. When will I see him again?

Aila twisted back around to look over her shoulder at him and offer one last wave goodbye. "When will you be..." But her question attenuated rapidly and died off unfinished, for he was gone.

❅

Alia, ever since meeting Loki that day, began to look for him each day thereafter. Even after a fortnight, she could not refrain from searching out his pet wolves in the shadows or scanning the rocks for his distinctive silhouette.

"He's not there," Epona drawled, rolling her eyes facetiously.

"Who?" Aila's cheeks flushed instantly with perturbation.

"Harald." The slave girl frowned curiously, stretching out her back to ease the tension induced by her swollen belly. "Who did you think I meant?"

"I was merely distracted." Aila averted her eyes guiltily and forced herself to think of Harald who had barely uttered two words to her in passing and always seemed to find something to occupy him all day so that he never saw her till the evenings; and even then he was taciturn and distrait.

"Yes, I see that." Epona lay her hand gently at Aila's abdomen, and with a troubled sigh she looked into her mistress's inquisitive gaze. "I must speak with you about..."

"Yes? What is it?" Aila lowered her eyes to where Epona was pressing her meaningfully at her flat belly.

"There is something wrong here," said she, "but I am not altogether sure it is not the work of a mischievous or malevolent hand."

"What do you mean!" Aila's gaze darkened the while her brows lowered, mistrust evident in the compression of her lips.

"There is an emptiness here," she circled Aila's solar plexus, "as though you have been poisoned. Nothing grows because...it is deadened."

Aila knocked Epona's hand aside and moved away. "I have not done anything to harm myself-"

"I know! Tis the machinations of another."

"Who?!" Aila's heart was filling with dread at the slave girl's words; the accusations were grave indeed if they were true.

"I have my suspicions, but I will say nothing further till I have absolute proof."

"So these are merely suppositions?"

"For now, yes." Epona closed the distance between them. "However, I caution you to... Aila, are you listening to me?"

But her mistress was not, for she had caught sight of movement amidst the rocks and had ceased to hear the young thrall's earnest warning.

"Epona, return to the house."

"Why? Where are you going?"

"Do not question me. Let me alone for the time being; we shall talk again when I return." Aila transferred her preoccupied stare back to her friend. "Please go. I want to be alone."

Epona narrowed troubled eyes at her, but said no more and nodded curtly before she left. When Aila had assured herself that she was quite alone, she sprinted off towards the rock pools and clusters of boulders along the shore. Once there she explored the area thoroughly, but found no trace of Loki save two sets of wolf prints following along the well-trodden path towards the forest.

She searched the edge of the forest for longer than she ought to have without catching sight of Loki or his pets. When she thought to give up the mad search entirely, she finally heard the sound of something large moving through the trees nearby and almost missed the disturbance of shadows, a streak of dark, grey fur caught in her peripheral, as she angled her eyes to look thither.

The Great red Forest, though stunning in its variegated allurement, was not a place she often, if ever, wandered alone. There was an atavistic sort of fear that caused her to hesitate a moment afore she swept aside a branch and moved past the boundary that separated her from view of anyone that might be watching from the safety of the house on the cliff.

"You came." Loki's voice was as she remembered it, deep and beguiling in its silken warmth.

Clutching suddenly at her startled heart, as though the organ might jump from its cage, Aila glared at him fiercely, her relief warring with her nervousness. He was leaning casually against an oak, his back flush against the bark as he beheld her fixedly.

"Do not sneak about like a spider, Loki! You nearly stopped my heart!"

His wicked smirk did nothing to calm her fluster. "I might say the same to you, Aila. Are not you also sneaking about?"

"I suppose I am." She shrugged her shoulders and darted her eyes between the pine trunks in search of the two wolves.

"They're not here. We are quite alone." He then pushed himself off the oak and approached her. When she began to retreat, he paused and cocked his head at her. "Why have you come? What is it that you want?"

"I don't know." Aila licked her lips and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. "I shouldn't be here."

"No, you shouldn't. I would have left you alone, you know," said he quietly. "But I hoped you would look for me...and you did; but why?"

"I don't know," she replied again, shaking her head in confusion.

"I do. I know what you want." He moved forward again, but this time she remained where she was. "You want what all women do."

"What do all women want?"

"The unattainable." Loki circled behind her and near enough that if she'd taken a deep breath, she would have felt him against her back. As it was he kept just enough distance to unnerve her further. "You want the forbidden."

"No. I want..."

"Yes?"

"I want to feel free. I want to know what it is to truly be alive. You make me feel alive; and so here I am. Surely these are not inconceivable desires?"

"No, they are not. And you ache for love, do you not? To feel that elusive connection and to find the other half of your soul in another's gaze?"

"Yes." Aila clutched at her abdomen where the worst of the emptiness dwelled. "I do," she whispered.

"What else do you want?"

"I yearn for more than what I have...what I am."

"This yearning, does it perhaps appertain to your want of a child?"

"Yes," she whispered, blinking away a single tear. "How do you know?"

"I belong everywhere and nowhere. I come and I go as it pleases me, but my ears are always employed, and people will talk when they think nobody is listening. Know that I am never seen unless I want to be."

"Who are you?" Her breath hitched as he brought his mouth close to her ear, his lips almost against her neck.

"I am that which makes your flesh hunger. I am he that quickens your heart and heats your blood. I am the forbidden. It is me that you want."

"No." The word was barely audible as it drifted from her lips. Her lashes lowered against her cheeks as she flicked her tongue out against her lips again.

"Do not lie to me, Aila."

"Yes," she said at last. Loki continued his circling till finally he stood before her. He lifted a single finger and gently pressed it under her chin, coaxing her eyes open to meet his. The smile that lit his beautiful countenance was a heady mixture of reverence and triumph. She found that it was too potent a look and pulled her face from his finger. "What do want with me?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Now who is the one telling untruths?" She arched her left brow at him which only induced his grin to widen mischievously and the wonted dimple to appear where it always did.

"Well said, Aila. You are not at all what I expected." His smile dimmed somewhat. "My scheming has long since gone awry in the face of your forthright innocence." He brushed a stubborn lock from her brow. "And that steady gaze — it disturbs me quite."

"What do you want, Loki," she asked again.

"I want what I believe you will not give easily."

"Speak plainly, man." And then she could not forbear saying, "You suit your namesake."

He chuckled at her jibe. "Very well. I want a kiss."

"You are right," she grinned, "I shan't grant you that."

"And if I resort to trickery?"

"You won't."

"Oh? You are very sure of my rectitude, for one who knows me not at all?

"You would have done it by now." Despite her apparent composure, Aila's blood was rushing furiously into every part of her body and had been from the moment she had heard his voice. The appetency beating in her breast was such as could only be imagined by poets and gods.

"Perhaps I have already attempted this chicanery."

"The pomegranate?" she ventured, somehow already knowing the answer.

"Yes."

"What does it do?" She could not tell how long their gazes had been thus locked, but he was yet to release her from his power — this strange and compelling energy that called to her spirit. She knew she should leave but she could not find the will to do so.

"It has power over the blood. That which excites the heart naturally will be increased tenfold. Whatever cravings dwell in the very blackest depths of your soul — your every darkest wish — will be realized. The seeds only release one's inner fetters."

"I somehow doubt that that is all it does. Freedom to do and be what you really are sounds wonderful; perhaps I should not have denied myself the pleasure of a bite."

"You are a revelation," he murmured, placing his hand lightly at her hip, "and you are right; that is not all it does. It is, after all, the fruit of the gods." Loki leaned down and brushed his lips cautious over Aila's, as if testing her, before he pulled back an inch to look at her once more. "'Twould seem that the huntsman himself has become ensnared, and I am becoming addicted to your brand of inimitable nectar."

"What?" Aila could barely understand him through the morass of her troubled mind. She was being pulled one way by her conscience — the very scruples that were so much a part of who she was — and another, treacherous direction by this inexplicable need for him.

"Go now, Aila." He squeezed his eyes shut, as though in pain, and shut her away before pushing her gently from him. He nodded his head for good measure, urging her back towards the house on the cliff.

Aila could get no words to move past her tongue, but did as he bade her. She knew that he was letting her go — giving her a chance to escape him — before he debauched her completely. She knew all this and yet...she was unwilling to go. Loki, sensing her hesitation, moved threateningly towards her, inciting her finally to run from him.

"Next time you seek me out," he warned her as she fled, "I promise you this: I shan't forbear as well as I did this day."

⭐️Hmm, what's his game? Do you reckon he is playing with her or do you think she's gotten under his skin? Please Vote if you're enjoying this!⭐️