When his chest was no more than a hair's breadth from her back he grabbed her around the waist with both steely arms and nestled his mouth against her neck. Aila turned in his embrace and threw her ams around him, fervid with relief ... and passion. A heady craving. He could hear her heart shivering with the excitement; taste the fragrant tang of desire that suffused her dampened skin.

She raised her lips to his — a silent demand that he promptly answered. They were rain-drenched and piquant, her warmth enticing and the velveteen texture of her tongue only whetting his ardor all the more. Loki pushed her up against the bark of a sturdy, broad elm, ripping her drawstrings loose the while he glutted himself at her throat and shoulders.

Working his way ever lower, he raised her tunic over her head and cast it to the mossy earth so that he could pause and pay homage to her luscious, undulating contours. There he suckled, her breasts heaving eagerly, and stroked each nipple into tautened peaks, pushing her trousers down as he dragged his lips to sip at the vale between her thighs.

Aila dug her fingers into his hair and threw her head back with a husky whimper, arching her back and spreading her legs further as Loki savored the nectar from her flushed and silken core.

Finally, he rose again when she was nearly overcome, his need long since surpassed, and swiftly, effortlessly, lifted her up against the bole. Aila wrapped her legs tightly about his waist, locking him in place and straining him to her center as he plundered her mouth with more urgent kisses.

Once his belt was hurriedly, and clumsily, unfastened, and his own cape and tunic discarded, he shoved his pants out of the way and freed himself before plunging forthwith into her welcoming depths.

Her scent was intoxicating and her movements wild, her nails merciless as they urge him deeper, spurring him ever faster. Even her soft moans enthralled him utterly — like the wind soughing at the cliffs, luring and inciting him to that obliterating precipice.

Loki was enflamed as he ran his palms against her pebbled breasts, his weight rooting her in place, their bodies as of one glorious instrument. Only pleasure surged and flourished as each bead of perspiration, each hungry breath, and every fevered touch conceived itself in the furious joining of flesh and heat.

At length she convulsed around him violently, precipitating him to followed her thence — over the edge of the world to fall with a euphoric discharge of lightning and fire.

So soon? he thought with a satiated chuckle as they sank to the ground.

Aila lay sprawled atop his chest, but lifted her head to admire the colors freaked across the firmament, the afterglow of lovemaking still high in her cheeks. "A rainbow," she whispered, swirling her finger over the expanse of flesh that housed his blackened heart.

"The Bifrost," he corrected her with a sensual grin.

"Oh?" she lifted her head still further. "Who has come?" She made to grab for her clothing, but he gently took her hand and stilled her movements, pressing his mouth against the inside of her wrist.

"Why, Aila," he answered with a smirk, "you did."

She laughed softly and rolled her eyes a brief while, after which she continued studying the woods warily as though expecting an intruder.

"Easy, love." He pushed himself onto his elbows to plant a firm kiss on her lips. "We are quite alone. Odin was here earlier, but, as you see," said he, pointing to the rainbow bridge, "he left afore you arrived."

"Hmm." She relaxed then, folding her forearms over his abdomen so that she could rest her chin there. "What did he want? It never bodes well when he visits you."

Loki coiled a lock of her hair around his index finger as he beheld her. "I think you know why he sought me out." Their sons, of course. Always the matter of his hated scions.

Aila suspired anxiously. "Yes. What are we to do?"

"Protect your people. To that end, we must find a way to bind our sons when the lunacy besets them." His mouth compressed somberly. "It will get worse, Aila. Your clan has not even began to experience the full extent of what Renic and Roth are capable of."

"You say they shed their skins by full moon light. Into what exactly do they shift?"

"Each transition is worse than the last, but Roth, the last I saw, seemed to sprout fur and his body swelled twice as large." Loki doubted not that these were only an inkling of what would yet befall the pair. Only the beginning of their metamorphic throes. He feared they would be larger still and far more terrible than what they already were.

"Perhaps a bear?" she pondered aloud.

"He was nothing of the sort, believe me. There is no name for what I saw." Loki's brow twisted wretchedly. "I am sorry for you and our sons. But it is too late to regret it all now."

"Yes. It is."

He had not watched over Roth the last time they had changed, but instead had guarded Renic. And had seen how the girl, Brenna, had barely escaped with her life. Had Renic not still retained a speck of his humanity — and even that was declining more and more each time — he'd have savaged her to death.

"The curse of blood was ours to endue," said he, "just as tis now theirs to endure it." Loki sat up and reached for his tunic with a heavy sigh. "And such is always the way of it when one consorts with gods and monsters, as you have already learned to your detriment, it seems."

"They are not monsters, Loki." There was a note of steel in her voice that made him smile.

"Conceivably not. But you forget that I am both." He held up a hand before she could argue the matter. "There is something else." He waited for her to pull her own tunic over her head, feeling instantly bereft when she covered herself. "You cannot stay here much longer."

"Loki..." Her tone was grave and warned of her unease. "I told you, I cannot leave my people just yet."

Saying nothing for the nonce, Loki reached into the pocket of his woolen trousers and pulled out a golden apple — the last he would give her. She could not, however, see the peculiar, otherworldly hue of the fruit; not with her mortal eyes. But she would soon.

Those very same beloved eyes of hers widened eagerly as she reached for it, knowing full well how it would taste. There was nothing of the sort in this realm and she bit into it readily, luxuriating in its unique flavors as the wet, golden flesh came away from the core. Yet to her it was merely a glossy, red apple.

"Do you remember when I promised you that you would nevermore be the recipient of any of my trickeries?"

"Of course I do," she said, a chary edge to her tone. She discarded the apple core and wiped the juice from her hands onto the linens she wore.

"I have not lied. But I fear that you might think otherwise."

"What have you done?" Her eyes narrowed furiously.

Loki gestured to the remnants of the apple. "The apples I gave you were of Asgard."

"I know."

But she didn't. Not really. He had finally fed her the third and last apple that was needed to complete her own transformation, for three was just as sacred a number as nine.

"Have you not noticed that you have ceased to age almost as quickly as your sons have grown to manhood? Do not you see how strong you have become? You even managed to best Ragnar today." He walked over to the discarded apple core and placed it almost reverently into his pocket.

"I have been practicing almost every day since I birthed my sons! Of course I should be adept in combat by now."

"Yes, and by mortal standards your skill would have been great indeed, but, in sooth, it far exceeds even that, wouldn't you say?" Loki moved closer, placing his hands at her cheeks. "You know this."

"What have you done to me?"

"I fed you the apples from Idun's orchard." He watched as her eyes flared again, only this time with dread.

"The first golden apple vouchsafes the knowledge of the gods from the sacred tree. The second apple grants immortal strength; and the third—"

"Immortality!"

"Yes." He watched as the color drained from her face. "You are becoming immortal, Aila."

"I did not ask to be!" She shoved his hands away angrily. "That should have been my choice to make!"

"Aye, it should have been; but would you have accepted if I'd offered?"

"No!"

"Exactly!" he seethed. "So you tell me now you would rather die, as all mortals will, than spend an eternity with me?" He shook his head, frustrated. "I could not allow you to be ripped from me, Aila! One meagre, human lifespan is far too short an age. Not even a thousand of your paltry lifetimes would be sufficient time for me to love you as I would! As I need to." He fixed his hands firmly to her elbows, ignoring her rebuff as she tried to shrug him off again. "I will not allow you to be taken from me, Aila, whatever you say!"

"Would you surrender your immortality if I asked it of you?"

"That is impossible, you know it is. Immortality is irreversible, even had I not been born to it."

"But if you could be mortal, would you? For me."

His teeth gnashed in frustration, and shook his head. "No."

"Yet you expect that I should become something other than I am for you?!" she growled. "And, moreover, you have lied to me. You promised me no more trickery, and yet what has been done cannot be interpreted as anything but treachery!"

"I do not call it trickery when I have your best interests at heart! What I did was done for love, not for the sake of idle fatuity!"

"But I had a right to know! How can I ever trust you now?!"

"I will earn your trust again, but at least now I have the time in which to do so!" He had not thought she would be as upset as this. "I have not used ploys with you since I gave my vow, save on this matter alone. But I wanted it enough to risk even your distrust." Even your love for me.

"Oh, Loki." She covered her face with trembling hands, her shoulders wracked with sobs. "Then you do not love me at all, for love is honest and pure. Love does not deceive the way you have deceived me."

"You speak of mortal love to me?" he scoffed. "I told you once that I could not love you as you should be loved. You should have listened to me then. I have never pretended to be anything other than what I am: deceitful, scheming, and contemptible!" He was furious now, but for the most part it was aimed at himself.

"Stop! Say no more, I beg you!" she cried, her lashes wet with brine and rain.

"But," he continued, "I love you more powerfully than any man of Midgard has ever loved a woman. There is nothing I would not do for you! No level of depravity I could not plumb in the name of love." He halted abruptly to bestow a punishing kiss on her quivering mouth, bruising her lips even as he revered them. "Yes," he said hoarsely, his throat thickened with pathos, "my love is ruinous; selfish; and possessive, but it is no less keen for all it is defective!"

She finally ceased her struggling and threw herself at him as a paroxysm of weeping overcame her. By the time she had completely spent her tears, the sounds of woe having diminuendoed to snuffling, the last dregs of the storm, that had so paralleled her own heartache, had also disappeared. The dark billows of before were now no more than grey streamers in an otherwise azure sky.

"Forgive me," he besought her, tucking a blond strand behind her ear.

"I love you, Loki. Of course I forgive you." Her eyes were yet pools of sorrow. "But I will not forget this betrayal of my trust."

"I knew that even as I fed you the first and last apple." It was a chance he had taken gladly.

She nodded. "How will I help my sons from Asgard?"

"My love..." He pulled her onto his lap and held her, the better to catch her tears on his shoulders — those that were still of a mind to fall. "Can you not see that I have given you, however enforced, the means by which to watch over not only them, but their descendants as well."

"When shall I leave here?" There was a woebegone sort of resignation settling over her demeanor that both vexed and confused him. In time, however, she would come to realize that her immortality was an empyrean bestowal afforded very few - a gift. Not the perpetual doom that she saw it to be.

"You have a few years yet, so use the time wisely. Roth must still be prepared so that he can assume your role capably." With a cleansing breath, he stood up and held his hand out to pull her up as well. "And I promise you this, though I wager my word now means nothing to you, you will have the chance to hold your grandchildren in your arms before you disappear from their lives, Aila."

She was watchful a moment before she suddenly struck him hard across the face. "That," she said, her voice as turbulent as her flashing eyes, "was for entrapping me! You will never betray me again, Loki!"

"Not ever again," he conceded brusquely. And he meant it too, but was still surprised by her effrontery withal. He did and said nothing more as they glared at one another, yet he could not deny that he had certainly deserved the blow. Nevertheless, no one had ever had the temerity, or the fortitude, to do so heretofore and it took him a moment to understand what it meant.

His smile was slow in coming, but it did bloom athwart his smarting cheek eventually. It was one of relief, for rage he could well deal with, but tears — her tears — had unsettled him immensely. All would be well, he knew that now. 

"Come." He gestured towards the cliffs where her hall loomed, his hand extended, so that she should precede him thence. They walked in silence a while until he spoke, sensing that her wrath had abated somewhat. "I have one more confession for you."

"By Frigg," she said with a tormented sigh. "No more, I beg of you, Loki."

He silenced her suspicions with a chaste kiss. As chaste a kiss as he was capable of — which wasn't very. "You will not become fully immortal till you finish the seeds as well," he admitted, patting his pocket where Aila's discarded fruits lay hidden. "I have kept all three apple cores, and all the seeds within. You have only a taste of knowledge, of strength, and of immortality until you consume the seeds as well."

"Oh." The furrows that had etched themselves into her brow, when first he'd confessed his so-called treachery to her, were now wiped clear from her face. "So you are not as faithless as I first bethought?"

"Apparently not," he said with a flat look. "It seems I love you better than even my selfishness can bear."

"And how had you planned to feed them to me unaware?"

"I have my male wiles, do I not?"

"That you do," she conceded. "But will you trick me into immortality or will you leave me to eat the seeds when I am ready for the undertaking?"

He cinched his teeth behind hardened lips. "I will neither enforce nor ensorcel you. You have my word."

"Then I will choose to trust you one last time." And she offered him a hopeful smile. "Thank you, Loki. For allowing me the choice after all." She lifted a hand and brushed her fingers gently across his temples and down to his jaw where she'd struck him.

"I can only hope you shan't leave me waiting forever." And then he released a tormented sigh of his own and turned from her so that the breeze could better cool the discontent from his face. "But I will not hold my breath." Almost instantly he felt her wind her arms about his waist from behind, and in return covered her fingers reverentially with his. "Let us now devise a way to keep our sons safe; and your clan alive." In that order.

⭐️🌟⭐️🌟What do you think of Loki's betrayal? Would you have forgiven him?⭐️🌟⭐️🌟