up on legs that shook as she imagined them wrapping around his bulk as he drove into her. Then her feet were taking her closer to him.
Vidar stared at the woman.
She wasn’t really glowing. But she was. To his senses. And to his more…fundamental parts. She radiated a compulsion, transmitted it on a wavelength that revved dark, dangerous urges inside him. Untempered, unrestrained.
A power he rarely used—making mortals unable to bear the impact of his gaze—emptied a path to her. Then his Lokian vision—another gift he seldom engaged, finding little in this world to warrant its clarity—zoomed in on her.
He magnified each feature of her exquisite face, every strand of spun-fire that framed it, every slope and curve and pore. Her broad, clear forehead bore the mark of intelligence. Her elegant nose and firm jaw spoke of character and strength. Her lips, dainty and dimpled, would be edible smiling or serious, but now, flushed and parted, they invited his ferociousness. Of her body, he could see only the capable, square shoulders, and the heavy breasts, hugged loosely by something out of place and beige.
But it was her eyes, gleaming like Asgard’s moons and as verdant as its seas, that had excesses storming through his mind, sending blood like molten steel to his erection.
He’d thought he’d seen it all. Every kind of beauty, on the mortal and immortal planes. He’d been right. Until now.
Until this woman.
Even the gods hadn’t been so ambitious as to dream of beauty like hers. Nature, in his experience, had never come close.
And her effect on him wasn’t due to a spell or a power.
She was human. Mortal. He even felt that her life force was unstable. She wouldn’t have a long lifespan.
He should take her while he could, then.
He imagined himself walking to her, then without saying a word, pushing her back on that bench she was sitting on and mounting her.
He hadn’t done anything close to that even when he’d been a barbarian and behavior like that was the norm.
He wanted to do it to her now.
Now that was desire. Although of something south of the heart.
And it was reciprocated. She wanted him to ravish her.
She was coming to him, the demand for his possession, his pleasures, rising in urgency with her every step closer.
How he would answer it.
Kara neared the man, only the crush of sweating bodies slowing her advance. The emptiness between her thighs throbbed harder with every step.
But along with arousal, anxiety intensified, too.
It would serve her right if he did something obscene when she reached him. Her off-the-charts, out-of-character behavior in walking up to a man who looked like a…a marauder, with drool no doubt trailing behind her, deserved at least a breast grope.
What would she do if he did that, or worse? Slap him? Run away? Rub herself against his rock-solid gorgeousness and beg for more? For everything?
That was it. She’d lost whatever had been left of her mind.
Don’t do this. Turn around, walk away.
If she didn’t, she’d blow away whatever normalcy remained in her life. After her “family’s” recent revelations, she barely had any left. This was just the guy to end “normal” once and for all.
But she could be imagining things. He might be just another mediocre guy, and she’d soon get this will-siphoning lust out of her system with some quickie that didn’t involve actual sex or the removal of either of their clothes.
Yeah, sure. Like she’d been imagining things when she’d thought there was something seriously wrong with her. Her “foster family” had set her straight on that.
Next to what they’d revealed, walking up to the most incredible and lethal-looking man she’d ever seen with the intention of asking him to fuck her brains out seemed tame.
To make things worse, he hadn’t moved an inch to meet her halfway, just kept staring at her. If you could call that denuding/dissecting/devouring gaze a stare. And if she trusted her senses at all now, she would swear he was getting…bigger.
She was only a dozen feet from him when he suddenly looked away.
Mortification scalded her.
He gazed with even more intensity at whatever had caught his attention. So he looked at everything that way. It hadn’t been for her. He might even be here with someone. He…
He had men converging on him. Lumbering, black-leather-clad men whose heads were shaved in patterns that looked like gothic runes.
And from their body language, they didn’t want to buy him another drink.
Vidar wanted to kick himself.
He’d been so lost in the mortal’s eyes, in his fantasies of how many ways, how long and hard, he’d fuck her, he hadn’t noticed the minions of Odin closing in on him. Not until they were a dozen feet away. He usually felt them from at least a mile.
He transferred his gaze to them, cursed them most for forcing him to relinquish savoring his mortal vision’s approach.
Odinians, like most religious cultists, were sociopaths desperate to belong to something bigger than they were, to draw importance and power from the affiliation. Even if it killed them. But preferably if it killed others.
He wondered how they’d realized what he was. Before arriving at the club, he’d shifted to only three-quarters of his real size.
Maybe the hair? He hadn’t shifted that.
Daven always advised him to cut his “goldilocks,” shave his beard, ditch the marauding Viking look. As if shaving his own head hadn’t made Daven look even more intimidating and conspicuous.
But of course, that wasn’t the explanation. These weren’t the garden-variety, fanatical mortal fare. They were Endowed. With echoes of the Odinforce. Wonder what they’d paid in return for it.
Someone with Asgard-based Endowment would sense another on the juice. And those with any trace of Odinforce were attracted to Lokians like a negative to a positive charge. They all had this ridiculous belief that they could tap a Lokian’s Endowment.
Well, no point hiding in a six-foot body now. Might as well slip into something more comfortable.
He stood, caught the satisfying blip of terror in the men’s eyes as he shifted to his full size. But he couldn’t engage them here. Especially with the mortal woman in range.
He used their hesitation to cast her a warning look.
Kara froze as the man’s gaze slammed back into her.
Before her heart could recover, it stumbled over a new shock.
Either
