Page 17 of Thor

She chuckled and squeezed his arm. “Remember how rowdy you and the warriors three would be when you won a battle. This is the same kind of thing to the mortals. So be patient... or as patient as possible. I recently had the wooden floors redone up there, and blood is tough to remove.”

Thor sighed. “Yes, Mother.”

She kissed his cheek and then turned back to her deep wooden bar. Her strawberry blonde hair had been braided and plaited intricately down her back. Her willowy limbs worked quickly to pour mugs of ale and set them on the bar for the waitress to deliver. He had no idea how she didn’t tire of serving people all day every day. But he supposed serving in the pub was to her what working on motorcycles was to him. A way to pass the time.

Thor turned back to the portal and stepped through.

* * *

Elle looked at the clock.Five fifty. Thor would be there any minute, but she couldn’t bail on Val and Kirsten. The mortals were in a more obnoxious form than she’d seen them before. She’d stopped counting the number of fake compliments thrown her way meant to flatter her into speaking to the various men. She wondered if all mortals thought stupid lines like—‘Somebody call the cops because it’s got to be illegal to look that good!’ And‘Hey girl, are you a beaver? Cause damn!’And worst of all,‘Is that a mirror in your pocket? Cause I can see myself in your pants.’— were intelligent ways for a man to attract a woman’s attention. She wasn’t sure what the last one meant, but she didn’t want to ask either.

Elle dropped off another round of beers to a corner booth full of guys and girls whose faces had been painted black and white. One guy had no shirt on and had painted his chest with the number forty-two on it. Elle couldn’t understand the obsession with adult men playing a silly ball game— especially by people they didn’t know personally.

Over the last weeks she’d come to understand mortals had many fascinations she didn’t understand. One was football. Another game called soccer— though she thought those names should be switched. She also didn’t understand their fascination with shiny sleek automobiles and music so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think. But the strangest of all was on Wednesday nights when patrons would become quite inebriated and sing badly in front of everyone at the pub. Why in the world they would embarrass themselves she had no idea. She herself was able to sing fairly well but had no desire to do it in front of a crowd of people.

Elle set her tray on the bar and Val shoved another tray toward her without looking.

“Table sixteen.”

Elle’s gut clenched every time Val refused to meet her eye. Val was angry about Thor more than about Elle telling her to back down, but Val was only mad because she was scared for both Elle and herself. Even so, Elle tired of being treated like a sheltered child. They had come to Midgard to leave that behind. If she couldn’t build some sort of life for herself there, what was the point of leaving in the first place? The only things she’d done since arriving were work at the pub, read in her room and sleep. Aside from the strange meeting at the DeLux Underworld Café, she’d basically done the same things she had back home.

Elle lifted the tray and walked toward table sixteen.

Thor stepped out from behind a curtain which hid the staircase and portal to the underworld. Her body flushed with heat at the sight of his handsome face, and she quickly looked away.

She sat the drinks down on table sixteen to another round of stupid comments aimed at her beauty and body.

“Enjoy.”

She turned to head back to the bar when a pair of arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her back to the table and down on the lap of one of the rowdy men.

“I’ll enjoy it much better if you sit with me while I drink,” he said.

Stunned Elle couldn’t move; like when Thadren had put his hand on her thigh and her brain froze. All the lessons with Val, teaching her to fight and trying to harness her gift and there she sat, completely unable to think straight.

“I would enjoy that too,” said another guy at the table.

“What about me?” said a third male. “I don’t mind being third.”

Every fiber of Elle’s body went rigid. Val finished pouring a beer and spotted her. Val’s jaw tightened, and she hopped over the bar in one swift movement, but she was too slow.

A blur of black leather appeared in front of Elle and before she could process what had happened, she stood behind Thor, and he had the man’s face smashed into the table-top and his arm wrenched behind him.

“Whoa!” The guy’s buddies at the table backed up.

Thor turned to Elle. “Did he ask permission to touch you?”

Elle hugged her tray close to her chest and shook her head. Thor’s eyes flashed white with lightning, and he turned back to the whimpering man whose cheek had been jammed into a plate of fries.

“What gives you the right to touch a woman without her permission?”

“I... I... was only playing.”

“Playing?” Thor grabbed the back of the man’s head and whipped it up so the man looked at Elle. “Does she look like she thought it was funny?”

Elle’s gaze dropped at the sight of fries and ketchup stuck to the side of the man’s head.

“N...no,” the man stammered.

---