Page 58 of The Hard Way

I smiled up at him. “Yeah?”

Something new came into his eyes right then. Something deeply familiar and connected, and it brought me back to that alley in Italy where he’d touched some ineffable part of me. We’d come together in a way that was more than physical.

Thor had been joking about our mystical butt-fucking for the past two weeks, but it wasn’t a joke to me, and not to Odin either.

He slid his hands along my throat, down and then up, landing under my chin, making me stay looking at him.

Zeus was pushing his fat fingers into me again, touching my clit.

I was trapped on the knife edge between pleasure and torment, waiting for Odin’s kiss.

Finally he took my lips with a desperate sound that was pure Odin. He was all warmth and tongue, lips consuming mine, sucking mine. Even his breath had a specific quality and sound to it that was pure Odin, familiar and welcome as coffee. He kissed me on and on, tongue tracing around inside my mouth—lewdly, invasively, as if to outline all he owned. Waves of excitement flowed through me.

The kiss went on, the pleasure of it merging with Zeus’s fingers. The three of us were going somewhere together.

He pulled away. “Now I have tofucking-grewind.”

I smiled up at him. “Thenfucking-grewind.”

“Oh dear.” He smiled—finally. “What did you just say?”

“I said,fucking-g-a-rewind,” I repeated, happy to see the darkness move out of his gaze for once.

He stood. “I’m not going tofucking-grewind. You know what I’m going to do?”

“What?” I asked, panting.

“I’m going tofucking-gpause that thing. Zeus—” He pointed at a small metal file cabinet in the corner. “Bend her over the cabinet.”

Zeus groaned and hauled me up by my upper arms. He bent me over the cabinet, clasping my hands together with one of his. He held my hair with his other hand and pressed my cheek against the smooth metal. “What have you done, goddess?” Zeus asked sadly.

I closed my eyes and whimpered, as much of an answer as that question needed.

Odin drew something smooth over my naked ass. “Do you know what this is?”

“No,” I said.

He drew it along my butt again. “Try harder.”

“Something wooden?”

“Good. It’s a plaque. Do you know how it feels to be hit with a plaque?”

“No,” I said.

“Don’t let her put her legs together,” Zeus said, gazing into my eyes. “She needs to feel this one.”

Yes, please,I thought.

Odin nudged my legs apart, then drew his finger across my seam. I whimpered, right on the verge of coming.

“This is what he needs, goddess,” Zeus whispered.

Odin was right there, of course. He heard the whisper. He probably understood both levels of it, too: Odin needed this as retribution for my teasing him about his way of sayingfucking-g, admittedly a fun game of ours. But also, he needed this kind of contact. Most of all, he needed to feel my absolute trust in him.

“He needs to do this.”

Whack.

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