Page 5 of Odin
“Can it see into the future?”
“I just said I don’t have one.” And she’s funny too.
“Other dimensions?”
I’m the one who crosses my arms this time, trying to be stern. It’s about as laughable as it gets. She seems to seeright through me. “Aside from losing an eye and having to pick something sort of badass as a club name, that’s as far as it goes. Odin was better than Cyclops.”
“You could just make up a story. That would be fun.”
“I have plenty of stories more interesting than any amount of making stuff up. Maybe one day I’ll tell you. No. Probably not. It’s probably best that we cut ties after tonight.”
She sizes me up like she’s going to ask more Norse god stuff, but then she bites her bottom lip and nods. It’s a reminder that I still very much need to find her a place to wash that smeared makeup off. I’m out here, having a full on conversation that ended in a negotiation, when I should have been a gentleman and helped her out.
This is the kind of help she wants.
She doesn’t want a warm cloth and a hug.
She wants middle fingers, vengeance, and one photo she can move on. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t understand that myself.
“Okay. Whenever I get where I’m going, I’ll send you a postcard to let you know I made it safely.”
She’s dead set on doing this. She even takes a few steps back towards the clubhouse.
I’d be a double liar if I said that I don’t see this heading for a world of trouble. I vowed to leave that behind me years ago, but here I am, getting ready to step right back into the thick of a terrible idea. It’s already been decided. What choice do I have except to follow her and make good on words that never should have come out of my mouth?
Chapter 3
Willow
Idid imply that I was a smart, capable woman who could take care of herself, and yet somehow, I’ve followed a lethal looking man straight down into a dubious-as-fuck basement that could double as a real life torture chamber. When I say that my life has taken a sharp left turn straight off the damn rails, it’s no longer an overstatement.
After bringing me inside the club, Odin took me straight to a small, tidy bathroom. I expected it to be a little bit gross, in a clubhouse with a bunch of rough men, but it was immaculate. The water was hot, and there were fluffy black towels inside. I washed away the evidence of all those tears I’d tried so ruthlessly to hold back. When I stepped back into the hallway, Odin was there, a bottle of whiskey and a glass tumbler in hand. I think he meant to pour me an ounce or two to steady me, but I took the bottle from him, twisted off the cap, and dumped a good few swallows down my throat. I’d never had anything more than a few glasses of wine or a shot of vodka at a party I’d been grudgingly convinced to go to, back when I was in college. I drank until I started to sputter, then I handed the bottle back, wiped my burning eyes, and forced a wobbly smile.
I thought the whiskey would kick in immediately, and I guess it did, because the heat hit me hard, but my head is only now starting to swim. I should be far more afraid of this darkened basement, lit only with a few fluorescent bulbs running along the massive ceiling beams, but even when my eyestrack to the dark, weird stains on the concrete floor and over to the even stranger hooks on the ceiling, all I get is a shiver of unease instead of the instinctual gut wrenching panic.
I raise my hand and point to one of the particularly nasty looking hooks. “That seems like it’s something for meat. Do you guys buy wholesale from a farmer and hang it up in here to age?”
I snort laugh after a moment of silence, watching Odin’s heavy brows crash down over his strong nose. One disappears into his eyepatch, that’s how wildly they dip. You’d think a man with that many scars would have a hitch or two in his nose, but it’s perfectly straight.
Holy shit, I’m completely drunk.
I can feel it in the languid heat surging through my body, in the sudden swimming in my brain, in the tingling in my legs and feet. I guess drinking eight or nine gulps of whiskey hits hard when it hits bottom.
Odin sets the bottle and the glass down on the floor and walks over, arms crossed over his massive chest. His leather jacket doesn’t like it. Even though it’s worn soft, it still struggles to contain that amount of flex.
I nearly giggle again, but bite down hard on my bottom lip. “Or do you bring people down here and torture them?” The fact that I nearly laugh again proves to me just how far gone I am.
Odin only sighs. His expression doesn’t change except for a flicker of worry, and it’s not about being found out. It’s all for me. I hold up a hand to reassure him, suddenly seeing two of them. Hands and him.
“I know I’m buzzed, but I’m still in my right mind. I chose to come here. I chose to find you and to come down here with you and do this. You’re not making me do something against my will. I’m a consenting adult. This is a bad idea, but it’s all my bad idea and I still want to go through with it. You can tell me what you wanted to do down here. I’m not going to freak out.” I might have, at least internally, but the whiskey is definitely helping with that. I fully understand the meaning of lowered inhibitions now.
It’s wild, given how hard I always fought to stay perfectly in control all throughout my life.
His soft brown eye shoots up to that gleaming hook in the ceiling. “I thought I’d tie you up. Not really, but just enough for show. You could stand on a chair so it looks like you’re hanging from the ceiling. Fully clothed. You could wrap your legs around my waist when you’re ready, kiss me on the cheek, then smile.”
I’m the one who frowns now. “But a photo wouldn’t show both. It would be the kiss or the smile.”
“I’m into photography, actually. Videography too. I do a lot of it for the club, but I go out and do nature stuff too.”
