Page 34 of Valkyrie Confused

“Someone I thought long dead.” But against reason, she’s alive and has found Tyr again. And Fenrir is happy with Freyr and his dragon. And I get to be close to the man I— to someone I care about, for just one month, before he hates me forever for taking away his woman.

“Why did you ask for a month?” I ask Pan. “Why not a week or a year?”

He tucks his tongue behind his front teeth and regards me with defiance. “That’s how long it took me to realize I’m in love with Scarlett. I guess I was hoping it’d be how long it took you to fall for her too.”

Preposterous. “And then what?”

“And then maybe you’d stop being a stubborn ass, and we could all be happy. Together.”

Happy.Doesn’t he know after all this time thathappyisn’t in the cards for me?

Only, when he grabs my belt and pulls me in for another kiss, it’s the closest I’ve come to happiness in centuries.

TWELVE

PAN

This is a fucking breakthrough.Arnlaug didn’t outright turn down my suggestion. He kissed me first, and now he’s kissing me back, and maybe things can be all right. Maybe they will be.

With a playful nip on my bottom lip, he breaks our kiss and moves to nibble on the spot beneath my ear. His beardticklesmy skin in the most delicious way. His hand is in my hair, rubbing one horn and driving me crazy.

“Your Valkyrie is watching,” he says. “Do we put on a show, or do we take this inside?”

There is a third option. I pull away and look up at Scarlett’s balcony. “What are you doing up at this hour?” I ask. When she found us in bed together, Arnlaug seemed as willing as I was to include her, but this isn’t about that. Tonight is as good a time as any to tell her who she is. Who we all are.

My eyesight is better than a mortal’s, and even in the near-total darkness, I see her startle. She didn’t expect us to notice her, the little voyeur, and as lost as I was in Arnlaug’s lips, I might have missed her presence if he hadn’t sniffed her out.

“You took my laptop.” There’s a hitch in her voice. “I tried to write on my phone, but I didn’t feel like it, so I’m having a glass of wine and enjoying the starry sky. Didn’t you suggest going out more?”

“I don’t think he meant to your balcony,” Arnlaug says. If he’s upset I stopped our make-out session, he doesn’t show it.

“Why don’t you take your glass and come to my room?” I ask. “We can hang. Talk. You can tell us about your book.” And maybe Arnlaug will like her enough to let go of his plan to take her to his stupid, self-centered, one-eyed megalomaniac of a god.

I don’t expect her to agree without some more prodding, so her timidokaycatches me off guard.

I gasp. “Okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll be right down.”

Huh.

With a thought and a tiny wave, I magic fresh sheets on the bed, tidy up the room, and put away Arnlaug’s clothes. “Great. We’ll see you in a few.”

“Someone’s thinkingthreesome.” Arnlaug cups my erection and squeezes. “You realize that, even if we all go through with this, it doesn’t change anything, yes?”

“Of course.” We’ll see about that, when we eventually get to fucking.

Not tonight.

He holds my hand all the way back to my room, but drops it when Scarlett’s feet patter down the stairs.

We wait for her to join us before we enter, but Scarlett stops in the doorway.

“What?” I ask.

She looks pointedly from the armchair to the bed. “Maybe you should have come upstairs, instead. More places to sit?”

I wave off her concern and go to the closet. Make sure to block her view of the insides as I make the fur rug from the main suite appear on the bottom shelf. Hopefully, our guests have turned in for the night and won’t notice it missing.

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