"We?"

"It pains me, but yes. We."

"I don't remember agreeing to an assassination."

"I don't remember giving you a choice."

The arrogance with a body count sits back in his seat, running his fingers over the bottom of his glass until the stem lodged itself between his middle and pointer. Never would we be so careless as to write our thoughts in our eyes, but we stared into each other's from across the table as if we were reading our darkest secrets.

I'm starting to think we captivate silence. There's something about the way it finds us so fiercely, and how deafeningly loud it roars, as if it so desperately wants to impress us with how much of the room it can consume. And that it did as it often does in our meetings of joint chaos, coating the walls, ceiling to floor, in a suffocating blackness that yells out their lungs in praise, incentivizing us to act.

It was louder than usual, making it more difficult to withstand the urge to either burn Asgard to the ground again or jump across this table and tear eachother apart. His stare dared me to try. No, it wanted me to. But neither of us would ever admit that there's an novel itch we need to scratch.

I let the silence play for a minute before I finally broke it, leering into his eyes at his audacity to move his horse before any of his pawns.

"Is this about your friend?"

"We're not friends."

"I'm not fighting one of your petty vendettas."

"This is a much greater matter than both of us--"

"Don't act like revenge doesn't roll more smoothly off the tongue."

He arched an eyebrow, tapped the table once with his pointer to test the silence. The room ached for the sound of our voice again, but we were perhaps the most stubborn we've ever been. Our faces molded to a glacial stone as our tone flowed just as bitter and cold.

He found the noise ceased for a second at his taps impact, so he did it again. Once again, twice, three times, echoing the ticking of a bomb as if to test my own restraint.

"How long?" I snap.

"You've seen it."

I tap my own finger twice, taking a slow, steady breath to keep my composure. His pawn smugly takes two spaces. "How long has this been planned?"

The grin I've only imagined on his face slowly falls. He considered something in me before speaking, tilting his head slightly as if my eyes told him to think a thought over for a second time. If it wasn't his first instinct, then what he spoke was a risk he decided to take; sacrificing one of his pieces for the greater game.

He clenched his jaw and bored his eyes into mine as if the words came with warning. "We met years ago. I had gotten myself into a little...predicament. He resurrected me, and I had the mastery of chaos he needed."

It was quick, vague, but I expected him to lie. It was something. For what seems like the first time since I met him, something clicked. Frigga had written the worried words herself in her journal—the deal she and Odin dreaded he took.

A truth, whether it be full or not, was a gift with him. My face held the stone look it's cemented itself into, but my eyes couldn't help but dance just a bit darker.

"What did you do for him?"

"Slow."

"I have a right to be impatient."

"Ask a better question then."

His ability to demand while he deflects will forever fascinate me. It's an art only he could master. Hell, I buy into it before I can even realize I have.

"Be productive. What would you expect from me in a debted situation?" He rasps, emphasizing each word, slowly, directly, as if to teach them to me—as if to convince me they were my own. "Ask me what he's planning."

He brings his back off his seat and clasps his hands on the table in front of him. His lips part as if the way he deepened his stare spoke words in itself. "Ask me how I'm playing him."

My fingers tap themselves gently on the table to staff back the silence that's eager to break me. I blink at him for what seems like the first time in a year, his eyes taking in the movement like a drink of water.

"I am a God, love," he whispers as if the words themselves paint an illustration of his plans. "The divinity of two things in my most bare form."

In true irony, I hadn't even noticed he had stolen a turn—making two moves on the board and taking my rook along with him. Mischief and lies—I've never seen such pride.

If I drank my entire glass in the next second would my ire be too obvious?

"Am I supposed to be impressed?"

"I am. With you." He lifts his glass slowly, letting the rim rest on his lips before taking a heavy sip, keeping his eyes fixed on me over the brim.

"Impressed," he continues, "just as much as I am concerned. You know a little too much about the stones--"

"Stones?"

"Yes," he hums, raising an eyebrow as if to advise against any further interruptions. "He is quite fond of them himself."

"And that's why you thought I was working with your friend?"

"Not my friend--"

"Because I know about these stones?"

He studies me once more, undoubtedly deciding whether or not to continue or rip my head from my shoulders. The situation must be dire because he sat back in his chair, taking another heavy sip of wine before addressing me again. "Yes," he growls subtly through gritted teeth.

I got close to something. Whatever it is was enough for him to throw me his bishop himself. I challenge his eyes before they even think about inviting the silence back.

"Well, don't stop," I snap.

"Mm. Say that again--"

"Stop deflecting."

He draws a deep breath through his nose, his chest rising to make him look ten times taller as he speaks to feel twenty times shorter.

"Our relationship is quite..exhaustive..and meticulously intimate--"

"He sounds like a gentle lover--"

"He knows how to get to me." He cuts me off aggressively, the sudden sincerity throwing me back into my seat. He taps his fingers on the table, boring his eyes into mine. "He knows just how to break me...and when a woman with a certain irresistible darkness comes to test me, I couldn't help but be a little suspicious. Especially when she knows...so much."

I trail my finger along the rim of my glass, watching my own movement. I wouldn't bite the bait. If I can keep anything for myself around him, I would, and since he would never dare to sound desperate, I veer us in a different direction.

"Why come back to Asgard? You could have went anywhere..been anyone--"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Do you miss Odin?"

I laugh darkly under my breath before taking a long sip.

"He won't come for Asgard. At least, not in the beginning," he starts as I lower glass to the table. "If I'm correct, which I most always am, I believe he wants to collect all of the stones. Which is both great and absolutely horrible."

He comes off the back of his seat to rest his elbows on the table. "It is known that the tesseract resides here, but it is more universally known that Odin is one of the most powerful beings in all the realms. They are all absolutely mad, but they would not risk themselves unless they were sure of a swift win, so they will strike here last. In the meantime, the tesseract will stay under my protection. That gives us time, the ability to track his progress with the other stones, and a front row seat while he does all the work for us. All without the threat of him trying to kill me which, not to flatter myself, would have been a priority next to getting the stones."

I lean towards the table to mirror him. "And why are you the one to do this?"

"Because it's fun," he rasps quickly in spite of me, "And he basically placed the opportunity in my lap."

I scoff, turning my head to find some kind of interesting detail on the wall to focus on, but the heat of his stare could not be ignored.

"And because if we don't," he warns more softly, "it is likely all of the realms will perish."

The turn back to him was slow, hesitant and greeted rather exclusively. Amidst our own game, he had somehow convinced me on his side of another, as if in the exchange of one look we had established our rather unholy alliance. And somehow, the idea that we must fight for and against each other made comfortable sense. As long as we had one to buffer the other.

"This is your specialty, isn't it?" He grins in his own desperate attempt to make the air more tangible. "Taking down people who shouldn't be ruling?"

I laugh dryly under my breath at his faint mock. "I don't think you should be ruling."

He huffs, scanning the pile of books on the table between us. "The only thing you need to trust for now is that there is someone out there planning interdimensional damage. I'm sure that's reason enough to try and keep any other homicidal pursuits at bed for a little while longer."

"Hm," I hum sweetly, "Not likely."

"It wasn't a suggestion."

I lay my forearms down on the table and pout playfully deep into those blue eyes. "But I just can't stop these thoughts when I look at you."

I hadn't expected silence to find us again, but telling from the way he leaned forward—agonizingly slow and commandingly stern—he called upon it himself. He paused, glared into me as if I were to blame for how deafening the silence is to us. Or is it because I have the most pieces on the board? Whatever conviction he decided to accept as the answer was evidently not convincing enough. But despite himself, he seemed to like the grey.

He raises an eyebrow in the same moment a wicked grin threatened the corner of his lips. "How are you going to kill me, Safiya?" He whispers, as if the words were an edging pleasure in themselves.

"Still figuring it out." I slowly tilt my head to the side, prolonging our staring contest. "I've had thoughts of breaking my glass and taking it to your neck...." I start, watching him take in his bottom lip, "but that's an awful waste of wine."

"Oh, that wouldn't do it."

"I would hope not," I frown, "I don't like anything that...comes that quickly."

He grips his hands tighter together as if to imprint his elbows into the table, the muscles in his arms flexing through his thin dress shirt. The look he shot me was the purest form of sin and god it tempted me to play. "Do you want to know all the things I can do to you right now?"

"No glass. No knives." He brought his chin up as if to project his words, yet even as he whispered them, they sounded as if he were right at my ear. "Just my hands."

I laugh darkly under my breath before leaning closer. "If I come across this table, I will guarantee you my hands will draw more blood."

"If you come across this table, we both know you won't be leaving."

He drones his accent into a dark, husky groan that seems to consume the air around us—the undertones pulsing through my body like vibrations.

"Stop talking like that."

"Like what?" He rasps again, knowing damn well what I mean.

He lazily brings his attention back to the pile of books, his grin lingering a while longer. It didn't take more than a single glance over all the work laid out to realize he'd been reading the origins of each stone.

He looks to me, studying me as if to gauge how much more I know before hesitantly grabbing the book of the time stone and pushing it across the table.

I thought about playing dumb, hoping to get at least a few more pawns before sacrificing one of my bishops, but it has already taken a lot to get this far in the discussion and it may be one of the more worthwhile sacrifices of information. I open the cover and run my fingers gently over the first page, reading just a bit.

"The eye of.."

"Agamotto," he cuts in.

"The time manipulator, yes."

"On the tip of your tongue, I'm sure."

My head shoots up from the page. "It was."

"No, I know."

"I would have gotten it."

"I'm not arguing."

"Not with your mouth maybe," I fought, "but with your eyes."

"Yours are remarkable, by the way."

"My eyes."

"And your mouth." His eyes fall instinctively to my lips. "It makes me want to be mean to it."

"Stop deflecting." I frown and look back down at the book, turning to the next page.

It's clear he almost always works alone. He resents that I know anything he does, he takes five steps back for every one forward, and the fact that it's me doesn't help. I can't blame him. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn't tell him anything. In fact, I'd slit his throat if he even so much found out my favorite color.

No matter how hard I push, we will always walk at his pace. But I suppose I can thank the stone lusting psychopath out there for something, because the severity of his plans is the only thing that is forcing Loki to open up—just a crack. Just enough to get something out him.

"Where's the time stone now?"

"On Midgard," he starts, burning his eyes into the top of my head as I read. "In the hands of the most arrogant sorcerer in all the realms."

It only took a second for me to realize I was the only one in the room who found that funny and painfully ironic when my laugh was met with a heavy silence and the pull of an eyebrow that threatened to meet his hairline, challenging me to keep going.

I raise my own playfully before lazily looking back down at the book. "Sorcerers..." I lull softly in an attempt to steer the conversation.

"I keep track of every one, old and new. This one acquired the stone not long ago--"

"I think I met one." I cut him off as if I hadn't even heard his words.

He unfolds his hands to cross his forearms in front of him, leaning forwards as if to challenge my words. "Excuse me?"

"Well, we didn't meet. They sent me a note."

"A note."

"Yep." I pop the p lazily as I invest myself deeper into the words on the page.

I could feel him narrow his eyes into my head as he tapped his fingers impatiently against the table to keep back the silence. I hadn't even realized how long he had been in control until I took it back for myself and had a moment in relish in it. And yes, I will relish in playing with the god of mischief.

He watched me for only a moment later before tapping the last finger just a bit harder than the others. "Well, spit it out."

"Mm. Say that again."

His deep, spiteful groan almost cuts me off before it falls into a rather sneering laugh. "He shielded you from me."

I bring some air in between my teeth and turn another page. "Your friends hate you."

"Still not my friend," he comments rather absentmindedly as he leans forward again. "Why would he have to block that from me?"

"Jealous?"

"What did the note say?"

"I don't think he wants me to tell--"

"You're impossible."

I slam the book closed and push it to the center of the table, dragging my eyes back to his. "We're conspiring against you," I spit with dripping sarcasm. "Neither of us know what your planning, and we didn't know anything about your other friend until a moment ago, but we're starting a revolution. Just for fun."

He shakes his head to himself and starts to unbutton his shirts cuffs as I speak, slowly rolling his sleeves up his forearm.

"What happens when they're all together? The stones?"

He narrows his eyes like he's suspicious I asked such a question about the mission he has literally forced me into. "Why do you want to know?"

"I feel like that's a normal thing to be curious about considering the circumstances," I cough out, his paranoia irritating me immensely.

He runs his fingers through his hair as he leans back off the table, silently inspecting me a few moments. "I have only an idea."

"That you won't tell me."

Expectedly, he ignores it.

How we would go about this withholding most everything from each other while wanting to drag a knife across the others throat in the process is beyond me, but like I said, I'm playing two games. And I intend to win them both.

"Who else knows about the stones? To this extent?"

"You're impatience is maddening."

"I swear to god--"

"My friend," he hums, taking his wine in his hand. "I would assume one or two of his children. The holders of each stone maybe. But to the extent of my involvement? Me and you."

"I know basically nothing."

He grins into the glass before taking a heavy sip. "So, me."

I dig my nails into the arm rests and slowly lean back into my chair. I wait until he puts his glass down to speak, giving myself time to find my composure. His eyes found mine again as if it were the natural reflex. And we stared, until it became almost sinful to blink.

"If you have this all under control," I whisper, "Why am I here?"

He takes the bottle of wine and refills his glass, settling it down afterwards just as hesitantly as his words flowed from his mouth. "Let's be honest with each other. For just a moment."

He stares deeper, bringing his back off the chair to drill some sort of accusation into my every pore. "Tell me."

"What."

"How long have you known about the stones and why do you want to know more?"

"They just keep showing up. I notice when things start to go wrong. It's what I do."

How I could feel the control slipping from me with each passing second is beyond me, but the sensation is almost a physical peeling. It feels as I have no defense. Nothing. He leans his arms onto the table again, gripping the sides for dear life as if he were slipping himself.

"How much do you know Safiya?"

I let out the gust of breath I didn't realize I was holding, and it shuttered.

He tilts his head slowly to the side. "How much--"

"The tesseract. Time stone. And the Aether."

"And?"

"Your scepter. What you used to take over Barton and misdirect our signal in Germany."

He took the control back so quickly I could feel the burn of the whiplash throughout my entire body. By the time I looked down to the board, he had taken a pawn and both of my horses. The words flowed out of me almost unconsciously. Something in his aggression seduces truth, and god it didn't think twice to give itself up to him.

Though, his eyes got three times darker as the last words left my mouth. That combative look softens into something a bit more apprehensive, like he was playing with something he shouldn't. He indulges in the silence for a few moments, seemingly testing whether or not to pamper the idea, but with the way his lips part to an almost edging regret, it seems he's gotten quite used to swallowing a specific kind of poison.

"You were in Germany?"

Staring into the eyes that have turned a dark, royal blue, I felt more change than that of his tone. Everything got heavy. The silence, the air around us. Something made it much more difficult to keep the walls up. They pounded at the defenses, splintering their way in.

We've entered dangerous, wild territory.

I slowly pick up my glass and rest it on my bottom lip. "I should have stayed home," I whispered, as if it were a secret for myself, but my eyes directed themselves back to him. "It sparked a rather...obsessive fascination."

He watched me drink, bringing his voice down to a whisper that matched mine. "What fascinated you, Safiya?"

The silence yelled, the heat of our stare threatening to outmatch its own presence. It begged us to change the subject. We heard it. We thought it. We fought it.

I lower the glass slowly from my lips, keeping our fixed contact. "Have you ever heard the sound of a fall before it happens?"

He shook his head agonizingly slow, keeping his face still—impossibly stiff.

"Your's was the loudest sound I've ever heard," I whisper, keeping myself back from the table. From him.

He brings two fingers to trail his bottom lip, prolonging the moment of silence so he could study me from across the table. "They caught me."

"You let yourself get caught."

He cocks an eyebrow with a just as expressive, "Oh?"

"It would have worked if it weren't for Nat. But you were careless. Haughty."

He places his own elbows on the table, loosely folding his hands in front of him, letting both pointers travel avidly around his chin. "You couldn't have been there."

"On the phone."

"Mm," he hums, and I swear I heard a laugh amidst that deep grumble. "Your relationship amuses me."

I raise an eyebrow for a moment. It was that look, the one that makes me think I have lived a whole life before that only he remembers.

"Similar life experience and all."

He didn't stop. That look didn't stop, and he drilled it deeper into my mind when he narrowed his eyes into mine like they were bottomless.

"Do you?" He whispered. "Do you share the same kind of bloodshed?"

I tapped my fingers slowly. "You saw...when you looked in my head."

"I only saw the good parts," he whispers hoarsely, gambling with the silence for spare seconds moments later. If he were diving beneath the surface of my eyes, someone should tell him that the void doesn't have a bottom. And he is going to lose himself before he can even realize he has.

But he didn't look lost. That smugness staring at me from across the table should be trademarked by now. The chessboard shakes, yet only my pieces tremble.

"Does she know she missed your golden ages?"

I haven't had to use this reflex in a while, but it found me effortlessly. My face stilled. Vacant. Nonviable. Dutifully. "Nothing about it was golden."

"Who are you trying to play virtuous to?" He rasps, parting his lips in sadistic pleasure. "I've never seen a legar so red that it looks black."

"It's a good thing I'm not one for sentiment."

"Mm." He nods, standing slowly with his hands fixed firmly on the table. He rose with his eyes down at his hands, gifting me a moment to breathe without the weight. "But..." he whispers, tilting his head playfully to the side as he inspects something under him, "some things are just a bit too ruthless to be without emotion, no?"

Three pieces, gone. When he shot his eyes across the table like a bow and arrow to my head, another piece gladly offered itself.

"It's never about me," I offered.

"Isn't it?"

"It's simple. Don't deflect," I rasp quickly in glorious irony. "Leave one wolf alive and the sheep are never safe."

"Is that all there is, Safiya? The wolf and the sheep?" He growls darkly, leaning forward as if he could tower over me from the other end.

"Watch it," I warn.

"A game with two players is an illusion in itself. Black and white. Good and bad. There's always a third—a power we need to acknowledge despite ourselves."

"Stop--"

"Who runs the game, Safiya?" He roars, gripping the table tighter. "Someone has to regulate."

I scoff, shaking my head around to acknowledge anything but him.

"Safiya--"

"Stop saying my name." I throw my hands on the table, standing to challenge him. "I protect that power. I've acknowledged it. I don't want it."

He starts down the side of the table towards me with a stare that could kill and a voice that threatens to shake the room. "It's not a matter of wanting."

"Isn't it?" I laugh mockingly, raising my voice to his. "You're a god after all. Is this what this is about? You want that power?"

"Do you think I want this?" He yells, drawing closer and closer to my end.

"I don't care! I don't trust you to have it even if you don't!" I scream and start towards him myself. "We have both made choices. That power needs to be earned, and none of the choices I've ever made makes me deserving of it! I know that! And anyone that thinks they do deserve it has already lost!"

"You're driving me fucking insane!" He laughs maniacally as he stalks closer. "You don't get it! You won't let yourself get it!"

"I apologize for not completely being delusional!"

"Then what are you, Safiya?" He shouts. "Tell me! A sheep or a wolf?"

The silence beds, staffed back by the heavy panting of our breath. What he was asking for...what he was demanding--

Identity. Nothing but a grey space, clouded with illusion. Forever undeserving of one title, yet too vain to accept the other. But when you're good at something, where the skill is both praised and feared, you accept one title. You accept it, and you run with it. You're not a person any longer. You're not a being. You're an idea. A thing.

You are destruction.

Because it's much better to be something than nothing.

Yet when I look down at the board between us, expecting my fallen King to be amidst flames, the King just inches from me was perhaps more painfully aware of the unexpected stalemate.

He had it. He had me, and he could've taken every piece. But preventing him from the last, final move was a piece we couldn't quite distinguish, or perhaps one we knew all too well. A defect that will keep anyone from a win.

"Which one are you looking for here, Loki?" I whisper, meeting his eyes with the grey blend of rage and uncertainty that tried to hide itself well.

Yet, as dark as his eyes had grown, they were a solid navy. Definitely, decisively, boldly navy.

"You."

A weak gust of breath slips his lips when he shakes his head in awe for us both. "You are so much more than you know," he whispers.

From then, I don't remember how long we stared at each other, but in the second that I could hear anything other than my own heartbeat, I start towards him. There were only a few steps between us, but I took them in time, slowly, with no hesitation or question.

The first one was quiet—perhaps matching the sound of our breaths, but I couldn't care as much as to adjust them to the game somehow.

"Safiya--" he starts, in an almost pleading, warning whisper.

"You want the art."

It was an ironic breath of confidence, but it shut him up.

"Killing people is easy, but that's not the fall." I take another step, keeping my eyes fixed on his. "You want to know how I do it? You want to see the Titian fall, hard. Loudly."

I take my final step slowly, settling right in front, almost under the unmoved body before me. My eyes fall straight ahead to his chest, watching his muscles stiffen through his shirt and his breath contemplate itself with each second.

"You're deflecting," he whispers down to me as if to hide the secret from the air in the room.

I keep my eyes away from his. "You know why."

"He needs to fall, Safiya. I know it comes with cost."

"It's going to take more from you than you know." I swallow before placing a hand on his chest, risking my own strength as I look back up at him. "You can never do the most damage without burning yourself in the process."

I'm not sure if the words registered. I don't know if he listened, but his eyes were fully invested into mine— a greedy, shameless kind of consumption.

"Tell me."

"Loki..."

I close my eyes as he takes the last remaining space between us.

Screaming. The silence screamed.

"Tell me how to fall," he whispers, giving me time to take a deep breath in and open my eyes again.

My hand starts itself slowly down his chest while my voice hesitates before each word as if I alone were to speak them into existence. "Take everything."

"Everything they thought to be true. Every concept they thought to be definite, solid, uncompromisable. Like poison, corrupting everything, slowly draining them of any reason or life." I slow my hand as I reach his stomach to watch how his eyes seem to follow it's path attentively.

"Bring forth everything they have tried to keep back," I continue. "Physically, psychologically—until everything in and around them is in ruins. And it will be slow. Slow, undetectable until the moment they realize they can't get up after they've fallen."

"Killing people is easy," I breathe, letting my hand fall slowly back to my side. "Making them suffer is the art."

He pushes out a weak, airy breath that could only half resemble that of a laugh, but his voice was no louder than the faint sound of my heartbeat.

"You're doing a great job at that right now."

"That's what I'm afraid of," I whisper just as quiet.

He raises his hand slowly to my face before I grab his wrist in front of us. He glares at me before pushing forward despite me, my fingers tickling down his forearm in an ironic defeat. He trails his thumb across my bottom lip in such slow precision while holding my head firmly in his hand, ready for any resistance I may throw back.

"I thought I could get you out of my system."

I closed my eyes as his thumb ventured deeper, keeping my breath as steady as I could. His expressive fingers curled at the back of my neck, subtly pulling me towards him before he grabbed the back of my legs and sat me on the table between his.

He leaned in close when I gasped as if to drink my breath in himself. Hands lingering on my thighs, he gripped them more decisively, kneading them skillfully. I grabbed onto his biceps as his hands rub every muscle deeply, every nerve I didn't know needed to be touched, every spot I didn't know needed him.

"Sex is supposed to be fun," he whispers, "Easy."

Our panting breaths meet in the small space between us. It may be the only thing keeping me conscious.

"Is this not fun?" I say breathlessly.

He huffs gently with a dark mix of disbelief and riskful lust. "It's a little too much fun."

I lean in to his mouth as it chose to linger dangerously above mine, stressing his decision by taking the last bit of space between us.

"Then what are you doing, Loki?" I murmur, brushing his lips just faintly with mine as I speak.

Face stone, eyes hooded, he looks up from my lips and into my eyes.

"Playing with fire."

I slowly rest my hands on his chest in front of me as if to keep him back. His hands snake up to my hips, gripping them with a devouring, wild need.

"Safiya..." he whispers down to me, warning me of his fleeting restraint.

I watch my own hands as I bring them up his chest, resting momentarily on his shoulders until my fingers wrap themselves around the back of his neck, my thumbs just under his chin.

"Loki..." I mouth, barely audibly. He watches the movement of my lips as I lean closer, drawing one hand back to grab the glass of wine behind me.

I take a light sip, lacing my tongue with the substance that will prove much less toxic than that of my own mouth, deciding whether or not to deploy it.

But it's as if it were to be the most inevitable fate.

I bring my hand back around his neck to meet the other before using my thumbs to push his chin up. Within the second, I pull myself up to him and run my tongue greedily up his throat. Slowly, markingly, mimicking the deadly nature of the formidable red silk itself.

It's only once I'm sure I have imprinted my path along the coarse column when I bite his chin, latching on until he brings his head down to reveal a pair of obsidian black eyes that marked me themselves in a simple look as their next victim.

"I don't know anything anymore," I breathe with the most certainty I've had in years.

And that was it. It was a glance that either lasted a second or an eternity, but there's no defense to be had in a look like that, where you could see yourself swimming in the darkness of the other. We drank in the wickedness of each other until we were absolutely, completely drunk.

He grinned. Maliciously, wickedly, sinfully—a look no fiber in my body could oppose to reciprocating. A dark seduction I could not resist playing with.

He pushes me roughly back onto the table, keeping his eyes locked on mine as my hands fall above my head. There was something in the way I lay among his plans—books, blueprints, anything that could give him all he wants and more—that brings me the same feeling I had when I pinned him against that concrete slab in that artful illusion. Something about looking and feeling natural in a place we shouldn't be—a slab displaying my emotions out in the open, a table where I lay in the center of his plans for possible realm domination. But he won't let me move, and I don't want to leave.

He takes my leg in his hand, letting my dress fall along the skin to my hips as he kisses my ankle, moving his mouth down to my calf before subtly grabbing the wine glass just beyond my head.

He tilts the glass gently until the liquid smoothly flows down my leg from my ankle to my thigh, the better part pooling at my core. He licks, bites, leaves hot, open mouthed kisses down my leg until he reaches my upper thigh to when he retreats to give the same treatment to the other.

My calf instinctively pushes against the back of his neck to keep him down as he starts to rise from my inner thigh again, but to no avail. He knew what he was doing—what he wanted to do—and I could not persuade him otherwise.

He moves from between my legs to hover over me completely, covering any light that may have had a chance to meet my eye. He takes the glass again and pours it along each collarbone, giving him the incentive he didn't need to attack my neck. And he took his time, despite the moans that escaped as light whimpers for more, he felt, kissed, and sucked, every surface of skin on my neck and chest that the dress allowed.

He made sure he drank every drop he spilt before he gripped my face, kissing my lips savoringly in a slow, languid manner that left  me breathless and starved as he pulled away.

"Loki," I moaned as if the word alone would tell him everything I want.

He lowered his head to the nape of my neck, kissing and biting the skin softly before whispering sensually deep into my ear a faint and assuring, "Hush."

His eyes ran down my body only seconds before his fingers shaped it themselves. The dress vanished under his touch, leaving me in the matching black lace set that waited desperately for him to rip it off.

He groaned darkly as he took me in, almost absentmindedly grabbing the glass once more and pouring the last of the wine down my body from the end of my throat to my stomach. His mouth latched impatiently to my throat to where I couldn't help but lean into it. I propped myself up on my elbows, biting back moans as he moved his way down, following the flow of wine that I pushed lower and lower.

He gripped my hips as his mouth reached the hem of the lace lingerie, to which he impatiently ripped off with his teeth.

Not another moment was wasted. I thought about yelling out praise to whatever god I have to thank, but he covered me with his mouth in that second, rendering me speechless as he sucks the pool of poison at my center and indulges himself in death.

My mouth falls open in a silent scream. I throw my head back and let my elbows give out to which my back met the table again with an eager surrender.

In the second that I could find my voice again, he snakes his hands under my back and grabs onto my waist, holding me up against him like I'm some kind of deadly offering and the sound of my single, gasping moan had been incentive enough for him to work harder.

I press my shin against the back of his neck, silently begging him to go deeper when I feel the tense, heavy sensation start to warm my body. I shamelessly cried out when he brought his tongue flat against me, triggering the release of every nerve I had yet to meet, proving to no one who didn't know it already that he can bring me to the skies and back with just his mouth.

My hands desperately try to grab anything around me, doing nothing but messing up the neatly stacked papers on the table and pushing books off the edge before he takes my hands in his. He raises up from between my legs, panting as he eyes me down with a look like that seemed to be plotting how he would eat me whole.

He moved up my body, bringing my arms up above my head, releasing my wrists only when he could reach the skin just below my ear.

He nibbled gently on the bone before groaning darkly in my ear.

"Jump," he whispers. And he didn't have to repeat himself.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and ran my hands up through his hair as he carried me to the large black and gold double doors. His jaw became a delectable prey to my lips while he waved his free hand to slam the doors to their sides, resulting in a loud bang that was no match to how loud his room was inside.

Not hell, no. A welcome to death, perhaps.

This was the den of iniquity itself and I have never seen or heard a room so dark.

Our sins wrote themselves on the walls, eager to conjoin ours both to fill ceiling to floor and beyond. Every massacre, every bloodshed—we bathed in it. We relished in it. We let it fuel us. An obsidian blackness consumed the room whole and the walls sang with tears in their eyes as we entered.

He laid me down gently beneath him on his silk, black sheets. I gave him only a second to run his eyes up and down my body before grabbing his neck and flipping of us over so I straddled his waist, getting straight to work on the buttons of his shirt. Only the first one had to be just a bit too time consuming before I just ripped the shirt open and threw it across the room.

In that second, he rises off of his back, laces his fingers through my hair and grabs a fistful, tugging my head back so I could stare at the ceiling as it wailed back at me.

"I'm going to bring you until you can't breathe," he growls into my neck before flipping us over again.

I start at his pants, desperately trying to work them off as he directly attacks the pulse of my neck, but with each second under him, I lose any sense of self control. I grab his face and bring his lips to mine, making the time for me to flip him over again and free him of the rest of his clothes.

We flipped each other once again, twice, three times, until he grabbed my throat and threw me down into the sheets, biting my lip hard enough to draw blood.

I start to bring two fingers to the cut before he grabs my wrist softly to stop me. He watched my lip bleed under impossibly hooded eyes for a moment.

I don't know what I was watching in him, but my lips part without my conscious consent at how bewitched he looks. I gasped softly when he starts to drag his thumb across the cut, and his own mouth seemed to gape wider than mine. He paints my lips with my own blood, running his finger slowly along my mouth until they were red enough for his liking.

I brought my own thumb to his bottom lip, forcing his attention to my eyes that seemed to dance in a darkness just as black as his did.

"Now," I demanded softly. "Take me now."

"Give me your mouth." With a carnal, almost sadistic pleasure, he takes my neck and brings me to his lips where he kisses me long, hard, and tastingly. He slows for just a second as he pushes inside me, breaking our lips apart as both of our mouths fall open on each others. He groans into my mouth, spitting my name like a curse.

He settles over me, locking his arms tightly on each either side of my head to keep himself up, thrusting slowly, fucking deeply, until he filled me completely.

"Hard," I panted, wrapping my legs around his waist. My fingers run themselves fluidly up his neck until they lace his hair, pulling a fistful when he started thrusting slower. "Harder."

He shakes his head down at me in protest of my own as he takes my legs and pins them under him.

"No. Nice and slow. Like this." He pumps in the same languid, dominating rhythm until I throw my head back, unable to speak any longer. "Watch," he orders as he grabs my jaw. He was taken over. A lust glazed animal eyeing me down.

"Do you feel that? Can you hear how much your body loves it?" he urged and gently retreated. When he pushed in again, he was slow and incomparably tender. "Do you feel how much it loves me? Because I can. You're clenching onto me like you never want me to leave. Wet, needy, so impossibly tight..."

His words don't stop as I watch him work between our bodies, thrusting in and out slowly—so fucking slowly. He was far from wrong, but I was building to an overwhelmingly high and I was certain this pleasure would break me. I swear he was in my head at that moment because as I'm rendered speechless, he seems to speak for us both, "Fucking hell, how do you feel so good?"

I bring my legs back around his waist again, but they don't rest for a second before he growls and brings them up on his shoulder. The position drove him deeper if that were even possible, and he now had full control. I gripped the sheets direly as I screamed out.

"Loki," I pleaded as he placed a kiss on the back of my knee. "Lose it on me. Let go."

He refuses, pushing both hands down on my hips heavier than before as if to nail me to the mattress. My hands grasp at his biceps before they fall agonizingly down at my sides seconds later. I was losing it. Never had a pleasure ever been so torturous.

I grab desperately at his face, forcing his eyes into mine, and he cursed at the sight as if it were compromising him completely.

"Safiya, you're sore, and if you don't stop looking at me like that, I swear I will rip you in half."

"Do it." I kick his shoulder and free my legs from his hands. I wrap them around his waist and raise up off my back, latching my mouth to his neck.

I'm distantly aware I'm talking to him—depraved, wicked things that threaten him to lose himself in me. And I swear it almost worked when he started biting my neck, but he kept his venom in with the most restraint I've ever seen a person hold.

"You're going to come like this," He growls, slowing his hips to drive me utterly insane. "You're going to come long and hard. And I want to see your face when you do."

He throws me back into the sheets with a thrust I swear hits my stomach.

He hovers over me, pushing deeper as he locks his mouth to my ear, feeding me a long description of how I feel around him. How he can feel me squeezing him every time he grabs my throat, and how his cock twitches at every sound that leaves my mouth. He doesn't stop, even when I start bucking beneath him.

He finally moves faster as I get tighter and tighter around him, squeezing him impossibly hard that he bites down on my shoulder. I fist his hair when black dots start to fill my vision, as if I need an anchor to bring me back after the release. And I think I did, because it wasn't until he kissed me again that I felt anything other than the aftermath of my orgasm.

When my vision cleared, I saw nothing but him above me. Blue eyes staring down as if they were assessing every expression in my face before I felt his hips roll into me again.

"Yes," I pant as I grip his arms. "Oh my god, yes."

"Never stop looking at me like that," he almost orders as he grabs my neck, taking seconds as greedily as he could to watch me come back down to reality. I couldn't help but grin when his hands familiarized themselves again with their favorite place, and he was well aware of the shameful reaction. "Don't you ever doubt that I know what you want. I know exactly what you want."

He leans down to my ear, close enough to where I could bite his cheek. "I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to bring you until you can't breathe," he repeats, drilling the words into me slowly as if to imprint them forever. He thrusts harder, finally losing himself in the way I'd hoped, making me cry out even harder and louder than before. "In this bed," he thrusts, "on the floor", he pushes harder, "up against the wall," he grunts, "on that table again...I'm going to have you for hours...in every way possible...until you finally get it."

A wicked smile escapes me in between moans I couldn't keep in. "And what don't I get?" I pant, needing to hear his voice even if they bring the last words I ever do.

He growls, his lips exploring any untouched skin around my ear before they meet with what's left of my reason, whispering a faint, angry, "Just how much of a problem you are."

He kept every promise.

Again. We came together again. And again. And again—exploring each other in an obsessive, extensive venture until we forgot what it was like to not be inside each other.

And he didn't stop. Not until the early hours of morning after every inch of my body had been kissed and we had presented the last of what our darkness had to offer the room—the one whose walls praised us in the end with screams that could no longer be defined as either cheerful or completely terrified. Whichever it was, whether they knew it themselves at the time or not, confined us in some kind of dark, depraved, unholy matrimony that only the gods below could agree with.

It was a senseless, inescapable impulse that we both felt despite ourselves, but reason left me the moment I touched his neck, and it seems my tongue was just poisonous enough for him.

"What the fuck are you doing to me." Loki curses in my neck, growling like an animal. "I can't stop."

"Don't stop," I plea, breathless. "Don't you dare fucking stop."

Don't get me wrong.

The devil wrapped in silk is still the devil, but we've always been this close.