Addictive Rimeshade (7 page)

It's going to take me all the strength I have to undo the damage her foster father has left in her spirit. She has been deeply wounded in a place where her source hides, the very source that broke my mind and melted my bones when I experienced it. It is innocent, and it has a festering abscess behind the light. It's a weal I intend to mend with the dark and the light, with emancipation.

“How? You live far away Leug. This isn't exactly practical.”

“
Sváss, nothing is impossible. You're about to find that out for yourself. The passages of Utgard belong to me, and they are a sight to behold. Let me take you away from your woes and show you true freedom.”

She stares deeply into my eyes with her hinterland-hued irises, her pupils fluctuating in size, betraying that on a subconscious level she can see me undulating spiritually between bright and cimmerian.

Lifting her hand I kiss the wrist, tracing the surge of excitement pumping her veins, “Come away with me, Lara.”

She nods, slowly, as if drowsy.

Capturing her diminutive curves, cuddling them inside my hollows to fill my empty spaces, I nuzzle her neck, inhaling the redolence of frost flowers in full bloom. She's hotter than the furnace of the first forge, melting my loneliness while intoxicating my logic with the blizzard of winter in her soul. She smells of both my volcano and my tundra; Lara is the embodiment of the first sphere.

She and her sister, they have become like Mundilfori's twins. One is the sun, the other the moon, both shine, both illuminate, they restore balance. In the beginning the sun was female, the brilliance of the holy spirit assigned to the physical light giver of daylight, so is my Lara, she shines a light in my darkness, burning out the pain. Yet she embodies both aspects, perhaps her sister does too.

Closing my eyes, crushing her, biting back into a nubile neck, I flick a symphony across her nipples, playing the harp of heaven.

Wriggling deeper to bathe my skin with hers, squeezing my arms tighter, she buries her face in the curl of my shoulder, her breath haphazard and strained, her need to wrestle and dominate riddling her with polarities.

She wants to take and give, control and submit, hurt and love, she is the double edged sword, and it's one that's already cut me so deep I want to bleed into her wounds and rescind her pain. If it takes me forever I will give this woman the peace she craves.

I will give you a home where your roots will thrive and you will flourish. And I will find a way to exact payment for your trauma.

Chapter 7

lost your shirt, destroyed my skirt,

brace myself for a world of hurt

~ The Gemini Journal

Lara:

Waking inside the embrace of snug muscly arms is a bit like waking up surfing the afterglow of an erotic dream.

Soft scruff scratches across my neck when scrumptious kisses trace my skin to the crook of my shoulder, tingling stimulation right to my soles. The ache swirls into an insistent throb when his head dips lower, capturing my nipple as a hostage for his tongue.

Hazy with sleep's stupor, I'm thrust into carnal turmoil by the onslaught of titillation. The flick of his tongue on my nipple detonates desire right through me - the addictive slip of skin against skin - the comfort of the hairs on his legs tickling behind my thighs - the warmth and solidity of a rigid torso pressing against my back - the hand locked tensely in mine when he pushes inside me, sliding deep, making breathing damn near impossible - spooning and screwing all while restraining me inside his possessive embrace, is sinfully gratifying.

God! I'm living the fantasy.

Resting on his bicep, biting playfully into the flexing forearm like a pain strap, I muffle a moan, writhing with him, indulging in the invasive heat, the safety, the phenomenal bliss of unadulterated hedonism.

Fondling my nipple with his lips while he slaloms in and out with precision, my twisted body yields in the neural chaos of arousal. Fuckohara, I could do this every morning.

Tensing my grip on his arm, his shoulders curling around the outside of mine, I relish the debauchery. I never thought fornicating could feel precious, or be a haven, but he manages to embody both all while corrupting me with subliminally addictive pleasure.

This is so much better than that stupid torpedo in the drawer. Nothing beats the real deal. Tilting me until I flatten on my front, I adore the way he confidently hooks my hips up, his knees inside mine, spreading and lifting me to meet his thrusts. My cheeks get hotspots and the sinful sound of skin slapping skin incites my femininity to flood with viscous passion.

He's a fast learner. I love the piques of 'almost orgasm' that flick tentacles up into me when it's hard and fast and brutal. Reaching between my thighs I slide a slow touch up his leg, handling the tight mound moving with his rhythm.

As if to halt my invasion he slams me so hard I pitch into the pillows, the left hand gripping my hip moving, deployed to do the wicked work of its owner. His thick forearm straps my hipbone so his fingers can meet the pressure point between my legs, where I crave the aggressive impact.

Nailing me like I'm bounty, he circles and agitates my nub, his penetration stretching me so wide it brands every inch of his penis into the slippery ache I clench around it. Firm fingers spume friction into me from the front while his entire body froths lather from behind, the vacillating pinnacle arcing closer and closer, drowning me in euphoria's chimera.

My ecstasy is muzzled by the pillow, the ineffable current  cascading through me, leaving me hot and wet and unstable. It feels all kinds of wrong when he pulls out, flips me over, and plasters my thighs to the bed, sinking his hips straight back to my tendons, filling me with a dick that should be mounted as specimen A in a museum for 'when you grow up this is what your wife wants'.

Slicing in, arching over me, cornering my head between his elbows, beguiling eyes stare into mine when he begins a long slow eternal rotation into and out of me, splicing my soul into little lesions of lust, rebuilding an orgasm inside me while his vulnerable gaze seduces my heart.

The audacious man sucks my mouth, running his tongue onto mine as if it's a morsel for madness. Sucking on his opiate, I'm the one getting high. The hair on his chest chaffs my nipples raw, and I ache. Oh mamma I ache so bad for this man. I want him to make me plead, and scream.... and bleed.

*

He's got me dressed for the Arctic circle, which worries me ever so slightly. Taking my hand, he leads me along a ragged trail which meanders up the Skiddaw massif.

I've always loved living in the Lake District. After my heartache at the hands of humans, residing outside Keswick in North Cumbria and working with only the dead keeps me sane and zenful. Some would call me a loner, I would argue with that opinion emphatically. I'm simply cautious and trust my instincts implicitly. My instincts tell me the easiest way to stay happy is to be wary of people in general. And yet I couldn't resist inviting Leug in when I saw him standing outside, sodden and forlorn. Everything I am wanted to offer him compassion, the kind I wasn't privy to as a child.

Best decision of my life!

I am relieved he's not taking me toward town, but away from it. I guess that's the bonus to living on the outskirts with my humble garden edging up the slope.

It's still dark and I feel silly holding a jar of fireflies in the dead of winter. It certainly is beginning to feel like the adventure he promised.

“Are you aware that you chose to live in an area that previously was a Scandinavian settlement?” he says, making conversation while we walk.

“
It is?”

He pauses for me to reach his side, slipping his arm about my waist and strolling with me in the brisk predawn, “Ah, complacency keeps folks ignorant, doesn't it? Keswick was once called Kēsewīc. It means
farm where they make cheese
.”

“
Oh,” I mumble, looking back across the valley while thunder peals in the distance. “Are they hunting you?” I ask, indicating the ominous nimbus galloping toward us, sparking danger across the sky.

“
They're just nosy. They seem to find me an endless curiosity, one they love to taunt.”

“
Why? Why do your elders rebuke you?” I pry.

Leug stalls with me, holding me close, feeling profound and safe lining my back with his arms folded across my breasts.

“Lara, my side of the story is never told. They have lived under Odin for so long that they forget Odin answers to someone greater than he ever was. Modern books and tales pay homage and respect to Odin because he was a charismatic leader who knew how to work a crowd. But he also has a filthy temper, and that made him a brute and a dangerous enemy. Those watchers up there track me purely for him. I once took away his source of immortality and he has never forgiven me for it. It's a vendetta with no end. His pride and ego are diabolical.”

“
Who are they?” I ask, sorry now that I've ruined our easy companionship with my inquisitive need for answers.

“
The favorites,” he mutters, his tone decidedly bitter. Releasing me, he recaptures my hand, hooking it into the crook of his arm, offering me an affectionate smile, “We can discuss my brotherhood later. Now, I have a way to escape them.”

He gives me a conspiratorial wink, his voice back to that low level gravel rumble that makes me think of hot dry desert where the roads are corrugated and malevolent.

His voice is seductive, husky, commanding, and mesmerizing. I could listen to him all day, mentally salivating while the coarseness in his voice rakes sharp teeth through my soul, studding my insides with desire, grazing away the edges of my mind.

Turning off the path he leads me behind a huge boulder, when apprehension grips me. If he was anyone else I'd fear ill intent, yet the rocks shift in the warped reality of a melting mirage, opening up to this walking god, exposing a tunnel into the mountainside.

“Welcome to Utgard,” he purrs seductively, tugging me through a film of glossy light.

It looks like an ethereal curtain of peacock-blue saran-wrap, thin and icy. I've heard the firmament is only an inch thick, and this is how I imagine it looks, transparent but with color; the shade of liberation.

Exhilaration replaces apprehension, claiming my mouth in wonder at this enchanting venture. Holding my jar ahead of me, I let nature light my way as I step from my realm into his. “Why do we walk inside the mountain?”

Pausing with me, glancing back at the translucent entrance, he says with humor evident, “It's a shortcut. I don't fly and I refuse to travel by boat. This is the fastest way to traverse the globe without detection and without the sniffers riding my arse.”

In a capricious turnabout he body slams me into the wall, hoisting me up to press his own depraved desire into my abused cooch, kissing me stupid before muttering, “You make me crazy.”

My heart is hammering from the sudden violence, but it's an adrenaline high which makes me giddy. I love that I turn him inside out.

Taking my fireflies, he opens the jar, releasing them into the dark tunnel. Immediately they swarm around his head like a halo, and it takes my breath away.

Cupping my head in his hand, he rubs that bold thumb over my cheekbone, agitating my eyelashes when he croons, “When you look at me like that I'm tempted to cut open my chest and hand you my heart; you command me.”

Ohmigod, he's so intense, he's so nuts, he's so fucking fuckable.

Catching a handful of his fiery minions, he hands them to me, “My fire is yours. Tell them to stay with you and they will.”

Opening my hand, releasing them, I say, “Stay,” as if I'm talking to his dogs – which aren't dogs.

So what are these then? Are they embers – or june bugs – or are they something else entirely masquerading as fireflies?

They flit to my face, sending a zigzag blur of light across my vision, momentarily blinding me to the impenetrable darkness of the tunnel.

Hot breath nuzzles my earlobe when he hums into my ear, “My flame burns inside you, let it light your way.”

Sucking the lobe before moving away, planting my feet back on the ground, he faces the underground passage.

The walls pulsate with a faint red aura.

“Can you see it?” he asks.

“
The light?”

He nods, “Yes.”

“Yes,” I smile, amazed by this magic.

God, I sound like such a loser. 'I saw the light'.

“Good. You are becoming.”

Looking up at my guide and lover, I ask, “Becoming what?”

This time the ambient lighting curdles his expression into something mildly heinous, the shadows playing his features all wrong when he snarls in a smokey tone, “My mate.”

Chapter 8

don't wake me with a kiss, destroy my bliss

or drag me to confession at church

for when reason shines on this world of mine

I never know what I'll blurt

~ The Gemini Journal

Lara:

After hours of walking, I relent, letting him carry me because I can't match his stride or stamina. At some point I must have fallen asleep because I wake with my legs splayed to accommodate an obstacle, supported by his body behind me while we ride on something which slides through the vast network of Earth's meandering catacombs.

Stirring, I twist to look up at my guardian, “Where are we?”

“Shh, get your rest, we're almost there,” mumbles hotly in my ear, his left hand moving to affectionately stroke the tresses away from my face, forcing me to lean heavily against his chest. “You sleep so soundly you almost snore.”

It's a sure indication that I feel safe with him, and this knowledge irks me. I rarely sleep with strangers, I don't trust them not to slice my throat open while I'm unaware and my guard is down. Or worse.

“I snore?” Great, just freaking great.

“
No sváss, almost isn't perpetrating it, that's why it's
almost
.”

It irks me, vanquishing my drowsiness, making me instantly hyper-alert because now I'm angry that I was so relaxed with this man. I want to impress him for some ungodly reason and being informed I snore is way down there in the 'I suck' category.

The walls are livid with crimson energy, running through the black rock like veins of fire, striating darkness with a net of interweaving luminescence.

It looks like hot blood keeping the mountain alive, pulsating through arteries and tributaries the way I imagine a smoker's lungs look when they're sucking on live embers, turning the bronchi into heat waves of vivid red.

The strait we're bound to encounter will become the ledge where acolytes prove their mettle, nominees for the secret society go through their trials, and abductees fall through the diaphanous shroud of pretentious faith.

A moment of reason accordions my chest, gripping me in the constricting arms of worry. Alarm is a trigger which keeps squeezing. Sensitive as it is, my ability to reason wanes while the tide of drama rises in my blood. Adrenaline, I have not missed you old companion, I do not like the way you sap my world of tranquility.

What am I doing? Is this how Deliah went missing? No one will ever find me, like a fairy tale I've vanished inside a mountain, crazy enough to think I'm rendezvousing with a god. Maybe the pain and loneliness finally cracked my fragile psyche and I'm hallucinating all of this.

Because it's not normal.
None
of this is normal.

Clinging to the undulating steed, the heat of this inner world overwhelms me, adding to the pounding of the pulse in my ears.

Rocks don't have blood, strange beings hidden in mountains are the lore of Mordor, not what normal girls living in rural England experience because they invited a stranger in to dry his clothes and have a bowl of tandoori curry.

He could be a changeling, one of the fey the olde folk hint at with that wise twinkle in their eyes (which I always assigned to a smidgen too much whiskey in their tea), whom some would swear on their lives exist. Everyone has a story, a familial tale, something they believe which gives credence to the occult pedigree of the land, giving authenticity to druids and dragons, gnomes and ley lines, witchwoods, hobgoblins, esoteric swords, and lands hidden in mists where the ordinary like me cross the veil into a world where time doesn't exist and we fall in love with the beautiful but deadly immortal.

I'm having a panic attack. I'm trapped! I've been trapped before; it's the dark, it's the claustrophobia, it's the unbearable tragedy of not being able to see when an assault is coming, unable to discern danger because the environment is alien and strange and asphyxiating freedom.

Arms tighten, reinforcing my jeopardy. Leug says softly, as if sharing a secret, “What troubles you? Your tension is palpable.”

“I need to get out, I need air!”

I can't think straight, my voice comes out shrill. I don't like the sensation of being powerless, of being a victim. This entire scenario has the makings of abduction all over it. I want to claw and scratch and run and scream. Caged makes me want to fight, and that's why bastards cage the free, it unleashes rage and fear and terror. It shreds logic because as small as the reptilian brain is, it controls us, and it will murder to survive.

“Okay, we'll take a break just up ahead. Calm sweet sváss, there is no reason to fear. Despite appearances this is not what it seems.”

Twisting to face him, I shriek, “Not what it seems? And what exactly does it
seem
?”

Eye to eye, I'm locked into a gaze so blue it looks like a prototype for someone evil. Unintimidated I give him the ocular shakedown, visually daring him to fob me off with meaningless placations. I've heard them all before, and I know a lie when I hear one. If abuse taught me one thing, it's how to recognize the untruths from the honest.

Calm and steadfast, he speaks with the assuredness of the don of the illuminati, saying, “It seems dark, it looks and feels like a trap, and that is what they wanted me to believe. They wanted me to believe I was in prison, because if they could cage my perception they'd have caged me. It was effective, I almost believed them, until I realized that without the dark we cannot identify our light. Darkness requires light, light requires dark. The contrast makes it shine all the brighter, its very presence pierces through the shades and inky black like an esoteric weapon. The more you try to warp light, the brighter it illuminates. Ever seen light filter through frosted or bottled glass? It refracts more when the filter is warped, magnified more, as if obscurity is a challenge it can't help but overwhelm.”

I nod, watching his full lips compress as if he's suppressing a smile, continuing unperturbed, Leug saying, “In darkness light is evident, but if you put something dark into bright, you lose the dark completely. It becomes insipid and lost inside the whole. To be individual you require the opposite polarity. What they didn't anticipate is that it is instinct to shine brighter in darkness. By thrusting me into the underworld they unleashed my potential. The only person I need master, is myself.”

His madness makes sense, and it does soothe me. He sounds as persecuted as I feel. His inflection is one worn smooth after years of bumping against ragged edges. His timbre that of peace, of resignation, the frustration polished down after an eternity of aggravation.

It's wisdom. It's the tone of a wise sage who has nothing left to prove because he found his essence when he lost his ego. An ego perceives competition, where there is no rival there can be no ego. Pride, and therefore ego, is the enemy of unity, of wholeness.

No matter who views you as competition, if you don't enter the race they cannot better you. Competition is petty and it's also reliant on perspective to exist. A wise pacifist sees no reason to engage in any form of conflict, certainly not one where the net result is discourse.

Mentally you have to be
in it
for it to matter.

He's the Norse version of an evil angel, a fallen brother no better than the worst devil, yet he's down here riding the flow of life - meanwhile everyone else is fretting about him, and he couldn't give a toss. It's brilliant, classic, and ice-breaking.

Good heavens, I fell chin first for Yoda.

“
Huh?” I mumble, needing him to keep talking, to break the isolation of this hot tunnel and our weird ride.

There's a strange sound rubbing at the periphery of my hearing and oddly it reminds me of the dulled shake of the seeds inside a dried calabash. Somewhere in the veins of this catacomb is a witchdoctor shaking fates over bones, or a voodoo priest is renouncing his religion, or the hoodoo are dispersing the evil eyes focused on our location, stalking our souls through Valhalla's ether...

He speaks over the subconscious heartbeat of this place and the subliminal alarm bells we're setting off, when he says in answer, “They are all alike, which is why they think they are white, pure, perfect. They think in their sameness they have power, but it's not so. Our power only matures and develops when we are cast into despair. That is when we have no need to fit in, no need to blend, no need to follow the pack and perpetrate the same lies. Their values cease to be ours. In order to know yourself and be yourself, you have to reach that point where survival is all that matters. In that moment a man knows himself, inside and out.”

I nod, in that case I know myself better than most.

Leug continues, his wisdom coating fear with a velvet cloak of comfort, saying, “I could see the obvious because the slate in Asgard was so bland, and such an anomaly compared to the rest of creation that I wondered why the gods and brethren sought to live in plain white light. Even the nebulae are colorful and striking, so why then would the gods choose one shade, one hue, one banal and bland tone as a representation of their holiness? They do so to flood out the grays. In complete light no one can pinpoint their sins, or target them individually. Most cunning really. To weigh a god's spirit, put him in the dark. If he shines, then you know he is of love and truth. But
they
, they'd become inconsequential down here because they are as black as the edge of outer space. The dark would expose them as the liars they are. They have no light. They cast out light because truth threatens them. Do not be afraid of this darkness, it's not here to persecute you, it exists only to accuse them.”

Why am I only meeting you now? I needed your wide shoulders and words of wisdom when I was alone in the dark without my sister and best friend. I know despair, its taste is familiar to me. I'd bet my tarot collection that I've known it far more than I've ever sampled joy.

Joy is warm and effervescent, anguish and suffering is the flavor of desolation. It has a powdery residue that coats everything in black and white, them and us, fulfillment and destitution, approval and dejection. It's sharp, leaving splinters on the tongue, prickling corneas with tears which distort in frenetic urgency to change the lenses of the eyes back to harmony. It's so cold it burns the nasal cavity and aches ears. It is the Maine winter to a Bahamas summer. Comparison is the mother of cruelty.

I think I've found my soulmate.

The big question here, is, who are
they
? How many of
them
are there?

He nudges his head next to my ear, jarring me, saying,  “We're here. Still need to take a break?”

“Where is here?” I gasp, tension still squeezing my throat tight.

“
A view to the ribbons of unlimited ethereal potential.”

I nod, needing the respite to again gather my courage. His answers are like riddles. Have you noticed how the immortal and wise like to do that to answers? They are fashioned to fathom and deduce meaning, as if every answer is some sort of test and a display of aptitude. It also has the nasty knack of amputating every answer into a question, until you're lost inside the riddle's maze.

I'm grateful for him, even if I think his idea of an adventure falls far short of Narnia. I've yet to spy a hedge (or a hedgewitch), a real maze, a nemesis, or an oracle. Perhaps the brothers Grimm have colored my irises with diabolical water - where falling down roots is an elevator to the imagination's door, where opening a book is an enchantment where we are compelled by spell-ing, and how truthfully once upon a time every book was a spell, a binding spell, and the reader merely a victim of alchemy.

Perhaps my lover put the romantic into nec
romantic
. When we raise the words, are we not truly raising the dead? Repeat them at your peril. Fall in love with the hidden side. Why are words written in black ink on white pages? From the pale grade of papyrus to the faded shades of parchment, we do not write white on black, because then we'd be evil witches indeed.

Black on white, dark on light, because only darkness sets us free, empowers, breaking the rules inside its own book. The most written words in the world are religious tomes, they lock and bind, they trap the reader, the binding spell so old no one can smell the sulfur originally used to bind the ink to the page. The mordant, the fixer. Ironic, iconic, and educating indeed.

Hide the obvious in plain sight and no one will ever question it, yet here I'm faced with the obvious, black is right, it's powerful, and I am walking its macabre path. The blind read the wind, they read the scars, they read the tones behind your voice.

Sight renders you vulnerable, and blind.

Only those who can see can read black writing on a white page, and when they do they become blind.

Oh my gosh, he's turned me into a riddle, I'm one of them! My education has merely rendered me ignorant.

How can one man's influence, his unspoken suggestions, expose so much without commitment, without speech, without utterance. A master of shadows would indeed use them to convey meaning, to test potential.