revelations 01 - on a red horse Read online

  “If I agree to see you later, will you please go? And also buy real clothes. People don’t dress like that here. Or anywhere for that matter.”

  “If you give me a place and time, I’ll make the agreement.”

  She scribbled her gym address on a yellow sticky-note and shoved it at his chest. “Be there at five thirty; we can talk then. You better be dressed properly.”

  He kissed her hand and left the cubicle. All she could do was drop her head onto the edge of her desk and hope she was still employed.

  What if she had stayed with him? She couldn’t fathom others being given the mantles her and her companions wore for the past few thousand years. Nor did she think Cloris would even allow another take that position. If she had stayed in the void maybe the destiny they’d shared would have just slipped away, unknown, and never come to pass...or maybe something worse.

  Scarlet didn’t want to dwell on it. For now this was her life, her job, and that squat little man was her boss. She scooted toward the desk and picked up her headset determined to finish the day without another interruption to her routine.

  Chapter Two

  TYR SAUNTERED FROM THE metal tower amidst the stares of human men and women alike. It didn’t matter though because he finally found Scarlet, and he wouldn’t be letting her go anytime soon. The men he saw were sad, little humans. The women could never compare to his woman, so they were also beneath his notice. She asked him to find appropriate clothing, and so he would.

  He walked down the street to a store he knew to be a popular place amongst the mortal men. A woman approached him as he entered, and he sized her up. She wasn’t as tall or in as good physical condition as his bride, but perhaps she knew men’s clothing well.

  “My wife asked me to wear appropriate clothing,” he told the woman as she appraised him from the top of his head to the tips of his boots. At six feet four inches he towered almost an entire foot over her, so she tilted her head back in order to see all of him.

  “I can certainly help you with that, sir. Right this way.”

  She led him to a dressing room behind a fogged glass window and took less than a minute to measure him completely. For a human she was impressive.

  “Just one moment, sir, and I’ll bring a few things for you to try.”

  She left and returned with a suit and a coat. The woman eyed his missing right hand while kneeling to take his boots away for leather shoes, but he politely declined them. Those boots were made from the hides of wolves he’d hunted before this woman’s family had begun to spread across the Earth. They were almost as precious to him as his wife, not that this little human could understand such things.

  He put on the suit and let her take away the leathers. While he stood in front of the mirror, he decided he couldn’t dress well and not do something about his hair.

  When she returned he asked, “Do you have something I can use for my hair?”

  She looked around before a light entered her eyes, and she pulled an elastic from her own wrist. It smelled of her, but Tyr didn’t mind. Once in his hair, he wouldn’t notice. She watched rapt as he quickly braided his shoulder length hair and secured the end with the brown elastic that blended into his own chestnut colored hair.

  The attendant nodded her approval. “Looks good.”

  Tyr now looked almost like every other man on the street, save his height and weeks of beard growth. He would have shaved if he’d actually thought he would find Scarlet today. She eluded him for so long he doubted he would ever find her, but he had kept looking.

  He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he searched heaven and hell for her. The shining realm was a quick check because she would have stood out in a place like that. The Underworld took longer, mainly because its occupying goddess, Hel, had been reluctant to allow him to leave. She’d claimed it had been a millennia since a man had entered her bed and practically begged him to stay. Had he been a minor deity, he might have been captured whether he’d wished to join her or not.

  The memory of the stench of her breath and her complete lack of sex appeal reminded him of the sulfur stricken realm. He curled his lip before shaking away the memory. He hated stepping foot in the Underworld, but for Scarlet he would endure anything, including Hel’s disgusting advances. Maybe if the goddess bathed once in a while she might not be so lonely.

  The sales woman reminded him of her presence as she stroked his upper arm under the guise of checking the material.

  “I’m ready to pay now.” He handed the sales girl a plastic card Thor had given him upon leaving Asgard, and she took it away.

  After concluding the business at the shop, he had no other errand save going to the location where Scarlet asked him to meet her. Back on the street he searched for a clock on one of the many-screened surfaces in New York City. Six hours remained. A yellow conveyance pulled up, and he directed the driver to the gym address Scarlet gave him. Once he arrived he sat on a bench outside to wait. The humans had long been a point of fascination to him, rather like ants in a glass house. He could watch them flitter this way and that as they went about their lives. While they looked harmless and innocuous, they could turn from victim to predator at the slightest provocation. Even something that would seem of little consequence to one of them could set another off enough to do fatal damage.

  He’d witnessed it over and over, and yet it still held him in sway. That particular human aspect made him all the more curious as to why Scarlet would choose to live among them. She disliked the human world even more than most immortals. As he’d searched for her, he realized it was likely her friends’ decision to leave the void. He admired Scarlet’s loyalty to her friends. Well, before she left him for them.

  He recalled the moment as if it happened the day before. He woke and found her no longer at his side. Her absence burned like a void in his soul. He vowed from that day he would not rest until he found her. The other gods mocked him, but he found their behavior no different than any other day. The hours passed in a blur as he watched the humans, men, women, and their offspring, pass him by. He felt Scarlet’s presence like a brush of warm fragrant air the moment she walked up the street.

  His eyes met hers as if by force, and he swallowed the desire to run to her and wrap his arms around her lean frame. When she finally made it to him, he smiled up at her from his seat on the bench. “My love, thank you of keeping your word.”

  “When have I not?”

  His smile slipped as his heart hardened a little. “Until death do us part, I believe.”

  She pursed her lips but said nothing as she pressed forward. “This is not a date. I come here to work out every day, and you wanted to talk. So I figured we could do that while I work out.”

  “Have I dressed appropriately for you?”

  “A little over-dressed, but a huge improvement over that fox—"she gestured to his neck area"—thing.”

  He bowed his head at the compliment and stood to follow her into the gym. Now that he thought about it the suit sales woman seemed a little taken aback by his animal skins as well. Maybe it wasn’t an animal found on Earth. They moved to the back of the gym past human stares, until they reached an empty room lined with red vinyl pads and mirrors.

  “Is this a sparring room?” he asked peering around and finding a light switch.

  “It is. You’re the only being in my vicinity who can withstand me in a sparring match, and I need to burn off some energy.”

  He shrugged out of his jacket. “It would be my pleasure.”

  Tyr smiled broadly as she stripped her own clothing and put on shorts and a sports bra with her back turned. Something he’d witnessed her doing countless times, and yet it never held any less awe for him. She’d toned up even more than the last time he had the opportunity to see her nude, and she looked good enough to bite. Even now he wanted to sink his teeth into the small hollow at her hipbone.

  “Stop staring,” she said as she plopped to the mats to stretch. He stood and watched her maneuver from
one position to the other with absolutely no acknowledgment of the effect she had on him. He wanted nothing more than to push her back to the mats and show her why she wanted him to begin with. But after three years, he did not want to scare her away. He swallowed the lump in his throat but dared not remove his gaze from her.

  “Are you ready?” she asked finally, standing and bouncing back and forth on her bare feet.

  “Of course.”

  She shook her head and approached to reach up to loosen the silk necktie. He had become so wound up in watching Scarlet he forgot the thing the sales woman chose to match his eyes.

  After a moment he met her gaze, but instead of love or even her cold aloofness of the morning, he stood before War. He had done something in error, and she was about to make him pay for it. “What is it?”

  “You come to New York to find me and then come here smelling of another woman?”

  He rolled his eyes forgetting with whom he was dealing with for a second. “You misunderstand. The woman who sold me this suit gave me something for which to secure my hair.”

  She reached behind his head and pulled the elastic out roughly before tossing it away. “You will never smell of another woman when you come to me again.”

  He smirked. “You’re going to allow an again?

  Tyr crossed the line, and she was on edge. He was flat on his back, the mat cushioning him before he even realized what had happened. She sat on his chest with her knees almost up into his armpits.

  “You have improved, I see,” he quipped, reaching up to cup her left hip.

  “I was always a little gentle on you. Pity, I guess.” She sneered yanking his hand away and pinning it up by his head. She had gone too far over his boundaries.

  He pinned her right knee with this forearm and rolled her over taking a dominant position, until she wrapped her thighs around his waist and locked her feet behind his back. He scooted forward so her knees were almost perpendicular to her head, and she relented. He tossed her over to the side and pinned her so he could look into her eyes while pressing his weight across her body.

  “You will never pity me. You did that the very first day, and I showed you how wrong you were for doing so. Do I need to show you again?”

  He had touched something there. A hard glint entered her eyes, and she pursed her lips, almost in invitation for a kiss. He wanted to take it so much that he flexed his hand into the mat to establish a grounding point.

  “Release me,” she said through gritted teeth. He did so at once and sat back on his feet still crouched to the mats. She stood, walked over to a mirror, and looked down at her feet.

  This was a new development. No matter how far she pushed him and how much he hated her sometimes; she was his woman. Until death do us part was the vow they’d taken and he would make her see he took that seriously. Regardless, he cared for her well-being. “Are you well, my love?”

  “I’m fine, and stop calling me that.” She turned to face him. “We need to get a divorce.”

  The words hit him like a punch to the stomach. Each inhale and exhale became physically painful as he met her eyes. They were red-rimmed and almost misty as if she might cry, but he knew better than that. This woman had no heart. She did not do something as pitiable as weep. He steeled his heart and put on a mask of arrogance, one he’d perfected long ago to endure the emotional torment at the hands of his so-called family. Even she would be unable to see through it.

  Chapter Three

  THE WORDS CLIMBED OUT of her throat on a wave of nausea and hung in the air between them creating a heavy tension. Scarlet looked away, like a coward, so she couldn’t see his face. He always had such an expressive face, and she couldn’t stand to see the heartbreak in those beautiful eyes.

  She heard him speaking but couldn’t make out his words over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears. Tears pooled at the corner of her eyes, but she wouldn’t allow them to fall. She would burn the Earth to ash before anyone saw her cry. Finally his words broke through the sound of her own heartbeat.

  “My love, I said, ‘until death do us part.’ Unless you’re prepared to kill me here and now, then you will not get what you desire.”

  She swung around to face him. He wore a look of pure arrogance and dare she say it, challenge. He wasn’t listening or taking her seriously.

  “In case you didn’t notice I live on Earth now, not in the void and not in Asgard. Here. I have a very different life than the one I had before and in that life there is no—"she gestured between the two of them"—us.”

  One corner of his mouth turned up, and he stalked closer reaching for her. She backed up until her shoulder blades hit the cool glass of the mirror. “These humans have broken you. You retreat. War does not retreat.”

  She swallowed and looked down at her hands. His words were true no matter how much it pained her to hear them. He didn’t stop but continued forward until his body stood flush with hers. She looked up into his eyes and forgot what they were fighting about. She saw her happiness there, the nights spent in each other’s embrace, and more specifically how often and passionately they’d made love. The walls in his home in Asgard had shaken with the sound of their lovemaking.

  He leaned down so inches separated their lips, but she could not look away from his eyes. Tyr cupped her face moving closer centimeter by centimeter, slowly torturing her with anticipation. She could have pushed forward and closed the distance between them, or she could have smacked her head on the mirror behind her to get away from the inevitable. Hell, she might have even been able to toss him to the ground and scurry away. The problem was...he was absolutely correct. War did not back down, especially to invading Norse gods with kissable lips.

  When his lips finally touched hers it felt as though she had stood there for a lifetime waiting for it. The taste of him foreign and yet so familiar. As if they hadn’t stopped kissing each other, not for a single day. He growled into her mouth as his hand trailed to the back of her neck and his fingers slid into her hair. She followed suit reaching up to clutch the expensive fabric of his shirt to pull him closer.

  Scarlet pressed into his lips harder until he opened and she could entwine her tongue with his. He tasted like sunshine and the ozone that permeates the air just before a thunderstorm. His beard rubbed her chin and around her mouth. It had grown past the stubble phase, but she didn’t mind the additional sensation it brought to the moment.

  His hand tightened in her hair as he delved deeper into her mouth, pulling her as much as she was him. The hard press of his erection growing between them snapped her out of a lust induced haze. One second they were kissing and the next she had pushed him to the floor. Scarlet stood with her back pressed against the mirror, her hands leaving warm fogging prints against the clean glass.

  “Woman,” he warned in a low a growl.

  Anyone else might have cowered at that tone, but she reveled in it. Loved it since the first time he’d made love to her and passionately whispered her name in that same gravelly voice. Every part of her body and heart wanted to mount him right there on the floor and make up for the three years they’d lost, but her head told her no. It reminded her of the nights she’d spent alone in her bed, and warned her of when he would tire of the human world and return to Asgard, as he most certainly would. He would leave her even more in love with him. Leave her needing him more than she had over the last three years. She didn’t know if she could survive that. Ultimately the one thing that could bring down War was love.

  When he pushed himself up and stared at her, she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Woman, if I have to stay on this gods forsaken planet for eternity I will take that look from your eyes.”

  She cleared her throat and shook herself sliding the mask of indifference she wore well into place. “What look is that?”

  “The look that says you’re a wounded animal. The look that does not challenge me back and say you will always win. What the hell happened that made you into this sort of woman? You’re nothing
like the person I fell in love with.”

  His words carved themselves into her heart and soul. They wounded her deeply. The bite of tears at the corner of her eyes caught her off guard, but she refused to let them fall. She couldn’t remember when she had transformed from a supportive friend staying on Earth for unity to a pitiful excuse of pseudo-immortality. The word person had popped into her mind first, but she really wasn’t. She needed to keep reminding herself of that fact. It seemed every time she let herself get comfortable something showed up to remind her who she was and wasn’t.

  Scarlet slid down the mirror to the ground and put her head in her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  Tyr scooted over until his back touched the mirror beside her and gathered her into his arms so she could lean on his shoulder. She wouldn’t cry, but she would allow him to comfort her for a few minutes. Just a few minutes.

  “I thought we were going to spar?” he asked after a few moments of blessed, comfortable silence.

  “We were, but I feel like yelling at you has helped.”

  He inhaled deeply, and she forced herself to meet his eyes. “Was I not enough for you?” he asked.

  With a few words he broke her heart all over again. If she told him the truth, it would give him hope. If she lied, it would break her a little more, cracking the fragile shell her soul had become without him. Minutes passed as he waited for her answer. She may not let her tears fall, but she could clearly see a pool of them building in his eyes. Deep enough that he looked away. She couldn’t lie. “You have always been enough for me.”

  He pulled away from her, breaking all contact. “You pity me, just as everyone else does.”

  “What about you is there to pity? You’re beautiful, kind, just, and the sexiest being I have ever come across. Hades not included.”