The door creaked open on a slow exhale of steam, and Loki stepped into the bedroom like a man born from the mist. The towel slung around his hips was nearly criminal—too low to be practical, too deliberate to be innocent. It clung to him, teasing every sharp angle and dip of his frame, a whisper away from falling. Water gleamed across his chest, racing in rivulets along the grooves of his stomach, his skin warm and flushed from the heat of the shower—and from something deeper still.

And there she was. Calm. Still. Reading, maybe. Writing. Existing. Unbothered.

It drove him mad.

Did she not see him? Or worse—did she see everything and just choose not to move?

He knew what today was. Mating season. Not a crude ritual, but a biological truth buried in his bones. His Jötunn blood was humming under the surface, ancient and demanding. He’d gone too many nights now resisting the itch to claw the need out of his own skin, but gods, she made it impossible to ignore. Her scent. Her voice. The way she touched his hand and kissed the tips of his fingers like she didn’t know he’d die for her on instinct.

Loki approached slowly, like a cat stretching toward the fire, but there was a tension in his shoulders that gave him away. He wasn't playing anymore.

He let the towel slip a fraction lower. Not enough to expose—not yet—but enough to send a very clear message. His body was pulsing with heat, with want, and she was the only remedy.

He stood in front of her, close enough that she could reach out and feel the steam still rolling off his skin, his fingers twitching like he didn’t know whether to kneel or pull her into his arms.

His voice was velvet edged with hunger, low and indulgent, almost daring:

"You’re not going to make me beg, are you?"

He said it with a smirk, but his eyes—his eyes were wild things, dark and glittering, pupils wide and ravenous.

She hadn't even touched him, and still, he ached like she had.

And that was the cruelest part.

Because she knew—of course she did—that she didn’t need to lift a finger to make a god come undone. All she had to do was look at him like this: calm, sweet, untouched. And he would unravel himself to pieces, one low-slung towel at a time.