Chapter Text
Why had Jane let herself be talked into this?
“Now, where should we start?” Darcy yelled over the earsplitting dance music as she dragged Jane through the ridiculously huge Odinson mansion. Bodies were packed into every nook and cranny, talking, laughing, chasing one another, dancing. All with a red Solo cup in hand. Jane felt like she had inadvertently walked into one of those stupidly inaccurate teen shows on the CW with pretty people and high fashion.
Apparently the cliché wasn’t that fallacious, after all. Not when you had money.
“I think,” Darcy continued, “first an illegal beverage, and then we get down and boogie!”
Jane had no intention of doing either, but she let Darcy lead on anyway. It took several wrong turns before they found the kitchen where a group of boys were shouting “Go! Go! Go!” at some jock doing a keg stand.
The next couple of hours were a blur of cheap beer (which Jane didn’t drink), dancing with some guy who smelled like pistachios, and ducking out of the way when the football team decided to transform the living-room-turned-dance-floor into a mosh pit.
This was dumb. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted lay in bed with her laptop and check out the latest images posted on the Hubble website. Where had Darcy disappeared to? Probably some makeout session with Ian, her not-boyfriend. Ugh.
Jane couldn’t honestly say if she’d been looking for her wayward friend or just some quiet place to escape when she stumbled into the only empty room in this gargantuan place. The walls were lined with book shelves, floor to ceiling. If it weren’t for the king-sized four-poster bed in the center of the room, she would have thought this was the library. She perused the titles—everything from Shakespeare to college-level science texts to the lifespans of Venus Flytraps to cheap sci-fi paperbacks. She pulled out a copy of The Evolution of Physics, whistling when she saw that it was a first edition.
Oh, yeah. She could ride out the party in here. Whoever had this place was her kindred spirit.
“Do you always go through people’s things without their consent?”
She squeaked, nearly dropping the book. “I’m sorry. I—” The rest of her apology went dry when her eyes found the other occupant of the room.
Loki Odinson. The school’s new resident bad boy.
Logically, she knew that Loki was Thor’s brother—so it would make sense that he would live in the same house—but her brain hadn’t really made the connection until this moment. And her brain was less focused on how siblings worked and more interested in the fact that the brooding, arrogant junior who shared her advanced calculus and physics classes was currently topless. Unconsciously, her gaze traveled over his surprisingly muscled chest (he’d always seemed so scrawny next to his brother, despite being nearly the same towering height) down to the smattering of hair peaking over the waistband of his lowslung jeans. “The happy trail” Darcy called it.
Jane swallowed, her entire face growing hot with embarrassment. She wasn’t that type of girl! She was a girl who holed up in the library reading the latest science journals rather than the current issue of Cosmo. She didn’t think about the kind of stuff that involved half-nude members of the opposite sex. She was only a sophomore, for crying out loud! Barely sixteen!
Loki grinned, and it made her even more uncomfortable. “I’ve only come to change my shirt,” he said, “but if you insist…” He turned the lock on the door, and then began to unbuckle his belt, advancing toward her.
Jane’s eyes widened. “No! I’m not—” She backed up against the shelves, desperately trying to remember everything from that self-defense workshop Mrs. Hawkins, the P.E. teacher, made all the girls take. “I’m not here for…that.”
He stopped two steps from her and laughed. Laughed. A total guffaw—doubled over, even. “The look on your face,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m going to remember that for years.”
Her mouth fell open in disgust. “You’re such an asshole!”
“I’ve been called worse.” He shrugged.
Her vicious retort was lost when someone knocked. “Jane?” came Darcy’s muffled voice from the other side.
He beat Jane to the door, and unlocking it, opened it just enough to casually lean against the frame. “Looking for your friend?”
“Whoa!” Jane couldn’t see Darcy, but she could imagine the girl’s expression. “You’re actually kinda hot.”
Loki smirked. “Shocking, I know. But you’ve come for Jane.” He pushed the door open farther. “She’s been keeping me company.”
Darcy looked between the pair, lips parting in a gasp as she clearly drew the wrong conclusion. Jane wanted to die. Scratch that. She wanted to have never existed in the first place, so people couldn’t spread rumors about that quiet, bookish girl getting it on with Thor Odinson’s little brother.
Loki sighed. “It’s a pity we were interrupted just when things were getting really fun.” He was talking to her now. “I suppose you have to leave now.”
Before she could deny that anything like that had been happening in this room, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. Jane was not completely inexperienced in the act, but the few times she’d locked lips with a guy, it had been a little sloppy and awkward. This was nothing like that. This was the kind of kiss that they wrote about in romance novels (not that she’d read any—well, more than one), the kind of kiss they captured onscreen in the romantic comedies Darcy made her watch. This was the kind of kiss that sent a bolt of lightning across every nerve-ending in her body.
The kind of kiss that made her almost wish she was that type of girl.
And then it was over.
“I’ll see you on Monday, then,” he said, stepping back from her.
She nodded dumbly, barely aware of Darcy pulling her out of the room, leading her down the hall, babbling about not knowing that Jane even liked the dude and was the kiss as good as it looked?
“Oh, and Jane!” Loki shouted, drawing the attention of everyone nearby. “You can borrow my books any time you want.” He winked at her and shut his door.
Horror washed over her as everyone was sent into a flurry of whispers. She wanted to wave the copy of The Evolution of Physics she’d accidentally walked away with, screaming that she had literally borrowed a book. But nobody would believe her. So, she let Darcy usher her down the stairs and out into the night, all while hating Loki with every bone in her body.
And hating more that a part of her wanted to kiss him again.