His fingers were nimble as they wove skillfully between thick bundles of the dark strands of hair, pale, cold fingertips brushing lightly over the nape of her neck, ghosting over her skin and making her shiver as she gazed at such bright eyes in the reflection before her, his face just behind hers as a smile threatened to stretch upon his lips.

Resisting the urge to laugh, she dedicated her attention to tracing the slow movements of his arms, watching the way his eyes focused entirely on the task, following the slow, calm rise and fall of his chest with each measured breath.

"Where did you learn to braid hair, anyway?" Sif asked curiously, perhaps even mockingly, her tone carrying with it the tell-tale sign of purposeful teasing, a habitual thing she'd picked up from him through all of the years she'd been privy to the minute, near undetectable changes in his tone that foretold his true intentions.

He only laughed at her, a deep, sultry rumble far in the back of his throat, smirking as he shook his head, the moonlight sneaking in from the window bathing his features in an almost ethereal, angelic glow, and she stifled the desire, a near overpowering, suffocating need, to touch the skin she knew to be as cold as ice, but as comforting to her as the soothing lull of his voice late at night, when slumber stubbornly evaded her and eyelids refused to rest, when she needed to be talked into dark, warm oblivion more than almost anything.

He tied off the unbraided ends, the small strands that couldn't be twisted together any further, with a small band, gingerly running his long fingers down the silky texture of her plait, and glanced at her in the mirror, that odd, genuine smile shining in the emerald depths of his eyes as his hands came to snake over her shoulders, the smooth pads of his fingers flitting across her revealed collarbone, and she relaxed in her chair, the silk nightgown she wore rising up her thighs, barely sliding against the milky, unscathed skin there with the movement as he leaned forward to rest his chin beside the crook of her neck, turning his head to press tender, chilling lips to the sensitive skin as her eyelids fluttered closed.

"My mother often asked me to braid her hair, since it was so long," he explained in a soft, reverent voice as she felt the breathy puff of air fall upon her neck, shivering involuntarily as she felt the excitement course through her veins, a feeling she'd come to think of in a rather familiar light after so many nights spent wrapped in his arms beneath the covers, bare skin pressed to her own as she felt his heartbeat, steady and reliable and unfaltering, at her back.

She could still remember all the places his fingers had touched upon her spine, counting the notches with absent interest in the darkness overlooked by distant, twinkling stars.

He moved to drag his lips over the bend of her shoulder, her girlish heart racing at his every attentive, thrilling touch, and the corners of her lips, once so lovingly described as alluring and as luscious as the roses in Frigga's gardens by an awed Loki as he'd felt them on his skin, curled up at the corners, and she knew, without having to open her eyes, that he'd seen their movement in the mirror, if his knowing, satisfied laughter, sending vibrations through her shoulder blades, was any indication.

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