🥀 3 🥀

~♤~

Loki had never had an issue with women.

They were perfect for their intended purpose only. Which was mild entertainment at best.

He wasn't like his brother however, who was a ladies man through and through. Loki's cooler exterior and demeanor made sure of that. It was easier to keep them at arms distance. Just like everything else in life.

Thor had a couple of girlfriends here and there, sure, but nothing in this family ever lasted long.

The only time he'd witnessed true love was between Odin and his mother, Frigga. But once she was gone, Odin became even more brutal and calculated within the business. Frigga was his last anchor to morality.

Loki missed his beloved mother immensely. She had called him her 'little shadow' as he had followed her around everywhere, always clinging to her side.

Being the least favourite child of his father meant he was rarely shown the same affections as Thor the Golden boy. But Frigga was different. She was the one that wanted to do something good with their wealth and privilege, an attempt Loki believed to offset all the terrible things Odin did that Frigga pretended she was oblivious to.

It was Frigga who gave him his love of reading and encouraged his studies. His favourite was The Picture of Dorian Grey and Frankenstein. He supposed he could relate to feeling like a hideous creation.

With Frigga gone, there was no one to defend his choices to pursue his actual interests.

He put everything he could into the family business in a desperate bid to earn a place in his father's heart. It was fruitless of course. No matter how many shipments he arranged, international ties he nurtured or hits he carried out, he could never compare to his brother.

Odin tolerated him within the business because he was the best at seeking out the liars and the rats. He believed Loki had a natural affinity to tell when someone was up to no good, or would cross them. For this reason, Loki got a lot of the dirty work, whereas Thor got to make the bigger decisions.

Loki's anger at losing not only his birth family, but then his only loved member of his adopted family, had been sharpened into a deadly blade that would slice through anyone's heart.

He had vowed to never appear weak again. Or people would leave.

He couldn't protect his mother from the cancer that grew inside her. And still to this day, his grief and rage had grown into somewhat of a tumour of his own.

Loki believed he was always meant to be this way. Staying cold, cut off and conniving, until he saw her.

She radiated warmth and comfort. Even from that brief interaction. The way her cheeks blushed at his words, the way she bit her lip in anticipation, how her face lit up when she spoke about her passions. She was life.

But he couldn't entertain those thoughts of ever truly being with someone. The job was too dangerous. It was a lifestyle that would suck those in like a black hole around him. If he couldn't ask her on a date, surely there was a way he could arrange to see her again. He was intrigued and needed to know more.

Without a relationship, for everyone's sake.

He was pulled from his thoughts by the grating sound of his brother's voice as he entered Loki's office without knocking. A habit he felt like stabbing him for.

Loki looks up at Thor, growling under his breath as he lopes onto the leather black sofa near his desk, making himself at home.

"What is it?" Loki asks impatiently.

"Father wants to know if you heard from the Barnes family? Says they've been late on their shipments for a week now and he's got a bad feeling. You know how they can get. They're our biggest threat if they turn. We need to keep them close." Thor explains as Loki sneers.

Of course he'd checked in. He was good at his job, unlike his brother who just turned up and looked like he was doing something every now and then.

"I've spoken to the son, James. He's taking over imminently." Loki began, trying to hide the jealously in his voice.

James got on his nerves. He was self assured and confident. Too confident. His father had become ill and James was stepping up. Loki had heard rumours about him. How much darkness he had in his soul. Even being nicknamed the 'Winter soldier' by those who had the misfortune of coming into contact with him.

He'd been ex-army and had a titanium arm after an injury on tour. Loki would rather keep on his good side to keep things running smoothly, though he wasn't good at playing nice.

"The transition from his father to him has somewhat delayed the last week of shipments. I've told him if it's not back up and running by tomorrow we will pull him as a supplier." Loki confirms as Thor nods thoughtfully.

Suddenly, Thor stands up and makes his way to Loki's side of the desk, taking a seat on the mahogany wood to the side of him. Loki sighs, putting down his pen and turning in his chair questioningly.

"You seemed to hit it off with Miss Romanoff's friend the other night." Thor notes.

Loki shrugs. "Who?" He feigns but Thor can see through his illusions. He always could.

"You know damn well who Nat is Brother. And by default her friend. What was her name? Lily?" He presses.

Loki grits his teeth.

"Lyla." He corrects automatically.

Thor leaps up patting him on the shoulder.

"I knew it. You do like her." He taunts as Loki rolled his eyes, busying himself again with the notes in front of him, trying to ignore his oaf of a brother.

"I made polite conversation. As you instructed me to for your own sake. I saw the way you eyed over the redhead." Loki explains as he clicks his neck from side to side, still keeping his eyes focused on his scrawled calligraphy in front of him.

He hated being called out by his brother.

"That's exactly my point. You never make polite conversation with anyone." Thor insists as he grabs the pen out of Loki's hand, turning his chair back to look at him.

Loki clenches his fist by his side, waiting to swing at the blond-haired baboon.

"Brother, I'm busy. What is the purpose of this enlightening small talk?" Loki states sarcastically as he reluctantly looks at Thor.

He can see a smirk on his face he'd really like to smack off.

"Well, perhaps Loki she is someone you could spend time with like we spoke about before. I saw you give her your card." Thor's smugness grew as he saw Loki briefly blush before his facade came back up.

"I pitied her. Besides, it's been two days and she hasn't rang." Loki admitted.

Not that he was waiting on it of course.

"I'm sure she will. She seemed equally fond of you from what Nat has told me." Thor said as his eyes lit up.

Loki raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"Oh interested now, are you? If you must know, I called Natasha to say thank you for the other night on behalf of us both. She said Lyla seemed smitten with you." Thor teases.

Loki bends his head down to hide a smile taunting the corners of his mouth.

He never showed weakness around his brother. He never even let a girl entertain his thoughts for more than an hour or so.

So why was she different?

"Look, I know you're not the relationship type. So why don't you just....come up with some kind of arrangement? That's how I met Natasha for the club opening. She used to have an arrangement with Stark. I got her number a while ago but never used her as a contact. It seemed to work well enough for him from what he told me." Thor chuckles as he remembers Tony boasting about his favourite girl.

It hadn't seemed cheap at all. They had both looked genuinely happy. Lord knows Stark had enough money to make it work.

"Arrangement...that sounds like a hooker Brother." Loki sighs as he attempts to get back to work, clicking a few buttons on the sleek black laptop in front of him now, trying to appear busy.

This conversation was making him uncomfortable.

"Well you know the official term but I know you probably despise it." Thor began as Loki looked up at him warningly.

The phrase 'Sugar Daddy' made his skin crawl.

"I can get any woman I want in this city. Why would I pay her to spend time with me?" Loki asks as he tries to appear menacing, but in reality he was telling the truth.

Why would that intelligent and beautiful girl actually want to spend time with him? Paying her made it feel cheap.

"Because I have a feeling she's not like any other woman in this city you've tried thus far. Besides, I know you're not the relationship type. This way it keeps things...simpler for you. You come up with some ground rules, she gets what she wants and you get what you want." Thor explains as if it's the easiest thing in the world.

"You're right. I'm not the relationship type. And I get the impression she is. So let's just leave it at that." Loki growled as he finally turned back to his brother, gesturing with his head toward the door as a sign to leave.

He'd had enough of talking to him. Sharing thoughts and feelings was for the weak. Which Loki certainly wasn't.

"Just think about it. She seems sweet. Talk to the lawyers." Thor said as he bounds out of the room without closing the door behind him.

Too sweet. Loki thought. The type of girl that needed to stay far away from him.

He pulled the dagger that was nestled against his side out and threw it forcefully at the wall opposite. It stuck in immediately, splintering the wood around it.

~♡~

It had been three days since Lyla had met the handsome and dangerous-seeming stranger in the club.

Three days of rolling around that luxurious business card between her fingers, leaving folds and creases on the paper as she did so repeatedly.

Its not that she didn't want to call him. She did. More than anything. She hadn't been able to get him out of her thoughts at all.

But what would she say? She still wasn't entirely sure he had given it to her for a reason, perhaps he was just being kind.

Lyla thought about the way he told her she just needed to find the right someone to tell her what to do, his glimmer in his green eyes, his crisp shirt clinging to his abdomen. She found herself lost in a daydream of lust when a customer putting down books on the counter in front of her snapped her right out of those thoughts.

She blushed as she began scanning the books for the old man.

"You seem miles away, Love." The man says jokingly as he got his library card out.

"Oh sorry, I have a habit of getting stuck in my head sometimes." She replies quietly as she felt the colour burn her face.

Surely Lyla had been remembering Loki wrong. He couldn't have been that handsome in real life could he?

"It's ok. Happens to the best of us." The man responds as he begins putting his reads in his tote bag. "Although I must say, whoever it is you were so clearly daydreaming about deserves to know." He winks and thanks her, walking away from the counter in the middle of the old building.

Lyla blushes an even deeper red.

She had always been too easy to read.

Lyla moves from around the dark wooden counter, leaving her colleague to check out the books so she could distract herself with putting some returns back onto the shelves.

Gripping the stack of books, she walks up the spiral staircase to the second floor, scanning her eyes over the decimal system briefly on the crowded shelves.

She sighs as she pushes some of the books into place absent-mindedly. It had been a long time since she'd felt excitement over another person in the way she felt it with Loki. But she also knew it was silly to feel that way.

When she'd asked Nat what exactly the brothers were involved in, Nat had also given vague answers, stating that Tony knew them and had worked with them which meant it couldn't be all good.

Tony dealt with weapon manufacturing as well as energy production. He knew some shady people and Nat suspected the brothers fell into that category.

Nat, however, was happy not to pry so long as she could do her job properly and get paid. She found it best to stay out of it, as she had when she was with Tony.

When Lyla had joked that they were in some kind of Mafia, Nat hadn't corrected her which had sent a shiver down Lyla's fibres. This was the stuff of movies. People like that didn't actually exist in the real world, right?

So why,m had Loki been carrying a weapon? Why had people looked towards the VIP area with a mixture of awe and fear, and why did Lyla have a gut feeling in her stomach that he wasn't a safe person?

She gulped as she entertained the thought. If she was going by the movies, he did seem to fit the stereotype. Cold, handsome and threatening.

But thrilling all the same.

Lyla hadn't felt alive in so long. Stuck in a dead end job, with Nat as her only friend and her colleagues twice her age. But Loki had lit something inside of her. A spark that was long dormant.

She couldn't take it anymore as she pulled out her phone, looking around to make sure no one was nearby.

Her fingers shook as she dialed the numbers she'd all but memorised over the last few days after staring at them for so long.

He picked up on the third ring.

"Who's speaking?" His voice cut through the silence of the library into Lyla's ear.

Right into her soul.

She suddenly felt like she'd interrupted him in the middle of something. Lyla clears her throat, willing words to come to her mind.

"Umm, Hi—it's Lyla. From the club? Natasha Romanoff's friend. The one that did your PR." Lyla stammered.

Loki on the other end smirked. He thought it was adorable she felt the need to specify exactly who she was. Like she hadn't been dancing through his thoughts for the last few days.

"Oh, hello Lyla. Of course. So nice to hear from you." Loki said, putting on his most polite tone and trying to disguise how out of breath he was from beating the man in front of him to a pulp.

"I—I don't really know why I'm ringing to be honest. I guess it'd be nice to see you again, if you'd like to that is." Lyla began stuttering again.

She really hadn't thought through the plan here and she felt foolish.

"I'm sure I can fit you in somewhere. I'll have to check my schedule, but let's provisionally say tomorrow at eight. I'll pick you up." Loki said as more of a statement than a question.

Lyla was taken off guard at his forwardness. She'd never had someone make such firm decisions for her before without knowing them.

"OK, well I'll need to give you my address then. Where are we going?" Lyla hesitantly asked as her heart suddenly fluttered.

She had no idea what to expect, but she knew it wouldn't be something cheap judging by Loki's wealth. She suddenly panicked at her limited outfit choices.

"No need, I'll find it. Wear something nice." Was all Loki replied.

Lyla's breath hitched in her throat at the response. What did he mean he'd find it? Did he already know where she lived? She shivered at the thought.

"Lyla?" Loki's voice pressed as she opened her mouth but no words came out.

She shook her head quickly.

"Sure, OK." Lyla replied meekly, still finding it strange he even wanted to be in her company again.

"See you tomorrow Dear." Loki said, his voice like velvet before he hung up.

Little did Lyla know that one phonecall was about to change her life forever.

——