Hermod tried not to blush any harder while she bandaged his hand. He really needed to get that under control. None of his brothers had this problem. Even Forseti had better luck with women than he did. He had to have a flaw in his genes somewhere.
“Um, I don’t have any sister,” he muttered. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I don’t have any sisters. Just a lot of half-brothers. Thor, Bragi, Vidar, Tyr. There are a lot of them.” Some of them had wives, but he wasn’t all that comfortable around them either. Except for Idun and then only when Bragi was there, too. He really needed to get over this somehow.
“Um, I do have some female friends that don’t make me… You know.” He was able to be around the Valkyries without embarrassing himself. It took a few years after he had moved into Valhalla for him to get comfortable with them, but he was there now. He could hang out with any of them without blushing just as long as everyone kept their clothes on. “I live in the same hall as the Valkyries. And they are all women.”
He tried to think of Philotes as one of the warrior women, but it wasn’t quite working. She didn’t have that tough exterior the girls put on. He could almost picture her as one of them when they were all off duty and playing pool or watching a movie. Yes, that might work just fine. He had even worked on his motorcycle with some of them helping.
“Okay then. We were going to take each other for a ride, right? You want to go first?” He was able to smile and relax again. This might not be too bad after all.