by Katie May
I don’t know why I chose the Goddess of Pain’s kingdom for this particular deception. I would almost describe it as a feeling. A tightening around my heart like steel clamps. A tug in the pit of my stomach.
But that sounds fucking insane.
I’ve never set eyes upon this woman before, but I heard from the other soldiers that her beauty is unparalleled. More than one soldier—including the unconscious Arnold—dreamed of fucking her.
“Don’t stop on my account,” a singsong voice declares as the throng of soldiers part. “I’m just here to watch the festivities.”
“A fight, my love,” Avery corrects. The God of Death I have seen, and I’ll be the first to admit that he scares the shit out of me. There’s something unsettling about his boyish, happy smile, like he’s a shark circling the ocean for the first scent of blood. Silent, but capable of ending you with one clamp of his serrated teeth.
It’s only then that I see her for the first time. Her dark hair hangs in luminous, shimmery curls down her back, stopping just above her plump ass. In the crimson gown she wears, I’m able to see the swell of her breasts and the outline of her perky nipples.
Jealousy flares to life within me at the thought that all of these soldiers are seeing something that doesn’t belong to them.
Not that it belongs to me either, but try telling that to my suddenly idiotic brain and cock.
As one, the soldiers bow before her, ducking their heads reverently. I scowl, remaining upright with my arms crossed over my chest. This body isn’t nearly as toned as my real one, but there’s no denying the muscles displayed on my arms and stomach.
And for the first time in my life, I feel a pang in my chest that she won’t be able to see the real me. The true me. I dismiss that voice with an annoyed grunt.
When did I turn into such a fucking pussy?
“Are you not going to bow to your goddess?” Avery demands, a manic gleam appearing in his eyes. He takes a threatening step closer, dark mist curling around him, but Emily merely places a calming hand on his chest.
“No, my love,” she soothes in that musical voice I fucking hate. And I only hate it because I know I could grow obsessed with it, and that terrifies me.
“A little murder won’t hurt anyone,” he states, that same charming smile plastered on his face. He reminds me of an angel that people on Earth worship. But instead of blinding light, he’s shadowed by death and destruction. His pretty boy looks can't hide the monster lurking underneath.
“No,” she hisses, glaring at him. I feel irrationally jealous that her attention is no longer on me. And of course, I fucking hate that. If the rumors are true, the Goddess of Pain has three committed lovers already. The last thing I need to do is get a fucking crush on her. I’ve never been a one woman type of man, and I don’t plan on starting now. Life is too short not to fuck anything and everything that moves.
Though, if she asked me to be hers and only hers, I wouldn’t refuse…
I growl at my internal voice.
“My job as your mate is to protect you from assholes like him,” Avery counters, somehow able to maintain that stupidly perfect and cheerful smile while talking about murder. “I know you love it when I use my powers, baby. I know it makes you wet.” He grabs her hips and presses her against his obvious erection. She rolls her eyes, but the delicate flush on her cheeks says that she doesn’t hate it. Not one bit.
“Aves!” She slaps at the hands on her waist, and he releases her with a petulant pout. Turning back to me, she shrugs with a ‘what can you do?’ expression on her face. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before. What’s your name?”
“Tate,” I bite out, willing my cock to behave itself. “And I don’t bow to fucking any one.”
The soldiers begin to murmur, and I see more than one cast me anxious stares, willing me to shut up.
“Not even to a queen?” she asks, stopping when her breasts brush against my chest.
“Why would I bow to someone who hasn’t earned my respect?” I ask darkly, maintaining her piercing stare. Her eyes hold mine for a long moment, thoughts percolating in that pretty head of hers, before a large smile appears on her face. I fucking hate how much that smile affects me.
“I like you, Tate.” Her husky voice curls around me, and I ball my hands into fists to curb the desire I have to touch her. Claim her. Mark her. I’ve never had such a visceral reaction to a woman before. Sure, I fucked other goddesses—and even that Athena bitch has tried to get in my pants—but no one has ever impacted me as much as Emily does.
“Are you going to initiate me into your harem now?” I drawl lazily, as if I couldn’t give a damn either way.
But that’s a lie; I care more than I want to admit.
She laughs raucously, tossing her head back and pushing out her generous breasts.
“We’ll talk again,” she assures me, taking a step away and interlocking her fingers with Avery’s. He glares at me, annoyance spewing from his crazy eyes, before she tugs at his hand, convincing him to walk with her. Immediately, the scowl transforms into his signature smile, and his eyes soften. “Nice meeting you, Tate!” she calls over her shoulder.
“Fuck you, princess!”
Her giggle reaches me, caressing my skin like she’s physically touching me.
I think the real saying is ‘fuck me.’ Because already, I feel that I’m lost to this girl.
And I hate it.
THE MOMENT the footsteps reach my ears, I pounce.
Shock appears on the man’s face as I level punch after punch into his disgusting face.
“Who. The. Fuck. Do. You. Think. You. Are?” I pant, hauling him to his feet and shoving him in the lawn chair one of the homeless people left behind.
His bald head glistens in the dim, artificial lighting as he glares at me, spewing vitriol with his eyes.
This fucker thought he could shoot at my girl? Hurt her? Well, fuck him. He didn’t know what hell he was getting into when he accepted the hit on Emily fucking Lopez.
He attempts to head butt me, but I merely laugh. Does this pathetic excuse of a human being think he can take on a god?
It’s actually quite comical.
Punching him once more in the face and reveling in his pained groan, I remove the gun from the waistband of his jeans. Next, I find a coil of rope that was once used for a tent and quickly tie him to the seat.
“That was…surprisingly easy,” Emily muses as she steps up from behind me. The assassin’s eyes widen appreciatively, visible even with his mottled, red face.
“Fucking hell!” I gripe, staring at Emily’s naked body. Her breasts bounce enticingly as she stops beside me, cocking her hip to the side. I can even see the fucking evidence of our shared arousal glistening on her tan legs. “Get some clothes on, woman!”
“You destroyed my clothes, asshole,” she retorts immediately, bending forward so her breasts dangle in front of the assassin’s face. His eyes latch on her beaded pink nipple as she captures his chin with her small hand. “Now, tell us who you work for.”
“I’m going to fuck you so fucking hard,” he purrs in a distinct Russian accent. “You’re just setting yourself on a silver platter for me, aren’t you, gorgeous? How is the wound treating you, by the way?” He flicks his gaze to the already healed gunshot wound on her shoulder. For a moment, confusion contorts his ugly face before he smooths out his expression, replacing it with a lecherous grin. “Nice tits, babycakes.”
Rage bombards me from all directions as red fills my vision. No one is allowed to see Emily naked. Absolutely fucking no one. Call me possessive or a caveman or whatever the fuck you want, but her body is ours.
“Emily,” I growl through clenched teeth. She whirls on me, now giving the asshole an unobstructed view of her firm ass.
“What?” she snaps. “Don’t be a fucking prick, Tate. My clothes are destroyed, and I need to get answers. Besides, you’re naked too.”
“Fuck you!” I hiss out, but my cock is rapidly be
coming hard at our verbal sparring. “If the others were here—”
“Well, they’re not, are they?” she huffs, knowing damn well how possessive all of us men are of her. Sin would have no doubt lit the man on fire already, while Avery grinned maliciously from beside him, his dark power curling around the assassin’s body. Desmond would cackle like a cat playing with a mouse, while Helio silently watched from the sidelines.
She whirls around to face the assassin again. “Now, tell us who you work for?”
“If you step a little closer so I can feel your pussy—”
Before he can finish whatever vulgar thing he’s going to say, I lunge forward, wrap my hands around his neck, and twist.
Emily gapes at me.
“What the fuck?” she screeches.
The only noise I’m capable of emitting is a feral growl. Immediately, I have her in my arms, her soft skin soothing something inside of me. Something ferocious and malevolent.
“I had to, baby,” I whisper into her ear, attempting to curb my out of control jealousy. “He tried to hurt you. I couldn’t control myself.”
Her body physically deflates as she returns my hug, twining her arms around my neck.
“If he would’ve been looking at you that way, I would’ve killed him as well,” she confesses, and my cock twitches automatically. My blood-thirsty, gorgeous psychopath. “But you’re still a fucking asshole. We needed to get information out of him. I need to know if—” She closes her mouth abruptly, stepping away from me and scratching absently at the back of her neck.
Instantly, my curiosity is piqued as I stare at her. “Need to know what?”
“Mind your own damn business,” she huffs.
“You’re my fucking business, you annoying brat!”
We glare at each other, each willing the other to give in, when she finally sighs, a wariness entering her eyes that hadn’t even been present when we were being shot at.
“Talk to me.” I work to moderate my volume so it doesn’t come out as a demanding growl. I’m slightly mollified when she nods once.
“I think…I think my brothers may have something to do with what happened to me,” she confesses, and the pain darkening her eyes makes me want to kill someone. Or multiple someones.
“I thought you said that you thought they were innocent?” I try really, really hard to keep the accusation out of my tone.
But, fuck, if she suspected this entire time…
“I didn’t think so when we went to their house for dinner,” she admits. “But then…”
“But then?” I tap my foot impatiently. “I don’t have all day, woman.”
“Fuck you!” she hisses, some of her familiar fire returning. I quickly try to suppress my grin. Because, yeah, sometimes I’ll purposely rile her up just to see that spark in her eyes. Anything’s better than a morose Emily.
“You just did,” I quip dryly. “Now, are you going to talk, or do I have to spank the information out of you?”
“Asshole,” she hisses.
“Bitch.”
“Cumstain.”
“Donkey’s anus.”
She glares at me before sighing a second time, pushing her hair away from her bare breast. Fuck, it’s a really, really bad time for my cock to be thinking of fucking her tits.
Her next words, however, dampen my arousal.
“I found Burke’s phone number in Ray’s pocket. I think…” She trails off, swallows, and then tries speaking again. And despite her ire, I realize that her sadness hasn’t dimmed an iota. The emotion consumes me like a tidal wave sweeping over the beach. “I think they might have given the money to Burke to pay for you guys to kill me. I think that they may be the ones who want me dead.”
CHAPTER 21
“No killing,” I stress, leveling the men with my most serious gaze. When Sin pouts, lower lip protruding forward almost comically, I narrow my eyes. “I mean it. No killing.”
“But—”
“No torture either,” I add before he can say whatever the hell he was going to say. Probably something about eyeballs melting down my brothers’ faces like ice cream cones left in the heat.
Because, despite everything, I still love the three of them. They’re my brothers, and I have years of memories that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to eradicate. Once, my dad took us on a boat he bought from a family friend. We stopped at a miniature island, completely overrun by tall trees and straggly weeds. There was a branch that hung over the water with a rope attached to it. All of my brothers had used the rope to jump into the turbulent water, but not me. I was too petrified that I would drown.
When my brothers discovered my irrational fear, they all crowded around me.
“I’ll be right at the bottom,” Henry assured me in a way that instantly soothed my frayed nerves. He always had such a calming presence to him, a way to innately pacify a person’s emotions. “You won’t ever drown when I’m there to help you.”
“I’ll jump first, yeah?” Colton added eagerly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He seemed to personify energy and jubilance; so much emotion rested inside of his five-foot something, ten-year-old body. I couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t smiling.
“Em, grow a pair of ovaries and do it,” Ray growled. His thin arms were folded over his chest as he glared at me, somehow making me feel incredibly small and vulnerable. At the same time, I felt…empowered. Capable of doing anything I set my mind to, if only to prove the bastard wrong. “Do you really think we’ll let anything happen to you?”
My dad, reading a novel on a moss-covered log, merely smiled at me, and that smile chased away the lingering doubts that consumed my mind. In one eloquent look, he replaced spiders, darkness, and fear with flowers, light, and bravery. I could still feel my initial panic skittering through my stomach like a parade of angry bugs, but they no longer overwhelmed me.
“Hey,” Avery says now, shaking me out of my morose thoughts. I can see the strain my confession made on his face as well. Because, despite his relationship with me, he’s still best friends with my brothers. It would destroy us both to discover they had been behind this the entire time.
You don’t naturally expect that the person you love most in the world will be the one to destroy you. On second thought…maybe you do. Maybe you’re one of those few people in the world that has never had anyone you can trust implicitly, with your heart and soul. But my brothers? They’re my people, a ribbon of sunshine that disrupts the monotony of darkness. It’s inconceivable that they would betray me like this, that they would want me dead. But in a way, everything about this story is inconceivable, isn’t it? In any story you read, a person like me wouldn’t be the heroine. I’d be the villain, the girl that the actual heroine destroyed to save the world.
The Goddess of Pain was never meant to have a happy ending.
But I’ll be damned if I don’t fight with everything inside of me, with every ounce of my entire fucking being, for what I deserve.
“We’ll talk to my brothers,” I whisper determinedly, my throat clogging with the enormity of my emotions. Fear, anger, helplessness…and a heavy dose of guilt. I don’t know where the latter emotion stems from. What should I feel guilty of? Because I wasn’t a good enough sister? Because I’m too broken to deserve love?
My thoughts spin and spin like a whirlpool as I struggle to get a grasp on my emotions. But trying to hold them is like trying to grab the wind—utterly impossible.
“Let’s go.”
AS FATE WILL HAVE IT, Ray is the one to open the door when we knock, his face scrunched in confusion. He wears a pair of gray joggers and a loose-fitting t-shirt. I recognize the outfit as his standard jogging attire. He used to force me out of bed at the asscrack of dawn to take a run through the neighborhood with him. I hated him each and every time he poured water on my head, telling me that only lazy asses stayed in bed this late.
He scowls at us, muscular arms flexing as if he’s imagining taking my men in a fight.
Ray? He’s a beguiling package wrapped in a prickly outer shell. He’s crass and oftentimes erratic, acting before he thinks things through, but I love him fiercely.
Which is why his betrayal will only hurt more.
“Ray?” I venture tentatively, taking a step forward. Immediately, Helio grips my wrist, almost as if he wishes to push me behind him. His body emits a low, dangerous growl as he examines Ray like one would an out of control, feral dog.
“What the fuck is going on, Emmy?” my brother demands, glaring at where Helio touches me. His eyebrows furrow as anger flitters across his handsome face. “And let my sister go!”
“You know what would be fun?” Sin interjects with a wicked smile, a smile that promises more pain than an average human can endure. A cigarette dangles from his lush lips as he skips up the porch steps and stands beside me. Slowly, never removing his gaze from my brother, he grabs the cigarette and points it at my brother’s eyeball. “Did you know that eyeballs drip down your cheeks like wax when they burn? It’s quite erotic, isn’t that right, baby?” He addresses the last question at me, snaking his arm around my waist and sliding his fingers beneath the hem of my shirt. His touch tantalizingly soft, he begins to brush at the sensitive skin, his power heating his fingers and causing pain to erupt wherever he touches.
And didn’t I tell you that he would talk about burning away my brother’s eyeball? Say what you want, but I know my men.
“What the fuck?” Ray bellows, and this time, his eyes are frantic and dark with worry. “Emily, come here.”
“Emily likes the pain I offer,” Sin continues, ignoring my warning glance. Desmond begins to laugh giddily from behind us, and I see Avery facepalm himself. “She has a thing for wax on her titties.”
This time, Ray’s face is green, and he looks seconds away from vomiting across the front porch.
“Enough!” Shrugging out of Sin’s embrace, knowing that I’ll have burn marks on my waist and lower back, I shove the piece of paper that fell out of Ray’s pocket into his hand. His eyebrows furrow further as he glances from the slip of paper and then back to me.