by Amelia Wilde
By the way he comes, fucking through it with vicious strokes. When he’s done filling me he pulls out and before I can catch my breath I’m facedown on the table. He takes one of my wrists and stretches it above my head, and then he kicks my legs apart. Violent fingers on my clit, violent pulls, and my own nerves shudder and shake, hips knocking against the table. At the last moment he thrusts his fingers in deep, deeper, and twists, so I’m forced to come on thick fingers with legs spread wide, my nipples pressed to cold metal.
I’m still coming, still not done riding the high, when he takes his hand away and pulls me up to standing. At the sink he washes his hands. Zips his pants. Buckles his belt. And then he comes back to me and runs those fingers through my hair. It’s perfunctory. Like tossing the covers back over wrinkled sheets. “Back in the dining room.”
“I—I have—I have you on my thighs. I have to clean up.”
“Back in the dining room,” he repeats, and there is such easy, raw power in his voice. “You like that, don’t you?” His eyes dip lower, and that smile, god, it hurts.
“Admit that you love me,” I tell him, my lips buzzing, my body buzzing.
“I love how you look when you beg. Come here.” I’m too far gone to resist him. I thought I was playing with him, but he has the strings, he always has the strings. Zeus puts one hand on the small of my back, ready to usher me through the door, but before he does he takes one of my nipples in his fingers and pinches.
The sound I make is more embarrassing than anything else. My knees prepare to buckle, but they don’t. I squirm in his grip, the pain increasing along with the want. He lets go just before I scream. My head falls back with the relief and meets his palm. “My love is worthless, sweetheart. Stop chasing it. It makes you look like a fool.”
It’s much later in the evening, when Alicia is draping a silk robe over my shoulders for the trip back upstairs, that I remember the way he put my hand over my head on the table.
That way, I could feel the space.
That way, I knew there was no mirror.
15
Zeus
Brigit is driving me fucking crazy.
The entire whorehouse seems bathed in her scent. I can’t go anywhere without thinking of her. I’ve slipped up twice now. I can’t fucking do it again, because it will end in her dead or worse. Dead or worse. It bangs around in my head until it’s permanently branded there. Hades was infuriatingly correct. Falling in love with her will kill it in the end. And it’s never been only about her, of course not. My father maimed and killed at least twenty women between the time I was twelve and the time he died.
And what I said to Brigit was true. I didn’t try to stop him. I knew I would never win. My life since then has been an attempt to make up for it.
The whorehouse will never be enough. I am permanently stained by the things I stood by and watched. By the things I’ve done. I’m always going to be the sick fuck who gets hard at the sight of reddened flesh and the crack of a whip.
There was a time, when I was younger, that I wanted to be good. Brigit has reminded me that goodness will never be at the core of me. I burned it out long ago.
My pen slips in my hand, making a slash across this page of my ledger. What was I even writing? I was writing no.
No to the small plates that currently crowd the desk in my office. My task for the afternoon was to choose foods for tomorrow evening. None of it tastes particularly good. It’s all slightly too sweet, somehow, or maybe I’m officially losing my mind. Either way, it’s the chef and her team that will have to deal with it.
Savannah pushes herself up on one elbow and I look toward the movement. She has panties today, no bra, and it seems to have gotten to her. She, like the food, is a bit off. Glassy-eyed. But then again, she’s been chained to one of my couches for days and days now. “What do you want?”
She pouts. “How long are you going to be angry at me for what I did?”
“I’m not angry.” I flip to a new page in my ledger. “This is a safety precaution. You still haven’t told us where you got the poison.”
“I did tell you,” she whines. “I don’t know. I didn’t see the person, I only heard her.”
“And she said...” I prompt her out of habit.
“She said that it would make a person sick, not die.” Savannah flops back down onto the chair and covers her face with her arms. “She said it would make you angry, not chain me to a loop on the floor.”
“She lied.”
Hades comes into the office without knocking. I’m almost glad to see him just so I don’t have to continue this conversation. I don’t have the focus for it today. Everything is vaguely off-center. His eyes skim over Savannah on her couch but doesn’t comment on it. “Persephone and I need to go back to the mountain. She’s not getting better, and she wants her doctor there. We’ll have to risk the journey.”
I wait for the sharp edge of hate to overtake me, but I only feel mild curiosity. I close the ledger and gesture for him to take a seat. Hades narrows his eyes. “How have you been here this long?”
He knows what I’m asking. “Persephone.”
“Fucking her?”
Hades rolls his eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m right, and you know it.”
“She’s manufactured her own painkillers,” he admits. “I don’t need Demeter anymore.”
“But you need me.” I put both hands to my chest. “I love when you’re like this.”
He leans in, looking into my eyes, fist clenched on the desk. “Are you high?”
I laugh in his face. “High on what? On random drugs from Persephone? No, brother, I’m not. She doesn’t share the way Demeter used to.”
“You look high, fucker.”
I widen my own eyes. “Maybe it’s just from looking at you.”
He sits back, expression clouded. “You asked me for help with Brigit.” Change of topic, then. “I know you care about her. No—shut your stupid fucking mouth. I need a contact in the city, and you need to purchase diamonds. I’m willing to enter into a formal truce. For Persephone.” A pause that drills down into the center of my brain. “Would you do it for Brigit?”
“No.” My thoughts are so filled with her that it’s ridiculous. “I’m not making a deal for one of my whores. I don’t need anything for her. Just diamonds, Hades. Just a legitimate paper trail. You know that. But yes, yes. Let’s have ourselves a little truce. It could be amusing.”
“You might need something,” he comments. “It’s too quiet in the city. You might need somewhere to go.”
No. I have not noticed fucking anything except for the fact that I want Brigit so much that it hurts me, constantly. And after all this, after all these fucking years and wars and deaths, I will not abandon my home.
Even if I hate it.
“I won’t, but I adore your invitation.”
Hades stands, his shadow falling over me, and then his hands are on either side of my face. I can’t recall the last time he’s touched me for any reason other than to break my nose or attempt to punch me into sweet oblivion. From this vantage point, I can see so clearly how fucked his eyes are. I used to see them every day. I could tell his mood from how little blue there was. His headaches were written all over his face. It was especially true when we were children. By the time we were twelve, he’d learned how to hide the pain. He made his face a blank wall.
But he couldn’t hide the attacks.
You would not know it to see him standing here now, wearing a black suit that rivals mine in quality, but Hades barely escaped that farmhouse with his life. “Do you remember how he would laugh?” I ask him. “When he was waiting for your brain to shut off.”
The thin line of blue disappears. “You have a death wish.”
“I thought we were having an intimate moment.”
The times our father would beat him were the most intimate moments they had together. Hades was often the first target for our father’s rage, and he c
ould always see it coming, and he could never escape. Cronos was an enormous man. He had more to eat and more years of pent-up aggression. Even when we’d grown, there were days I would feel weak and I would know he was coming. Something scratches at the back of my mind. Remember—those days had something in common. What I remember now is the sound of fists on flesh.
Hades was fast, and strong—he always has been. His weakness is, of course, his eyes—secondary to that, it’s the neat bone of his eye sockets. Cronos would wait until he got him there, once, twice, and when Hades was on the verge of falling, our dearest father would put an arm around his neck and walk him outside.
I always wondered if Hades was too far gone to remember those long minutes, his hands coming up on instinct to hook on Cronos’s arm, wrapped as it was around his neck. The closest they ever got was this hideous embrace. I know I’m sitting in my office but it’s such a clear memory. The warm wood of the doorframe against my arm as I leaned there, watching.
Hades’ head would fall as his body tried to protect him but Cronos would tip it back against his shoulder to keep his eyes in the light.
My brother didn’t scream, but before long he would struggle, uselessly. Pointlessly. Not long after he would throw up and Cronos would let him fall, then. Easier to kick that way. The way he would step on the back of his neck...
Someone else was there.
Who?
Demeter. She wasn’t supposed to leave the house but she liked the shadows of the barn. She’d wait there with a basket of blueberries in her hand, waiting for Cronos to get bored. Blueberries. And other plants. But those weren’t the important things, no, it was the way she adored our father. It shone in her eyes like moonlight.
Perhaps that adoration is what made me find reasons to lurk around the yard. Or drag him into the shade and make veiled threats to anyone who saw. If he asks, Hades crawled.
I did that.
It wasn’t enough.
“I think you’re having an overdose, dumb fuck.”
I blink and discover he’s still got my face in his hands. “Do you? Remember? He would laugh the same way here.” Who the fuck am I, admitting this to him? And yet I can’t stop. “You didn’t know. You never came here. He would laugh while he strangled them.”
A long silence. “Yes. I remember.”
So he does.
Hades lets go of me, slips his hands in his pockets, steps back. “If things get out of hand, put your people on the trains.” He heads for the door and stops one final time before disappearing from view. “I still hate you, by the way.”
16
Brigit
All the seduction games I’ve been playing have gone to my head.
And my body.
I spend all night with my fingers between my legs, picturing Zeus and panting out not-enough orgasm after not-enough orgasm. He’s on this floor. He is on the same floor, and so close I can almost taste the clean salt of him. I feel like I’m floating. Disconnected from what happened in that cathedral. Far from it. But it’s still there, mocking.
In the dark I feel reckless.
I would hate it if it had some long-term effect, like the hole it left when my mother died. I don’t want ten minutes in a dressing room to scar me permanently.
I don’t want Zeus to scar me permanently.
Maybe he already has.
Toward dawn I fall into a restless sleep. I dream about being in a getaway car, fleeing for the city limits, but I keep running into traffic and I don’t remember how to drive. The car keeps changing around me, the pedals rearranging themselves. The car bumps as it collides with a person. There is no brake pedal anymore. I’m sorry, I sob behind the wheel. I couldn’t stop.
It’s afternoon when I pull myself out of it and into the shower. Even nightmares can’t distract me from Zeus.
“You’re sick,” I tell myself as I brace my hand against the shower wall and find my oversensitive clit with my fingertips. “This is really fucked.”
Fucked reminds me of the prep kitchen and the steel against my nipples and coming on his fingers.
Here in the whorehouse, the hot water never runs out. I stand under it and scrub until my skin is raw and pink. I imagine that the washcloth could wipe my soul clean. Could wash away this endless want for a man who only wants to toy with me. Who refuses me.
I shouldn’t even think about going to his office. It should be the last resort for the day. But there’s a magnetic pull that I can’t ignore. It tugs me along through the quiet halls, unstoppable. I’m a ghost. I’ll always be a ghost.
The door to Zeus’s office is closed, but I don’t hesitate. Hand on handle. Push it open.
He sits at his desk, with his ledger. No jacket on at this time of day. Sleeves folded up. Pen in hand. The afternoon light was a gift from god to Zeus, and it clings to him like he could never love the darkness. I want to see him on the beach. Want it so much that it weighs me down enough to keep my feet on the floor. Shit. I remembered lingerie and a sheer robe. I forgot shoes.
Savannah is in her usual spot. She is not wearing her usual glare. She has one sock on and looks blank, listless. I could go to bat for her, I could, but my heart doesn’t want her. It wants him.
He doesn’t look at me as I pad across the floor.
Doesn’t look up at all until I’ve been standing at his desk for a full five minutes.
When he does I have a metallic shock. My nerves recognize him. He could pull them all out of my body with a single look. Zeus stretches, leaning back, and I lean forward. No more space between us, please. “I came to ask you a question.”
A sneer. “I don’t want another blowjob.”
“Then maybe you want another decoration.” I perch on the edge of a chair across from him and undo the sash on my robe. It slips down over my shoulders. It’s so sheer that it shouldn’t make a difference, but I’m looking carefully for one—and I see his pupils expand. I look down, pouting. “Please, Zeus. I could use a little extra money.”
He huffs a laugh. Needing money is a lie. The amount he named for my compensation is in an account somewhere, I’m sure of it. “You’re well cared for here, sweetheart.”
“Fine.” I stand up and start to peel off my panties. “If I can’t sit here and let you look at me, then do something else. Let me earn my keep.”
“Earn it elsewhere.”
I let go of the lace, feeling Savannah’s eyes on me.
And then, instead of going to the door, I move around to the other side of Zeus’s.
Where he is so hard that I can see the full outline of his cock through his pants. I plant my feet one step from his chair. “How about here?”
“Elsewhere, Brigit.”
I get closer. “Here?”
Light in his eyes, a cruel smile. He threads his fingers together behind his head. His eyes say you’re walking a fine fucking line. His eyes say come closer.
I want what happened in the kitchen.
That, and worse.
Pull me into the chair with you. Don’t let go.
I bend down, freeing my tits from the lingerie, and let them hover in front of his face. “Here?”
“Is it that you want to be punished? Are you a slut for the pain?”
“Tell me you want me. Out loud. Not just with that.” I flick my eyes to the front of his pants.
“I want you out of this room.”
I cover myself, but I don’t back away. “And I don’t want to go.”
“Then I’ll take you myself.” He rises, seemingly unconcerned with the bulge in his pants, and reaches for my arm. I slip away at the last moment, backing up, my heart a hummingbird. God, the adrenaline feels good. It feels so good. Zeus is lazy, strolling toward me with the full knowledge that even at my fastest I’m no match for him.
I want him to prove it.
Fingers curled on the windowsill, I wait for the punishment to arrive, or at least his touch. Of course it’s fucked up. Of course it’s wrong. He doesn’t want me. And here
I am.
Zeus takes my elbow almost delicately. He turns me and my body melts into the power of him. The golden wash of light outside catches my eye. I won’t have this particular view if he forbids me from coming here. Chain me to your bed, I want to scream at him. Keep me there instead. Chain me to the concrete outside this window. Just admit that you can’t bear to have me out of your sight.
Except the sidewalk isn’t empty.
My father is standing there.
He’s looking right at me.
An inhuman howl sears up my throat and as soon as I get another breath I scream again, dropping so fast and hard that Zeus lets me crumple to the ground. He breaks my fall enough that I don’t hurt my knees and lets go, crouching down next to me. My nails scrape against the floor and I drag myself to the wall and tuck myself into it, butting my own head against the hard, unforgiving plaster.
“—all right,” he’s saying. “Look at me. It’s all right.”
But another scream tears loose from me and I dig my heels in, pushing away. It’s wrong, it’s wrong. He can’t be here. The instinct to hide is so strong that I can’t fight it, but then it occurs to me that I’m moving closer to my dad by going that direction. All my muscles freeze, my back cramping, my arms seizing up. My thighs.
“—going on?” Savannah’s voice is thread and panicked but it comes from down low and I get a flash of her huddled by the side of her couch, the collar still around her neck. “What’s happening?”
The door bursts open, and heavy footsteps fall. My vision narrows under the onslaught of a scream I can’t stop. “Don’t let him in here,” I howl, desperate, desperate.
Zeus moves, his tall body blocking out the rest of the room, and I try to focus on his face. His pants. His shirt. The cut of his cheekbones. Golden eyes. Anything but the certain death I know is coming. Anything but the feeling of those fingers on lace panties. Anything but the countertop, the countertop, the countertop.