by Vivian Wood
We sit in silence as Allecto drives us back to Carver City. My men don’t stop touching me, as if they’re afraid I may disappear at any given moment. As if they’re afraid this isn’t real. My adrenaline fades right around the time we hit the city limits, and then all I know is pain. I’ve definitely broken at least one rib. My knees and shins is full of pinpricks of agony from the broken glass and I’m getting blood all over the seat.
Hades is the one who carries me out of the car and up to his penthouse. I’m so tired, I don’t even bother to protest that I can walk myself. I feel safe in his arms with Hercules shadowing his steps.
Someone must have called Dr. Miranda because he arrives less than a minute after we do. He’s a small white man with giant glasses and a no-nonsense attitude that never ceases to make me feel like I’m five years old and have disappointed him greatly. He casts a look at me. “The dress needs to come off.”
Hades cuts off my dress as the doctor peppers me with questions that I try to answer as honestly as possible. Once I’m naked, he does a quick examination and stands back. “Broken ribs, most likely, but I’d need an X-ray to be sure. They aren’t hampering her ability to breathe, and she hasn’t started coughing up blood or any of that nonsense, so I doubt it’s serious. Miscellaneous cuts and bruises that need to be cleaned, but nothing deep enough for stitches.” He crosses his arms over his chest and glares down at me. “You’ll live.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Six weeks of no hard activities.” He turns that glare on Hades and Hercules. “No wild sex. No swinging crops and the like. Nothing that puts stress on those ribs. If the pain gets worse or you start having trouble breathing, call me immediately.”
“I will.”
“Then I’m going back to bed. You two.” He points at my men. “Clean her up. I’m sure you have bandages around here. Rinse the wounds first to make sure there’s no glass remaining. That’s it. Keep things PG.”
Hades levels a severe look at him. “Thank you for your help, Doctor. Please leave.”
“Good night.” Dr. Miranda turns and strides to the elevator, and then he’s gone.
I let out a dry laugh. “I always liked him.”
“It’s the only reason I put up with his attitude.” Hades moves to stand in front of me. “Come on, love. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
It feels surreal to step into the shower with him and have him wash me. We’ve done this before. Hell, we did this earlier today. It feels different now. He sits me down on the tile bench and carefully cleans my legs, probing gently for glass.
Hades has never touched me like I’m breakable before. I don’t think I like it, but I’m too tired and too breakable to complain. When we turn the water off, Hercules is waiting with the bandages. Hades combs my hair while Hercules patches me up. As I suspected, most of the cuts are small enough that they don’t need much. There are two slightly larger ones on my arm, and he carefully bandages them.
“I love you,” I blurt out. “Both of you. So fucking much. It scares the shit out of me.”
Hercules flicks his gaze to my face, more serious than I’ve ever seen him. “You both know I’m head over heels for you two. I have been since that first night.” He glances at Hades. “So, no shit, I love you.”
I find myself holding my breath and relax as Hades strokes my drying hair. “You know I love you, Megaera. I may not say it often enough, but I have ever since you walked through my doors, full of fury and a determination to save someone who didn’t deserve it.” He leans over until I can see his face. “I haven’t taken care of you the way you deserve, and I’m sorry for that.” He glances at Hercules. “And you. You were never part of my long-term plan, and yet here we are.” He hesitates. “I don’t give my love easily, little Hercules. You’ve slipped in when I wasn’t paying attention.” He gives a slow smile that makes my stomach flip over despite how exhausted I am. “Now you’re mine forever.”
“I’d like to propose a new bargain.” He squeezes my hand. “The three of us—for good. Three lifetime bargains in one.”
Hades goes still. “Three.”
“Yes. Not just a bargain with you; a bargain with one another.” Hercules smiles and it’s so sweet, it washes over me like golden sunlight. “The three of us on equal ground, such as it is.”
I find myself holding my breath. Hades doesn’t make us wait long. “A bargain it is, then. A mutual claiming.”
“Sounds kinky,” I murmur.
He chuckles. “When you’re healed, it will be. Until then, we seal it with a kiss.” He brushes his lips softly against mine, and then repeats the move with Hercules. Hercules presses a quick kiss to my lips and stands.
My heart is so fucking full, I can barely stand it. “I think this is the best bargain I’ve ever made.”
“The feeling is entirely mutual.” Hades lifts me into his arms. “Come on, love. Let’s get you in bed.”
It’s not as graceful as we’ve been in the past. The pain meds haven’t quite kicked in yet, and I’m moving like a person three times my age. They bracket me in, warming me, comforting me with their bodies better than they ever could with their words. Surrounded by the two men I love, the two men who love me, something inside me relaxes, and despite my pain, I draw my first full breath in what feels like years.
This is right. This is exactly where we’re meant to be.
This is fucking perfect.
Thank you so much for reading Learn My Lesson! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! If you did, please consider leaving a review.
Need more Hades, Hercules, and Meg in your life? Make sure to sign up for my newsletter to get an exclusive bonus epilogue where they finally get their public scene to announce their relationship to all of Carver City!
The Wicked Villains series continues in A Worthy Opponent with Tink and Hook’s story. With Tink’s contract coming to a close, she’s got vengeance on her mind. The only person who can help her? The man determined to bring her to her knees…and put a ring on her finger! But can Tink and Hook get over their animosity to bring down their mutual enemy? Only one way to find out!
About the Author
Katee Robert is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance and romantic suspense. Her titles The Marriage Contract and The Bastard’s Bargain were both RITA finalists. Her books have sold over a million copies. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, children, a cat who thinks he’s a dog, and a Great Dane who thinks she’s a lap dog.
www.kateerobert.com
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Someone to Watch Over Me
Iris Morland
Chapter One
Blood, sand, heat. It smells of copper and he can’t see anything in front of him. He shouts, hoping he’s not the only survivor, and he hears a groan through all of the noise. He wonders if his eardrum is blown from the blast.
He follows the noise. It’s instinctual at this point. He wonders if he imagined it when he can’t find the source of the sound. Then: he sees something. He kneels next to his comrade, gently turning him over. He doesn’t know if his friend is dead. When he hears him choke and gasp, he realizes he’s alive.
But given the wound in his belly, he will be dead within minutes.
He tries to get his friend up, get him help. He can’t die out here when they’re going home in a week. Not like this. His friend has a new baby girl and his wife needs him—
Another blast rocks him. He collapses onto the sand, hits his head on something hard and painful, and it all goes black.
Seth Thornton barely caught the scream in his throat as he woke up. Thrashing under the too-heavy bedcovers, he sat up, gasping for breath. He could taste the sand and blood on his tongue, even though he’d been in Fair Haven, Washington, for a year now. After his third tour as a Marine, he’d finally earned inactive duty.
Except that inactive duty had meant that
Seth had no idea what to do with his life now. Who was he, if not a soldier? He knew war; he knew guns; he knew death and he knew victory. But mostly, he knew loneliness, and it was like a pall he couldn’t overcome. Even with his twin sister, Lizzie, getting married and having a baby, even knowing he could do whatever he wanted with his life now, it wasn’t enough.
He blew out a breath. “I’m turning into a total sap,” he muttered as he got up. After taking a quick shower and getting dressed, he made himself a cup of black coffee—his usual breakfast—and after he’d downed the mug, he decided to get some fresh air.
It was better than sitting in that apartment and reminiscing about his best friend’s death.
Outside, it was an obnoxiously beautiful day. June in Washington State heralded the end of the rainy season, and the sun shone so cheerily that Seth scowled up at the sky. What did the sun have to be so fucking happy about?
It didn’t help that he had nightmares more often than not. When he could sleep, the memories crept up on him, taking over his dreams, until he’d wake up even more exhausted than when he’d gone to sleep. Lizzie had stopped asking about the dark circles under his eyes because he tended to snap at her, but he saw the worry in his twin sister’s expression
You can’t keep going on like this, she’d said just a week prior. Nobody can.
He would, because he didn’t have a choice.
Right then, Seth heard a woman swearing. Very colorfully, in fact. Intrigued, he rounded the corner to see an overstuffed armchair seemingly hanging in midair, the only evidence of human involvement being the slender ankles and feet standing on the concrete. The woman swore again as the chair began to tip onto the ground.
Seth grabbed the chair just in time. It was heavier than it looked. Grunting, he was about to ask which apartment the woman lived in when he was arrested by a face that he couldn’t forget.
Rose DiMarco. The woman he’d met outside The Fainting Goat, the most popular bar in town. Those wide blue eyes, that pert little nose. The dark brown hair tipped with blue.
She stared at him in surprise. “You.”
“You,” he drawled. “How have you been, princess?”
That pert little nose wrinkled. She tried to lift the chair away from his hold, but he had at least a foot on her and a whole lot more muscle.
“How about you tell me which apartment is yours, unless you want to stand out here all day?”
Rose hesitated before sighing. “It’s number 115. Just right around the corner here.”
Seth’s eyebrows shot up, but he bit his tongue in time. It just so happened he lived in number 117—right next door.
What a fascinating coincidence.
They maneuvered around the corner and into the apartment, setting the chair down with a thud in the mostly bare living room. Seth took in the boxes—most labeled BOOKS—and then he took in Rose herself.
Her long hair was in a braid down her back, her cheeks flushed. He told himself she was flushed from the exertion, not from him, but it amused him that she not only remembered him, but that she’d reacted to his presence so decidedly.
He’d seen her outside The Fainting Goat fending off some asshole, and when said asshole had grabbed her, Seth had come to her rescue. Except that Rose had taken issue with his interference, and Seth had wondered where the hell this beautiful, fiery woman had come from. He hadn’t seen her in a month, no matter how many times he went to The Fainting Goat. He’d almost wondered if he’d dreamed her.
Now here she was. His new neighbor.
A smile tipped up his lips, and when she saw it, she put her hands on her hips.
“Thank you for your help,” she said in a prissy voice, “but that was my biggest piece of furniture.”
“So you’re saying I should leave?” Now he was definitely amused.
“Not in so many words.”
“Are you always this kind to people who help you?”
She opened her mouth and closed it, looking very much like she’d like to stick out her tongue at him. Instead, she decided to turn around and say nothing.
Seth followed her to a hatchback outside. He wondered how she’d gotten that chair in her car in the first place. He saw boxes and more boxes, along with random odds and ends: pillows, blankets, picture frames. Except that the picture frames held no pictures in them, and her pillows and blankets and lamps and everything else were as nondescript as Rose was colorful.
He picked up two boxes, and when she looked like she’d balk, he just raised an eyebrow.
By the time he’d helped her get everything out of her car, her apartment looked slightly less depressing. He noticed she had no bed to speak of. Would she sleep on the chair? On her floor?
He suddenly wanted to know everything about her. What kind of a woman carts five boxes of books and no bed to a new apartment? No pictures, no knickknacks. He hadn’t seen boxes labeled clothes or shoes or jewelry like his sister Lizzie had had when she’d moved in.
“Is there a moving van coming?” he asked, intrigued.
Rose looked up from the box she’d begun to unpack. “A van? No. This is it.”
“Are you getting a bed later today?”
She wouldn’t look at him as she began to stack books. “No, I’m not.”
Well, that said plenty. But at her warning look, he decided not to push his luck. He started to help her unpack her books, glancing at the spines as they started to shelve them in a tiny bookshelf that wouldn’t hold even half of her collection.
Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, John Keats, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens—so many books, most of which had clearly been read over and over again. Some were falling apart, barely glued together. When he took out a copy of Frankenstein, the cover fell off entirely.
“Oh, poor guy. This one has been through a lot.” Rose took the book from him, smiling.
That smile burst something inside him. Something hot, something dangerous. Something that felt exactly like longing. He caught his breath and forced himself to look away before he got burned.
After they’d shelved as many books as they could, Rose stood up, wiping her hands on her shorts. “Do you want something to drink?”
She didn’t wait for his reply. She returned with two glasses of water and handed one to Seth, which he took gratefully. And he realized, with an inward start, that helping Rose DiMarco move in had made him forget this morning’s nightmare.
At the thought of her last name, something itched in the back of his mind. He knew that name, didn’t he? He looked at her more closely, trying to find a clue, but all he saw were those bright blue eyes, like the lake on a sunny day. He’d never seen eyes like hers. As he gazed at her, he watched as a blush climbed up her cheeks.
So she wasn’t as indifferent toward him as she pretended to be. That only heightened his attraction. His blood thrummed.
But then something fearful flickered in her eyes, and she looked away. He recognized that look all too well: he’d seen it in the eyes of his men when they were facing down death. He’d seen it in his own face.
But what did Rose have to be afraid of?
Rose DiMarco, in all of her twenty-seven years, had never encountered a man as stubborn as Seth Thornton.
Yes, this was the second time she’d met him. No, she didn’t really know him. Yes, she had thought about him more often than she cared to admit after he’d saved her from Rich, one of her ex-boyfriend Johnny Porter’s cronies.
She’d moved to Fair Haven to escape—and to escape from men who wanted to use her for their own gains and pleasure.
She recognized desire in men’s gazes. She was no stranger to those heated looks, those looks of anticipation. It was rather like having a large predator spot you and decide to hunt you down. Running only made them want to hunt you more.
Rose had no intention of being the gazelle to Seth’s lion.
He looks more like a panther, she thought as she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. All m
uscle and darkness. And those blue-green eyes. Like turquoise.
A dog barked from her bedroom. Rose jumped, feeling foolish. She’d left her German shepherd, Callie, in her bedroom while she’d been moving in, forgetting her when Seth Thornton had appeared. Guilt assailed her as she went to let Callie out of her tiny bedroom.
Callie was all black, and small for a German shepherd. Rose had gotten her from the shelter three years ago, and Callie had proven herself a worthy companion and guard ever since. Rose had needed a large dog to keep people at bay; Callie had fit the bill perfectly, even though she was more likely to demand belly rubs than take a bite out of some villain.
Callie woofed, her tail wagging. She followed Rose into the living room, going alert when she scented Seth. She sniffed him. Rose couldn’t help but notice that Seth allowed the dog to smell him without moving. Most people tended to reach for dogs without considering the consequences.
“This is Callie,” Rose said.
Seth waited another moment until Callie had completed a thorough sniffing. Deciding that Seth wasn’t a threat, she sat on her haunches, watching him with her dark eyes. Sometimes Rose wondered how much Callie perceived in people.
Seth kneeled down, and when Callie wagged her tail, he began to stroke her silky dark head. Callie woofed in pleasure, her tail wagging harder. A smile spread across his face.
“Pretty dog,” he murmured. He gave her one last pat before rising. “Is that it?”
“Is what it?”
His smile widened. “Is that everything you needed out of your car?”
“Oh!” Rose barely stifled a blush. “Yes, thank you. You don’t need to stay.” She winced and, feeling foolish, decided to focus on unpacking the few things she had.
But what could she do with blankets and pillows without a mattress? She hadn’t lied when she’d said she didn’t have a mattress being delivered anytime soon. Her brother, Heath, had said he’d buy her whatever she needed, but she’d declined. She’d taken care of herself for this long; she didn’t need anyone’s charity. Although, if she thought about how she could barely afford this apartment, she knew her pride would only last so long. She had agreed to borrow his car for the move, but that had been the extent of the charity she’d been willing to accept.