Chained

by Celia Crown

  It’s worth the pain that I’m putting Abel in with the fake anthrax attack. The news reports it as a single attack on a specific individual because no one has come into the hospital with symptoms of Anthrax poisoning.

  All the walk-ins and calls for ambulances are symptoms many made up due to being hypochondriacs.

  When the symptoms went away, the doctors have him pumped in antibiotics and the most successful cure for anthrax that has been invented. Nothing seemed to work because he wasn’t really poisoned with Anthrax; he just had something in his body that made him incredibly sick with the symptoms.

  It’s enough to scare the hell out of him.

  “I think you’re plenty fit,” I say, reaching my hand out to pat his sculpted back.

  It hardens under my fingers when I run a finger down a curve of a tattoo’s line. The ink is still new, considering he has much older ones. The interesting design takes a minute to manifest a shape in my head, but it’s nothing I have seen.

  It’s almost tribal with the characteristics, but mainstream tattoo artists are dabbling in traditions to bring attention and awareness to things that are fading with time.

  “What did I say about touching me?” he growls, but he doesn’t make any move to push my hand away as he finishes another round of pushups.

  “I can’t help it!” my lips turn down into a pout.

  His skin is scarred and marked with the victories that he proudly held, and I think I’m starting to understand the new tattoos now. They are a symbol of his triumph and a reminder that he can live another day.

  “Oh!” a thought comes to my mind, “Why are you still here?”

  He jerks his knees up and kneels on them as he straightens his body; sweat glistens on the grooves of his hard muscles, and it’s such an attractive sight that it’s hard not to drool at it.

  “To learn about you,” Damon lifts himself up from the ground, and I follow him.

  The height difference is hilarious, but I can’t laugh when the back of my neck always has to strain to look at him. I can move back to talk to him, but I get a bit antsy when I’m far from Damon.

  What a peculiar finding, I muse to myself.

  “What’s there to learn?” I cock my head with confused eyebrows.

  “Everything,” he says, rolling the towel around his neck after he had wiped the sweat off his forehead.

  “You can just ask me twenty questions, but I can’t grantee I’ll answer you truthfully.”

  He comments, “Or at all.”

  I tut at him, “As a sign of good faith that you haven’t tried to kill me yet, I’ll answer one question.”

  He raises an eyebrow, dropping the towel on a box of old stuff that the previous owners had left when they went on vacation.

  They are an older couple living their lives, and I will make sure everything in the house stays exactly the same when they come back. It’s going to look as if no one lived here without their permission; their alarm system was weak though.

  I’m doing them a favor by invading the home first before other unsavory characters do it for other gains.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  Somehow, I knew what he was going to ask, “Hera.”

  “Real name,” Damon clicks his tongue.

  I give him a smile, “Would you believe me if I told you I don’t know?”

  “No,” came his immediate answer.

  A laugh bubbles from my chest.

  “Are you going to answer or what?” he sighs.

  He and I both know that I’m not going to answer that; it’s a breach of privacy, and I prefer if I leave my past out of my future for the sake of my sanity.

  Distancing the me before the tragedy and the me now is how I live; I can’t put myself back into my ten-year-old shoes and walk down the memory lane. I’ll break, and another psychotic break would surely be the end of Hera.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Damon brings the concern up as his body language is non-threatening.

  “How would I know?” I narrow my eyes at him.

  “You’re Hera.”

  “So?” I shrug my shoulder at the obvious that he stated.

  “Hera is Zeus’ wife and the ruler of Mount Olympus before marrying. She’s a powerful goddess that commands over the heavens and the Earth.”

  I’m not sure why Damon is going into a history lesson of Greek mythology, but I think it’s best if I keep my mouth shut and listen to him tell me things that I already know. The moment people nicknamed me Hera, I have been hearing the things the jealous Queen had done to all of Zeus’ mistresses and why she is considered one of the most powerful figures in Greece.

  “You are Hera,” he pokes me with his thick finger; my chest aches from the force he puts behind his touch.

  “A psychopath,” Damon hisses, “You can kill me before I can do it to you.”

  “Well,” I nonchalantly remarked, “When you have people coming left and right like extremists of opposite ends of political groups, you learn to defend yourself, no questions asked, and no remorse felt.”

  “I want you to train me.”

  “No.”

  We stare at each other, and I swear there are sparks of electricity flying in our gazes. His is a bit more fervent than mine, his adamancy to have me train him doesn’t make sense.

  Damon is physically stronger than me. He should be training me. I relay that point to him, and he boldly steps forward with the confidence of a man searching for a new route in his life.

  “I want you.”

  That sentence has so many different meanings and interpretations behind it that I’m put off by the deep blackness in his eyes. I can read people quite well. However, Damon negates that ability with his own mysteriousness that slips into a paradox.

  “I did my research on you,” he begins heavily; his chest expands as he takes a lock of my blonde hair into his fingers.

  Whatever the rule number is, I know to never leave my long hair out and about in the presence of a dangerous person. It is a fact that they will grab onto anything, and it’s not just women who fight by going after the hair.

  Men do it too if they think they're beaten.

  I can’t cut it off. Mom loves my blonde hair, and she adores my eyes too even though no one knows where the other color comes from.

  Both my parents have the recessive trait of blue eyes, and the amber must have come from an earlier generation with amber eyes for me to even have a chance at it.

  “The videos with you in it don’t show much, but they are enough to tell me that you’re strong.”

  I scoff, taking the chance to grope his biceps since he’s touching my hair. “Have you seen yourself?”

  I squeeze his arm in emphasis.

  “I’m aware you’re not physically strong, but you have technique.”

  I shift my weight to the other leg. My head moves with my body, and my hair gets tugged from his finger. He doesn’t relent his grip and force my head back to the original place where he wants me to be at, that kind of subtle dominance hits me right in the core.

  “You’re nimble, flexible, and is able to take on enemies more than twice your size with speed.”

  I bite my tongue to not take the compliment. It would mean that I agree with his reasoning as to why I should train him.

  I’m not that stupid.

  “Fight me.”

  Before I can decline his offer to fight him like a madman, his hand turns into a fist when he crowds my hair.

  Instinct comes in white flashes, hot and painful as I snap my hand around his wrist and find the perfect spot to disable his grip with one twist. His arm bends, and I step away from his frame; my foot is flying up to his jaw and knocking him backward.

  I let him go, and he goes tumbling back, but he finds his balance easily with a hand to caress his jaw.

  Then he’s on me with the strength of a bull and the fists of iron.

  Dodging to the side as his fist narrowly misses my face, my mind cranks up it
s usage to analyze the best outcome of restraining him without killing Damon on impulse.

  He’s quick to swing his muscular leg towards me, but swiftness is a skill that I know how to utilize as I fall to the front of my feet while supporting my weight with a hand on the cold cement floor.

  If Damon wants to attack, then he will have the deal with the consequences.

  Jumping up, the flash of black from his eyes shines in conflict when I bring my foot down on his knee to render him to the ground and snap the side of his skull with my knee.

  Picking up my pace and using the time when he’s falling to his side, I step on his arm to pin him down with my weight on his chest. With a hand around his neck and the other holding his other wrist down, I make him immobile underneath me as the curtain of gold falls over my shoulders.

  He’s cascaded with my hair and my weight. He is unable to know what is happening outside of what I’m allowing him to gather from his senses. The crushing grip on his throat brings a snarl on his lips, but his pupils are blown for the wrong reason.

  “You went easy on me,” the accusatory tone in his voice comes out as a sneer.

  I blink as I take in his words; the accusation seeps into my brain like a sponge with water. I didn’t think I went easy on him; his punches would have broken a bone or two if I let him touch me. I was truly in the midst of searching for a plan to either kill him or kill him.

  There wasn’t a second choice.

  I wasn’t thinking about subduing him, but my body had other plans.

  When I face imminent danger from things that are bigger and stronger than me, I have this unnatural way of overpowering them with a blank mind. The thoughts I have in my head during the times of Damon’s balance of his tattooed fist coming towards me with explosive, raw power behind his eyes, everything went white.

  Survival kicked in, and I refused to die.

  “I didn’t go easy on you. It’s self-defense,” I flex my fingers around his neck in emphasis.

  He lays on the ground, not moving a bit when he can use a small amount of power, and I would be thrown off.

  “Your self-defense is killing.”

  I lick my lips at the truth behind his words. I do kill people in self-defense because I don’t want to hurt them and have them come back to exact revenge for hurting their pride.

  “I can’t kill you,” I admit, the pools of obsidian are hypnotizing as I stare into them, “I don’t know why.”

  “I’m injured,” he says, “You can’t kill me because I’m injured.”

  Even he doesn’t believe his words. His lips move, but I don’t hear words as I’m fixated with the urge to kiss him. I want to feel his lips on mine, kissing away the nightmares that haunt me with the screams of my little sister.

  Damon sits sup, quick with a hand on the small of my back to prevent me from smacking my head down on the ground. I slide down his rigid abs and land on his lap where something big, hard, and very hot is poking me.

  Fidgeting, I huff as his hand comes down to my hip to hold me tight and stop my movements with a growl radiating from his wide chest.

  My pussy nuzzles on top of his thick cock, hot and pulsing in his black pants as he curls his fingers into the curve of my waist.

  My throat constricts, dry and tickling with my need to cough. His black eyes peer into my heterochromia hues, and he has my attention with a steely hold that I can’t break free from. I’m physically weak against him, and I’m becoming a bit dizzy emotionally as my heart races.

  Why am I feeling this way?

  I know I’m attracted to Damon, but this type of warmth in my belly runs deeper than lust.

  Taking a mental step back, I steer myself into a clearer mindset as this type of emotions are out of my comfort zone, and I’m not ready to face what it means.

  If it has any meaning.

  When I’m not sure about something, it’s best if I go with my gut on this. I won’t know the end result if I don’t do it myself or I’ll regret it later and beat myself over for not doing what I wanted to do.

  I slide my hands over his shoulder; the bone that sticks out from his muscles and the rippling thickness of his body send thrills down my toes as he carefully holds my waist while keeping an eye on me.

  We’re still technically enemies in a sense.

  I kiss him on his lips, feeling the plushness on mine as his entire body freezes on the ground. It comes and goes quickly as I peel myself away from him, taking the advantage that he’s stiff on the ground while his mind is spinning about what just transpired.

  “Thank you for not killing me today!”

  I turn and run back up the stairs like a bat out of hell. Crawling up the stairs sounds appealing, considering that my cheeks are burning, everything that’s happening to me with regard to Damon is new.

  Any information I can find online should help me deal with this raging storm in my chest, and it’ll let me know how I should I act around Damon.

  I physically shake my body to get rid of the jittery feeling crawling on my skin, and I release a big breath of air from my lungs to rejuvenate myself with the bright sunlight from the window.

  “Okay, new day!” I clap my hand, and a smile takes over my cheeks.

  The floorboard behind me creaks when Damon gets out from the basement and shuts the door behind him. I twirl around, eyes gleaming with wickedness as a giggle spills from my lips at his sweaty chest and messy hair.

  He’s too handsome.

  My demon, the voice in my head whispers.

  “Get dressed, demon boy!” I shoo him to the stairs that lead to the bathroom, “We have a busy day ahead of us!”

  “What makes you think I’m going anywhere with you?” he snaps with a scowl on his face.

  There’s no bite in his words, and that makes me happy, “You don’t want to be with me?”

  He breathes in sharply and glares, “Where?”

  Damon doesn’t have to sound so aggravated. I only kissed him, and it’s not like I shaved his hair. No one can go near his hair. I will chop their hands off if they dare to mess with that beautiful mop of black locks.

  “It’s a secret,” I put a finger to my lips as a shushing motion, “Tick-tock, tick-tock, the time is here. You can hide, but I can hear your sorrow.”

  The melodic tune takes over my mind as I hum and spin around with hysterical delight gushing through me.

  My feet find the ground after being slightly lifted up for the jumpy dancing twirl, “I’ll make you a delicious breakfast! You’re still growing, and you need all the protein—”

  “Do not even fucking think about it.”

  My pout deepens.

  Chapter Seven

  Damon

  When I come out of the elevator with Hera, she has a skip in her steps that bounces throughout the walk. The freight elevator closes loudly before it’s being pulled back down to the first level, and that doesn’t sit right with me because elevators only go down when the button is pushed, and no one should be out this late into the night.

  The building under my feet is a hotel that from where one could see a sea of lights at night, and the air is thinner, fresher than the stench of spilled beer and old cheese from a nearby restaurant.

  I have been following Hera around all day. We have been to multiple places where she received packages from people who are notorious for their illicit activities. My time in the underground world has opened my eyes to people who do much more than heinous crimes, but seeing the young, cheerful girl greet a woman with the sharp edge of a sword as a replacement for her lost leg is another.

  The woman tried to cut Hera’s head off with one clean swipe of her leg, but agile, little Hera dodges with ease.

  It was eight at night when we got up to the hotel’s roof, and she isn’t here to sightsee the breezy city of Philadelphia; her goal is the hotel directly in competition with this one.

  She skips towards the ledge and leans over to look towards the ground, and if I was her enemy, I would have ta
ken this chance to push her down.

  Hera is too vulnerable at times, and she doesn’t even realize.

  “Come here!” she squeals, waving her hands wildly.

  Noting the area is empty with a wide range of space, she chooses this space to take the violin case from my hand. This has been in my possession starting at lunchtime where she scarfed down a messy plate of salmon; she says she needs it for her eyesight and fish has Omega-3 to aid visions.

  I should have known what her intentions were when she said that because today is a planned even where her signature of eerie tunes come out. I picked up on her subconscious habits. She sings when she’s in the mood to play a game.

  The case opens with disassembled pieces of a sniper rifle. I can add that to her impressive resume. I distantly wonder what she can’t do.

  She assembles the weapon by seasoned hands; she’s clicking the rifle in place on the ledge and standing to stretch.

  She wiggles her perky, little ass and giggles, “Are you excited?”

  I meet her eyes when she looks over her shoulder, “You haven’t told me who you’re going to kill.”

  “Not kill, Damon,” Hera’s grin broadens; a glint of a devil behind those eyes laughs at my naivety.

  She’s not here to kill with a sniper rifle that can hit a target miles away, but she’s here to play a game with whoever her unfortunate target is.

  Abel is the only person that comes to my mind.

  Hera pats her ass, and it jiggles because of from her tight pants; my fingers twitch at my side, “Alright, good luck to me.”

  She pats a bit harder, and the sound is not satisfying, and since she’s wishing good luck on this, I’m going to give her one.

  With the strength of a bear, I swat her ass, and the echo comes back loud and crystal clear. The redness and swelling of blood on my palm throbs as a sinful grin parts the pearly whites of my teeth when her startled eyes jump to mine when she hides her ass from me.

  It was soft and bouncy.

  Her scream was a bonus.

  “Y-you can’t do that!” a small blush on her cheeks says otherwise.

  “You can’t stop me,” I quip sardonically, clenching my hand into a fist.