by Amelia Wilde
I don’t move.
I let him come all the way across the room, to his enormous desk, and plant his hands on its firm surface. My own fingers are frozen on the page I’ve turned. I wish I could freeze this moment, rewind it to before I was such an idiot, and run back upstairs. “You were gone a long time,” I say, a tremble in my voice.
“I don’t fucking care, sweetheart.” The deadly edge in his voice makes my knees weak. “I told you to stay upstairs.”
5
Brigit
Zeus glares at me across the desk, his shoulders rising and falling with each breath, and a cold certainty pulls my belly tight. The page of the journal is so flimsy between my fingers. I’m just as insubstantial compared with him.
There’s no one else here. No one else in the entire building. I read in a book once that the act of being observed changes people. We have no audience now, no other whores, no clients.
No one to make him into an illusion.
This is who he really is.
Zeus has taken off his mask, and I can’t look away. It was so real. It was so real. But this? An unguarded, angry god? This is who he is, no mask, no distance. He’s breathtaking in his rage. He’s obviously paid for it dearly.
His hand flies out faster than I can track and knocks mine away from the page. The words fall away from my fingertips but the book stays open and my animal heart panics, tries to flee. I make it two steps, to the corner of the desk, before I’m met with a solid wall of muscle and fury. Zeus’s hand tightens on the back of my neck, his fingers twisting through my hair, and he pulls my head back to see the cruel twist of his lips. “Running,” he scoffs. “As if I would ever let you leave without payment.”
“I didn’t—” Another hand, tight on my jaw. He teases at my throat, the message clear. His power over me sings through my neck and down to the tips of my toes. I lift my heels, trying to get closer, trying to get away. I don’t know what I’m trying to do anymore. “I didn’t take anything.”
A space inside of me melts down inside his lethal, precise touch. It’s one thing to be caught in an explosion, glass shoved through your back. It’s another to find the hard man you’ve fallen in in love with has been turned soft. That was an illusion, too. He’s not soft. Not at all. He dips his head to mine and steals a kiss that’s more of a bite. Yes. This is the man I know and the one I want.
If that makes me sick, if it makes me depraved, if it makes me a whore, then I’ll be one for him.
“You stole my secrets from me,” he says against my mouth.
And here, only here, I can be that woman from the alley, the one who pretended not to feel my fear even while I felt it. “Then steal something back.”
He laughs, a sound with a razor’s edge. “Don’t play revenge games with me, sweetheart. You’ll lose.”
I would love to lose. “We’ll see.”
Zeus lowers his head and sinks his teeth into my collarbone, another laugh marking my skin with its heat. He’s filled every stretch of vision, my whole body attuned to his, and that’s how I hear the hurt behind the laugh. A twisting fear. The struggle to take control over it.
I’ll offer myself up instead. And even if I didn’t offer, he would take me. It’s only right. I’m on fire for him, cut with glass down to the bone, turning soft and pliant in his hands like the whore I can’t help but be in this moment. I bite my own bottom lip to keep from begging.
He turns me, hand still on the back of my neck, and bends me unceremoniously over the desk. The robe slips off, silk skimming my shoulders, and falls somewhere out of sight. Zeus shoves the tank top up above my breasts and yanks the shorts down to my knees. I’m disheveled, humiliated, and panting.
Panting.
I can’t stop, can’t get my breathing under control. Don’t want to. Take me away from that burning building. Make me a part of this house. A part of you. Steal it from me if you have to.
His only concession to the fact that I semi-recently got stabbed by an exploding window is that he doesn’t tie my hands behind my back, but I can tell he wants to from the way he circles my wrists with his fingers and squeezes tight. Zeus releases them with a low growl, and then his hand is back in my hair, jerking my head up from where my cheek was pressed against the notebook. It’s a painful arch. I could fly away in it, but another mean kiss steals my breath and the rest of my composure.
The old me wouldn’t recognize who I am now, with my toes skimming the floor and my hips rocking into empty air, trying to get contact, any contact. Zeus punishes this with two rough slaps to my ass that do nothing to diminish the heat between my legs. I’m on fire for him, aching for him, and he scrapes his nails down to the crease between ass and thigh and teases a fingertip close to my folds.
But he won’t touch. He circles again, his other hand pressing my cheek back into his secrets, and a needy whimper escapes me.
He moves behind me, one foot planted to keep my legs apart, holding himself back so that I can’t even rub myself on the front of his pants. I can’t do anything but squirm in his grip. It’s fucked up, anyone would think so, but it reassures me that I can’t get away. A desk drawer opens and shuts, hard, and I jump but there’s nowhere to jump. There’s nowhere except him.
“What do you—what are you—what are you going to take—oh.”
Thick, lubed-up fingers breach my ass and burn my useless babbling into an ash of shame and want. “What will I take?” Zeus sounds thoughtful, as if he is not finger-fucking my tight hole with rough strokes at this very moment. Adding to the stretch and embarrassment until I’m writhing away from the fingers with tears in my eyes. “What will I take, without asking, like a fucking thief? What do you think, sweetheart?”
It demands an answer so I give him one. “My ass.”
“More than that.” He leans down to drop a kiss between my shoulder blades, just above where the cut is still healing. “I’ll steal your pain and your tears and what else?” Zeus twists his fingers and the ache blooms outward until it’s all the way to my knees, all the way to the beat of my glass wings. His breath brushes the shell of my ear. “I’ll steal your pleasure, too. It’s mine, you little slut, it’s all mine, and you can’t have any of it unless I say.”
My pussy clenches in response to this and a fresh shame pulls a moan from my mouth. It almost covers the sound of his zipper.
“Not yet,” Zeus says, and pulls his fingers out. My knees knock against the desk, mind fracturing. What can I say to get him to let me come? What can I say? Nothing. There are no words to convince him, and anyway it’s too late, far too late, because with no more preamble he notches his cock to my aching hole and thrusts in deep.
My scream echoes off the ceiling and his laugh catches it on the way down. It hurts. It hurts so much. He’s so big, too big, and the scream curdles into a relieved sob. He drives in mercilessly, my pussy weeping with neglect while my hips crash against the desk. It should rattle, but it doesn’t—it’s solid, like him. Made for him. Like everything else. I’m not solid but I can bear him.
That thought transforms the brutal fucking into something new.
Proof.
I won’t die. I won’t shatter. If he thought so, he wouldn’t do this to me, not with his secrets on display.
This is the most intimate fuck we’ve ever had.
Heat rolls through my muscles and I grip him hard. “Fuck,” he says, his voice breaking.
It’s a power surge. Trip the breakers. Reset everything. There are no lights on but I see them flicker anyway as he grinds his hips against my ass, taking every inch. A hand palms my throat, pulling my head up so I’m arched for him. It brings my nipples into the air and they’re pulled tight, so sensitive that if he pinched one I’d scream again. “Tell me another secret.”
The demand is shuddering, shaking, but he hears it nonetheless and fucks me harder. I’m going to feel this for days. I hope I feel this for days. “I wanted you the moment I saw you.” His own breathing is sharp, pointed, and yes, I�
�m having an effect on him. He’s not the only source of gravity. “I decided you would be mine.”
On mine he shoves the full weight of himself against me and I cry out, nearly delirious with the force and tug of it. Every thrust makes me hotter between my legs, more desperate, and I know this is supposed to be a punishment but I can’t help wanting more of it. “Your turn, sweetheart,” he prompts.
“I like—” I choke on another cry. “I like it when you call me a good girl.”
“That’s not a secret,” he snaps, but then his hand is gone from my throat and his big palms run down my lower back until they reach my ass. He spreads me even wider and slows his pace. “But look how good you’re being for me.” It’s half-mocking, half-real, and it doesn’t matter. My body doesn’t care. It tightens around him and the feral growl he makes is the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever caused. “Such a good girl.” I’m on another plane, somewhere close to a filthy heaven.
I try to move back against him but there’s no room. He has me pinned. Trapped. I love it. Pleasure tightens down low, a glow that intensifies more with every movement of his hips. A tear drips down to the page below me. “Say it again. Please?”
“You’re stretched so big around my cock,” he murmurs. “I’m fucking this tiny hole of yours so hard and fuck, Brigit, you cry the prettiest tears.” He sweeps one away with the pad of his thumb. “Tears like diamonds. And you’re being such an angel, a little slut of an angel, you are being such—” He punctuates this with a vicious thrust. I see the stars. “A good—” Hard. Harder. I’m right on the edge. “Girl.”
He empties himself into me with long, hot spurts, an animal growl in the back of his throat and his hands still spreading me open, my hips bruised on the desk. I’ve become a feral thing myself, toes scratching at the floor, blinded by lust. He pulls himself out of me and steps away. I’m hanging off the edge of a cliff, a void yawning below, and I just need him to touch me, I need one touch and this ball of pent-up orgasm will burst and I can ride it out—
His zipper scrapes into place and I push myself up in time to see him round the corner of his desk. “No,” I whisper, and then a frustrated, wordless shout tears from my throat.
Zeus turns his head, his profile elegant and amused. “I said I would steal your pleasure.” He opens the door and goes through, hooking his hand on the frame at the last moment. Golden eyes, golden man. So cruel. So mean. I’m throbbing for him, dying, and he takes me in one last time before he disappears. “I didn’t say I would give it back.”
6
Zeus
I’m wrung out, a lightweight, and the minute I’m out of Brigit’s view I have to stop and lean against the wall. Her howl follows me out, as if she’s screamed into her own hands, and I have to stifle my own laugh.
Or is it a cry?
I don’t cry. Fuck that.
I’ve been circling the city all morning in one of my unregistered cars. I’m not looking for the women. Not exactly. And even if I was, there’s no sign of them anywhere. Or at least there wasn’t when I arrived. I felt the message come in while I was fucking Brigit and to hell with stopping in the middle of that.
She deserves a little frustration, after what she did. What I did not tell her was that seeing her with one of my journals open on the desk in front of her flayed me alive.
I did not expect her to disobey me immediately.
Then again, she loves it when I punish her. In fact, her punishment continues even now. I saw the state of her pussy. I wanted to lick her until she melted into the desk, but we all have to make sacrifices.
One of mine is continuing to go on living while my heart feels like a burning building. I saw it today—the whorehouse. The flames did more damage than the explosives. The roof is missing, and my entire apartment. Whoever did this—and I am convinced it was Demeter—wanted my personal space destroyed. She doesn’t know that my personal space is here because she thinks I’ve become my father.
That’s up for debate.
I leave Brigit in my office and climb the stairs, taking my phone out as I go.
“—a travesty of a contract,” Hades is saying, to someone else, obviously. “A fucking travesty. Bring another one of these to me and I’ll tie you to the front of the train for your ride back to the city. If you wanted to thank me, you could have done so by never calling me again.”
“You love me,” I tell him. “You love me so much, you sweet thing.”
“Have Poseidon drop you in the ocean. I’ll gift him cement for your shoes.”
“Don’t hang up.” He doesn’t, but I can tell he was going to.
“I have business.” A clipped tone, yes, but curiosity, too. I did, after all, make him very nice food while he was staying at the whorehouse.
“Did you notice anything different when we ate dinner?”
“I noticed that you’re obsessed with a whore.” A muffled voice in the background breaks in. I think it’s Persephone. “I noticed that Brigit has had quite an effect on you.” Ah—there’s the strain. If she’s telling him to be polite, then she’s more cunning than I thought. “How is she?”
“Alive. We were drugged.”
“Yes, I know.”
It comes back to me then—the strange conversation we had in my office. About our father. He touched my face so he could see my eyes. “And you said nothing? That’s so like you, Hades.”
“I told you I thought you were high, and as usual, you disregarded me.” A lengthier pause. “Was it everyone?”
“Brigit and me at the very least.” The mood in the whorehouse that night was so happy. So celebratory. But there was nothing to celebrate. “I think it was everyone, but I can’t be sure.”
“Is there a point to all your senseless rambling?”
Claws around my throat, digging in hard. “How is Persephone?”
This is a loaded question and my heart responds as if there might be consequences to asking it. I’m not afraid of asking it. I haven’t been afraid of Hades ever in my life, and I’m not afraid of him now. I just feel...something. Different. It’s unfamiliar and appalling.
“She—” He clears his throat, and I can see him behind his desk, a fist up to his mouth. “She didn’t eat the day we had our discussion. Neither did I.”
“So she’s—”
“She’s fine.” End of discussion. “Is there something relevant you want to discuss?”
Relief sweeps over me. I have sworn every day of my life that I don’t care what happens to him, to any of them, and Demeter’s daughter has always been nothing to me. But I know, in a distant, calculating way, that hurting Hades’ wife, even inadvertently, would be the end of the city and possibly the planet. It’s the relief that makes me push him some more. “Are you going to marry her?”
“I don’t believe it.” More voices in the background, an ebb and flow. “You’re worried you might not be invited. Is that it?”
Not once, not ever, have I considered the possibility that Hades would throw a wedding and invite me. “You promised I could be the best man.”
He laughs, a splinter of ice, and what the fuck is this emotion? Pride, I think, at making him laugh at all. And then—hope. Not for his wedding, no. Because the other thing I’ve never considered is attending my own, with a pink-cheeked bride. A white dress. Not any bride. Brigit. Thinking about weddings in this context makes my stomach turn. The laughter peters out into a sigh. “Fuck off, Zeus.”
“I thought you were leaving the city.” This is beyond the boundaries of any conversation we’ve had in recent years, and I know it. I wait for the answering silence of a disconnected call. “Did you not?”
“Persephone couldn’t travel.” The defensive, protective edge is still in his voice, but there’s the smallest crack in the door. “For a while, it was block by block.”
I curse under my breath.
“Yes,” Hades says. “And then I received an exceedingly irritating call from some woman at the hos
pital who was so frantic she could hardly speak. It’s lucky for her someone level-headed took the phone from her hand.” A brief pause, to let this settle in. “Your emergency contact, fucker?”
I’m blindsided by a belly laugh that wrestles itself out of me and won’t let go. Tears come to my eyes. I collapse onto my sofa, my abs protesting. “Well, you came, didn’t you?”
He replies in a string of profanities that’s only interrupted for him to order someone out of his office. “Did you find her?”
Her—Demeter. “I can’t even find my whores.” Laughter takes over again in a painful grip. “I’m down to a skeleton crew.”
This time, he waits so long to speak that I think he’s ended the call. Then—a sharp breath. “The trains are still running.” By this, he means that there is an escape from the city. My crazy bastard brother, offering me safe haven. It’s enough to make a man ill. “Send a messenger next time. Your voice is like an ice pick to the brain.” Then he really does hang up, and I toss the phone onto the sofa and stare at the ceiling.
It’s a fucking beautiful ceiling.
My phone buzzes again and I slap a hand down to pick it up.
Can I come up
James.
Yes.
His footsteps approach a minute later. He has a proximity sensor in his phone, like I do. Like Brigit will, when I get her a phone. If we both survive this interlude.
James enters and closes the door behind him.
He turns to face me and his shoulders sag.
“You found them.”
The door opens again and Brigit breezes in, honey hair a gorgeous mess and a righteous anger painting her cheeks red. She’s tied her robe tight, but abandoned the rest of her clothes, and despite the horrendous news written on James’s face, my cock stirs at the sight of her. My needy little slut plants her feet in the center of the room and folds her arms over her chest. “Go ahead,” she says.