Dishonored

by Bethany-Kris

  Then, no one would ever think she was weak.

  Or incapable.

  Broken.

  It was the one thing she could control in her marriage—her reputation.

  And it was lost.

  “Fix your face,” Caesar murmured.

  Aria kept her head tilted down. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Clean your face—wipe off the tears. Do whatever you have to do, but fix it. You don’t want me to see it.”

  A laugh burst from her lips.

  Bitter and sad.

  She finally tipped her head up and glared at him from across the room. “I knew you would come—I was fucking betting on it.”

  Caesar arched one brow high. “I figured that.”

  “What?”

  He gestured a finger between the two of them, saying, “This … all of it. And us, maybe. The whole thing you’re doing—the war you’re trying to start. All of the manipulation and games. Every step you’ve taken. For yourself. Against me. Around me. None of it was what I thought it was. It couldn’t be when it was actually just for you, right?”

  Aria’s heartbeat pulsed hard in her throat. “I don’t know what you’re—”

  Caesar came closer, then. Suddenly closing over half the distance between them in a blink, but stopping in the middle of the room with a gaze that burned her on contact. It was his eyes that dared her to deny—urged her to lie. He was angry and disbelieving, and if he were another man, she might consider him to be too close to her.

  Except he wasn’t another man.

  He wasn’t Raffe.

  Caesar was him.

  And she had yet to be scared of him.

  “Don’t,” he uttered. “Just … fuck, don’t lie right now.”

  Aria straightened, and for once when she was naked in front of this man, his gaze never wandered from her face. He didn’t leer at her body like he had all the times before, or even make one of his crude comments that irked her as much as it made her hot.

  Maybe that was why she had the deepest urge to reach for her dress, and cover her nakedness. She held back, but only because he was talking again. She found it was usually better for her if she listened when Caesar talked.

  He let things slip.

  Right now, the slip wasn’t in his words. It was in his gaze—confused, and hurt. It was in his posture—ridged, and defensive. It was in his tone—low, and deep.

  She could see it; feel it.

  He cared.

  Aria didn’t know what to do with that, or how to handle it. If he was angry at her, or if he was trying to hurt her, then that was an entirely different story. That was something she could work with, and something she could most certainly use where Caesar was concerned. She could handle him when he was promising violence, or fucking her … or anything else but this right here.

  What even was this?

  And why did her heart hurt because of it?

  “This is not how this is supposed to go,” she mumbled with a shake of her head.

  Caesar’s brow furrowed, and he came one single step closer. “How what is supposed to go?”

  Christ.

  Didn’t he know?

  She waved her hands between them, knowing damn well she probably looked crazy, but not giving a single fuck about it. “This! You can’t care, Caesar—you don’t get to care! You get to be angry, and … unpredictable. I know how to fight back against that. I know how to—”

  “Use it,” he interrupted softly.

  Aria stiffened all over, but stayed quiet.

  Caesar nodded like he didn’t need her to say a thing. “Oh, yeah, I do know now. That’s what you use, girl. Sure, you make it seem like the person is doing it because it’ll help them by hurting you, but that’s never what it is, is it? Your father, for one. Tell me different.”

  She refused to look at him.

  Caesar only sighed.

  She heard his next step, though. Another move that yet again, brought him closer to her. A part of her wanted him to get the hell out of her room, and then maybe she could salvage her pride; fix her fucking plans. Another part of her found it strangely easy to be around this man, and wanted to keep him near.

  God.

  What was wrong with her?

  “I can’t …”

  “What?” Caesar asked.

  “I can’t like you,” Aria said under her breath. “It messes with everything. Don’t make me like you, Caesar.”

  His laughter came out like raw honey.

  Dark, rich, and all too sweet.

  “That’s amusing,” he countered, “considering everyone around me seems to think I’m rather easy to hate.”

  “You are.”

  And he wasn’t at the same time.

  “Aria,” he murmured, “would you look at me?”

  She did, but the same thing stared back at her. A man who both confused and infuriated her. A man she had been able to trust in—because he would continue to do the same thing over and over again without even knowing he would help her in doing so. A man who turned her on as much as he drove her crazy.

  A man who cared.

  He shouldn’t care.

  There was a hell of a lot less than half a room of space between them now, but he quickly closed it. She couldn’t breathe nearly as well when all she could smell was his distinct scent, or see only his gaze locked on hers and nothing else. His hand came up, and his palm curved around the side of her throat, and part of her jaw.

  She would have flinched.

  Except he wasn’t Raffe.

  “You could have asked me not to touch your throat,” he said gently. “I would have—”

  “I like it when you do that. I don’t like it when he does it.”

  Caesar nodded subtly. “You don’t love him at all, do you?”

  “I was given to him. I never chose him. There was no choice. I gave my father everything, and was all the things he wanted me to be. And yet, this is what he did to me in the end. This was who he gave me to.”

  “Why not just kill your husband, then?” Caesar asked. “You can’t say you’re incapable. I have seen you at work. You are more than able to get that done.”

  Aria smiled a bit. “It would be easy, actually. I have a knife in my nightstand. I think about killing him every night he sleeps beside me.”

  “Then why—”

  “They’ll know. The clan, I mean. My people. They’ll challenge me after. Kill me, at the most. Shame me, at the least. I need my position to be unchallenged.”

  Caesar laughed, and glanced up at the ceiling like he expected it to crash down on them. “You’re doing all of this—this … production of a war just to kill one man? It’s not even about the streets or the power at all, is it?”

  “It is—it’s the high I keep chasing. Power, I mean. The more power I have in the end, the less likely I am to be challenged. It gets me so fucking high. It’s the heroin that’s either going to save me, or it’ll kill me. Either way, I’m going to be free of him, and I’ll take it.”

  His gaze came back to her—blue and stormy in a blink.

  It was shocking, really.

  “He doesn’t know what he has in you, does he? He doesn’t know at all.”

  Aria stilled. “I don’t—”

  “He doesn’t know what you’ll do. Or what you’re willing to do. What you can and have done. He doesn’t know how smart you are, or how cunning you can be. He just … doesn’t know at all.”

  “He doesn’t have to know, Caesar,” Aria replied. “He only wants to be able to say that I’m his—I just need to be his thing.”

  “What a waste of a woman.”

  Aria found herself smiling again.

  Caesar blew out a slow breath. “He’s so fucking stupid.”

  “Most men tend to be when a beautiful woman is in front of them.”

  “That’s fair.” Caesar still hadn’t let go of her, but he loosened his hold, and s
crubbed his other hand down his jaw. “I came here to do something, but uh … I don’t think I can now.”

  “And what was that?”

  Although, she thought she knew.

  Caesar shook his head once. “Not important.”

  “All right. Then, would you stay for a bit?”

  His gaze cut back to her in an instant. “You don’t have to pretend like this is anything more than what it is with us—you use me, and I was stupid enough to let you.”

  Aria shrugged. “Maybe it is more; I tend to be good at multitasking, il mio tiranno.”

  His gaze darkened, and that smirk of his deepened.

  “Your tyrant, huh?”

  “Fits, doesn’t it? I think so. You were named well.”

  He laughed again.

  Aria grinned.

  Yeah, he wasn’t going anywhere. She was going to hate herself for it, but she wanted him to stay. To make her feel. To let her be alive. To give her that escape.

  He did that.

  He barely had to try.

  It was everything else that made her feel dead.

  Funny how that worked.

  Warm sunlight woke Aria first, and then the buzzing of her phone second. She stiffened all over as the hard body pressed against hers shifted, but relaxed when his voice filtered through her sleep-dazed senses.

  “You should tell Nico you’re alive,” Caesar muttered, tone thick with sleep. “Otherwise, he’s going to wake me up again, and then I’ll have to kill him.”

  Aria would have laughed.

  Except he sounded serious.

  Even as Aria rolled over on the bed to put more distance between them, Caesar’s hand still grazed her spine. His fingertips making a soft path from her lower back all the way up to her shoulders. Her skin prickled with heat and need while her mind flashed back to the night before.

  The phone buzzed again.

  “Goddammit, Nico.”

  Finally, Aria snatched the phone off the bed stand, and checked the messages. No missed calls or texts from Raffe—not surprising as he rarely rolled his ass out of bed before nine, and it was only six. Nico, on the other hand, had been messaging and calling since five.

  “He’s worried about you,” Caesar said.

  Even through the thickness of his sleep, she could hear something there. A hint of heat in his tone that he might have been able to hide had he been properly awake.

  “Nico is a friend,” Aria said.

  “A good friend?”

  She smiled, and glanced over her shoulder at him. Unsurprisingly, she found his stormy blue eyes looking back at her from the mountain of white blankets and pillows. A question lingered there in his gaze, but nothing more.

  “A friend,” Aria repeated. “People do have those. Don’t you?”

  “Not with women.”

  “Right.”

  She sent off a quick text to Nico, and told him not to bother her again. Putting the phone back on the nightstand, she attempted to keep some of that distance between them. At least for the moment. It was made more difficult by the slight ache between her thighs that reminded Aria it was much nicer to have Caesar very fucking close.

  He was good at that.

  To say the least …

  “Does your husband rape you?” Caesar asked.

  It came out so cold.

  Not indifferent, but just … flat.

  Aria answered the same way. “Often.”

  “I don’t understand, then.”

  She glanced over at him. “Understand what?”

  “How you can be with me when someone’s hurt you like that. I get why you would want to—sex is just another weapon to use, right? Sex is the best way to manipulate or cause someone pain in a simple way. That I get. But … that’s not what this is, or last night.”

  No, it wasn’t.

  “It was before with you,” she said stretching a bit. “I manipulated you with sex.”

  “You can’t really fake liking it the way you do with me, though, can you?”

  Aria laughed softly. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it, Caesar. I do—quite a bit.”

  “That’s my point. How? I just … sex isn’t sex for me,” Caesar admitted quietly, staring blankly at the ceiling. “There’s always had to be something underlying to it, maybe. Or maybe it’s just women that make me feel like that. They’ve always got something up their sleeve, and I would much rather hurt them first before they get to me. Or shit …”

  “Prove all women are the same?” Aria asked.

  His gaze cut to her.

  Silence thickened the air in the room.

  “It’s not hard to figure out that’s what you do, Caesar,” she told him, shrugging her naked shoulders. “Sex is your weapon. You said it, not me. It’s the why that makes me curious.”

  “Because that’s what I was taught.”

  Aria frowned. “What?”

  “I was taught very young by someone who had no business putting their hands on me that sex was just another weapon to hurt people. It’s all I’ve ever known. It’s easy. Maybe it gets me off in some ways, and maybe I just want to ruin people like I was because making things dirty like me is what feels good. Like the shame I can’t wash off, well they can’t get me off, either.”

  “Does it?”

  “What?”

  “Feel good,” she clarified.

  Caesar sighed. “This is why I don’t talk in bed unless it’s to tell someone to shut the fuck up and swallow my dick.”

  Aria glanced over at him. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know if it feels good—I say it does.”

  “But?”

  “Don’t shrink my head, Aria. Suck my dick. Climb on for a ride. Let me fuck your ass while I gag you, or tie you up. Anything else. But not this. Everything else is easy, and this is all the things I never want to talk about.”

  Point taken.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The words were barely out of Aria’s mouth before Caesar had rolled on top of her. Every dark, fractured, confusing part of him clouded her vision, and took up all of her space. Her ability to take in a proper breath was gone with the first kiss he slammed down on her mouth—a bruising, violent kiss that left her lips tingling and swollen. But damn her if she didn’t love it. It was his fingers curving around her throat that made her wet between her legs, though.

  Well, that and his already hard cock grinding against her bare pussy.

  “Don’t ever apologize to me,” he muttered against her lips.

  “Ever?”

  “I don’t deserve it.”

  His other hand snaked between their bodies, then, and Aria couldn’t help herself when she felt his knuckles graze against her sex. She widened her legs for him—just like the whore her husband liked to claim her to be. She opened for another man, and she took every single inch of his cock in.

  And she did it with a smile and a moan.

  Because fuck, he felt good.

  And damn, he filled her so well.

  Christ, he made her ache.

  “Shit, you need to relax,” Caesar grunted. “So fucking tight.”

  “You don’t know what it feels like.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  Soft, warm lips drifted over her trembling mouth, and cheekbones. Tender, and sweet, and entirely hot.

  “Fuck, tell me,” he demanded when she couldn’t form words.

  His order was punctuated by a hard jerk of his hips that had his cock hitting her inner walls in just the right spot to make her clench, and soak him even more with her juices. Aria let out another one of those broken moans.

  “I’m so full,” she breathed, “and it’s not nearly enough. You make me want more. And then I want to breathe, but I want you to squeeze so I can’t, too.”

  He did just that.

  Long, strong fingers gripping tight to her delicate throat, and making her breath hitch.

  “Ke
ep going,” he murmured along the seam of her lips.

  “I’m hot—all over. I just want …”

  “More.”

  “More,” she echoed.

  Jesus.

  He pulled out fast, then, and dove right back in. It started a brutal pace between them that could only end with an ache between her thighs, and sweat slicked down her skin. She needed it, though. Needed to have this. She never got this, now.

  Never would again.

  His hand at her throat kept her pinned to the bed, and under his weight. A heavy, substantial weight that she couldn’t escape, and didn’t want to. His other hand between her thighs used the slickness of her sex to ease the sensation of his fingertips dragging harsh circles over her throbbing clit.

  One.

  And then two.

  Three.

  Four.

  “Don’t even fucking ask me for it—just take it.”

  She knew what he meant.

  Her orgasm.

  He always wanted her to beg.

  To be sweet.

  To ask him.

  She couldn’t have done any of those things even if she tried. It came on too quickly, and far too fierce. Not something she could control, or hold back. It was there all at once like a wave crashing into the sand with violent intent, and taking parts of her away with it when the tide went back out.

  And fuck … it was wonderful.

  Caesar had her flipped over before the orgasm was even done, and was shoving his cock back into her clenching cunt before she realized he was gone. His arm wrapped around her middle, and pinned her arms against her body. He fucked her like that, too, with his mouth against the back of her throat, and his face buried into the mess of her hair.

  Dark, hot words whispered along her skin.

  Take it.

  Fuck it like you want it.

  And breathe and scream for me.

  She was a mess by then. Arms and legs she couldn’t control—nerves that felt on fire. She thought he fucked a lot like he just was. Uncontrollable, and unpredictable. A little too wild for his own good, and always with the intent to get what he wanted in the end.