He wrapped his hand around her ankle and squeezed.
“So.” Vinnie swung her leg over Crixus and sat down hard on his hips. His grunt was somewhere between pleasure and suffocation. “I guess this makes you my slave.”
“How do you figure?” She could hear the lingering discomfort thick in his words.
“Vinnie, I’m begging you,’” she quoted. “On my knees. Come with me to Hades. He’s reasonable. I know we can work something out. Do this, and I will be your slave. My life is yours to do with what you will, blah blah blah. Please, help me save Matilda, yada yada, more emotional crap…’ Matilda is safe. Calliope has been delivered. Your contract is complete. The way I see it, you owe me.”
His head cocked to the side, endearing befuddlement widening his eyes. “But, you weren’t…how did you—”
“I heard you composing that lame-ass speech all the way over to the recording studio,” Vinnie said. “I followed you, genius.”
“How did you know where to find me?”
“You’re not the only one with a Girl Friday, cupcake. You’re not so hard to track. You don’t blend, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Anyway.” Vinnie leaned over, her elbows resting on his pectoral muscles and her hands propped under her chin. “I caught the squeal that you were in Vegas and decided maybe I’d hit the Crixus buffet and have myself some seconds. But I saw you wander into a therapist’s office and thought well this is going to be good.”
“You listened?”
“You’re damn right I did. Your thoughts are about as hard to read as a picture book. Boning a pregnant lady? Really?”
He shrugged beneath her. “I’ve never fucked a pregnant woman before. I like to keep my horizons broad.”
“How about that. We have something in common after all. Beside an intense dislike for Calliope, that is.”
“Did you know it was her?” Crixus asked. “Killing the artists?”
“I knew it wasn’t me.”
“You could have mentioned that.”
“You didn’t ask. And, though perceptivity is clearly not one of the abilities you enjoy in excess as a demigod, I was reasonably certain you would figure it out, and I could address it when you did. Why waste my energy when I could waste yours?”
Vinnie walked two fingers up his chest and tapped his chin. “Also, I caught Calliope lurking in Rome after our last encounter and decided it was time I spoke with Hades. He was kind enough to intercede with the Fates and Muses. I imagine she will answer to them in due time.”
“About these encounters…” Crixus took a lock of her hair between his fingers and tugged, a sensory reminder of when he had done the same with less restraint. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, but I would prefer if you could kindly quit killing me.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Vinnie kicked her sandals off and slid her thighs onto his, pedaling her feet in the air like an illustration of some dreamy, malt-shop teenager on the phone. She loved lying against him this way. Letting him be the intercessor between her and the earth. Of the two, the gladiator’s body felt more stable. “Are you going to behave yourself?”
She could feel his muscles tighten as soon as the word behave had left her lips.
“Give me some credit, kiddo. I’m not interested in some neutered, spineless sucker. I’m talking about laying down some ground rules and seeing if we can share the same planet without wanting to kill each other constantly.”
“I’m listening,” Crixus said.
For once, Vinnie had the odd feeling that he was.
“I don’t think either one of us is what you would call relationship material.”
Crixus did not disagree.
“Trouble is,” Vinnie continued, “if you fuck another woman, I’m going to want to kill her hideously and make you scream apologies.”
“And I can’t promise not to throttle every painter and poet you pick up,” he said. “Fair enough?”
Vinnie considered this.
“At the risk of sounding hypocritical, sex isn’t just a hobby for me. I fuck, or I fade. It’s that simple.”
“You could fuck me,” Crixus offered. “It’s the least I can do.”
“How very altruistic of you to offer what already belongs to me.” Vinnie traced the curve of his strangely small, perfectly-formed ear. “You’re my slave now, remember? I own you.”
He seized her hand and held it to her chest. “I’m being sincere, Lavinia. I’m trying to apologize.”
Vinnie allowed herself an eye roll. “I’m a succubus, for the gods’ sake. Apologize with a stiff drink and a hard cock.”
Crixus’s fingers rested on her hips as he shifted her weight. “I could arrange half of that right now.” The truth of his words pressed against her through his jeans.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asked.
“Which part?”
I think I’m in love. Lavinia’s mind was a jewelry box, and this phrase, the little tune that played every time she opened the lid. She had opened it again and again since he’d spoken those words. She didn’t know if she believed them yet. Time would tell, and they had plenty of it.
“About you being wrong?” she said.
The relief was visible on his face.
“Yes.” He paused a moment longer than she thought necessary. “I’m…an impulsive, arrogant, self-serving asshole who’s spent his whole life seeking his own pleasure with…little or no thought for the feelings of others.”
“You looked like you had to think about that.”
“Because I did. I am under the care of a psychologist who suggested I think more and speak less.”
“You are Crixus, right?” she quizzed. “Roman gladiator? Asshole demigod?”
“Do I feel like Crixus?” His forearm snaked up her spine, his hand at the nape of her neck, drawing her face downward.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to sample for myself.” Vinnie lowered her mouth to his and knew with irritating certainty that nothing, no one, had ever tasted this good. He had been written on her. In her. His lips, his tongue, his skin. Every curve and angle of him felt like an extension of the home she had always been meant to have.
And she knew him. The way a flower knows to turn its face to the sun, or a leaf to bleed gold into its green veins.
He pulled back only when both their lungs screamed for air and their blood pounded with the shared rush of intoxicating desire. “What now?” he asked. “What next?”
Her lips grazed across his ear as her fingers curled around the living iron between them. “How about breakfast?”
<<<>>>
Other series by Cynthia St. Aubin:
The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist – See where Crixus got his start!
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Cynthia St. Aubin wrote her first play at age eight and made her brothers perform it for the admission price of gum wrappers. A steal, considering she provided the wrappers in advance. Though her early work debuted to mixed reviews, she never quite gave up on the writing thing, even while earning a mostly useless master's degree in art history and taking her turn as a cube monkey in the corporate warren.
Because the voices in her head kept talking to her, and they discourage drinking at work, she started writing instead. When she's not standing in front of the fridge eating cheese, she's hard at work figuring out which mythological, art historical, or paranormal friends to play with next. She lives in Colorado with the love of her
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