Page 29 of Dark Restraint
Her denial infuriates me. It’s so obviously a lie that it would be laughable if there wasn’t a kernel of doubt inside me. I was so fucking sure she knew she was mine, that our time in the maze proved it. Now? There’s enough evidence to make me wonder.
“Yes,” I growl in her ear. “You might be engaged to Dionysus, but it’s my cock you were begging for. My cock that you’re riding right now, not worrying if somebody walks in and sees you like this. I don’t give a fuck about begging permission to take what’s mine. You know as well as I do that the next time you see me, you’re going to end up on my cock just like you are right now. And if that has to happen in the middle of a fucking party of these goddamn Olympians, then so be it. I’ll claim this pussy, claim you, where everyone can see it.”
Her body goes tight and her pussy flutters around me. Her eyes roll back in her head as she orgasms, and even though part of me wants to deny her, my body has its own agenda. I tighten my grip around her waist and drive up into her, chasing my own pleasure. In that moment, I promise myself that it won’t be long before I’m filling her again. Watching my come leak from her pretty pussy. Claiming her in every way I can. No matter what her lying mouth says, her body knows the truth.
We belong to each other.
I’m not surprised to see slow-dawning horror bloom on Ariadne’s face. It stings all the same. She practically leaps off my cock. “This can’t keep happening.”
There’s a whole lot I could say to that, but there’s no point. She’s going to spin her wheels until she twists herself into knots. “Take off the skirt.”
“What?”
“The skirt. Take it off.” No matter what she says about other lovers, after what just happened, I’m less worried about that being a possibility. Even so, I’ll be damned before anyone else sees her in the skirt. Once we get all this bullshit figured out, I plan to pull it out when she gets bratty and remind her exactly who she belongs to.
But there’s no reason to tell her that now.
She glares at me but she shoves the skirt down her thick thighs and kicks it at my face. I catch it easily. Some of the sting of her rejection eases as I watch her dress. She’s putting on a show for me, going a little slower than necessary, bending just the right way to give me a view worth dying for. She grabs every single item of clothing and piles it in her arms. When she catches me looking, her expression goes mulish. “If Hera is paying, then she’s going to damn well pay. No one else is looking out for me. I have to look out for myself.”
Pride flares in my chest. I know better than to show it at this point. She won’t appreciate it, not when she’s standing on her own and demanding her due for the first time in her life. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes, well, you weren’t saying anything rather loudly.” She glances at the door. “You’ll have to wait in here until we leave.”
If I don’t, it will be a fight. It doesn’t matter that Hera all but served Ariadne up on a platter for me. Somehow, I don’t think she’s told her sister and brother-in-law about her plans. If Eros and I get into it, it will turn this boutique into a bloodbath, which will kill the last flickers of pleasure in me. “Go. I won’t make a scene.”
Her attention falls to the skirt I have fisted in one hand. She looks like she might demand it but finally shakes her head and slips out of the changing room, careful to keep the door closed as much as possible when she does.
I listen to Psyche ooh and aah over her choices and to Hera make a dry quip about her finally starting to learn. Within fifteen minutes, they’re gone. I wait another five before I leave the dressing room. Then I head to the register and buy the skirt. That shit is sure as fuck going home with me. And she will be wearing it again. Just for me.
But now it’s time to get to work.
I check my phone, cursing when I see a dozen texts and calls from Minos. He’s gone from threatening to almost pleading. The man is losing it. I couldn’t give a fuck about his mental state, but I don’t want him to send another killer after his daughter, so I have to play the game for a little longer. I stop on the street corner and pull up his contact info.
He answers on the first ring. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“Doing exactly what you asked of me.”
“And yet my daughter is still alive, whoring herself for Olympus, and that goddamn disgrace of a tower still stands. You’re failing me. Again.”
I have to wait several long beats to wrestle my fury out of my voice before I speak. “There’s been a delay in acquiring the blueprints. We can’t get into the tower without them, and I’m working on it. I expect to have them within the next day or two. I wasn’t aware we were on that tight of a timeline.”
He curses. “We still have a couple weeks left. The city is soft, but not quite soft enough. And there’s the question of the barrier. It’s turning out to be slightly more challenging to bring it down than I expected. We had intended to do it through the lower city, but that way is barred to us now.”
Interesting. I won’t point out that he’s had his own roadblocks and should be more forgiving of mine as a result. It doesn’t matter. “Want me to look into the barrier while I wait for the blueprints?”
“Do it.” He hangs up.
As much as I would like nothing more than to haunt Ariadne’s steps for the rest of the day, I have a vested interest in that barrier coming down. I walk a few blocks while I consider what angle to come at this from. If Theseus still held the Hephaestus title, that would be a good option, but the person who took over isn’t likely to let me through the front door. Apollo already proved he doesn’t have the information necessary to fix the barrier, so he’s not going to be able to bring it down. Who else…
I stop short. There’s one person in Olympus who likely has answers. Even better, according to the gossip sites, she’s back in town.
If Minos was smart, he’d wonder where Hermes has spent the last couple weeks. She’s not one to pull a long-term disappearing act, and she knows more about his plan than he’s probably aware of. But he’s always been an arrogant bastard, and he never stopped to wonder why she wants to know about his benefactor. About Circe. His only thought was to use Hermes to his own benefit. Just like he thought to use me.
I’ll admit that when I first met her, I grouped her into the same category as Dionysus—a vapid Olympian more concerned with partying than with being useful. But I watched her at that party. She drank and flirted and made a big show of being harmless…but then she turned around and helped plot the death of two of her peers without blinking an eye.
Maybe it’s time Hermes and I had a conversation.
She’s not making any attempt to hide. All I have to do is check MuseWatch. Within an hour, I’m sitting in yet another bar, watching her hold court. She’s like a jester in some old-world kingdom, all bright colors and irreverent attitude…with a startling wit beneath it. She’s wearing leather pants, a cropped white T-shirt that looks like she cut it off herself with a pair of scissors, and a glittering bomber jacket that hurts my eyes to look at. For someone known for stealth, she’s practically a walking disco ball.