Page 82 of A Reign of Storm and Madness

Numb and confused, I let him move my arms as he helps me to weave my limbs through the holes of the sleeves and then tuck the hem into the waistband of my trousers. He doesn’t say anything about the dagger he’d no doubt seen at my back.

“Theos?”

His lips are pressed together in a flat line that doesn’t reveal any clear emotion. It’s only the fire still crackling in his eyes that gives me any sort of indication that he’s not as calm as he appears. Despite the fact that he’d mentioned our need to hurry before coming in, it’s as if time has stopped for us. He lifts one hand, fingers grazing the side of my jawline.

“I think I knew,” he whispers, “that whatever you were hiding would be a danger to my brothers and me.”

I don’t know what to say to that. My words seem locked behind my lips, unable to move or voice themselves. Theos’ attention never leaves my face now that he’s settled firmly on it.

“Ruen wanted you gone the moment you got here and showed an ounce of spine. He’s not used to that, especially not from humans, but I suppose it makes sense now why you were so…” He doesn’t finish the comment, shaking his head instead as he moves on. A thumb touches my chin, forcing my head back in the gentlest of motions.

“Kalix wanted to play with you,” he continues. “People are toys to him. Objects that he owns and breaks when they fail to live up to his expectations—if he even has those.” The corner of his mouth lifts ever so slightly as if he’s amused by that. It falls in the next instant.

“But me…” He leans closer until his face, those sunset eyes of his, become all that I see. My heart stutters in my chest, beating wildly and incomprehensibly. “I thought I’d be like Kalix. Play with you and see how much it took you to break.” His eyes flash between mine before falling to my mouth. I lick my lower lip on instinct and his lids lower ever so slightly. “Imagine my surprise when you didn’t break at all but outsmarted us.”

What was a few short months in the past now feels like a lifetime ago. My breath catches as his thumb and fingers tip my head back further and he steps closer until the heat of his chest is right against mine.

“I didn’t want you gone, and after Darius,” he cuts himself off with a cruel twist of his lips and a low chuckle that is more caustic than amused, “I just wanted you,” Theos finally admits. “I wanted the girl who looked at me like she understood my loss and knew what it felt like. Who looked at me and didn’t see a being that could threaten her and take her life in an instant, with merely a word. You were so unafraid and I wanted that. Someone who didn’t want to fuck me to claim some relation to my father or to just say they had. I wanted someone who didn’t have ulterior motives. I guess that was never my fate because you did have them, didn’t you?”

The smell of him, rich in spice and rum as if he’d just downed an entire bottle, is heavy in my lungs. It weighs me down, pressing into me and I have to withhold my desire to press into him further and rub my face against his chest. My own breath hitches at his words. Slowly, I shake my head. His fingers don’t fall away. They remain locked onto my jaw, gentle, but unyielding.

“Fucking you was never in the plan,” I tell him honestly. “I won’t lie to you and say I’ve never fucked for a job before, but you weren’t … part of that job.”

He tilts his head to the side, examining me with careful inspection. I don’t know what he sees, his face is a mask of calm I’m certain he can’t truly be feeling. “Is that because your Guild never gave you the name of your target?” he inquires.

I flinch. My, how far I’ve fallen. So many years I’d been tested and trained not to give up a single molecule of information and yet, here I am now, standing before one of three outsiders I’ve given everything to. The blood contract, however, is the strongest vow anyone can take—stronger for those with Divinity because of the power in their blood. So, even if I can’t trust anyone in this world, I trust that power. I trust that they will keep my secrets. I have to because if I don’t … then I just damned an entire organization, the woman who raised me, and my best friend.

The thought of Regis brings me back to reality and the man standing before me. I shake my head again and sigh. “I didn’t fuck you because I was going to use you,” I say.

Theos waits, as patient as I’ve ever seen him. Cool indifference plastered on his face when I know it’s so much deeper than that. He is so much deeper than that. “I just wanted, for once, to choose.” My words are a whisper in the silence that hangs like a pendulum between us. “You were hurting and I didn’t want you to hurt anymore.”

“So, it was a pity fuck then?” Theos frowns. “I’ve never had that before. No one’s ever bothered.”

Gods, I could slap the shit out of him right now. “It wasn’t a damned pity fuck,” I bite out, pulling away. Or at least, I attempt to pull away. The moment I step back, however, Theos moves as fast as lightning. His hand comes down hard on my waist and he spins me until I slap into the wall opposite my bed.

“Then what was it for?” he demands, baring his teeth at me. “You don’t get to come in here and wreck my life or our carefully laid plans and give no explanations. I want fucking answers, Kiera.”

I curl my hands into fists, digging my nails into my palms to keep from beating him senseless. “I just gave you answers,” I snap back. “Do you have any idea the things I’ve done in my life? The people I’ve killed?”

He waves my words off as if they mean nothing. “That was for survival,” he replies. “You didn’t have a choice. You had a choice about me and you decided to take me to your bed and you took Kalix too.”

Technically, it was his bed that we’d fucked in, but I don’t think he’s worried about semantics at this point and I’m certainly not. What I’m focused on is how easily he seems to disregard my past actions, my kills.

“There was a choice when killing and I chose to kill because it was easier.” The words are like knives ripping up my throat. I hate them, revile them, but admit them because they are the truth.

Theos glares at me. “Why. Did. You. Fuck. Me?” Each word is cut from his lips like diseased flesh from the body. Rage fills me. It’s so damned obvious, how can he not see it?

“Because I wanted to, Theos!” I scream at him. “Because for once, I didn’t want to kill or hurt. I just wanted to make you feel better, but I wanted to feel better too. It wasn’t damned pity.” Maybe it had started out that way, but it certainly hadn’t ended as pity. “It was desire,” I spit at him. “Plain and fucking simple. Are you happy now? Can we go?”

Black spreads from Theos’ pupils, consuming the gold in an instant. “No.” The denial is cold and hot all at once, a fire coated in ice. “I’m never happy, Kiera.”

Then his lips slam down on mine.

Chapter 42

Kiera

This is not the time to fall into Theos’ kiss. We have to leave the north tower and we have to go to the battle arena to find out why the Gods have called everyone. And yet … when Theos’ mouth touches mine, I don’t shove him off. I don’t push him away.

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