Page 33 of Dark Restraint

“Don’t you dare apologize. Not to me. Not for this.”

She pauses, her knuckles still pressed to her eye. “You say that, but you’re mad at me.”

I start to deny it, but she’s not wrong. “Yeah. I am. But not because you came to me, and not because you got an abortion.”

“Asterion. I wish you’d…” She takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “Never mind. I’ll have the blueprints to you by tomorrow night.”

She’s retreating from me again, and the realization makes me want to snarl. For someone so smart, she seems determined not to see the truth of me. Of us. Again, I wonder if Icarus is right. If this has only ever been one-sided, if all she feels for me is lust and fear. “Okay,” I finally say.

“Oh. I forgot.” She doesn’t quite shift away, but the distance between us seems to grow. “Hera is willing to clear the way for you to take down Dodona Tower, as long as you promise not to kill anyone but Zeus. It’s a good deal, and it means only one person will die instead of hundreds. It protects your team, too. Less resistance and all that.”

It’s interesting that Hera didn’t inform Ariadne of our conversation. It might simply be because they didn’t have a moment alone yesterday, but I don’t think so. That woman is holding her cards close to her chest. She wants her allies to think that they know everything there is to know, but she’s not telling the left hand what the right hand is doing. “I’ll let her know the time and day we plan to bring it down. It’s on her if she wants to evacuate the nearby buildings or not.” I have no interest in mass casualties. I honestly don’t give a fuck if Zeus lives or dies, either. But keeping Hera happy means keeping Ariadne safe—from the Olympians, at least. It’s a small enough price to pay.

Ariadne frowns at me. “Just like that?”

It shouldn’t continue to sting that she thinks so little of me, and yet here we are. “The tower coming down is the important part. The rest is just details.” Dodona Tower…and the barrier. I don’t trust Hermes as far as I can throw her, but I’m willing to wait and see if she’ll follow through on our conversation. If she does, it will make my life significantly easier. Even if it means waiting a little longer than I like.

“Oh. Okay.” She slides to the edge of the mattress and stands, seeming almost reluctant to leave. That makes two of us. I’m fighting the instinct to drag her back to the bed and lose all track of time. Only the fact that staying here too long will put her in danger keeps me from giving in.

But she surprises me.

Her gaze lands on my chest, sliding from one scar to another. I have more than a few. Plenty from before I came to live in Minos’s household, but nearly half of them came after. Minos doesn’t believe in coddling his weapons in training. Not to mention all the assignments he sent me on that went wrong. I probably should be dead a half-dozen times over, but I always managed to drag myself back to the villa where his team could patch me up.

To drag myself back to her.

“Asterion…” She licks her lips. “It’s like I’m addicted. I get close to you, and I lose all sense of self-preservation.” She speaks softly, almost to herself.

Because part of you recognizes me as yours, even if the rest of you won’t acknowledge it. I don’t say the words aloud. I doubt she’ll believe me. I just sit there and wait to see what she’ll do next.

Again, she surprises me. She hesitates, twisting her hands together in front of her. “Thank you. For last night. For your kindness. For taking care of me.”

“Sweetheart—” Again, that damned endearment slips out without my meaning to.

“I’m not ready to leave yet.” She throws herself into my arms hard enough to send me back onto the mattress. And then her mouth is on mine. If I were a better man, a kinder one, I would stop this. If I had any of the self-preservation that she seems to possess in spades, I would deny her until she acknowledges the truth between us.

I don’t.

Instead, I pull her closer. “I’m not ready for you to leave yet, either.” There’s no going slow this time, no playing with her pussy for hours, no taunting her. There’s only the frantic scramble of hands shoving clothing to the side so that nothing remains between us. Desperation is thick on my tongue, twining with the taste of her.

Why is it always like this with us? Stolen fucking moments. Secrecy. Frenzy. It feels as bad as it feels good.

And then I sink into her and nothing else matters. Just her wet pussy welcoming me home, her fingernails digging into my ass, urging me deeper, her whimpering little cries that rise with each stroke. Frantic. Fast. Rough. I drive into her and she rises to meet me. I barely have the presence of mind to shove a hand between us and stroke her clit, to make sure she follows me right to the edge and then over. To pull out at the last moment and finish all over her stomach instead of deep inside her.

I stare down at my come lashing her light-brown skin. Another time, the sight might fill me with satisfaction, a temporary marking of ownership. Right now, it feels like a lie. She’s still fighting the truth of us, and I’m a fucking fool, because I keep giving her exactly what she wants even though she plans to get out of this bed and leave me. Again.

I squeeze her thigh, right over the scar of my bite mark, as much to comfort myself as a reminder that it’s still there. “I’m going to come to you today.”

She blinks those big eyes up at me. “What?”

She won’t believe me if I tell her that I’m worried about her. That I’m not sure all the power players actually have her best interests in mind. Right now, she’s leading with lust, so lust is where I’ll meet her. “Tomorrow night isn’t soon enough, sweetheart. I need this pussy again.”

“Asterion, you can’t say things like that.”

That I need her? Or that I called her sweetheart? I swallow down the questions, deciding it’s better if I don’t know. “What are your plans for the day?”

She worries her bottom lip and then looks down to where my orgasm marks her. Her thighs shake a little on either side of me. “Um… I think there’s a dinner or something. Dionysus and I are supposed to be seen as a couple desperately in love, but it’s really for the Thirteen to be seen as a united front.”

The thought of her playing loving fiancée makes me see red. I release her thigh and move back. “No panties, Ariadne. I want you ready for me.” If fucking her rough and dirty is the only way she’ll have me, then I’ll damn well do it.

---