Page 89 of The Blood of Gods and Monsters

“You didn’t threaten him to get him to do anything, did you?”

Ruen’s face grows closer as he bends, dipping his head towards me. “I know you care for the Terra,” he says, breath warm against my cheeks. “I did not threaten the boy.”

“He’s—” I start to disagree with Ruen calling Niall a ‘boy’ when I know for a fact that he’s at least my age if not slightly older.

“You’ve shared your body with me, but you still don’t trust me not to hurt a mortal?” Ruen asks.

I shut my mouth. All amusement dies in my throat. “So, we’re talking about that,” I say, feeling as if the words are being ripped over shards of glass as they move up my throat.

He tilts his head to the side, keeping his gaze pinned to mine. “We haven’t had a moment to discuss it.” When I don’t say anything, Ruen releases my hips and straightens. “Do you have nothing to say?”

“You didn’t ask a question,” I remind him, taking a step back.

“I hope you’re not going to tell me the same thing you told Theos—that it meant nothing.”

I flinch. “He told you?”

Ruen arches one fine cut brow. “My brothers and I rarely keep secrets from each other and certainly not when we’ve all bedded the same woman.”

Instinct has me crossing my arms over my chest as if that will, somehow, protect me from this conversation. “I didn’t mean to hurt him,” I admit.

“Clearly.” Ruen’s tone suggests more than a little sarcasm.

I scowl. “We’re not children, Ruen.” My voice comes out strong despite my discomfort. “Sex is sex. I should think you would agree with me that we have more important matters to focus on right now than a damned relationship.”

“Just tell me something,” Ruen says, lifting a hand to a nearby statue and stroking the pad of a finger down the side of the icon’s arm. It comes away coated in dust. “Have you considered the consequences of sleeping with the three of us?”

Considered it? I’ve damned myself by falling into bed with them and I know it. Now, I’m just postponing the inevitable for as long as I can.

Dropping my arms, I turn away. “This is ridic?—”

“Coward.”

My feet freeze at that one word. I pivot back to face him … slowly. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Ruen rubs the pad of his thumb and dust-covered finger against one another. “I called you a coward and that’s what you are.”

“You have no fucking idea who I am.” Ice touches my voice, frosting over each word.

“Does anyone?” he replies.

“What do you really want to ask, Ruen?” My hands curl into fists, nails stabbing at my palms. “Come out and say it.”

Ruen’s gaze sparks with a dangerous light that reminds me of Kalix. “You came to me, Kiera,” he states. “You demanded I crack open my soul and reveal all of my dirty little secrets, or have you forgotten?”

Heated flesh on flesh. Open mouths. Tongues. Lips. Teeth. Moans swirling in a darkened bedroom lit by the window and smelling of parchment and ink.

No, I haven’t forgotten a damn thing.

“Say. It.” I bite the words out, angry at feeling so damned vulnerable.

Ruen steps closer. I refuse to move, and when he takes a second and then third step, not stopping until our chests are nearly brushing, my lungs contract to inhale the scent of him as if it needs the added reminder of what being this close to him is like. I don’t need to remember—it’s already burned into my memory.

“You know as well as I do that all power demands a sacrifice.” My eyes lock onto the column of his throat as he speaks. “The four of us have made a deal with a God—one that could betray us as easily as he could save us.” Caedmon.

My lashes flick upward. “And?” I prompt him.

“Are you so blind that you don’t see that Theos is reaching out because he thinks he’s found a woman who doesn’t give a fuck what or who he is?”

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