Page 54 of God of War

“Ares,” she sighs. It’s a sweet sound. Innocent.

My eyes fly open and it’s over as quickly as it started. I spring back, horror slamming into me. My eyes dart over her face to assess the damage.

“Fuck, Delaney. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I think I mumble it a few more times. She just blinks at me, eyes glassy. Her lips are puffy and wet from my mouth.

I wonder if her lips look like that after she’s been sucking cock.

I rear back and drag my hands through my hair, tugging at the ends and gripping tight, like I want to tear the thoughts right out of my head.

She’s drunk. She’s fucking drunk and I… I still want to kiss her, touch her, watch her break under me.

I’m a piece of shit.

Whatever cloud she’s standing in clears and Delaney straightens up. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. I need to fix this. I need to fix it before she freaks out and takes off. I can’t protect her if she’s afraid of me. I take a breath.

“Delaney, are you okay? I… I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?”

She tilts her head, a line creased between her eyebrows.

“It’s my job to protect you and I… Jesus Christ, Delaney, can’t you just be mad? Slap me or something. Kick me in the balls.”

“I kissed you back.”

She did. She did kiss me back. The thought flutters uselessly. A dying bird trying to fly. I shake my head.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Something about that makes Delaney change. Her curious expression goes flat. Her eyes empty.

“Because I’ve been abused,” she says coldly.

I swallow down the bile that rises. “Look, I’m sorry,” I say. I step up to her and slowly put my hands on her shoulders. I probably shouldn’t touch her again, for my own sake, but I need to make her understand that this touch is different, that I’m different. “I promise, you don’t have to worry about me.”

Her eyes narrow and she shrugs back, forcing my hands away. “I don’t have to worry about what, Ares? You grooming me? Raping me?” A brittle laugh bursts from her lips. “That’s good, because I was real worried about that.”

I feel like she’s slapped me, I’d prefer it if she did. The sting of her words is more painful.

“I’m not broken, Ares,” she spits angrily. She comes at me and I scramble to back up. As she keeps talking, she keeps coming, forcing the space between us to shrink.

“I’m not fucking broken,” she says again. “No matter what you and everybody else might think. I know when I want to kiss somebody. I know when I want to fuck somebody. Maybe some survivors shut down, maybe they need to protect themselves like that, but that doesn’t mean we’re all the same.”

My back slams into the side of the dumpster and she stops, a few feet away. She looks away from me and I see her face change, the anger replaced by a sudden wash of sadness. For a second, she looks far older than eighteen.

“I know what my father did was disgusting and wrong, but you know what it wasn’t? It wasn’t kissing. It wasn’t fucking. It wasn’t making love. It was violence.”

Her face tilts to me again, eyes glittering in the dark. “And it doesn’t make me disgusting and wrong to want kissing and fucking and making love. Okay?”

I’m frozen. Pinned in place under her stare. My heart pounds against my chest and my pulse roars in my ears in the silence she’s left. Words catch my throat. The words I really want to say.

Okay. I get it. Okay, okay, okay.

And then I want to take her in my arms and kiss her and fuck her and make love to her.

But instead, I say something else.

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