Page 18 of Grave Curse

Oh, I remembered. I’d tried everything to get enough money to get away from Tyr, including stripping. That had lasted literally fifteen minutes before Tyr had walked onto the stage I’d entered for the first time, picked me up and carried me out of there, all without saying a single word.

“So, if you take all that into account,” he went on while I dreamed of being strong enough to rip his throat out, “why would I ever want you to go back to Hades?”

“Because you hate me almost as much as you hate him.” And there it was. The truth. The core of all the hurt I carried like an anvil around every day of my life. “I even get why.I’mthe reason behind every setback Hades ever dealt you.I’mthe reason you couldn’t rise to the top in the Chicago Gravediggers. Jesus, I’d hate me too if I were you. But I’m not going to allow your hate for me to become the death of me, Tyr. You hear me? Am I making myself fucking clear? Because if not, let me try again. I’llneverdarken the door of Hades Colgrave again. And now that we’re talking about hate, let’s just get it all out there. Every single time Hades beat me because you misbehaved, he let me know my pain was your fault. Over the years I came to hate you for that, but this insult today makes me hate you even more than you could possibly im—”

“Stop.” With a violence that made my heart try to leap out of my chest, his massive hand came up and closed around my throat. Then I was up against a wall, feeling my pulse hammer against his thumb lying just beneath my jaw. “Never,ever, say those words to me again.”

I found myself gripping his forearm with both hands while arching up to escape his terrifying hold. No dice. I may as well have tried to escape my own shadow. “What… words?”

“That you hate me.” He leaned in, so shockingly close it froze me in place. I heard him take in a slow breath, like he was breathing in my scent, before his nose brushed against the fall of my hair next to my ear, pushing it aside. Confusion exploded in my brain when his lips brushed against my lobe, a shockingly intimate caress of a lover, when we both knew we were enemies. “I get that Hades filled you with poison when it comes to me, but if you think back, I never did a thing to hurt you. Not once. So you’re not allowed to hate me, do you understand that? I won’t allow it. Nod if you understand me.”

“Fuck you.” I might be confused, but no one got to tell me how I felt. I did hate Tyr. Part of me had always hated him for never caring about me enough to simply behave and obey Hades’s rule. That hatred rose anew, because once again it was agonizingly clear he didn’t give a damn about me. “You hate me, you’ve made no secret about it, so fuck you, you dick. Find a way to cope that I’m smart enough and strong enough to hate you back.”

“Let’s compromise, yeah? I’ll allow you to hate me all you want in public.” By degrees, his voice turned from an icy razor to a velvet purr. It short-circuited my already-confused brain like nothing else. No way was he talking to me in the voice of a lover. Noway. “That works great for me. Now that I’m at war with the Chicago Gravediggers, let the world believe we live in mutual hatred, struggling to put up with each other because we’re safer together against Hades. Let everyone see that I only keep you close because it pisses my uncle off. Let Hades think I use your presence to fucking spit in his eye every day of the week. That’s what I want. I want everyone to believe hatred is the only thing between us, just as it’s the only thing that binds us together.”

“Hatredisthe only thing that exists between us.”

“I might even be okay with you thinking that, at least for a little while longer,” he murmured, as if talking to himself. Thenhe moved in closer, looking down at me as if he feared I’d vanish if he so much as blinked. Slowly, so slowly at first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, he lowered his face to nuzzle it against my hair.

What.

The.

Hell.

I froze. Even my heart seemed to pause in my chest. Could a person actually die from shock? I tried to speak, to ask what he was doing, but I literally couldn’t get my mouth to work. One undeniably tender move from my enemy, and I had been rendered speechless.

What’s happening? God help me, I don’t understand what’s happening…

“You know what my problem is, Snap?” The heat coming off of his body was weirdly intoxicating, radiating from him to be absorbed by every pore of my body as if I were starved for it. “I believe too much in the Colgrave curse of losing loved ones to this godawful, fucking violent world. So go ahead, baby girl. Believe I hate you. Believe I hate you with everything you’ve got, okay? Maybe that’ll keep you safe, and whole, and fuckingalive. But don’t think for a minute that I’lleverallow you to hate me in return.”

“Too late.” I wasn’t sure the message ever left my mind, because with the slightest pressure of his hand still at my throat, he turned my face to meet the descent of his mouth.

The kiss that happened yesterday had come about as a form of punishment. Since I knew Tyr refused to raise a hand to women, I had chosen to believe that kiss had meant nothing more than a contemptuous slap in the face.

But this…

The scalding heat of his lips was just the same, shocking yet seductive all at the same time. They molded to mine like meltedwax, creating a custom fit that sang through every part of me, and that song had only three words.

Made for me, made for me…

It was insane to believe Tyr’s mouth was created to fit against mine. Just as it was insane to try to give him back that same breathless perfection by making my lips cling to his.

But that’s exactly what I did.

And I did it like my life depended on it.

A deep moan in the back of his throat told me that he liked it. Just as importantly, I liked that he liked it, so much so that slick heat bloomed in my girlie parts that throbbed for his attention—his fingers, his mouth, his cock. Any of it.Allof it. In whatever order that tickled his fancy.

As long as he tickledmyfancy, I would be more than satisfied.

That didn’t mean the rest of me was on board.

I clenched my fingers still wrapped around his forearm, so hard it probably hurt him, but it was the only way to keep them in place. My traitorous hands wanted to sift through his silken hair, or maybe worm their way under his shirt to see if he was as rock-solid as he seemed. I didn’t need to know that.

That way lay madness.

“Open for me, Ginger.” Tyr didn’t raise his head to speak to me. Instead, he kept his lips on mine, made me feel his words break against my lips in a kind of intimacy I hadn’t known existed. Then his tongue licked at the seam of my lips. My brain broke along with whatever was left of my will, and my lips opened for him with a soft gasp.

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