Page 44 of Grave Curse

“A sex trophy.” His snort of laughter feathered my skin. “Weird way to look at kids, but okay.”

“No, it’s not okay, because I’m not ready for a sex trophy.” Then again, I was almost twenty-nine and not getting any younger… Frantically I shook my head. “No. Seriously,no. We’re not doing this, and I’m not playing around. Let me up so I can take care of this.”

“I can’t let you up because I’ve already taken care of it. And I’ll continue to take care of it until this—” he moved just far enough to one side to place a hand on my flat tummy, “grows big and round with my son or daughter. I can’t wait to see you like that, Snap. You’re going to be so fucking majestic, just thinking about you all swollen with my baby makes my dick throb and my chest clench.”

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

“You’re serious.” It was nothing more than a faint whisper as I stared up at him through the gloom. “You’re really serious.”

“I am.” His hand slid up from my stomach to the valley of my breasts. “Your heart’s racing so much it’s shaking your whole body. You’re not going mute on me again, are you?”

His tone made it plain that I’d better not go mute on him now, or ever again. “Tyr, we’re not like that, you and I.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re not like Romeo and Shiloh, or even Ashtray and Mabel. We… we can’t.”

“Tell me why you think we can’t be exactly like that.”

“Because.” It seemed so obvious that we would never work, that my one-word denial was all I could come up with.

He waited a beat, apparently thinking there would be more. When there wasn’t, he huffed out a laugh that had nothing to do with humor. “Jesus fucking Christ, Ginger.”

Uh-oh. He used my real name. That meant I was in trouble. “What?”

“You’re still so fucking brainwashed from all the shit Hades poured into you that you still can’t see the world you live in, can you? But I guess I get it. Scars don’t ever really go away, after all. We just learn to live with them. And Hades, that evil motherfucker, made sure he scarred you every goddamn day of your life.”

For no reason I could fathom, the backs of my eyes began to sting. “I survived.”

“Barely. And you’re a fucking wreck because of it.”

“Fuck you.”

“You will soon enough.”

Damn it. “Let me up.”

“There’s no reason for you to be mad at me for pointing out how that piece of shit blinded you, at least when it comes to seeing me. He made me your enemy every time he beat you or burned you or broke you, all the while claiming he was punishing you for somethingIhad done. But here’s the truth, Ginger—it was all bullshit. He hurt you whenever he felt like it. Because he fuckin’likedit. He also liked hurting me, but he couldn’t lay a finger on Odin’s son without risking losing a good portion of the Chicago Gravediggers. I’ll bet my old man told Hades how I wanted you as my back-warmer when I was a little kid, because that bastard seemed to know right from the beginning that hurting you was a way to keep me in line.”

“But you neverstayedin line, Tyr.” The bitter accusation shot out of me before I could stop it, and the poison of rage from so many years of being brutalized because of Tyr—and his rash, selfish ways—tainted the air between us. “You never once stopped to think about what your actions were doing to me, did you? You never once protected me, because you never gave a shit about me. I lost blood because of you. I had bones broken because of you. I lost fuckingteethbecause of you. And now you think it’s okay to just knock me up because you still think I’msome sort of Chicago Gravedigger vessel you can do whatever you want with? You can’t, you selfish sonofabitch. Youcan’t,you can’t…”

I honestly didn’t know when I started hitting him.

All I knew was that I was suddenly screaming in his face while my fists pummeled him wherever I could. The vast reservoir of misery from our time growing up—the pain, and the terror that more pain would come—flowed out of me in a single torrent I didn’t even know was there. It was like a geyser finally blowing its way up through layers of denial that I’d buried it under.

Maybe it wasn’t fair, but I wasn’t feeling fair. I was more than a goddamn thing to be used by these Colgrave men, and I would never allow myself to be treated like that again.

Fierce arms crushed me to him, smothering both my attack and the breath out of me. Or maybe I couldn’t breathe because of what sounded like hysterical sobbing coming from somewhere, and it took me a shocking amount of time to realize it came from me. That realization quieted me immediately, because I didn’t cry. I felt the need to, of course, just like everyone else. But I never gave in to that need. Never. Hades taught me long ago that my enemies thrived off my tears. So fine. My enemies could suck it, because I never let my tears fall.

Yet here I was, bawling my damn eyes out in front of Tyr.

Worse yet, I couldn’t stop.

What the hell did that mean?

It took me a while to calm down, something else I couldn’t explain, because while I was in an emotional state like this I was utterly vulnerable. Yet Tyr seemed to take it all in stride, making small crooning noises and rubbing my back, and completely not destroying me when I was defenseless.

---