Page 58 of Inked Athena

Then he sighs and his grasp loosens. Something like melancholy leaches into his voice, though I don’t really think he’s capable of emotions like that. “I need your warmth and your touch, Nova. I’ve been away from it for too long.”

I plant my fists on my hips. “Whose fault is that?”

Something sad flickers in his silver eyes. “That’s a complicated answer. But I wouldn’t have left if it wasn’t necessary.”

That’s the thing, though: No matter what, there will always be something that takes him away. There will always be some big, important cause that I’m forced to share Samuil with. He’ll leave me again and again and there will always be reasons; there will always be complicated answers to my questions.

I just don’t think I’ll ever like them.

“Did the dogs keep you company?” He bends down to scratch Finbarr behind the ears as the pup nibbles on his shoelace.

Yes. I love them. I love you. Never leave us again.

“The dogs—” I meet his gaze. “—were a manipulation.”

He grins. “But did it work?”

“Scotland looks good on you,krasavitsa.”

I watch his reflection in the patinated mirror as he unbuttons his shirt slowly. Each revealed inch of skin tells a story—scars from battles I’ll never know about, victories carved in flesh and bone. Watching him undress is like watching a transformation. The beast shedding the businessman’s skin, finally showing his teeth.

“Gardening, shepherding puppies.” His voice drops to that dangerous octave that makes my toes curl and my common sense go haywire. “You’re going native. Next thing I know, you’ll be out birthing sheep with Morris and speaking Gaelic.”

“He’s better company than my other options.” I reach for my sexiest negligee—a scrap of black silk that cost more than I used to make in three months of walking rich bitches’ dogs. If he’s going to walk around flaunting his washboard abs, I’m certainly not going to drown in my flannel pajama set.

“At least the sheep don’t disappear for weeks without a word.”

His eyes track my movements as I slip the silk over my skin, and something fierce and feral unfurls in my chest at his sharp intake of breath.

I love seeing that reaction in him, that confirmation that he’s actually fucking human after all. That I can still reach him.

Even kings can bleed if you know where to cut.

“The sheep also can’t make you scream my name in three languages.”

… Well, fuck.

Fuck, because that voice—that dark promise of pleasure twined with pain, of passion tangled with possession—is what started this whole beautiful disaster. It’s the voice that whispered filthy promises in my ear that first night in my apartment, when we were both covered in lake water and dog slobber and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. The same voice that murmured Russian lullabies against my stomach last month when he thought I was sleeping.

That voice is my undoing.

“Bold of you to assume I’ll give you permission to come anywhere close enough to do that,” I snap back. I try to inject venom into the words, but they come out breathier than intended. Because he’s moving now. Closer. Closer.

I feel like one of Mr. Morris’s lambs, locking eyes with a wolf on the other side of the fence.

“‘Permission’ has nothing to do with it.” He’s behind me in an instant, one hand splayed possessively over the slight swell of my stomach where his heir grows, the other tracing the edge of my negligee like he’s mapping territory he already owns. “This is about truth. About how your body responds to mine. About how you’ve been wet since the moment you heard my voice in the garden.”

His fingers drift lower, and I hate that he’s right. Hate that three weeks of silence and anger dissolve like sugar on my tongue the moment he touches me. Hate that my body arches into his hand whether I like it or not.

“I’m still mad at you,” I gasp as his teeth graze my neck, his fingers finding exactly where I’m aching for him.

“Good.” He spins me around, and the look in his eyes makes my knees weak. Hunger and possession and something deeper, something that looks dangerously like devotion. “Be mad. Be fucking furious. But be mine.”

He kisses me like a man starving, like he’s been dying in the desert and I’m the first drop of rain. His tongue slides against mine, and I taste his desperation, his need, his silent apology for leaving. For always leaving.

“I hate you,” I breathe against his mouth, even as my fingers dig into his shoulders, marking him like he’s marked me.

“No, you don’t.” He lifts me like I weigh nothing, pressing me against the cold stone wall. The contrast of temperatures—his burning skin, the frigid stone—sends shivers down my spine. “You hate that you love me. There’s a difference.”

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