Page 75 of Tyr

She walked to it and sized it up.

“Hold on.” Tyr held out a helmet with a plexiglass shield on the front. “Don’t want you to get hurt.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Tyr, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I took a dozen bullets yesterday. A few shards of glass won’t faze me. But if you’d like me to leave…”

“No. I… At least step back, please. I don’t want to hit you.”

Tyr nodded and backed up by the door.

Celeste put on the helmet and walked to the lamp. She was about to swing but paused. “Who’s gonna clean this up when I’m done?”

Tyr’s muscles flexed beneath his t-shirt as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t worry about it. Just let go.”

Celeste pictured her mother’s face until she couldn’t hold back.

For more than thirty minutes, Celeste let every single item in the room suffer her wrath. Every hit from Anton. Every annoyed word from her mother. The burned body of her father. The room she’d been locked in. The blame. The fear. The guilt. All of it.

When she finished, she dropped the bat and sucked in several deep breaths. Every muscle in her body ached. But if anything in the room hadn’t been smashed, she would have kept going.

A warm hand fell on her shoulder, and she turned and grabbed onto Tyr. He pulled her close.

After a minute, she undid her helmet and dropped it to the ground. A piece of glass stuck out of Tyr’s cheek.

“Oh my gosh, Tyr.” She reached up to the fragment, but he stopped her.

“I told you a little glass wouldn’t hurt me.”

The red flecks danced in his eyes. Something about them made her body heat with desire.

She tugged the glass from his cheek and dropped it to the floor. “Why did you get excited when we were at Anton’s, and you hurt him?”

He didn’t speak for a long time, and he searched her face as if trying to decide something. “I’m the God of War. Anger and pain… do that to me.”

She pressed her thumb into the gash on his cheek. The red flecks flared brighter.

“Is that why you also had thoughts about… other women?”

“No. Yes. I mean… It wasn’t other women specifically. It’s just…” He took a deep breath. “I can’t help that fighting makes me hot. It’s how I was made. When you do what I’ve done for thousands of years, you can’t help but get some wires crossed.”

She pressed her thumb deeper into the cut on his face. “So, me doing this?—”

She didn’t need to finish the question. The way his erection pressed into her stomach answered it for her.

Celeste pressed Tyr back until he hit the wall. “Lower your mental barrier.”

His eyes brightened further. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you to see what’s in there.”

“I already saw enough at Anton’s. The women. The sex. The pain mixed with pleasure.”

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