Page 79 of Forget Me Twice

“I mean, thanks for the orgasms and all, but you didn’t think this was anything more than sex, did you?”

The last thing I hear before I leap over the railing is athudas Hermes’s knees hit the floor.

* * *

By the timeDionysus gets me back to campus, the sun is starting to set, and the ground is freezing beneath my feet. I hadn’t bothered to put my socks or shoes back on—not with my feet all covered in sand.

The crisp bite of the approaching fall against my legs only serves to further remind me that I’ve once again found myself coming home at night, no underwear and thighs covered in dry cum.

The whole thing feels like a weird déjà vu moment.

Only I won’t be coming home to masturbate furiously to Apollo’s O face for an hour and a half like I did last time.

No, this time my uterus is as solemn as the cavity in my chest.

Dio walks me all the way to Briarthorn, dropping me off right outside my door with a burning kiss to the neck and an accompanying slap to the ass. But not even that playfulness is enough to cheer me up.

I feel weirdly, oddly, foreignly, confusingly…adrift.And I don’t know how to even begin approaching it.

I’m literally not emotionally equipped to face what just went down in that ramshackle beach house.

What I just did.

“Why don’t you remember us?”

I’m halfway through unlocking the three deadbolts on my front door, when my internalspidey sensesstart going off and the hairs on my arms stand up. An answering flare of adrenaline shoots off and I begin to tense.

Someone’s in my fucking dorm room.

My sullen mood clears, leaving my mind in survival mode and racing. Waiting for any kind of movement.

Did the Aces find out I was in the alley that night? What syndicate did the Northerners belong to?

Has Dominic changed his mind about me and come back to clean up the problem once and for all?

Considering my best course of action, I make the decision to stay, rather than flee. I’ve never been one to run from a good fight, and they obviously already know where I live.

It’s best if I can draw them out now and get ahead of the threat.

Besides, it’s not like I don’t deserve to face a little pain right now.

I finish with the last lock, before attempting to arrange the keys in my hand into some kind of fist-load weapon. It’s the best I’ve got; I have nothing else on me except my phone and my shoes, which only have a blunt heel.

Taking a steadying breath, I shove against the door, right near the hinge so that it swings back slowly. The interior of the apartment is pitch black, all the lights still off, just as I had left them last.

Keeping my feet firmly on the hallway side of the threshold, I reach my empty hand around the doorframe and hit the switch for the lights.

Warm pendant lamps flicker to life across the living room and the kitchen areas, revealing the intruder that has very much made himself at home on one of my couches.

There’s a glass of water and a small stack of paper on the coffee table.

“Jax,”I breathe out, before stumbling forward like a drunkard. The keys drop to the floor, forgotten. It’s been two months since I’ve laid eyes on him. I feel about three foot tall right now, but I’m just so fucking overwhelmingly glad to see him.

“Sabe,” he says in an equally relieved voice, rising from the couch and striding to meet me. He catches me up in a crushing hug.

My entire face is pushed into the warm embrace of his chest and the comforting, familiar scent of his cologne wraps around me, pulling together the fraying threads of my composure.

I pull back and take stock of him, almost afraid to believe he’s really here. Both his hair and beard are much longer than he usually keeps them, giving a slightly wild and untamed edge to his already strong features.

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