Page 84 of Ares

Even crumpled from sleep, he still looks like he could carry the world on his broad shoulders. He smiles sleepily, and a knot of desire tightens in my gut. My hand remains on the gun, but as I watch the Adonis in tight trunks walk toward me, his golden body rippling with muscle and power, a new need takes over my body, and a tiny pulse flutters between my thighs.

I remove my hand from the gun. “I had a bad dream, but I’m okay now.”

He comes around to my side of the counter and towers over me, engulfing me in the warmth of his body. I’m not worried about him seeing the gun because I’ll say it’s for protection. But it’s hidden, and he doesn’t see it.

“You want to talk about it?” He reaches out to touch my face, his fingertips feather-like against my throat. I close my eyes against the sensation, and without thinking, I lean into them. “Sometimes it helps.”

“No,” I whisper, seduced by his touch.

When I open my eyes, I’m met with a gentle warmth in his and a tenderness I’m not expecting. It tugs on my heart, and I have to push the feeling away and remind myself of why I am here and who he is. I can’t forget that no matter how intoxicating his touch feels against my skin or how mind-blowing it is when he covers me with his muscular body and grinds into me to make me come…

… this man murdered my brother.

I take a step away from him, but he catches my wrist, and the warmth of his gaze sears into mine as he takes my face in his big hands and leans down to kiss me.

His kiss is comforting, his mouth warm and inviting. As it moves over mine, I think about the gun behind the canisters. I think about reaching for it. I think about raising it and pressing the tip of the barrel to his jaw and completing what I came here to do. But then he takes the kiss deeper, and a growl falls between us, and those thoughts fall away as small pleasurable fires ignite throughout my body.

“Don’t be afraid, little one. Our dreams can’t hurt us.” He wraps his arms around me. “And I’m here to chase any of the monsters away.”

Tears prick at my eyes. This man. He’s so damn protective.

I have to hold back a whimper when I grip onto his big arms and kiss him fiercely.

“Fuck me,” I beg against his lips. “Make me forget.”

With an aroused growl, he spins me around and bends me over the counter, where he pushes me down. He nudges my ankles apart, and his hands glide over my hips and down my legs as he removes my underwear. “What my girl wants, my girl gets.”

My girl.

I can’t hold back my tears, and they spill down my cheeks onto the counter.

Standing behind me, he cups my ass and moans. “So good. So perfect.”

He shoves down his sweatpants and sinks into me, his low groan rippling in the air around us.

My pussy throbs.

But so does the hole in my chest.

I’m so damn confused.

My hand slides across the marble counter and through the space between the sugar and coffee canister until my fingertips brush against the gun.

When we were kids, Joey was my best friend. Our father was dead, murdered because he was a crime boss in an unstable time when families were at war over power, money, and turf, and our new stepfather was a cold-hearted deviant who believed he could take what he wanted, when he wanted, and from whom he wanted.

There was a time when Joey protected me against the harsh realities of being raised in a crime family. But as he grew older, he became more distant and less interested in protecting me.

But I still loved him because he was my brother.

We had a bond.

But the man sliding his cock into me ended it when he killed him.

Yet the more I get to know Ares…

Oh God, a delicious sensation takes up in every nerve ending of my drenched pussy, and I can’t stop the desperate groan that falls from my parted lips.

A war rages inside me.

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