Page 60 of For the Love of the Gods

I felt myself smirk.

“It’s July,” Adrian corrected, raising an eyebrow at his friend, who was uncharacteristically fumbling over his words.

“Right,” Dominic grumbled, as if that was all the response he could muster. It was hard to tell in black trousers, but the fabric of his pants looked slightly tented.

I let my hand linger as far up on his leg I could get without actually palming his cock, which pissed him off.

Or something.

Whatever the emotion, Dominic shoved his hand further up between the press of my thighs, mere centimeters from my underwear. He stopped short though, and I fought a treacherous groan.

I shouldn’t want him to touch me like that, but here I was, about to beg for it. Made worse by the thought of him getting hard at the stroke of my hand.

We hated each other. We hadjustgotten in a fight about secrets I was keeping and I admitted to lying to him and our friends in a stupid, impulsive attempt at honesty.

“That all?” Adrian asked, snapping both Dominic and I back to focus, if his short grunt was to be believed.

Dominic nodded tightly and I made a weird sound in the back of my throat.

“Good. No more grand reveals out of you two for the next year,” Adrian joked and I let myself smile through the absolute havoc Dominic’s hand was wreaking on my body.

“You know a thing or two about grand reveals Rose,” Sebastian drawled, leaning so far back in his seat it was borderline disrespectful. “What I would havepaidto have been here and seen the look on everyone's faces. Tell me, did you really bring his head as a trophy?”

My whole body froze, time turning to syrup as I processed what, exactly Sebastian said. We were friends, not best, to be fair, butfriends. It was a drunken joke in poor taste but it still lit a fire of agony through my chest.

Even Dominic’s thumb, which I just now registered was stroking small circles on my leg, stopped dead in its tracks.

“Sebastian!” Sabina Minerva scolded from the seat to his left, hitting him lightly upside the head.

“What?” Sebastian said, shooting her a confused look. “It’s just a question.”

“A dumb fucking question,” she snapped back.

The exchange gave me just enough time to unfreeze my brain. My body still wasn’t functional, not with rage and grief turning me cold and numb. The only heat was from a body that wasn’t my own, pressed between my legs.

It gave me time to go on the offense, to act like the comment didn’t affect me, to come up with a witty response. The same I always did with Dominic or Adrian or anyone else.

I acted like that girl who walked into a throne room and coldly told the room her brother and father had died, while silently grieving.

I unclenched my jaw and said, “I left the head at home in my trophy case. It was too heavy to lug all the way here.”

My tone was dry, sarcastic. Enough so that it balanced the line of humor and self-deprecation. Like I’d been reminded with Corrina, most of the gods at the table didn’t know Pine. They chalked it up to business, the price of merging two godly systems. They were apathetic, which allowed them to chuckle lightly at the response, or judge Sebastian for bringing it up in the first place.

After that, I stayed silent for the rest of the meeting. I wasn’t even sure what was discussed. I didn’t think I felt the low rumbling of Dominic’s voice next to me, didn’t feel anything under where my hand was still gripping his leg.

In the span of two days, I’d been reminded twice of the path I walked. One where I lied to my friends or to my husband or both. Where the stories of how I’d delivered the news of my ascension were spun in more dramatic and grand ways. Where no one saw the numb pain that had taken over my body that day, but instead saw a cold, calculated girl.

I was forced out of my head when everyone started standing, signaling the end to the meeting. With scattered waves and promises for lunch or dinner or something I couldn’t remember soon, everyone started to filter out. At the end of the room, Dominic and I were among the last to leave. That, and the feeling of his hand sliding off my skin, were the only two things I registered fully.

By the time we made it out, everyone had jumped back to their homes, leaving Dominic, Max, and I alone.

In my haze, I didn’t even notice Dominic backing me into a column before my back hit the cold stone, shocking me enough to meet his eyes.

I had no idea what his expression meant, his pupils near black against the white of his eyes and the line between his brows a little deeper. I was too numb to care.

Dominic gripped my upper arms hard enough to draw attention. “Sebastian is a fool. Ignore him.”

My head cleared a little with the scoff that command deserved. “Easier said than done.”

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