Aftercare. Pillow talk. Snuggling.
These are things I’ve obliterated from my lexicon. Things I “don’t do”.
And yet, here I am. Here we are.
Maybe it’s not that I don’t do snuggling, just that I never had Bianca before.
I know she’s awake. But her eyes are closed peacefully, her cheek against my bare chest and her small hand splayed across my abs. I watch the way my own large hand slides down the defined muscles of her bare dancer’s back. The way my big fingers splay across her ass, cupping the whole cheek in one hand.
She’s so fucking breakable. So crushable. And yet, I know I’d bleed my last ounce of strength in these arms shielding her from harm, rather than being the cause of it.
Her lips curl into a smile as I reach down and brush a lock of her hair back from her face.
Yes, I was furious when I watched via the hack on her phone as she “reset” her match parameters on the Venom site. In her case, it didn’t do shit, because I’d already locked that function in her account on the back end. But seeing she had that intent made me see red.
The fact that she wanted another man. Another player to go toe to toe with in these games of ours.
I could have stopped it there. I could have found her at the club I knew she was at, dragged her into the bathroom, and reminded her whose she is.
But that’s not really a reminder, it’s a threat. And I don’t want threats being what keeps this woman at my side. I don’t want anything “keeping” her there at all.
I want her to simply want to be there.
So I played her game. I indulged in a role, because I wanted to see—had to see—if she’d truly seek someone else.
In the end, she didn’t. She walked away. And not because she got cold feet.
It was because she realized I’m the only one she wants. And that’s all I needed to see.
…But, I mean, I already had the car borrowed from Ares. And I’d bought the wig and fake mustache. And who am I to turn down a chance to feast on her screams as I chase her through the dark?
I still have questions, though. Something spooked her and pushed her away, and it sure as hell wasn’t just me getting cold with her after she freaked out in the bath.
My teeth grit as I replay that scene, when Bianca threw up her walls, rebuking intimacy—intimacy that takes a lot for me to find within myself. Intimacy I haven’t ever sought out with another person. It fucking hurt. Hence, my frostiness afterward.
“Who is she?”
I frown, pulled from my thoughts as my attention slides down to Bianca’s face against my chest. Her eyes are open now, staring into the dim, cocooned warmth of the back seat as she strokes a finger over my ribs.
“Who’s who—”
Her finger stills.
“That woman, Kratos. Just…tell me,” she says quietly. “Tell me if you fucked—”
It hits me like a backhand to the face and makes me want to roar. It makes me want to break something.
Namely, Amaya’s fucking neck.
“You saw her leaving the house.”
Bianca says nothing. She doesn’t have to. Because in an instant it all clicks into place, and I can see it right there on her face.
She ran into Amaya leaving the brownstone after the bitch stopped by unannounced to threaten me with prison time. I can only assume the miserable cunt did or said something to send Bianca running, because that’s the kind of fucking ghoul she is.
That’s why Bianca left. It’s why she went out, and drank, and tried to find someone else on the Venom site.
Son of a bitch.
I suck in slow breaths, trying to calm the beast roaring inside of me. My arms squeeze around her a little tighter.
“Please,” Bianca whispers, taking my silence the wrong way. “Put me out of my misery. If it’s going to hurt, just do it fast instead of—”
“Her name is Amaya Mircari.”
Bianca stiffens in my arms.
“And no,” I hiss quietly. “I didn’t fucking touch her.”
Bianca exhales swiftly against my chest.
“I’m guessing she insinuated that she did?”
Bianca’s lips purse tightly.
That’s a yes.
I look away, my eyes stabbing viciously out the tinted window into the darkness of the forest.
