His hand tangles in my hair and pulls. My eyes go wide when I realize what he’s doing, and I shiver as his lips press hotly to mine in a deep, slow kiss.
Copper and salt.
Lust and need.
Danger and excitement.
Heaven and hell.
That’s what we taste like together.
19
KRATOS
“This is ground control to Major Drakos. Can you hear me, Major Drakos.”
I blink before I pull my gaze back to Ares.
Yes, I was zoning the fuck out. And no, it’s not because I’m disinterested in going over the quarterly financials of our legitimate investments with my brother.
It’s because somewhere along the line, the game became real. Somewhere, Bianca went from my toy to my wife.
My plaything to something more.
Much more.
Someone who doesn’t flee or try to hide from my darkness. She complements it. Encourages it. And yet also soothes it, like a cool drink of water my parched mouth never knew it needed.
The other night at the engagement party, I should have spiraled. Being cooped up in a room with Amaya, being threatened by her and backed into a corner, should have shoved me down into a black pit for the next month.
Instead, I kissed Bianca.
Our first kiss. My first kiss at all.
Bitterness clouds my thoughts. That’s another aspect of my fucked-up brokenness that the she-devil is to be thanked for. I’ve put this all out on the table enough times to enough “expert therapists” to know that my need for darkness, dominance, and yes, some violence in my sexual encounters stems from that time when I was the one without the power.
Are you going to be my good boy today?
A viscous, inky blackness bleeds though my brain, then I force it back into the shadows.
Yes, kissing is another of my hangups. Because it was the one thing Amaya wouldn’t do with me.
Assaulting me for years when I was barely a teenager was fine in her books. But kissing, allowing a modicum of human intimacy, was strictly off the table.
And that’s precisely why I’m the way I am. Because it was hammered into me, far too young, that sex equals power, not love. Sex is a war. A battle to be won. And battles and war necessitate strength, brutality, and ruthlessness.
Needless to say, there’s a reason I’m the last of my siblings to have found someone. Why I don’t date. Why I seek women for temporary arrangements, and why those temporary arrangements usually entail an NDA and me radically toning down who I am, because there’s no way women want that.
Women fantasize about the monster. But they don’t really want him when he comes out to play.
Or, at least, no one did until Bianca.
Bianca, who entices him out of his cave. Who goads and antagonizes. Who seems to delight in the darkness as it pours out of the mouth of that rocky opening to consume her.
Bianca, who may very well be as fucked up as I am for some reason.
Well, not as fucked up. But at least we’re playing in the same league.
“Kratos.”
Once again, I drag myself from the thoughts swirling in my mind.
“Sorry. What?”
Ares and I are sitting by the massive wall of windows in his gorgeous corner office at Thermopylae Holdings. Thermopylae, a nod to Ya-ya and her obsession with the Spartans, is our legitimate business venture. A hedge fund, to turn our dirty money into a LOT more money. Lots cleaner, too.
I never went to business school like Ares. But I’m a quick learner, and I’ve been absorbing this stuff by his side for years. But today, I’m distracted.
I’m thinking of that first kiss, and the ones that came after.
And how I want more.
It’s sort of tough to pay attention to a goddamn P&L sheet when I’m trying to process the idea that I might be far more emotionally invested in my fake fiancée than I should be.
“Welcome back,” Ares says dryly.
“You were saying…?”
