At a certain point, as the car is winding up Tenth Avenue, his hand slides across the back seat to mine. Our fingers thread together, and I shiver when I feel him take my hand and give it a comforting squeeze.
We’re silent on the drive home.
I’m stunned and more than slightly horrified at what I’ve just witnessed. When I replay the way Ares dragged an already bloodied Mike out of The Banshee and proceeded to beat the ever-living shit out of him right there on the sidewalk, I can’t tell which of the two ways my gut is pulling me.
On the one hand—horribly—I’m turned on. I’m excited and aroused by the savageness I just witnesses. The totally unbridled fury of the man next to me. The man who dresses in elegant, tailored suits. Who rules an empire with a level head and an unflinching concentration.
But also a man that I just watched turn into an animal, complete with snarling teeth and bloodlust in his eyes. The fact that it was all for me—for my “honor”—somehow makes it even hotter. I know, I know…fighting for a woman’s honor is a ridiculously antiquated and more than slightly sexist concept.
But it was still hot as sin to watch.
On the other hand, it’s the polar opposite. The other way my gut pulls me, when I think back to the brutality I just saw on that sidewalk, is toward fear.
And that’s as real as the attraction to that lethal brutality.
I’m caught somewhere between two damnations. Half of me very much desires the man who just almost killed someone in front of me with his bare hands. The other half very well might be terrified of the man I’m married to. Of the darkness and the savagery in him that I’ve only fully grasped tonight.
“Neve.”
I flinch, startled.
“What?”
“We’re home.”
Inside, I linger in the living room as Ares stalks off down the hallway towards the bedroom. I look down at my hands, and I shiver, my breath catching.
There’s blood on them. Mike’s blood, now smeared on my skin from holding Ares’ hand in the car over here. I feel a horrible rolling sensation in my stomach as I rush for the kitchen sink. Shivering, a cold knot in my stomach, I quickly fill and then down a glass of water to steady my stomach.
Shit.
There’s blood on the glass now, too.
Shuddering, I start to wash it in the sink, scrubbing it clear of the blood before setting it on the drying rack. The water is still running as I look down at my hands.
Immediately, I start to scrub them hard, over and over, until they’re raw from hot water and soap and I’m sure every molecule of blood is gone. It’s only then that I turn off the water and grip the edge of the marble countertop.
Out, damned spot.
I may have just washed the literal blood from my hands. But that doesn’t make them clean. I’ve been pushing the notion into the far recesses of my head the whole way home. But it’s not going away, even if I’ve been choosing not to think about it.
“It”, as in what I said to Ares right before he beat Mike to a bloody pulp in front of me.
I could have lied, and said it was a different Mike. I almost did. I mean, I hate that fucker for doing what he and Greg did to me that night. They might not have actually raped me. But they still violated me.
I knew damn well what was implied when Ares asked, “is this one of them”. He was looking for me to sign off on Mike’s punishment. To co-sign his beatdown.
I could’ve walked away. Denied it was Mike. But I didn’t.
In fact, I very much did sign off on it.
“Don’t kill him.”
We both damn well knew what that meant. Don’t kill him, but hurt him. Hurt him badly, even. And worse, I didn’t mean “don’t kill him because he doesn’t deserve it” or “because I don’t want that for him”. It was because that seemed like a bridge too far in terms of potential fallout or legal repercussions.
I tremble as I look down at my hands. Again, clean…but not clean at the same time.
My eyes close as I take a shaky intake of breath.
My hands are dirty. And I’m okay with that.
I swallow as I walk across the still-dark penthouse, towards the windows with New York and the Hudson River spread out before me. Then I hear the pad of Ares’ footsteps coming up behind me. I can feel and hear him walking closer, until I know he’s only a few feet away.
“What was that?” I whisper quietly, not turning around.
“What was—”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“That,” he growls. “Was me defending what’s mine.”
I stiffen, shivering as I start to turn.
“I’m not your—”
My eyes bulge, my words trailing off and then failing completely.
Ares is naked, his grooved, chiseled body glistening and dripping wet from a shower. His cock hangs thick and heavy and powerful between his sculpted, muscled thighs.
“I—”
I whimper as he closes the distance between us, gasp as he pins me hard to the glass at my back and cups my jaw possessively.
“And I will always defend—and never fucking apologize for defending—what’s mine.”
A heated shivers curls and teases through my core. My pulse thuds as I look up defiantly into his eyes.
“And again, I’m not your—”
“The fuck you aren’t.”
His mouth descends to mine so hard it hurts. So hard that his lips bruise me, and take my breath away, and almost bring me to my knees just from the heat in it.
I moan into him, shuddering and clinging to him as I lose myself in his lips. His tongue assaults my mouth, destroying any possible defenses I have left as it plunges inside. I whimper as I kiss him right back, my tongue dancing with his as I feel him yank the straps of my dress from my shoulders.
I gasp, my hand sliding into his thick hair and gripping tightly as his mouth drags hotly down my jaw to my neck. He growls, biting me hard as I yelp in a mixture of pleasure and pain. He groans into my skin, lapping at the tender place where he’s just bitten as I moan eagerly.
He yanks the dress down, peeling it over my breasts until my nipples are dragging electrically over his bare chest. The dress slips from my hips, dropping to a puddle at my feet.
I’m still not wearing panties. Not since hours ago, when he ripped them off me while fucking me like an animal in the bathroom and gagged me with them.
Heat and reckless desire surge through me like liquid fire. The two halves of me are at war with each other—the one side terrified of the savagery barely contained in this man, the other utterly and completely electrified and turned on by him.
As his teeth rake over my skin, and his powerful hands lift me by the waist to pin me against the glass, and as my thighs spread around his grooved hips, I realize I don’t have to pick a side.
I can have both. With him, it’ll always be both.
Power and lust.
Fear and excitement.
Sin and salvation.
I choke, cooing softly and eagerly when I feel his thick, swollen head slip between my lips.
“Are you dripping wet because of me, or because of what I did in front of you?”
I shudder, choking on my own breath as his eyes stab through the darkness of the penthouse into mine. It’s as if he’s been reading my thoughts. Has been inside of my head this whole time, hearing everything.
“I…I don’t know what you—”
“Yes you do,” he growls.
I cry out as he teases, dragging his cock up and down my lips until I’m shaking all over.
“Is your pretty pussy dripping wet for me, because you want me to stop teasing you and fuck you senseless with every hard inch of this thick cock?”
I shudder, whimpering as my eyes roll back.
“Or are you this fucking wet and messy for me because watching me let go, watching me drop the facade concealing the savagery inside of me, makes you want to get fucked harder than you’ve ever been fucked in your life?”
My mouth falls open in a whining, pleading, desperately eager moan as he sinks his head into me.
“Or,” he rasps into my neck. “Or maybe it’s—”
“Both!” I blurt the word shamefully, shuddering and trembling as I feel him groan into my neck. His teeth drag across my skin until I feel him nip at my ear.
“Bad fucking girl.”
Oh fuck yes.
He drives balls-deep into me with one thrust of his hips, burying every inch of his gorgeous cock inside. I cry out, my thighs clamping around his hips and my eyes rolling back. My head lolls against the glass, my nails raking his back as Ares pulls all the way out and then rams right back into me.
I moan as he grabs my wrists, keeping me pressed to the window with his body and his cock. He pins my wrists above my head, and I whimper as his lips crush to mine. His hips roll, driving in and out of me, fucking me against the window as he keeps my hands immobilized.
“Does this feel real enough for you?” he snarls darkly into my ear.
I shudder, gasping as he starts to fuck me even harder and more mercilessly. And I know exactly what he’s referring to.
“Imagine if we were real couple.”
“Ares—”
“I want you to fucking listen to me.”
He grinds into me, making me whimper and moan.
“This may have started as a political alignment. But make no fucking mistake,” he rasps. “You are fucking mine.”
My core tightens. My body begins to melt against him, my pulse roaring as my eyes roll back in pleasure.
“You’re fucking mine, Neve,” he growls savagely, pounding into me until my whole world starts to dissolve into pure ecstasy.
“And you can go ahead and warn any man you see not to even fucking look at you. They’d damn well better fucking listen. Because if they don’t?”
I cry out as one hand pinning my wrists moves down and digs into my hip. The other slides down my body, pinching and twisting one of my nipples before his fingers wrap around my throat. My eyes bulge, my body instantly rippling with pleasure as I start to peak.
“If they don’t,” he snarls, I’ll put a hole through their chests and fuck you in front of them while they bleed out, so their last goddamn thoughts on this earth are knowing how fucking MINE you are.”
And suddenly, I let go of the notion that getting turned on by Ares’ savageness and brutality tonight is “wrong” or makes me fucked up. I mean, maybe it is wrong and does make me fucked up.
But what hits me like a ton of bricks is that I simply do not care.
I embrace it. I give in to the wrong. To the savageness. To the filthy. And I give in to the pure hedonism of being fucked to within an inch of my life by the very god of war himself.
My thighs clamp around his hips tightly as his fingers squeeze my throat just enough to make everything more. Every growl against my ear turns me to liquid fire. Every brush of his lips against my skin feels like pure sin. And every thrust of his gorgeous cock feels like he’s fucking my very soul.
“Come for me,” he rasps into my ear. “Come for me knowing I’ll burn the goddamn world down just to have you in the ashes.”
My vision dims. My eyes roll back as the wave begins to sweep me up and crash down over me.
“Come for me knowing I’ll fucking kill for you. But most of all, Neve,” he snarls, ramming his cock so fucking deep that I crash over the edge.
“Come for me because you’re fucking mine.”
It takes me a second to realize the wail I’m hearing in my ears is me, crying out as my entire body erupts for him. My ankles lock around his hips. My breath chokes as his fingers squeeze. My skin feels like it’s been electrified and then set ablaze as my body grinds against his.
The orgasm explodes deep in my core, incinerating me from the inside out as I cling to him for dear life. Ares groans, biting down hard on my neck and sending me spiraling into orbit before his mouth crushes to mine again.
His cock pulses thickly inside of me, and I moan as I feel his cum spilling deep—over and over and over.
I’m dimly aware of his hand leaving my throat. Of being carried all the way into the bedroom with my legs still wrapped around him, his cock still buried in me to the hilt. Of him finally sliding out of me, and of his cum dripping down my thighs as he flips me onto my stomach on the bed and slides on top of me.
Of the delicious and sinfully hot feeling of him sinking his still-hard cock deep into me from behind and taking me again. And of coming, over and over again, until the sun begins to crest.
But he’s still not done.
I’m still not done.
We’re just getting started.
