that’s more of a bite. Yes. This is the man I know and the one I want.
If that makes me sick, if it makes me depraved, if it makes me a whore, then I’ll be one for him.
“You stole my secrets from me,” he says against my mouth.
And here, only here, I can be that woman from the alley, the one who pretended not to feel my fear even while I felt it. “Then steal something back.”
He laughs, a sound with a razor’s edge. “Don’t play revenge games with me, sweetheart. You’ll lose.”
I would love to lose. “We’ll see.”
Zeus lowers his head and sinks his teeth into my collarbone, another laugh marking my skin with its heat. He’s filled every stretch of vision, my whole body attuned to his, and that’s how I hear the hurt behind the laugh. A twisting fear. The struggle to take control over it.
I’ll offer myself up instead. And even if I didn’t offer, he would take me. It’s only right. I’m on fire for him, cut with glass down to the bone, turning soft and pliant in his hands like the whore I can’t help but be in this moment. I bite my own bottom lip to keep from begging.
He turns me, hand still on the back of my neck, and bends me unceremoniously over the desk. The robe slips off, silk skimming my shoulders, and falls somewhere out of sight. Zeus shoves the tank top up above my breasts and yanks the shorts down to my knees. I’m disheveled, humiliated, and panting.
Panting.
I can’t stop, can’t get my breathing under control. Don’t want to. Take me away from that burning building. Make me a part of this house. A part of you. Steal it from me if you have to.
His only concession to the fact that I semi-recently got stabbed by an exploding window is that he doesn’t tie my hands behind my back, but I can tell he wants to from the way he circles my wrists with his fingers and squeezes tight. Zeus releases them with a low growl, and then his hand is back in my hair, jerking my head up from where my cheek was pressed against the notebook. It’s a painful arch. I could fly away in it, but another mean kiss steals my breath and the rest of my composure.
The old me wouldn’t recognize who I am now, with my toes skimming the floor and my hips rocking into empty air, trying to get contact, any contact. Zeus punishes this with two rough slaps to my ass that do nothing to diminish the heat between my legs. I’m on fire for him, aching for him, and he scrapes his nails down to the crease between ass and thigh and teases a fingertip close to my folds.
But he won’t touch. He circles again, his other hand pressing my cheek back into his secrets, and a needy whimper escapes me.
He moves behind me, one foot planted to keep my legs apart, holding himself back so that I can’t even rub myself on the front of his pants. I can’t do anything but squirm in his grip. It’s fucked up, anyone would think so, but it reassures me that I can’t get away. A desk drawer opens and shuts, hard, and I jump but there’s nowhere to jump. There’s nowhere except him.
“What do you—what are you—what are you going to take—oh.”
Thick, lubed-up fingers breach my ass and burn my useless babbling into an ash of shame and want. “What will I take?” Zeus sounds thoughtful, as if he is not finger-fucking my tight hole with rough strokes at this very moment. Adding to the stretch and embarrassment until I’m writhing away from the fingers with tears in my eyes. “What will I take, without asking, like a fucking thief? What do you think, sweetheart?”
It demands an answer so I give him one. “My ass.”
“More than that.” He leans down to drop a kiss between my shoulder blades, just above where the cut is still healing. “I’ll steal your pain and your tears and what else?” Zeus twists his fingers and the ache blooms outward until it’s all the way to my knees, all the way to the beat of my glass wings. His breath brushes the shell of my ear. “I’ll steal your pleasure, too. It’s mine, you little slut, it’s all mine, and you can’t have any of it unless I say.”
My pussy clenches in response to this and a