Chapter 41

Chapter Forty-One

Petra sat at Silas’s feet in the living room. Arrayed around her were the trunks he’d stolen, some of them opened and others not. She felt slimy pawing through them, seeing all the names of people whose lives had been held in the palm of Antonin’s hand. Originally she’d set up in the middle of the floor, but when Silas sat down to work on the decryption on the couch, she’d inched her way over until she leaned against his leg.

Things had been bizarrely peaceful since their talk in the blanket fort the previous night. Petra knew it was a peace that wouldn’t last, and not just because his rut brewed like a storm on the horizon. Her problems didn’t disappear just because they were tucked away in the wilderness somewhere. But when she was with him, she felt like her feet were on solid ground for the first time in years. The world might continue to spin around her, but when Silas held her, she wouldn’t spin with it.

Not when she was his mate, and not when he fisted his hand around her ponytail and tilted her head back like that.

She blinked up at him, lust curling in her belly at the light sting in her scalp. He watched her from under heavy lids, his tablet loosely held in his other hand, and murmured, “I fuckin’ love it when you look up at me like that.”

“Like what?”

His grip tightened, forcing the arch of her neck into a sharper angle. “When you’re at my feet and you look up at me like you’d let me do anything to you.”

“I like how you look at me, too,” she admitted.

“Yeah? Tell me how I look at you.”

“Like you want to eat me.”

A low rumbling sound erupted from his chest — not quite a growl and not quite a purr, but something in the middle. “You have no idea how much I want to eat you, baby.”

Her heart thumped unevenly in her chest. Speaking with more bravado than she felt, she challenged, “Why don’t you?”

Silas set his tablet aside and leaned over her. The hand not tangled in her ponytail cupped the side of her head as he skimmed his lips over hers. “Because, little goddess,” he whispered, “if I get another taste of that pretty pussy, it’ll send me straight into rut. And then I’ll fuck you until you beg me to let you rest.”

She hardly breathed. Heat flashed over her skin as her magic bubbled inside of her, mixing with lust to make a potent cocktail of power and desire. A keen longing made her want to provoke him, to make his filthy promises a reality.

There’d been so much relief in giving him power over her. Everything went soft and out of focus when he used her, moved her, fucked her mouth until she gagged. Petra had only gotten to experience that freedom so briefly in the cathedral. She wanted that peace back with a sudden, piercing ache.

“Will you?”

His tongue snaked out to taste her bottom lip. “Will I what?”

“Will you let me rest if I beg you?”

His lips curved against hers. “No, baby. I won’t. Do you like that?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Such a good girl.” Silas stroked his hand down her throat, then down under the collar of the shirt she’d borrowed from him. He cupped her breast. Teasing her hardened nipple with his callused thumb, he asked, “Do you like it when I have the power? When I tell you no?”

Petra’s bare toes curled. “Yeah.”

“My powerful little goddess needs me,” he murmured, teasing her with the tip of his tongue and those gentle touches. “You need me to make you feel small and safe. You need me to tell you what to do. You need me to make you come.”

None of those things were questions, so she didn’t bother denying it. He knew it was true no matter what she might have said. Still, she couldn’t help but poke at him just a little bit.

Slowly moving her head back and forth, stroking her mouth against his, she gave into the urge to tease him just a little. “I could make myself come.” But I prefer when you do it.

In an instant, his delicate touches to her nipple turned into a cruel pinch. Petra gasped, back arching, as a bolt of heat arrowed down her spine to settle between her thighs.

Silas’s soft croon didn’t change, but she felt the tension in his body and the corresponding tightening of the shadows around her throat when he replied, “You touch that pussy without my permission, little goddess, and I’ll introduce you to my belt.”

Good gods. Her heartbeat pounded between her thighs as she squirmed there at his feet. She’d never had any inclination toward letting a partner discipline her, but if it was Silas…

Her head filled with a pleasant sort of static and her spine lost its tension as she leaned into him. It wasn’t the idea of punishment that made her go soft and wet, but the understanding that Silas had the power to do it if he wanted to. He could take whatever he wanted. Give whatever he wanted.

But he wouldn’t hurt her. At least, not in any way she wouldn’t end up liking.

Her trust in him was, much to her astonishment, complete.

“Do you like the sound of that, baby?” Silas sucked in a deep, deep breath. When he released it, that rumble in his chest turned into a purr. “Yeah, you do. You’re dripping for me right now. What a perfect mate I have.”

Her heart skipped a beat. It was one thing to know she was his mate, but to hear him say it aloud with so much desire in his voice was quite another. Reaching up to feather her fingertips over his curls, she whispered, “Is this how it’s going to be with us?”

“Do you want it to be?”

Petra’s instinct was to say yes immediately, but she stopped herself. This thing, them, deserved more thought than that.

Slowly, she asked her own question, “If I didn’t, could you live with that?”

Would you still want me?

The hand on her breast moved upward to cover the spot over her heart. “You know the day we made our deal? You were looking at me like you wanted to rip my head off with your bare hands and I thought, I don’t care if I never get to fuck her. She’s mine.”

He pulled back enough to look her in the eye when he continued, “I like dominating you. If I could shrink you down and lock you away inside of me, I’d do it. But if that’s not what you need, what’ll make you happy, then I don’t give a fuck. I’m not giving you up, so you better tell me how to do this right.”

“I don’t want you to humiliate me or anything like that,” she said, forcing the words out through a tight throat. It was weird to have to talk about these things, but freeing in its own way. “But the rest— I like it. It makes me feel…” Like I’m taken care of. Like I can relax for a second. “Steady. It makes me feel steady.”

As much as she wanted him to move his hands elsewhere, Silas returned to stroking her throat. The look in his eyes was warm with approval. “I’d never humiliate you. You giving me this power is heady as fuck. You trusting me is a gift no one else has ever or will ever give me. I’m not going to blow that by pretending you’re not worth a thousand of me. So no degradation, no humiliation. Just control. I won’t give you an inch of space, baby, because that’s what you need.”

Petra searched his expression. “And what about your rut?”

The muscles around his jaw tensed. He took a second to breathe before he answered, “The only reason I’m holding off is because you need to recover. If it weren’t for you almost dying, I’d have my cock in you right now.”

“I’m pretty sure I can handle sex.” And gods, she wanted to. Not only because it was what her body craved, but because she desperately wanted to ignore reality and everything in the horrible red trunks for a little while longer.

Silas gave her a narrow-eyed look. “I said no. Not because I’m some fuckin’ saint, but because it’s not just sex. The rut lasts weeks and is brutal even when it’s normal. This one won’t be normal.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my mate,” he answered, as if she could have forgotten, “and all my instincts are telling me to spread you out, fill you up, and breed you so nothing and no one will ever take you away from me. I’m gonna stake my claim, baby.”

Petra’s brain briefly fizzled out at the thought of children. Talk of breeding was all fun and games when she didn’t have a future, but now everything was different. The high of knowing she might actually be able to do that was immediately followed by a crash and a thousand questions. Now she was a murderer, she had no idea what kind of father Silas would be, and she wasn’t even certain what her next few days looked like, let alone years.

Trying to stave off a panic spiral, Petra took a deep breath and told him, “Um, I’ve got an implant.” Something she’d been smart enough to get in a private clinic a few months before the Protector showed up on the cathedral’s doorstep. Even so, it was a minor miracle Antonin hadn’t found out.

Or perhaps he had, but he was so arrogant he assumed she’d had it removed in the time between their meetings. Her stomach soured at the thought.

“And I’m on the shot,” he replied, unfazed. “I want to knock you up, Petra, but I’m not gonna share you with a kid for a long fuckin’ time. Doesn’t mean I won’t talk about it though.”

She couldn’t tell if she was relieved or disappointed. The idea of getting pregnant when everything in her life was on fire was horrifying, but since she’d resigned herself to never getting the chance to choose that path…

Yes, it was possible to feel both emotions in equal measure.

She let out a shaky exhale. Kids with Silas? Gods help me. Now that’s going to be a mess.

Shaking her head, she asked, “So I guess that means no sex until my days of rest are up?”

“That’s exactly what it means.”

The aggrieved look on his face would have been comical if she wasn’t at that moment sitting in a pair of soaked panties. It would take so little to get her off. Petra cast him a look from under her lashes.

Not having sex was annoying, but there was plenty they could do that skirted the line, wasn’t there?

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, Silas tugged on her ponytail and growled, “Nope. If I so much as get a whiff of an orgasm from you, Petra, I’m gonna lose my mind. We’re not doing shit, and you’re not touching that cunt. Got it?”

She made a face. “Your rules suck.”

“But you’re gonna follow them, or you’ll give me an excuse to deny more orgasms. Push hard enough and you’ll get the belt, too.”

He released her ponytail, allowing her head to return to its proper angle. Stroking her hair, he said, “Now do you want me to work on decrypting the asshole’s data, or do you want me to keep talking about what I’ll do if you earn a punishment?”

If he kept up with his filthy promises, she was pretty certain she’d do something that would end up with her meeting the belt. Since she wasn’t actually excited by the idea of punishment or pain, Petra sighed and leaned heavily into his legs.

Eyeing the trunks in front of her, she muttered, “How can one man have all this? Not just the files, but all that data, too. How do you even amass that amount of information?”

Silas lazily tied the end of her ponytail around his hand again, but this time he didn’t pull. He held it like a loose leash as he picked up his tablet with his other hand. “That’s easy: you don’t do this on your own.”

“I mean, I knew the Ardeo still existed. It’s an open secret among the higher-ups, but…” Petra swallowed. “I’ve been so focused on Antonin for so long that I honestly didn’t think it would be this big. How many people are involved in this?”

“Men like him tend to be tyrants. They don’t like to share power, even if that power is something they got handed to them by someone else. My guess is that Antonin was the heart and soul of the operation, but that operation had to be approved by someone at some point. Someone more powerful than even him — at least to start.”

Her stomach turned. “The High Gloriae.”

“It makes sense. Who else would benefit from having this much power?”

Petra almost wished Antonin was still alive. Silas said he didn’t rely on torture to get information, but it probably would have made sorting through the mess at least a little easier if they knew what direction to look in.

“The High Gloriae certainly benefit from having all this,” she agreed, gesturing to the trunk closest to her. “Blackmail means people don’t leave the Temple, and it means connections, money, properties. That all makes sense to me.”

It was also textbook extortion. Having leverage was the oldest trick in the book. Governments and religious orders had been doing it since time immemorial, and criminal organizations were only half a step behind them.

The Temple was one of the largest private landowners in the UTA. While they didn’t officially wield political power anymore, they didn’t need to. Glory was the most widely worshipped goddess in the world. The High Gloriae used their influence over their sea of worshippers every day, not to mention the thousands of acolytes under their banner.

Add in the blackmail and the money donated every year that mysteriously vanished into thin air…

Something niggled at the back of her brain, something she knew but couldn’t fully articulate to herself. What do they want? What do they not already have?

The dread that something was wrong — seriously, profoundly wrong — hadn’t ever really gone away, but now it took on the weight of a bowling ball in her gut.

“Max wouldn’t have confronted Antonin over this,” she said, speaking the words slowly as she teased the thread of thought loose. “We all know that something like this is going on in the Temple. You whisper something and it’ll be heard. You snitch on someone and it’ll get you moved up. You have a skeleton in your closet and it’ll be found.”

Silas played with the end of her ponytail and muttered, “Sounds like a syndicate.”

“It is. At least, once you get into the depths of the organization. Day to day, most of the work done is good, genuine service, but the moment you dig into who holds the power…” Petra dragged the heavy trunk closer, a deep frown curving her lips. “Max knew that. I’m pretty sure that’s why he joined in the first place.”

“Must have felt familiar.”

“It did. For me, at least.” Flipping the gold latch on the trunk, she popped open the lid and was only a little surprised to see an odd assortment of ancient-looking files and gold bars inside. No wonder this one felt heavier than the others.

She curled her lip in disgust. Petra was born into the criminal world, so she knew how stupid it was to have something like this carted with him everywhere he went. But Antonin was no better than a common criminal kingpin, and they tended to get dumber the more powerful they became. Arrogant, too.

No criminal who actually cared about being caught would keep their safety net with them in the form of gold bars. Not only was it insecure, but it was also flashy. Abnormal. One look inside the trunk and any average person would think, “Huh, I thought only gangsters had stuff like this.”

She didn’t doubt that he had untold wealth squirreled away, but the fact that he kept some with him like that said an enormous amount about his ego. And also explains why he was so put out by my lack of jewelry, I guess.

“What I don’t get, though, is what scared Max so badly,” she continued. “Not even knowing that Antonin had all of this would have made him blink. Max ran his own organization. He knows— knew the score. So for him to risk confronting Antonin, a man he knew was a threat for decades… There had to be something else.”

“Maybe he killed someone Max cared about?”

“Maybe.” But Petra hadn’t heard anything about a disappearance prior to Max’s death, and while he was an outwardly charismatic man, his only real connection was the one they’d shared. Things had been a little strained between them since Max unexpectedly took the position at St. Emaine’s and left her behind, though, so there were almost certainly things she’d missed. She wanted to believe that if he’d had a partner, he would have told her, but there was clearly a lot he’d never seen fit to tell her. What was one more secret?

“When was the last time you talked to him?”

The familiar ache of grief tightened her chest. “I don’t know for sure how close it was to his death, but my guess is just before he confronted Antonin. Maybe hours. I don’t know.”

Silas’s palm smoothed over the nape of her neck and settled there, heavy and warm. “What did he say to you?”

“Nothing helpful. He was panicked and refused to tell me any details. Only that something was really wrong and—” Petra shook her head, trying to dislodge the memory of that final, awful phone call.

“And what, baby?”

“And he told me to leave the Temple.”

Silas’s grip tightened. Urging her to turn her head with a press of his thumb, he asked, “Why didn’t you? You had the money to go off and live a good life. Why’d you stay when he told you to go?”

He looked like he was bracing for some sanctimonious answer, but that wasn’t what Petra gave him. “I was angry,” she answered, shrugging stiffly. “I’d been angry at him for years. Ever since he left and didn’t take me with him. And then he calls and says I need to go? That the life I’d built meant nothing and I was supposed to just drop everything when he wouldn’t explain what was going on? I was so damn angry, Silas. Scared and confused and concerned for him and pissed off. ”

He tilted his head to one side, examining her like he did sometimes — as if she was a squirming amoeba under a microscope. A week ago it would have unsettled her, but now she saw it for what it really was: Silas doing his damnedest to understand her.

“Do you regret it?”

“Being angry at him?”

He nodded.

“Yes and no. Yes, because I obviously wish I could have had the perfect last conversation with him. I wish I could have known what he was up against and begged him to run with me.” She had to swallow hard before she could continue, but when she did, her voice came out harsh, full of all the hurt she’d kept to herself for so long. “But also no, because he left. I know it’s selfish to care so much about that when he felt he was on some moral mission, but it hurt me so badly that I don’t give a shit. After everything, he left me all over again.”

And then the bastard up and died. That was the permanent sort of leaving that made her want to howl with rage at the injustice of it all.

She loved her uncle with every ounce of her soul, but that didn’t mean she forgave him. The first time he abandoned her, she understood it. He assumed she’d be taken care of by her parents. He didn’t know what would happen. He was grieving and lost and searching for peace. She understood that unique sort of desperation better than anyone.

But the second time? No, there was no forgiveness for that. Not when she never would have done the same to him. Not when she was still fighting for him even after everything, and not when she finally understood what it was like to have someone who would never, ever leave her.

Silas’s thumb curved over her jaw to brush her bottom lip. Something dark and full of promise glowed in his lambent eyes. “Good girl.”