34. Nat

34

Nat

from anticipation

His shirt has fallen by the wayside. Buttons undone inappropriately low. The highest tip of Kadmos’s flame is visible.

A foot taller than the crowd, Sin laughs as he stalks toward me, two glasses of red wine in his hands. The mortals eagerly part for him, like they sense he’s brought the good mood. He’s luminous under the neon lights, that internal Divine glow. Several mortals pause to stare appreciatively at the hooded purple eyes, mouth set in a naughty smirk, the swagger. He has an undeniable magnetism.

The shaved head is … working. Killing me. It’s lighter clipped close to his skull, true blonde, and it’s … brutal.

It cuts across him. Violent, relentless, merciless.

Same way he fucks.

Resisting him is becoming increasingly difficult.

His gaze sweeps across the bar for me, and I yank on Zeke’s feather boa and pull his gyrating hips closer. “I need a break.” I have to shout to be heard over the blaring music.

“No, no,” Zeke whines, hips swinging, scars gleaming. He tosses the pink artificial feathers around my neck and drags me into him. “I just requested the Old Oaken Bucket. It’s going to start any minute.”

I’m gone before I laugh in his face, spitting out runaway feathers as I sidestep a stack of young mortals sucking drinks through skinny black straws. I crash next to Drake along the wall.

His hands are in his pockets, steely stare scouring the crowd like he’s patting each individual dancer down for weapons. “There’s no way you’re tired.”

“Zeke’s request is coming up.” I drag my face to the side and savor the shiplap’s coolness on my temple. “How many ancient cult washboard songs does he know?”

“There’s only like two, but they’re each fourteen minutes long.”

“They won’t actually play it, right?”

“Oh they will,” Drake warns, finally looking at me. “Why do you think Sin’s been gesturing at the DJ for an hour? Zeke wants weird cult music, Sin arranges it. He’s always doing that.”

“That?”

Drake rolls his shoulders up from the wall, unaffected by the music, the flashing lights, and the crush of bodies. “Lev’s vodka is always mysteriously stocked. There are disposable booties available for Atlas. This is the only bar in the city with Wi-Fi fast enough for Rune to suffer it.” He leans into me to point each of the Blackguard out, as if they weren’t obvious. Louder, bigger, more beautiful, even with the haunting tattoos. Every mortal eye follows them, entranced.

“Look, not a single man has come within a foot of Meda. We don’t let Sin use his gift, but he finds a way around it.”

To ensure all are happy and safe.

Like he did with me. A pang tears into my soul, serrated and skewering. Sin’s opening his world to me, offering his family on a string. A family he cares for and loves, and tomorrow I’ll shred them.

Like claws across a tapestry, I’ll cut clean through them the moment I get what I want.

“And you?” I ask to distract myself. “What do you get?”

Dark eyes skip to the crowded bar. A sluggish, far from happy smile pulls over his teeth. “I get the men who don’t heed Sin’s warning to leave Meda alone.”

“Twisted, Drakey.”

“They don’t intend to keep their hands to themselves. Why should I?”

I recall, in the recesses of my mind, saying the same thing to Theia after curb stomping a mortal who felt taking a up the skirt picture of Theia was his right. Yup. Drake’s my friend.

Another fuck up.

I sigh, dropping my head onto the wall. Thanks to burned pancakes and vodka and hours on the sweaty dance floor, sweat limns my body and a light, tingling buzz spirals through my blood.

The bar is a kaleidoscope in front of me. So many auras, all densely packed in wide ranging colors create a rainbow vortex. With seven color sucking black dots.

“Are you single?” I ask Drake.

“You trying to get me killed?”

“Theia’s had bad luck with males, but you …”

He laughs into his whiskey. “A Phoenix? Give me a break.” I elbow him on behalf of all Phoenix. “C’mon,” he says as if I’m absurd. “The butcher and a Phoenix?”

I rip a frayed thread from the hem of my shorts, glad Sin suggested we change for the club. “Better or worse than a Fury and a Demigod?”

He chews on that. Biting his lip. Rakes a hand through onyx hair. “I’m single.”

“I’ll assume you’re not discussing what I think you are,” Sin’s drawl has a rough edge as he plants his arm between Drake and I. the Demigod peers down at me with stunning purple eyes, soft with an emotion I can’t name. “Unless murder would make this the best night of your life?”

A weaker female would lose herself in those eyes. “Only yours,” I lie. “But silver stains.”

“Damn right.” He hands me a glass.

I snort at the choice. Laser lights, EDM, and “Wine?”

“Hey, that’s good stuff.”

I waft it at me, sniffing loudly. “I’m getting notes of this came out of a box .”

“They didn’t have the blood of your enemies on tap.”

I tap his throat. “I can take it straight from the vein.” Sin’s lips quirk into a smirk. “Lev gets custom vodka and I go thirsty?”

Sin presses his body against mine, firm muscle pushing into me, grip tangling in my hair. “You’re thirsty?” He wags his dismissive fingers at the butcher. “Bye bye, Drake.”

He sounds so eager, so insufferably cocky, I smash the toe of my tennis shoe into his boot. A smile unfurls. “If you’re looking for trouble”—his breath puffs against my ear, hand anchoring firmly around the back of my bare thigh to pull me into him—“Allow me to provide.”

My pulse gallops into an unsteady rhythm.

Thirsty, yes. My mouth waters.

“What does this mean?” he asks, hovering above me, fingertips mapping a line from my chin to my breast. I move his fingers to my heart. He smirks, not a glimmer of innocence. “Whoops.”

I jam my knee into his thigh. Savor his groan. “It’s a mark of home. Done every time we wish a sister could be of witness.”

He cups my jaw, forcing my attention to remain on him. “You want to show your sisters the sunrises?”

I want to make them understand. I want to take creatures who know light and dark and rip open the lid on this in between world the mortal’s have.

Not day or night. Dawn and dusk. Colors that don’t exist anywhere else. Creatures just as rare.

A mortal thief saved from the patriarchy.

A soft-spoken executioner who vows protection.

A Demigod on the tile, clawing into golden skin to get the sting of evil off him.

A Fury lying.

A wave of guilt sweeps through me. I lash out. “And sunsets. Except, oh wait, you took last nights, didn’t you?”

“You were exhausted, love.”

My stomach churns as the image of my nightmare blazes. His limp body covered in blood, limbs mangled.

Never happening.

I won’t let it.

“I told you what I wanted, and you ignored it.”

“Do you plan on throwing everything I’ve ever done in my face?”

“Yes.”

Another grin. This one wider. Pearly whites shining at my stubbornness. His crave of battle is as intense as mine. “Good. I love how you taste when we fight. Almost as much as I love the taste when we …”

I cover his mouth.

He licks my palm.

My heart skips at the missing word, his mocking me, and the silence between us in the chaos of the club paints wicked, wonderful pictures in my mind.

“I wanted to spank you for not saying it.” A nearly inaudible confession. He sets his forehead to mine and groans as if tortured. “Rune needs me,” he says, eyes slashing across the room. He looks back to me and promises, “I’m talking to him for two minutes, and then we’re dancing.”

I push him away, watching as he breaks for the Viking, who’s busy typing at his watch.

In the opening, Meda shoves a drink at me. It smells like ethanol. “What’s it like having sisters?” she asks loudly, fanning her neck, pulling at her bright white halter top. “I always wanted one, you know. I have a brother, and he’s just …” She growls, and mimes choking somebody. “You know? Every time I talk to him. Are you going to drink that?”

The ethanol? I freely give it back. “You seem to get along with the guard. They’re males.”

She throws back my drink and stacks it inside hers. “That’s cause they’re shitheads and I remind them constantly, but my brother acts like he’s never made a mistake. I ask Leto for one little favor that’s really for Sin, and in return, I get this endless speech about how he must bail me out, and what have I done this time , and am I always so troublesome ?“ She sighs, staring at her reflection in the big shiny ruby on her ring. Blurts, “Should we fetch another round?”

I’m distracted. “What does Sin need?”

“Tomorrow,” she slurs. “You know. You should have heard Leto. Tomorrow? Andromeda, really? Suppose I drop everything for you after all you’ve done . He’s always looking down on me. If it weren’t for me, you know where he’d be?”

She’s not listening to me, so I offer, “On stage at the Bellagio?”

“ Exactly !” she quips. “Right fucking here, with this fucking mess.” She grabs the tattoo on her neck. “He should thank me for saving him from this—oh god .”

Her eyes bulge. She sprints from me. Navigates the crowd perfectly, fluid as wind despite the hand plastered over her mouth, racing toward the exit.

I chase after, slower, unable to slink through the mortals so easily. “Luke’s waiting for her out there.” Sin’s low voice pours into my ear, his hand closing over my waist. “Complete with moist towelette, tic tacs, and a hair tie.”

“And all you got from me was a wet rag.”

“Yes,” Sin agrees, pulling me back onto the dancefloor, fingers sliding up my shirt to caress the dimples in my back and the valley of my spine. “But it was a very, very wet rag,”

A laugh bursts out of me.

“There is no finer sound than your laugh, Natasa.” He traces my vertebrae up to my shoulders, lingering on the exposed skin of my nape. “I want to feel it against my lips,” he whispers. “And around my cock.”

A decadent promise.

I’m aflame. Floundering. Blinking too slow, breathing too fast.

And then he delivers a blow to the head. “You are so fucking lovely.”

Each word is a sentence, a bullet to the chest.

So.

Fucking.

Lovely.

The deadly tenor makes me ache, tightens my thighs and floods my core. I take in a deep breath of clove and wine as his fingers slide into my hair, thumb trailing the shell of my ear. “When I get you alone, I’m going to strip you naked and …” He inhales harshly.

“And?”

I feel like I’ve stumbled backwards into a trap. He bites my earlobe, hard enough to hurt. “Tickle you until you’re begging for me to stop.”

Challenge flames in my stomach. “If you think I’ll beg, you don’t know me at all.”

A filthy, near pornographic smirk splits his face, features shining with unholy delight. “Oh, I know you, Bloodspiller. I know your breath hitches when I touch you just here.” His fingers skim the sensitive skin at the small of my back, and I fail to suppress a shiver. “I know the angry, gasping sounds you make when I fuck you, and I know when I finally get my head between these perfect thighs, you’ll pin me there until you’re screaming.”

He destroys me with every word.

I close my eyes.

The rumble in his throat cascades through me deliciously. “Say you want it too.”

I stifle a whimper.

“Tell me you ache for it. Tell me my touch hits you like lightning. Tell me you’re soaking wet and your fingers aren’t good enough.” His breathing is even. He hasn’t stopped swaying us to the music, tearing me apart without breaking a sweat. “Tell me no one else is enough. Just me. Your desperate, fucking Olympian.”

Mine .

I catch the thought in a velvet box and jam it through the bars on my heart. Mine . I like that far too much.

“Are you wet, Bloodspiller?”

I bite my bottom lip, shove my forehead into his pecs. For a wild, mad moment, I almost suggest we leave.

“Say it, you can’t lie.” He’s panting against me, voice a rumble. “Tell me you pretend, but you don’t hate me. Not even a little bit.”

He thinks I can’t lie.

It feels like all I’ve been doing.

I clear my thoughts, push air between us. “Meda’s angry with you,” I say instead of the truth, desperately clutching onto the little sense I have.

Disappointment sneaks in his gaze, but a setback never stops a warrior. He regroups, moving us faster to the beat. “Tell her to stop. That’s your job.”

“I believe positions are opening daily.”

Sin guides us effortlessly to the beat, molding heat and muscle and the unmistakable weight of concealed weapons into me. “You’re the best at it, though. Even when you’re coming around me.”

He rolls his tongue over my neck, strong fingers kneading my ass. He squeezes me tight into him while maintaining steady, graceful movements. Movements that have me gliding closer, even as the voice lowers. “I’m surrounded by mortals and they’re explosive emotions and you know what I taste?”

He flips us abruptly. A half spin that stamps his front to my back, and skates his thumb into the waist of my shorts. “Lemons.” He sighs, indulgent and obscene. “So bright and sour I burn.”

My lungs constrict. I bury my nails into his wrist to stall his exploration.

And still he speaks, husky and lush and straight to my veins. “Do you know how difficult it was to leave you in bed?” His touch lingers on the contour of my ribs. Stroking side to side before splaying over my torso. “Let me make up for all the time you were alone.”

I’m in over my head.

Heat scalds my cheeks.

“You should have never given me a taste, never let me develop such a fucking addiction.” One strong palm curves under my chin, thumb tilting me up. “Tell me you feel it too.”

“Your cock pounding in my back?”

A smirk. “Let me take you to bed so I can give you better. I can do so much better for you.”

“Sin …”

“Not crushing me,” he reminds me. “Aren’t you pure of heart? Aren’t you the good I’m supposed to hold myself to? You would not deny a cursed male one chance at redemption, would you?”

I’m out of my depths.

This is his battlefield.

Seduction .

For the first time in my life, I’ve no hope of winning.

Empty-handed. Light-headed. Addicted.

A delicate fluttery feeling coils in my chest, so light it steals my breath.

I crane my head up at him. “Yes.”

“ Fuck. “ It springs out on a whisper. He strokes my arm, ringed fingers curling around my throat and jaw to stare at me, mesmerizing eyes packed with heat and anticipation, as though I have the power to save him or damn him. “Yes what?”

I’m too eager to consider the ramifications. hungry and wanton. “Yes. To all of it. Yes to you.”