Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
These were gloves that meant something to her—and she’d given them to me without a second thought.
I decided right there and then that if the gods existed, they’d sent her to me. If they didn’t, it didn’t matter, because I was going to take matters into my own hands. I was going to marry that girl.
It took me two weeks of carefully asking around to find out her name—to figure out who her father was—and another three to catch wind of the whispers that he was looking for the kind of muscle he could train up into being his.
I’d sold my soul for less. It didn’t take much to bring me to his attention. I already had a mean streak and a vicious temper. Now after seeing Ariadne, I also had something to fight for.
Three days after I joined up with Minos, I found out that those gloves she gave me were a gift from her late mother. They’re priceless and she gave them to me without hesitation because she felt I needed them more than she did.
She claimed me that day without meaning to, and I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to claim her right back.
Not that she remembers the day we met. If she did, she’d never believe that I’d actually kill her. The fact that she keeps insisting on clinging to that bullshit only pisses me off.
It makes me want to punish her.
It feels like I’m punishing myself to step away, but I do it all the same. “Take off your clothes.”
She jumps. “What?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
She turns slowly to face me. She’s worrying her bottom lip the way she does when she’s doing something she thinks she shouldn’t. She did the same thing in the maze. The memory feels like acid under my skin. It was the realization of everything I’d ever wanted, a physical promise of a future together…and then she left me.
Now she’s engaged to another man.
“Has he touched you?”
She props her hands on her hips, anger overriding her caution. “Does that seriously matter? He’s my fiancé. Even if he wasn’t, would you really see me as less valuable if I had sex with someone else?”
She doesn’t get it. She never fucking gets it. “No one else matters but us. No one has ever mattered but us.” I drop onto the couch. “But you forget; I know you. You wouldn’t have chosen it—not with him. If I need to kill the motherfucker…”
“Stop.” She shakes her head sharply. “No one has touched me. Dionysus even wrote a clause into the marriage contract that takes sex out of the equation.”
Relief threatens to bow my shoulders, but I force them straight. Thank fuck she hasn’t been harmed like that. “Good.”
That takes some of the steam out of her sails. “Yes. Well. I thought so. He’s been very kind, actually.”
“I’m done talking about him.”
Ariadne rolls her eyes. “Great. Wonderful talk.”
“Ariadne.” I wait for her to look at me. “Take off your clothes.”
She shrugs out of her jacket and lets it drop to the floor. Then she reaches for the bottom of her shirt with shaking hands and pulls it over her head.
The maze was a frenzy. This is something different. No matter what else has happened, I relish this moment of freedom between us. She might be engaged to someone else. I might be under orders to kill her. But right now, there is only us.
We have all night.
She doesn’t stop, removing one piece of clothing after another until she stands before me in only her underwear. I was right. She’s lost weight. I don’t comment on it, but I file the fact away, along with a determination to feed her soon. I knew the stress of the situation in Olympus was getting to her, knew it was taking a physical toll, but I thought there was still time to deal with it…at least until she left.
Even so, her body is still lush, her soft belly making me want to sink my teeth into her all over again. Her thighs have dimples, and there are stripes of paler stretch marks over her hips.
In short, she’s fucking perfect.
“Show me.”
She sinks slowly onto the chair across from me and tentatively spreads her thighs. She’s wearing cotton panties, and I can actually see how wet she is from here, but I’m just as interested in the scar marking her thigh.
I have a matching one on the fleshy spot between my thumb and forefinger.
I want to ask her if she thinks about the maze just as often as I do. I want to sink to my knees and taste her again. I fucking want.
Not yet.
“You left.”
To her credit, she doesn’t look away. “I didn’t think I had any other choice. I’m not sorry I did it, but I’m sorry it hurt you.”