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)
Dionysus squeezes my hand. “I’d wish you good luck, but you don’t need it. Good night.”
***
The Minotaur
The next day, I’m still trying to figure out what my next steps are when someone buzzes my front door. I hit the intercom. “What?”
“Let me in.”
I blink. I didn’t expect anyone to be here, let alone Ariadne. I’m not about to turn her away, though. I hit the door buzzer to let her in and have to fight down the weird-ass urge to pick up around the place. It’s not messy. She’s been here before. But the urge remains all the same.
She’s perfectly put together as she steps into my apartment, wearing one of her new dresses, and I’m no expert in fashion, but it seems too fancy for wandering around town in the early hours of the morning, its silky texture clinging to her breasts and stomach and hips before fluttering down around her knees. The pale-purple fabric looks soft and fragile enough to tear beneath rough hands. It’s also fitted in a way that makes me wonder what she’s wearing underneath it…and what she isn’t.
Need hits me hard enough to make my voice harsh. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you would appreciate me being punctual.” She surveys the apartment as if seeing it for the first time and holds up a zip drive without looking at me. It strikes me that she looks well rested—even more so than when she left the other night. There’s no reason for the spike of jealousy that knowledge brings. I want her to be okay. But there is a monstrous part of me that’s so damn pleased at the idea that she only sleeps well with me.
I clear my throat, trying to shake off the feeling. “This is more than punctual. You’re early.”
“I am. I had some questions for you, and I thought it best we talk in private.”
I narrow my eyes. There’s something in her tone, a new determination that I know better than to trust. “You’re making it sound like you’ll be involved in this beyond getting the blueprints. Get that thought right out of your fucking head. You’re not going anywhere near that tower, the barrier, or Zeus.”
“We’ll see.” She shrugs out of her jacket and tosses it over the back of a chair. Which showcases the fact that the back of the dress is made entirely of straps pressing against her skin from the top of her shoulders to the jaunty little bow at the small of her back. Two things become clear in the space of a heartbeat.
One: She’s not wearing a single fucking thing underneath that dress.
And two: There’s no way she could have gotten into it on her own.
Jealousy surges forward and pours out of my mouth before I can call it back. “Who tied that bow for you, sweetheart?”
“I’ll make you a deal.” She sets the zip drive carefully on the coffee table and turns to perch on the edge of it. Ariadne meets my gaze boldly, not a hint of fear in her dark eyes. Something’s different. But before I can figure out what changed, she keeps speaking. “I’ll tell you who helped me into this dress…if you answer a question for me.”
I take two steps toward her before I can stop myself. And then I wonder why the fuck I bothered to stop at all. If she came here only to deliver the blueprints, she would’ve shown up right on time, not early. That wouldn’t have stopped us from putting our hands all over each other just like we have every time we’ve been alone, but she could’ve pretended that she wasn’t planning on it.
But this? The sun’s barely up in the fucking sky and she’s knocking on my door. This doesn’t feel like that frenzied fuck on my bed, where she was looking for sex and sex alone before she bolted back to her fiancé. This is…different. She knows what this is. Me? I’m still figuring it out.
I stop in front of her, close enough that her knees bump mine. Close enough to intimidate. “Sure. I’ll play your game. What’s your question?”
She lifts her hand slowly and hooks her fingers into the front of my pants. One tug and I’m standing between her thighs, but she makes no move to do anything else. She licks her lips. “Asterion?”
Oh fuck. Even as I tell myself to move, to speak, to do fucking something, I stand there as still as a statue and watch her unbutton the front of my jeans and drag my zipper down. The moment she touched me, my cock hardened, but now it’s pressing so tightly to the front of my jeans that it’s a wonder I’m not losing circulation.
Did she say something? I’m having a hard time concentrating. “Yeah?”
She tugs my jeans down just a little so she can stroke my cock through my boxers. It’s a light, teasing touch. It’s fucking heaven. She licks her lips again, as if I’m not already possessed by the fantasy of pressing my cock into her mouth, of watching her swallow me down until tears spring to her eyes and she gags on my length.