Chapter 6 Guns and Other Foreplay #2
Rolling my eyes, I got to my feet and kicked the material away. Little white pieces drifted in the air around me like snow.
Heat warmed my face—the rest of the buildings were on fire.
A muzzle filled my vision.
I screamed.
Achilles loomed before me.
He cracked his neck like he was preparing to attack; Patro’s name was tattooed down it.
Is he mad that Patro keeps talking to me? Everyone knew how possessive he was.
I stepped back, terror clawing at my lungs.
Achilles took a step forward.
Smoke billowed around him, the scent of fire and ash filling my nose.
He’s going to attack me. No one’s ever going to find my body.
Titan screams echoed over the speakers and another building exploded in a spray of Styrofoam and fire.
I turned and ran for my life.
An indeterminate amount of time later, I leaned against a metal pole in the fake forest and panted.
I couldn’t hit any of the Chthonics. They were too fast.
Metal scraped.
I whirled around.
A white mask stood a foot away.
“Do you need water?” Augustus asked, his long black and white hair blowing in the fog, voice drifting in and out as my ear rang. “Are you feeling, okay? Please, let me know if you need—”
What a thoughtful, nice man.
I fired at his face.
Not.
Augustus moved in a flash.
He was gone.
Groaning, I resumed jogging around the course.
Heaving for air, vision blurry, lungs aching from exertion, I stared down at my gun and turned it so the gold WSDL flashed: War, Sex, Death, Lies.
“Make them fear you, daughter.” Hades frowned down at me. “No one fears the weak.”
These people were highly competent monsters.
Unlike them, I’d never been particularly adept at physical fitness. I was good at calculating obscure mathematical problems and writing scintillating (inappropriate) fan fiction. I was a true Renaissance woman.
Gunshots echoed.
A tall figure jumped down from above and landed silently in front of me.
Skeleton-tattooed fingers raised a knife.
It was pointed directly at my heart.
“It’s like you’re not even trying, carissima,” Kharon drawled, his tone cruel.
My gun clattered to the ground.
Kharon grunted with surprise as he clutched at his stomach.
“You’re supposed to shoot it—not throw it at me, darling.” His eyes went cold. “Pick it up.”
I raised my chin. “No.”
Kharon held himself unnaturally still. “You have three seconds to pick up your weapon and apply yourself to the simulation that I spent hours creating just for you, or else …”
I scoffed.
“Three.” His voice vibrated with violence.
Does he have a counting kink or something?
“Two.”
My breath caught and I pressed my thighs together.
Wait … Do I?
I raised my arm up, opening my hand like a puppet. “One,” I said, before he could, chuckling at my joke.
Icy fingers wrapped around my throat—he pushed me back until I was pressed against rough metal. He wasn’t laughing.
Kharon squeezed the delicate pulse points of my neck as he held me against a fake tree.
In slow motion, his masked face moved to eye level.
He pressed harder and cut off oxygen to my brain.
Foreign thoughts filtered through my head, a mix of emotions and images in a confusing jumble.
Mine. She’s mine. Need to claim her. Control her. Possess her. Own her. Destroy her. Taste her cunt. Tie her to me. Protect her. Punish her. Need to watch her submit to Augustus. Devour her.
Scarlet-filled eyes contrasted with the white of his mask.
I gasped.
Kharon was using his Chthonic powers—I could hear what he was feeling.
Blood rushed from my face.
He was more animalistic than I could have ever imagined. The level of obsession flowing from him was incomprehensible.
Karen was truly feral.
“If you don’t take this seriously, shoot me.” His fingers tightened mercilessly. “You won’t sleep for a week—we’ll hold you hostage in this training room.”
“Physical … Nothing m-more,” I whispered.
His feelings took a dark turn.
Kharon ripped himself away from me with a strangled sound.
“You’re wrong.” He pressed the gun into my palm.
Fuck you.
“No, I’m not.” I aimed for his handsome face.
Kharon twisted to the side and dodged; the fake metal tree exploded where his head had been.
“Closer, baby,” he taunted. His raspy laugh echoed, and it had a cruel brittle edge. “If it was just physical, I would have fucked and discarded you like I’ve done with dozens of other—”
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
I fired, dread crawling up my throat at the mere thought of him with other people.
Kharon laughed louder as I stalked after him, fire, explosions, and Titan yells echoing all around.
Screaming, I followed him deeper into the darkness. It was where we both belonged.
“Alexis, where are you going?” Augustus’s voice cracked like a whip.
To go drown myself in the shower. Obviously.
“Stop!”
I halted. Drex and Agatha disappeared into the bunker’s locker room.
Slowly, I turned.
Kharon glared at me. “You’re not dismissed, darling.” He said the endearment like an expletive. “They get the showers first, and you get to explain yourself. Drex grazed one of us—you hit none.”
Patro and Achilles stood beside them, both staring at me with angry expressions.
Wonderful, everyone’s mad at Alexis. It’s a party.
I flipped them all off in my head.
“Do you care to explain your performance?” Augustus asked slowly, the harsh planes of his face unmoving.
I didn’t want to speak, so I didn’t.
Kharon narrowed his eyes, and Augustus twitched like he was having an aneurysm.
Sure, I had the potential to be physically fit and athletically competent. The problem was, I didn’t want to be. I enjoyed sitting. A lot.
Also, I was partially blind and deaf, so there was that.
“ANSWER ME!” Augustus bellowed.
“Don’t speak to my mentee that way,” Patro snapped as he crossed his arms over his chest. “We’ll deal with her performance issues in private. She chose us after all.”
I choked at the double entendre.
Kharon turned with a snarl. Achilles cracked his knuckles, DEATH tattooed across them.
“Do you people ever shut up?” I asked with a mumble, genuinely curious.
Kharon stilled. “What was that?”
I turned and walked away from all of them, collapsing on the bench outside the locker room to wait in peace.
Augustus followed and sat down on my left, in my blind spot.
I stared straight ahead.
Kharon chose that exact moment to aggressively shoot at a target across the training room. My bad ear rang with sharp feedback as a headache pounded in my temples.
“How come your aim is so off?” Augustus asked quietly.
I kept my expression blank. “No idea.”
Augustus made a noise of disbelief, and the side of my face prickled under his intense gaze.
I glanced over.
His midnight eyes were narrowed with suspicion.
It felt like he was staring through me, straight into my soul. He doesn’t know about your eye and ear. Don’t panic.
Patro and Achilles were having a tense conversation at the edge of the metal forest. Achilles signed something about “Alexis, patience, trust” and “needing a plan.”
Do men think they’re subtle?
When Agatha and Drex finally emerged clean and in fresh clothes, all five of us awkwardly moved toward the showers.
Patro and Achilles glared at my husbands.
Kharon raised his gun.
“Careful,” Augustus said darkly. “I’m still the eldest heir.” His eyes filled with blood, and a few droplets dripped down his cheek, trailing across his scar.
Tension increased.
“Fine—” Patro spat after what felt like an eternity. “We’ll wait … this time. But don’t forget, she chose us.” He smirked mockingly.
I made a face at him. Stop antagonizing them.
Achilles scowled.
Kharon elbowed Patro as he stomped over and shoved past him into the changing room. Augustus and I followed.
The room was smaller than I expected. About a dozen lockers filled with folded clothes faced a bench with towels.
The other side had a narrow hall with two shower stalls positioned across from each other.
I stared at them suspiciously.
Showers were a luxury I was still getting used to, but I was pretty sure they normally had doors—only the one on the left did.
Augustus saw where I was looking and explained, “It’s because Hermos is a Gorgon. They’re notoriously bizarre about their privacy. We added the door for him so he’d stop complaining about nudity.”
It took a second for me to process that he thought the one with the door was the weird one.
Maybe the sirens are right, and I am a prude?
Kharon muttered about Hermos being ridiculous as he walked past me—butt-ass naked.
A small smear of blood contrasted with the pale, unblemished skin of his left thigh.
But his right leg was a patchwork of burns, welts, and ruined skin. The scars were different from the ones across his chest, but no less painful looking.
Kharon was a shocking amalgamation of fury, tattoos, and old wounds.
He stepped into the open stall and turned on the water.
His expression became guarded as he saw me looking at his leg, and he roughly grabbed bottles.
Guilt filled me, because I’d noticed his limp back in Corfu, but I hadn’t thought much of it. I never could have imagined the awful extent of his injury.
Augustus sauntered past, also sans clothes, and I momentarily lost the ability to think. Black and white hair hung loose against his bronze skin.
His chest was unbranded, smooth with a light smattering of hair, but there was also blood streaked across his thigh, and silver glinted in the head of his thick penis.
Wait—what?
My gaze shot to his face.
Augustus arched a dark brow as he stepped into the shower beside Kharon.
God save me.
The drawings of genitalia on the Spartan Lifestyle Page were clearly fabricated because none of them had a piercing—I would have remembered.
Shaking my head, I ran into the stall that had a door and closed it tightly behind me.
Being the world’s first introverted perverted prude is surprisingly exhausting.
I hastily stripped down.
The divinely hot spray almost made me forget about the two naked men an arm’s reach away.
Almost.
“Are you okay in there?” Kharon crooned mockingly, an edge to his tone.
I shouldn’t have stared at his leg. He was clearly self-conscious about it, even though, if anything, the scars made him more impressive.
“Is the shower up to your standards, princess?” Kharon called out, clearly trying to get a reaction out of me.
“Don’t c-call me that.” I furiously rubbed soap all over my sweaty skin.
“But it’s true,” Kharon said. “You’re the princess of the great House of Hades.”
“We know,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s why you married me.”
The silence that followed was charged.
“That’s not the only reason,” Kharon said sharply.
I scoffed.
Kharon’s pale feet appeared outside my door. “Alexis, you’re being a coward hiding from—”
“And you only married me b-because of my heritage.”
“I married you—” Kharon’s tone was dangerous “—because when I saw you, I immediately wanted to ruin you … body and mind.”
A primal part of my brain recoiled with horror.
Save yourself; get away from him.
“Is that what you wanted to hear?” Kharon asked harshly. “Does that make you feel better, princess?”
“No.”
It really doesn’t.
Turning off the water, I quickly wrapped myself in a towel and wrenched the door open.
“It’s not just physical.” Kharon bared his teeth as he glared down at me, his naked skin glistening with water.
If he was trying to look remorseful, he failed.
He looked cruel.
I pushed past him, my arm tingling where we touched as I grabbed the first training clothes I found in a locker and pulled them on. When I was fully dressed, I turned back to him.
Kharon had found pants.
I was a devastated woman (read: pervert).
“I admit the urge to stalk you is—” Kharon wet his lower lip “—unbearable.”
I took a step back. What was someone supposed to say to that?
“When it comes to you, my desires are even … darker than usual.” His voice was gravelly.
The queasy sensation returned.
Augustus stepped out of the shower in a cloud of steam with a towel slung low on his hips. “We both enjoy control,” he said casually. “I tend to praise—while Kharon is more viciously inclined. One could say he’s … cruel.”
I choked.
WARNING: DANGER.
Red lights flashed in my mind.
Kill them and run before they can hurt you.
“Do you understand what we’re saying?” Augustus asked, his voice velvet wrapped in steel.
Praise?
Cruel?
“Carissima,” Kharon said with sinister gentleness. “Tell us that you understand.” Tendons strained across his tattooed neck. “Now.” He pinned me with his gaze.
My mouth went dry.
Shadows clung to Kharon’s sculpted face as his expression turned sinister. A vein bulged in his forehead as he pointed at me. “TELL ME RIGHT NOW THAT YOU—”
“I GET IT!” I yelled back, desperate for him to shut up.
Augustus stepped toward me. “Oh, Alexis,” he whispered darkly. “I’m so glad you comprehend what’s happening here. That’s … my good girl.”
Kharon seethed and Augustus smiled.
My nervous system shut down.
Acute full body paralysis, all systems failure.
There was no cure.
Never, in all of history, had a woman ever been so unequivocally screwed.