Chapter 11 #2
His hands work lower, pressing into the muscles along my spine. The compress has gone warm against my shoulder, but I don’t want him to move it. Don’t want this to end.
“And what about you?” I manage. “Five years in a cage and you act like you own the place.”
His hands still against my skin. “I do not love this cage. But I have learned how to survive in it.” He clears his throat before I can reply. “Your hair is covered in knots.”
Marco’s fingers brush against the back of my neck, and I freeze, stone still. His touch is gentle, but every nerve ending in my body is awake.
I try to run my own fingers through the mess that is my hair. He’s right—all the rolling around in dirt and sweat hasn’t been kind to it. It’s getting long too. Longer than I like to keep it.
“My sister usually cuts it for me.” The words slip out before I can stop them. The mention of Esme sends a sharp pang through my heart, and I wonder for the millionth time where she is. If she’s safe.
Marco’s hands pause their massage. “How old is she?”
My throat tightens. “She’s thirteen,” I say. “Only thirteen.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. His palms rest flat against my shoulder blades, warm and steady.
Then his hand moves to root around in his bag. When it emerges, he’s holding something golden and shiny.
A comb.
A hair comb with delicate teeth that glimmer in the dim light. It’s beautiful—too beautiful for this place. The metal gleams like it’s made of actual gold.
“May I?”
He holds out the comb. There’s something almost vulnerable in the way he asks, like he’s not sure I’ll let him.
I nod, and he moves closer to me, shifting until he’s sitting directly behind me on the mat. His legs bracket mine. Heat radiates from his thighs against my sides.
The first gentle stroke of the comb through my hair makes me shiver. He starts at the ends, easing out the tangles with infinite patience. When he hits a particularly stubborn knot, he doesn’t yank or force it. Instead, his fingers tease it loose first, then follow with the comb.
The comb moves higher, smoothing through the mess near my scalp. His other hand cups the base of my neck, thumb stroking along my hairline. The gentle touch makes my eyes flutter closed.
We sit in silence as he works, the only sounds our breathing and the whisper of the comb through my hair. Each stroke is deliberate, careful. Like he’s savoring the simple intimacy of it. I know I am.
When he reaches a section near my temple, his fingers brush against my ear, and I accidentally lean into the touch.
This is dangerous. Everything about this moment, this closeness, this tenderness—it’s all dangerous as hell.
Marco said it himself—getting close to someone in here is perilous. All too soon, our names could be opposite each other in the fixtures.
But I can’t bring myself to pull away.
“Your hair catches the light,” he whispers. “Like spun gold.”
I close my eyes. A soft sound escapes me—almost like a purr.
“Does this feel so very nice?” Marco asks in a murmur, and I realize I’ve been making little noises every time the comb passes through. Like a kitten being stroked.
Heat floods my cheeks, but I can’t bring myself to care.
It feels too good. I’ve never been touched like this.
Ever. It’s such a treat. The gentle pressure of his fingers, the rhythmic motion of the comb.
My muscles go loose and heavy. Without thinking, I let my head fall back against his chest. Even my eyes are heavy—it’s a battle to keep them open.
“I’m so tired. So fucking tired.”
The words slip out like a confession, and suddenly my throat is closing up. My eyes burn. Fuck, what is wrong with me? It was just hair combing, just a simple touch, but it’s like he’s broken something open inside me.
This is dangerous. I know this is dangerous. Any second now Marco will flip, smash my head into the ground, shout at me for letting my guard down. For being weak.
But I’m too goddamn tired to care. And enjoying this stolen pleasure far too much to bring it to an end…
Marco abandons the comb. His fingers move through my hair in long, slow strokes. Silent. Gentle. Like I’m something precious instead of just another body destined for his arena.
“This place is awful.” The words keep tumbling out, and I can’t stop them.
“Fucking awful. And the matches haven’t even started yet.
You know, the others seem excited for the fixtures to be posted.
But I’m not. I don’t want to know who’ll be the first men to die and have to look into their faces each morning at breakfast.”
More silent stroking. His fingers trail down to my neck, trace the tendons there.
“Am I ready?” I find myself asking, hating the note of desperation in my voice. “For next week?”
“I’ll make sure you’re ready,” Marco promises, his voice so sincere I almost believe him.
“I just… don’t know how you’ve survived five years of this.” I can’t hide the way my voice cracks. “Five years, Marco. I just… don’t understand.”
His hand stills. Then he whispers, “Sometimes, I don’t know either.”
The admission hangs between us. He’s silent for a long moment.
Then he says in a quiet voice, “I suppose it’s the tiny things that have kept me going.
The way morning light hits the arena walls before the crowds arrive.
How my housemaid hums to herself while she works in the kitchen, and I know I’ve made someone’s day easier just by existing.
” His thumb brushes against my temple. “That when I stare up at the stars, my family are out there, looking up at the same ones, desperate for me to return to them. I just hold on to the knowledge that one day I’ll be home, and this will all be a half-forgotten dream.
Until then, I just have to find the tiny pleasures in life. ”
I turn my head to look at him. “Tiny pleasures.”
“Something like that.” His dark eyes search my face. “Finding beauty in ugly places. Holding on to hope when everything else is stripped away.”
My heart pounds as I shift, turning fully to face him. His thighs come together, creating a cradle for me to settle into. I’m sitting in his lap now, our faces inches apart.
“And this?” One hand fists his shirt, and with the other I reach up, touch his face with trembling fingers. “Am I a tiny pleasure?”
His breath catches. For a long moment he just stares at me, something blazing in his eyes.
“No,” he whispers finally. “You’re a wildfire.”
A ripple passes between us. Nothing gentle, nothing sweet—something fierce and consuming that threatens to burn everything down around us.
His hand cups my jaw, thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone. I lean into the touch, suddenly starved for it.
“Robin.” There’s something about the way he says my name. Like a prayer, like a curse. My pulse is in my wrist, my throat.
I don’t know who moves first. Maybe we both do. Maybe gravity pulls us together, inevitable as the tide.
His mouth crashes against mine with desperate hunger. Not the careful, exploring kiss of first attraction—this is collision. Wreckage. Five years of isolation and pain poured into this single point of contact.
I taste salt. Sweat, maybe tears. His or mine, I can’t tell. Don’t care.
My teeth catch his lower lip. He growls low in his throat, a sound I feel more than hear. His hands tangle in my hair, grip hard enough to sting. I arch into it, sparks racing through me to pool hot in my belly.
This isn’t tender. This is two people drowning, clawing at each other for air.
His tongue sweeps into my mouth, claims it. I bite down gently, feel him shudder beneath me. His grip tightens, pulls my head back to expose my throat. For a wild second I think he might bite me there, mark me.
Instead, he breathes against my neck, harsh and ragged.
“You,” he says, simply. “You.”
I silence him with another kiss, deeper this time. We pour five years of his loneliness into it, my weeks of terror and confusion and want. My hands find the hem of his shirt, slide underneath to map the heated skin beneath.
His body presses against mine, and suddenly I can feel everything. The hard length of his erection pushing against my thigh through the thin fabric of his training clothes. The way his breath hitches when I shift my weight.
Want floods through me, violent and all-consuming.
Fuck, I want him so much. I want him broken open, all that control stripped away until he’s nothing but heat and hunger and mine.
I want him on his knees, begging for me.
To hear him cry out my name as I push inside him.
I want him ruined. But the way he’s looking at me right now? I’m the one who’s already lost.
I shift back on his thighs, and my hand is already moving—down his chest, his stomach. My fingers find his cock through the fabric, and he gasps.
He’s hard. So hard.
I rub over his length. Once, twice. Fuck, he’s so big.
But Marco’s hand snaps out, catches my wrist before I can free his cock and properly attend to it. His grip is firm but not painful, and when I look up at him, his eyes are so wide, I can see my flushed face reflected back at me.
Shame burns through me. Shame and confusion.
“I’m sorry, I—”
He lifts my captured hand to his mouth, presses his lips to my knuckles. The kiss is soft, reverent, and it steals whatever words I was going to say.
“I wish I could stay,” he says against my skin. His voice almost breaks on the words. “You have no idea how much I wish I could stay with you. But I have to go. I’m already late.”
Reality crashes back like ice water. Of course. The Emperor.
“You have to go to him.” The words taste bitter, and I almost laugh at the intense jealousy clawing at my insides.
“You think I want to leave you?” His hand slides along my chest, fingers mapping the planes. When his thumb brushes over my nipple, I can’t hold back the sound that escapes me—half gasp, half whimper. “He’ll kill me if I don’t. It’s that simple.”
The casual way he says it—like death is just another appointment on his schedule—makes my blood freeze.
“Do you hate him?” I need to hear him say it. I’m pathetic, a child asking for reassurance.
Marco’s hands frame my face, thumbs stroking along my cheekbones. When he speaks, his voice is low and deadly serious.
“With all my being.”
His words sink through me. There’s such venom in them, such pain. Five years of this. Five years of being used, owned, broken down piece by piece.
“Give me one more kiss,” he says, and there’s desperation in his voice now. “To last me.”
To sustain him. Through whatever’s waiting for him tonight.
This time when we kiss, it’s different. Desperate, yes, but also something deeper. I clutch at his shoulders, his back, trying to eliminate every inch of space between us. He holds me like I might disappear if he lets go.
We’re both breathing hard when he finally pulls away, our foreheads pressed together.
“You taste exactly how I imagined you would.”
My heart stutters. “Like what?”
But he only smiles—soft and secret and heartbreaking—then nudges me off him to gently rise to his feet.
And walks away.