Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Kronos
Materializing in Kristina’s room, Kronos’ focus had flitted to the bed, his stomach knotting when he found it empty. For a split second, dread erupted, roaring inside him like thunder.
Where was she?
He’d left her sleeping with enough enchantment settling over her to last several more hours, yet he’d returned to find her gone.
The panic was placated when he peered around the place to find her on the floor.
Curled into a tight ball with her head resting on her legs and her blanket strewn around her shoulders, she seemed not to have noticed his appearance.
He closed the distance between them in one long stride, watching her in silence.
While his alarm was assuaged, he was still troubled to find her so overtly anxious.
Her fingers gripped around her knees so tightly that the digits had blanched.
“Little one.” He called for her softly, waiting as her chin rose and her gaze sought him.
He wanted to ask a hundred queries, like how she had been able to sleep off his magic so quickly and why she was so distressed.
Her watering eyes conveyed her upset, and the way she pulled her lip between her teeth suggested she was nervous, although he couldn’t immediately understand why.
He’d left her sleepy and satisfied. What had happened in the interim?
“Master.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of one hand.
“What’s wrong?”
“Waking up here is just…” She hesitated, and he had the sense she was choosing the right word, trying to downplay whatever she was feeling. “A lot.”
“What do you need?”
He lurched immediately into problem-solving mode. Things between them were better than he could have possibly hoped, yet it seemed those hours alone, even in sleep, had disturbed her.
Fleetingly, he considered how unusual his response was.
He never normally gave a damn about his captives’ emotional wellbeing, especially at the beginning of her captivity, accepting it took time for her to acquiesce.
So long as her physical needs were met, he simply induced a greater slumber and allowed her that time to come to terms with her plight.
As with every metric he could recall, though, Kristina was different. With her, he did care, her fretting tightening the ball of tension in his stomach.
“Nothing, Master.” She climbed to her feet with a sniff, wrapping her blanket tighter around her. Even at her full height, she still hardly even reached his chest. “I just need to get out of here.”
“You are upset, and you will tell me why.” Her words barely registered as he made the demand.
She glanced around the room, fear still flickering in her gaze. “I don’t like being kept like a lab rat.”
“You are no rat.” His lips curled at her analogy. “I told you what you are back in my parlor. Were you paying attention?”
His mind flitted back to the intensity of the connection they’d shared in his private space. It had felt right having her there with him, and when he’d finally claimed her, he realized there was no other woman he would rather have brought into his fold.
Providence had long been his foe, but with Kristina, it seemed fate was finally a friend.
Tempting, testing, and complicated though she was, the mortal was everything he’d longed for during all those eons.
Someone who offered fascination as well as compliance, someone who was so flawlessly aligned with his sexual needs, and someone who, for some reason, was able to counter the effects of much of his magic without even realizing she was doing so.
A match for me.
He pressed his lips into a hard line at the amusing thought. There should have been no possibility that the diminutive woman beside him was a match for the king of the Titans, but there she was—apparently sent to taunt him with her science and her ceaseless questions.
“Master, I…” She swallowed, retreating to the wall when he approached.
“Come now,” he teased, aware of his cock stirring beneath his tunic. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
Her gaze flitted past his shoulder as though she was desperately trying to think, and ignoring the gesture, he pressed gently against her.
“Kristina.” Her name was an intentional sigh on his voice, her gaze widening as it darted back to him.
“I’m sorry, Master.” Her focus crawled over his pectorals en route to his face. “I’m flustered, and I can’t think.”
He liked the way she admitted her reasoning, at least.
“When I fucked your ass by the fire.” Taking her chin in one hand, he stroked the soft skin of her jaw and tugged the blanket from her shoulders with the other hand. “What did I tell you that you were?”
Emotion flickered in her deep blue eyes. “You said I belonged to you, Master.” Her throaty plea spoke directly to his cock.
“That’s right,” he purred, pleased that, in the end, she had remembered. “You are mine.”
He lowered with the final word, discarding the blanket entirely and lifting her from the ground until they stared directly into each other’s gazes.
“Yes.” Her attention flitted to her feet as far as his fingers allowed as she realized she was levitating, but she didn’t question the deed. “I’m yours.”
“So whatever troubles you, troubles me, little one.” Pinning her against the wall, he ensured there was nowhere for her focus to be except on him. “Tell me why you were crying.”
He wanted to kiss her again, wanted to press her against the wall and make her take every inch of him, but he knew Shelley was waiting to advance, and time was of the essence.
Once his brunette was safely delivered back to her timeline, there would no longer be any restraints on the time he could spend with Kristina.
Her physical limitations would then become his only constraint.
Pulling in a pained breath, Kristina gulped. “Master, if I tell you why, you might be angry with me.”
“I will not,” he assured her. “Remember rule four, little one. What might encourage my fury is not your truth, but your reticence to reveal it.”
He watched as a solitary tear made a track along her face.
Tears had long been a source of such intrigue for him.
Not specific to mortals, he had witnessed them over the centuries and still hadn’t comprehended their meaning.
As someone who’d never knowingly shed a single one, the tears he’d seen had often seemed motivated more by frustration than melancholy.
“When I woke and you were gone, I panicked.” She blew out a breath. “The room got smaller somehow, and then I was thinking...” Her eyes fluttered closed, and again, he sensed she was holding back the truth from him. “I realized I can’t do this.”
Caressing her cheek, he tried to follow her logic. She’d decided that she couldn’t stay there with him, although he was sure there was more to the story.
“Kristina.” His tone was harder that time, the timbre drawing her eyes open in an instant. “There is no escaping me. You know that, don’t you?”
Her lips parted, shock shining in her blue eyes. “But I have to, Master.” A sob caught in the back of her throat. “I can’t stay here anymore.” Her gaze flitted around her cell in dismay.
“Tell me.” His gaze drilled into her. “Were you thinking about leaving?”
Hadn’t he made her happy since she’d woken? Hadn’t he made sure she was looked after and gratified? The idea that she—the most aligned woman to his needs that he’d ever found—would consider fleeing from him was like a knife to his heart.
He had to make her understand; she had to stay.
Blowing out a breath, she lifted her chin. “Yes, Master.” The glint in her eyes was colder at the confession. “I’m thankful for everything you’ve done for me, but I have to get out of here.”