Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Nyx
Caroline – Artemas
"Here." His deep voice brings my attention back to him as he passes me the bottle of champagne.
I started looking around his room while he was opening the bottle, mainly at the music sheets on his desk. None of them are from him, and I'm slightly disappointed by that. He's got a few famous concertos spread all over. They don’t seem too hard to me. Some I've practiced many times.
I look up at the snake on the shelf above.
"She really asked you to use a snake?"
"She's terrified of them," he explains simply.
"Why would anyone introduce what they're terrified of into their sex life?"
"If that's their kink." He shrugs, takes a sip from the bottle, and offers it again since I didn't take it the first time.
I grab it, still looking at the snake. "Is it your kink?"
"Maybe we shouldn't talk about my kinks if we really want nothing to happen between us."
I can feel his burning gaze on me, so I turn to him. What I would give for something to happen between us. Realistically, I know it can't.
The silence grows too heavy with unsaid propositions. I take a few sips of champagne, and choke so hard on the concentrated bubbles that I cough it all back on his shirt.
"Oh my God," I gasp. "I'm so sorry."
He laughs softly, taking his shirt off without hesitation, and I choke all over again. Holy…fuck. Now, that's something the girls commenting on the fan accounts would die for.
This man wears his name like a glove, carved exactly how I would expect a demigod to look like. I try not to count his abs, but there are obviously more than enough to ignore, and his Adonis belt points straight to where I should absolutely not look.
He dabs his neck with his shirt, and all I can do is stand there with my eyes stuck on the tattoos on his chest and shoulders.
"You've got tattoos," I say dumbly.
There are some small bats on his left shoulder, a sentence in French that runs down his arm. La vie n'est qu'un jeu. And right by his right shoulder, a pair of soft, female eyes are looking right at me. They seem young, childish even.
"Why the shock?" he asks.
"It's just not very…rich kid of you."
He runs a hand through his pitch-black hair. It falls beautifully to his neck, leaving a curtain on either side of his eyes.
"Never having tasted champagne is very North Shore kid of you."
"I'm so—" I need to scratch my throat. "I'm sorry."
"You're fine." He throws his t-shirt to the side, and all that he's left wearing are his jeans and that gold necklace.
He comes back to stand next to me, both of us leaning against his desk, and I automatically move to his left out of habit. He looks at me with questioning eyes, but when he doesn't get an explanation, he simply brings a hand to my face, pushing my fringe out of my eyes.
"I like the bangs."
I swallow thickly, trying to keep composure.
"Uh, thanks. So…" Using my thumb, I point at the sheets behind us. "Have you been composing anything?"
"Let's not push it." He snorts. "Tell me about you, Nyx. When did you start playing?"
I lick my lips, tasting the remnants of the bitter drink. "In middle school."
He nods slowly. "Must have been tricky where you're from."
"It was," I agree. "But I had a great teacher. She taught me after school for free, had a lot of faith in me, and gifted me my first violin. Then my dad sold it to gamble, but that's another story."
He observes me with those eyes that seem to read into my past, like he can see an entire movie of my life in his head.
"Is she the one who told you about our school of music?"
I nod as a pang moves through my chest. "Yeah, but she died before I could get in."
"How?"
His question is obvious, a morbid curiosity everyone gets when they talk about the North Shore. "Gang stuff. Because we're such bad people on the other side of the river, blah blah blah."
"You'd be surprised to know how many dead bodies show up on this side of town too. You haven’t landed in some sort of utopia."
I can't help the sarcastic laugh that bursts out of me.
"Come on. I saw you two weeks ago. You were upset your daddy dragged you to an inauguration and put on a crooked tie as an act of rebellion. That's probably as crazy as it gets here."
"That’s quite an assumption to make. Been observing me closely, have you? So much so you feel confident about the kind of relationship I have with my dad?"
I pause, blinking at him like an idiot. How do I tell him that, yes, I have been observing him closely.
For years. That I spend hours a day scrolling through accounts that add up every little detail they can find about his life until they have a picture of him we can all fangirl over.
And yes, I did look at him intensely during the inauguration, enough to see that tie, the fact that his father and him didn’t exchange a word, and with the rest of the info I know about him–the divorce, the move to France–I came to that conclusion.
How do I tell him all that without sounding like an absolute creep?
Surprisingly, after everything I’ve been told about him, he spares me the embarrassment and keeps talking.
"I like the mouth you got on you. You're clearly a good girl, but you're trying so hard to be a tough little thing." His voice is a low rasp now, and he comes to stand in front of me rather than next to me.
Bringing his hands to my hips, he lifts me up slightly, making my stomach clench with surprise and excitement. He sits me down on the desk and settles between my legs, and I can feel myself approaching euphoria. This can’t be real.
"You're being weird," I whisper.
"Weird?"
"Not yourself."
He barks out a genuine laugh. "You don't know me."
"Your reputation precedes you. I’ve been told you're an asshole. You don't make an effort with anyone, and you certainly don't give them compliments."
"Well..." Bringing the tips of his fingers to my cheek, he taps in a slow rhythm. I can feel the thickness of the calluses he's built over time from playing. "Maybe there's something about you that puts me at ease. Something that brings out the nice side of me."
His face is close to mine now, and I feel the vibrations from his words on my lips.
"Is that true?" My heart is racing, my entire body tingling from how good it feels to have him so close, to have him touching me.
He presses his lips to my jaw, traces all the way to the corner of my mouth, and I can't breathe anymore. As he skims over my mouth, in a moment of absolute insanity, I press against it.
He doesn’t need any other sign. His hand slides to the back of my head, gripping my hair as he keeps me against him. I kiss him savagely, sliding my tongue inside his mouth. I'm aware I'm pushing harder, more desperate than he is. But fuck, this feels so good. A dream come true.
"Or maybe," he says in a low voice against my lips as I keep trying to get more out of him.
I feel him searching for something behind me, but I'm too focused on the taste of his lips on mine.
"Maybe you're a fucking nuisance to me, and I've kept you in this room to teach you a lesson about your place here. "
Something twists low in my stomach, and the second his hand leaves my hair, I wrap my arms around his neck, needy for his hot skin against mine.
It's only when I feel something graze the back of my neck that I register his words. Did he just say I'm a nuisance? That he's going to teach me a lesson?
Soft material brushes against the nape of my neck, and despite it being loose, panic grips my gut.
"What are you doing?" I pull away, or at least as much as I can, being stuck on the desk with him pressing against me to keep me in place.
"Weren't you warned?" He chuckles as I grab his wrists. It's too late; he's wrapped something around my neck, and a ball gets stuck in my throat.
"Don't do that," I whimper. "D-Don't… I hate it."
I try to get hold of the material, but the second I reach it, he tightens it.
He tuts at me, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "I can go much tighter."
I freeze, and he relaxes a little. "Put your hands on the desk."
"What are you doing?" My brain is desperate to keep me confused, to pretend bad things aren't happening, but my body already knows since it follows his order like it's going to save my life.
"Didn't your new friends tell you to stay away from me?
They gave you a good list." He licks his lower lip.
"They just forgot one thing." He presses his mouth to my right ear.
"I'm very good at tricking stupid girls into thinking they're special to me.
Sometimes, I even get them to believe I have a heart. "
My eyes flick down to what he's holding, and when I see the burgundy and black from the SFU uniform, I finally understand what it is.
"Please take it off."
"You were so fascinated by my crooked tie a minute ago," he taunts me. "What happened, Nyx?"
I try not to hyperventilate, but fail miserably.
"I h-hate… Fuck. Please, I'm scared."
"Yeah." He presses his body between my legs, his hard-on against my lower belly. "I know. I heard you earlier. Now what I'm eager to know is what's so scary about having something around your neck?"
His face is nothing like the one I was looking at a minute ago. Still as beautiful, of course, but there's an evil shadowing his features, and I don't want to know exactly what it means. I just want to get out of here.
The tie isn’t tight around my neck at all. He's loosened it so much, I can barely feel it, but it's knowing it's here that stops me from breathing.
"P-Please," I gasp. "Take it off."
My eyes fill up with tears, and I scrunch them tightly to stop them from spilling.
The hand that's not holding the material comes to my face, and his thumb presses softly at the corner of my eye.
"Open your eyes, pretty girl. Show me those tears."
When I don't, I feel the knot moving higher.
They snap open.
"There you go."
"Achilles—"
"I won't hurt you." That smirk of his becomes terrifying. "I just want to see the fear in your eyes."