Chapter 6
six
-Ares-
I still haven’t decided what to do about Brynn when I hear the car pull up in front of my house.
Voices of my men fill the lobby, but not hers. For a second, I’m starting to think they failed, but then her small silhouette makes her way down the lobby and steps into the living room.
It’s the first time I’ve really looked at her.
I never wanted her to know I see her, that I’m watching, so I never spent more than a few seconds glancing her way.
But now that’s all I want her to be aware of.
That my fucking eyes are on her, scanning her, learning every detail, memorizing every curve of her body, like they’re not already burned into my fucking mind.
She wanted my attention. Now she’s got it, every last fucking drop of it.
I expect to see fear glinting in her eyes, yet there’s not a single trace of anything remotely similar to that. She just walks in front of me—slowly, calculated, all too aware I’m watching this time.
At least she’s smart enough to keep her mouth shut.
She just bows her head, expecting me to do the speaking.
That helps temper my rage. Just not as much as she’d need to be completely safe from my wrath.
“What the fuck were you doing there?” I ask, my voice hitting so hard the windows tremble with every syllable.
She just stares at me for a beat, her tongue trailing along her lips, as if to tease me, before she finally speaks. “I’m not made to serve tables.”
“So, what are you made for then?” I ask, catching a slight tremble on her lips.
“I want a job. A real one, not scraps. I want to work for you like Silver does. Prove to you I can get shit done.” Her breath is heavy as she speaks, her eyes on me, but somehow, they seem to be seeing right through me.
“Yeah, you’ve got shit done for me, alright. You fucking ruined my plans!” I grunt.
She winces at the anger in my voice, but stays quiet, expecting me to go on.
“I didn’t give a fuck about the weapons. I need to get every bastard responsible and wipe them off the face of the Earth. No one defies me. No one steals from me.”
Her gaze slightly lowers, but doesn’t completely drop, like she’s not ready to take the entire fault for this. “I didn’t know that.” She says, with a hint of regret that she’s trying to hide. And just like that, I realize that I could forgive her for fucking anything.
The thought unsettles me, like she just fucking changed the essence of my existence in just one breath, and I couldn’t even lift a finger to stop it.
But before I even start to think about what this really fucking means to me, I catch a change in her.
Her complexion looks even paler than usual, and even if the porcelain doll look fits her perfectly, I don’t like the way her breath stumbles as she speaks.
Still, I hold my ground, trying to decide what the hell I’m going to do with her.
“You didn’t know that because you fucking went there on your own, risked your fucking life to get me a worthless truck,” I mutter, studying her from head to toe because something doesn’t add up in this picture.
She looks like she’s frozen, her fists clenched around the rims of her jacket, her knuckles almost white from the effort.
But suddenly, she takes a step closer, her voice much more docile. “I just need a chance. I’ll prove to you I’m a valuable asset to your organization,” she says, and by the time she finishes speaking, I’d bet my life something’s wrong with her. Though she hides it disturbingly well.
“Come closer,” I order, and she walks right up to me, her perfume flooding my senses like it’s a fucking drug.
She smells like orchids and bergamot, and the memories of her serving me different drinks, making my cock ache for her, flood my mind.
She stops a little too far for my liking.
So, I grab the back of her knee and pull her closer until her legs stop between mine, hitting the edge of the armchair I’m sitting in.
Her poker face slips, and I can see the surprise flashing in her eyes at the closeness. She wasn’t prepared for this, so now, she doesn’t know how to react.
But then the firelight reveals a dark stain on the right side of her black jeans, right where the fabric meets her shirt.
I raise my eyes to look up at her, anger flaring from my gaze.
Why the fuck didn’t she say something?
She wants to play the bad bitch, huh? Then she'd better be ready to face the consequences.
“What asset would that be…” I push her jacket aside and spot a small hole in her shirt…. Fuck.
A sharp gasp escapes her lips before she can stop it.
My fingers go to the hem of her shirt, lifting it gently to find a trail of blood streaking her skin. “What fucking asset would that be if you’re dead?” I ask, feeling her knees slightly buckle as I lift the shirt higher, past her bra, to see where the fuck the blood’s coming from.
“Things… things got out of hand,” she says, sucking in air through her teeth as my other hand moves up next to the wound, right beneath her breast. And I can’t help but notice the netted bra she has on, a silvery jewel shining against her nipple.
Fuck, I want to touch that.
I want to taste that.
But unless I’m planning to do it while she's a corpse, I need to focus on the bleeding wound.
My eyes run across her skin, examining every inch.
The bullet did not penetrate her flesh. It’s just a scratch, but nonetheless, a very nasty one, splitting her flesh wide open and making her bleed enough that she’ll need stitches.
And as my focus shifts, I catch the pale shimmer of more than a few silvery scars across her stomach.
This isn’t the first time she’s gotten into trouble.
“This needs fixing,” I groan, looking at the blood already coating my fingers.
“No hospitals. Please,” she whispers, a slight trace of desperation in her voice, the kind I didn’t truly find her capable of. We don’t do hospitals here. But the wound needs to be cleaned and sealed. So, if she wants to play badass, fine by me.
I rise to my feet. “Stay here,” I command, leaving the room to return with a bottle of scotch and something I never thought I’d use again, especially on her—my seal.
I still feel I need to punish her somehow for disobeying me. I can’t let it slide. Not when I want to do far more than just punish her right now.
Patience, Ares. I remind myself as I regain my place in the armchair, dragging her closer so I can reach the wound.
I hand her the bottle of scotch, letting her take a long pull while I put the metal seal into the flames.
She takes several gulps, like pain’s already an old friend of hers and she knows exactly what comes next.
“You wanted my attention? Now you’ve got it,” I say, pouring scotch onto her wound to disinfect it.
She rips the bottle straight from my hands and starts drinking the second I finish. But that’s it, no scream, no cry of pain, no begging me to ease up on her.
That raises a lot of questions in my mind. I’ve seen injured men and women before, and this isn’t standard behavior, more like trauma resistance.
I stare at her. Her expression defiant, daring me to take the next step.
“You want in, little curse? Well, I mark what’s mine,” I say, rolling my seal in the fire, waiting for the metal to get lava-hot.
Anyone else would be trembling by now. But she doesn’t flinch, though, doesn’t even move. Just waits for me to do it.
Her reaction—or lack of it—gets me thinking. She wants this. She wants to work for me so badly that she’d let me do anything to her. But I won’t touch her just because she’ll do anything for a job. I’ll do it, because soon, she’ll want to purr for me.
Her blood is running down my fingers and I can’t stop myself from bringing them to my lips.
To taste her in every way possible. To let the sweet taste of her origins flood my senses, forming that unbreakable bond between a god and his newest worshiper.
Though I fear that with Brynn, I have no control over keeping our roles from reversing.
Framing her wound with my hand to keep her still, I pull my seal out of the fire. I haven’t branded anything in an eternity. I only used this for letters, and that was a century ago. But knowing that my mark will be on her, even just to stop her bleeding… that hits differently.
Fuck, I’m hard. And if she weren’t bleeding right now, I’d already have her on her knees, wrapping those lips around my cock as punishment for disregarding me.
I take another look at her to assure myself she’s not going to back down, but she keeps her ground, her eyes trained on me, watching my every move.
“Take a deep breath,” I say, pressing the hot metal to the center of her wound. The sizzling of her skin and flesh fills the room as I brand her, and I swear this feels like a fucking epiphany.
Her eyes flutter, her hands lose grip of her jacket, while her knees buckle beneath her, and she collapses straight in my arms. She’s too weak to withstand this. Her body, too human for her inner strength.
I drop the sigil to the floor and stay in the armchair for a few moments longer, her body curled up in my arms, her breath softer now, as if she’s sleeping… as if she belongs here.
I lift her shirt again so the fabric doesn’t rub the wound, and my hand stills right beneath the brand—a spear and a Greek helmet now burned into her skin, making her entirely mine.
All that’s left is claiming her—in every sense of the word.
She’s so fucking beautiful sleeping on my chest that I almost consider taking her to my bed so she can get better rest. There’s nothing I want more than having her there.
But that’s not the way I want to play this.
She won’t get anything handed to her on a silver tray—not after what she’s pulled by almost getting herself killed to get noticed.
She’ll suffer for it. The same way I’m going to enjoy every second of her torture.
I think about sending her home before I lose control and do something stupid. But no matter how much I trust my men, I don’t trust them enough to take her safely there while she’s unconscious.
So, I take the step I’ve been avoiding all along—I place a call, find her address, and take her there myself. I wait in the car for a few minutes until the street’s clear, then carry her inside her apartment.
The place is clean. Hardly any decorations or personal shit, like she just moved in and she brought little to no personal belongings. But what I find even stranger is that every wall is black.
Everything is painted black, even the bathroom.
There are two bedrooms. The first one looks untouched at least recently, dust coating the dresser, and a large white sheet covers a mirror and an armchair.
I then try the other door, and I instantly know this one’s her bedroom.
Her closet door is open, and a pile of clothes is scattered across the floor, mostly black too.
The bed’s covered in makeup and a hair curler, which I toss aside to lay her down. She’s still sleeping so peacefully, I almost crawl in beside her.
Not just yet.
I need to know where we stand first, and that she’s not climbing into bed with me just to scale up the ranks.
Still, she’s so fucking alluring, and the thought of that damn piercing on her nipple haunts my mind like a ghost. I lift her shirt again to see my mark one more time, the red symbols resting beautifully on her skin.
I want to kiss it, but I hold myself back for now.
I’ll do it eventually. I’ll taste every inch of her skin.
Mark her with my lips. My cum. My blood.
Still, my mind doesn’t give me peace, and I raise her shirt higher, over her breast, exposing her see-through bra beneath. I groan at the encounter, my fingers gently drifting over the material, tracing the circle of the nipple, brushing the cold metal of the piercing.
I’ve got a few piercings of my own that I want to show to her, that I want to make her feel—especially with my cock already twitching in my pants just by looking at her body.
I have to get the fuck out of here, before I fuck her while she’s unconscious.
Just not before I inject her with something for the pain.
I might’ve wanted her to feel every single second when I marked her—that made everything much more real, unforgettable.
But I don’t want to know she’s in pain now.
I take another look around, scanning the room, looking for a photo—anything—that could give me a glimpse into her life.
But there’s nothing. Like her whole existence’s been stripped down to a pile of clothes on the floor.
She doesn’t have decorations in here either, or anything else that could set this room apart from one of a hotel—except for the black walls, giving it a Gothic edge, something I do appreciate in modern architecture.
It’s just that they don’t make any sense since the place isn’t styled in any way–not even in a normal someone–actually-lives-here kind of way.
I have no idea why, but I check her fridge, noticing she only has one tub of ice cream in the freezer. No food whatsoever. And no real food in the cabinets either, just an unopened bag of cereal and a lone can of tomato sauce.
She needs to eat if she’s going to heal. But I won’t be the one spoon-feeding her. Still, something in me won’t let me leave her like this. I can’t be here when she wakes up, but I’m not okay with leaving her alone while she’s unconscious.
I shut the apartment door behind me and text Silver as soon as I’m in my car.
Go fucking check on your friend. Make sure she recovers.
Tell her I’ve got a job for her when she’s fully…
functional.
I know she’ll be running to Brynn before she even finishes reading it, and I don’t get to put down the phone before the ‘seen’ mark shows up on my screen.
She’ll be fine now. It’s what comes next she should worry about.