Chapter 9
Edrifted out of sleep. Her body lay on the warmest mattress she’d ever felt, though it definitely wasn’t the softest. Her eyes blinked open and all she saw was glittering skin.
It took a second for her to register her surroundings clearly, but when her brain finally booted back online, she bolted upright, planting her hands firmly in the middle of Plutus’s hard-muscled chest.
He rumbled beneath her hands, shot out his arms, and folded her snugly back against his chest. A deep sniff sounded above her head. On top of her head, actually. Absurdly, she suddenly became very self-conscious about how her hair might smell. Or if it was a matted mess of sex hair.
Oh, god, she remembered the night before.
The frantic, heated, delicious sex they’d had on the floor, right where she’d summoned the god.
After, when she’d agreed to let him sleep with her, he’d been far too sweet for her liking.
He climbed in with her after scrounging up a bowl of ice cream.
He fed her and himself, until she fell asleep curled into his warm side, the heat of him and the chill of the ice cream creating a delicious clash in her body.
Then… Damn. She’d woken up in the middle of the night, aching and needy, and reached out to him.
He coaxed her on top and she’d gone willingly.
Grabbing onto his tall, curved horns like they were handlebars, she’d ridden the god until she’d screamed her release at the same time as he shouted his.
Again, he took care of her, carrying her to the bathroom and giving her privacy inside until he carried her back to bed once she finished cleanup.
She’d slept the sleep of the truly satiated.
Until then, and the idea of all of it flooded her with heat – from embarrassment and desire both.
She shouldn’t be embarrassed. Had never in her sexual history felt the shyness she felt in that moment. Then again, she wasn’t used to facing her sexual partners in the bright light of the morning, plastered together in her too-small-for-a-god double bed in her sad little corner of the apartment.
It was one thing to share her body, share pleasure, with a man she found attractive. Quite another to share her life—the way she lived—with them. Opening herself up to that type of judgement made her skin crawl.
However, Plutus already knew. Had known who and what she was from the jump. Spoke to something deep and tethered tight in her with his body. Even seemed to want more than her body. Plutus acted like he wanted to care for her.
Chafing at the ideas swirling in her brain, she managed to push up from his golden arms, crawl over his hulking body, and exit the bed before he snatched her up again.
She beelined for the bathroom and the few minutes of peace it might give her.
And maybe she did brush her teeth longer than two minutes and brush her hair for a touch too long.
When she emerged, minty-fresh and hair gleaming, she had a plan.
Knew what she needed to do. She tried to ignore Plutus as she breezed into the living room, but he wasn’t even there.
The sound of the refrigerator door slamming made her jolt and spin.
Plutus stood in the middle of the kitchen, a carton of eggs in one hand and a slab of thick cut bacon in the other.
Her mouth almost watered at the sight. She loved bacon but rarely bought it because it’d gotten so damn expensive.
E favored breakfast foods in general, but if she was getting some space, she needed to keep her mind set on her plan.
“Hey. I need to, uh, get going.” She called this out as she scurried into her bed area. She slipped the curtain closed and dressed in shorts and a NYU t-shirt she’d gotten at grad student orientation as quickly as she could.
E flung the curtain back and Plutus was there, hovering as usual. “I have thesis work I need to get done today. At the library.” The truth, at least partially. She had other things to research, too.
“You need breakfast.” His voice, usually sly and joking, sounded far more rigid at this declaration.
She waved a hand and said, “I can grab coffee and a doughnut on the way.” After saying it, she instinctually reached for her phone to check her bank app.
To make sure she had the funds for such a pit stop.
Her feet cemented to the floor, her body turned to marble in an instant, when she saw the number there.
It wasn’t right, of course. There was some bank error. She’d never seen that many zeroes in a row. Five, to be exact. With a little slash of a one to cap it off. One. Hundred. Thousand.
“Shitshitshit,” she muttered, her fingers flying in the app to check her deposit history.
And there it was. A big honking deposit yesterday from some place she didn’t recognize.
Enough to get her right at the magical one hundred grand mark.
She squinted down at the name of the company, her brain starting to boil. Olympus Holdings. OLYMPUS. HOLDINGS.
“What. Is. This?” she hissed out, turning her phone to shove the screen in Plutus’s face. He seemed unconcerned, as per usual, and shrugged.
“Me upholding our bargain.”
“I didn’t ask–”
His smirked as her, “Oh, but you did, little one. Much like you asked me to make you come last night.”
Heat rushed to her face and she couldn’t tell if it was anger or embarrassment or budding lust. Likely a mix of all three. “Plutus, we talked about this.”
He shook his head. “We discussed me not replacing your things. This is not replacing. It’s augmenting.”
E breathed in and out, steady breaths to help calm her nerves, as Plutus moved to spread out on the couch. He patted the cushion next to him, a silent invitation for him to join her, which she did not take.
Instead, she crossed her arms on her chest, cocked a hip, and prepared to let him have it. He got there first. “What I don’t understand, E, is what you thought this arrangement might mean if you continue to get angry every time I fulfill a part of our bargain.”
“You throwing money in my bank account was not part of our deal.”
“Wasn’t it? How else would I be able to make you ‘comfortable’ for the rest of your life?” He even used the damn air quotes at her.
She had to pause at that, because it was a good question.
“I don’t need this much.”
Another massive shoulder shrug. “You have it. Splurge. Give it to someone else. Hell, it’s yours. Do what you will with it.”
She snorted. “You act like you wouldn’t care, but you do. You want me to have this money.”
He blinked mesmerizing, forest-canopy eyes up at her like he couldn’t understand what she’d said at first. “I want you to be comfortable. As you wished. In this world, comfort most often means money.”
“Money is not the only thing that can bring comfort.” Now she was saying things just to argue. She needed money. It was the whole reason she called him. He gave it freely and without issue. Which, for some reason, chaffed.
He peeled off the couch, all languid grace and rippling muscle. Stopping right in her space, he looked deep into her eyes, a spark of memory flashing in his own. “Oh, I know. We offered each other much comfort last night.”
E wasn’t going to let him get her off track.
Not that easily. Though flashes of her own memory made her more than a little wet.
“We have a month together, Plutus.” She said it to dig at him, remind him they were temporary.
Maybe remind herself of the same. “In this month, we need to come to a more concrete understanding of expectations regarding what you should and should not do for me.”
“Money is the bare minimum given our agreement, E, and you know this.”
“Money isn’t everything.”
He shook his head. “You’re right, but it helps a hell of a lot, little one. As you well know from your past.”
She stiffened. He knew. Of course he did. He’d said as much the night before during dinner. He could look at a person and see their relationship to wealth, so logically he saw her lack of a relationship. Still, she hated him knowing because he would react in one of two very predictable ways.
Plutus’s face softened. E found this look all too familiar and it twisted a knife in her gut.
“There is no moral failing in poverty, E, regardless of what others may have made you think in your past.”
Pity it was, then.
“I don’t need lectures on wealth, or lack thereof, from someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to do without.”
His jaw clenched hard and he reached out, probably to put a beautifully veined hand on her shoulder, but she couldn’t have his touch then.
Couldn’t bear for it to be soft and gentle and pitying like his look.
“I have things to do, Plutus. A goal that has nothing to do with the accumulation of wealth, unlike some people.”
The god flinched at her words, but his hand froze in midair, which was what she wanted. She scooped up her shoulder bag from the dining room table and stomped out the door. She didn’t look back at Plutus. She also didn’t realize she was crying until she was halfway down the block.
Within two blocks, her stomp eased and her shoulders slumped a touch.
She even started feeling bad for Plutus a touch when she stopped in front of her favorite coffee spot for breakfast. A flash of anger flared when she thought of all the money she now had in her bank to pay for little luxuries, like an extra shot of espresso in her morning latte.
The flare wilted when she thought of Plutus’s earnest face when he told her not having money didn’t affect who she was as a person.