14. With Terrible Clarity
With Terrible Clarity
Andie
It was no secret to me that Alexander slept with other women. I’d always known it. From the very first moment, from our first time together on the yacht, I’d known I was only a joke to him.
Still, the fact that he’d come here, to Samos, and paraded himself in front of me with a woman I’d called my best friend was a whole new level of low. As he dragged me through the corridors of Heraion, I glared at his back, wondering what he was trying to prove.
He didn’t slow down until we reached my room. He pushed the door open with his free hand while keeping his iron grip on my wrist with the other. The hinges protested with a quiet groan as we crossed the threshold. He released me only once we were both inside, closing the door behind us.
The room smelled like me now. My scent was embedded in the sheets, in the pillows, in every fabric surface. The bed itself was a disaster, blankets twisted and bunched, pillows arranged in a careful cluster.
A nest. I’d started building a fucking nest.
Heat flooded my face as Alexander scanned the room before inevitably zeroing in on the bed. On the evidence of my Omega instincts betraying me.
“Get out,” I snarled at him, shaking with humiliation and rage. “I don’t want you here.”
He turned to face me fully, and I was confronted again with his bare chest. It was too easy for me to imagine Danae, Cassandra, and even my own mother touching him.
“Where do you want me then?” he asked, arching his brow as if completely unaffected. “With them?”
I saw red.
It was a pure, incandescent fury that whited out every rational thought. A sound ripped from my throat, and I launched myself at him.
My hands found his shoulders first, nails digging in as I shoved him backward. He just let me push him until his legs hit the edge of my bed.
When he collapsed on the mattress, I grabbed his face.
I found his jaw rough with stubble, days of growth that scraped against my palm.
He was unshaved. Unkempt. It was evidence that he’d been as wrecked by this as I had.
Somehow, that made the fury burn hotter.
He had no right to suffer when this was all his fault.
I dug my nails in, dragging them across his jaw and throat. His skin gave way beneath the pressure, thin lines of red welling up in the wake of my touch.
Blood.
The scent hit me then—copper and lightning and something uniquely him. It flooded my senses, drowning out everything else, making my body respond in ways that had nothing to do with anger.
I climbed onto the bed, onto him, straddling his lap. He just sat there looking up at me, his eyes holding no judgment. Only patience and acceptance for whatever violence I decided to inflict on him.
My hands were in his hair, on his bleeding jaw, against his chest where I could feel his heart pounding beneath my palms. The nest I’d built surrounded us, my scent and his mixing in the tangled sheets.
Some terrible, traitorous part of me recognized this as right even as the rest of me screamed that it was poison.
Alexander didn’t try to fight me. He didn’t push me off or use his Alpha strength to reverse our positions. He just sat there, bleeding from the scratches I’d carved into his skin, looking up at me with an intensity that made my chest hurt.
“What now, Andromeda Cross?” His voice was low, rough, but there was no smile on his face. No mockery. Just something dark and raw that I didn’t know how to name. “Here I am. What will you do now?”
The question paralyzed me.
My hands were still on his chest, feeling the rapid thud of his heart. I’d attacked him, drawn blood, climbed onto him like I had every right to his body—and he’d let me. Was still letting me.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
“Fuck you,” I whispered, the words breaking halfway through. “I hate you.”
Something flickered across his expression. Pain, maybe, or recognition. “What a coincidence.” His hands came up slowly, carefully, wrapping around my wrists where they rested against his sternum. “I hate myself too.”
He lifted my hands, guiding them up his chest, over his collarbone. Finally, my palms rested against the sides of his throat. “But what do you know?” he murmured. “I have a solution.”
His grip on my wrists tightened, pressing my hands more firmly against his neck. “Come on.” His eyes held mine, storm-gray and utterly serious. “Squeeze. End it.”
I knew I could do it.
He was an Olympian Alpha, and his body was designed to withstand damage that would kill lesser men.
But there was something burning through my veins right now—something unnatural and wrong that made me so much stronger than I should be.
The curse, maybe, or just the culmination of every moment of lost control since I’d met him.
I could break him. Destroy him. Remove the source of all this poison from my life with just the right amount of pressure in the right place.
My fingers flexed and squeezed a little tighter. It was not enough to cut off his air completely, but enough to make breathing difficult. Enough to hurt.
His pulse hammered against my palms, frantic and vicious. His hands stayed on my wrists. Not fighting, not pulling me away, just holding on. It was as if he was anchoring himself to me even as I killed him.
“Do it,” he said, the words coming out strained but clear. “If it’ll make you feel better. If it’ll give you peace. Do it.”
The heat around us intensified. I could feel my own heartbeat in my fingertips, pounding in time with his. I could see the absolute surrender in his expression—not defeat, but choice. He was choosing this. Choosing to let me decide whether he lived or died.
And I hated him even more for it.
I snatched my hands away from his throat, suddenly more angry than before. My skin was crawling, like thousands of ants were marching beneath the surface.
“You would want that, wouldn’t you, you coward?” I snarled. “You want to run. Well, I won’t let you.”
“What will you do then?”
He shifted beneath me, his hips grinding up against mine in a slow, deliberate roll. The friction sent sparks through my nervous system, and I realized with a jolt of shock that he was hard. Fully, obviously aroused despite—or maybe because of—everything I’d just done to him.
“You’re sick.” My voice shook with the force of emotions I couldn’t name. “You’re the one who’s insane, not me.”
His eyes flared with something dark and consuming. “Maybe.” His hands slid from my wrists to my hips. “Or maybe I don’t mind it if I die. As long as it’s by your hand.”
I couldn’t stand hearing him speak anymore. His words burrowed under my skin and made homes in places I didn’t want them. So I did the only thing I could think of to shut him up.
I kissed him.
I crashed my mouth against his, swallowing whatever else he might have said. For one glorious second, he went silent, shocked into stillness beneath me. I felt a surge of vicious satisfaction that I’d finally found a way to stop the flow of words that seemed designed to unravel me.
Then he kissed me back.
His mouth opened under mine, one hand coming up to tangle in my hair, angling my head so he could devour me more thoroughly. His tongue slid against mine with a hunger that matched the fury still burning through my veins.
It was too much. Too consuming. The wrongness in my skin intensified. It spread outward until I couldn’t tell where the curse ended and my own desires began.
I jerked away with a gasp, my lungs burning. His lips were swollen, bleeding slightly where I’d bitten down without meaning to. The sight of him sent another wave of that terrible heat through me.
I couldn’t think anymore. I could only feel. The only thing left was the desperate need to do something before I shattered completely.
My hands went to his belt, my shaking fingers fumbling with the buckle. He started to help, reaching down to undo the clasp himself. I slapped his hands away with a snarl. “Don’t. Don’t help. Don’t move. Just—”
I gave up on words, too focused on getting his pants open. With him still sitting beneath me, I shoved the fabric down his hips as far as I could reach. He lifted his hips to help despite my command, and I was too frantic to care.
My own clothes came next. I ripped off my tunic and threw it somewhere I didn’t bother tracking.
I kicked off the loose pants I’d been wearing with graceless movements.
Once I was naked, I shoved the last of his clothing down.
His erection sprang free, thick and flushed dark with blood, already slick at the tip with precum.
The scent hit me immediately, stronger now without the barrier of fabric.
Salt and musk, pure concentrated Alpha. Everything I wanted. Everything I despised.
I wrapped my hand around him, feeling the weight of him in my palm. His breath stuttered, hands fisting in the tangled sheets of my nest. I felt that same vicious satisfaction from earlier—the knowledge that I could affect him, could make him lose some of that infuriating control.
My mouth watered.
I didn’t let myself think about it, didn’t give my rational mind time to catch up. I just lowered my head and took him into my mouth.
The taste exploded across my tongue. I worked him deeper, hollowing my cheeks, using my tongue along the underside where I could feel the prominent vein pulsing with his heartbeat.
“Fuck—” His voice broke, hands coming up like he wanted to touch my hair and guide my movements. I caught his wrists and shoved them back down to the mattress.
“Don’t.” I pulled off him just long enough to spit the words out, my lips slick and swollen. “Don’t touch. Don’t move.”
I took him deep again, deeper this time, until I could feel him hitting the back of my throat. His hips jerked involuntarily, trying to thrust up into the wet heat of my mouth. I immediately pulled back, my hand loosely circling the base but providing no friction, no relief.
“Andie—” The word came out desperate, pleading, and I hated how much I liked hearing my name in his mouth.