Chapter 23
Atalanta
I am so tired of thinking. Of trying to be seven steps ahead of anyone around me.
Years and years of existing as part of the world and separate at the same time I try to save it.
Kissing Circe is damn near suicidal, but she tastes like bourbon and warmth and I can’t make myself be logical and noble right now. I just want to feel.
I lift her, not remotely surprised to find her light enough that the move barely pulls on my injured shoulder.
There’s a brief moment where the bed calls, but that feels unbearably intimate for what this is.
I don’t like this woman. I want her, but I don’t like her.
Instead of moving us somewhere more comfortable, I set her on the counter.
Circe breaks the kiss with a low laugh. “Pointed. Very pointed.”
“We don’t have to do this.” I want to. Gods, I want to. Just a little window of time where I’m not thinking about Olympus or Hecate or the nebulous future that seems to get further and further away with every hour slipping past.
She drags a single finger down my sternum, to where the towel is starting to come loose. Just when I think she might free it completely, she shifts to trace around the bandage. To draw attention to the wound she caused. “I could say I’m sorry if it will make you feel better about wanting me.”
That startles a laugh out of me. “Are you sorry?”
“I don’t make a habit of being sorry for anything.
What’s done is done.” The words are right, delivered in that perfect cadence she uses to speak to the public.
But the image falters and fractures when she nibbles at her bottom lip.
“I’m happy not to have killed you, though.
It would be a tragic waste of a beautiful woman. ”
“I’m already willing to have sex with you, Circe. You don’t have to pour on the compliments to make it happen.”
Circe smiles slowly, a little crooked, her dimple once again making an appearance. “I don’t lie to my lovers, Atalanta. I certainly don’t attempt to manipulate them. There has to be some avenue in life that is free from duplicity.”
I have the strangest tightness in my chest as I stare down at her. I won’t pretend my bullshit meter is always perfect, but I’m not getting even the slightest hint that she might be lying right now. “I want you, but that doesn’t mean I like you, and I sure as fuck don’t trust you.”
“And maybe you want a little revenge for the hurt caused by…” She trails off, intentionally not putting Hecate’s name between us, but it’s there all the same. It will always be there.
She’s not entirely correct, though. The betrayal hurt, and deeply, but this is more a cumulation of being overwhelmed and needing a release, toxic though it may be. “Don’t tell me you’re a romantic.”
“Not anymore.” Her smile dims. “I’m not offering love tonight. Just pleasure.”
There’s no reason for the tightness in my chest to get worse in response to her words. Didn’t I just ruminate on the fact I don’t like this woman? “Then it’s a good thing I just want to fuck you.”
She reverses course and hooks her finger into the top of my towel. “A very good thing.” One tiny tug and it slides off my body to pool around my feet. Circe props herself back on her hands and just looks at me.
I’ve had a handful of lovers over the years. Nothing serious, not when my heart always belonged to another, but something to mutually release some tension. They were always frantic encounters, fueled by the need to feel, to escape. Just like this started.
Apparently Circe is changing the rules. She looks at me like she wants to consume me, bite by bite, relishing every taste and texture. She touches the scar just below my right breast. “What happened here?”
“A mission gone sideways. Stab wound.”
Her lips quirk, but her eyes are serious. “Are they still alive?”
I shake my head slowly. “I killed them.”
“Good.”
That prompts a laugh. “Don’t try to act protective. You stabbed me. By that logic, I should kill you.”
“Do you want to?” She cups my breast, rubbing her thumb lightly over my nipple.
It’s the tiniest touch, but a whimper presses against the inside of my lips.
If I let her, this will be the tone of the night, with her steering our ship right into the rocks of oblivion.
It will be too vulnerable, too close to cracking open my rib cage and letting her see my beating, bloody heart.
I can’t do it. This is a betrayal to Hecate, and no matter how angry I am at her, there are some lines I still can’t cross.
I can’t give Circe intimacy, even if I share my body with her.
“Maybe in the morning.” I grab the hem of her shirt and pull it over her head.
Even in the low light, I can see that she has scars of her own, more than I would have expected from a sweet-talking politician.
But this woman also won a knife fight with me; there’s more to her than meets the eye.
Getting this close is a privilege, and if I was even a little less desperate, I’d use this opportunity to end things once and for all. I should…
My body moves of its own accord, reaching past her to the knife block and snatching a blade. “Or maybe I really should do it right now.” I press it to her pale throat, our bodies so close that I swear I can feel her racing heart in my chest. “Give me one good reason not to kill you now.”
She stares at me, her green eyes filled with so much emotion it staggers me. “I can’t.”
The response surprises me so much that my hand goes slack.
If this is a lie, it’s the best I’ve ever seen.
She looks exhausted on a level I understand intrinsically.
“What?” This woman with all the words in the world in her arsenal, who always has the right thing to say, can’t give me a reason not to kill her?
“I’m not delusional. I know I’m as much a villain of this piece as the ones I returned to punish.
People have died because of the choices I’ve made.
I can’t change that, Atalanta. If I could go back…
” Circe could take advantage of my moment of shock.
She doesn’t. Instead, she looks almost sad.
Exhausted. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. ”
That almost sounds like she holds regret, which doesn’t align with what I know of this woman. She’s been cold and calculated and brilliant beyond measure. There’s never been any indication of what appears to be a glaring weakness. “Why not change course?”
“It’s much too late for that.” She tilts her head back, baring her throat. “I haven’t begged for my life since I was married to that bastard. I won’t start now.” She doesn’t smile, doesn’t charm, just speaks stark truth.
“I’m going to stop you. We’re going to stop you.
” All I have to do is slash once. With the correct placement, she’ll bleed out in a few minutes.
It won’t solve all the problems we’re dealing with right now, though.
I’m not even sure it will feel good. I hate her and I want her and I might even understand her a little.
Who in Olympus is without scars, physical or otherwise?
I was used and discarded by the Thirteen, too.
I went in knowing it was a possibility, but that doesn’t change the foundation of the issue.
The way things are set up in this city doesn’t work.
They wouldn’t have worked even if Circe hadn’t come back.
She still hasn’t moved. “Make your decision.”
It should be easy enough to cut her throat.
I should be thinking of the greater mission and what is required to save Olympus from itself.
I should be putting that above all else, the same way I have for years and years.
The perfect soldier, the perfect spy, a woman with no thoughts or feelings of her own—at least none that she’ll allow to interfere with the mission.
The mission, the mission, always the fucking mission.
The mission didn’t stop Hecate from falling into this woman the first chance she got.
She’s even better with a blade than I am; she could have ended things the first time they were alone.
She didn’t. She chose herself over the mission, over Olympus, over me.
I want to hate her for it, but how can I when the weight of so many lives on my shoulders is crushing me?
We put aside all personal needs for so long; is it any wonder she’s tired of being strong and standing alone? That I am?
I very carefully withdraw the blade and set it on the counter, out of the way. “I hate this.”
“I know.” The sheer empathy in Circe’s voice threatens to undo me.
This woman is a monster, and yet she’s still human, still carries scars on her body and soul the same way I do.
She cups the back of my neck and tugs me gently down, the press of her palm against my skin more a suggestion than anything else. One I’m only too happy to take.
I kiss her again and there is no hesitation, nothing holding me back.
I choose this, choose her, in this moment, and it changes everything.
This time, when I pick her up, I walk unerringly down the short hallway to the bedroom.
The bed is only a full, likely because anything larger would consume the space.
I turn at the last moment and sit on it, allowing her to push me down onto my back.
Her smile is knife-sharp and impish at the same time as she runs her hands over my body. “Beautiful, beautiful Atalanta.”
I arch into her touch, moaning as she tugs at my nipples and bends down to take first one and then the other into her clever mouth. She clearly knows how to use it for more than bringing entire civilizations to ruin.
She shifts down my body, kissing her way over my stomach, pausing at the long, curving scar near my hip.
I tense, but she doesn’t ask for the story of this one.
She just nudges my thighs wide and uses her fingers to part my pussy.
“Perfect,” she breathes. Then her mouth is on me, her tongue licking up to my clit.
Once again, she surprises me. It would be so easy to slip back into the frenzy, to let the world fade away as we come, hard and fast and borderline brutal.
Instead, Circe slows down even more. As if she’s savoring this, savoring me.
She runs her hands over my thighs and hips as she idly tests out different motions and pressure until she finds the one that makes my back bow and moans slip free despite my best efforts to remain quiet.
She hums with pleasure at my pleasure, but she doesn’t immediately zero in on making me orgasm.
She dips down and thrusts her tongue into my pussy as if trying to claim every bit of me, to imprint my very taste.
Her fingers dig into my thighs, a perfect point of near-pain to ground me against the pleasure she pulls forth.
When she lifts her head, I can’t stop a whimper of protest. “Don’t stop.”
“I won’t,” she murmurs. I look down my body to find her expression damn near rapturous, proof that she’s just as lost in this moment as I am. She licks her lips, her lower face shiny from my pleasure. “Come for me. Ride my mouth and take what you deserve.”
It’s as if her words weave a spell around me.
The few thoughts I have left in my head dissolve like mist on a warm day, my body taking over entirely.
I lace my fingers through her short hair and lift my hips, guiding her mouth back to my pussy.
There may have been a distant part of me that wanted this to last forever, but it’s quickly drowned out by pure greed.
Make me feel good. Do it. Do it now.
Circe obeys my unspoken commands, holding my thighs wide as she works my clit in exactly the way I need to go nuclear.
It’s too much and not enough, and I suddenly want to slow down, but she’s stronger than she looks, and my hands haven’t gotten the memo, holding her to me even as I unravel.
I cry out as I come, every muscle in my body locking almost painfully.
I want to blame the intensity on it being so long since I’ve slept with someone, but it’s not the truth.
It’s never been like this before. Godsdamn it.
While I’m still recovering, she moves up to stretch out against my side.
She doesn’t stop touching me, her clever fingers tracing patterns on my skin, palming my breasts, sliding over my hip.
I drag in a breath and roll to face her.
I start to say… Nothing. Nothing at all.
There are no words needed in this moment, and anything I say about the future will ruin the strange spell we’ve created in the now.
Better to ride this out to its inevitable conclusion and deal with the fallout at that time.
I press her onto her back and palm her pussy. “My turn.”