Chapter 28
Hecate
I want to sleep for years. Decades. The kind of sleep that makes people build towers in your honor—or their horror of your fate.
My body has never felt so heavy…but the delicious warmth of Atalanta draws me back.
We shifted about while we slept, and now I’m sprawled on top of her, my face tucked against her throat.
My hand rests lightly on her bandage, which probably needs to be changed after she carried Circe, wet with river water.
Why didn’t I think of that? I should have said something.
If she ends up hurt… Well, more hurt. I can’t pretend she’s been kept safe during this whole process.
Even before, during the Ares tournament, she was knocked out cold by Paris. I still remember the sheer terror that went through me when I watched her fall. Helen stayed behind to make sure she woke up, but what if she hadn’t? I could have lost her then.
Or later, at Minos’s party. I knew it would be dangerous, but we didn’t have a good way for her to deny Artemis’s invitation without raising red flags.
More, we assumed that the two of us in the same place would ward us both against danger.
Instead, she was hurt again, almost killed by Artemis’s ambition.
Over and over again, she’d paid the price for my plans.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Her arms tighten around my waist. “You’re going to have to be more specific,” she murmurs sleepily.
It would be so easy to pretend her question was in jest, to lighten the mood.
Or to change it. To press my lips to her skin and give in to the desire that’s been simmering beneath my skin for years.
It would be an injustice to the woman I love, though.
I swallow hard. “I’ve never put you first. It’s always been the end goal, and I was willing to sacrifice anything—anyone—else to get there. ”
“Mm-hmm.” She’s starting to wake up properly, and she doesn’t sound happy with me. “That it?”
“No.” I sigh. I’ve never been particularly good at groveling.
I don’t know that I need to grovel, or that it’s what Atalanta wants, but she’s right: I’m leaving out one glaring portion of this apology.
“I’m sorry I left you and slept with Circe that night.
You’re right that her and my connection is something I can’t break—even when I thought she was dead—but how I handled the whole situation was selfish. You didn’t deserve that.”
She trails one hand up my spine to cup the back of my neck.
“It’s all water under the bridge—which is a shitty saying considering how yesterday went.
I get it. I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt, but she’s magnetic.
” She turns her head and presses a kiss to my temple.
“I’m not proud of how I handled things with her, either.
I could have told you what happened in a better way. ”
Despite everything, I smile. “Yeah, well, we’re two fucking disasters—three, really—so why start acting logical now?
” It takes more courage than I want to admit to lift my head and meet her gaze in the dim light of the living room.
“I thought I knew what the future would bring, but now I can’t be sure we’ll have a future at all. ”
“We can only take it one day at a time.” Something crashes in the distance and she frowns. “I don’t think it’s wise to leave this apartment until dark. We’ll have a plan by then.”
She says it with such confidence, as if there isn’t a single doubt in her mind that we’ll come up with a plan. Truth be told, I can see a way through this, but she’s going to hate it. Really, really hate it.
She shifts beneath me, the warmth of our bodies making everything float away, dreamlike and insubstantial.
I don’t want to think about tonight or tomorrow or the future at all.
I want to be in this moment, and there’s no one I’d rather share it with than Atalanta, strong and steady and far better than I deserve in a woman.
She’s been at my side through my worst moments, through the dark days before we began putting our plan into motion—and the dark days that still plagued me even after.
Even if she wasn’t there, she was there. Always. No matter what.
I want her. I’ve wanted her since I met her, and probably the single most honorable thing I’ve done in the last decade was to hold back from turning our relationship physical.
Why not now? The plan forming in my mind, a pivot that might actually be possible with the current mess we’re in, is going to piss her off; Circe, too.
Why not grab what joy we can right fucking now?
Tomorrow isn’t assured. It never was, but I’ve been able to pretend before.
Not anymore. Reality is knocking on our door, and I don’t want to miss a single experience.
If I don’t make it out of Olympus alive, at least I’ll die with the peace of knowing there are no paths left unexplored.
Really, I’m a selfish bitch. I love Atalanta and I want her, and that’s enough to have me moving in slow motion to tilt my head to brush my lips against hers.
Atalanta exhales. “Hecate.”
It’s a plea and a demand, and I’m already sliding up her body to take her mouth properly.
I’ve dreamed of kissing this woman for years.
Of having soft moments like this, cuddled up on a couch with only a scattering of clothing between us, of her hands on my ass, pulling me tighter to her.
I want the hours spent in the gym, vibing as we work out together.
I want to cook her dinner, to romance her the way she deserves, with soft lighting and silken words.
There’s no time for any of it. There’s sure as fuck not a guarantee.
I cup her face and kiss her deeper, trying to put all the words I’ve never had the courage to say into the slow slide of my tongue against hers. I love you. I cherish you. I want to take care of you. I hate that this city and my ambition have made that impossible for so long.
She grabs my thigh and tugs me closer until I’m straddling her stomach, my pussy pressed to her bare skin. I break the kiss with a gasp. “Gods.”
Atalanta laughs, deep and pleased. “I haven’t even touched you properly yet.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I kiss her temple, her cheeks, the corners of her generous mouth. “It’s you.”
She shudders out a breath. “I love you.”
The words have been said, but not like this.
Not with so much vulnerability and truth.
I sit up a little and meet her gaze. I could lose myself in her dark-brown eyes, so wide and expressive.
Right now, she’s telling me she’s here with me, feeling the exact same combination of love, lust, and regret for opportunities passed by.
I swallow hard. “I love you, too. So fucking much. I’ve failed—”
She presses a finger to my lips. “No. We’re not doing this in a dramatic and doomed way. This isn’t the one and only time we’ll be together, Hecate. This is the first step toward a real future together.”
With Circe? I don’t have the cruelty to ask. Not now, not when this is just about the two of us. We’ll have to discuss Circe at some point—and soon—but now isn’t the time. Just like we’re not going to discuss the plan I’m putting together, piece by piece.
She bends up, causing me to slide against her stomach in a way that makes my toes curl a little, and takes my mouth. This time, there’s no slow exploration. This is a decade’s worth of pent-up desire, cascading between us in an unstoppable force. What’s left of my restraint snaps.
I grind against her stomach. I’m so wet, I might be embarrassed if I was a different person.
I’m not. I’m exhilarated. I want her so desperately.
I need her. She clearly feels the same because she grips me at the top of my thighs, shifting me higher yet.
Atalanta squeezes my ass, parting me in a way that feels depraved despite this being the barest edge of foreplay. But it’s her.
“Hecate,” she gasps, and then her fingers are sliding into me, firm and blunt and agonizingly good. Atalanta actually whimpers at the feel of me and I almost come on the spot. “Gods, you’re perfect.”
“Not me. You.” I drag my mouth down her throat, finding the spot where her neck meets shoulder and sucking lightly. It makes her moan, so I keep doing it.
“Woman, stop distracting me,” she mutters.
She hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me up until I’m damn near straddling her chest. It gives her full access to my body, which was clearly the goal.
She delves two fingers deeper into my pussy, sliding slowly in and out, exploring me while she searches for… there. My G-spot.
Every muscle goes slack and tight at the same time. I grind down onto her fingers mindlessly, whimpers slipping free of my lips as if coming from someone else entirely. Sometimes desperate and needy and not at all in control. Maybe it is me, after all.
Atalanta takes advantage of my overwhelming pleasure by capturing my right nipple in her mouth. She sets her teeth against me, exerting the slightest pressure, the slightest pain, and I swear I gush all over her hand. She chuckles darkly. “Give it to me, Hecate.”
It’s too fast, too intense. I can’t think, can’t slow down, can’t relish this the way I planned.
I open my mouth to say something clever, maybe to suggest…
something. But then she switches to my left nipple and adjusts the angle of her fingers inside me, and the only thing I’m capable of doing is clinging to her and coming all over her hand.
And she doesn’t stop. She just rolls us so my back is the couch and keeps slowly fucking me, adding her thumb into the mix so every stroke glides over my clit.
Holy fuck. I squirm, but even I can’t tell if I’m trying to get away or drive her fingers deeper.
“I want to make you feel good,” I finally gasp.