Chapter 24
YELENA
Rain pounds on the Range Rover's windshield as Achilles guns the engine. Lighting crashes and thunder booms, making me tremble in the passenger seat.
I’m soaked to the skin from him carrying me over his shoulder out of the party, across the freakishly narrow stone causeway that connects The Spire to the main cliffs and then all the way along the cliff path to where his car was parked.
But still throbbing.
The ecstasy courses through my veins, turning my skin electric and setting my nerve endings ablaze.
I’m trying to glare daggers at the prick next to me, but keep getting distracted by how good the leather seat feels under my bare thighs.
How nice it feels to run my fingers over the trim on the door next to me.
How magical the glow of the dashboard display is.
I bite my lip as I squeeze my thighs together against the throbbing, needy ache between them.
Okay, it’s the drugs. But it’s also the proximity to this asshole.
His pheromones, teasing my senses, pulling all sorts of triggers inside me.
How freaking attractive he is, even now in soaking wet jeans and a black t-shirt, little rivulets of rainwater dripping from his hair down his ridiculously perfect face.
“Where are you taking me?” I mutter.
Achilles doesn’t answer. His face is grim and tight, his eyes fixed on the dark road ahead of us as lighting crashes again. The flash sends shadows sliding across his face as he grips the wheel tighter.
“Answer me, asshole,” I snap.
He picks up his phone, his gaze switching between it and the road.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He types haltingly.
“Answer me!” I scream. “What are you—”
“I’m texting Arianna that I have you, I know you took drugs, and you’re safe.”
My brows knit. “What makes you think I took—”
“Don’t insult me.”
Okay, there’s no point in fighting him on that one. But it feels strange that he would give a shit about telling my friends where I am.
But he’s not taking me home. We’ve left campus, and I think we're headed up toward Griswold Hill, not down to Hawthorne Hollow. The woods are heavy and thick and ominous as thunder and lightning crashes around us.
“Am I?” I blurt.
He finally glances at me as he sets the phone down. “Are you what?”
“Safe,” I mumble, running my palms up and down my thighs and biting back a moan. The leather seat teases against my legs and my ass, sending more ripples through my core.
Achilles doesn’t answer.
“Why did you tell her I’m safe?” I mumble.
Silence.
“W-was it so she won’t worry when I disappear?” I stammer. A nervous shudder skitters through my body. “Are—are you going to kill me?”
Achilles glances at me briefly. “What?”
“Are you the Shoreline Killer?”
Fucking drugs.
Drugs are why I can’t keep my mouth shut right now, and am asking this man, while I’m alone in a car at night with him, if he’s the person responsible for the Jane and John Doe bodies that the local press has dubbed the Shoreline Killer.
A low chuckle rumbles in Achilles’ throat. “Calm down.”
“Are you?!” I scream. “I swear to God, if I don’t check in soon, Arianna—”
“Arianna thinks you’re safe with me.”
His tone and the way he just looks straight ahead sets the hairs on the back of my neck on end.
“I—”
The car jerks as he pulls off the main road and starts down a dirt one. The woods close in around us.
I glance at him, my face pale. “H-how do you even have her number?”
“Maybe because you used it to text me about needing class notes?”
“Oh, you mean because you’d blocked me?!” I snap. “After you fuuuuucked me?!” I slur. “Like an assssshollle—”
Lightning splits the sky as the car slams to a stop. I gasp, then bite back a moan at the sensual feeling of my thighs rubbing on the buttery-soft leather seat.
The car turns off. Wordlessly, Achilles gets out and shuts the door, then marches through the rain to my side of the SUV. He yanks the door open, and I bat at him to no avail as he lifts me out of the passenger seat and carries me to—
Oh God.
A murder shack.
There’s literally no other way to describe the dark, crumbling cabin we’ve just parked in front of.
I kick and thrash, trying to tell my body to stop getting so fucking turned on as Achilles throws me over his shoulder again and marches up the stairs to the sagging porch.
He unlocks the door and carries me inside before striding over to a kitchen counter and unceremoniously planting my butt on it.
I’m still throbbing and obsessed with how smooth my thighs feel under my fingertips as I watch him cross the room. A lighter flicks, and he touches it to the wicks of about a dozen half-melted candles sitting in a variety of old metal holders sitting on a rickety table.
My eyes dart to the door. In a supremely dumb move, I lurch off the counter and try to bolt toward it.
I only make it about one and a half steps before muscled arms wrap around me like iron. I choke on a scream as he drags me across the room, sits heavily in a creaky old chair at the table with the candles, and yanks me into his lap, facing away from him.
My dress bunches almost all the way up to my hips, completely exposing the tiny black thong I’m wearing. The dress itself is molded to every curve of my body, and just breathing has it dragging electrically over my tight, pebbled nipples.
That same euphoria tickles over my skin. Even like this, pinned to him in his fucking murder shack, I can’t stop noticing how good everything feels.
Thanks, drugs.
“What did you take?”
I purse my lips as I twist my face to glare at him.
Achilles sighs, and when his heavy hand lands high on my bare thigh, I gasp. “I could force it out of you,” he growls.
I sneer. “Even you wouldn’t do anything to me right now,” I mutter. “Not when you know I’m on drugs.”
His grip tightens. “That’s a misconception I’m excited to relieve you of.”
My breath catches.
“Ecstasy,” I finally mumble. “I…I accidentally took ecstasy.”
Achilles says nothing, but his hand slides away from my bare thigh.
“W-what are you going to do to me,” I whisper. My back is to his chest, but I can feel his face hovering just to the left of and slightly above mine.
I yelp as a knife suddenly slams into the table in front of me, the tip splitting the wood. Achilles leaves it there, embedded half an inch into the tabletop, and slides his fingers to my lap.
Pure electricity buzzes over my skin when he takes my hand, and I have to bite down on my lip to stop from moaning. A thunderclap cracks outside, and I jump as he sets my hand palm-down on the table in front of us.
“Achilles—”
“Can I trust you, Yelena.”
It doesn’t even come out as a question.
“The games I play,” he growls, “like the one we played the other night—”
“When you chased me like a psycho?!” I snap.
“It would behoove you,” he sighs, “to stop pretending I don’t know every single one of your darkest fantasies. That I don’t know what makes you wet in the dark of night, when you think no one is watching.”
My core tightens, and that slithering, needy thing coils around my center.
“I know what sort of dark delights dance through that fucked-up head of yours, little prey,” he murmurs quietly into my ear, making me shudder. “And they’re the same sort of delights that turn me on.”
It’s then, when it pulses underneath me, that I realize it’s not his cellphone I’m feeling against my ass.
It’s his cock.
“But games like that require a high level of trust.”
I shiver, trying not to squirm on his lap even though that thick bulge throbbing against me makes me want to outright grind on him right now.
…Much more than that, actually.
“Says the man who went down on me while I was unconscious?” I snap.
“Do you trust me, Yelena?”
“No,” I say flatly.
“Why is that?”
“Are you serious?” I yell. “You fucked me and then disappeared!”
I turn toward him, shivering at the intensity in his steely gaze but forcing myself to keep glaring at him.
“I’m not naive enough to think that screwing you means we’re dating!
” I snap. “But you took my virginity…and you knew it…and then you blocked me,” I spit venomously. “For the record, that's pretty fucked—”
“Do you still have feelings for him?”
My brow furrows. “What?”
Achilles’ jaw sets. “I told you I wasn’t going to be your tour guide or your experiment,” he growls. “Maybe I should have added that I had no interest in being your fucking backup plan.”
I gape at him. “What the actual hell are you talking—”
“Is my being the new head of Para Bellum part of it?” he mutters. “Or is that just a nice coincidence?”
“I have no fucking idea what we’re even talking—”
“We’re talking about Kyle fucking Santoro!” he roars.
I go still.
“I—” I shudder. “What?”
“I know, Yelena.”
For a moment, I almost vomit.
He knows what happened. He knows my cowardice.
He knows I’m a victim.
So… Why is he looking at me with so much rage?
“I know you and he hooked up over the summer,” he growls. “And I know you’ve had a hard time letting go of it—”
“Are. You. Fucking. Serious?!”
Even Achilles seems surprised by the ferocity in my roar.
“I didn’t hook up with him!!” I scream. “He—”
No.
I’m not telling this asshole about the worst day of my life.
I swallow, rage surging in my eyes. “I did not hook up with him!” I snarl.
Achilles’ jaw tightens. “Your fathers work together. You went out for sushi—”
“Yes, to talk about the project!” I bark.
“I went out to dinner with Kyle once, to talk business. Because, guess what, fuck-face, I might actually want to do something with the empire I was born into! You think I’m here at Knightsblood killing myself to ace a degree in international finance so I can look pretty for a fucking husband? !”
Achilles says nothing, and I bark out another cold laugh.
“Jesus, did he tell you we hooked up?!” I hiss. “Because that’s a lie!”
He smiles coldly. “You just thought it would be fun to leave your panties for him in Lochlan’s room?”
Dread pools in my center.
“That…that’s not—”
“Not what, Yelena,” he rasps.