Chapter 25
Envy
Fan-fucking-tastic. No way is Envy going to repeat himself. Nor suffer the indignity of pleading.
Sorrow huffs, stabbing her finger toward the deck’s hard surface. “On the floor.”
Cringing, Envy plucks his shirt. “I’m wearing lunar silk.”
“Ask me if I give a shit.”
“And it was a gift from Siren.”
This isn’t a lie. His Guide had the garment custom tailored by The Stars, woven from fine moondust. Reclining on a deck mottled in the residue of nature will hardly preserve the fabric.
The goddess pauses, this new information cluttering her face. If there’s one thing she’s trained to feel, it’s empathy. She respects the relationship between Guides and their charges.
For some reason, pink slashes across her throat. Grunting in resignation, she scoots to the bed’s edge. “Stay on your side.”
Envy jams his hands into his pockets. “As if I’d cross borders into your lair on purpose.”
“Get in here or go to hell.”
“Hon, I’m already there.”
Tossing him a death glare, Sorrow flips onto her side. An inconvenienced sigh rustles from Envy’s lungs. At the same time, his pulse spikes as if it’s been laced with champagne. Something with a high alcohol percentage that’ll get him drunk fast, liable to make stupid decisions.
Ignoring the sensation, Envy hunkers beside her, crossing both arms behind his head.
Because his weight digs a crater into the mattress, Sorrow curls up like a snail, stiffening down to her asscheeks.
He doesn’t need to peek to know as much, for he’s been attuning himself to her kinetics since adolescence.
Silence descends. Despite the drone of insects, the quiet pinches his flesh.
As eventide showers them in darkness, the female’s stunted respirations fray Envy’s nerves, the effect creeping south to his cock.
Very well, he might have envisioned this scenario too many times to count.
Albeit with fewer clothes, in a different climate, and with a degree of self-control he doesn’t entirely feel.
She insists on shifting positions, the reminder of her proximity gnawing on his patience. Some manner of pressure radiates in the crawlspace between them, restless and thick enough to bury a hatchet in.
This ceasefire doesn’t feel right. Sharing a bed with this goddess makes no sense unless they’re using it as a verbal boxing ring. On cue, as if looking for a reason to keep fighting, they twist toward one another.
“Cease thrashing,” he barks.
“Quit telling me what to do!” she spits.
“What The Fates is wrong with you?”
Sorrow vaults to her knees, grey hair splashing down her shoulders. “What’s wrong with me is you! It’s always been you!”
A leer spreads across his face, its quality akin to an acrylic sweater—cheap and unnatural. Insolent, he rises on his haunches. “My, my. Now we’re getting somewhere. I like seeing that snarky little mouth parted,” he hisses. “I bet every inch would tremble against my tongue.”
Her pupils ignite like bonfires. If he could measure that fantastic reaction with a thermometer, it would shatter the apparatus.
Ah. Now there’s a look he can get used to.
Except this gorgeous praying mantis fires one final, familiar cannonball. Tapping her nose against his, Sorrow warns, “Don’t fuck with me, pretty god.”
Fury crackles at the tips of his fingers. Maybe it’s the shitstorm that’s happened since Love’s treasonous romance, Anger’s exile, and their crew’s demotion. Maybe it’s all this fate and free will chaos.
Or maybe it’s just her.
Sorrow, with all her moodiness, which she conceals behind a mask of cynicism. Maybe it’s Envy’s inability to break through that cinderblock wall, because she reveals nothing, shares nothing, cares what no one thinks about her, and gives even less of a fuck what he thinks about her.
But he wants her to fucking care. He wants her to think about him. Because maybe they’re both wearing masks, and hell if he’s not itching to rip off her disguise, among other offending garments. Damnation, if he doesn’t want to tear this female apart.
And maybe it’s this fucking bed. Maybe he’s losing his goddamn mind. Or maybe he lost it ages ago, back when she fisted his shirt and said the same exact thing.
It had gone something like this: Don’t fuck with me, pretty god.
Yet much later, there’d also been this: An ugly god is easy to spot.
Pretty. Ugly.
Inconsistent. Seriously, this flinty bitch should just pick a fucking lane and stay there.
Their gazes lock like weapons. They pant into each other’s faces, their exhalations thicker and damper than the surrounding air.
Fuck it. The next thing Envy knows, he’s grabbing Sorrow’s ass and hauling her against him.
Correction. He’s not the only one who loses their shit.
This goddess is no better. She launches across the bed with equal savagery, the pair of them firing toward one another like arrows and crashing with the force of opposing armies.
Sorrow hisses, but Envy plugs the sound with his mouth.
Not by kissing her—Fates fucking forbid—but by sinking lower.
With the appetite of a cannibal, he slams his lips hard against her neck, incisors scraping a deadly path across the wench’s pulse point.
And because deities have far fewer concepts of boundaries, the sharp edges of his teeth cross that line, treading hectically as if about to snip her arteries.
Either that, or he’s about to make a messy meal out of her. Fuck it all, Envy can’t say which.
The instant Sorrow’s chest smashes against his own, she attacks with her claws, all ten fingernails knifing into his hair.
With hostile relish, she cleaves through every fiber, on a vengeful mission to ruin his mane.
The sort that will tangle for eternity and destroy his impeccable reputation, the type of mark he’ll remember.
As if this heartless, soulless, careless bitch hasn’t branded and scarred him already.
When she locates the most vulnerable spot, Sorrow stabs her digits into his scalp, the tips breaking through flesh. Envy snarls, the bloodthirsty noise out of character. In retaliation, his pearly whites nick the goddess’s flesh, on a rampage to sever a life line.
They wrestle one another, all teeth and nails. Their arms snag together, waging a tug-of-war, the kind of hate-lust worthy of its own legend.
His hands gun it to her ass and snatch the ovals through her skirt, the contact tipping the scales, another volatile sound cutting from his tongue.
On those insufferable nights when Envy succumbed to morbid curiosity, he imagined her stripped and susceptible to his gaze, his scrutiny, his judgement.
Though, staring isn’t all he’d done to her during those head trips, the figments causing him to sweat through his expensive sheets and nurse an erection harder than granite.
Yet this twisted reality fucks him up worse. Sorrow’s curves are more pronounced than he’d fetishized about, her ass filling his palms like they’d been molded for his touch.
And finally. Fucking finally. After giving each other shit for thousands of years, he knows what it feels like to claim her.
Seize her. Taste her.
Christ almighty. The violent beat of Sorrow’s heart sends Envy into a tailspin, the vibration of her flesh surreal against his mouth. He parts his lips over the sensitive area and gives a combative suck, demanding to get a reaction, a noise reserved only for his ears, only for him.
On a contentious moan, Sorrow throws her head back and clutches his shoulders. As the goddess’s body arches, her tight nipples pit through her vest and wrinkle his shirt. Not that he gives a fashionable fuck.
The harm she does to Envy’s promiscuous cock is frightening.
From ball sac to crown, every inch vaults upright, solidifying the point where the head might tear through his trousers.
It’s not the first time she’s obliterated his dick without knowing it, but goddamn her.
Since when does he forfeit control this quickly?
As always, Sorrow has no idea of the effect she has. Condemnation, those puckering nipples and her disjointed growls are the stuff of unattainable myths. Not to mention sexy as fuck.
And they’re his. The resentful lust. The aroused vitriol. Everything she’s feeling belongs to him.
It’s always been you!
No matter how much blood this female draws from his scalp. No matter how repellant they find each other. No matter how long it has lasted.
She can’t take the words back. Like fuck will he let her.
Sorrow’s cunt rushes against the engorged outline of his dick. Somehow, the shape of her uncovered clit and the slender cleft between her thighs manifests, easy to decipher, to envision.
As dampness seeps into his trousers, Envy’s vision goes black. Fucking Stars, this goddess is leaking through the skirt.
The wet friction obliterates the last vestiges of control. Shoving aside his penchant for seduction, Envy groans from the furious pit of his chest. He flexes his tongue between Sorrow’s clavicles, each ferocious pull yanking caustic moans out of her.
She thinks he’s worthless? She thinks him unimpressive, shallow, ugly?
He’ll show her. When Envy’s done with this vamp, she’ll eat her cursed words with the same gusto he intends to eat her pussy for dessert.
In a rage, they charge at one another’s clothes like animals set loose from their cages. Yet instead of ripping out one another’s throats, they slash into panels of fabric, seams spitting, material tearing. The motions are frenzied and competitive, a push-and-pull meant to dominate the other.
Sorrow blows open Envy’s shirt, his torso spanning from the textile.
Her erratic gaze roves over each packed muscle, those irises glinting like rings of mercury.
And despite how many deities have feasted their eyes on him, the impact of her gaze demolishes every bit of admiration that came before, wiping them from memory.