Chapter 15 #2
“This is… it’s a lot… and there’s so much.” Her hands started to flutter like birds, trying to release some of the nervous energy flooding her system. She couldn’t help herself. There was too damn much going on to be able to immediately process the fact she was a god’s mate.
“You can trust what you feel, E. Trust me.”
“Trust is earned,” she whispered without looking at the god. He was right about her feelings for him, feelings that had been there from the start. But trust? Full trust? The trust one would maybe put into a mate destined by fate or something seemed suspect to her.
Plutus huffed out a sigh, his first sign of frustration with the conversation. “I believe I’ve done a great deal to earn your trust.”
She barked out a humorless laugh. “In the week we’ve known each other?”
He was in her face in the next breath, close and hot and demanding every bit of her attention. “If you were being honest with yourself and not stuck in your past, you’d see what I say is true.”
Her hands shook as she poked him in his chest. “See. That right there. That’s why I can’t fully trust you.”
“I’m only telling you the truth. As I always have. As I always will. Although, I can admit that may have come out too harsh.” He closed his eyes, pulled in a breath, and reached for her. E sidestepped him.
“No, Plutus. I need time. Away from you.”
His face fell, realization and fear mingling.
“E,” Plutus called out as she rushed to the elevator, scooping up her work bag along the way.
“Please, Plutus,” she whispered, not turning back, not wanting him to see the tears threatening to fall from her eyes. “Please, let me go.”
He was there. Always fucking there, in her gut and her head, but just then, he was there in reality, hot and comforting at her back even when he was the thing she needed to be comforted over right then.
“I will never let you go, little one. I cannot. I will, however, give you the time and space you need right now. I’ll be here, waiting for you to return to me. ”
She left him standing behind her as she entered the elevator and whooshed down, down, down and away from her gods-damn mate so she could think all this through.
Her anger lasted about half the drive to her place.
Then she deflated into a depressed little puddle.
She groaned as soon as she face-planted into her double bed in her apartment.
One reason: it wasn’t the comfiest to land like that.
Another reason: the damn sheets smelled like smoke and whiskey and tarnished metal. They smelled of Plutus.
She’d left his apartment in a snit, not looking back at him.
E suspected his face would look much like she felt, confused and hurt and maybe a little pissed off.
How was she the mate to the god of wealth and luxury?
She didn’t know bupkus about those damn things.
She knew about books and classes and study and poverty.
And now, all this stuff at her fingertips, this comfort and security she’d never known, and something in her told her not to trust it, to hold back, to make sure she was the only one she relied on.
And, despite that, she’d come to rely on Plutus.
Not for those material things, but for the banter and the sex, and more than anything, the general feeling he gave her.
Warmth, comfort, safety. He was a big, worn blanket in a way, or he’d come to be that in her head. Then he dropped this on her.
They were mates, and he’d kept it from her.
Likely because you ran as soon as you learned about it.
She turned over and stared up at the white ceiling above her bed.
Gods were real. She’d learned this less than a week ago.
Now she knew they also had mates, and some of those mates could be humans, and she, a regular-degular human woman in her later-twenties, was the mate of the god of wealth.
A delicious god who made her melt with his kisses and hands and other things.
A god who also made her laugh and think and feel not-so-alone for the first time in ages. Maybe forever.
E rubbed her belly, the spot where she imagined the tug toward him. Not imagined, it seemed. Literally felt.
She flung an arm over her eyes and squeezed them tight.
She’d been in survival mode for so long, she questioned whether she deserved any good thing that came into her life, which was why she pushed back on Plutus every step of the way.
More than that, however, she didn’t think herself deserving of him.
She’d not earned him, and she’d had to fight and scrape for every little piece all her life.
Against people like Mitchel who also saw her as lesser and always would.
Plutus never had, though. But damnit, she did.
Her history scarred her, made her hesitant and scared to have more.
Because she knew a life of having little.
She didn’t know a life of more. Not only more things or opportunities or respect, but more love and openness, which is what Plutus himself was after.
She saw it now, with the cooking for her and caring for her and doing what she liked.
Even if it only was a week, the thing tugging her toward him also told her she could trust it, trust him.
Her head, the same thing that’d gotten her so far from the trailer park, was also a little bitch at times, and told her she hadn’t earned it, so it couldn’t be trusted. Couldn’t possibly be real.
Damn if poverty didn’t do girl’s head in, even when she clawed her way out of it in some respects.
She’d left him because she’d had a knee-jerk reaction to the news she was his mate. The idea they were destined, fated, and nothing would ever change that. The reality of him being there, always, if she simply trusted it as her new reality. Still, it was so, so hard to trust in someone else.
She tucked her arm under her head and turned over, curling in on herself. E needed to work through her shit.
Obviously.
Because running out on a hot god when he told her they were mates was a dolt move.
Truly. Never mind the timeframe or her past. If they were mates—and she believed they were because of what she already felt for him—then she needed to put on her big girl panties and face it.
Talk it over with him. Get to the bottom of her issues. Maybe go to therapy.
While there, she might have to dig into why she revolted every time anyone tried to help her. She did it with Lisa all the time. She was doing it with Plutus. E kept everyone at arm’s length, at such a distance she didn’t have to take anything from people.
The problem was, there were people in her life who cared for her.
Loved her. People she loved. Who she’d do anything for.
For forever, it’d been okay in her mind for her to give, but never to take.
E figured taking was weak, or unnecessary, even as she gave when and where she could.
It was an obvious double standard she needed to work on, not just for herself, but for all the people in her life who wanted to help because they cared for her without conditions. Like Plutus.
Even then, she wanted him there to hold her, big-spoon style, as she sorted all this shit out in her own head.
But she’d run away like a child. Possibly understandable given the gravity of the news he’d kept from her, but also stupid of her because he’d become the only thing that could soothe her.
He was hers, MINE echoing in her head once again.
If she felt that, she had to be his also, right?
That’s how mates worked, or so she thought.
Mates or no, she liked him. Cared for him.
Thought of him when they were apart and enjoyed all the time they spent together, sexy and otherwise.
“Bittersweet,” she whispered to herself, harkening back to their MOMA date, his one word like an arrow in her chest. The one word that summed up her feelings for that painting and about life in general in many ways.
The way she didn’t feel about Plutus. Sure, he frustrated and annoyed her, but more often she felt cherished.
They laughed and teased. They talked books and art and random things.
They pushed one another in productive ways.
She wanted all of that. Needed it, in fact.
Needed him, if the ache in her chest meant anything.
Well, shit. She loved him already. She’d have to deal with that, along with her running, shortly.
Sitting up in her bed, she thought about calling him for a split second, but decided against it.
He’d come in all his godly speed, she knew for certain.
But she wanted to also give him space. Maybe she also wanted to lick her own wounds.
Or give herself space after acting like a petulant teenager before she pulled up her britches and apologized.
Maybe she’d hold off the love confessions for later, though.
He deserved to know, and she deserved to tell him, but at the right time.