13. Athena #2
Nathan’s eyes flash, and his control slips just enough to show hunger and rage in the same place. “I don’t blame you,” he replies. “I still want you. I’ll never stop wanting you.”
My body feels pinned by attention alone, and the worst part is that my mind wants him even while it tells me to slam the door.
Nathan’s voice drops further. “I’m not going to take anything from you,” he says, each word deliberate. “I’m not going to force a moment, I’m not going to threaten you into giving me access, and I’m not going to pretend that wanting you gives me rights.”
I swallow.
He steps closer, and his hand comes up slowly, not grabbing, not yanking, just stopping near my wrist like he’s asking permission with his body.
“I want to touch you,” he says. “Tell me no, and I won’t.”
My breath catches.
I should say no, but all I can do is stand there and feel my pulse in my fingertips.
My silence answers before my pride can. Nathan’s fingers close around my wrist, firm and careful at the same time, and the contact sends a sharp jolt through me.
His grip isn’t painful, but it’s possessive, and it makes my entire body go alert.
He reels me in with one decisive tug, abolishing the distance between us, so swift it steals the breath from my lungs. My wrist remains caught in his hand, his other arm circling my back, drawing me flush to his chest.
His mouth hovers a whisper from mine, voice dark and frayed. “I could ruin you,” he murmurs against my cheek, his breath hot and heavy. His grip tightens with the restraint of a man fighting both darkness and longing.
“But I won’t,” he says, rougher now, breath shaking. “I would never live with myself if I took what you didn’t give freely. A body is easy to steal. A heart must be yielded.”
He inhales sharply, forehead resting against mine, eyes closing as though the weight of what he restrains costs him blood.
“Your body…” His hand sinks lower along my spine, fingers splaying there, trembling. “God, I could crave your body for the rest of my life, wear down to bone wanting it, but it means nothing if I haven’t earned that stupid, stubborn, beautiful heart.”
His forehead presses briefly to mine, and the gesture feels too intimate for how angry we both are. “I have to have you,” he says, voice low and raw. “Not your body for a minute. You. Your choice. Your yes.”
My eyes burn. “You don’t get to talk like this after six years,” I whisper, even as the tears begin to fall.
“I do,” he replies, and his voice shakes. “I get to tell you the truth. I want you in my life, and I want her in my life, and I can’t unsee what I saw today.”
My hands press against his chest, not pushing him away, not pulling him closer either, caught in the middle of everything I’m trying to hold together. Nathan’s grip on my wrist tightens slightly then loosens, like he’s reminding himself I’m not property.
“Tell me you don’t want me,” he says again, voice rough. “Do it now.”
I stare at him and hate how impossible that sentence feels.
Nathan’s gaze drops to my mouth, and he makes his decision with a hard shift of his shoulders.
He brackets me against the wall in one relentless surge, palm flattening over my hip, fingers splaying possessively against bone.
The other hand fists in my hair at the nape, tugging hard enough to arch my throat, and the bite of it steals my breath before his mouth even finds mine.
“You think I forgot?” he growls, voice thick as smoke. “You think distance, time, anyone else could touch what we had?”
Then he crushes his mouth to mine.
The kiss is a collision, brutal and soul-deep.
His breath is hot and demanding, his tongue invading with a groan that vibrates through my ribs, the taste of him dragging me straight into every memory I’ve tried to bury.
He kisses like a man on the edge of ruin, lips punishing until I gasp, then trembling with reverence as if he both damns and worships me.
My hands tear at his shirt, nails biting into muscle, but he just tightens his grip on my hair, forcing my head back as he licks into my mouth. “Look at me,” he whispers against my lips, teeth grazing, eyes gone nearly black. “Look at what you do to me.”
I look. I can’t not. His cheekbones are sharp beneath my fingers, his pupils blown wide, restraint a fragile veneer over raw need. He kisses me again, slower, deeper, his thumb stroking my jaw while his other hand wanders from my hip up to the small of my back, pressing me flush against him.
“You’re still mine,” he murmurs, voice scraping low, a decree made of hunger and grief. “Even if I let you walk away.”
His hand slides under my hair, fingers spreading against my skull, holding me captive in that searing gaze. He breathes me in like he’s stealing air, lips hovering just above mine, waiting for the inevitability we’ve both fought for years.
“Say it,” he commands softly, fierce eyes glittering. “Say it or I’ll tear the words out of you.”
The demand thrums through me like a fever. I’m trembling, breath shallow, every nerve lit. His mouth descends again, deep and devastating, and when he whispers against my tongue, “I’m losing you all over again, Athena,” my heart breaks and my fingers curl into his shirt. “Don’t let me lose you.”
I sob into his mouth, and his reaction is immediate. He breaks the kiss, keeping his hand on my wrist, and his voice shakes. “I can’t do it like this. If you want me,” he says, “you still know my number.”
My lips part, and I hate the small sound that threatens to escape. Nathan’s eyes hold mine, then his grip loosens completely and his hand drops away from my wrist like he’s forcing himself to.
“I’m leaving,” he says, voice tight, eyes suddenly devoid of all life. He steps back one pace, then another, and the space between us feels wrong. My skin still remembers the heat of his arms, and my wrist still carries the shape of his fingers.
Nathan’s gaze flicks once toward Ivy’s door then returns to me. “She’s safe,” he says quietly. “I won’t make a scene. I won’t come near her without you allowing it.”
I can’t string words together, so I say nothing.
He nods once like he expected that. Then he turns and walks out the door, his steps controlled, his back straight, leaving me standing in my doorway with my mouth still tingling.