Chapter 28 #2
“Ember,” he breathed into my ear as I guided his hand beneath the waistband of my pants.
His hand slid lower, sending heat cascading through me.
His opposite hand pinned me to his chest, tightening around me so possessively that I nearly blacked out.
The man held me like doing so would absolve him of his immortal sins.
I spread wider for him as his fingers wound through the hair at the apex of my legs.
“Touch me.” I begged this time. “Feel how much I want you.” His fingers slid so easily inside me.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
He added a third finger, using the palm of his hand to make a slow, rhythmic pulse against my clit.
I moaned, trying to keep my voice soft, but unable to stay completely quiet.
Ares’ tongue swept across the lobe of my ear, letting me hear the increase in his breath as he fucked me with his hand.
The hand on my abdomen slid upward to cup my breast.
“Can you come like this?” he asked.
The question itself was nearly enough to send me over the edge. It was beyond considerate, free of any ego. Just a simple ask after my pleasure. I nodded, suddenly unable to speak. I was overcome with emotion.
That one question reverberated in my mind as he continued to pulse his fingers into me, harder as I pushed my hips against him, his breath still hot in my ear. “You feel so fucking good.”
I bit my bottom lip to keep from crying out, but Ares’ free hand gripped my chin, bringing his mouth to mine as his speed and pressure increased just enough to push me over the edge.
As I came, his mouth closed around mine.
He swallowed my cries with kiss after kiss, refusing to stop touching me, even after the first wave of my release began to relent.
Another built in its place and his mouth was back at my ear. “Yes,” he urged me on. “Again.”
My head flung back on his shoulder and I caught sight of his face for the briefest moment before my eyes squeezed shut, my walls clamping down hard around the fingers inside me as I came harder. I’d never seen him look like that, so open, so enraptured by something.
Was that what Ares Necroline looked like in love?
The thought was so forbidden, so unreal, that wet heat rushed through me, white light flashing behind my eyes as I rode Ares’ hand as hard as I could. When my body went limp, he caught me, holding me against him as I shuddered with the aftershocks of pleasure.
I had no idea what to say. If that was what happened when he fingered me, what could he do with his cock? I laughed against him, at myself, for the smallest of moments, until he drew his hand out of my pants and sucked his fingers clean. That had me panting again.
“Stop distracting me,” he muttered, but there was more than a little bit of amusement in his eyes, and when he kissed me again, tasting myself on his lips, I felt a way I never had with any other lover… Safe.
“Find what we’re looking for in under an hour and I’ll return the favor,” I said when he finally pulled away from me.
He held onto me so tight I thought his fingers might bruise me. “I don’t want a favor,” he whispered. “Just you. All of you.”
His eyes burned with that possessive light again. To be possessed by Ares Necroline would not be about control or dramatics, but about belonging. And every part of me wanted it. Even my pathetic, shriveled heart.
Ares pulled me into the Senator’s apartment. The two of us stood staring at the minimalist atrocity before us. There was a hard, white couch sitting in the center of an enormous room, and no other furniture.
“Ugly,” Ares remarked as we walked past the kitchen.
He opened a cabinet, his brows pulling into a frown.
He opened every one in succession. They were all empty.
The refrigerator had nothing in it but booze and a few protein drinks.
Ares kept looking at the empty kitchen, shaking his head, as I walked further into the living room.
There was only one piece of art in the living room, an enormous black and white photograph of an empty lot.
Most people wouldn’t recognize it. But I did, and my blood ran cold.
Who was Senator Cromvale?
I swallowed hard as I stared at it, my gaze sliding to Ares, who was still shaking his head at the bare cabinets. “Not even a junk drawer,” he muttered, half to himself.
When he looked up, he read the look on my face first. Then his jaw clenched as he stared at the photograph. “That is—”
Everyone knew about what had happened to Ares and Eryx’s parents, but no one ever talked about it.
What was the use? Their story was a common one.
The Authority had them eliminated for being too talented, and so painted them as criminals, when in reality they’d owned a little flower shop back in the ancient days of Orphium.
The place in the photograph, the empty lot, was the place the shop once stood.
They’d been killed on a raid, executed on trumped-up charges everyone knew were false.
It was obvious he couldn’t finish the sentence, that he was as sick as I was. “What is he doing with that?”
I shook my head. The photograph was enormous. Its scale alone was an indication that the Senator had some sinister perspective. I didn’t know much about Chance Cromvale. Only that he was relatively young. “Let’s split up,” I said. “You take the bedroom.”
Ares nodded. “There’s an office, I think. You wanna try that?”
“Sure,” I said.
As we passed one another, my fingers brushed his.
He held on tight, just for a second, his eyes shifting slightly away from mine.
I paused, listening for any increase in his breath, any outward sign that he was upset by the photograph.
Some might try to rationalize it as a coincidence.
Ares and I were both old enough to know those didn’t exist. Especially not with these types.
When I heard him in the bedroom, calmly opening and closing drawers, I moved on to the office.
I didn’t even bother with the computer. There wouldn’t be anything there, or in the file cabinet.
The minimalist decor and sadistic photograph told me all I needed to know about Chance Cromvale.
I went right for the painting of a single red balloon and pulled it off the wall.
Sure enough, there was a safe behind it.
The thing was a Sentry Vault, the best safe in the world.
There was no way for me to crack it. I sighed, about to sit down at Cromvale’s hideous glass desk, when movement out of the corner of my eye startled me.
For half a second, I saw a beautiful woman with dark sepia skin, and a mass of ebony hair that fell past her waist. She was dressed in a stola that draped around her sturdy frame.
Her eyes were wide and haunted. She walked across the room, weeping, paying me absolutely no mind.
As soon as she reached the door of the office, she disappeared, then reappeared in the exact same spot and made the journey across the room again.
Every time, she started right next to the safe, and then crossed the room to the door, weeping in exactly the same way.
I tried to get her attention, but she was an Echo.
I stepped out into the hallway, calling softly for Ares. He appeared faster than necessary, concern in his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said softly. Echoes were sometimes scared off by loud noises, or sudden changes. “We have a looper.”