31 - Haven
HAVEN
I couldn’t sleep.
That wasn’t new. The level of cold was.
I lay curled beneath the blankets, teeth chattering softly, staring up at the ceiling as frost gathered along the edges of my window. My breath fogged in the air. Again.
“Unbelievable,” I muttered, tugging the covers tighter around myself.
It didn’t help. It never did.
The door creaked, and I froze. Slowly, carefully, I turned my head.
Ares stood in the doorway.
He was framed in shadow, but it was unmistakably him. Massive. Still.
For a second I thought I might be dreaming. That maybe I’d succumbed to the cold, and was in some hypothermia-induced hallucination, because he didn’t look real.
He looked like something carved out of stone; broad shoulders, thick arms, chest bare beneath the dim light of the hallway. Like some colossal statue, dragged down off its pedestal and dropped into my life, just to ruin it.
Then he stepped inside, and my heart started pounding hard and fast.
One step. Then another. He didn’t make a sound, but I felt him anyway. Like the room shifted around him.
He stopped at the edge of my bed. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak, or even breathe.
Because if I did… this would break.
And I didn’t want it to. Not when my mind was already racing ahead, to see what happened next.
I could see it. Feel it. Him, climbing onto the bed. Pinning me down. Kissing me like he meant it — hard, rough, relentless.
Throwing me around like I weighed nothing. Like I belonged to him. The kind of sex that wasn’t careful. Wasn’t slow. Wasn’t the least bit polite.
It would be violent.
Shocking.
Totally—
Butterflies erupted in my stomach, as he continued moving forward. Staring up at him, frozen beneath the blankets, I realized something:
I would let him.
Anything. Everything. Whatever he wanted…
I swallowed hard, my lips parting slightly as he leaned down. Closer. Closer—
His hand pressed the mattress beside me. His weight dipped the bed just enough to make my body react, instinctively arching toward him.
I wet my bottom lip. Waiting. Ready.
His face hovered just above mine. Close enough that I could feel his hot breath.
And then—
He reached past me.
There was a sharp, metallic click. Followed by a long, strange hiss.
I blinked.
What the—
For several seconds, that’s all there was. The hiss. The heatless air. The sound of something shifting, inside the walls.
And Ares’s presence, hovering over me. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He just looked at me.
Then, slowly… he straightened. Stepped back.
And walked out.
Just like that.
The door stayed open, and the room went silent again. I lay there, frozen in every way.
He hadn’t said a word. Not one.
“… what?”
Confusion hit first, then… insult. And beneath all of those, something far worse.
I was still burning.
“Are you serious?” I muttered, sitting up abruptly. “That’s it? That’s what—”
Heat.
I froze again.
It started slowly, as a faint warmth against my skin. Second by second, it grew stronger. Then — I turned.
The radiator.
I bolted all the way upright. Carefully, I reached out and touched it.
“HOLY—”
I yanked my hand back.
It was hot.
Not lukewarm. Not barely working. Hot.
I glared at the thing, like it had betrayed me. Five minutes passed. Then ten. The room changed. The cold bled out of it, replaced by something comforting, steady, and real.
It was warmer than Sebastian’s. My jaw dropped.
“You’ve GOT to be kidding me.”
Anger hit next, full force, hard and fast. I didn’t even think about it. I stormed out of my room, down the stairs, and straight to the second floor. Ares’s door was closed. I didn’t knock. I shoved it open.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed. Shirtless. Of course.
A large dumbbell rose above his head, slow and controlled, his big arm flexing with each rep. His shoulders tightened through each of the triceps presses. The muscles shifted beneath his skin like they had something to prove.
For a half second, I was totally mesmerized. Like I’d forgotten why I was there.
Then I remembered.
“What the hell was that?” I snapped.
He didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at me. Just kept lifting.
“My room is warm now!” I said, stepping closer. “What did you do?”
Another rep. Another controlled breath.
“Fixed your radiator.”
That stopped me cold.
“You— what?”
He lowered the dumbbell, switched hands, and started again.
“Bleed valve,” he said with a shrug. “Air got stuck in the line.”
I stared at him. “I don’t underst—”
Then it hit me. My eyes narrowed.
“You sabotaged my HEAT?” I swore out loud.
It all made sense now. Everything clicked.
“Before I even got here…” I murmured in disbelief.
Nothing. Just another rep.
“I’ve been freezing my ass off up there!” I snapped, stepping right up to him now. “For weeks!”
Still nothing.
“Are you kidding me right now?”
The dumbbell dropped. Hard. Straight to the floor.
And before I could react… his hand was on me. Fast.
Ares shoved me back. My spine hit the wall. And then he was there, pressed against me. Kissing me. Hard.
It happened without warning, without hesitation. There was no restraint, or second guessing.
Every ounce of tension from the past weeks crashed into that single moment, his mouth rough against mine. His body was bulk and heat and all things manly. He pressed it tightly against me, like he’d been waiting just as long as I had.
I gasped into the kiss, as a spark of excitement flared inside me.
His hand came up, gripping my hip, pulling me tighter against him as his mouth moved against mine again — deeper this time, hungrier.
“Is this what you want?” he murmured against my lips, pulling back just enough to look at me.
His eyes burned with the same fire I’d seen on the ice.
The same fire as when he made that hit.
“Is this what you came down here for?”
“NO,” I shot back.
But I didn’t move. Didn’t push him away. Didn’t do anything except stand there, breathing hard.
“Liar,” he hissed quietly.
A beat of silence passed between us. Then—
“Yes,” I admitted.
That was all it took. Ares kissed me again. Forcefully. Voraciously.
And this time, I kissed him back.
Everything disappeared. The cold. The house. The team.
All of it, gone.
There was just Ares. His hands. His mouth. His body, pressing into mine with a force that bordered on overwhelming, lifting me off the floor as if gravity didn’t apply. The kiss deepened, as a heat spread through me.
It wasn’t careful, or controlled, or even safe.
It was just… consuming.
My hands moved on their own, dragging across his shoulders, his chest, his back. I was desperate to feel the heat of him. The raw strength in him, shifting beneath smooth, unblemished skin.
Clothes came off. My sweatshirt, then undershirt hit the floor. The mouth I couldn’t get enough of kissed its way downward, past my neck, along my shoulder…
I gasped sharply as Ares’s lips closed eagerly over my breast. They moved back and forth, from one to the other, even burying his face between them as my hands embedded themselves into his hair. I was pulling. Clawing him even tighter against me. Feeding myself to his greedy mouth.
The heat became fire, and that fire raged.
Wrapping my legs around him, I sighed as Ares made a feast of my bare breasts.
My cries became whimpers. My whimpers, sighs.
I was clutching his head, drawing him into me as the molten core of my essence became unbearable, and all I could envision was spreading myself open for him.
I was desperate to draw him down, onto the bed, where he could plunder me properly. I wanted him to destroy me. I needed him to quench the desire that burned, white hot, between my aching, trembling thighs.
At one point my eyes fluttered open, and I looked down. And there, on the floor, I saw it:
My shirt.
No.
Not mine.
Grayson’s.
The one he’d given me to wear, the night before, at the don’t-touch-anything because there’s blood on your door, hotel.
The one I hadn’t gotten back to him.
The one I’d put on before bed tonight, hoping it smelled like him.
Fuck.
The moment shattered. Reality rushed in, to fill in the cracks.
What the hell are you doing?
My breath hitched. This wasn’t just a mistake, this was—
Everything.
Too much. Too fast. Too—
I pulled back hard, and Ares stilled immediately. His grip tightening just slightly, like he didn’t understand the game.
“I—” I started, already prying myself away. “I can’t…”
Grayson’s shirt glared up at me, like a silent witness to some unspeakable crime. I snatched it up and dragged it back on with shaking hands.
“This is a bad idea,” I said quickly, not meeting his eyes. “I just— I shouldn’t have…”
I didn’t finish. I couldn’t.
Instead, I turned and bolted. Out the door, down the hall, and up the stairs. I fled back into the cold of my bedroom, only it wasn’t cold anymore. My room was warm.
Almost too warm.
I stood there in the middle of it, chest heaving, skin still buzzing from his touch. My radiator hummed quietly against the wall, looking happy to be here. Working perfectly.
I dragged a hand through my tangled hair, and let it fall back over my face.
“Unbelievable,” I muttered.
Because somehow, I was still cold.
And still burning.