10. Can’t Take His Ass Nowhere!
Chapter ten
Can't Take His Ass Nowhere!
Ione
I don't know what to say about that all and I'm not sure how to respond. "Good talk, now get out the car."
"What are we here for?" He grunts, closing my door harder than necessary, while squinting in the sun. "Food? You should grow your own."
"Sure," Grabbing a cart from the stall, I roll my eyes. "Stretch your hand over my garden and make things grow."
"Not my alley," He snorts. "I will ask my sister when she comes over, she enjoys that kind of thing. Making things grow where there is no hope."
Stopping before the door, I stare up at Athy. "Are you saying my garden is a lost cause?"
"Your trees look pitiful." He shrugs. "I'll space them out more when we return home."
"Remind me to karate chop you in your throat when we get home." I mumble.
I can feel him pulling on the back of my shirt. "Excuse me?"
"Nothing."
Athanasius watches with slight interest as we go up and down the aisles. He points and asks what different things are, or what they are for. A woman farther along in the aisle is with her child who is screaming while lying in the middle of the floor.
"She should hit him."Athanasius says out loud. "Why does she allow her child to make a mockery of her in public? It looks like she cannot control her offspring."
Yes, he is right, but damn. My eyes go wide as the woman looks up with a sour expression. "You can't say those things out loud." I hiss.
He doesn't care. "It's true."
"Some of us are doing our best," The woman sneers. "Timmy, please, I will buy the cookies."
"Abandon him in the woods." Athy chuckles. "Maybe he will be grateful then."
Why me?
"How about you set him straight? Hm?" The woman nearly yells. "Since you're such a great father."
We're almost out of the aisle, I'm snatching for Athanasius, and he pulls away from me. "Boy, get up."
Timmy continues to scream.
Reaching down, Athanasius grabs the boy by the front of his shirt and sets him on his feet. He leans close, whispering something in the boy's ear. Timmy's face goes white, his lips pale, and his eyes widen in horror. He scampers back to his mother, clings to her side, whispering apologies.
"There." Athanasius crosses his arms over his chest. "He shouldn't give you any more trouble, will you boy?"
"No sir," Timmy whispers. "I'm sorry momma."
His mother looks more than concerned, quickly scampering away with her child. As they round the corner, I shake my head and look at Athanasius. "What did you say to him?"
Athanasius smirks, the right side of his tongue poking from between his lips.
He looks downright devious. "I told him that long ago, I made a cradle from the ribs of disobedient children.
It still rocks in the dark, waiting for the next one to forget their manners.
Cry louder, and it might just hear you."
I don't even know what to say. "Is that true?"
"Maybe," He walks past me towards the meat aisle. "I enjoy eating meat."
"Athanasius," I smack the cart on his butt. "I'm being serious."
"It was an effective method to make the boy behave." He picks up a T-bone steak. "I remember when people used to throw their children off of cliffs for clef palates and heterochromia."
It's true, but damn does he have to say everything that's in his mind? "Athanasius, I'm beginning to see that I can't take you in public."
"I look acceptable," He looks down at himself. "Arms put away, two eyes." He blinks. "What do you mean?"
"You say the most out of pocket stuff."
He nods. "You think I am unhinged."
"I believe it to be so." I correct him.
Opening his mouth, he flicks his tongue at me, wagging both sides. "You'll learn, rabbit."
"Ugh," An older woman walks by holding her basket. "Please keep that fetish business at home."
Athanasius smirks at me. He's on a roll. "Fetish?" He says, tossing six T-bones into the cart. "If I want to tongue fuck my rabbit until her eyes roll back in her skull that is my business to share with whom I wish, hag."
"Ok," Lacing my arm through his, I try to pull him away. "Let's go this way, we need milk."
The woman gasps, if she had pearls, she'd grab them. "I beg your pardon?"
"You can beg all you want, doesn't mean you'll get it." He smiles.
Then he does the most. Grabbing my face, Athanasius wiggles his split tongue at the woman before licking my lips.
First with the left side, then with the right while grabbing my ass.
My brain is hyper aware of the feeling of his hand.
Long fingers, wide palm, he digs his fingers in and I'm wet.
He has me pressed against his chest, my hands are clenched in his shirt, and I can feel every muscle beneath his clothing.
One good smack has me yelping, and he moves away as quickly as he invaded my space.
"Come rabbit, this place bores me and its patrons are beneath us. "
In the car, the only thing I can think about is how his tongue felt against my lips. How he's able to move one side and then the other, and my mind flashes to how it'll feel somewhere else. Why did he do that? To show off?
"We have to talk about something, Athanasius."
"Not Athy?" He chuckles.
Sighing, I pull up to my house, shutting off the car. "I have to go back to work soon. I'm on PTO, this was supposed to be my time to decorate my home and relax, but you popped up."
He raises an eyebrow. "Work? What do you do?"
"I manage internal and external communications for my job." He stares blankly. "I work in office 3 days a week, which means you'll be home alone."
Athanasius grunts, exiting the car. "You work for me, woman, I provide your needs."
"No," Popping the trunk, I begin to grab a few bags. "I work to make money, and pay my mortgage, and buy food."
"Trivial things," He shrugs, following my lead. "I will provide."
As we enter the house, I set the bags on the kitchen counter. "By doing what? Making money appear out of thin air?" I shouldn't have said that.
"Show me what it looks like." He sets his bags down, leaning on the counter. "You know what I can do."
"Where does it come from?" Now I'm curious. "Because it has to come from somewhere, you can't—"
"I can do whatever I want." He waves dismissively. '"I am a Primordial—"
"Beyond your mortal comprehension." We say at the same time which earns me a scowl. For now, I'll drop it. "Well, if you can drop $479,000 in my closet tomorrow morning? I can pay off this house." I chuckle, but I'm also serious.
"Testing me?" He grunts. "I want the meat for dinner, two of them."
"Yes, oh highly exalted one." I shake my head, but he beams with pride.
"You're getting it, and here I thought you were a lost cause."
Athanasius likes his steaks medium rare, cooked in butter, salt, pepper, garlic, and rosemary.
He eats said steak like it's his last meal, licking his fingers before dragging his tongue against the plate.
Admonishing him does nothing. As I shower for the night, again, he waits naked in bed.
His tattoos are always the first thing my eyes catch.
The swirling patterns and stark geometric shapes, triangles and circles connected by straight, short lines that make up the language he knows.
I stepped out of the bathroom and paused, towel still in hand, at the sight of him—Athanasius the Veil between Worlds, the Withering—propped up against my headboard, wearing my reading glasses, flipping through He Tamed Me at Twilight, one of my Harlequin romance novels.
“Really? I put that away this morning." I state, placing my towel on a holder behind the door.
He doesn't look up. “Were you trying to hide it? It was underneath a flower decoration, tucked in the back. Naturally, I was compelled.”
Flower decoration? Oh my god, my rose. I'll pretend like I didn't hear that. Groaning, I flop onto the bed, arm dramatically thrown over my face like it can save me from any possible questions he might press about my 'flower decoration.'
“You highlighted passages,” he says, casually, like he isn't holding my dignity hostage. What dignity? I don't care.
“I annotate everything. It’s a literary habit.” I answer.
He turns a page. His voice deepening as he reads. "Her bosom heaved beneath his ravenous gaze… Tell me, Ione. Do bosoms truly heave like this, or is it a metaphor?”
I peek at him from under my arm. He's completely serious. And also clearly entertained.
“It's a feeling, okay? Not a literal... physics thing.”
“Hm,” he says thoughtfully, flipping another page. “And this one—‘He would’ve bled the stars dry if it meant one more kiss from her lips.’” He looks at me now, both sets of eyes, black and red stare back at me. “You enjoy this… dramatic male suffering?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation, then immediately wince. “I mean—not suffering suffering. I just… I like the way they love in these stories. Big. Messy. All in. The men fall hard and deep. They’d ruin kingdoms for their women and bring Armageddon just because she demanded it. It’s... hot.”
He raises a brow. “So. This is what you desire?”
I squirm. “I mean. Most women do. But real men don’t act like that.”
He makes a low noise in his throat—offended, amused, possibly both. “I once asked my sibling to stop time for seventy years to mourn a pigeon I had become fond of."
Laughing, I turn over in bed, adjusting my bonnet. “That explains so much, actually.”
He closes the book with a soft thud, placing it on the nightstand like it's holy scripture. “Turn off the lights, little rabbit.”
I obey, still buzzing with secondhand embarrassment with the way he'd read my smut like it was a philosophical treatise.
As I slip under the covers, he shifts behind me—warm, immense, and entirely inevitable.
His nose presses gently to the nape of my neck.
His arms come around me like a shadow swallowing light, and suddenly, I'm not just a woman in bed with a Primordial.
I am his, and he is mine, and my breath catches.
“Is this…” his voice is low, ancient, curling against my skin, “how you wish to be held?”
I can't stop my heart from pounding. My mouth is dry, the occurrence of early today is replaying in my mind.
“Yes,” I whisper, small in the way that only love can make a person feel.
We are not in love. This is a transaction.
Servitude, let him tell it. Nothing romantic going on here, just what Athanasius sees as normal and what he expects.
His arms tighten, holding me like I might vanish between the seconds.
“Then sleep, my rabbit,” he murmurs. “Tomorrow, we’ll find a kingdom to ruin for you.”