My blood runs cold. Connie doesn’t choose her words carelessly. There’s a reason behind them, just like her visit. She’s not one to waste her time, not even to help someone into their wedding dress.
“What do you know?” I ask immediately and stand, though when she answers me I wish I was still sitting.
“Zeus isn’t going to let you leave without you consummating the marriage.”
“He’s insane.”
“Whatever you asked of him was big enough that he isn’t going to let you leave with Law without knowing he’s got a fair shot at a snotty grandkid popping out of you in nine months.”
“He can’t make us, he can’t force me to-”
“With the others it might not have come down to that, but with Law...”
I glare at her. “I don’t love him. I don’t want him anymore,” I lie.
She raises an eyebrow and stares me down. When I look away she snorts. “Sure you don’t, sweet cheeks.”
“Connie,” I growl, hands fisting at my sides. She clicks her tongue at me.
“Kitten’s got claws.” She grins at me when I look at her and the woman fucking boops me on my nose with one manicured nail. “I like it.”
“I get the distinct feeling you’re not taking my concerns seriously,” I tell her.
“I am, but there has to be levity or we’ll all go insane,” she tells me with another tap to my nose. I dodge her and she continues on like she wasn’t just booping me. “You picked well with Law. He won’t hurt you and he’ll protect you.”
“Even from Zeus?” I ask, because I want to hear her say it. I feel it as surely as my own heart beats, but I want to hear someone else say it. She’s close enough to Zeus to know why I’m asking it and when she dips her chin in affirmation I let out a breath I hadn’t even been aware I was holding.
“You also still want him, which makes the whole consummation thing easier.”
“I’m not fucking him,” I blurt out.
Connie laughs. “Oh, Honey,” she sighs.
“I won’t,” I insist, but my words sound weak, even to me. I flush thinking about Law touching me. I’ve thought about him obsessively over the days we’ve been apart. Mostly because I don’t want to. Like when someone tells you not to think about white elephants or polka dot ducks and then that’s all you can think about, even though there’s no sense to it.
That’s how it is with the way Lawson Sokolov has taken up my brain matter. It’s because I don’t want to think about him. It has to be. I frown because even I know it’s a lie.
“When the fuck is the debt going to be paid?” I ask rather than say anything more of me fucking Law to Connie. She thinks it’s a done deal and from the way my body is humming it’s on board with it. “He can’t keep doing this for the rest of my life. When is it going to end?”
She lifts one delicate shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know what you asked of him, Honey. He’ll stop once it’s balanced to him. Zeus is the only one that knows.”
“Fuck,” I swear.
“I mean, you are going to be doing that tonight, so yes. In a sense.”
I don’t even have it in me to tell her she’s wrong. The second she mentioned that I’d have to climb into bed with Law, my libido came online. The spark of life I’d felt leaving me with each passing day in this dark world of The Cairn was suddenly there, painfully bright and hungry. Of course I want Law.
It’s not like lust and love have an off switch.
He knows my body like his own. Every part of me that sets me off, what makes me come apart, what I want to hear. He knows just how to fucking touch me until I come apart into a thousand little pieces. He’s the man with the brutal touch that I crave. I’ve begged for him to do it before.
I hope he doesn’t make me beg tonight.
It’s bad enough that I can feel my belly going tight, feel a pulse start between my legs. Blood flows to my clit and the ghost of the silk panties I wear is almost too much to bear while thinking about being with Law tonight. I wouldn’t even have to be the weak one. Not with Zeus adding it to his laundry list of demands on me.
I can just…give in.
I didn’t think I wanted to, but with Law? Giving in can be sweet. It can be cathartic and ease the ache and anxiety that I’ve carried with me since the day I left him. I know as well as anyone what Law is capable of coaxing out of me.
