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Fuck.
* * *
When I finally make itback to the house, it’s mostly quiet. I walk towards the stairs, wanting nothing more than to sink into a hot bath. My entire body is throbbing with pain, and I groan inwardly when I get halfway up, hobbling the whole time, and see Dean coming down the stairs towards me.
Goddamn it. I was already sore from working out, and then the fight, and now I have to deal with him on top of it?
I grit my teeth, looking up at him and wondering what sort of bullshit I’m going to have to put up with now before I can get my bath and clean up from the fight.
But instead of annoyance or arrogance in Dean’s face when I look up at him as he catches sight of me, all I see is astonishment and something very much like horror in his eyes.
“Christ, Athena,” he breathes as he catches sight of my face. “What the fuck happened to you?” His face hardens suddenly, his jaw clenching. “Did Jaxon do that to you while you were training? If he did, I swear to god—"
I touch the edge of my cheek gingerly, wincing. “Well, I got into a fight. But no, it wasn’t Jaxon. He’d never.”
Dean’s jaw works anxiously as he takes another step down, his fingers sliding under the unharmed part of my chin as he turns my wounded face into the light. “Fuck,” he murmurs. “Well, let’s go upstairs and get you into the bath. And then you can tell me what happened.”
I shouldn’t feel shy about getting into the clawfoot tub in my bathroom in front of Dean—after all, he’s seen me naked now more times than I have fingers to count on, but somehow this seems more intimate than the punishments I’ve endured or the rough sex we have in his bed at night. This is him helping me with my shirt when it hurts too much to lift my arms over my head, him heating the bathwater as I wriggle out of my yoga pants, him hovering nearby to make sure I don’t slip as I lower myself into the steaming water, groaning with mingled pain and pleasure as I sink into it.
“I’ll get something to help clean up those scratches on your face,” Dean says, walking towards the medicine cabinet over the sink. “Who did you get into a fight with?”
I hesitate, unsure if I should tell him the truth about what’s been going on. I told Cayde, and he’d seemed concerned, but I don’t know how Dean will react. “Just some jealous girl,” I say finally, shrugging as I lean back in the tub. “She was waiting for me when I came out of the gym.” It’s not a lie, really—I don’t know what the dark-haired girl’s motivations are for sending me that letter, if that really was her, or for stalking me.
“This is pretty rough for someone who’s just jealous.” Dean frowns, turning my face towards him. “Are you sure there’s nothing else to it?” He pauses, ripping open an alcohol pad. “This is going to hurt,” he warns, before he starts cleaning off the scratches on my face and neck.
He’s right. It does fucking hurt. I suck in a breath between my teeth, pressing my lips together as he cleans away the blood. “Some of these are pretty deep,” Dean says, and I can hear the real concern in his voice. “Not deep enough for stitches, but still, you should probably take it easy for a couple days. No fighting. In the gym or out of it,” he adds wryly.
“I didn’t go looking for a fight.” I glare at him as he squirts some kind of antibiotic ointment onto his fingers, smoothing it along the scratches on my cheek. That actually feels good, cool, and thick, and I lean into his touch without meaning to.
“I didn’t say you did.” Dean’s voice is even as he smooths the same ointment over the scratches on my neck. “But you need to be careful, Athena. I don’t like anyone damaging what’s mine.”
And just like that, I can feel a door slam shut as resentment boils up in me. You don’t actually care about me, I want to snap. You just care about someone daring to touch your pretty little possession. It makes me want to pull away, but I just sit there in the steaming water instead, feeling it soothe away my aches as Dean unwraps a flat bandage for my cheek and another for my neck.
“I think you can sleep in your own bed until this heals,” he says offhandedly as if he’s allowing me something. “I don’t want to risk making these worse.”
“Why do you act like this?” I ask suddenly, the words bursting out of me. I don’t know why—maybe it’s the pain radiating through my body, now a dull ache, perhaps it’s that I’m not sure how much worse things can get, maybe it’s just that I’m tired of his high-handed attitude. “Why are you so sure that you’ve won?”
“Because I have.” Dean shrugs, setting down the ointment and empty packaging. “You can keep baiting Cayde all you want, you can try to keep the game going, or he can. It doesn’t matter. I’ll win in the end, no matter what. I have your virginity. I have the proof. You and Cayde or even Jaxon can argue all you want that it wasn’t a real choice if you didn’t know the stakes or that you didn’t really choose me, you chose Jaxon, and he turned you down. But in the end, you came to me, to my bed. I didn’t force you. And that makes me the winner.”
I want to push it, to tell him that he’s the only one who’s so sure of that, that Cayde at least is going to fight it. But I don’t, because that’s just going to be an endless round-robin of an argument that won’t get either of us anywhere. So instead, I ask him the question that will only really matter if, in the end, he does win.
“If you’re the winner, what happens to me? After, I mean. After graduation, after you take over.”
Dean pauses, looking at me curiously, and then he finally shrugs. “Some of it is up to you. I won’t force you to keep sleeping with me. Being my mistress, serving my darker desires, allowing me to do what I want with you—I’ll reward that, as powerful men have always rewarded their mistresses.”
“Won’t your wife, whoever she turns out to be, be angry about that?”
Dean laughs. “Athena, don’t you understand anything about this life yet? She’ll have no say. She’ll be the perfect society bride, and she’ll serve her purpose, as you have and will continue to serve yours. And I’ll fuck who I want when I want. If I want to tie her up and fuck her in the ass while you watch, I will. If I want to watch the two of you together, I’ll do that. If I want her to watch as I take you in every hole, that will be my pleasure to demand. Or if I want to only touch her when it’s necessary and fuck you in every depraved way I can think of the rest of the time, then that’s what I’ll do. I’m a lord, Athena, in title and now in truth, as soon as I take up my rightful place.”
“But you won’t force me if I don’t want to fuck you.”
“No.” Dean watches me, his gaze cool and even. “I’m not interested in that, Athena.”
“So what if I tell you that once you’ve officially ‘won,’ I don’t want to fuck you anymore? What happens to me?” I narrow my eyes. “What will you do to me?”
“I won’t do anything to you, Athena. You can work in the house if you don’t want to warm my bed. Just like your mother.” He smirks. “I’m sure there will be some use for you. Maybe, if you work hard, you can even be the house manager one day and do more administrative work than cleaning, oversee things.”
I stare at him. “Are you fucking kidding me? So my only options are whore or housekeeper?”
