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My hands curl into fists at my side, hard enough that my nails dig into the soft flesh of my palms. “I’ve never done a damn thing to you, Ares. So, you can… you can fuck right off!”
And there’s the anger again. It roars back to life in his eyes like a badly banked fire. “Your mother–”
“Newsflash, jackass,” I snap, feeling my eyes narrowing. “I’m not my mother!”
“Do you think that will save you?” His voice is a snarl, more enraged wolf than man.
“Oh, no… no, no, no.” I jab a finger towards his face. “If you decide you’re going to kill me, that’s on you. Not me, not my mother, you! You don’t get to make the excuse that I’m my mother’s daughter—like it’s part of some grand revenge plot. Especially when webothknow my mother wouldn’t get off her ass to help me unless it might impact her, and maybe not even then.”
Some rational part of my brain is trying to interject, but my frustration, fury, and terror apparently have wrestled away the control of my mouth, so all it can do is hide its face in its metaphorical hands while I grab a shovel and start digging myself deeper.
Ares just stands there, staring at me.
“I get that what Aphrodite did to you was beyond shitty,” I continue, taking a step forward and up onto my tiptoes so my nose is as close to his as I can manage (which isn’t that close but the point still remains). “But did you really think that threatening or holding the daughter shecursedwould be the way to get back at her? I’m not even her favorite! I’m not even in the top five!”
Big hands clamp down on my shoulders, and Ares drives me back until my spine touches the far wall of the bedroom. He’s breathing heavily, chest rising and falling like a set of bellows. He just holds me there, glaring at me as if he isn’t sure if he wants to waste his breath on me or tear my head off. So, I just stare right back at him.
“You dare to speak to me in such a way?”
“Obviously I dared.”
His eyes narrow. “Clearly, you aren’t intelligent enough to know when to cower in my presence.”
Cower? Come again?
Centuries of resentment, of being underestimated, of being treated like a toy, a doll, a mannequin, it all comes welling up in an instant, and I…
I tell Ares off. Spectacularly, and in vivid detail. I use graphic terms and some words that haven’t been used in more than a hundred years.
“—and you can stick your ‘cowering’ right up your ass with your sword, you arrogant, vindictive, over-muscled jackanape! And while you’re at it, you can—”
Ares makes a sound that’s more of a growl than a throat should be capable of producing as he leans down the last few inches between our faces and crushes his mouth to mine.
I freeze for a second, so confused by the turn of events that my entire brain just blue screens. Then Ares’s tongue pushes past my lips and into my mouth, and it’s hot, and hard, and the slick glide is absolutely perfect, and suddenly my body decides to flip a switch and all the adrenaline flooding my body turns into toe-curling, stomach-tightening lust.
I surge back against him, determined to give as good as I get. I grab hold of the front of his armor, like I can haul him closer by it. One of his hands grabs hold of the hair at the back of my head, and he uses the grip to change the angle. The kiss becomes a new battle. Or maybe the extension of the old one. I don’t even care anymore.
Heat floods my body, my belly pulling tight. I want to yank him down to me. Or climb him like a particularly violent tree, and there’s a perfectly good bed right over there in the corner of the room, and gods, adrenaline is just theweirdestthing sometimes.
Ares makes a low sound that I feel more than hear. The rumble of it vibrates through his chest and into mine.
The next instant, he’s tearing himself away from me.
He retreats a couple steps likeI’mthe threat, and that combined with the hormones rioting in my body is baffling enough that I just stare at him wide-eyed. If anything, he looks even angrier now than he did when he kicked my door in. The veins in his arms bulge as he clenches his fists.
He slashes a hand through the air like a knife blade. “You will not use your mother’s tricks to manipulate me!”
“Um, what?” I manage. “You kissed me.”
He looks like he’s about to say something but then shakes his head and stalks out of the room, slamming the door behind him hard enough that I’m kind of surprised the whole castle doesn’t shudder and fall apart around me.
EIGHT
PEN
As soon as Ares is gone, I take a deep breath and try to understand just what in the hell happened.
I rake my hands back up into my hair and then let loose with some of the foulest words I know. Because what the hell was that? Whatwasthat? I can’t believe he accused me of using my power to... to what, seduce him?Hekissedmefor hell’s sakes! Of all the convoluted, paranoid bullshit I’ve ever had to deal with in my life…
