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She trailed off, the second half of her sentence buried behind the lip that was caught between her teeth.
Breath seized in my chest as I tumbled into the memory of this morning, the sounds of our fucking ringing loudly in my ear. I heard her pleas, her whimpers, her needy whines, and felt the silken grooves of her sheath sucking me deeper…
“You promised you wouldn’t hurt me, Zoei,” she whispered, glancing down at the fingers that were gripping the ledger.
The sensual memory vanished like a balloon at the mercy of a needle. Unlike me, she wasn’t thinking about the intimacy from before.
“Promised?” I scoffed, raising a brow.
Promises were for children and idiots—a worthless word that didn’t have a place in the ruthless arena of court.
She slicked her lips with her tongue. They were reddened with little indents from her teeth.
“Yes, promised,” she insisted, bringing her knees closer to her chest. “When we were at the monastery, you said you would never use your powers against me. We shook on it.”
“In the monastery?” A memory niggled at the back of my mind, covered with the cobwebs of time. “When we were pups?”
The incredulity of my words weren’t lost on Olympia. She flinched slightly, a small crease appearing under her left eye.
“Doesn’t matter when. A promise is a promise,” she insisted, tilting her chin in the air.
“Grow up, Olly.” The words were heavy with tendrils of resentment. “Promises are broken every single day.”
“Not by me,” she whispered, glancing down at the ledger with unseeing eyes. “I never thought ours would be broken.”
“You swore not to hurt me, too,” I continued, refusing to let the hurt pheromones in the air derail me from making my point. “Yet here we are.”
Anger had always been a constant companion, and I reached for it, seeking solace in her familiarity.
“Enough of this childish conversation,” I snapped, rising with a clip of my boots. “You’re stalling. Find me the Goddess-damned person who was responsible for the assassin in my chambers or confess that it was you. It’s one or the other, Olympia.”
“It’s not that simple,” she cautioned, running a hand through her riotous curls. “I have to come up with a motive for each person on this list—something or someone that wants you out of the picture and points the blame in my direction at the same time. Do you know how hard that is?”
“You better get to work then.” My gaze lingered tauntingly on her protesting frame. “Because if it isn’t one of their heads, it’s going to be yours.”
“Zoei!” she snapped, outrage lighting her eyes. “Stop with these empty threats.”
“Empty?” I took a menacing step in her direction, Amnesia drawn an inch out of her scabbard. “Who says it is?”
“I do.” She stood, placing herself too close. “You need me, whether you like it or not. We were both targets here—your clan was targeted, while mine was implicated.”
She crossed her hands over her chest with a deep huff. “While it may be easier for your tiny brain to jump to conclusions and blame theobvioussuspect, I’m going to do some actual work and findrealmotives.”
She spun away, retrieving the ledger from the bed, and moved swiftly to the window. With her back to me, all I saw was the rigid set of her shoulders and heard the angry murmurs under her breath.
I was loath to let her have the last word. It offered her too much power—the illusion of it. It was in my best interest to remind her of her place. She was no more than a prisoner, at the mercy of my beneficence.
There were two halves of me. The first desired nothing more than answers—a seemingly impossible endeavor. The truth seemed more elusive than ever before, and the search became more tedious with each passing moment.
The second half—the hungry, wild,needyspirit stirring inside me—still lusted after the perverse pleasure of Olympia’s lust and fear.
A fervent wish brewed inside me—that the past decades could vanish like words written in sand. That neither of us belonged to strong clans that demanded our utter loyalty. That I could trust freely like everyone else in this world.
Impulse rode me hard, stifling my limbs as I walked woodenly to the armchair that stood alone near the nightstand.
I sat heavily, expecting its plush contours to support my weight. Instead, a sharp crack echoed through the room, and the chair’s wooden legs spread in all directions, crashing to the floor.
A choked noise reached my ears, sounding suspiciously like laughter.
