“Yes.” No need to deny it. Not here. Not with her. “Though one could argue that there’s a very fine line between a lie and the truth. The man is a white knight in search of a damsel. It’s not my fault that he saw what he wanted and ignored the reality. You are no damsel, love. You never were.” I wind her hair slowly around my fist, increasing the tension as I force her head back.
So beautiful, my Meg. So sharp and brittle and broken. I cup her jaw and drag my thumb over her bottom lip. “He doesn’t see you, love. Not like I do.” A slip, that. I have no reason to be jealous. Meg is mine. Hercules is as well, though he isn’t aware enough to realize it. Not yet.
She blinks up at me, vulnerability crawling through her eyes for one breathless moment before she shuts it down and her walls go back up. “Hades… Sir.” She swallows, and I can feel the movement against my palm where it rests on her throat. A reminder of who truly owns her. She presses her lips together and then seems to decide to continue questioning me. “Why?”
I allow my lips to curve a little. It’s not beyond me to yell and rage, but I learned a long time ago that soft words and gentle sentences inspire fear and obedience just as easily. More so in some cases. Meg sees and shivers in my grasp. I could tell her my plans, could lay all the details out in a neat little row. But, knowing her, she’ll balk at the idea of using Hercules; both to heal our relationship, and to construct my revenge. No, there’s plenty of time for pure honesty later, once we’ve come out the other side.
I speak softly. “I don’t want you to fuck him again. Anything else is up to your discretion, but not that. Not yet.” Not until it serves my purpose.
She frowns as if I can’t see the conflict written all over her body. “I don’t want to fuck him.”
“Yes, love, you do. And you can… but not yet.” I give her bottom lip another slow stroke. “Do you think I’d deny you anything, Meg? You want him. I’ll give him to you.”
The line between her brows deepens. “You didn’t do this for me.”
It stings a little, her lack of faith in me. It’s nothing more than I deserve, but after ten years together… No use in following that thought any deeper.
“Why?” she finally asks.
“Because, love, we’re going to seduce him. Together.” And, in doing so, we’re going to bring all of Olympus to its knees.
Chapter Eight
Hercules
This isn’t going at all how I expected.
I spend the rest of the day looking at this mess from a thousand different angles, and there’s no getting around the truth: I fucked up. I’m just as much a fucking idiot as Meg accused me of being. I let my desire to protect her get the best of me. After what happened in Olympus, I should know better. Protecting other people only leads to trouble, and in the end I don’t make a single goddamn difference. I can’t seem to help myself, though.
Not before, with Leda.
Not now, with Meg.
The path seemed so clear before, but by the time someone knocks at my door, I’m a bundle of nerves. I have no idea what I really signed on for. Fucking Hades, sure. Something that I shouldn’t want, but there’s no denying the anticipation that zings through my veins. He’s nothing like the guys I messed around with in high school and college. He’s got an edge about him that says he wants to hurt me. I’m afraid I’m going to like it.
I open the door to find a cute, curvy blonde standing there. She’s wearing a short skirt and a cropped lace top thing, and I blush at the sight of her pale pink nipples showing through. In the second it takes to pull my gaze to her face, she’s started laughing at me. She props a hand on her generous hip and smirks. “God, you’re precious. They’re going to eat you up with a spoon.” She turns and starts away, which leaves me scrambling to shut my door behind me and keep up.
I finally catch her right before she hits the elevator. She’s fast for such a little thing. “I’m Hercules.”
“I’m aware.” She punches the button and gives me another look, finally settling on my jeans. “First up is wardrobe. That will not do.”
I follow her into the elevator, feeling like a kid tagging behind an adult. “What’s your name?”
She sighs like it’s an intrusive question. “Tink. I’m handling your training, because obviously I’ve pissed off the big guy in recent weeks.”
“You mean Hades.”
“I mean Hades.” The elevator slides to a stop, and she leads the way down the hall and through a door into another, smaller hall. Tink doesn’t wait for me to gawk. She just opens yet another door and strides through. Inside is the largest closet I’ve ever seen. Or maybe it’s a store? I honestly can’t tell as she moves to the right side and starts sifting through the racks. She shoots me another look and frowns. “Take off your clothes.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I can usually eyeball measurements, but the baggy T-shirt is throwing me off.” She made a vague motion. “Strip. We don’t have a ton of time, so save the bashful virgin act for the customers.”
Customers?
Somehow, in all this, it never occurred to me that I’d be dealing with customers. I’d braced for Hades. Had prepared myself as much as was reasonably possible. Nothing could prepare me for this. “I’m not sleeping with people.”
Tink pauses and gives me a long look. Whatever she must see on my face makes her sigh. “Wow, you really are a baby. Look, Hades isn’t a pimp. I mean, I guess technically he could qualify since some of us like to fuck the customers. But it’s not part of the contract. Submission or domination, depending on our terms, but not fucking.”
It’s like she’s speaking a different language. “I don’t understand.”
She mutters something about hazard pay and comes to stand before me. She’s so short, she barely hits my chest, but that doesn’t make her presence any less intense. Tink taps my chest. “Strip.”
There’s enough snap in her voice that I obey without thinking, pulling my shirt over my head with one hand. She snatches the fabric from my hands and tosses it to the side. “That thing you just did, how you felt so right in obeying me? That’s submission.”
“I know what submission is.” I’m not an idiot, no matter what she obviously thinks. “I know what Hades is, too.” King of the Underworld. Someone with his hands in all the right pockets, because from what I could glean in my rudimentary research of this place, the clientele is the elite of Carver City. They’re what the Thirteen are back in Olympus. Powerful and rich beyond measure, with a total lack of morality.
“Then why are we having this conversation?”
I try to articulate the strange feeling inside me. “When I made the deal, he acted like he now owns me.”
“If you made a deal with him, then he does own you.”
That’s what I thought. “Then why…” I motion at the room.
Understanding flares and she rolls her eyes. “Hades doesn’t fuck anyone but Meg. I mean, he does scenes with others sometimes and he enjoys watching, but just because you sold yourself to him doesn’t mean he’s going to like make you his sex slave or something.”