Page 92 of Warrior

He nods, but the haunted expression doesn’t go away.

“I want both,” I whisper. “I want to take your misery and pain and twist it into pleasure. But I like this version of it, too. I like the softness after.”

“A combination,” he agrees.

He pulls me toward the white couch, sitting and drawing me onto his lap. I straddle him and rest my arms on his shoulders. This way, we’re nearly eye to eye. He’s still a bit taller than me, though.

“Is that wickedness you crave a piece of you from Terror?” he asks. “Did they… condition you to like pain?”

I shake my head.

His hands roam slowly, first across my hips and back, then higher. Up my sides, across my ribs. He palms my breasts and skates his thumb across my nipple.

“They pierced one when I arrived,” I tell him. “It hurt so fucking bad.”

“Why?”

“A sign of their ownership, I think. Like tagging a cow’s ear to mark it as part of the herd.”

His brows furrow. “That’s awful.”

“I know.” I scoot back and unbutton his pants. I’m not sure why he put them back on. But his dick is already stiffening again, and I stroke the inked, soft skin to full hardness. “Tell me about this.”

He laughs quietly. “It was a punishment.”

“For what?” I meet his gaze.

I love his eyes. Dark blue, like the ocean in a storm, they can be so impossibly expressive. It’s how I knew he was in pain. And somehow, he can sharpen them to cut like a knife. He can also, I think, see straight through me.

“After Elora died, I wanted to feel something. Anything.”

He keeps touching my breasts, just soft little movements, and I fight the urge to shift my hips. What he’s saying is important, I think.

“You didn’t see me accidentally walk into the bathroom when you were showering,” he continues.

There’s a tub—which I contemplated drowning myself in—and a glass-walled shower.

“The glass was fogged over, but I saw you. Your silhouette. Your ass, your breasts… although if I had seen the piercings, I don’t think I would’ve been able to stop myself. I was hard in a fucking second, and I hated myself for it. At her funeral, I promised myself that I’d never fall in love again.”

I blink hard.

“Do you remember what’s on her plaque at the mausoleum?”

Yes, of course I do. I used to visit it. I haven’t in a few months, though. The urn isn’t there, sosheisn’t there. I think her parents took her…

Why Saint allowed that, I’ll never know.

“The darkness only makes you shine brighter,” I recite.

It fit her, both as Elora, a glorious star, and Nyx, the primordial deity. Goddess of the night. She picked that namewith care, I know. From her first fight at Olympus, then set on the path by my brother and his friends. With Saint.

They were intertwined, always.

“What made you think of that?” I cup his nape. “And what does that have to do with the tattoo on your dick?”

He leans forward, brushing his lips against mine. I accept the kiss, but I don’t let him deepen it. It’s a rare day for Saint to talk, and I find myself greedy for his words.

“It was you,” he murmurs. “You in the shower. You were singing.”

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