by Rucker, Shay
Why the hell he was focused on knife throwing instead of blade wielding was a mystery he refused to explain. It was senseless.
“I’m done,” she declared, sheathing her blades against her sides and back.
“You haven’t hit the target once today. You’re not done,” he said, tossing her another blade, which she caught with ease. “I don’t even need you to hit the rings on the bull’s-eye anymore. Just hit the fucking wood it’s drawn on.”
“I. Am. Done.”
Zeus proceeded to curse her nonexistent skills and hit his head against a tree hard enough to shake a few leaves loose. To his credit, he’d used his body and hands over and over again to help her understand what the motions should feel like. He’d brought the target closer and still she couldn’t hit it. She was useless at throwing a knife, but hell, she wasn’t training for a circus act, so why was this so fucking important? Nothing since being unable to save her sister had made her feel so incompetent.
And Zeus’s constant criticisms hadn’t helped.
He could stay out here all night breathing in tree spores and squirrel shit for all she cared, but she was going back in the house, taking a bath, and lying down for a long nap. She was walking away when something hard struck her on the ass.
“Son of a…”
When she turned and looked down, there was a golf-ball-size rock that rolled to a standstill inches away from her foot.
“That’s how you hit a target. Learn first. Rest later.”
Sabrina knew in some little, corroded chamber of his heart he was trying to help her. On some level she knew this, but when fatigue, anger, and a longstanding negative reaction to being pushed collided, Sabrina grabbed the closest thing at hand and threw it.
The blade sailed through the air, perfectly on track to embed itself squarely in Zeus’s chest.
She was horrified as she realized what she’d done. Zeus smiled at her and twisted around, plucking the blade out of the air by its hilt. He used his own continuous motion, fluidly redirecting the blade and letting it fly straight to the center of the bull’s-eye. She hadn’t thought of this before, but she clearly saw it. Zeus was a show-off. A cocky, arrogant, I-am-a-god-with-a-blade show-off.
Retrieving her blade, Zeus walked back toward her with slow strides, her blade dancing excitedly through his fingers.
“Now you know what it feels like. No thought, only intent and motion. Your big woman’s head with stupid woman’s brain chatter got in your way. Sometimes you just need to stop thinking and let the blade do what it wants to do.”
Sabrina looked down at his large hand offering the blade back to her. Despite his knowledge of battling with sharp objects, the idiot lacked good sense if he thought it was safe to give a woman he’d just insulted a weapon. Especially after she’d just thrown said weapon at him.
Grabbing Zeus’s wrist with one hand, she used her other hand to extract her knife and sheath it. Trailing her fingers over the vein in his wrist, she smiled up at him before turning her focus to his hand. She traced the faint lines on his palm, stroking her finger gently over each of his fingers. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t like the roughness there, the strength, but still…
“Zeus?” She looked up at him. His gaze was glued to their hands. He was mesmerized. But of course he would be, she thought. His hands, not his heart or his head, seemed to be the seat of his soul. She spiraled her finger around to the center of his palm. Bull’s-eye. He was breathing a little rougher, his nostrils flared. His eyes, gleaming and intense, never left the motion of her fingers.
Sabrina knew if she let her eyes drift south, he would be hard. Her heart rate quickened with lust and anticipation. She was playing with fire, but the power she held made her feel giddy, daring. Why shouldn’t she provoke him? Hadn’t he ridden her hard all morning, thrown a rock at her? Maybe he was too skilled to let her pierce his seemingly immortal hide with her blade, but she had other skills.
“Did you just call me bigheaded?”
“Yeah,” he muttered lowly as if hypnotized by the sensual spell she was weaving into his palm.
“It’s rude to call someone bigheaded,” she said as she lifted her finger away from his palm. The only contact they maintained was her other hand gripping the back of his wrist. He looked up at her then, muted desperation lurking around the edges of his metallic gaze.
“You have a near perfect-size head,” he said as he guided her fingers back to his palm. “Just meant you think too much. I found a way to shut those thoughts down.”
She stroked his palm again. “By throwing a rock at me and causing me pain.”
“Yeah. Worked.”
She coaxed his fingers into a fist and wrapped both of her hands around it, gripping firmly as she looked him squarely in the eyes.
“Zeus, you throw a rock at me again, and I am going to kick. Your. Ass.”
It was an empty threat, but it gave her a sense of power. Until he threw his head back and laughed. She smiled at the sound. It felt as precious as a child’s trust. More so, because she’d never heard him laugh.
Sabrina tossed Zeus’s hand away in mock disgust when his laughter settled into a smile. “Not that funny.”
“Exceedingly funny,” he contradicted.
She rolled her eyes and turned to walk back to the house. He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her back against him.
Yep. He was definitely hard.
Zeus wrapped his other arm around her shoulders, right beneath her collarbone. She felt like she was wearing a human straitjacket.
Struggling halfheartedly, she attempted to free herself. Using his head, Zeus tilted hers to the side, and sucked the corded tendon running down the length of her neck.
The feeling of his mouth and tongue leached all resistance from her body. The arm against her collarbone loosened just enough for him to reach his right hand over to cup and massage her breast, while the arm wrapped around her abdomen pulled her tighter against him.
“Zeus…”
She intended to tell him to stop, to put her down and let her go, but his fingers burrowed beneath her T-shirt and bra, and plucked and squeezed her nipple. She felt liquid heat slip from inside of her body and pool in her panties. She needed them off, needed them replaced by his large hand.
“Sabrina,” Zeus groaned. “Haven’t I been good enough today?”
Laughter spilled straight from her soul. “You threw a rock at me and called me bigheaded. That’s far from being—” She sucked in a startled breath as his fingers deftly slipped beneath her panties and stroked her, bathing her clit with her own moisture. “Shit!”
“But this is good, isn’t it? Good enough to make you forget all the bad?”
She braced her foot against his shin and pushed her ass harder against his groin.
“Yeah,” he gritted out. She could feel him smiling against her neck. “That’s good, isn’t it? So good.”
He pushed three fingers into her again and again while his thumb stroked her clit.
The forest grew silent at the sound of her cries as orgasm shuddered through her.
Sabrina closed her eyes and went limp, her body trembling in aftershock. She moaned as Zeus slipped his fingers free from her underwear and walked with her collapsed against him.
Zeus set her on her feet and maneuvered her around so that her back pressed against the trunk of a large tree. Sabrina opened her eyes when he pulled off her pants, leaving her lower body bare. Before she could speak, he shoved his jeans down around his thighs, lifted her up against the tree, and pushed deep inside of her. He didn’t pause to let her adjust, but thrust into her wilder than any animal around them. The thickness and force of him pumping into her threatened to overwhelm the integrity of her vaginal walls. She tried to catch his rhythm, but his hands gripped her ass tighter as he shifted her thighs higher and wider, giving him full access as he grunted toward his completion. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh overlaid their groans and her sharp cries. With two final pumps,
Zeus became rigid as he shot hot semen deep into her womb. The feeling of his seed jetting into her pushed Sabrina into another orgasm, more intense than the last.
She sighed, spent. Her head lolled against Zeus’s shoulder, and she closed her eyes. If Zeus let her go, she would fall to the ground like an oversize brown leaf and remain there until she’d regained her strength.
Zeus, who hadn’t stirred since his violent ejaculation, lifted her head and stared down at her. The remoteness in his gaze disturbed her. She remained silent, unsure whether he would pull away or reach behind him, pull one of his beloved blades, and slit her throat.
“It won’t work,” he eventually said.
“Maybe not, but it worked just fine a minute ago,” she joked weakly.
“It won’t go away,” he gritted out, striking the tree.
She flinched as if he’d struck her, and in a sense he had. He was unprotected and buried deep inside her, yet he continued to act as if the only value she had was satisfying him until he no longer needed her in his life. She was so over people rejecting her and treating her like she wasn’t worth the breath God breathed into her at birth.
Gathering her coldness, she tried to push away, but Zeus wouldn’t budge. He just stood there, looking down at her.
“Look, Zeus. You’re making this more than it is. Remember, I can be off your hands with a phone call.”
He rolled his eyes as if she were being unreasonable. “You can’t leave. Didn’t you hear me just say I still want you?”
“Get the fuck off me,” she snapped. She hadn’t intended to show anger, but it was better than acknowledging the pain.
“You leave when I’m done, not a damn second before.”
She blinked. Attempted to speak, but no words came out. Dumbfounded. She was completely dumbfounded. Did he really believe his wants and needs were the only ones that mattered?
A sound descended from above, and she jerked her head back just as a pinecone struck Zeus on the crown of his head and tumbled toward the ground.
Zeus frowned at her. “A pinecone just fell on my head.”
Sabrina looked up into the far reaches of the treetops. The sky above barely peeked through. Grateful at least Mother Nature had her back, she turned back to Zeus. “If I had a vote, one of those big fucking branches would have fallen and split your thick skull open.”
“Lucky for me you didn’t have a vote.”
ZEUS TUCKED HIMSELF back into his pants as he watched Sabrina pull her pants up and brush away leaves and dirt. She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm, stopping her in her tracks.
“You’re mad at me. Why?”
She looked down at his hand, then back up at him. He knew there was little she could do to cause him physical harm, but the look she threw him was evil enough to make him wonder if she could.
“I’m not mad at you,” she said calmly. “I’m mad at myself.”
He snorted. Like hell she wasn’t mad with him. If she had the skill, she’d bury her knife in his throat and stand over him as he bled out slowly.
She tried to shake free of his hold, and he released her, wary as she walked toward the back door of the cabin. He followed her silently because he didn’t know what else to do. He would have to watch her. People usually broadcast their thoughts with their actions and weren’t even aware of it.
After watching her for two hours, he assumed he no longer existed in her world, that he was a nonentity. She stepped over and around him, looked past or through him. When he went to her room and lay on the bed beside her, she didn’t say anything, not even when he reached out and placed his hand on her hip. Her breathing was so soft and even he’d thought she had fallen asleep. When he moved closer, molding himself along the length of her back, she leisurely rose from the bed and walked out of the room. The television came on in his bedroom a few seconds later. He turned to lie on his back in the too-small bed. Watching her was not giving him the results he wanted. She was ignoring him. People didn’t ignore him. They avoided him, stayed out of his way, attacked and were killed by him, reluctantly accepted him, like Mama’s Brood, but no-fucking-body ignored him. Zeus rubbed his hands over his face. Hopping out of bed, he walked over to his room. He was done trailing her all over the cabin like some attention-starved mutt too beaten down to understand being pitiful didn’t get you what you wanted.
Sabrina was lying on his bed, propped up on all four of his pillows, attention focused on some travel show. He closed and locked the door, but she didn’t even look in his direction. He growled in frustration, and she fucking ignored that too.
He was done with this shit. Climbing on the bed, he pulled two of the pillows from behind her pile, placed them against the headboard, and leaned into them, bending his knees as he too watched the television.
Zeus frowned. He’d already seen this show. It was one about Trinidad and a few other Caribbean islands. His experience hadn’t been anything like the host’s tame tourist bullshit. He had a place in the Caribbean; he didn’t want to hear about it on his fucking television. He reached over, took the remote from her, and turned the channel.
She didn’t react.
He ground his teeth together, vaguely aware of the twitch that had started on the outer edge of his right eye. He turned to a nature and science channel just in time to see a computer-generated enactment of a star going supernova, exploding into trillions of sparks of light. It was exactly what he felt like, exploding, destroying himself, and everything around him just to see if she would notice enough to be affected.
“Turn back,” she said with quiet menace. As if he gave a—
In a blink, her boy-brief-covered ass was straddling his groin and she had her knife—the knife he had gotten for her—pressed against his throat. Even if it was in the wrong place to sever an artery, his heart swelled at her accomplishment.
“Turn back,” she demanded again.
He couldn’t help it; he didn’t want to help it: he got hard.
Zeus leaned back into the headboard, allowing the blade she had pressed at his throat to slide against his flesh, drawing blood.
“Jesus, Zeus,” Sabrina hissed, breaking rule number one and dropping the blade so she could rip off her pillowcase and hold the material against his neck.
“Just blood, Sabrina. If you want to work with knives, you need to get used to it.”
“I cut you,” she said in disbelief.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. Even though it was his movement that had caused the cut, he didn’t think he’d ever felt this proud of another person. She’d moved damned fast with her blade. She was the only woman who made him want to fuck like a god of procreation. Sowing his oats in her again and again.
He lifted his hips, rocking into her cradling warmth. She closed her eyes and rubbed weary fingers over her brow while her other hand pressed the bundled material against his neck. Scratch had probably stopped bleeding the moment she’d applied the first bit of pressure.
He rocked again, closing his eyes on the pleasure spike that burned through his blood. He was addicted to this feeling. She could ride him into the night on this feeling, and he’d never lag. He would be a sexual endurance athlete, getting higher and higher on endorphins the longer they did this one thing they did so well together.
He opened his eyes when the cloth fell away from his neck. Sabrina leaned forward, placing her hands on the headboard, trapping his head between. He groaned in protest as she lifted her hips off his dick, but rejoiced again when he realized that her breasts were suspended just below his mouth.
“I shouldn’t have sex with you again after what you said to me,” Sabrina said.
What the hell had he said? He couldn’t remember ever needing a woman to talk to him about what was bothering her, but in this instance, he needed her to tell him because he didn’t have a clue.
He palmed her breast, squeezed a nipple. A low, need-filled curse made him smile against her neck. Feeling encouraged, he urged her hips back down onto his
erection.
Maybe this will be the one last time, he thought to himself. Or at least he thought he had. When she tensed above him, he knew that he had spoken the words out loud, said something wrong. Again. Fuck. Fuck!
He acted quickly, rolling her over so she was on her back and trapped beneath his weight.
“Let me go,” she said.
“Can’t,” he muttered as he stroked his nose against her temple. He liked whatever coconut-blended scent lingered in her hair.
“If not now, when, Zeus?”
Never. “Soon,” he lied. “Just tell me what I keep saying to piss you off.”
She turned her head away, tuning him out again.
He savored the contour of her jawline, her cheekbones, the steel in those molten-brown eyes, though one was still faintly discolored from the violence she’d endured during her abduction.
He ground into her, and her eyes fluttered closed, her hand tentative against his hip, as if uncertain whether she would pull him closer or push him away.
“I’m just the self-centered sociopath, remember?” he said, quoting her prior words. “It’s your job to make me understand.”
That last part wasn’t just a manipulation. He wanted to understand; he wanted her to be there to bust his ass over something he wouldn’t have considered.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. You can be as self-centered and crazy as you want to be. Just let me go.”
Her words incited the primal part of him that wanted to feed death and pain to anything and anyone who tried to keep her from him. That part of him wouldn’t let him let her go. It accepted that she was his the moment he’d touched her on the warehouse floor. It had claimed her and hadn’t let her get far from its reach since she’d first gazed up at him in all his bloody glory. Zeus didn’t comprehend relationships. He’d thought his attachment to Sabrina was purely physical because that was all it had ever been with women. When faced with the idea of losing her, he knew that there would never be one last fuck. Not until one of them was dead and buried. He knew this. She was as tangled up inside of him as the spirits existing in his blades. Maybe more. Sabrina was bound to both of them, Zeus and his spirits, and just as those spirits had claimed him as a boy, he would claim her as completely.
