Learn My Lesson (Wicked Villains Book 2)

by Katee Robert

  The door opens before I can turn and walk away. Hercules leans against the doorjamb, his hair wet from a recent shower and a towel wrapped low around his hips. He studies me for a long moment before he pushes off the frame and steps back. “Come in.”

  “Actually, I—”

  “Meg.” He gives me a soft smile. “Come in.”

  It’s what I want. Why am I so conflicted about taking it? I finally nod and follow him into his room. He doesn’t speak again, and I have too much to say to get anything out. Hercules disappears into the bathroom for a moment and comes back naked. He eases off my robe and takes my hand, tugging me to his bed and tucking us both in with an efficiency that’s truly impressive. I rest my head against his chest and listen to his strong heart beating.

  The comfort he offers comes without strings, without manipulations. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to speak my pain into the dark room. “Tonight hurt.”

  “I know.” He smooths a hand over my hair. “I’m sorry.”

  “I love him.” I don’t even know why I’m saying this, why I’m treating this man as my own personal confessional, but I can’t seem to stop. “I don’t know if it’s enough. I don’t know if it ever was.”

  Hercules cuddles me closer, his strong arms acting as a barrier between me and the rest of the world. “He’d walk through fire for you.”

  Maybe once. I don’t know if it’s true any longer. “When we first fell for each other, yes. But the years have a way of taking their toll. We’ve grown apart. The stupid thing is that I don’t even know when it started. It’s something I should know, right? But it feels like I just woke up one day and realized that he’s almost more a stranger now than he was when I first made my deal.”

  “It happens like that sometimes.” His lips brush my forehead. “I think he’s trying, though. In his own way.”

  I’m not so sure. What kind of man throws another man at a problem instead of wading in to fix it himself? Hades, that’s who. I manage to keep that doubt inside, though. Hercules has enough to worry about without adding my wavering emotional health to the mix. I hold him as tightly as I can. “If you were smart, you’d run. I can get you out if that’s what you decide.”

  Hercules presses a kiss to my temple. “I’m not going anywhere, Meg.”

  That’s what I’m afraid of.

  Chapter 21

  Hades

  I let myself into Hercules’s room well before dawn. The faint light of the full moon shines through his windows, illuminating the scene on the bed. I knew Meg would need comfort tonight, but I also knew she wouldn’t accept it from me. Not this time.

  Is that what she wants? To walk in the sun with a man like the one holding her so close while she sleeps? The thought carves out my stomach and leaves me curiously empty. If I was a better man, I’d let them both go, let them attempt to find whatever happiness there is in the world with each other. If any two are able to do it, it’s Meg and Hercules. For all her scars, she’s still one of the good ones. He brings that side out of her. I’d have to be particularly dense not to recognize that.

  I’m not a better man. I’m not even a good one. This woman and this man belong to me, and I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure they stay.

  I give a soundless sigh, and Hercules opens his eyes. We stare at each other for a long moment. I expect recrimination. Judgment. Anger. Any number of things. He simply smiles. “I figured you’d make your way here eventually.”

  “Am I becoming predictable?” We both speak low to avoid waking Meg, though I could have told him it’s unnecessary. Once she falls asleep, she’s dead to the world. A tornado could burst through the building and she’d likely sleep through it.

  “You care.”

  Two words to encompass so many conflicting emotions. I nod at the woman sleeping in his arms. “Thank you. She wouldn’t accept this from me, but she needs it.”

  Hercules shakes his head slowly. “You really are a good Dom, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” I should leave it at that, but apparently the honesty earlier tonight begets further honesty. “But not a good person.”

  “No, not a good person.” He lifts a hand and motions me forward. “What are you waiting for?”

  Will that man ever cease to surprise me? I slip my hands into my pockets and take a step back. “I’m respecting her wishes.”

  “You’re being a fucking idiot.”

  I blink. “You’re a mouthy little sub, aren’t you?” There’s a specialness to Hercules that I can’t let myself enjoy. He’s not for keeping, and forgetting that is unacceptable. Leaving right now is the only option. Yet my feet don’t quite get the instruction.

  What if he was for keeping?

  For Meg, yes, but also…for me.

  “It’s not just me she needs and you know it. Stop being a fucking coward and get in here.”

  Now is the time to walk. Meg and I have survived plenty in our decade together, and that history suggests we’ll survive this too. Hercules was only meant to be a temporary fix. Or that was the plan until he burst into our lives and the balance shifted. It’s the one thing I couldn’t have anticipated—his effect on both of us. For the first time in thirty years, I don’t know what the future holds. Not in its entirety. I can’t be sure my plan won’t break us.

  I strip slowly, aware of Hercules’s attention on me. A small vain part of me enjoys the way he watches me so closely, but he’s right. This isn’t about me. Or even about us. How can this man come into such a longstanding relationship and see things so clearly? I didn’t plan on that. Perhaps it’s just who he is. He shines a light wherever he goes.

  I carefully climb onto the bed on the other side of Meg. She barely shifts as I settle in next to her. She looks younger like this, less world weary with her carefully cultivated mask set down for the moment. It makes me ache. She’s so formidable during her waking hours. She may stand at my side, but she doesn’t need me. Not for protection, not to shore up her defenses, not for a single thing. It’s such an attractive thing in a partner, to know that she can weather any storm and keep the things we value safe in the process. But somewhere along the way, we went from standing side by side to being on either end of a gulf I don’t know how to cross. I’m too old, too set in my ways. I can’t bend for anyone.

  Even her.

  “She’s worth it.”

  For a moment, I think Hercules is pulling thoughts straight from my head, teasing them into existence through sheer force of will. That would be a neat trick, but it’s ultimately impossible. No, this man is simply better at reading people than I anticipated. I shift onto my side so I can see him better, and he mirrors the movement. “Surely your anger at your father doesn’t delve deep enough to sacrifice yourself for it.”

  Hercules doesn’t blink at the change in topic. “That’s really not for you to say, is it?”

  He has a point, but I don’t like unknown quantities, and this man has proven himself to be one. Since bargaining himself away for Meg, he hasn’t quite done what I expect. I study his face, taking in the strong lines of his jaw and cheekbones, the straight Roman nose, those full lips that save his features from being too harsh. Really though, it’s his eyes that hold a person captive. Contrary to popular belief, not all eyes are the windows to the soul. Too many things can counteract that. Control, fear, a skilled lie. Hercules has none of that. His eyes could drown the unwary.

  I don’t look away. “Explain it to me.”

  For a moment, I think he might argue, but he glances at Meg and sighs. “My father didn’t stop doing terrible things after he… did what he did to you. I tried to make him pay through the appropriate channels, and it blew up in the face of someone who deserved it the least.”

  I could play with this, could tease out his willing victimhood to serve my purposes. But this blasted honesty gets the best of me yet again. “It’s not going to bring him down, little Hercules. I may have had that ability once, but I don’t anymore. I can kill him, but I can’t dismantle hi
s power structure.”

  He went pale. “You could kill him.”

  “Yes.” No use denying it. It’s what I intend, after all. If he hasn’t seen what I am up to by this point, he’s denser than I could have dreamed. No, that’s not the truth. Hercules is too insightful by half. He just has a pair of rose-tinted glasses that color his experience with the world. Despite being slapped down again and again, they remain intact. It’s the strangest thing.

  He shifts a little closer and pulls the covers up when Meg shivers. “Hades.” He gives me a long look. “You didn’t change your name back. You know, in Olympus now, Hades is more bogeyman than real person. I always assumed he was a legend.”

  We’re dancing too close to things best left in the past, but the past is here and shining directly in my face. “It’s a legacy role, similar to Zeus. With my son…” Even after all this time, I can barely speak the words. “There is no one to assume the role. It dies with me.”

  Hercules reaches across Meg’s sleeping body and takes my hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “You weren’t even alive at the time. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “Fuck, Hades, I can still offer emotional support even if I wasn’t directly responsible for what happened to your family.” He strokes his thumb over my knuckles. “What were their names?”

  “Amber. Jonah.” Saying them aloud feels like summoning their ghosts to this room. I was a different man in my early twenties. They wouldn’t recognize me now. Some moments, I barely recognize myself.

  Hercules squeezes my hand. “You should have told her.”

  No point arguing. He’s right. “I know.” I’ve never lied to Meg—not really—but withholding this information is almost the same thing.

  Hercules keeps stroking my hand, little movements that curl through me even as they provide the comfort I don’t deserve. He finally says, “What you said before, your plan to defile me and send evidence to my father… It won’t work. He won’t care.” He doesn’t tense up as he says the next words. “For it to be true justice, you’d have to kill me.”

  My chest locks up and I stare at him, shocked to my very core. “What?”

  “That’s what this is about, right? A son for a son?” He’s watching me so closely, and for the first time since we met, I have no idea what my face is showing. “He already wrote me off, Hades. You could be fucking me seven ways to Sunday, and it will barely make him blink. That’s not how my father works.”

  Surely he didn’t just suggest I murder him? I won’t lie and say the thought never crossed my mind in my initial plans, but I discarded it upon meeting him for a thousand different reasons. Meg and the future of our relationship, such as it is. Even Hercules himself. “I’m not killing you, little Hercules.”

  “Why not?”

  What is his aim with this conversation? I twist my hand and take his wrist, tightening my grip until his fingers splay out and he bites his bottom lip. There are so many things I could say, so many reasons I could give that would detour us away from this conversation. In the end, this strange addiction to honesty wins out. “Because you’re mine.”

  He’s mine.

  Yes, that’s my truth.

  Hercules is mine the same way Meg is mine. Except it’s not the same. She and I push and pull and move through an intricate dance of power in every single one of our waking moments. With Hercules, it’s effortless. He slid perfectly into a slot in our lives that I hadn’t even realized was lacking until his presence brought it to my attention. I acquired him as a gift to Meg, yes, but I never realized that I would feel this way about him, too.

  “He knows I’m here.”

  He doesn’t form it as a question, but I answer him nonetheless. “He knows you’re here.”

  Hercules nods. “Maybe that’s enough.”

  It’s not. Zeus will be ripping his hair out at the thought of his son within my grasp. Not because he cares about Hercules. If he did, he wouldn’t have let the man leave the city and struggle the way he has these last few months. No, Zeus is a schoolyard bully. Hercules is a possession, a toy, and even if he’s long since discarded it, he can’t stand the thought of someone else picking it up and finding value in it. It will aggravate him to no end to know Hercules is in my household. Eventually, I will push him hard enough that he’ll be forced to come here, to my territory, and retaliate.

  That’s when I’ll truly gain my revenge.

  I release Hercules’s wrist and reach up to stroke a single finger along his jaw, tracing the hard line there. Lifetime bargain or not, I can’t guarantee he’ll stay, short of locking him in. I know how that story ends. I don’t know how this one does, though. “You’ll be tempted to break your word at some point.”

  He makes the conversational leap with me without hesitation. “I’ve never broken my word before. I won’t start now.”

  Promises aren’t worth the air it takes to voice them. I’ve learned that lesson time and time again. “I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?” I lean over Meg and kiss him.

  Chapter 22

  Meg

  I wake up pressed between two bodies I know intimately. Hercules has a big hand bracketing my hip, but from the way they’re moving, they’re making out over my head. Both their hips shift as if seeking each other, except I’m in the middle, keeping them from closing that last bit of distance.

  I’m in the way.

  If I had any self-respect at this point, I’d bolt out of the bed and retreat back to my bedroom to brood in peace. I came here last night to escape the demons nipping at my heels, and yet here they are, thrusting their hard cocks against me. If I leave, will they even pause? Or will they get right to fucking without the slightest bit of hesitation? I don’t know. I don’t even know what I want. I’m not fool enough to think their relationship only exists when I’m in the room. It’s not true for me and each of them, why should it be true for them together? Expecting that—wanting that—is ugly and horrible and selfish of me.

  Hades drags his hand across my side to delve between my thighs. The shock of the touch has my eyes flying open. Hercules breaks their kiss and looks down at me, his blue eyes already gone hazy with pleasure. “Good morning, Meg.”

  “I—”

  Hades chooses that moment to push two fingers into me. “Did you think we wouldn’t notice you waking up?”

  That’s exactly what I thought. I swallow hard. “You were busy.”

  “Never too busy for you.” Hercules shifts down to kiss me, and I can taste Hades on his tongue. He barely lets me sink into him before he lifts his head. “You tensed up. Why?”

  Is he seriously asking me this while Hades fingers me? I arch up to take his mouth again, but he moves back, staying just out of reach. Hades chooses that moment to withdraw his fingers and deliver a stinging slap to my clit. “Answer him, love.”

  When I craved being the center of their attention, I didn’t anticipate this. I open my mouth, but hesitate. Admitting my selfish thoughts might as well pave the way for them to leave me. The fear feels a little irrational right now, with Hercules reaching down to lightly stroke my clit and Hades moving to finger-fuck me from behind. It doesn’t mean it’s not valid or that it won’t leave me so incredibly vulnerable. “Can we please just get down to the orgasms and stop talking so much?”

  Hades’s lips brush the curve of my ear. “No.” He pushes a third finger into me. “Answer his question.”

  I can’t think past what they’re doing to me, past the way their presence overwhelms me from both sides. The truth spills from my lips, sharp and painful. “I feel like I’m unnecessary. Replaceable.”

  Hercules inhales sharply. “What?”

  Now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop. “Hades shares with you what he won’t share with me. He doesn’t shut you out.” God, it hurts to admit that, hurts more than I could imagine.

  Hades stops fucking me with his fingers, but he doesn’t remove them. “You’re still hurting.” He sounds…shocked? But surely that
can’t be. Hades knows all, even when I want to shove him out a window for seeing things I’m not willing to share.

  “I’m always hurting.” My words don’t have the intended amusement in them. They come out stark. True.

  I twist to face him and they allow me to do it. Hercules wraps his arms and body around my back, always giving me comfort in whatever way I’ll allow. His strength buoys me to speak the truth that’s been lodged in my throat for days. Longer. I look up into Hades’s dark eyes and, for the first time in as long as I can remember, he’s not holding himself back from me. He’s right here, close enough to touch in every way that counts.

  I swallow hard. I may not get another opportunity to get this out. “You didn’t tell me about them. You’ve stopped telling me anything. I’m not a partner, Hades. I’m just another soldier for you to bend to your will.”

  “Not that, love, never that.” He strokes his thumbs over my cheeks and they come away wet with my tears. Hades presses his forehead to mine. “I love you. I may not… show it abundantly at times, but never doubt that I do.”

  “I love you too,” I whisper. “I just don’t know if it’s enough.” The same words I said to Hercules are just as true now as they were then. That’s the worst part of it. Love is supposed to conquer all, but I’ve known that for a lie most of my adult life. It feels different with Hades, and that used to be something I cherished. Now, it seems like every move we make cuts each other, no matter how carefully we maneuver.

  “Give us time, Meg.” Hercules kisses the top of my head.

  Pain lances through me. “You two want—”

  “No.” Hades shakes his head. “Give us time. All three of us.”

  I stare up at him. Surely he isn’t saying what I think he’s saying. I lick my lips, striving to calm my racing heart. It’s no use. “The three of us.”

  “Yes.” He looks deadly serious for once. No amusement. No cruelty. Just Hades. “We could be a true triad.” His lips quirk. “At least we could if we get out of each other’s way long enough to make it happen.”