Darker Than Night Page 6

  I shove her ass onto the desk and pull her body into a taut arch, shoving myself between her legs. The robe falls off one shoulder and I bite her there, then lower down, anywhere I can find exposed flesh. It’s a scuffle, nails and teeth. She kicks out and gets me below the ribs but I don’t feel it, I don’t feel anything, I don’t feel anything—

  “Do it,” she taunts. “Do it, Zeus. You’re just like him.”

  Just like him slams into me like a runaway train and the air goes out of my lungs. I have one fist around her thigh and I lever it open under a wall of white noise and pain.

  “He would leave all those women to die. He’d kill them himself. Just like you said. Were you his favorite, Zeus? I think you were.” She’s still got a grip on my shirt and I can’t understand why she’s pulling herself closer, closer to the storm that I’ve become, that I can’t shake. “I think you are your father’s son.”

  “No.” The word bursts out of me, a truth I can’t believe, a truth I don’t want to believe, I can’t allow myself to think it. Can’t.

  “Oh, yes,” Brigit says, and she has tears in her eyes. I sink my fingers into the flesh of her other thigh. Her ass. Anywhere I can. “You are.”

  “No.”

  “He would be so proud of you.”

  One moment I have her thighs in my palms and the next moment, no, no. Her face is in my hands, her hair threaded through my fingers. So close. I’ve pulled her in close, too close, it has to be hurting her. She is not in any state to withstand this, not the precarious angle on the edge of my desk, not the too-wide spread of her legs around my hips, not me. “I’m not the same.” My voice is too rough to be a shout, too shredded, like the rest of me. “I’m nothing like him.”

  She has both hands up, both hands on my wrists, and I can’t tell if it’s to fight me or pull me in closer. “And why not?”

  “Because I love you. Is that what you want to hear? Is it? Is it?” I’m way too fucking loud, way too rough on her head, and Brigit gasps. I’ve done it. I’ve broken her neck. I’ve killed her, I’ve killed them all, every one. Something comes loose in my chest, near my lungs. It wrestles its way out of my throat and Brigit touches my face. She’s still alive. I didn’t kill her. I was never going to. I’ve been trying all my life to keep her alive.

  The wretched storm of my thoughts is interrupted by my phone.

  It’s ringing.

  Brigit freezes.

  There’s only one person with that specific ringtone. For emergencies. This is the only reason I take my hands off Brigit and step back, chest heaving. My business is in ashes. The women are in the clutches of a psychopath. This call has to be about something worse, then, and fuck it. I’ll find out soon enough anyway. It might as well be now.

  I take my phone out of my pocket while Brigit wriggles down from the desk. She ties the belt of her robe with a dignified lift of her chin and leaves, the robe taunting me with every step she takes.

  Emergency or not, I wait until the last moment to answer. “If you’re calling to apologize, I can spare you two minutes.”

  Carina Jain is breathing hard on the other end of the line. My stomach turns over. “I have some new information,” she says, and then there’s a soft creak like she’s dropped into an office chair. Probably she has.

  “If it’s about one of my people—”

  “It’s about Brigit,” she interrupts.

  “We discussed this in the hospital.” I feel an irritated relief at this.

  “There were additional panels—”

  “I don’t know how Demeter got inside the building yet, Jain. It’s irrelevant now, because the building no longer exists.”

  “There were additional panels. I didn’t get the results until after you left.” She sighs. “I need to speak with her, Zeus. Is she there?”

  My stomach turns over. I consider demanding that she tell me, but Carina obviously isn’t in the mood. Neither am I. I have been denied a cleansing post-argument fuck, and my cock is displeased. “Give me a minute.”

  When I renovated the theater I had it carefully insulated between floors, so her footsteps are light as air. I only hear them because I’m listening with my entire soul. The doors to the upstairs are closed when I get there, with no sign of Brigit, only a single lamp on in the corner.

  I find her in the master bath running a brush through her hair. Our eyes meet in the mirror and I hold out the phone. “For you.”

  She puts the brush down. “Who is it?”

  “Dr. Jain. She wants to talk to you about results from the blood test.” It makes less sense as I say it. What results would she discuss with Brigit but not with me? Demeter’s reach had to cover most of the whorehouse.

  Her face pales, all the color bleeding out. “Is it cancer?”

  “No.” Maybe it is. I don’t let on that the floor is tilting beneath me. Brigit takes the phone when I press it into her hand. She holds it like a grenade, turning slightly away from me.

  “Hello? Yes, it’s me.”

  I wander back out to the living room like a ghost and turn on more lamps. The light from each one pools on the floor. It’s excruciating, this love. Bruising. I can’t believe she goaded me into saying it, into admitting it out loud. Again. The dark tendrils of the past slither along the floor and try to hook themselves into my ankles. It’s all very dramatic, these imaginings.

  The act of sitting and waiting impatiently is a joke so I go into the kitchen and take out a bowl from the freezer. I’m leaning against the countertop and letting the bite of the cold dig into my palms when Brigit comes in.

  Reading her expression is an exercise in futility. She looks surprised. Shocked. The corners of her lips turn down, firmly pressed together. I get a breath of her shampoo as she slides the phone onto the countertop, eyeing the bowl cradled in my hand. “What are those?”

  “Frozen grapes.” I crush one between my teeth and swallow it, my heart a wild thing throwing a tantrum to know what’s happening, tell me what the fuck is happening. “What did Carina say?”

  Brigit plucks a frozen grape from the bowl and puts it in her mouth. I have a small heart attack watching her roll it around on her tongue and bite into it. In all my years of experience I have never considered frozen grapes to be erotic.

  There’s a time for everything, I suppose.

  “They’re good,” she says, not looking at me.

  I put the bowl on the countertop. “What did she say?”

  Fuck. Was it cancer? She wasn’t supposed to be testing for that. By the time I woke up from Hades’ misguided attack, they’d already run preliminary screens on Brigit and found—whatever it was they found. Demeter’s latest experiment.

  What else?

  She still won’t look at me, and I can’t stand it. Brigit’s focused on some point out the kitchen window. Touching her will reignite what happened in my office, so I do it, turning her face to mine. “Sweetheart, tell me what she said, or there will be consequences.”

  A short, sharp laugh bursts out of her, and she raises a hand as if to cover her mouth but puts it over mine instead, her fingers holding on tight. “There have already been consequences, I’d say.”

  I know what she’s going to say before she says it. The truth is a pit in my gut, an icy denial that shoots out to the tips of my fingers. Impossible. What she’s going to say is impossible. I don’t fuck up like that. I don’t make those kinds of mistakes.

  But I do, don’t I?

  I have a flash of Brigit sobbing into my shoulder, the blood from the remains of her virginity on her thighs. She’s not crying now. She’s clear-eyed but nervous, her heartbeat fast under the pale skin. “I’m pregnant.” Brigit licks her lips, concentration locked on my face. “She said I’m pregnant.”

  9

  Brigit

  My lips have gone numb. What part of the body’s fight or flight response includes numb lips? It seems like a bad idea. A trick of evolution that didn’t work out. It’s as if the small lizard part of my brain
thinks that telling Zeus this news is a dangerous thing.

  Rationally, it can’t be that risky. He has contingency plans for just this circumstance. He told me about them himself, and he meant it. Never mind that I was naked at the time, bent over his place setting at a fancy table, his grip relentless on my wrist.

  We’re statues now, me facing his kitchen sink and him with his hand on my face, thumb resting on my cheekbone. He wanted me to look into his eyes and now his face is all I can see.

  Did I imagine understanding flickering there in his golden eyes before I said the words? His pupils contract and blow out. The darkly gorgeous expression on his face doesn’t change. It’s only his stillness that belies his shock.

  My belly tightens. Maybe it’s not shock. Maybe it’s resignation, or disappointment, or horror. Maybe he is horrified by this news. All the possibilities run through my mind on a flickering reel. He could cover his face, grab at his hair. He could walk out of this room, out of this house, and never come back. He could rage.

  Somehow, the wash of terror I’m expecting in this moment sputters out. Feeling comes back into my lips while I wait in this eternity of silence. I can’t feel it. The animal mind knows better than to let me feel it.

  The weight of his silence grows with every passing moment. I can hear my own heartbeat.

  He blinks.

  He draws in a long, slow breath, then lets it out.

  He does not take his hand from my face.

  Once, only once, he closes his eyes, letting his eyelashes meet his cheeks. Then I’m caught in the gold fire of his eyes.

  “You—” His voice doesn’t break but it’s a near thing. “You have a number of options.” He straightens up, planting his feet, bringing his other hand up to touch my face, to run the tips of his fingers through my hair. “You should know that they’re all available to you, at any time of your choosing. I have people on call to—”

  “Stop,” I whisper.

  “No, Brigit—” His jaw clenches, and I see how hard it is, I see the strain he’s under, giving me this practiced speech. Because it is a practiced speech. This isn’t the first time he’s given it. “No. Let me—Christ, let me finish.” Zeus’s hands tense. “I have people on call to consult with you at any time of the day or night. I personally guarantee your access to medical care including—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Including the option to—”

  “Don’t.”

  “—end the pregnancy.”

  His eyes shine, and when he’s done speaking he runs his thumbs over my face again. The numb shock I’m wrapped in begins to unravel. One of us is trembling. I’m sure it’s me. He’s as solid as the earth. I’m a gust of wind, curling into myself and back out again every other minute, but he rules this room. This house. This city.

  Me.

  Even if he doesn’t want to. Even if he pretends.

  “I don’t want to end it.”

  He swallows, and the air between us shimmers. I have the strangest sensation that I can see beneath his skin to the jagged heartbeat underneath. The calm face—always a mask. “I would understand if you did.”

  Now it’s my turn to touch him, the strong lines of his jaw. I run my thumb over his lips and he turns his head and presses the palm of my hand into a kiss. It feels ancient somehow, ceremonial, and my breath catches. I would understand if you did.

  “You’re not like him,” I promise.

  “You seemed sure of it earlier.” Fear flashes through his eyes and disappears so fast I’m not convinced it was ever there. “I wouldn’t blame you if—” He glances away, then back. “There’s still time to decide.”

  “I don’t need time.” Certainty floods me like a drug, like a burst of adrenaline that doesn’t subside. I swear the room gets brighter. “I don’t need time to decide.”

  “Brigit, there’s no need to rush—”

  “I’m not rushing. Stop trying to convince me when I’ve already decided.”

  “I have to,” he says, and he’s so close that the pain from behind his eyes spills over into mine. Well, let it. Other things have hurt worse. “I have to, sweetheart, because you can’t go into this blind to the person—”

  I shake his head, pulling him in another inch. Get close to the fire, close enough that it burns. “I see everything,” I say into his mouth, the heat of him chasing away the last of the chilled shock. “I’m pregnant with your child, and I’m having the baby.”

  He closes the final inch between us and kisses me, hard and deep, both of his hands wrapping around behind my head. It’s the kind of kiss we might have shared if we’d met in another world, where no one’s mother had died a tragic death, where no one’s father was evil incarnate, where he had all his beauty and all of his money and none of his pain. It’s reverent and deep and romantic and I fall into it headfirst.

  Zeus breaks the kiss in time for me to take a deep breath that’s filled with him, absolutely filled with him. We’re inside but the air is new and fresh and sparkling, like the first snow. He kisses me again below my jawline, kisses the side of my neck, the curve of my shoulder at the edge of the robe, and then he sinks to his knees in front of me and pulls me close.

  I’m glad for the air now because I can’t get a full breath with how astonishingly intimate this is. He’s never done this before. The last time I saw him kneeling was to fuck me on the floor of the lounge, and even then, I was under him. He lets his forehead rest against my still-flat belly and I run my fingers through his hair.

  My skin tingles. Time travel isn’t real. Past lives aren’t real. God, maybe. But this god is kneeling at my feet, his breath warming my skin, and he presses a kiss below my belly button like he’s bestowing a blessing. Or receiving one.

  Then he kisses lower. The holy moment breaks apart. Only a devil would kiss me this way, teasing, taunting. He’s a god and devil both.

  Zeus, it turns out, is in charge even when he kneels. Maybe especially when he kneels.

  He keeps kissing me while he shifts us in subtle but powerful moments, his hands on my hips, on the swell of my ass, everywhere. He’s been waiting to do this since I provoked him in his office, I can tell, but he’s agonizingly measured about his kisses. I drop my head back and close my eyes. No reason to be afraid of falling. He wouldn’t let me. He’d just as soon take me over the kitchen counter and—

  A breath edged in ice gives me a heartbeat of warning, and then a deep freeze wrapped in heat meets my clit.

  It’s too late to squirm away but I try it anyway, my hips going nowhere in his hands. He laughs around the grape and I feel his tongue dance underneath it while he sucks my flesh in. My embarrassing moans are punctuated with cries.

  “Cold,” I manage, though the rest of my sentences are nothing but heated babbles. I have no idea what I’m saying. “So cold.”

  He doesn’t answer except to use his tongue to roll the grape around in tiny circles against that supersensitive bundle of nerves. Pleasure runs up my spine in an electric melody that makes my hips circle with it, anything, anything to relieve the pressure. But it’s a pressure that only he can take from me. I’ve been waiting so long to come that I could scream and finally I do. My hands find the edge of the counter and I hold on. My limbs won’t work together. My hands are trying to pull me away but my hips are trying to push into his mouth.

  I thought grapes were innocent.

  I thought they were just fruit.

  He rolls it down between my folds and holy shit, oh my fuck, how is he doing this? “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” I cry. “Just let me come.”

  The grape is starting to melt but he pushes into my clit again with the flat of his tongue. It’s too much. The cold. The heat. Pain. Pleasure. Stars explode behind my eyes. New universes form. Flowers push up through new earth and two people dance in the middle of a crowded room, whirling, whirling, whirling. My toes are the only parts of my feet touching the floor but there’s no escaping him, thank god, there’s no escaping
him. All the scenarios I pictured scatter to the ends of the void. He didn’t leave. He didn’t leave. He didn’t leave.

  He keeps his lips on my skin, sucks the grape into his mouth, swallows it.

  And then his breath skims over my clit again.

  “Why did you think it was cancer?”

  I’m too busy trying to get contact with his mouth to care that he’s asked this question. “What?” One of my hands finds his hair but he won’t give me what I want.

  “You made an offer, sweetheart.” Fingers brush up the inside of my thigh and tease at my opening but he won’t put them in, the bastard, the bastard. “Now tell me. When the doctor called, you thought it might be cancer. Why?”

  A grief bomb explodes somewhere in the distance. “My mother died from breast cancer.” Tears of frustration and want slip out from under my lashes and drip down the edge of my jaw. “It’s why my dad made the agreement that he did. He wanted—” He licks me, long and slow, and it’s a good thing I’m holding onto the counter because my legs give out. “He wanted access to her family trust.”

  “I’ll kill him,” he whispers, and then his tongue and teeth and lips are everywhere, everywhere. He’s holding me up, supporting most of my weight, and by the time he’s tongue-fucking me with abandon he has both hands under my ass, spreading me open. I don’t know how he does it. It’s a demanding position but it doesn’t bother him at all. He’s good at this, so good at this it hurts, it makes me come on his tongue, so long and hard that the robe slips off my shoulders and gets trapped between me and the countertop.

  The last wave of my orgasm is the biggest one. It shakes me to the core, it shakes the building off its foundation. The city falls. Kingdoms crumble. The sky collapses inward and who knew that the end of the world would be so beautiful?

  When it’s over he pulls me into his lap, rocking back on his heels, and I drop my head onto his shoulder, aftershocks tearing through muscle and lung. He wraps his arms around me with a studied gentleness. “Your baby,” I whisper feverishly in his ear. “I’m pregnant with your baby.”