Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
I catch her wrists and pin them at the small of her back. She’s tricked me twice. It should be reason enough not to kiss her now, not to allow her close, but this woman is the unplumbed depths of the ocean. I want to dive right into her, embrace her shadows, let her crush me in her embrace. The impulse is nearly suicidal and exclusive only to her, but I can’t resist it any more than the ocean can resist the moon’s pull.
It’s so much worse because she instantly kisses me back, her vicious mouth going soft and sweet as she opens for me. Even knowing what I do, she tastes like home. I’m terrified that she’ll always taste like home to me.
I break the kiss just enough to speak against her lips. “If you move, I’m going to stab you, and I won’t miss.”
Her laughter fills the room. “I’ve missed you so much, love.” Her voice cracks in the middle of the sentence, truth breaking through.
I’ve missed her, too. Even if she’s a different shape than the girl I fell in love with, one with even more jagged edges to bloody myself on. I drag my mouth over her jawline as I pat her down, removing her gun, ejecting the clip, and tossing both parts away.
She lifts her arms so I can wrestle her hoodie off her body, quickly followed by her tank top, leaving her in only a lace bra that looks like a sharp word could shred it to pieces. Circe always did like her pretties, though neither of us could have afforded something designer back in the day.
I kiss my way down her stomach to the band of her jeans, continuing my pat down. She’s got two knives in ankle sheaths, which is honestly surprising. Even knowing she held her own against Atalanta, that she orchestrated the downfall of Olympus, part of me can’t help but look at her and see a prissy rich woman like the ones I’ve been surrounded with since becoming Hermes.
Hermes. The title has come to feel like an extension of my identity in recent years. In the last couple days, that’s changed. Now it’s an ill-fitting shirt, tags scratchy and fabric dry and itchy. I want it off.
Just like I want Circe’s pants off.
This is a mistake, but I’ve been making a lot of them lately. What’s one more? I send the knives skating away across the floor and tug her pants down, having to pause to pull off her boots before I can slide them off.
And then she stands before me in nothing but two scraps of lace that do little to cover the woman beneath. Kneeling before her like this, I can see the shadow of her slit through her panties, and there’s a hint of her pale-pink nipples beneath the lilac of her bra.
I suddenly don’t want to lift my gaze farther. If I meet her eyes and she’s got her derisive mask on, I might shatter. This is wrong and right and awful and beautiful and…
“Hecate.” She touches my chin, lifting my face. “Look at me.”
If I were stronger, if we were different people, if I hadn’t spent a decade of my life mourning this woman, maybe I could deny her. Maybe. I meet her gaze. My breath whooshes out. She’s both stranger and lover in this moment. When we were young, we told ourselves how worldly and jaded we were. It was true and not true. Trauma may strip away childhoods, but it is no substitution for years spent walking this earth.
Circe cups my face, her touch agonizingly gentle, her eyes shining in the low light of the room. “I’ve missed you. So desperately.” She brushes her thumbs over my cheekbones. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to touch you again.”
“I shouldn’t let you,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t want to touch you.” No matter what evil she’s done, it doesn’t change the fact that she once was mine. I close my eyes. “I’ve missed you, too.”
Over a decade’s worth of emotions well up inside me, bursting from my chest as she sinks down to the floor, her knees bumping mine. The first time we kissed, we were in nearly an identical position, kneeling facing each other as she did my makeup. She cupped my chin just like this, staring at my mouth with a desperation mirrored in the racing of my heart.
I kiss her now, just like I kissed her then. The past and present lay uneasily over each other as she grabs my hips and jerks us closer together, my arms going around her neck so I can dig my fingers into her hair. Shorter now but still so familiar.
Circe tugs my clothes off with impatient hands, and then the cool marble floor meets my back as she rolls us to settle between my thighs. She kisses down my throat, the edge of her teeth catching my skin in her frenzy.