“Husband or not, you’re trespassing.” She starts pulling pins out of her hair and moves to the side table, dropping them there, one by one. “I’m not in the mood to play with you. Come back during normal business hours.”
“You’re my wife,” I growl.
She stops and smirks. “Please. You’re not naive enough to think that means anything.” She runs her fingers through her dark hair and it cascades down around her bare shoulders.
Aphrodite looks good, which just pisses me off further. I stalk to her. Even with taking it easy this afternoon, my knee fucking hurts and I can’t keep the limp out of my step. Rationally, I know my wife isn’t to blame for that particular sin, but her sister is and that’s enough to have me catching her jaw and turning her face away from me. I swipe my thumb over her skin, smearing the lipstick. “I’m going to ask you this once more—where have you been?”
“Here and there,” she says airily. “You know how it is. Too many places to be, too little of me to go around.”
I rub the lipstick between my fingers. It is Pandora’s shade. I’m sure of it. Now that I’m thinking of it, there’s a scent in the air…
Aphrodite curses when I pin her to the wall and press my face to her neck. I inhale deeply and, yes, there it is. Pandora’s perfume. It’s the first gift I bought her after Minos put me in the ring at eighteen, bought with my winnings from that fight. Ever since then, I buy it for her for birthdays and whenever I notice she’s running low. It always makes her smile, and that brightens my day no matter how shitty everything else is going.
“I told you to leave her alone.”
To her credit, Aphrodite doesn’t play coy. The tension melts out of her body, and she leans back against the wall to look at me. She’s wearing those ridiculously high heels again, so our faces are even. She smiles, her dark eyes cold and fearless. “I am leaving her alone, dear husband.” She runs her hands up my chest and loops them around my neck. Her lips brush my ear. “But who’s going to tell her to leave me alone?”
It was a mistake touching her, allowing her this close. Aphrodite muddles my brain and gets my wires crossed. Half of me wants to shove her away, but the other half wants to grab her tight little ass and haul her more firmly against me. “You’re such a bitch.”
“Guilty.” She sounds so pleased with herself it might make me laugh if I didn’t want to strangle her. “Face it, Husband. You’re outclassed on every level. If you were smart, you’d roll over and play dead and hope I wander off to torment someone else.”
As if giving up has ever been an option for me.
Not in the orphanage, dealing with shit no kid should ever deal with. Not when we moved into Minos’s house and suddenly had everything we could ever hope for…but not without cost. There’s a price to every action and inaction. I know Pandora thinks I idolize Minos, and maybe she’s right, but the truth is that I wouldn’t have trusted a free ride. I understand what he wants from me, and he’s been nothing if not consistent in those demands.
It’s a price I’m more than willing to pay for safety and security.
And, truth be told, I’m just monstrous enough to enjoy the work.
“I’ll kill you before I let you use Pandora in some sick game.”
She laughs in my face. “You don’t get to have the high horse, murderer.” Aphrodite tilts her head to the side, her hair tumbling over my arm. “She’s a smart woman. She knows what I am.”
I highly doubt that. I don’t even know what Aphrodite is. Every time I think I have her nailed down, she twists out of my grasp and does something to make my life more complicated.
I met her two weeks ago. We’ve only been married two days. I don’t like to think what kind of damage she’ll do with more time at her disposal. “Leave her alone.”
“Leave her alone,” she mocks. “If that’s the only argument you have, it’s no wonder you need Minos pulling your strings. Ironic that you’re Hephaestus now when you never could have gotten the title with your smarts.”
I push her back against the wall, using my bigger body to hold her in place. “You keep running that fucking mouth, Wife. You’re right. I’m a murderer. What’s to stop me from snapping that pretty neck of yours?”
Even in the face of a serious threat, she’s undaunted. Aphrodite is relaxed in my arms, as if we’re in an intimate embrace instead of half a breath away from a physical fight. It confuses me. My brain knows she’s dangerous, but my body is all too eager to remember how good it felt to sink into her wet heat. I strain for control, but my cock isn’t listening.
“I don’t understand what she sees in you.”
The words don’t make sense…until they do. I glare. “Don’t talk about her.”
“Why not?” She kneads the base of my skull with her nails. It doesn’t quite hurt, but it doesn’t entirely feel good, either. Aphrodite lowers her voice. “Now, what you see in her? I get that. She’s a sweet little thing, isn’t she?”
“Stop it.” I’m playing right into her hands—again—but I can’t seem to stop.
“Selfish, though.” She smiles, slow and sinful. “She came all over me and then got in a car and went home.” Aphrodite laughs. “Woman knows how to leave you wanting more.”
She’s lying. She has to be. Pandora can be reckless and wild, but she’d never betray me like that…
Though I did find her here this morning, looking hungover and faintly embarrassed. That doesn’t mean anything, though. She said nothing happened, and Pandora and I don’t lie to each other. Nothing happened.
Last night. That doesn’t mean it’s true for tonight, though.
“Pandora would never fuck you,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Why not? You did.”
I don’t know who moves first. One moment we’re glaring at each other and Aphrodite looks like she wants to rip my throat out with her teeth, and the next our mouths meet in a clash.
She tastes of sex. The realization is almost enough to stop me in my tracks, but Aphrodite wraps one bare leg around my waist, and control slips through my fingertips. I run a rough hand up her thigh and cup her ass under the slit of her dress. “No panties. What a little slut.”
“Your girlfriend likes it,” she gasps against my lips.
I kiss her again to shut her the fuck up. Gods, but I hate this woman. That alone should be enough to ensure I never touch her again, but my body hasn’t gotten the memo. I lift her and take one step…
Which is the moment my knee decides to remind me that it’s not on board with this abuse.
It buckles and then we’re falling. I manage to catch the back of Aphrodite’s head to ensure she doesn’t bounce it on the marble floor, but that means I take the brunt of the impact.
Godsdamn it, that hurts.
She doesn’t pause, one clever hand delving between us to make quick work of my pants. The witch is already trying to take control of this. She doesn’t give a fuck that my knee is one blazing starburst of pain or that I saved her from the worst of the impact. The only thing she gives a damn about is winning.
Yeah, fuck that.
I brace myself with a hand on the floor by her head and catch first one wrist and then the other. She curses a little, but I’m not in the mood to play. “Spread your legs.”
“You’re not in charge.”
“Right now, I am.” I press her wrists to her stomach, pinning them there. “Spread your fucking legs, wife.”
Her slow smile makes what little reasoning I have short out. Her words sweep away the rest. “Make me.”
“Never the easy way with you.” I should stop this now. There’s no way I come out on top of this situation; our wedding night more than proved that. I don’t care. I need to put her in her place, and if I have to drive her out of her mind with pleasure to do it, then damn it, I will.
I shift down her body and use my shoulders to force her legs open. For all her smart mouth, she doesn’t fight me, letting her legs fall wide. I spare the thought to wish for better lighting to see her properly, but there’s no time to pause with lust and rage in the driver’s seat.