Cruel Seduction (Dark Olympus, #5) (30)

She looks like she’s been out fucking. Her hair is a tangled mess, as if someone dragged their fingers through it, and her come-fuck-me dress is sliding dangerously low on her breasts.

Then I see the lipstick smeared at the base of her jaw. Even in the shadows, I know that shade. It’s the only one Pandora wears. “What did you do?”

To Aphrodite’s credit, she doesn’t jump or scream. No, the damned witch goes right for the gun she had fastened to the underside of the coffee table. She curses when she finds the spot empty. “What the fuck are you doing in my house?”

“I’m your husband.” Following Adonis’s instructions, I made sure I was seen coming here. Waiting for my wayward wife while she was off doing gods-alone-know-what. The poor sap of a husband. The skin of that role feels too tight, but Adonis was right before… In a game of perception, Aphrodite is a heavy hitter, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.

Seeing her infuriates me. She was born with everything at her fingertips, and that privilege is there even now in the way she rises gracefully to her feet. This woman has wanted for nothing, and every second in her presence is an itch I can’t scratch, one designed to drive me mad. She’s the one who took over my life and trapped me in this marriage I don’t want.

She is my enemy.

“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.”