Shattered Gods (Dark Olympus, #10)(71)

Circe is next, and no less torturous. Because I know how it feels to slide my mouth down the center of her chest, to part her deceptively muscular thighs and taste her at her core. I know the sound she makes when she comes and how her fingers feel digging into my hips as she rides my thigh. It kills me to lay her next to Hecate and pull the blankets over them both. And yet there’s something satisfying in it, too.

I take the time to fold the solar blankets and shove a chair under the doorknob, and then I lie down on the couch and close my eyes. Despite my racing thoughts, sleep takes me in its comforting embrace, tugging me gently down into the dark.

Only to be woken a short time later by the soft sound of footsteps. I jolt out of sleep, my hand going to the gun I set on the floor next to the couch. I wake up to find it pointed at Hecate’s surprised face.

She blinks. “I know you’re not happy with me, but shooting me feels a little dramatic.”

I jerk the gun to the side and then lower it. I’m shaking. I don’t know when that started, but I can’t seem to control it. “Don’t sneak up on me when I’m sleeping.”

“I was basically stomping my way over here so you’d hear me coming.” She shuffles her bare feet, not making a single sound. I belatedly realize she’s wrapped in a blanket, but not the one from the bed. She bites her bottom lip. “You’re out here to guard the door.”

“Yeah.” It takes effort to keep my gaze on her face, to not picture her body beneath the blanket, to not wonder if she’s as naked now as she was then.

“I…” She looks away and then back at me. “Can I sleep out here with you?”

“It’s your place.”

“Atalanta.” She ducks her head. “Please.”

My heartbeat picks up, racing in the base of my throat. “I’d like that.” I recline slowly and have to close my eyes as she stretches out next to me and tosses the blanket over us both. I’m not wearing near enough clothes to hide the fact that she’s still naked.

She tangles her legs with mine and nuzzles my throat, exhaling slowly. “Now I can sleep.”

This woman is a torment. I can’t live without her. I carefully wrap my arms around her and settle back into the couch. Before today, I would have said that a naked Hecate would be enough to wipe any concept of the possibility of sleep from my mind.

Instead, I’m out within seconds, her steady breathing lulling me into a sense of safety that I want more than anything in the world.





28

Hecate




I want to sleep for years. Decades. The kind of sleep that makes people build towers in your honor—or their horror of your fate. My body has never felt so heavy…but the delicious warmth of Atalanta draws me back. We shifted about while we slept, and now I’m sprawled on top of her, my face tucked against her throat. My hand rests lightly on her bandage, which probably needs to be changed after she carried Circe, wet with river water. Why didn’t I think of that? I should have said something. If she ends up hurt… Well, more hurt. I can’t pretend she’s been kept safe during this whole process.

Even before, during the Ares tournament, she was knocked out cold by Paris. I still remember the sheer terror that went through me when I watched her fall. Helen stayed behind to make sure she woke up, but what if she hadn’t? I could have lost her then.

Or later, at Minos’s party. I knew it would be dangerous, but we didn’t have a good way for her to deny Artemis’s invitation without raising red flags. More, we assumed that the two of us in the same place would ward us both against danger. Instead, she was hurt again, almost killed by Artemis’s ambition.

Over and over again, she’d paid the price for my plans.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Her arms tighten around my waist. “You’re going to have to be more specific,” she murmurs sleepily.

It would be so easy to pretend her question was in jest, to lighten the mood. Or to change it. To press my lips to her skin and give in to the desire that’s been simmering beneath my skin for years. It would be an injustice to the woman I love, though. I swallow hard. “I’ve never put you first. It’s always been the end goal, and I was willing to sacrifice anything—anyone—else to get there.”

“Mm-hmm.” She’s starting to wake up properly, and she doesn’t sound happy with me. “That it?”

“No.” I sigh. I’ve never been particularly good at groveling. I don’t know that I need to grovel, or that it’s what Atalanta wants, but she’s right: I’m leaving out one glaring portion of this apology. “I’m sorry I left you and slept with Circe that night. You’re right that her and my connection is something I can’t break—even when I thought she was dead—but how I handled the whole situation was selfish. You didn’t deserve that.”

She trails one hand up my spine to cup the back of my neck. “It’s all water under the bridge—which is a shitty saying considering how yesterday went. I get it. I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt, but she’s magnetic.” She turns her head and presses a kiss to my temple. “I’m not proud of how I handled things with her, either. I could have told you what happened in a better way.”

Despite everything, I smile. “Yeah, well, we’re two fucking disasters—three, really—so why start acting logical now?” It takes more courage than I want to admit to lift my head and meet her gaze in the dim light of the living room. “I thought I knew what the future would bring, but now I can’t be sure we’ll have a future at all.”