“You know what?” A little wine splashes down on my fingers as I turn to face him. “You need to get over it. I’ve spent a lot of long and brutal years in this place, and if I want someone to help me pass a bit of that time, I’ll take them. I’m sorry it’s not you. I’m sorry it’s not ever going to be you again. Because you wore that welcome out.”
He settles his full, psychopathic attention on me and delivers flat words. “I would have done anything for you.”
“You would do anything for my house. For my sheets. For my clothes and my money. You’d gut me in a heartbeat if you thought you could hide the body well enough to keep it all to yourself.” I lean nearer to him. “From one killer to another, you need to learn to hold your cards a little closer to your chest.”
I’ve walked two feet away when he says, too loudly, “And you think Robin’s any different? Like he doesn’t have one purpose in mind?”
I turn back just long enough to reply, “No. I think he’s exactly the same. I think you’re all dead inside, the lot of you. Just like me. But I think he’s really fucking pretty. And it’s going to be a long time before I get tired of the taste of his cock.”
For one sweet second, I think the flaring of his eyes means I’ve managed to reach some living part of him. But in a blink, his entire expression settles back into one of his foul smirks.
I sense the presence over my shoulder as quickly as I realize how much Jason’s enjoying the moment. A natural impulse stiffens my back to attentiveness. I close my eyes and breathe out, “My lord?”
“You were saying?” His hand slides down my back like a wet eel, settling just above my ass.
“Locker room talk,” I say quickly, quietly, in his ear. Then, “Jason, go.”
He doesn’t. He stands there, considering the situation. Weighing his word against mine. His eyes cut across to Robin, back to me, and he tries to pin me with them. Tries to threaten me.
I can’t and won’t show any weakness. “Now, or you’re going to feel it in training tomorrow.”
“It’s alright,” the Emperor says, no doubt drunk and forgetting himself, as much as he ever can. “I don’t mind meeting the men. That’s what we’re here for.”
Jason’s about to open his stupid mouth, so I close it for him. “Let me introduce you to some of them. But not this one. He’s one slip from a very long stay in Victora Prison.”
Finally, I get through. Self-preservation. It’s the only language he speaks.
He bows his head and steps away, just as the revolting hand slips inside my gown.
I feel sick. I can’t. I can’t let him do this here. But I can’t take him away. He’ll know I was with someone else. And it feels so wrong. More wrong, even than before. Than ever before. I’m not his. I’m…
I want so much to believe I’m for someone else. For Robin. But as close as the words are to my heart and my lips, it can’t ever be.
I stop his hand through the fabric of my gown as it moves upwards. “Did you want me to introduce you to some of the sponsors? There are some people here who would really like to meet you.”
His breath reeks of the aniseed liquor he’s been adding to his wine all night. “I thought you couldn’t wait to be alone with me?”
“I can’t—I—Julius s-said—”
“Julius doesn’t know anything.” His body presses into mine, even as I step back. “Julius hasn’t learned the pleasures an Emperor and his favorite are born to yet.”
“We can’t here,” I try, turning my face away as he leans in, even though I know I should never do that.
“You’ve gone shy?” He laughs a sticky laugh. “Then come with me.”
His hand locks around my wrist, like molten iron fusing with my skin.
There isn’t a choice. I cannot refuse him. And I don’t think I’ve been this close to losing control in a very long time.
He walks. He pulls me. I follow.
Then I almost crash into his back when he stops dead in front of me.
I raise my eyes and meet the tumultuous depths of a stormy Atrean sea.
“Robin.”
His name slips from my lips, a living thing, the very essence of fear and grief and hope and this stupid, desperate, useless adoration I can’t snuff out.
