“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.
28Hecate
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,morehurt. 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 wokeup, 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 Ineedto 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’smagnetic.” 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.”
“We can only take it one day at a time.” Something crashes in the distance and she frowns. “I don’t think it’s wise to leave this apartment until dark. We’ll have a plan by then.”
She says it with such confidence, as if there isn’t a single doubt in her mind that we’ll come up with a plan. Truth be told, Icansee a way through this, but she’s going to hate it. Really, really hate it.
She shifts beneath me, the warmth of our bodies making everything float away, dreamlike and insubstantial. I don’t want to think about tonight or tomorrow or the future at all. I want to be in this moment, and there’s no one I’d rather share it with than Atalanta, strong and steady and far better than I deserve in a woman. She’s been at my side through my worst moments, through the dark days before we began putting our plan into motion—and the dark days that still plagued me even after. Even if she wasn’tthere, she was there. Always. No matter what.
I want her. I’ve wanted her since I met her, and probably the single most honorable thing I’ve done in the last decade was to hold back from turning our relationship physical. Why not now? The plan forming in my mind, a pivot that might actually be possible with the current mess we’re in, is going to piss her off; Circe, too.Why not grab what joy we can right fucking now? Tomorrow isn’t assured. It never was, but I’ve been able to pretend before. Not anymore. Reality is knocking on our door, and I don’t want to miss a single experience. If I don’t make it out of Olympus alive, at least I’ll die with the peace of knowing there are no paths left unexplored.
Really, I’m a selfish bitch. I love Atalanta and I want her, and that’s enough to have me moving in slow motion to tilt my head to brush my lips against hers.
Atalanta exhales. “Hecate.”
It’s a plea and a demand, and I’m already sliding up her body to take her mouth properly. I’ve dreamed of kissing this woman foryears. Of having soft moments like this, cuddled up on a couch with only a scattering of clothing between us, of her hands on my ass, pulling me tighter to her. I want the hours spent in the gym, vibing as we work out together. I want to cook her dinner, to romance her the way she deserves, with soft lighting and silken words. There’s no time for any of it. There’s sure as fuck not a guarantee.
I cup her face and kiss her deeper, trying to put all the words I’ve never had the courage to say into the slow slide of my tongue against hers.I love you. I cherish you. I want to take care of you. I hate that this city and my ambition have made that impossible for so long.
She grabs my thigh and tugs me closer until I’m straddling her stomach, my pussy pressed to her bare skin. I break the kiss with a gasp. “Gods.”
Atalanta laughs, deep and pleased. “I haven’t even touched you properly yet.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I kiss her temple, her cheeks, the corners of her generous mouth. “It’s you.”
She shudders out a breath. “I love you.”
