Or, if I’mreallybeing honest, because I needed him. Because I needed to finish my plan.
“Yeah.” I look at him, and I know he can see the grief in my face; multitudes of it. Grief for myself, and for him, for my mother and for Natalie, for every fucking woman this town has crushed under its heel and every dream it’s ever killed. “I knew.”
“And you didn’t tell me. You let me—” A shudder goes through him, wracking his body as he takes two long strides towards me, and I could fight back if I wanted to. Jaxon and I train together, after all. I could try to get away. But I don’t, either because I crave him so badly or because I deserve it, I don’t know which. But when Jaxon’s hand closes around my throat and lifts me up, shoving me back against the side of the porch like Cayde once threw me back against the lockers, I don’t try to fight him.
My head hits the pillar a little, not hard enough to make me see stars, but hard enough to jolt me. Jaxon’s hand is tight enough to hurt but not enough to choke, and I can still breathe, but I stare down at him, unable to mask the fear in my eyes. I might deserve this, but I’m still terrified.
“You knew, and you let me fuck you anyway,” Jaxon snarls. “You little whore.Slut.” His hand tightens around my throat, shaking me, and I close my eyes. My hand comes up to his wrist automatically, closing around it, but there’s no way I’ll be able to get free of him now. It’s impossible.
“I tried to protect you as much as I could, all this time.” Jaxon’s upper lip curls, and he surges forward, pinning the rest of me against pillar and porch as his hard body presses against mine. He’s hard as rock, the thick line of his cock straining against his jeans as he grinds his hips into me painfully, his hand still tight around my throat. “And that’s the thanks I get. Youknewhow I felt. YouknewI still fuckingdreamedabout her, and you came into my bed anyway, let me fuck you anyway, knowing she was yoursister? How thefuckdid you think that would make me feel?”
He nearly screams it into my face, his lips pulled back to show the snarl of his teeth, his eyes dark and wide, eyes that could kill me, eyes that look like a demon’s. He’s half-mad with rage, and I know I should be more scared than I am, but all I can feel is the crushing weight of all my own emotions, and beneath it, that crawling need to come out of my own skin, to tear something apart, to purge all of this grief somehow.
Half-sister, I want to say, but I can’t speak, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. Jaxon shakes me again, his jaw clenched. “No one in this town gives ashitabout me,” he hisses. “I thought maybe you did, but I guess I was fucking wrong.”
His free hand comes down, fumbles with his zipper, and I gasp as I feel him surge against me again, scrabbling at my skirt as he shoves it up, kicking my legs apart as I suddenly feel the hot, hard press of his cock against my entrance.
Jaxon thrusts into me hard, still holding me up with one hand as his other goes to my thigh, holding me in place as he drives himself into me. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he growls into my ear, each word punctuated by a hard thrust. “Little fucking slut. You just wanted my cock for your Blackmoor bingo card. All three of us, the heir trifecta.” His hand loosens a little, enough for me to breathe at least, but his hard muscular body still has me pinned. “I can’t believe I still get fucking hard for you. The only reason I can think of is because you look enough like her for me to forget that you’re nothing but the trailer trash whore that our fathers gave us to play with.”
He drives himself into me again, hard, roughly enough for me to scream out weakly with what little breath I have, but I’m not entirely sure if it’s a scream of pain or pleasure. As he fucks me harder, my legs wrap around him without thinking, and Jaxon chuckles darkly.
“That’s right,” he growls, laughing through it. “Take my cock, you fucking slut. I bet you’d beg for it, if I stopped fucking you right now. You love this.”
I’m almost afraid he’s going to put that theory to the test, but to tell the truth, I don’t think hecanstop. I can feel how hard he is, his thick pierced cock ramming as deeply as he can into me with every painful thrust, and despite the violence of it, I can feel my own pleasure rising to meet his.
“I bet you’re going to come on my cock,” he pants, the rain soaking us both now, streaming down his face and mine. It’s coming down harder now, making it hard to see, but Jaxon barely seems to notice that both of us are drenched and freezing. I can feel him rocking forward with every thrust, as if he’s trying to go even deeper, and the sudden shudder that ripples through his body tells me that he’s close.
“That’s right, Athena,” Jaxon hisses, his black eyes very close to mine, his lips hovering over my mouth that he’s refused to kiss this entire time. “Take every drop of my fucking cum.”
His mouth crashes down over mine, swallowing the scream that erupts from my lips as my orgasm hits, my body clamping down around his length as he starts to come too. He keeps fucking me, hard, as he pumps his cum into me, his cock rock-hard and spasming inside of me. I can almost feel the ripples of it, I’m clenched around him so hard, the hot rush of his cum as he fills me, his teeth sinking into my lower lip as if he wants to tear it off.
I’m still whimpering against his mouth as he thrusts once more, holding himself inside of me until every last tremor of his orgasm has passed, and then he yanks himself away from me abruptly.
I fall to the muddy ground like a sack of potatoes, my dress hiked up around my hips and cum dripping down my thighs as Jaxon stuffs himself back into his jeans, disgust written over every inch of his face.
“Fuck all of you,” he snarls.
And then he turns, and strides away again.
This time, the roar of his motorcycle tells me there’s no point in going after him.
5
DEAN
“They’ve been out there for a long time.” I look towards the arched window on the other side of the living room, where I can see the rain coming down hard now. “It’s fucking pouring out there, what the hell are they doing?”
“We’ll give it five more minutes, and then I’ll go out and see,” Cayde says. There’s worry on his face, and I can’t help but think how much has changed. How did we go from Athena’s captors, her tormentors, her lord and her master, to her guard dogs? Her protectors?
I’m not mad about it, either. Somewhere down the line, something has shifted. I don’t even have to think that hard to try to figure out when—it was the night she was abducted. Seeing Athena like that, finding her, seeing those awful things that were done to her and then watching her bounce back from it even stronger, changed something. It changed her, and us, and the entire dynamic.
Athena’s not our pet anymore, even if we might enjoy calling her that for fun. She’s not our girlfriend either—that sounds too childish, too pedantic. Lover, maybe.
Whatever the right label for it is, she’sours.
Ours to fuck and punish, yes.
But also ours to protect. Ours to defend. Ours to keep.