Page 46 of Deathless
"I couldn't say it." I got that much out. "Saying it made it real. And if it was real, then I'd left my own..." I stalled. Tried again. "My own daughter. With the man who killed her mother. For nine years."
"You let me fall for that kid." He was shaking. "I fed her. I taught her it was okay to sleep without a weapon. I sat with her every night she had nightmares, and you just stood there."
"I know."
"You said nothing."
"I know."
"And now I have to live with letting her go." His voice cracked. "I made the same call you made. Forty people or one child. I chose the mission. Just like you did with Nadia. And I didn't even know she was yours."
"I was going to tell you. After. I kept waiting for after, and after never..."
He grabbed my collar and yanked me forward off the wall, close enough that I could count the capillaries in his eyes. My jacket caught on the stone as he hauled me in, and I took it the way I'd taken Eight's fists in the grass at the olive tree, the same debt paid in the same currency.
"You should have told me," Diego said, and his voice had gone quiet. "Before I got attached. Before I had to look her in the eye and promise I'd come for her while Patroklos walked away with your daughter."
He slammed me back against the wall. His face stayed inches from mine. Rage and want and grief all jammed into the space between us.
He shook where he gripped my jacket. I could track the war in his jaw, the way the muscles clenched and released.
I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him in.
The kiss was hard enough to hurt. He growled against my mouth, something raw and furious, and then he kissed me back with teeth and grief and every ounce of anger he'd been holding in since that gully.
He bit my bottom lip, and I tasted copper. I fisted my hand in his hair and yanked his head back, dragged my teeth down his throat. He shoved me harder against the wall. My ribs lit up, and I didn't care.
He pulled back and dug his nails across my chest through my shirt.
My whole body arched into it. He dragged down hard enough that the sting burned through the fabric, and my hips jerked forward.
"Fuck you," he said against my jaw.
"Yeah." I bit his collarbone through his shirt. "Fuck you too."
He shoved me around to face the wall. I braced against the stone. He yanked my shirt up and set his nails against my bare back and dragged down from my shoulders to my waist, ten lines of fire that lit up every nerve between my skin and my spine. The sound that came out of me bounced off the stone.
He did it again, harder. The welts rose under his nails. I pressed my forehead against the wall and shook.
"You hid from me for a year," he said against my shoulder blade. "Right here. Right now. You don't get to hide."
He reached around and went for my belt. The leather cracked when he yanked it open. He got my jeans down and wrapped his hand around my cock, and the contact sent everything sideways.My knees buckled. He caught me against the wall with his body, pinning me there with his weight while he stroked me.
He raked his nails down my back again, digging into the welts he'd already left. Everything narrowed to Diego. He stroked my cock and pinned me against the stone with his chest, breathing ragged against my neck.
He scored his nails across my hip, and I jerked in his grip, but he held me tighter and kept going, dragging marks across my stomach, my ribs, my sides, each one sharper than the last.
"Diego." My voice broke on the second syllable.
"I know." He pressed his nails into the raw skin over my ribs and dragged down while he stroked me faster. "And tomorrow, when you can still feel where I've been, you're going to remember that you owe me the truth. Every time. About everything."
My whole body seized. I came hard into his hand, and my legs gave out. He caught me against the wall and held me through it while the aftershocks jerked through my muscles. I couldn't stop the sounds or the way my knees buckled or any of it.
He held on until I stopped. Then his belt buckle rattled behind me. He pressed himself between my thighs and leaned his forehead against the back of my neck, breathing hard. He gripped my hip where he'd scored the welts, fingers digging into the marks he'd made. He rocked against me, and a sound built in his chest that I tracked through the vibration against my spine, low and tight and breaking apart at the edges. He came in three rough strokes, spilling hot against my skin, and the sound that tore out of him was more grief than release.
We stayed there, breathing hard. Then he stepped back.
Water ran. A cloth hit my hand.
