Yet, the night had been…anticlimactic, for lack of a better word.
Hades glanced over at Persy in the passenger seat of his Corvette. You’d think she’d be ranting and raving. On the verge of tears, as she’d been on the dance floor. But she just stared out the window, looking lost. And broken.
Good. She already disrupted his original plan. Breaking her was a necessary evil. He needed her broken in order to satisfy his thirst for revenge.
Nonetheless, a weird guilt gnawed at his gut. He kind of wished she would yell or scream. Say anything, so he could stop thinking about how upset she’d looked when they danced.
But she remained quiet on the car ride home. She didn’t even react all that big when she saw the dog cage he’d told Ellie to place back in front of the bed while they were out.
She paused, then simply bent down to climb in.
A desperate rage surged inside of him. She was denying him. Denying him the satisfaction of taking pleasure in a revenge well-executed.
Maybe that was why he said, “You forgot to run my bath.”
She froze. But then, after a few beats, she crawled back out of the cage. And less than ten minutes later, he found himself once again soaking in the copper tub.
He handed her the cloth with a challenging look.
But she didn’t meet it. Just took the washcloth from him and got to work. Going nowhere near his penis this time.
He wasn’t sure how to feel about her taking his threat seriously. On one hand, he could use the release. He hadn’t touched her, or any other girl, since she’d started sleeping in his bed. On the other hand, she was disturbingly good at hand jobs.
He frowned, remembering the terms he’d given to her father to get around all that Catholic private school girl technical virgin bullshit. No anal, no oral, no intercourse whatsoever.
But hand jobs hadn’t been on the no-go list. And that made him wonder out loud, “Is that what you did with all those boys you weren’t allowed to fuck? Gave them hand jobs?”
She shrugged, her eyes weirdly placid. “It seemed like the least I could do.”
Don’t, he advised. Don’t ask about—
“Did you hand fuck that Beer Asshole too?” he asked.
This time, she stayed quiet.
She probably suspected, after tonight, that he couldn’t stay in his right mind when it came to the guy who’d actually expected to marry her. Before Hades came along.
The fact that he’d disrupted that plan too should have brought him some measure of glee. But their PG-13 romance made him burn with jealousy for some reason.
“Hades?”
Her voice brought him out of his fume.
“Yes?” he asked, still annoyed, but also curious. She’d never asked for his attention before, especially while he was in the bath.
She pulled his knee up and ran the towel over his leg. “If you wanted my virginity so bad, why do I still have it?”
He supposed he shouldn’t feel so insulted by that question. He could understand why she’d think so little of him.
“I take lives, and I reap riches,” he answered, laying a hand on his chest. “I do not force sex on women.”
“That’s an interesting ethos to live by.” She set down the towel. And pumped the face soap she always set down beside the tub into her hand.
Something tugged on his gut when she began rubbing it into his cheeks and forehead, careful to avoid his eyes. Having her hands on his face felt weirdly…close. Even more so than having them on his body.
No close wasn’t the right word. Intimate. It made him feel close to her in a way he never had with other women, even though he’d only gotten the same hand job as all her other guys.
“Hades?” she said, once again interrupting his jealousy spiral.
