“You areexactlyyourself around me,” he snarls.
“Maybe that’s what scares me the most,” I choke out. I shake my head as I look at him pleadingly. “Please,” I whisper. “Just go. I… I want you to go.”
His eyes narrow. “There’s only one word that would?—”
“Please don’t make me say it,” I sob, heavy tears beginning to roll down my cheeks.
“I can show you everything,” he murmurs. “Whenever you're ready.”
I nod, feeling my heart wrench as I suck back the tears.
“Will you please, just go?”
“For now, little prey,” he says. “For now.”
Lucia comes rushing down the stairs to catch me as I collapse, watching him walk away.
Feeling my heart crack in two.
39
YELENA
Life without Achilles is…cold.
Dark.
Numb.
Awful.
I hate that he’s gone. I hate that I miss him. I hate that he’s constantly on my mind, in every flicker of movement in my peripheral vision.
I hate that I look for him in every shadow, eagerlywaitingfor him to jump from behind every corner to make me his again.
I hate that every footstep behind me makes me hope I’m about to be grabbed. That every lick of a fall breeze at the nape of my neck makes my body anticipate his touch.
But most of all, I hate that I just can’t fucking hate him.
I havedamningevidence that Achilles has been full-blown stalking me formonths—from even before the night of the ParaBellum party where I first crashed into him. Which makes me question, well,everything.
Was it accidental that I ran into him—andfromhim—that night? Or did he plan it? It’s thoughts like that have my head and my heart splitting in two.
On the one hand, it would besupremelyfucked up if he had engineered the entire events of that night.
On the other, the sick part of me can’t help but think it would be outrageouslyhotif he had.
That broken, fucked-up piece of me can’t stop thinking about him combing through my darkest fantasies, filing them away, and then acting them out with me. Because I know if that night hadn’t ever happened, there’s no way I would have ever started down the shadowy path of self-discovery I’ve been on ever since.
Maybe—maybe—I’d have eventually found someone with whom I could have let my guard down enough to have some semblance of a normal sex life. But I can't think of any scenario where I’d comecloseto exploring the part of me that I've discovered with him.
I think that’s the hardest part of trying to tell myself I hate him: hating him means hating the dark, fucked-up parts of me that he’s awoken.
Hating Achilles for hunting me means hating myself forwantingto be hunted in the first place. And that brings up a whole other slew of mindfuck and borderline icky questions.
Did I ask for it?
Did having these dark desires welcome in the beautiful monster who would tear them from me and lay them bare before myeyes? Or is that a nauseating self-and-victim-blaming coping mechanism?