Pure (50 page)

“Do you feel the connection between us right now?” I asked.

Alex frowned. “Not really, but I don’t know what it feels—”

I don’t even know why I did this. Anger? Frustration? Need? Or maybe just to prove that she did want me even though she loved someone else, which in my mind, proved that love was probably one of the most fickle, stupid things the gods had ever created.

Grasping the sides of her face, I lowered my mouth to hers. She froze against me, but didn’t fight back as I deepened the kiss, rushing past the exquisite feel of the first time, delving head first into it. Gods, I could eat her up. She was right. It had a lot to do with connection between us fueling the desire, but I didn’t care. There was a lot to that, a purpose to all of this, not that I could remember or think about a damn thing other than how soft her lips were, how I’d bet my life ambrosia tasted like her.

And finally she moved. Wrapping her arms around my neck, she tangled her fingers in my hair, kissing me back like there was no tomorrow. I loved that—loved how when Alex finally decided to do something, she threw all of herself into it—right or wrong.

Coldness lingered at the back of my mind though. Knowledge. This was my chance, the only chance I knew I’d get.

I pulled back, catching her lower lip. The sound she made wasn’t even fair. “You can’t tell me you didn’t like that.” I kissed her again, unable to help myself after so long. “And don’t you dare tell me you didn’t kiss me.”

“I… don’t know what that was,” she said.

I chuckled, moving my mouth against hers. “You have a choice, Alex.”

Her eyes flew open then, and she watched the marks on my face almost obsessively. They hummed with approval. “What choice?”

I slid my hands to her waist, holding her still. “You can choose to continue wasting away for something you can never have…”

“Or?”

Huh, not an outright no. I smiled. “You can choose not to.”

“Seth, I—”

And here we go. “Look, I know you aren’t over
him
, but I do know you like me. I’m not suggesting anything. Not asking for stupid little labels or promises. No expectations.”

She drew in a shallow breath. “What are you suggesting?”

“You choose to see what happens.” I let go, stepped back and ran my hands through my hair, needing space. “Between us—you choose us.”

Alex wrapped her arms around waist, looking incredibly small. It was a risk, putting it out there like that, but it was far past the time that I did. Like staking my claim, I guessed.

I smiled faintly. “Think about it, at least.”

Then I left her, giving her a few moments to think, which in hindsight might not have been such a good idea. Alex had turned making wrong decisions into a hobby. My movements were jerky as I grabbed the discarded shirt and slipped it on over my shoulders. The material rasped against the now sensitive marks, but I was getting used to that sting.

“Seth?”

I turned halfway, finishing the last of the buttons. “Alex?”

A flush crept across her cheeks “I… I choose you—or whatever it is that you’re saying.”

She paused, her nose wrinkling. “I mean, I choose the whole seeing what—”

My mouth cut her words off, and I swept my arms around her, dropping the jacket over her chilled shoulders, and then I lifted her up against me. Fire swept through both of us, and she moved in my arms, deliciously so. The marks blasted against my skin, swirling to where her hands fisted my shirt, demanding to make contact with her, to brand her skin once again.

Then her hands slid under my shirt.
Too fast.
I jerked back, breathing heavy. I had her, but still, too fast. My lips spread in a smile that reached every part of me. “You’re not sleeping in that bed—in that terrible little room—tonight.”

* * *

Deity

The Third Covenant Novel by

Jennifer L. Armentrout

Coming in October 2012 from

Spencer Hill Press

CHAPTER 1

RED SILK CLUNG TO MY HIPS, TWISTING INTO A TIGHT BODICE that accentuated my curves. My hair was down, silky around my shoulders like the petals of an exotic flower. The lights in the ballroom caught each ripple in the fabric so that with every step, I looked like I was blooming from fire.

He stopped, lips parting as if the mere sight of me had rendered him incapable of doing anything else. A warm blush stole over my skin. This wouldn’t end well—not when we were surrounded by people and he was looking at me like that, but I couldn’t make myself leave. I belonged here, with him. That had been the right choice.

The choice I… hadn’t made.

Dancers slowed around me, their faces hidden behind dazzling bejeweled masks. The haunting melody the orchestra played slipped under my skin and sunk into my bones as the dancers parted.

Nothing separated us.

I tried to breathe, but he had stolen not just my heart, but the very air I needed.

He stood there, dressed in a black tux cut to fit the hard lines of his body. A lopsided smile, full of mischief and playfulness, curved his lips as he bowed at the waist, extending his arm toward me.

My legs felt weak as I took the first step. The twinkling lights from above lit the way to him, but I would’ve found him in the dark if necessary. The beat of his heart sounded just like mine.

His smile spread.

That was all the reinforcement I needed. I took off toward him, the dress streaming behind me in a river of crimson silk. He straightened, catching me by the waist as I looped my arms around his neck. I burrowed my face against his chest, soaking in the scent of ocean and burning leaves

Everyone was watching, but it didn’t matter. We were in our own world, where only what we wanted—what we’d desired for so long—mattered.

He chuckled deeply as he spun me around. My feet didn’t even touch the ballroom floor. “So reckless,” he murmured.

I smiled in response, knowing he secretly loved that part of me.

Placing me on my feet, he clasped my hand and placed the other on the small of my back. When he spoke again, his voice was a low, sultry whisper. “You look so beautiful, Alex.”

My heart swelled. “I love you, Aiden.”

He kissed the top of my head, and then we spun in dizzying circles. Couples slowly joined us, and I caught glimpses of wide smiles and strange eyes behind the masks—eyes completely white, no irises. Unease spread. Those eyes… I knew what they meant. We drifted toward a corner, where I heard soft cries coming from the darkness.

I looked over his shoulder, peering into the shadowy corners of the ballroom. “Aiden…?”

“Shh.” His hand slipping up my spine and cupped the nape of my neck. “Do you love me?”

Our eyes met and held. “Yes. Yes. I love you more than anything.”

Aiden’s smile faded. “Do you love me more than him?”

I stilled in his suddenly lax embrace. “More than who?”

“Him,” Aiden repeated. “Do you love me more than him?”

My gaze fell past him again, to the darkness. A man had his back to us. He was pressed against a woman, his lips on her throat.

“Do you love me more than him?”

“Who?” I tried to press closer, but he held me back. Uncertainty blossomed in my belly when I saw the disappointment in his silvery eyes. “Aiden, what’s wrong?”

“You don’t love me.” He dropped his hands, stepping back. “Not when you’re with him, when you chose him.”

The man twisted at the waist, facing us. Seth smiled, his gaze offering a world of dark promises. Promises that I’d agreed to, that I’d chosen.

“You don’t love me,” Aiden said again, fading into the shadows. “You can’t. You never could.”

I reached for him. “But—”

It was too late. The dancers converged, and I was lost in a sea of dresses and whispered words. I pushed at them, but I couldn’t break through, couldn’t find Aiden or Seth. Someone pushed me and I fell to my knees, the red silk ripping. I cried out for Aiden and then Seth, but neither heeded my pleas. I was lost, staring up at faces hidden behind masks, staring at strange eyes. I knew those eyes.

They were the eyes of the gods.

I jerked straight up in bed, a fine sheen of sweat covering my body as my heart continued to try to come out of my chest. Several moments passed before my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I recognized the bare walls of my dorm room.

“What the hell?” I ran the back of my hand over my damp and warm forehead. I squeezed my watery eyes shut.

“Hmm?” murmured a half-awake Seth.

I sneezed in response, once, and then twice.

“That’s hot.” He blindly reached for the box of tissues. “I can’t believe you’re still sick. Here.”

Sighing, I took the box of tissues from him and cradled them to my chest as I pulled a few free. “It’s your fault—achoo! It was your stupid idea to go swimming in—achoo!—forty-degree weather, jerk-face.”

“I’m not sick.”

I wiped my nose, waiting a few more seconds to make sure I was done sneezing my brains out, and then dropped the box on the floor. Colds sucked daimon butt. In my seventeen years of life, I’d never gotten a cold until now. I hadn’t even known I could get one. “Aren’t you just so damn special?”

“You know it,” was his muffled response.

Twisting at the waist, I glared at the back of Seth’s head. He almost looked normal with his face planted into a pillow—my pillow. Not like someone who’d become a God Killer in less than four months. To our world, Seth was sort of like any mythical creature: beautiful, and could be downright deadly. “I had a weird dream.”

Seth rolled onto his side. “Come on. Go back to sleep.”

Since we’d returned from the Catskills a week ago, he’d been up my butt like never before. It wasn’t like I didn’t understand why, with the whole furie business and me killing a pure. He was probably never going to let me out of his sight again. “You really need to start sleeping in your own bed.”

He turned his head slightly. A sleepy smile spread across his face. “I prefer your bed.”

“I prefer that we actually celebrate Christmas around here, and then I’d get some Christmas presents and get to sing Christmas songs, but I don’t get what I want.”

Seth tugged me down, his arm a heavy weight that pinned me on my back. “Alex, I always get what I want.”

A fine shiver coursed over my skin. “Seth?”

“Yeah?”

“You were in my dream.”

One amber-colored eye opened. “Please tell me we were naked.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re such a perv.”

He sighed mournfully as he wiggled closer. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“You’d be correct.” Unable to fall back to sleep, I started chewing on my lip. So many worries surfaced at once, it made my brain spin. “Seth?”

“Mmm?”

I watched him snuggle further down into the pillow before I continued. There was something charming about Seth when he was like this, a vulnerability and boyishness missing when he was fully awake. “What happened when I was fighting the furies?”

His eyes opened into thin slits. This was a question I’d asked several times since we returned to North Carolina. The kind of strength and power I’d displayed as I faced the gods was something only Seth, as a full-blown Apollyon, could’ve accomplished.

As an un-Awakened half-blood? Yeah, not so much.

Seth’s mouth tightened. “Go back to sleep, Alex.”

Seth refused to answer. Again. Anger and frustration rushed to the surface. I flung his arm off me. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“You’re being paranoid.” His arm landed on my stomach again.

I tried wiggling out of his grasp, but his grip tightened. Grinding my teeth, I rolled onto my side and settled next to him. “I’m not being paranoid, you asshat. Something happened. I’ve told you that. Everything… everything looked amber. Like the color of your eyes.”

He blew out a long breath. “I’ve heard that people in high stress situations have increased strength and senses.”

“That wasn’t it.”

“And that people can hallucinate while under pressure.”

I swung my arm back, narrowly missing his head. “I didn’t hallucinate.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.” Seth lifted his arm and rolled onto his back. “Anyway, are you going to go back to class in the morning?”

Instantly, a new worry surfaced. Classes meant facing everyone—Olivia—without my best friend. Pressure built in my chest. I squeezed my eyes shut, but Caleb’s pale face appeared, eyes wide and unseeing, a Covenant dagger shoved deep in his chest. It seemed I could only remember what he’d really looked like in my dreams.