Page 38

Malice

So what starts as casual banter becomes a genuine conversation, which is more than he can say for most of his other interactions with deities. Except for maybe Hate, Scorn, and Calamity. And possibly Anger, in the rare moments when the rage god and Malice weren’t aiming to kill each other.

As morning turns into afternoon, he and the goddess talk about research. “Tell me what you love about it,” Malice prompts from his lazy position.

Wonder scrubs her bare heel over the bark. “I love the possibility, the gateway between the known and unknown. I love how The Archives gives me choices about what to discover, but it also offers surprises. There’s comfort and challenges in that.”

“Hmm. I just love the rush of a good page-turner, especially if it contains smut.”

She chuckles. “Be serious for once in your depraved life.”

Dammit. Her mirth is a softer noise than Malice is used to.

To hear it on repeat, he might do just about anything she asks.

“It’s not about safety for me,” he says.

“It’s about risk. Finding out the truth can be a blessing or a curse.

You won’t know until you find out. But then, you’ll finally get a grip on what you’re dealing with instead of life keeping information from you.

You’ll be able to hold the facts in your hand. ”

“And decide what to do about them.”

“Exactly. By the way, I like the sound of your laugh. I could lap it up by the spoonful.”

It’s pretty cute how Wonder chomps on the inside of her cheek, visibly stifling a retort. As for safety versus risk, he understands her point. Control versus discovery. He’s never given it as much thought before, but each has value.

Wonder studies him. “So then, you believe in free will over fate.”

“Why choose when I can have both? It’s more interesting anyway.” Malice counts off his fingers. “The Archives prove it. Humanity proves it. Every banished deity proves it. We have cognitive thinking, and we have nature, and they coexist. It’s not rocket science, just chemistry.”

“If that were true, finding a common ground between choice and destiny wouldn’t be this difficult.”

“I guess, but it doesn’t mean we’ll never solve the puzzle. Be gone, troublemaker.” He swipes a hand, batting a dragonfly from his ear. “So what do you hate about The Archives?”

The goddess flinches. “The same things.”

Malice nods. “I’m with you.”

They love and hate The Archives for the same reasons. Possibility and risk. And it turns out, they respect and resent how they were raised, chiefly their intended roles as deities. The service and the entitlement of it turns them into equal parts servants and superiors of mortals.

Wonder keeps talking, growing more animated by the subject, and Malice finds himself shutting up to listen.

Each thought leads to another. He dares her to consider things she evidently never has before.

Would she value answers, truths, and possibilities if they were dark, flawed, or disturbing?

What good are legends, if they teach nothing?

What help are those discoveries, if they’re only meant to please or coddle?

What’s the point of knowledge, if it’s only there to validate assumptions?

By comparison, she pelts him with questions that make it hard to sit still.

Would Malice value research if it didn’t grant him absolutes?

Would he keep faith in the unanswerable?

Would he ever be content to merely speculate?

Would he appreciate a legend, if it had nothing to do with him but benefited others?

Wonder goes in for the winning shot. “What answers are you really searching for here? Why is it so important?”

Malice stiffens. He’d been expecting this to inevitably come up. “How about you? Are you binging on this sacred ground for the answers you just want to hear? Are you looking for the ideal instead of the truth?”

They go silent. Good idea, since instinctual responses will lead to a shouting match, which will fuck up the mood. Giving each other a migraine isn’t worth ruining the last few hours. That said, Malice stores Wonder’s questions in his mind.

Willow branches swish like tiny whips. The scent of wildflowers drenches the air and floods his lungs, same as her skin. They recline across from one another, their legs spanning the divide, their grazing limbs ejecting bolts of electricity up his legs.

Not only do they tackle personal topics, but they also do a deep dive into the books that have blown their minds. Voices getting all zealous, they swap recommendations, saying, “That’s the best chapter” and “I know, right?” and “You’ve got to read that one.”

At one point, Wonder scurries off the branch to collect berries, each flexible squat and bend doing unfair things to his sex drive.

Relocating to the ground with her, they camp against separate trees and face each other.

Settling into a nest of exposed roots, she pitches a few morsels Malice’s way, which he catches, tosses into his mouth, and swallows whole.

It’s not so much that he’s showing off a trivial skill like a circus act, and more that he’s compensating for the fact that he’d rather swallow Wonder whole.

Fucking hell, the goddess isn’t making life easy.

Nope, she’s sucking berry juice from her fingers like sugar from a lollipop while his eyes eat up every innocent slide of her tongue.

As the day passes, Wonder acts like she isn’t surveying his attributes in kind. Never mind, since Malice feels every place her eyes stray, from the fine hairs rising across his knuckles to the pump of his neck when he drinks water from a conjured flask. By eventide, they’re talk-drunk.

Constellations pop from the sky. Dusk shadows the botanic garden.

Where the hell have the hours gone?

Malice scopes out the setting. “I think I’m a night person. Nighttime is so very dark and moonlit. Have I mentioned how much more beguiling the moon is than the sun? This is the witching hour, when The Stars are more active, doing all kinds of shiny things.”

Another adorable sight is Wonder fighting to constrain her humor. “Such as shining ?”

He swings his head toward her. “You remind me of a siren, sitting over there all pretty and plush.”

“Pretty,” she quotes, presumably impressed by the gallant term. “Not hot?”

“Just because I didn’t say it, doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking it.”

“Since when have you ever thought something without saying it?”

Malice just stares at her, making sure the answer oozes down her flesh like lava. This female doesn’t know half of what he’s thought about her. The superficial, sexy things aren’t difficult. It’s the other stuff of substance that’s harder to let out.

Wonder reads his features, her cheeks flushing again. “This coming from someone who resembles a satyr without horns.”

“I can live with that,” Malice approves. “Apart from my fingers and certain inanimate objects, have you ever been toyed with?”

“Apart from that?” She pretends to give the question legit consideration. “Not in your context.”

Is that fucking so? Well, then. Now that his intellectual quota has been reached, time for a snack break.

Malice rises on all fours and crawls toward her like a panther, his black pants straining across his thighs and ass. Oh, yeah. She’s looking, alright. Matter of fact, she’s been looking for as long as he, ever since their introduction in The Celestial City.

Locking eyes with her, he swipes the obstructions blocking his path, discarding the blackberries with a backward swat of his wrist. They roll across the grass, inviting dragonflies to scramble after the pickings.

Malice’s approach forces Wonder to reel into the trunk like cornered prey. But instead of her fist launching toward his face, the goddess’s legs split around his thighs, her knees steepling on either side of him.

He takes that as a sign to keep going, stopping only when his nose brushes hers. “What context is that?”

A little button pulsates at her throat, the tempo quickening like a coin of butterscotch. The kind that will taste delicious, grow addictive, and rot his teeth.

Wonder’s breath comes out shallow. “I’m not playing that game with you.”

“Of course, you won’t. It will involve more expletives and less clothing.”

“You’re fishing for my sex history.”

“I’m not fishing. I’m tossing a big fucking net.”

“Spoken like an over-confident god who’s too shortsighted to realize larger creatures swim in that sea, and one of them is about to consume that net with him inside it.”

Malice can’t help it. He drops his head toward the ground and booms with laughter. Okay, she’s probably not as masterful at creative rhetoric as Andrew, but this female is definitely better at it than Malice.

But instead of his closeness unnerving Wonder, she looks more disturbed by his mirth. The goddess draws in a breath as if she’s heard him like this before, multiple times beyond just recently. Her pupils dilate, her gaze staggering across his mouth, the effect making his cock jump like an Olympian.

The humor dies on his face. With one flick of a switch, Malice buries his humor in a coffin. “Don’t do that, Wildflower,” he warns in a gritty register. “Don’t give me that look, like you enjoy my voice.”

“Why?” she asks, then yelps when he sits on his haunches, straps an arm around her middle, hauls her atop his lap. Her thighs break open around his waist, her pussy rocking into his bloated cock.

The yelp flutters into a gasp when his hips give an upward jerk, emphasizing the bulge pressing against her cunt. A husky little sound cracks from Wonder’s lips. Her fingers loop over his shoulders, fingers gripping as she peers at him, resistance and lust treading a fine line across her features.

“That’s why,” he rasps, the noise scraping from his tongue.