Page 80 of Violence and Vice

He tears my shirt, and I gasp, arching into him. His mouth traces fire down my neck, his hands reverent and hungry.

I claw at his bloodied and torn clothes. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t clean. Violence happened today. Death was all around us. But none of that matters.

Because I still get to touch him. I still get to feel him breathing.

We make love like we’ve been starved of each other—like the world could burn outside, and we wouldn’t care.

It’s not careful. It’s not slow.

It’s the kind of love that rebuilds.

That claims.

That marks this as a new beginning.

When it’s over, we collapse into each other, limbs tangled, breath shared.

Ares brushes hair from my face, his eyes burning with something ancient and infinite. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” I whisper.

Chapter 18

Idon’t know how long I sit there on the edge of the bed after he leaves—just staring at the crumpled sheets where Ares had been lying minutes ago, where I had clung to him like the world would collapse again if I let go.

But it hasn’t. Not today.

Because he’s alive again.

Because I still get to love him.

The morning light cuts across the penthouse in golden streaks, soft and quiet and surreal. My heart is anxious, strung out, stressed from everything that’s happened, but today… today it’s pounding for something different.

Hope.

My phone buzzes. Ares.

Got our license. You’re going to be my wife by tonight.

I laugh, actually laugh, full and breathless and alive.

I’ll find something white.

Time is ticking, and there’s a million things to do before tonight, so I launch out of bed.

I don’t overthink it.

It’s a little boutique tucked into a narrow stretch of SoHo, nothing flashy. I tell the woman working there that I need something I can get married intonight. Her eyes go wide with panic for a moment, but as she sees the conspiratorial grin growing on my lips, she gets it. She steels her expression, and she gets to work.

For just a few moments, I have an ache inside me. Shopping for a wedding dress is supposed to be a big deal. It’s supposed to be something you do with all the important women in your life. But my mother is dead. My sister is dead. My best friend ended things with the kind of finality that there is no coming back from.

Florence will kill me for not inviting her. Clementine will be heartbroken.

But as I look in the mirror when I try on the first dress, I know it. My priorities have shifted dramatically in the last twenty-four hours. This is a means to an end. This gets me what I want today. Time can be short, and you never know when things will change in the blink of an eye.

So, I’m not waiting. And I won’t regret this.

I try on three dresses.