The Bad God Wins: A Dark Romance (Possessive Gods Book 2) Read online

  He has a charming smile and an easy manner. I find myself liking him immediately though he’s only said two sentences to me. I don’t know him, but then again, I don’t know anybody here. We are supposed to do introductions, but I refused to meet everybody in one big staring line.

  “Not so lesser they weren’t invited,” I grumble.

  “It is bad luck to leave gods out of gatherings. They have a tendency to become vengeful and take what they want when they are denied what they are owed.”

  His voice dips into a suggestive tone. I feel a chill, a little warning from my deepest, most human instinct. His smile is brilliant, but not in the way Helios’ or Lucy’s smiles are. It is not bright. It is wicked and it promises untold delights. Not for me, of course. Smiles like that are never for me. I know I’m supposed to swoon, but instead I feel suspicion. This god is different from the others. He sets himself apart from the crowd by the look in his eye, a wicked intellect which is obvious. He’s up to something.

  He offers me his hand. I give him mine in return. He bows and kisses the back of it, leaving the impression of his lips and a searing heat spearing through to the very core of me.

  He really is very handsome. He has deep brown eyes and bone structure to die for. Masculine and yet refined. His jaw is so sharp I think I could cut myself on it, and his body, as far as I can tell beneath the robe he wears, is broad shouldered and strong. But it is not his physicality which makes me react. It is the energy around him. He swirls with mystery, power, and a particular form of dark deviance which calls to me.

  “I’m Tanuk,” he says. “I’m an old friend of your fathers’.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” he smiles. His eyes roam up and down my body. He is looking at me the same way the others looked at Lucy, but I am dressed modestly and I do not understand why he is giving me attention. I’m not worth it. “The two of you are really rather different, aren’t you,” he observes.

  “As different as sisters can be,” I agree. “She got all the looks.”

  “I wouldn’t say all the looks,” he purrs, that suggestive note coming back into his tone.

  I glance into his eyes, and then away. There is something about this Tanuk which addles me completely. I have been around gods all my life. I know when they are old and I know when they are powerful. This one is both.

  “It is hard to thrive when you are forever in the shadows, isn’t it, Raine? But good things grow in the dark. They may take longer to bloom, but their beauty is greater for it.”

  Now he sounds like my mother does when she tries to comfort me and tell me Lucy isn’t at the center of the universe. He’s trying to flatter me. I don’t like it. He doesn’t know me. He thinks I am shallow, like Lucy. He thinks I will swoon if he just tells me what a pretty girl I am. But there are more important things than being pretty, and I do not need to have another one of these tedious, patronizing conversations.

  “I don’t give a damn about beauty.”

  His head jerks back, a look of surprise passing over his handsome features. I am sure he cannot imagine being anything other than incredibly good looking and I am sure he cannot imagine anyone else not caring about it at all.

  Then he laughs, throwing his head back with what seems like real amusement.

  “Ragnar’s blood is strong in you,” he chuckles. “You would make a formidable enemy.”

  That makes me smile genuinely. “I don’t have any enemies.”

  “Not yet, perhaps, but time and fate have a way of bringing enemies to us,” he says, reaching out to trace my lower lip with the pad of his thumb.

  I feel a tremor run through me, a feeling I haven’t experienced before, but which feels entirely natural. It tells me that I am in the presence of somebody dangerous.

  “I think you’re very beautiful,” he says. “Your sister is of the light, but you are of the dark — and the dark is where everything interesting happens.”

  He drops his hand from my face, and takes my hand instead. I am charmed and enchanted as he leads me from the party, moving through the revelers as if they’re not there at all.

  Ragnar is manning the doors, but the golden palace has a particular quirk in opening for the family wherever they please. As Tanuk leads me toward the wall, it parts for us, leading us not merely outside the palace, but across the island, to a forest not far from Yggdrasil.

  “That’s better, isn’t it,” he says, his dark eyes smiling down at me. “We can hear ourselves think now.”

  I don’t know if this is better. I am alone with a very male god who has unclear intentions toward me. I don’t think he is going to hurt me. Nobody would be that stupid. Helios is king of Okeanus and I am one of two princesses. The consequences of hurting me would be unthinkable.

  “Tell me, Raine,” he says, running his fingers down my exposed arm, making my skin goosebump in their wake. “What did you want for your eighteenth birthday?”

  I think about the question for a moment before responding. “I want to be free.”

  “You’re not free?”

  I don’t know why I am talking to Tanuk so honestly. I wouldn’t have admitted this to anybody else, but there’s something magical about being out here, alone with this handsome god. Something which makes me feel so much more grown up than ever before.

  “Not really,” I say. “They worry about us. A lot.”

  “I wonder why. Do you think they don’t trust you?”

  His question makes my temper prickle. I get the sense he’s trying to manipulate me somehow.

  “They trust us. It’s just that we are precious.”

  “Yes,” Tanuk agrees. “Very precious little princesses.”

  I get that feeling again, the one which makes me feel like a worm before a raven. This god is toying with me.

  I’m the quiet one, but I’m not the good one. You don’t mess with me and get away with it.

  “If you think I’m stupid, you’re wrong. I know precious has more than one meaning. I’m not weak, and I’m not stupid.”

  “Nobody called you stupid, princess. With perhaps, the exception of yourself.”

  “I’m going back to the party.”

  I turn to leave, but his hand is wrapped around my wrist, suddenly tight. He pulls me back, firmly enough to make me stumble against his body. I feel hot, hard flesh against mine, barely shrouded by robes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t go yet, princess,” he purrs.

  “I’ll go if I want to. Unhand me.”

  But he doesn’t. He keeps his grip on me, controlling my movements, looking down at me with that appraising gaze. He’s still trying to work something out. I don’t know what.

  “Let me go,” I repeat.

  “Make me.”

  He’s trying to taunt me into showing my powers. I don’t know why. He wants to see what I am capable of. These gods are all about powers. The day Lucy first glowed ethereally I thought Helios might collapse with pride. I have no powers, but powers aren’t the only way to escape a situation.

  I swing my free hand through the air and make sharp contact with his cheek, slapping him right across his face. The slap is hard enough to make my palm tingle, but it’s not enough to even move his head. He has very high cheekbones, and a hard jaw. I suspect the slap hurt me more than it hurt him.

  “Naughty little princess,” he chides, swinging me around and away from him. He handles me with remarkable ease, as if he is used to working with unruly young demigoddesses. I brace myself for some kind of retaliation and sure enough, it comes. His hand meets my rear in a slap which makes my left cheek sting terribly.

  “An eye for an eye, a slap for a slap,” he warns, twisting me back toward him. “If you don’t behave for me, princess, you’ll find I have no problem punishing you long and hard.”

  Nobody has ever struck us. They wouldn’t dare. My mother would never allow it, and she is more frightening, even as a mortal, than any god. What does he even mean,
if I don’t behave for him? Why would I behave for him? Who is he that I would even consider obeying?

  “How DARE you!” I growl. “You will pay for this…”

  He breaks into a smile, which is entirely disarming, but does not change the fact my rear is stinging terribly. A single slap from a god is enough to set flesh tingling for many hours.

  “What are you grinning at?”

  “You,” he says. “You’re cute when you’re outraged and bristling with fury.”

  I’m cute? That’s a new one. Well, it’s not, actually. I’ve been called the cute one for years. But it is different when he says it. He means it as a compliment, not as a placation. I almost blush with pleasure — almost.

  “I’m not cute, and you’re not going to punish me.”

  “That would be a pity,” he murmurs, his eyes running down my body in an obvious way. “You’re made to punish.”

  I don't know what that is supposed to mean, but I know it makes my body react. For the first time in I don’t know how long, perhaps since my very birth, I am the center of somebody’s attention.

  “I’m a good girl,” I say. “I don’t deserve to be punished.”

  “Even good girls deserve punishment sometimes,” he purrs. “Especially the good ones, on occasion.”

  I find myself emitting a giggle. Gods, what is happening to me? Who is this god who outrages me one moment, and makes me melt the next?

  “What if your birthday present from me was a birthday spanking,” he says, his eyes twinkling. “What if I made your flesh hot and sore. What if I showed you what awaits spoiled little princesses who leave parties with gods they do not know, and find themselves in remote forests where their screams will not be heard?”

  “I’m not scared of you,” I say, even as a bolt of fear runs through me.

  I am scared of him, but not in the way he's suggesting I should be. I know instinctively that I am not in real danger. He won’t harm me, but I think he might tear my idea of what I am and what I am not completely apart. This is the sort of situation Lucy should be finding herself in, not me. But he saw Lucy. We all did. And he didn’t lure her away. He chose me.

  “I know,” he chuckles. “That is the problem, sweet little brat princess. I think I will give you the gift of a good birthday spanking. It will teach you a lesson you very much need to learn.”

  “Wait… what… no!”

  My words come too late. He has seated himself on a fallen tree and swept me over his lap. I have never felt a man’s body before, but now I feel his lap, his abdomen, and his hands, taking control of my much weaker form. I could struggle. I could scream for my fathers. Helios would hear me in an instant. But I don’t. I stay here, over his lap. Touching him. Feeling him. Experiencing what it is to be touched by a man.

  “Remember this, next time you encounter a deity,” Tanuk says, his hand making contact with my right cheek, and then the left. His slaps are not overly hard, but they are hard enough to make his point. My dress offers no protection against the flat of his palm. There is a growing heat sinking into my skin, growing very quickly from a little sting into something more like proper pain. It makes me feel very sorry for ever allowing him to take me from the party.

  “Okay! Enough!”

  “Not yet,” he says. “Not until you’ve learned a few things, little princess. You still have so much growing to do. You’re eighteen today, at the verge of womanhood, and now all Okeanus competes for the soft treasure between your thighs…”

  With that, he sweeps his fingers lightly between my legs. He doesn’t actually touch my sex, but he makes the folds of my dress brush against my most intimate parts, and that is enough to start a chain reaction I never knew was possible. My clit throbs against his thigh, where I am forced to wriggle and grind with every subsequent swat of his hard palm.

  He is spanking me much more firmly now, disciplining me for real. It hurts enough to make me wail and writhe, every desperate movement increasing the pressure on that naughty little bud at the apex of my nether lips.

  I am enjoying this.

  He can never know it, but the pain of being spanked is nothing to me. I have wanted to be touched for a very long time. The hormones every human has have been charging through my body for what feels like years, entirely without outlet. Now I am pressed against this male, feeling his force, bearing the marks of his palm.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  A minute ago, the answer would have been yes, but now it is something else.

  “No,” I whimper softly.

  “I can’t hear you, Raine.”

  “No…”

  “No? You want me to keep spanking you, is that it, princess? Does my bad girl need her bottom nice and hot?”

  His bad girl.

  I find myself wishing that those three words were true, that I could be his. I have never had an experience like this before. I’ve never been this close to any male. I’ve never felt a masculine body pressed against mine, or realized the way my own flesh reacts. There is a storm of desire inside me, but I have to keep it inside. I have to be the one thing gods and goddesses never are: realistic.

  I’m not his girl, bad or otherwise. I don’t know him.

  He speaks to me in that seductive purr, expertly driving me towards a climax which should not be possible, and yet seems unavoidable. Pleasure is building between my thighs, right at the core of me in a place nobody has ever touched. That little bud which sits at the top of my sex, hidden between the folds of my lips, is conducting external sin all the way into my body. And now I know what is going to happen, inevitably, inexorably. I am going to come over his legs. I am going to grind myself to completion here, in the woods with this stranger.

  Tanuk

  She is more than beautiful. Holding Raine is thrilling. I feel her energy pent up inside her curvy body, building every time I speak to her or spank her. Words and slaps have the same effect on her dynamic mind.

  Her dress is riding up. I aid it in its quest to end up wrapped around her waist, her bright red cheeks glowing in the moonlight. I could do anything I wanted with her. She’s mine to claim. She doesn’t know any better. She doesn't know to fight. She doesn’t think to scream. She’s perfect and untouched, a soft, soon-to-be-submissive goddess waiting to be claimed by the right hand.

  I smile to myself at how careless Ragnar and Helios have been. Raine is ripe for the picking, and her sister is no better protected. Sooner or later, they will both be snatched away from this place. I would be surprised if either one of them was still a virgin after tonight.

  I palm Raine’s cheeks, feeling her agile hips squirming, seeing the seam of her virginal sex displayed to me quite wantonly, and yet somehow also very innocently. She doesn’t really know what is happening to her. I know that her body is ready for this handling, that a sore bottom is an aphrodisiac to almost every goddess. She spreads her legs wider, practically begging to be fucked. I can smell her, the sweet scent of her juices on the evening air. It calls to the animal which lies inside every god, and which is particularly strong in me. According to all the laws of nature and gods, she is mine.

  She whimpers and bumps her hips up toward me in wanton invitation. She is engaging in every behavior a woman can to invite a male to ravage her. I grit my teeth and spank her good and hard, my palm spreading over her cheeks to catch as much of her reddened skin as possible.

  “Aiie!” she calls out in pain. It’s not fair that I’m spanking her harder now, but it is either spank her bottom searing bright red or take her virginity roughly and completely. I’m learning that her pain response is very closely linked to her pleasure reaction. The more she whimpers and whines, the more her thighs spread, the wetter she gets, and the harder it is to restrain my impulse to conquer her.

  This demigoddess has an effect on me like no other. I have been alone a very long time. I thought my days of love were long gone. I thought the part of me which was capable of it was completely broken. But I am already feeling stirri
ngs which remind me of a distant past in which I had a heart — and that is all that keeps her safe. Any other time, any other place, any other wet, willing pussy would be wrapped around my cock right now.

  It would serve her fathers right if I did deflower her. But I have developed a soft spot for this little brat. I like her fire. I adore the way she has embraced the role of the outcast without becoming embittered by it.

  If I take her now, and leave her, then it will be over before it begins. It will be a cheap, easy victory. I came thinking that would be enough, but it won’t be. Not with this one. I want to take my time with her. I want her for more than one night. But that is going to take some doing.

  Instead of ravaging her, taking her virginity without care for anything besides quick, rough conquest, I finish spanking her. A final harsh flurry makes her whine and squeal, but it also gives her the intensity she needs to grind herself against my thigh long and hard, her hips making desperate little jerking motions as she ruts and then finally orgasms, the outer lips of her sex all puffy with the dew of her desire as she shakes and trembles over my thighs.

  I should be filled with dark amusement, but instead I find myself marveling at what a work of art she is. The urge to deflower and defile has been replaced with one to protect and possess. But I cannot take her this moment. That would be to play my hand far too soon. The night is young, and my revenge still awaits.

  My time with Raine has been a pleasant distraction, but this is not over.

  She lies quietly over my lap, panting her post orgasmic bliss to the wind. I hold her there, rub her gently in the same places I just spanked, enjoying the sight of her bright red derriere.

  Oh, all the things I could do to her… everything I could take. Just thinking of it makes me feel as though I am a very, very good god for leaving her unsullied. Perhaps I am changing with eternity. Finding some sense of compassion. Or, perhaps there is something about this demigoddess, the one everybody ignores.