“I don't believe you.”
“You don’t need to. I can show you.”
“I don’t believe you because you’re evil. You killed everybody I loved, and you ravaged me. You made me a sexual spectacle. And then you abandoned me to be arrested and imprisoned. There is no way for you to make up for what you’ve done to me.”
Her eyes burned with rage, the same rage he’d felt such a connection to the moment he first laid eyes on her. This is what he loved about Iris. Her power. Her absolute refusal to submit, or to break. She was right. He had absolutely ravaged her in the most filthy and shameful of ways. He had put her on display and fucked her to the cries of a baying crowd. He didn’t deserve forgiveness, and he wasn’t asking for it.
“Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe I can make up for it. Maybe you’ll never forgive me. I don’t mind. I know what I want now. I want you. You’re mine. Whether you hate me or love me is your choice.”
The slightly ashamed and nervous male who wanted her approval had slipped away behind that magnetic blue gaze, leaving her with the bastard king she hated.
“I’m not going to thank you for ‘rescuing’ me,” she hissed. “It’s your fault this happened to me to begin with.”
“Speak to me with respect, wretch!”
“Why? I don’t respect you. I don’t fear you. You’ve done everything besides killing me, and I don’t care if you kill me, because I don’t believe my family are alive. I think you’ve killed them all, and I think you’ll kill me eventually.”
“You will be the death of me, human brat,” Archon growled, sweeping her into his arms and kissing her thoroughly. He wanted to silence her as much as he wanted to taste her.
The kiss was dirty and not entirely wanted, but she didn’t fight him as hard as he knew she was capable of doing. Perhaps some part of her really did want him. He would never know what her little human mind contained, but he knew how she felt, and he knew that when he kissed her, he felt complete.
He broke the kiss and stared lovingly down at the squirming human in his arms, who snarled at him more fiercely than ever.
“I still hate you, even if I like kissing you.”
“Like I said, you’re welcome to hate me. Most do.”
He said the words without any kind of self-pity. It was a mere statement of fact. The corollary to being a merciless maverick king was that you got used to being hated. Archon had spent his entire adult life doing awful things to those who were close to him. He had no family left, much like Iris, though to be fair, it was his fault her family were missing.
It occurred to him he could make it up to her and prove that he did not lie by reuniting them. It was possible, though he had not planned on it. The place the others were was very distant from where they were now, and technically outside the realm of his control. He’d wanted to keep Iris on her world, or at least the same general realm. She belonged here. She was part of this place, the living embodiment of wild humanity. Taking her, showing her the rest of the universe, that would change her.
He thought he might live with her anger, bear the brunt of it to save the last of what she was. She might hate him, but at least she would remain herself. He could stand her loathing. He just couldn’t stand being without her.
So he changed the subject.
“Come. Get cleaned up. There are baths and food and clothes upstairs, all for you.”
She came with him, her hand reluctantly trapped in his. He was not going to let go. Her touch meant everything. The warmth of her flesh, so soft against his rough palm made all the pain he’d experienced in her absence better.
Iris bathed while he sat on the side of the tub, watching her. She cast him the occasional resentful look, but otherwise did not seem to object to his presence. He was surprised to discover that he enjoyed spending time with her, just looking at her, almost as much as he did fucking her.
It was tempting to pull her from the water and fuck her thoroughly, but he knew she was in far too foul a temper to find that in any way arousing - and for perhaps the first time in their relationship, he was considering what she found arousing.
"Why are you looking at me that way?”
“You’re changing me, human.”
“I doubt that. I really, really doubt that,” she replied, sinking down in the tub so that only her eyes and top of her head were visible above the ceramic rim. She had such dark eyes. He felt as though he could lose himself in those eyes. There was a very real possibility he already had.