Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 887: At War

”The first girl you ever met out of all of them.”

Her fingers tightened in his hair, possessive. ”I was there before anyone. You walked into that gym and I was the one waiting for you.”

”Waiting for me?” Kaiden couldn’t help but grin at the overly romanticized way she seemed to remember their first meeting. ”Yeah, to take my money. That’s why I chose Liam.”

”Kai...” Aria’s grip tightened dangerously around his balls as she corrected the terribly inaccurate way he seemed to remember their start. ”I was the one who chased you down outside the locker room. I was the one who swallowed my pride and admitted I needed the money. I was the one who took the bartending job at Bruno’s because you offered it. I was the first whose virginity you took, too... Kai, I’m your first.”

He tilted his head, and the playful glint in his eyes should have warned her.

”You were the first girl I met and the first girl I lay with,” he agreed. ”But Luna was the first one who.”

Aria’s hands went still.

”Kaiden Grey. What were you about to say just now?”

The look on Aria’s face was a masterpiece.

Her lower lip pushed forward.

Her silver eyes, which seconds ago had been fervent with love, narrowed into slits that could have cut steel more precisely than her moonlight crescents.

Her fingers twitched with the urge to drown the man she loved.

”I’m kneeling here,” she said, voice low and trembling, ”washing your body, your hair, your everything, giving you all of my love and attention, and you say that to me!”

Her hands withdrew. She sat back on her heels, arms crossing beneath her bare chest, wet and glistening and magnificently dejected.

”You’re far too cruel, Kai.”

The guilt hit him like a truck.

He’d wanted the reaction his needy yandere tended to give, but he clearly went far overboard.

”Aria-”

”I’m giving you everything of me and you...”

He turned in the water, caught her by the waist, and pulled her off the ledge, into the bath, onto his lap in one motion.

She landed against him chest to chest, her thighs wrapping around his hips on instinct, their faces inches apart, and beneath the water her flower settled against his shaft.

Water sloshed over the stone edges. Steam curled between them. Her breasts pressed against his chest, slippery with soap and warm water, her nipples dragging across his skin, and even through the hurt her body fit against his like it was designed to be there.

”I’m sorry.” He held her gaze, both hands on her hips. ”I wanted to see it: the jealousy, the possessiveness... Your face getting all scrunchy and mad.”

His thumb traced her jawline, brushing wet silver hair from her cheek. ”I went too far.”

Aria stared at him.

The hurt held for three more seconds. Then the emotion shifted behind her eyes, recognition, warmth, a knowing that ran deeper than the teasing or the jealousy, and a slow smile spread across her face.

”Got you~” She snickered.

”What?” Kaiden was confused.

”I manipulated your manipulation~” Aria giggled, seemingly far too happy with herself.

”...Explain.”

She pressed her forehead against his, silver eyes dancing inches from his own. ”Dummy, what needs explaining here? You knew how I’d react. I knew you knew. So I pretended to be hurt because I knew that when I did that you’d feel so guilty you’d pull me into your lap and apologize with that beyond adorable, stupidly sincere face.”

She traced a wet finger down the bridge of his nose. ”You might not realize, but we’re fighting a war, Kai. A quiet little psychological war. Aren’t we basically husband and wife? We know too much about each other...”

Kaiden grinned.

*Smack!*

*Smack!*

Both hands came down on her perky butt with a sharp, wet smack that echoed off the stone walls, and Aria yelped, releasing a sound so undignified it would have made Luna cackle for a week.

His fingers sank into the heavenly, round flesh and squeezed, palms kneading her with slow, shameless pressure while she squirmed on his lap, their eyes still locked, water rippling around them.

”You’re far too proud of yourself, you mischievous woman,” he said, hands still working.

”I read the terrible anomaly powerful governments can’t figure out, and I did it flawlessly.” She lifted her chin, completely regal despite sitting naked in his lap with his hands kneading her behind and his member pressed against her folds beneath the water. ”Of course I’m proud.”

Her hands found his chest.

Her fingertips trailed across his skin, tracing paths through the water droplets that clung to him, up the center of his chest, over his collarbone, along the side of his neck, and finally to his face, cupping his jaw with both hands, thumbs brushing his cheekbones.

The playfulness faded from her expression. An emotion deeper rose beneath it, older, heavier, more fragile than the yandere bravado she usually wore.

”From having to work two jobs to put food on the table,” she whispered quietly, thumbs moving slowly against his cheeks. ”From begging clients at the gym to choose me because I needed the commission.”

Her voice softened further. ”From being so tired after a shift that I’d fall asleep on the bus and miss my stop.”

She swallowed. ”To this.”

Aria gestured all around herself, the demonic marble, the architecture. But more than that, she was gesturing at the intangible, the entirety of their current situation.

She released a far too devastating feminine smile as she said, ”To being one of the most recognized women in the world. One of the most powerful. Connected. Even admired.”

Her fingers curled against his cheek. ”Do you know I get thousands of fan letters every day, Kai?”

”Thousands?” He knew, of course, that she was getting fan mail. They were all getting some. But that much?

”Yes...” She nodded tenderly. ”Girls and young women, mostly. They write me letters.”

A small, disbelieving laugh escaped her. ”One girl said she’d been working double shifts at a convenience store since she was sixteen to put her younger sister through school, and when she saw the stream, the fighting, the moonlight, all of it, she cried for an hour because she realized that being broke and exhausted didn’t mean she was stuck forever.”

Her thumb traced Kaiden’s cheekbone.

”Another girl told me she’d been ashamed of her own body her whole life. Ashamed of wanting to feel desired, because everyone told her that made her a loose woman. She said watching me, watching how I fight and love and refuse to apologize for wanting what I want, made her stop being ashamed.”

Her voice cracked.

”And a girl, fifteen, wrote me three pages about how her classmates told her pretty girls don’t get to be strong. That she’d have to choose between being taken seriously and being feminine. She said she started training the day after the stream.” A tremor ran through Aria’s fingers against his face. ”She sent a picture of herself at the gym with her hair tied back and this look on her face like she’d finally given herself permission to be both.”

Aria’s chin dipped.

”There are still people who mock us for how we got here. They call me names I won’t repeat.”

She shook her head once, small and final. ”I couldn’t care less.”

She leaned forward and buried her face in the curve of his neck, and her whole body curled into him, arms wrapping around his back, legs locking tighter behind his waist, every part of her pressing into every part of him as if the laws of physics were the only thing stopping her from crawling inside his chest and never coming out.

”Kai...”

The word came out broken, and the warmth that spread across his neck wasn’t bath water.

Tears rolled down her cheeks and onto his skin, tracing the line of his throat, trailing down his chest, running between them where her breasts pressed against him, and she clung to him so tight her arms shook with it.

”I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it all,” she whispered, her voice muffled against his neck.

”No matter how many hours we spend together, it’s not enough. No matter how many times you kiss me, I want another one. No matter how close you hold me, I want closer.”

A shudder ran through her whole body. ”It’s eating me alive, Kai. This love. It’s too big and it keeps growing every single day and I don’t know where to put it.”

Her nails dug into his back.

”I always want more of you and I’m terrified that one day you’ll look at me and see a woman who needs more than any one person should ask for.”

Kaiden held her through all of it, hands on her butt, his cheek resting against the top of her head, breathing in the scent of soap and steam and her.

He’d listened to every word without interrupting, without rushing to comfort, without telling her it was okay.

Because it wasn’t something to fix.

He then finally tilted her chin up with two fingers.

Aria’s face was a mess, silver eyes swollen, lashes clumped, cheeks flushed, tear tracks catching the faint red glow of the lava beneath the water.

She looked raw and totally wrecked.

”My beautiful moon.”

His thumb wiped a tear from beneath her eye, smearing it across her cheekbone.

”That makes two of us.”

”Kai...” Aria’s lips parted, but whatever she was going to say dissolved when he kissed her, both hands rising to cradle her face, pulling her in, and the sound she made against his mouth, a small, wet, broken thing, said everything that words had failed to carry.