Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)(104)
He signed off as their loving son, possibly for the last time.
He proofread the dictated message as best he could.
With a shaking finger, he pressed send.
Then, his phone in his sweaty palm, he tapped the number he’d stored in his contacts weeks ago, just in case he ever found enough courage.
Maybe he still hadn’t. But at least he’d found sufficient inspiration and motivation. Enough to do what he should have done years before.
Vika Andrich answered on the second ring, ambient conversation almost drowning out her greeting. She was down in one of the hallways below, no doubt, surrounded by crowds of Gates fans and gathering information for her next blog posts.
“Vika speaking.” She sounded distracted. “How may I help you?”
“This is Marcus Caster-Rupp,” he told her, his voice hoarse. “I have a few misconceptions I’d like to correct. How would you feel about an exclusive interview this evening?”
There was a long, long pause.
“Hold on a moment.” When she spoke again, her surroundings were quieter. “May I be frank?”
He swallowed hard. “Certainly.”
“I’d feel like it was about time,” she said.
Rating: Mature
Fandoms: Gods of the Gates – E. Wade, Gods of the Gates (TV)
Relationships: Aeneas/Lavinia
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Angst and Fluff, Guilt
Stats: Words: 5,937 Chapters: 3/3 Comments: 9 Kudos: 83 Bookmarks: 4
Sparring
AeneasLovesLavinia
Summary:
Aeneas teaches his wife swordplay—and waits for the day she draws blood.
Notes:
Thanks to my beta. He knows who he is.
* * *
Lavinia was growing more comfortable with a sword in her hand.
That was true in bed, of course, and he was a selfish enough man to appreciate her increased skill there. But the bed wasn’t where she was growing to trust him, thrust by thrust.
At night, she permitted his caresses and ventured her own, willing but awkward still. That wide-eyed look of shock each time she shuddered and came apart in his arms hadn’t yet disappeared. Her lingering hesitance charmed him, even as her pleasure prompted his.
Under the blazing sun, in the dust, she was a different woman. Clothed and confident, she swung back at him. She parried. She engaged.
You must learn, lest I and the other guards of the Latium gate fail, he’d told her.
It was true enough. It was also an excuse, one he refused to relinquish after sparring with her the first time.
Her endearing, lopsided smile bright, she moved her elegant, angular body without hesitation, certain he wouldn’t wound her. Some swords, it seemed, she considered more dangerous than others.
One day, she wounded him instead.
“Tell me about Carthage, husband,” she said as she knocked aside his blade and made an advance. “How did you spend your time there?”
His concentration slipped, with predictable results. The gash on his thigh welled with blood, and she gasped and found a clean corner of her stola to press to the injury.
She choked out apologies, and he consoled her, and he wondered.
If she knew—if she knew—how he’d left behind the last woman he’d loved, abandoning her without a word; if she’d stood on the deck of his ship, at his side, and watched a queen light herself afire in desolation at his cruelty; if she understood him for what he was and what he’d been and what he’d done—
Maybe she wouldn’t accept his sword in bed, and maybe she wouldn’t laugh and use one to parry his thrusts in the dusty yard they shared.
Maybe she’d turn it on him instead.
29
“—SO CYPRIAN AND CASSIA WILL NEED TO MAKE SOME hard decisions about what they mean to each other, and what they’re willing to sacrifice for one another and for humanity,” Maria said in response to the moderator’s question, before turning to Peter. “Anything you want to add?”
As she’d spoken, he’d been gazing at her the entire time, rapt, mouth quirked slightly in a smile. “Another question that will become paramount is whether the island where they’ve been shipwrecked for years is still their prison, or whether it’s become their home. Otherwise, I think you’ve covered everything I’d planned to say. As always.”
Her expression impish, Maria wrinkled her nose at him. “If that’s a hint that I talk too much—”
“Never,” he swore dramatically, one hand clapped over his heart as the audience laughed. “I hang on your every utterance, my lady.”
“There’s a word in Swedish that applies here.” Maria propped her elbows on the table in front of her and gazed conspiratorially out at the session’s attendees. “Snicksnack. Nonsense. Total bullshit.”
Carah snickered at that. “I thought I’d be the first person bleeped today.”
“Swedes are a foulmouthed lot, I’ve found,” Peter said very clearly into his microphone, while Maria grinned at him. “I can only conclude that long winters encourage vulgarity.”
Marcus shook his head at them both. By the time he got on Twitter later, that particular exchange would have already gone viral, one of many such exchanges that had become memes and gifs over the last several years. He knew it already.