Vow of Hell by Clara Elroy

Saint

The silver lining to falling asleep with Ariadne every night for the past month was waking up with her limbs tangled with mine—deliciously naked because clothes were forbidden as per the ground rules—sometimes her mouth wrapped around my cock, and other times me licking my way up her tits, and sinking into her warm cunt while she panted in my mouth.

Today I went for option number three, seeing as she'd been extra stressed, and I wanted to pay her extra attention. Ease the nerves that had her eyes wide as saucers until I got home from work so she could get some shut-eye.

Was I doing everything I vowed I never would with this woman? Yes, yes, I was.

Did I regret it? Hell to the fucking no.

The little virgin was milking daily orgasms from me, and I found myself growing attached to her orange scent and the random conversations she would strike at three am like whether men were truly necessary for the survival of the human species, now that scientists uncovered a new bone marrow procedure that allowed women to conceive without our help.

“Would you really be able to give this up?” I told her one of our nights together, while she bounced up and down on me, under the stars on the sky bridge. It was her favorite place in the whole house.

Stargazing had become a tradition of sorts, and I bought us a fluffy white rug so her stubborn ass wouldn’t catch pneumonia.

“I survived for twenty-one years without dick. Vibrators exist for a reason.” Her boobs swayed tauntingly over my face, and I reached up, taking a nipple in my mouth. She shuddered, and I smiled around her hot flesh, her moans doing nothing to mask her lies.

“But you can’t spell coconut with your hips while riding one, can you now?” I slapped her ass while she did the trick I taught her, and my eyes rolled to the back of my head, my lips parting with a hiss. “Don’t lie to me, you’ve become more insatiable than I am.”

“It’s all your fault,” she complained in my mouth while flooding my cock and balls with her release.

I never thought I would enjoy domestication. Throughout my life, I wasn’t raised with the poster example of a happy family and parents devoted to each other—everyone cheated, it was a known fact, but I couldn’t comprehend even touching someone else when I had a curvy brunette making me Paximadi, a hard heavily textured, traditional Greek bread for breakfast.

“Tell me again, why did we not sleep in the same bed before?” I half-moaned while taking a bite of the soaked bread, marinated with olive oil, and topped with chopped tomatoes and feta cheese.

Aria shrugged, and her robe fell slightly, exposing one of her shoulders, and I got the urge to get her filthy enough to need a second shower with me. “Because you were too busy fighting your blossoming emotions for me.”

“If you use blossoming in a sentence like that again, those emotions will evaporate.”

“Don’t be so grumpy. It’s okay to admit you fell for me, despite wanting to throw me off a cliff when I first got here,” she pouted, and I wasn’t surprised she thought that way.

I’d passed through douchebag academy with flying colors when I was younger, and some of the traits extended into adulthood. My stomach tightened at the words fell for me, and I took a sip of my Frappe—courtesy of Ariadne too—to avoid lashing out because of the murkiness that had overtaken my temporal lobe.

“Let’s not run before we can walk.” I settled for a neutral answer and proceeded to continue the joke. That’s what she was also doing, joking. “And I never wanted to throw you off a cliff. Well, not without a parachute anyway. You were annoying, but not annoying enough to kill without remorse.”

“Stop being so swoony. My heart can’t handle it.” She clutched her chest mockingly.

Checking the clock on the wall, I scarfed down the rest of the food, giving her some words of wisdom that she would heed if she was smart. “Better shield it, baby. You never know what might cause it to break.”

“If I lived my life in fear, then I wouldn’t be living at all.” Aria gave me a haughty look that was all sass, and I had to remind myself that this was still a trial run and that I had to set her free once it was up.

* * *

“All this snow is making my hair frizzy. It’s March. I long to see the sun again,” Aria sighed dramatically, rearranging her scarf to cover her poofed-up hair as we made our way down a slick sidewalk.

“Want me to put a Shirley Temple song on when we ride back home?” I teased, drawing her close. She was so focused on maintaining the curls she defined before we left, she would step straight into a patch of ice. Rushing to the hospital because she broke her back was the last thing I needed.

She gave me the finger, and I laughed, blowing frigid air into the atmosphere.

“I want you to tell me why the hell you dragged me all the way to Boston on a Saturday.” Her question was answered within seconds once we took a left and stopped in front of a Barnes and Noble. Ari’s eyes squeezed in confusion, and she stared up at me, her windburned cheeks begging me to cup them. “A bookstore? Are you looking for something specific?”

I dropped my hand from her shoulders, squeezing my arms to my sides. It was cold, but I also was avoiding doing anything stupid. “I got a Facebook ad about an event related to one of the books you told me about. The one about the blue aliens with the ribbed dic—”

“Out of all the ones I told you about, that's the one you remember?” Her long lashes flicked to the sky in exasperation and humor.

“It was the most memorable.” I shrugged, my lips twitching. “I was checking on a campaign with your dad, and you should’ve seen his face when I clicked the Learn More button.”

“You did not tell him I like reading those types of books, right?” Aria clutched my forearm in desperation.

“No, I’m sure he thought I was booking tickets to the author’s signing purely for my enjoyment,” I mocked, shrugging some of the snowflakes that littered my coat.

“Okay, cool—” She sighed before doing a double-take. “Wait, what?”

Lacing my fingers through hers, I ushered us past the double doors. “Come on, she’s not going to wait forever.”

Turned out, we had to wait forever.

The author was late due to the snowstorm, and even though I enjoyed the excited kiss Aria planted on my lips when she saw Mariana Parker’s banner—which was an iconic blue. However, I was not enjoying how she took advantage of the time we spent waiting by filling up my arms with special edition covers of Harry Potter because according to some online quiz she was a Ravenclaw and had to have the blue box set.

At least her ass looked extra biteable in her white faux leather pants.

“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.” Her entire face lit up with one of the biggest smiles I’d ever seen when Mariana made her way to the desk that was set up for her, stacks of books on either side. “It’s really her!”

I swallowed past the increasing lump in my throat and slammed the sudden urge to book tickets to Tasmania so she could see her fucking southern lights, and I could see an even bigger smile on her face illuminated by the green and blue sky, down. By the time it was winter in Australia, Aria and I would be on separate roads.

“I can’t believe I married a dork,” I complained but followed when she rushed forward.

Okay, blue aliens were more popular than I thought, and bookworms could remain silent as nuns. The line was fifty people long, and I was seriously concerned because one: I must’ve only caught like two customers lingering around the bookstore when we first came in. And two: The male species had some serious competition if so many women thought aliens were the next big thing.

I voiced my last concern to Aria and shut my mouth when she told me that it was because they were so tired of our bullshit, even extraterrestrial love sounded better.

Couldn’t argue with that logic.

After hearing girls squeal for about an hour, I was more than grateful to be out of that place. Ariadne’s smile was still in place as we stared at the people skating about the ice rink in Boston Common, and I mirrored her, but mostly because I found watching people fall extremely entertaining.

“And here you said you there was no ounce of romance in you.” Aria blinked innocently at me, taking a bite out of her cheesy pizza, and chewing as fast as she could so she could shove her red fingers in her pockets again.

“Don’t be fooled, Spitfire. I did this purely because it’s not healthy living this dream world of yours. I hope meeting the author helped you realize that the characters are indeed fictional, and real-life doesn’t always have a happy ever after,” I grumped, and the pit in my stomach grew when the next fall didn’t do anything for me.

“Romantic and jealous of blue aliens. I like this two for one special.” She grinned, reaching up to peck my cheek.

“Eat your pizza,” I ordered, but as time went on, I was starting to forget why I was so averse to a lifetime with Ari.

I was happy—maybe too happy, and I hadn’t felt like this in a while.

Sure, I had fun in my life, but fun was fleeting. Happiness was the extended version of it. And being with Ariadne Fleur, my opposite in so many ways, surprisingly had me eating out of her hand to stretch the emotion.

My phone buzzed with a call once I’d gotten Ariadne settled on the passenger seat, and I checked the name as I strode to my side of the car, declining when I saw who it was.

The universe’s way of showing me why we can’t have nice things was cruel, but oh, so valid. Ariadne deserved someone better than a guy who was about to send his father to an early grave.