Chapter Text
hello everyone!!
long time no talk but i have been working on something exciting that I wanted to share. If you enjoyed this book then please check out my first ever novel titled "When we were gods". i have spent years working on it and I'm so proud that it's finally here!! Its a story about young gods, love, and betrayal and full of twists and turns set in a group of diverse characters whose love you will fall in love with. if you enjoyed this story then please feel free to check out my book, ill leave a link and the first chapter below!!
ONE,
ARIS,
This is not how Aris Riley had expected her night to go. She had expected dinner, maybe desert, and a walk back to her apartment, she may have even invited him inside if things seemed to go well. But instead, what could have been a nice evening has turned into her being tied to a chair in the middle of a dingy hotel room surrounded by more men than she had agreed to meet. Figures. Of course, she had known what she was doing, she had let them tie her hands and led her to the room and put her in this situation, she had nothing else planned for the evening and this was still better than watching reruns on TV. Halfway through the date when Brad suggested they go back to his place, she had seen the glare in his eye, had seen the powder he slipped in her drink when he thought she wasn’t looking, he thought he was in control of the situation. She watches him walk around her, as though trying to decide what he wanted to do, the other men stood looking at her low-cut dress with something horrible in their eyes and a small smile on their faces.
This night would have had a very different outcome for the last girl, but Aris was going to be the last.
“What do I want to do with you?” Brad says, moving his face inches closer to hers. She can taste the citrus on his breath from the drink he had been sipping at the bar.
“Let me go and we can call this whole thing a misunderstanding?” She says with a small smile, secretly giving them a chance to turn back before it was too late. Little did they know that the rope that bounds her hands was already broken. Brad shakes his head as the other men laugh. She doesn’t take her eyes off him, keeping her face relaxed and controlled, her eyes open and innocent. Brad twists the hilt of his knife lazily in his fingers, trying to show that he was a bigger man than he really was. He brings it carefully to the side of her face, raking it down her cheek as his breath hits her nose. She smiled at the sweat that dripped down the side of his temple. She lets her eyes stare into his, lets herself slip away silently from the plastic chair below her, away from the sharp knife and walls that try to contain her, into a place that is both everywhere and nowhere at the same time, a place that Brad doesn’t know lives within himself. She searches for a pull, letting her mind wander in and out of the holes in his mind, looking for the locked box he keeps so deep down inside that he forgets it’s there, to begin with. She feels it like electricity, the image of a small girl with Brad's grey eyes looking at someone Aris can’t see, the sun makes her hair look like a shade of gold. When Aris blinks her eyes again there is a smile on her lips, Brads round face comes back into focus in Infront of her.
“What would Michela think of all this? Do you want her to know that her father enjoys hearing young girls scream?” She says and the second her name is off her tongue the air changes; Brad’s face pulls tighter into harsh lines. She watches as he almost flinches away from the words as though they held a secret power to hurt him. “Wouldn’t want her to find out about any of this, would we?” It was an empty threat but her calm voice got the job done. Everyone in the room feels the shift in power, that somehow, she has gained some sort of control that she lacked before. If they only knew how truly in control of the situation she was. Bright energy tingles up her back only to settle in the set of her collar bones as she smiles slowly.
Before she could say anything else, Brad is throwing his entire weight into a punch that had the power to knock down a much stronger person than her, but when his fist connects to the side of her face she doesn’t flinch. Her eyes stay locked with his.
“Shit,” he mumbles, bringing his hand to his chest protectively as though he had just punched a piece of drywall. His eyes grow when he looks up at her who still sits in her chair completely unaffected; the strap of her dress hanging innocently off of one shoulder. She watches the way his eyes narrow, she can feel the budding tension appear between them in exactly the way she knew it would.
“Not so big now, are you?” The words drip in sarcasm, desperately begging the men around her to make the first move; she liked the way they looked at each other as though not sure what to make of her. “Let me guess, this isn’t how things normally go for you? The story is always the same with you men; you get the girl, tie her down, maybe threaten her with that knife you keep spinning, then you take turns having your way with her only to kill her when it’s over? I’m afraid the story is gonna play out a little differently tonight.” Aris keeps her voice low, the tone cold and dangerous with her true power apparent in every word. She watches as Brad takes a look around, his face contorting with a heavy blush, his eyes grow darker with rage. He moves closer, moving the knife forward in a way that suggests it was about to be plunged deep into her chest, but her eyes move faster than Brad. She grabs the blade while ripping her arms free of the loose ropes. They all watch as the blade shatters against her skin as though it was made from fine glass, Brad's eyes go wide. He stumbles backward in fear or maybe shock as she looks around at the room of men with a smile.
“What—what are you—?” Brad spits, his words shaky and hesitant. He looks behind him for someone to back him up but instead his friends seem to confused to move or have the wherewithal to run as Brad holds the empty hilt of the blade limply in his shaking fingers. Eventually, they come back to reality as she slowly stalks forward; all of them pull out pocket knives that are barely the size of her finger. She looks at them, tilting her head as though in amusement.
“Come on, you know it’s too late for that.” She takes them out quickly, using the knife from one on the right to take out the one on the left as she hears the door open and close behind her as someone runs. Soon the only one left is Brad, his back tightly against the wall. She watches the way his fingers dig into the cheap wallpaper as though he was trying to get impossibly farther away. Her fingers run over the side of his jaw in the same way he had done to her at the bar, his eyes don’t move as his face grows more and more distorted, like his brain was spinning with trying to find a way to escape this. She moves to look at the blood on his shirt, the same blood that was sprayed on the blue of her dress, his body trembles as she presses her fingers into the soft skin of his neck.
“You’re smart, haven’t you figured it out?” She asks, her voice dripping in condemnation for the man living under her breath. She plays with a piece of his hair, twirling it between her fingers like they had woken up together in the very same hotel room. Her eyes—her true, bright eyes—bare into his.
“I’m something like a God.”
His eyes go wide before Aris connects the side of her elbow to the spot right below his temple.
thats a little peice from the first chapter! There is LGBTQ+rep who you will fall inlove with, and yea hope you guys take a look!
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B097X5VLSH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1