Let's check in with #Axria in modern-day Greece...
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Scene 6: Weakness
A.D. 2015
Axel Golde groaned as he woke up from a heavy sleep to the persistent buzzing of his phone. There were a thousand better ways to be roused, many of which Atria had used on him in recent days, and all of which involved being aroused. But he knew who was calling him now, and every muscle in his tired body was turned off by the sound.
He rolled out of bed, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that Atria was still asleep after he'd disentwined their dewy limbs — luckily, she had always been a deeper sleeper than him — and stepped out onto the veranda still naked. They were staying in a sleek villa on the island of Ios now, one of his several vacation homes. On this hedonistic isle, clothing was often optional and rarely worth the trouble.
"Seriously, kid," he grumbled into the phone as he answered it, "not even moms and clingy girlfriends are allowed to call this often."
"This is what you signed up for, Golde," Jett chided, continuing on calmly over Axel's protests that he'd never signed up for anything. "When a little bitch fails to report back to his boss with progress, then the big dog needs to check in and make sure that the underling is doing what he's told."
Axel responded with a chuckle. "Ha ha, 'big dog'? That's hilarious."
"Actually, Golde, everything about this is quite serious. You know — I suspected soon after meeting you that you were not the most... reliable recruit. That I might have cause to question your commitment to the mission of the Guild. So I took care to secure some insurance."
Silence on the other end, evincing Axel's apprehension as to where Jett was going with this.
"I may have neglected to mention this to you earlier, Golde, but I happen to know where your mother lives," Jett stated. "And no — this is not the start of an 'I fυcked your mum' joke, of the sort that seems to cater to your oh so mature sense of humor."
Golden-green eyes darkened dangerously. Axel had known that he was dealing with a good-for-nothing punk, but he hadn't thought that the boy would stoop so despicably low. He blamed himself now for having underestimated just how villainous Jettison Jacobs was. "You listen to me, kid, if you fυcking dare—"
"There is nothing that I wouldn't dare do, Golde. You should know this. I am a man with no morals, no limits. Men like me are not to be messed with. Today, you have learned this the hard way."
"Yeah, I've learned that you're a bottom-feeding sack of shıt," Axel retorted as his knuckles whitened on the terrace's pale marble railing. After losing his brother, there was no one and nothing on earth that he would protect more fiercely than his mother. "If you touch a hair on her head, you sick son of a bitch, I will drag your sorry ass to hell and make you pay for it."
"Spare me the big talk; save it for the whores desperate enough to take your cock," Jett spat. "I expect progress by this time next week, Golde. Actual and substantial progress. Or else I just might be inclined to pay your mum a little visit..."
"A week? Hell, it could take months, fυcking years, to figure—"
"Somehow I get the sense, Golde, that you're more interested in making Miss Shearer love you, making yourself her weakness, than in figuring out what her weakness truly is. Pray tell, am I mistaken about this?"
For a fraction of a second, Axel bit his lip.
Jett snickered at the silence; brief though it was, it'd been enough. "Not only is that not your job, Golde — it's fυcking pathetic. I should not need to remind you that your task is to determine where the bitch's heart lies, her Achilles' heel, her true weakness; for this, a week is generous. That's all you get. So focus, lest your six-feet-under brother meet his mummy dearest."
With that, Jett promptly hung up. The blood pounding in Axel's ears, far past its boiling point, was so loud that as Atria approached him now, he didn't even hear.
"Hey..." she murmured, laying a hand on his shuddering shoulder.
Axel swiveled to face her, taken aback at the contact, muscles tensing and fists tightening — from within his right hand, both of them heard a crack. He unclenched his fist and they looked down to see a fracture in the screen of the phone he was holding.
"Whoa," Atria arched her brows, not out of astonishment at the fact that Axel's fist was capable of cracking it — she had plenty of experience with the viselike strength of his grip — but rather alarmed and concerned as to the cause of his anger. "Did... did you just do that? You okay?"
He sucked in a deep breath, in an effort to calm himself. "Yeah, I'm great," he lied, smiling to mask his panic upon wondering how much of the conversation she had overheard. "Just, uh... some problems back at work."
"Sounded like it. But nothing a big bad boss like you can't handle, right?" she purred as she inched closer, till his bare body was pressed firmly into hers. "...And nothing a bad girl like me can't make better?"
He grinned and gave in to the sweetest of sins. Sex never actually made anything better, but with Atria it always felt so good to be so bad, and the sensation of hot, sweaty skin against the cold, slick surface of the terrace made for some of the best sex they'd ever had. Which was saying a hell of a lot, he thought after their billionth climax.
And after a long, lazy day mostly consisting of having more sex, going to the beach, having sex on the beach, and other such activities, they flumped onto the plush, swanky sofa in front of his big, fancy flatscreen TV and had something — other than each other — to eat.
As he reached for another piece of pita, piling it high with gyro meat, Axel tried not to think about the fact that every passing second brought him closer to the deadline Jett had given. One fυcking week...
"Ahh, shıt," Atria interjected, pointing up at the screen. "It's that guy, the modeling agent. That creep who was harassing me the other day on Mykonos."
Axel looked up from his gyro, blinked at the TV. "Oh. Yeah, it is."
"Are you listening to this? They're saying that he dropped dead on the beach right after a bird pooped on his head. Just boom, dead."
He furrowed his brow. "So what was it, like, toxic seagull shıt?"
She shrugged. "Dunno. Just super weird. The story made it to the news because apparently doctors can't determine the cause of death, so now nobody is going to that beach, and everyone on Mykonos is fυcking terrified of birds."
"Huh. That is super weird," he agreed. "Guy was a dick, though. Had it coming."
Atria heaved a shaky sigh and grabbed the remote. "I guess so."
Axel glanced over at her, only now noticing how troubled she looked, how her hand trembled as she flipped through the channels. He set down his plate. "Hey — hey, what's up? You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm great," she lied with a wide smile that was clearly a charade. "Just — was just a little bit freaked out, for a second. Like, you know how sometimes you hate people and maybe think to yourself that they deserve to die in shıtty ways, but then if it... actually happens..." her train of thought trailed off.
"Ah, I see. Yeah, I guess if you wished a shıtty death upon him, then this literal death-by-shıt thing is a pretty freaky coincidence."
"Exactly," she concurred, voice shaking and sounding almost... desperate or something, which was strange. "Coincidence."
In any event, Atria had entirely lost her appetite at that point and was bored of surfing channels, she announced, which of course meant that it was time for her to pounce. Didn't even have the patience to shift over to the floor, which was unfortunate for his sofa's fine upholstery.
But nowhere near as unfortunate as what Axel had to do next, what he had to suggest. In hopes of hiding his hesitance on the subject, he prefaced the whole thing by talking about how great Ios was, praising the island's spirit of debauchery and not-giving-a-fυckery.
"I know right, it's the best," Atria sighed as she absentmindedly caressed his chest.
"Yeah. Oh and hey, so while we're here, I was, uh..." he began, still struggling to convince himself that doing this was worth it, that it would be part of a potentially effective plan, "...I was thinking we should, like, see other people."
The path her fingers traced along his skin came to a sudden stop.
Axel cleared his throat, hating the sound and the taste of his own words. "And by 'see', I mean fυck. Obviously. Since we're not exclusive or anything, I figure we might as well make use of what this island has to offer, you know?"
"Yeah," she uttered after a lingering silence. "Uh — yeah, sure."
And the evident reluctance of her words was one of the most beautiful things he had ever heard. He masked that, of course, pretending to not care one way or the other. "You don't seem too hot on that idea."
"What? No, I'm—I'm burning up at the thought. So hot," she claimed, her gaze the special shade of dark green that he knew flared only when she felt defensive. "Been dying to fυck other guys for a long time."
He smiled; she always looked so cute when she was lying. "Oh, is that so?"
"Totally. Just... didn't want to mention it since that would leave you in the dust with lesser women. Seemed like it would be selfish of me."
"When have you ever not been selfish?"
She paused briefly, then shifted in the couch, breaking contact with him, staring up at the ceiling. "Never. Which is why tonight I'm gonna hit the clubs and grab some random hunk and fυck him senseless."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
As much as he hated what he was doing, the fun of watching Atria all huffy like this almost made it worth it. Almost.
At any rate, he'd been good at pretending that he didn't give a shıt about her lately, aside from the pleasure he derived from her sexually, so he just resumed that facade for the moment. Cocked his brow suggestively. "Can I watch?"
She rolled her emerald eyes. "You wish."
"I do. Or better yet, I could, you know... get in on the action."
Faint blush rose to her cheeks, already flushed, at that suggestion.
"It wouldn't be our first threesome," he reminded her.
"Right, and you know how well the last one went."
"Ibiza?"
"And the guy in New York, before that," Atria added to the list. "And the Miami waitress... the showgirl in Vegas..."
"I know, I know, but hey — everything's different now, isn't it?"
She bit and then released her luscious lower lip. "Yeah. It is."
"No way the same thing would happen this time. We're not the same people," Axel asserted. "Not the same... couple."
Where her pretty head lay on the sofa, she nodded. "Right."
"It'll be fun. It'll be hot."
"Super hot."
"I vote for girl, though."
She rolled her eyes again. "Of course you do."
"Way hotter watching a chick eat you out than seeing you blow someone other than me."
"Aw, and why's that?" she goaded, shifting to come close to him again, gaze fixating on a certain something. "Little Axe gets jealous?"
He smirked, shook his head. "Big Axe never gets jealous. He just gets even bigger watching girl-on-girl," he told her, though the truth was that having her all to himself was his favorite thing in the world.
She flashed him a coy little pout. "So, what, making Big Axe happy is all that matters?"
"You sure seemed to think so last night," he teased with a wink.
Atria rolled her green eyes yet again, involuntarily licking her lips.
"And this morning," he whispered, moving closer and grinding his length into her. "And this afternoon. And..."
"Well, tonight will be different," she butted in, yanking her body away from him as if resisting the pull of the world's strongest magnet, evidently needing to summon every ounce of her willpower to manage it, flouncing out of the sofa and heading toward the closet where she kept her hottest nightlife outfits. "So we'll hit up the club separately, as if we're complete strangers."
He nodded, standing up to follow her. "You grab a guy, I'll snag a girl. The girl is coming home tonight for sure—"
"Hey...!" she began to object, turning to face him.
"Who's paying for this place? I get the final say."
That shut her up.
"And you—" Axel continued, "—you can either go off with your so-called 'hunk', or come back home with us."
"And make you happy."
"Very happy."
"Or... let you suffer through inadequate sex with some lesser slut while I go off and suck on a bigger—"
"If that's what you want, baby," he cut in.
She scowled. "Don't call me baby."
"Bitch."
"That's better," she assented with a sultry grin.
They proceeded to take separate showers, and to get dressed without succumbing to the usual urge to just rip the clothes right off each other as soon as they were on and go at it all over again. Just the two of them, nobody else... though the both of them had to pretend, just for now, that that wasn't what they really wanted.
All the while he was supposed to be gauging her reactions, as part of his job — trying to see what her behavior indicated, if anything, about her feelings. About her true weakness. Sometimes Axel felt certain that it had to indicate something... but then again, he was fυcking pathetic, just as Jett had said — for twisted reasons that he himself couldn't fathom, he wanted Atria to love him... So if it sometimes seemed as if she did, then that was probably just wishful thinking.
And a godforsaken soul like his did not deserve to be loved, and didn't even have the right, at this point in his sorry life, to wish, to hope, for anything. Not a damn thing.
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Any thoughts about #Axria? Jett? About Axel's 'job'? ...
I know many of you assumed that his assignment was to just kill Atria, but as we can see, it turns out to be a lot less simple than that ;) ...
Next scene, we'll revisit Rider and Lachesis in B.C....
** And if you liked this one, please don't forget to vote! :) **