The Arena

40 days before

Fear gripped at my throat. I shouldn't keep going, I needed to stop, stop walking. But I contradicted every protest my mind was exclaiming—I am a walking contradiction. The desperate sensation of needing to see them propelling their screams, to see them alive and buzzing—compared to their usual drone behavior—was overriding my fear of being spotted by Ares. I was bursting with the same thrill and wish to feel pure energy pulse within my veins. Will I be safe from his guarded eyes? The blank glower of the dark veneer that masked the watchful eyes, they seem to only devote themselves to me when I spoke out of line or better not at all. But I was yet to cease my pace through the tunnel, the entrance enticing me to dare walk through it, and then I heard it, the blaring chants and cheers from a horde of people. I leered as I near the edge of the pit—which I have found was due to the old mining projects over fifty years ago, how they discovered this place, I was still yet to uncover.

My heart underwent a plummeting chill as I arrived just in time to see Ares pounding the existence out of another fighter, who seemed to put up a fair fight, but was still no match for the masked figure. I did not waver my eyes from the violent mess, but I could still feel a familiar disgust for it.

Then I saw something, something in the slight turn of his muscled shoulders, the tilt of his head and steady stance—pride, how satisfied he was with the violence. It was alluring, his dominance making itself known to member within the crowd. I could almost feel the arrogance scorching holes into my existence, this I only grasped is when he stood three feet away from me. I seemed to have either spaced out, or he was lightning quick.

"Thought you'd be here, couldn't get enough of me, Katri?" he spat my –fake– name.

"I didn't come here for you." I quickly retorted, somehow feeling like I was lying. Something I seemed to do now excessively, but the name I gave him sounded alien to me. "I have a few things to ask you, since you so rudely refused to last time."

"This isn't a place for someone like you." he gestured towards the fuming flocks of people below, from this far they looked like animals.

"People like me? You don't know what kind of a person I am." I muttered.

"There are two reasons people come here, to see a fight or to fight. By the look on your face earlier, it didn't seem you were enjoying the fight and I'm sure you're not a fighter either." his muffled voice told me calmly, but I couldn't stop the irritation from crawling up my throat.

"How would you know? You don't even know me! I could probably put on the same theatricality as you do, with even less effort. Besides, you don't have to physically strong to be a fighter."

I wanted to get him mad, perhaps as payback for leaving me in an angry daze for the past week. But I wasn't sure if it worked, because as the words left my mouth he managed to only get closer to me, I could feel heat radiating from his naked torso in waves and I had to slightly look up to his face.

"Theatricality… You presume that what I do is an act? A performance?" he challenged, his voice taking on a dark tone. Something was telling me to leave, to run and never look back because the hair on the back of my neck seemed to stand up, but my feet stood rooted on the ground. This only fuelled the fire.

"No, not a performance exactly, more like a facade—you hide behind that mask, you use it to show your power or even the absence of it. You, you come here and beat someone to death because you can't hurt the people that control you in your life outside the cage." I rambled.

"Ah, clever girl. You usually like to psychoanalyze strangers?" he mocked while I glared. His arms pinned me against the railing, he paused and eventually leaned his head down to my ear and whispered. "but what if I come here to solely beat the fuck out of someone…what if I'm just a foul boy looking for a fight?" if I could see his face I knew it would be pulled into a smirk.

"Well…then you're just a foul boy looking for a fight, aren't you?" I paused, trying to ignore the goosebumps along my skin. "But nothing's that simple, you come here for a reason, they all do."

"What's your reason?" he asked. I didn't expect him to ask me that, I didn't expect for my mouth to provide an answer. I was completely at a blank, and started to really wonder just what the hell I was doing here? To watch him fight? For answers? To watch a mob of desperate people? To idly flirt with a maniac? I felt impossibly small and stupid for leaving my house.

"I, I don't know." I confessed, trying my best to ignore the fact that my chest was practically against his naked torso.

A few moments passed, and I could feel his eyes intently observing me. I felt something burn in me, desire, I realised I wanted him, in that moment, being pinned by him in front of all those possible onlookers, somehow thrilled me. Something new and dangerous was happening, I wasn't sure if I was able to handle it. But, I really really wanted him.

I was about to push him away when the warmth was invading me to the point I started to feel my hands start sweating, but then his much larger hand gripped my wrist and started leading me in a new direction. "What are you doing?" I shouted, my voice cracking when without a warning as his fingers intertwined with mine.

"Giving you a reason."

My heartbeat increased its pace, my hands started to feel clammy because I swear his voice had held a dark and dangerous promise. But danger was terribly exciting and my feverish mind grappled with endless possibilities. Until now, my life had been a series of calamity's and repercussions…beginning with my father's death and ending with my mother's abandonment. I felt like I was forever struggling to hold my ground— practically suffocating from the sheer claustrophobia.

The quarantine of my thoughts was broken when I was pushed gently into the room, the door slammed shut before I had a chance to register where I was, but I swiftly noticed I was back in the dim emerald confines of his room, alongside the jagged wall. The mask barely an inch from my face, his fingers playing with the hem of my t-shirt.

"What are you doing?" I barely whispered.

"You know what I'm doing, tell me stop." his tone of voice was making it difficult to speak or remember what the hell my name was. A moment passed by when I realised that he seemed to me waiting for something, the dark mask making it difficult to read him.

I felt an unwelcome heat overtake my senses, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant. Almost as if watching someone else, I saw myself press my body closer to his and reached my fingers tentatively stroke his velvet mask and impulsively place a warm kiss to where his lips were supposed to be. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was intimate enough to make me snap back to myself and lower my eyes to the ground. I couldn't help but notice that my lips thrummed pleasantly.

Without further notice, I was pushed back into the wall and held in place while his hands made quick work of my clothes, making sure to linger on my skin every now and then. My senses came reeling back with a force enough to propel me into a dazed state of vertigo. I was brimming with hunger as those tools of destruction caressed —no not caress, they, they possessed my body.

I couldn't believe I was getting what I wanted. It seems like I wanted him the moment I saw him, does it always seems like that when you have hindsight?

I couldn't speak, the only sounds escaping my mouth were one's which I've never uttered before. His touch was warm but firm, I thought I had to be dreaming. Nothing in my entire life had ever felt like that before. My very soul was aflame. He was touching me so frantically that as if at any moment I would change my mind and push him away. But there was no way; I wasn't plan on letting him go anytime soon. I clung to his neck and kissed it with all of my might. I wanted to show him how many emotions he made me feel. How I thought about him when I was alone. It was only there that I identified that the misplaced anger towards him could have been feelings of desire.

But soon I was lying against the cold silk sheets, desperate for his warmth while he stood above me and watched me for a moment and whispered something that made me blush in agony. It was the first time someone told me I was beautiful and sounded like they meant it.

"You're not bad yourself." I managed to breathe out as his fingers trailed along my lips, my neck, my breasts.

"Wait until you see my face." he whispered and I smiled in return.

He kept asking me if I wanted to stop very gently, my answer was always the same, no.

Suddenly he moved with a new found drive and I started to feel a painful intrusion, I was devastated but he murmured words of assurance, his hands stroking my tears away and soon enough the pain was being replaced by a catastrophic greed and hunger, the utter feeling of being starved for something for days. I was frantic, I was ablaze, I was so desperate for something I never thought I wanted so bad.

I've yet to realize that I've lost my virginity before my kiss, before falling in love, before being utterly head over heels as they do in stories. I didn't even know what his face looked like. But it didn't matter at the time, it didnt feel as important because this, oh, this is so much better than any illusion of love that there could ever be. His hands barely brushed against every inch of skin I possessed. The rawest of sensations began filled my whole body and I experienced the beginning and end of something extraordinary, over and over again.

He let me collapse on the bed as I relished in my comatose state. Eventually my breathing came to a slow and I opened my eyes, I finally noticed with a grimace that Ares was pulling his clothes back on and it only deepened when I realised what time it was.

"It's two in the morning!" I sat up.

"Your observational skills are incredible."

"I came here at eleven...that, that mean's we, we have been..." The sudden realization colouring my face in crimson. Ares didn't seem fussed and began gathering my clothes into a little pile.

"That we've been fucking for three hours?" he offered casually. How can he be so relaxed? He didn't even seem out of breath, but the slight sheen of sweat along his body suggested otherwise. The veins on his muscled arms were distracting me to the point where I barely noticed what he had said. "Where's your underwear? I cant find it." My whole body froze while my face became even more flushed.

I began to join him in the hunt, stark naked, completely comfortable.

"So when are you going to show me your face?" I decided to ask while checking under the bed.

"When are you going to tell me your real name, Katri?" he shot back.

Caught in my own lie, I sighed. "How did you know?" I asked, not surprised as my lying capabilities have always been sub-par.

He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "I'm a human lie detector." he said. "Also your eyes narrow slightly every time you lie... when I asked you what you were doing at the beach and when you told me your name..." he continued and I felt a smile tug at my lips, impressed."...and when you insisted you didn't come here looking for me tonight." he finished, his voice taking on an amused tone while I felt completely flustered.

"My name is more ridiculous than the one I gave you anyway." I tried to appear angry, as angry as one could while completely exposed and slightly embarrassed, he didn't respond and we resumed my search. His hands seemed to wonder on more than one occasion, it became so ridiculous that once again I found myself panting on the silk sheets beneath him, completely exhausted while my underwear lay forgotten somewhere.

I left in a complete daze a few hours later, my underwear missing, my virginity locked behind me in a room with a masked man on a heap of emerald silk and a new found reason to return.