“I wondered if… you’d tell me what happened between us and Hephaestus. I know his side of the story. I haven’t spoken with you about it, and I don’t remember.”
Beau dragged in a breath. “I kind of hoped you wouldn’t care to ask.”
“Why?”
“Because it was all my fault. Indirectly mine anyway. You know how all throughout mythology, Aphrodite is considered my consort?”
“Yeah?”
“Because that’s how I wanted it. I had a thousand opportunities to make you my wife. I could have married you before Hephaestus even had the chance to win you from Zeus, but I didn’t. And that’s my fuckup. Because I was afraid of commitment.”
“And?”
“So I put it off. Then one day, Hera receives a golden throne from Hephaestus and she’s delighted, thinks he’s forgiven her and extending the olive branch. Fuck, she was so overjoyed, she sat in it right away.”
“And was stuck.”
“Right. He enchanted it to hold her captive, and no one, not even Zeus, could break the spell. So someone gives Dad this bright idea to offer you as a prize to the first god able to convince Hephaestus to release her from the throne. You agreed to get back at me. When I showed up to try to talk him into it, Heph breathed fire on me, melted my armor, and didn’t leave until Dionysus got him drunk enough to decide he wanted to be married to you.”
“No wonder Alex barely looked me in the eye at first.” She bit into her remaining chocolate pastry from the dining room. “So what happened then? I mean, obviously I wasn’t very loyal.”
Beau sighed. “You were heartbroken, and I was so pissed at Heph, I said to hell with it, let’s carry on the way we were before. Then you found out you were pregnant with Harmonia—”
A flash sparked through her memories of a young girl with honey-colored curls. Esme blinked rapidly a few times, eyes stinging. She remembered singing to a warm, ticklish little girl who snuggled against her at night in a palace of rose gold and ivory, the two of them all alone. She’d had Ares’s blue eyes in a heart-shaped face and dimpled cheeks.
“The day you told me about her was the day Helios ratted us out. Bro made a trap to catch us in bed the next time I visited, and the rest of the story is as you know. I got exiled by Zeus, you cursed Hephaestus and Helios, and then things were never the same again.”
“Answer my next question. If I had you, why did I want Adonis? Persephone and I fought over him.”
Beau’s expression darkened. “Zeus offered to grant your divorce if I paid your bride price to Hephaestus. I didn’t. That’s my second fuckup. I hurt you because I was too proud to pay for what I thought was already mine.”
“Sorry to repeat this again, but the Greek gods sucked. Myself included.”
“Yeah, we did. I like to think I’m a better, wiser man now. I learned that day it’s possible to win the battle and still lose the war. I could have ended everything right then. One day, Heph granted the divorce on his own and withdrew to his forge. Stopped taking any outside visitors and said he’d see no one but you.”
“Did I ever visit?”
“No.” He looked away, toward the window and the dimming sky beyond. “Everything sort of fell to shit after that. Hermes and I fought, I killed Adonis, Hephaestus retreated to the mortal realm. You got tired of the fighting in your name. The contests to try and win you. So you left. And our world was so much poorer to have lost you. This world was poorer to have lost you.”
“Then one day, you guys decided to wait for me to be reborn. Is this the first time you’ve ever approached me, or the first time I’ve ever agreed to give you another chance?”
He chuckled. “First time we’ve approached. Your life—lives, I should say… have been loveless. One reincarnation after the next, you push away anyone who might care about you. Then Hephaestus moved to Ashfall a few years ago. One day, he saw you, recognized you, and he contacted Hermes. Hermes found me in Iraq, and we both made lives in America.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah… I’ve been shunning my duties for a while, but I figure the twins and Eris have it covered.”
“The twins?”
“Our boys. Deimos and Phobos. They were born after Harmonia.”
A knock interrupted before she could ask more about their children. Room service wheeled in a cart bearing several dishes and a chilled bottle of moscato. Between the two of them, they’d ordered enough to feed four or five people.
Esme ate until she was stuffed, polishing off a whole steak and several creamy, garlic encrusted scallops. Somehow, she made room for the caramel pecan brownie. “Ugh, I’m so full I could burst.”
He looked over and grinned. “You should get ready for bed. The time crept up on us, and if we’re gonna hit the slopes again, you’ll need your rest.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
She retreated to the bathroom and soaked away her aches in a steaming bath. Since the resort provided scented salts and fancy soaps, Esme didn’t crawl out until her fingers pruned.
“You were right about the bath. I feel so much better.”
Beau stared at her purple dragon onesie. “Are you five?”
“Shut up. They’re warm.”
“You know what else is warm?”
“Don’t you—”
He gestured to himself with one thumb and flashed the usual cocksure grin that melted her insides and made her want to slap or kiss him.
She rolled her eyes and sprawled across the king-sized mattress. “I’m claiming this side.”
“That’s the entire bed.”
“Yup.”
“Nice to see time hasn’t changed you.”
“Be nice or you get the couch.”
He vanished into the bathroom, and then the steady, rhythmic drum of the pounding shower spray lulled her into a drowse. When she stirred again, a half hour had passed and silence had fallen over the room. Beau wasn’t beside her.
“Beau?”
“Hmm?” his voice came from behind and above her.
Esme rolled to the other side to face him, and her breath caught in her throat. Beau stood beside the nightstand with his cell phone in his hand, idly texting. Light from the adjacent lamp cast pale yellow highlights over the sculpted planes of muscle, leaving each chiseled dip in shadow.
Scars of varying size and shape accented his bronzed skin, but none of them detracted from the absolute beauty of his form. He had a physique that belonged in artwork.
“What? Should I have brought unicorn pajamas or something?”
“I’m guessing jammies aren’t your thing.” Her gaze wandered down his naked body despite her best intentions to keep it above his waist.
“Never saw the purpose in them.”
It wasn’t fair. She’d wanted to stand firm and strong, to at least put up the appearance of resisting him.
Now she couldn’t wait to have him inside her.
Esme eased onto her knees beside him, though he was so tall it only brought her face level with his magnificent chest. He and Alex were alike in that way, both specimens of masculinity, each gorgeous in his own right.
“You fight in every war, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She traced her finger over a healed gunshot wound above his heart, imagining the pain he must have experienced. “Where did this come from?”
“World War II. I followed a few Greek immigrants to the UK and joined them in battle. They believed in me, so it was the least I could do.”
She kissed a long line below his left pec. “And this one?”
“The Thessaly Revolt.”
Esme stroked down the aroused length and circled her thumb over the soft tip. He jerked and thrust his hips forward. She could have marveled over him for the rest of the night as a study in the ideal male anatomy.
“Like what you see?”
Seeing? She’d done more than see, staring at him with unabashed feminine appreciation, touching him with fingers eager to explore every inch her mind alr
eady knew. She recognized these scars, she could put battles to them, name fights where they’d been earned.
Leaning forward, she kissed his muscled stomach. The next kiss landed at his navel and followed the dark treasure trail leading to her prize. She placed the third kiss even lower—tenderly delivered to the tip of his cock before she took him between her lips.
Beau hissed, twitching in her mouth. Those same muscles she had admired tensed, and a low groan of appreciation came from him. He unzipped the front of her pajamas and shoved it down her shoulders until the fleece pooled around her hips, her breasts exposed to him, hips clothed by plain cotton panties.
His groan sent a pulse to her core, and when she teased the sensitive spot below the rounded head, his hand fisted in her hair.
“Have mercy on me, babe. I… if you keep that up, this is going to end real fast.”
Despite his warning, she continued, nibbling the fat underside with her lips and locking gazes with him. He shuddered.
Esme wanted to taste him, but she also wanted him inside her, wanted him to finish deep within her, trembling in mutual ecstasy. Through a feat of Herculean effort, she dragged her mouth away. “Condom?”
Beau frowned. “Huh?”
“I hope you have a condom. With all the kids we have, I’m not sure if I should take chances with you.”
His eyes twinkled in amusement. “I didn’t even think about it. Would it be so bad if we did have number seven?”
“I’m still in school another semester.”
“You’d graduate before it was born.”
“But the others…”
“Would wait their damned turn.”
Did she even want a child? Her mind was hazy with bliss and desire, but there was an appeal to the idea of carrying Beau or Luke’s child again in this new body—or even bearing Alex’s little one and giving him the child their marriage had deserved.
Esme shoved Beau down against the pillows and straddled his hips. “Fuck it. I’m on the pill.”
She slid onto him, and the fit was so perfect, so deep, she could have sobbed in relief. Something in her had awakened the night she made love to Alex, and that something wouldn’t be contained. Couldn’t be.
“Yes,” hissed between Beau’s teeth. He thrust up as she rode him and found their rhythm.
It may have been centuries, but her body remembered him. Beau was branded there on her soul, her god of war and battle, her lord of the arena, her immortal soldier who had followed her across lifetimes.
She kissed him again, flicking her tongue between his lips, savoring every divine taste of him.
His hands traced her body, slid over her ribs, and cupped her breasts, teasing the nipples and plucking them into pebble hard points that ached. His mouth broke away from her lips and found the tender spot below her ear that always sent pleasure trembling through her core.
He knew where to touch, how she liked it, locating each of her spots as if she’d labeled them by preference.
When orgasm crashed over her, the false name of his new identity wasn’t the cry that fell from her lips. Ares. Ares. Her Ares. Just as Alex had been her Hephaestus, Beau’s divine name burst from her in a triumphant shout.
Beau thrust his hips up, her name a guttural cry as he found release. The name no longer sounded alien and unusual to her ears. It was her name, and she was Aphrodite, his goddess of love, passion, beauty.
Some time passed before Esme moved again, though she was content to remain astride him, listening to the thunder of his pulse. She stroked his chest and kissed his chin while Beau’s fingers drew lazy circles over her back.
When she peeked up at him, he kissed her brow. “I missed you.”
“I…” Lifetimes of loneliness, of never meeting her other half, of always seeking but never finding flit through her mind in fragments of memory. Now she had Hephaestus, Ares, and Hermes, the three missing pieces of her heart. “I missed you too.”
And now that she had found them, she wouldn’t let go again.
Room service delivered breakfast for them. After a day on the slopes and a night of lovemaking—Esme had lost count of how many times Beau had proven his virility to her—she lacked the energy to tread downstairs to the resort’s restaurant.
After she donned her gear, she sat on the couch and watched him zip into his snow jacket.
“How long will you be in California until you return to the battlefield?”
“Eh, I’m actually heading down to New Zealand this summer for a while to help with the new Queen of the Shields movie. Wanna come? I can get you on set.”
“Yes! Will I get to meet the cast?”
“Sure.”
By the time they reached the slopes, her breakfast had settled, but her thigh muscles screamed disagreement with her plans to outrace him again.
Beau smirked. “We can head back if you’re too tired.”
Esme ignored him and stared at a bright spot above them moving rapidly across the serene blue sky. “What’s that glow up there?” She shaded her eyes against the sun’s glare.
“What glow—oh, shit. It’s ambrosia.” Awe filled Beau’s voice. “There hasn’t been a scrap of any new ambrosia going into Olympus in a few years. It’s all vanished.”
“But it looks like a grape or something.” She squinted to focus on the ivory bird flying overhead. It carried a bunch in its beak, all four of the swollen grapes a lustrous and shimmering gold.
“All ambrosia comes from earthen fruit. Berries, grapes, apples… everything. One in every ten-thousand is touched with a divine spark, and the doves carry it up to Olympus.”
“I had no idea.”
A bright lance, fiery as the sun, pierced the bird through the breast and engulfed it in flames, consuming both the creature and its golden bounty.
“No!” Ares charged forward across the snow, leaving a melted swath in his wake. Too late to intercept the attack, he skidded to a stop and stared at the few black flecks that drifted down.
Esme hurried to catch up. “What happened? Who did that?”
“I don’t understand why he would do this,” Beau said.
“Who?”
“Helios. That was one of his lances, but I don’t know why he’d do this…” He scooped up the smoldering carcass in the black flecked snow and turned around. Cold fury replaced his smile and warm eyes, expression tight with broiling anger. “I need to go see the others.”
18
Leaving Esme at the resort hadn’t been easy, but Beau made it up to her by booking an entire afternoon pamper session at the spa. Then he took the In-Between to the others and laid the scorched dove on Alex’s coffee table, interrupting an online video game lesson between the other two gods.
Luke blinked at the charred carcass. “The hell is that?”
“An ambrosia dove. What’s left of it anyway. Esme and I were about to hit the slopes for the day when a sun bolt shot it out of the sky.”
Alex shook his head. “Then you saw wrong. At my request, Helios has been watching the skies for the birds to help us locate the ambrosia we need. He wouldn’t slay one of the creatures. That is an offense against all of Olympus—against every god.”
“Maybe that’s what he told you, but it isn’t what I saw. A lance from his spear killed it.”
Luke rubbed his face with the heel of his palm. “Do you think this is what’s happening to all of the birds?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Alex insisted. “He knows how much finding the ambrosia means to us.”
Luke shook his head. “Aphrodite also hit him with a wicked curse, man. We got off easy. She cursed him to discover ruin in every relationship he enters ’til the end of time. And he knows I told you it was him. He probably hates both of us.”
“I know what I saw,” Beau growled. “Esme and I were standing right there when the dove went down. It was a solar bolt from his spear. No one else can command the powers of the sun.”
Alex ran his fingers through his hair and groaned. �
�All right. Fine. We’ll take it to Zeus. Maybe he’ll be in better spirits to deal with divine issues now that… she’s there again.”
Beau glanced at his brother and sighed. On one hand, he couldn’t blame the kid for his resentment. He’d been different already at the time of birth, but Hera’s impulsiveness had only crippled him further. “Bro, if she’s there, you can leave, all right? I just figured you might want to bring this grievance to Zeus, too, since Esme is involved.”
“No. It’s fine. If Helios truly did this awful thing, I want to confront him as well. Everyone knows we have searched to find the ambrosia needed to restore her divinity.”
“Indeed,” Luke said. “Don’t you find your discovery of her and the timing of the doves’ disappearance to be a little suspect, man? You found her four years ago.”
“The ambrosia shortage began a little while after that,” Beau mused.
“I just don’t understand,” Alex said with a heavy sigh. “He swore to me only months ago that he holds no ill will against her, and now it appears he has gone back on his word. Has lied to me.”
They reached Olympus sometime later, and after a while of waiting in the lobby, were granted the key to Zeus’s office by Iris. The king of the gods sat behind his desk with his wife perched on his lap, both laughing together over a scene from the mortal world playing out on a viewing glass.
His mother was smiling again. He hadn’t seen her happy in so long that he hadn’t remembered—couldn’t remember—how radiant she became when filled with joy. When her gaze darted to Alex, her eyes widened. She scooted from Zeus’s lap and into the adjacent seat, though it wasn’t golden or anything remarkable.
“Ah, what brings you three here today? I told you, I’m not interfering with your woman’s quest, so I hope you didn’t come here seeking help.”
“This isn’t about Esme,” Luke told him. “It’s about the doves.”
“Have you discovered something?” Hera asked. The laughter faded from the room, replaced by a grim intensity that was mirrored on both gods’ faces.
“Show them,” Luke muttered.
Beau stepped forward and set the charred dove on the desk without a word.
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