by Jane Kindred
“Fuck me,” he breathed—an oath, I assumed, rather than instructions—and jerked beneath me, all his muscles tense as he burst inside me. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, yes!” he growled through gritted teeth and wrapped his arms around my bared back as he hugged me close and groaned out the last of it.
I was panting against his chest, moaning softly, and he kissed my forehead. “Better, sweet Millie?”
My answer was a barely intelligible slur into his suit. “Oh God, yes.”
“Good. Let’s see what else we can get up to in my bed.” His cock twitched inside me. “By the time I’m done tasting the fruits of my efforts, I should be ready to give you a proper fuck.”
A ripple of aftershock and anticipation coiled through me and I steeled myself against it. I’d indulged my wounded heart and wounded pride, using my lowered inhibitions as an excuse to do something mad, but I had no intention of repeating what would likely turn out to be a horrible mistake in the light of day. I eased myself off his lap and tried to pull up my stockings gracefully, but they were a hopeless wreck. Shit. I’d liked this pair.
Ares laughed gently at my efforts while he buttoned himself up, and then surprised me by taking my foot in his hands and slipping off my boot—first one, then the other—and peeling off the tattered cotton tights, brushing his fingers down my legs with sensuous appreciation. “I’ll buy you another pair,” he said in a sultry voice. “I’ll buy you a hundred pair. I’ll buy you a lingerie store.” He tucked my boots back onto my feet and stuffed the stockings into his pocket before holding out his hand to me to help me up.
“Thanks,” I murmured when I’d gotten to my feet, too embarrassed to look at him, and started to pull away, but he held me fast, drawing me against him.
“I wasn’t doing you a favor, my sweet.” He tilted my chin up and kissed me with obvious desire, the hand around my waist sliding down over my hip and back up to the underside of my breast. “And I’m not done with you.”
“I need to get back,” I said, shivering.
“No, you don’t. To do what? Sulk over that fool you should stay away from anyway? Make small talk with the locals while everyone drinks to excess and lies about Aravella to soothe their grieving and their guilt? I want to take you to my bed where we can enjoy one another’s company at our leisure.” He cupped my breast and drew his thumb once more across the nipple. “And you’re covered in leaves. Are you going to saunter back into the reception with leaves in your clothes, your stockings gone, and your pupils dilated like you’ve just had your brains fucked out?” He grinned at me and drew me with him toward the manor. “Come on. There’s a side entrance to the guest wing where my room is. No one will see us.”
That much, at least, seemed like a good idea. I could take my leave of him once we were inside. But when I tried to pull away from him once more within the side stairwell as he closed the door, Ares turned and put his body in front of me.
“Millie. Why are you running away from me?”
“I’m not running away from you. I just need a bath and some rest, and I don’t think we should take this any further.”
“I have a bath in my suite, and if you want to sleep, you can sleep. I won’t lay a hand on you.” He smirked, running one down my arm as he spoke. “Well, maybe a hand. But we don’t have to do anything else. I just want to…appreciate you.”
Once again, I couldn’t help the question. “Why?”
Ares looked puzzled. “Why not?”
“I don’t exactly have that problem your sisters have of blinding men with my perfection.”
His dark eyes smoldered, and his hand fell to his side. “You devalue yourself. And your assumption that I would be attracted to someone who looked like one of my sisters is beyond insulting. You’ve understood nothing I’ve said about my family.” There was no mistaking the genuine hurt in his eyes.
“That wasn’t what I meant. I was just talking about me, about not being pretty. Not about your attraction.”
“And yet you judge me for being attracted to you.”
My cheeks itched with embarrassment, vasodilation still fueled by too much alcohol. “I guess I find it suspect,” I admitted. “I’m not used to people being attracted to me.”
He looked perplexed again. “Why? Because of your scar?” I also wasn’t used to such bluntness. Most people danced around it, tried to avoid looking at me for fear of being caught staring.
“It’s not just one scar,” I said quietly. “There are others.” I jumped slightly as Ares’s fingers came up to stroke my cheek.
“Do you think I couldn’t feel them? I had my hands all over you.” And in me, I thought with a rush of heat. “Your call, Millie. Come to bed with me. Keep me company. Or don’t.” He held out his open palm, the dark fawn of his eyes questioning. I stared at his hand a moment, and then put mine in it.
* * * * *
True to his word, Ares ran a bath for me and left me to it, though when I came out after a long, much-needed soak, wrapped in the black-and-gold men’s silk robe I found on the hook on the back of the door, he was lying naked in the center of his bed sporting an enthusiastic erection. Muscular but narrow hips and lean, tight abs made it seem all the larger.
“I thought you were going to let me sleep,” I said with a lift of my eyebrow.
Ares smiled, hands clasped behind his head. “I have no objection to you sleeping.”
“Yet you’re lying there, rather—conspicuously naked.”
“You’re wearing my robe,” he pointed out with a mischievous grin. His gaze traveled over me. “Take it off.”
Had I been more sober, and less broken inside by what I’d almost done with Lukas as much as by his rejection, I’m sure I would have refused. I would have come to my senses, gotten dressed and gone back to my room. I like to believe that’s true.
I loosed the tie in front and let the silky fabric slip from my shoulders. Inside, my heart was pounding. The last person I’d been naked with was Cole. That had been difficult enough, but he’d been a friend I knew and trusted long before things escalated to anything romantic or sexual. I had never been one for casual encounters; not because of any moral compunction, but precisely because of this—disrobing for the first time before someone I hardly knew.
The robe fell to my elbows, revealing my breasts. I was pretty confident about those. Men didn’t seem too particular so long as a woman had them. Ares didn’t move, but his cock gave an encouraging twitch. I let the rest fall as I reached the bed and sat hesitantly on the edge of it. Ares unlinked his hands, keeping one behind his head, and brought the other to my side, traveling the length of the fire’s brand with a slow stroke while he explored me visually. When he reached my hip, he followed the edge of the scar to the inner thigh, and I made a sound between fear and desire as he stroked his fingers over the hill of it and into the valley between my legs until the tip of his middle finger rested on my clit.
“Come here.” The words rumbled out of him with obvious desire, and as I crawled toward him, he stopped me from moving down the bed from where I’d sat at the level of his shoulder and swung my leg over his chest, pulling me forward by the hips until I hovered over his mouth. “Grab your ankles,” he said, and I complied in surprise as he drew me down roughly by the hips and buried his mouth in the waiting heat of my sex.
Squirming and moaning with helpless delight, I watched him for a moment, watched the obvious pleasure with which he spread me open with his tongue and explored me, before closing my eyes and giving myself over to it. I was vaguely aware amid the rising tide of my own climax that he was simultaneously pleasuring himself with one hand while holding me with the other. The groan of his release reverberated inside me, and he sucked hard against my clit just as a stream of slick warmth struck my back. The knowledge that he’d come with his face buried eagerly in me was like the snap of the taut thread that had held me back, and with his semen slid
ing down my spine like a caress, I let go with a cry, arching and pressing into him as the charge rushed and rattled through me like a wild storm.
Ares crushed my breasts in his hands, holding me still while he tormented the inflamed head of my clit until I whimpered and went limp. Then he cradled me with both arms and rolled me off of him, laying me back against the bed, and kissed me with his lips and tongue sticky with the evidence of my arousal.
“There,” he said as he rolled onto his side and propped his head against his hand. “Relaxed?” I laughed weakly, and Ares traced a finger over the web of lines on my neck. “Nothing is more beautiful than a woman in the flush of pleasure,” he murmured. “Don’t let me catch you saying you’re not pretty again.”
I shivered at the touch, never quite comfortable with such obvious acknowledgment of my scars. “I’ll try to remember that.”
“It’s like the grain of wood,” he said, watching the path of his finger.
I stopped his hand. “Is it true?” I asked. “Are you a…a hamadryad?”
He looked at me curiously. “You didn’t know until today. Until the Grove.”
“I didn’t know until Lukas told me an hour ago.”
“That’s why you were outside. He shifted into a hollow for you, to show you.”
“A hollow?”
“An empty tree.” He shook his head ruefully. “No wonder you were both riled up. That’s a very intimate thing. I don’t know what he was thinking.”
“More like drinking.” I lay back and ran my hand through my damp hair. “We both had quite a bit.”
He took my hand from my hair and kissed it. “Don’t regret this tomorrow.” He was insistent, as if I could simply will myself not to. I was regretting it while it was happening, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. And I’d deserved a good fuck, I told myself. That much, and the pleasure he’d given me, I wasn’t going to regret. It was only the person and place I didn’t think had been wise.
I changed the subject. “Can you tell me something?” If he could be blunt, then I would too. “Why did you? With Alexis. Do you regret that?”
The hard line of his lips made me think I’d overstepped the bounds of blunt curiosity and I was about to get tossed out on my ass, but he answered after a moment. “I wanted to help her. She wanted a child, and she was in love with Basil. My father had his rules. No children outside the family line until a true Apostolou was conceived. She and I discussed it at length. She could run off and have a baby with Basil, but she’d be cut off from the family permanently. And Aravella would be left to shoulder the burden.”
He made a low sound in his throat like a growl. “Vella was only a kid at the time, our kid sister, and though we knew Papá wasn’t going to demand it any time soon, we also knew—or thought we did—that I would be expected to father her child. It was one thing to think about doing such a thing with Alexis, despite my misgivings. She was an adult, and we have a bond as twins. But to imagine one day having to…” He stopped and swallowed as if bile had risen in his throat. “Vella was always going to be my baby sister. I agreed to give Alexis what she wanted. And we both agreed it couldn’t be Vella. We couldn’t let it be.”
This wasn’t at all what I’d imagined, and I felt guilty for having made such cruel assumptions. “I didn’t know you were twins,” was all I managed to say.
Ares laughed bitterly. “So that, you get.”
“No, I’m not saying that. I just—I didn’t know. I didn’t know or understand any of this.” I paused a moment, pondering. “Can I ask another question?” Ares nodded. “Why couldn’t you have just—donated?”
He pursed his lips. “Tradition. My father believed the ancestors would know. The trees live on, you see, in the Grove, and the spirit lives on with its tree once the mortal human frame has passed away. My father believes the dead can take vengeance.” He shrugged. “It all sounds a bit foolish, I know, but it’s ingrained in us. Alexis and I made peace with the idea of what we had to do. It was a transaction, and a gesture of brotherly and sisterly love between us we felt we could give, though we thought my father was wrong. Because wrong or not, the burden would fall on Vella. And so we did what we did. And failed.”
The sexual confidence he exuded was absent for the moment, revealing beneath it the vulnerability of a man who obviously cared deeply for his siblings. He still held my hand, and I gave him a squeeze of reassurance, almost as surprised at myself as he obviously was as he gazed at me.
After a moment, he went on. “When Signe approached my father to propose the match with Lukas and my father actually agreed, we were stunned. And elated. He was finally joining the world of the twenty-first century. Or at least leaving the dark ages. I had been dreading Vella’s coming of age.” I couldn’t help the little shudder that went through me. “And then my father gave his terms.” Ares shook his head. “I confess, I was relieved it wasn’t me he’d chosen. Papá realized where Ari’s inclinations ran even then, and he thought somehow this would ‘cure’ him. He’d have his Apostolou grandchild and he’d make a man of his younger son.”
“And what about Aravella? Didn’t she have any say?” I was furious on her behalf, and Ares looked a bit startled at my tone.
“She understood the tradition, and she wanted Lukas. I think she was a bit relieved it wasn’t me who was chosen as well.” He smiled ruefully. “She loved Aristos—as a brother—and I think she bought into my father’s reasoning that all he needed to get over his unfortunate ‘weakness’ was to be initiated into manhood. I believe she thought she was making a sacrifice for him as much as for the family. But Ari…” Ares looked troubled. “I don’t know what went on. I wasn’t there. But it messed him up.”
I thought of how full of guilt and shame Aravella had been when she’d confessed to me. The Apostolous might not think it had traumatized her on a personal level, which I greatly doubted. But it had obviously weighed on her for her brother’s sake if nothing else. “I think that’s why,” I mused. “Because of Aristos.”
“Why, what?”
I bit my lip at Ares’s sharp look. I hadn’t intended to say it aloud. “Why she killed herself.”
He went from pensive to furious in an instant. “Don’t you dare blame him!” He shoved my hand away and sat up. “You have no right!”
I pushed myself up against the headboard, drawing my knees in tight against me. “I’m not blaming him—”
“If you even suggest that—if he hears that—it would kill him.” His eyes were full of betrayal, as if I’d manipulated him into telling me his story.
“Ares. I would never say it to him. I didn’t mean it was his fault, just that she felt guilty about how it affected him.”
Betrayal and mistrust still smoldered in his eyes. “And that gives the sheriff motive, reason to shift the blame from you.”
I gaped at him. “From me?” This had been worse than a mistake. I scrambled out of the bed and looked around for my clothes, tears of frustration springing to my eyes when I didn’t see them anywhere. “Where are my clothes?” I demanded. Ares didn’t answer, his chest rising with deep angry breaths, so I grabbed his robe off the floor and ran for the door as I flung it on, but in a heartbeat, he was standing in front of me as if he’d just walked into the room—through the solid door. A shriek of surprise escaped me, and Ares grabbed me by both arms before I could move.
“Millie, wait.” His anger was dissipating, but I was too fucking freaked out to care.
“Let go of me!” I jerked back and nearly stumbled when he complied. I stared at him, breathing rapidly, my heart in my throat. A full-on panic attack was ensuing.
“Millie?”
“Get out of my way.” I took a step toward the door, grabbing for the handle behind him.
“Stop.” He put his hand on my wrist, his eyes concerned as he studied me. “I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t mean to attack you like t
hat. It wasn’t fair.”
“I just need to leave.” I tried to speak steadily, but I sounded funny even to myself.
“Let me get your clothes. You left them in the bathroom, remember?”
“I don’t want them! Let me out!”
“Millie, I’m not going to hurt you. Jesus, you’re white as a sheet. What’s going on?”
I tried to breathe and shook my head. Ares steered me back toward the bed just as my legs started to wobble. “I need my pills,” I gasped.
“Where are they?”
“Pocket,” I managed. I always kept one on me as a sort of talisman against needing it, but this time I really needed it.
Ares grabbed my clothes off the bathroom floor and brought them back to me, feeling in the pockets of the skirt, finally pulling out a tiny white pill. “This?” I nodded, and he put it in my hand. “Let me get you some water.”
I shook my head and stuck it under my tongue. It would dissolve and get into my system faster.
“What is it? Heart medication?”
Humiliation warred with the still-spiking anxiety as I clung to the edge of the bed trying to calm my breathing. “Anxiety,” I choked out. “Pathetic.”
His own anxious expression relaxed. “It’s not pathetic. I’m sorry, Millie. I didn’t mean to bring this on.”
“You didn’t. It’s me.” I looked up at him warily. “But how the fuck did you…?”
Ares took my hand and drew me farther onto the bed. “Come on. Just lie down.” Easing me down beside him, he pulled the covers from under my legs and tucked his beneath them as he pulled the comforter over us both. “How long before your pills usually take effect?”
“Ten minutes,” I said as my legs started to shake uncontrollably. “Maybe five, under the tongue.”
Ares drew me gently against him. “Dead wood is like a hollow,” he said. “I jumped into the door. I shouldn’t have sprung that on you. And I shouldn’t have overreacted.” He stroked his hand down my arm in a calming gesture. “I’m very protective of Aristos, as I said.”