She almost whimpered when Pan slid out of her and drew her closer into his arms and held her, his breath hot against her cheek. Deep shudders still ran through him, aftermaths of his climax. Nina leaned into him, still short of breath herself.
One hand idly stroked her cheek, the caress tender. He chuckled. “I guess I don’t need to ask if you want to be with me this morning.”
“No, you don’t,” she agreed, snuggling closer into his chest.
“Good. That’s one less thing to do in the morning.”
Lifting her head, Nina noted the smile in his face, and she detected more than a little satisfaction in his reply. Was Pan becoming so sure of her presence in his life as to want to skip their ritual morning greeting? Surely that wasn’t a good thing.
Or was it? It might mean that he was recognizing her place with him and that he no longer needed to question her continual presence. He could be becoming content with their relationship. In fact, he might even have grown happy with it.
Would an arrow spell have this effect after all this time? Nina wondered at that. Pan was acting like a…a…husband might act!
Nina opened her mouth to talk to him about it, but with a final kiss on her forehead he pulled away from her and exited the bed. She watched as he pulled another of his loincloths off a peg and dressed.
She really had to do something about his sense of style. A man should wear something besides a piece of fabric wrapped around his waist, no matter how well it suited his physique. After all, she knew fashion…he should stay somewhat in step with her.
Finished assembling his minimalist clothing, Pan turned his amused gaze on her. “So are you going to stay in bed all day, lazybones? We need to get to your place to pack.” With that comment he bounced out of the bower, probably headed for the garden’s rudimentary kitchen to prepare breakfast.
Reaching for her simplistic Olympian gown, Nina grumbled to herself. Oh goody. More lightly sweetened granola with milk and herbal tea with a few grapes for dessert.
Yum, yum. She’d lost a few pounds since living with Pan, and for more reasons than having an active sex life. Pan’s cooking had its limitations and it showed in their diet.
Maybe she could talk to her sister Chloe and get some pointers on cooking. She bet Pan would love some of Chloe’s home-baked breakfast cake. Fastening the shoulder clips of her gown, she headed for the doorway. “Yeah, breakfast cake. That plus a really good espresso machine, that’s what we need.”
* * * * *
So this was Nina’s home. With curious eyes Pan looked around the living room/bedroom of the small studio apartment. It was identical to the many other apartments in this building, one of the many identical dwellings in Elysian Fields, Olympus’ answer to affordable housing. This was where most of the minor Olympians lived when they weren’t doing their jobs on Earth.
Hep had said he might learn something about Nina through her belongings, so Pan took careful note of his surroundings.
One thing he’d learned already—she sure liked the color red. And black. Everywhere he looked was those colors. There were red and black fabrics, black furniture, and wall and window coverings in the same solemn tones.
Pan frowned. It was rather dismal as a color scheme. Moreover, it didn’t really seem like Nina, at least not the Nina he knew. Or thought he knew.
Sure she’d worn a lot of black in the past and even when she’d first come to live with him, much of her clothing had been that way. But in the past few months, the whole palette of her clothing had gotten lighter. The gown she wore today was even a pastel pink, something new that she’d picked up recently.
Maybe her tastes had changed? If so, it was for the better.
Nina came in from what she’d described as her kitchen, hauling a complicated piece of equipment with metal tubes and glass carafes. She beamed at him. “I knew I had this in there somewhere!”
After eyeing the apparatus uneasily, Pan took it from her and placed it on the tall pile of belongings they’d already accumulated. “What is it?” he asked.
“A combination coffee-and-espresso maker. One of the best on the market.”
Pan eyed the dust on it. “It doesn’t look like it’s gotten much use. Why do we need it?”
“Oh, well.” Nina said. “I got it a long time ago but never really got the hang of using it.” She held up the instruction manual and placed it on the pile. A sheepish look crossed her face. “I’ve never been that interested in cooking and it was always easier to go out. But now we stay home more and I’ve been thinking of learning…”
Nina was considering learning to cook? Pan could barely hide his smile. It had to be a good sign when the woman you wanted to live with became interested in domesticity.
Waving his hand, Pan transported the pile, including the coffee-espresso maker, back to his garden. He wasn’t all that fond of the distillation of coffee beans, but he’d drink gallons of it if it meant keeping Nina happily at home with him.
Rubbing his hands together, he looked around the apartment. “So, what else do you want?” He lifted the black and red comforter off the queen-sized bed in corner of the room, revealing black satin sheets. “How about these?” he asked.
For an instant, he thought she might actually be blushing. “No, I don’t think so. I like your bedding.”
Pan had a mental image of Nina’s paleness against black satin and his cock hardened in reaction. Oh, yes, the sheets had to come.
“It never hurts to have extras,” he told her, pulling them off the bed. As he tugged, a long white shape fell out of the bed from where it had been stuck under the comforter. Curious, Pan picked it up, and noting it was a pillow about the size and shape of a bolster, covered in sheepskin. He held it out to Nina with a questioning look.
She snatched it from his hands, color high in her cheeks and he wondered why. What did Nina have to be self-conscious about?
“It’s a pillow…” she told him, not meeting his eyes. “I liked to sleep with it…when I slept alone.”
What was so embarrassing about a pillow, he wondered, then inspiration struck. Maybe it was that she sometimes didn’t have a bed partner. Pan held up his hands and laughed. “It’s all right, Nina. We all sleep alone sometimes and it isn’t like it’s a teddy bear or something like that. Do you want to bring it with you?”
She placed it back on the bed, rubbing her hand along the surface, a bemused smile on her face. “No, I don’t need it. It can stay here,” she told him and returned to the kitchen. Pan heard more sounds of metal on metal.
He leaned over to stroke the pillow the way she had. Funny, it reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite place what. Still if Nina didn’t want it that was fine with him. He didn’t care for animal products like skins in his home.
The bookcase caught his attention. Perhaps there were more clues to what Nina liked in here. Lips twitching with amusement, Pan read the titles and authors. The Kama Sutra, a couple of books by Don Juan, several by the Marquis De Sade, and a worn copy of The Joy of Sex, complete with bookmarks. On a separate shelf he found an elaborately illustrated version of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, which Pan seized along with the others. Good reference material, he decided, and sent the collection on its way to his bower. He’d have to enlarge the bedroom’s bookshelf to hold it all, but one could never have enough good reading material.
Particularly this kind of reading material.
Looking further he found another shelf that held photo albums marked “Dodi Does It…” with the numbers one through ten. Pan opened the first one and nearly dropped it when he noted the subject matter of the photos. Each page was full of still pictures of men and women, mostly naked, having sex in assorted and often imaginative ways.
Very imaginative in some cases. He thought he knew every position possible and some of these he hadn’t heard of or would have even thought possible. Still, they were inspirational. His cock got harder than it had when he’d seen the satin sheets.
; Pan started to close the book, intending to add it to the reference materials he’d already transported, when he noticed how often a certain dark-haired woman showed up in the pictures. Here she was with a dildo in her hand, stroking it deep inside another woman. Here she had a man’s penis in her mouth.
Here she was in a scene not unlike the one he’d had with Nina this morning, except that the hair in the picture was longer and the man sodomizing her wasn’t him. Pan pulled another of the albums. Similar pictures, with different people, but always the same woman with dark hair, which was shorter in this album. The third and fourth were the same.
Shaken, Pan replaced the albums on the shelf. Sure, at some level he’d known that Nina was an experienced woman, but he hadn’t realized just how experienced she was. Plus to keep photographic evidence of her conquests…at least he hadn’t done that.
“What are you looking at?” Nina bounded in from the kitchen with a pile of bowls and utensils in her arms. She plopped her finds on the table and came to join him. Her smile faded as she saw Pan’s face and the book in his hand, and the obviously disheveled albums.
“I see you found my pictures,” she said, her voice suspiciously even in tone. Perhaps this was another thing she’d been hiding from him?
She took the album from his hands and opened it. “These are stills from my TV series Dodi Does It Everywhere. It was very popular, ran for a full ten seasons and went into syndication. I still get hefty residuals from it.” She turned the pages, indicting some of the pictures that had appeared in Pan’s judgment to be humanly impossible, or even hard for a god to manage.
Her slight smile told him she’d noticed his bemused look. “Many of the poses are staged.”
Pan pointed to one of Nina with two men, one entering her from behind while she sucked the cock of the other. “That was staged?”
She laughed but it sounded uncomfortable. “No, not that one,” she admitted. Closing the album, she returned it to the shelf then turned to face him. “Pan, you know I used to be in films like that and you’ve known it for a long time. I fucked a lot of men and women—that was my job and I have to say that I enjoyed it.”
At some level he had known and had accepted her past. But it was one thing to know she’d had sex with a lot of other people, it was another to have explicit pictures of it. Besides, she’d been with so many people, and now he was the only man in her life—as far as he knew.
No, he’d know if she was cheating on him. He was a god, after all. But suppose she missed all those other lovers, particularly the women and having her pick of men. Did it satisfy her to only have sex with him?
When he looked at her, Nina’s eyes were searching his face, something like desperation in them. “Does my past really bother you, Pan?”
He put on as much of reassuring smile as he could. “Not that much. It was more of a surprise, that’s all.”
Her smile seemed genuine as she headed for her bathroom to pack her toiletries. “I’m glad you aren’t upset. After all, it was in the past and now that I’m directing I don’t have sex with the actors anymore.”
Pan picked up one of the albums again. “You certainly had a variety of sex in the past. Do you miss it?”
Nina popped her head out of the bathroom doorway. “Do I miss what?”
“The variety…of sex.”
“You mean like this morning?” Nina laughed. “Variety is always fun, Pan.”
Pan sighed. Sexual variety was great if it didn’t mean other lovers. He’d had extras in the bed in the past, but not when he was with someone he cared about. He cared about Nina more than any one he’d ever been with before.
Somehow he just couldn’t see adding someone into their lovemaking right now, if ever. He wanted to be Nina’s only lover and she was the only woman he wanted. Perhaps because of the past between them she didn’t believe that, but it was the truth and someday he’d make her believe it. He didn’t want to share her with anyone.
But she liked variety. Pan resisted the urge to groan aloud. Hep had told him he’d find out a lot from her place, but this wasn’t something he’d wanted to know.
She emerged from the bathroom with a large cardboard box. Pan stared at it. “How much shampoo do you have?”
“Oh, this isn’t just soap, Pan.” Nina had a wicked grin on her face. “Just a few items that I think you might enjoy. No peeking, though!” she admonished on handing over the box.
It was heavy and he wondered what was inside, but couldn’t steal a look while she was standing there. With a grunt, Pan sent it on its way, along with the last of the kitchen items on the table.
He gathered Nina into his arms. “Are you ready to go?” After a long look around the lonely little apartment, she nestled deep into his arms and nodded her head, sighing into his chest.
“Take me home, Pan.”
Chapter Four
Nina was making breakfast. After five months of Pan getting out of bed before her and preparing food in his primitive kitchen, she’d decided it was her turn to cook for him. The time was right. It was the morning after they’d moved her belongings into his garden. Her first official act as lady of the house would be this, making a splendid meal to celebrate her presence.
She had her coffeemaker from her apartment. Pan had fixed up a countertop for it to sit on and a small stove similar to what humans used in the modern world. The simple cold water-based cooler he’d used had been replaced with a refrigerator/freezer. She even had a dishwasher.
Nina had sent a hurried message to her sister Chloe the day before announcing her new living arrangement and seeking guidance. In true Chloe fashion, she’d responded with her heartiest congratulations, a set of shining pots and pans, and a cookbook with some wonderful sounding recipes marked with sticky notes. Eager to try out her new domestic wings, Nina had crept out of Pan’s bed before the sun rose, hoping to have an excellent breakfast waiting for him when he finally awakened.
It was all perfect. There was only one hitch.
She had no idea what she was doing.
Nina looked up from the coffeecake page in the cookbook and for the hundredth time that morning wished she’d spent more time actually watching Chloe in the kitchen rather than drinking coffee and talking sex with her. Surely then she’d understand what it meant to separate an egg or sift together the dry ingredients. For a moment she considered teleporting her sister there to help but she didn’t have the power to make such a transfer without Pan’s help.
Besides, with her luck, she’d get Chloe out of bed and if she were really unlucky, her sister and Alex would have been “occupied”. Since the pair had gotten engaged, it seemed like every time she’d called, they’d been sexually busy.
Nina shook her head wryly. And folks thought she and Pan had an active sex life. From the way her sister and her soon-to-be husband went at it, she sometimes thought they could tell her how best to keep a relationship alive.
But sex wasn’t what she needed advice on now. What she needed to do was learn to cook. She looked at the barely lightening Olympian sky. It was too early to consult anyone, even if she had known of a great chef on Olympus to talk to.
If only there was some way to find answers without directly asking someone…
Nina’s depressed gaze fell on the pomegranate-decorated laptop sitting on her new desk and her mood elevated. Pan had assured her it had wireless networking but she hadn’t tried to connect to Earth’s internet. Maybe there was hope if she could connect into it. After all she’d heard about this human search engine where it was said you could find anything with just a few well-chosen keywords and a little time.
Moments later, Nina happily cracked an egg over a bowl and, carefully following the directions on the glowing laptop screen, separated the clear white from the yolk. Grinning, she tossed the empty shell into the garbage basket. Thank the gods for technology. With a little help from a search engine she’d found a “cooking for kids” website complete with pictures of common cooking techniques. Sa
tisfaction filled her as she completed adding the ingredients for the coffeecake that Chloe had marked with note reading “Alex’s favorite”. This was going to be a cinch!
She lost some of her enthusiasm when she pulled the cake pan out of the oven an hour later and examined the contents. The instructions said to stick a toothpick in to check how done it was, but it was clear that the thin twig she’d substituted wasn’t going to come cleanly out of the still runny batter.
What could she have done wrong? She’d followed all the instructions. Baffled, she held the pan for a while before realizing she was doing so without any protection from heat. And yet, the pan was barely warm…
With a groan, Nina put it on top of the stove and checked the oven’s controls. Sure enough, the temperature gauge was set to the minimum. She rechecked the recipe, only now seeing the small print at the top of the page “preheat oven to 350” and another groan escaped her. No wonder it hadn’t cooked.
Turning the knob to the correct temperature, Nina collapsed on a stool to wait. Maybe breakfast could still be saved and if Pan slept in a little longer he’d never know how she’d messed up.
“Good morning,” a sexy voice said and a familiar thrill went down her spine. Eyes twinkling, Pan moved around her in the kitchen and examined the cake pan on top of the stove. He gave the contents a skeptical look.
“Hmm, what’s for breakfast?”
Nina snatched the pan from him. “It’s a surprise. Just needs to cook.”
He took a glance at the oven and an amused look crossed his face. Maybe he guessed what she’d done wrong, but if so, he’d decided not to mention it. Wise of him Nina thought, inserting the pan into the now correctly heated oven. She’d have hated to start their first morning of domestic bliss with violence.
Instead, he examined the contents of the carafe in the coffeemaker, which Nina had managed to activate. To her pleasure this was one time where things had worked out right and she’d managed to make actual coffee. Even to her palate the results had been spectacular. Nina held her mug and sipped the rich brew.
Divine Interventions: Nemesis of the Garden Page 5