He clenched his jaw but said nothing.
I shook my head. “Say it, beast. Tell me the truth. Say it!”
“There is nothing to say,” he growled, his words so very angry, and it made my blood sing.
I felt the fire burning through me. Tears were coursing out of my eyes, but I couldn’t stem their flow.
I knew I was a selfish being. I’d always known it, and the proof of that selfishness was now on full display because I had to hear it. I had to. I just had to.
“You lie,” I hissed.
He jerked, looking up at me and breathing like a bellows. Fury stamped onto every line of his handsome and beloved face.
I shook my head, tears streaming so hard he was naught more than a blur of colors. “I went away. I tried to make this stop. I tried to cut you out of me. I ran away, because it hurt. It hurt so damn much. You have to know that. You must know that!”
Pain tightened his features into a hard and cruelly beautiful mask. “Go. Leave me!”
The fires raged through me, curling outward. I felt them move and burn and turn me into a tower of breathtaking beauty. “Say it, and then I’ll leave! Lie to me if you must, but you must do this. Because I tried, dammit. I tried. Friends don’t lie, right?” The tears came, and they sizzled in my flames, but I could not stop their flow. “Then I will tell you as a friend. I love—”
“You left!” he roared, smashing his fist down upon the table, scattering the beautiful and expertly crafted trinkets, and my heart broke just a little to see them destroyed forever, but then he stood, and he walked toward me.
And I gasped, covering my mouth with my hands, as I stared down, not up, at him. He was shorter than me by several inches, his lower half withered, and each step was excruciating for him. I could see it. See him fight through the pain, see him wince and grind down on his molars.
But he did not stop coming at me. He shook his head. Rain fell through his eyes. “You want me to say it, then I’ll say it. You made me love you, and I will never forgive you for that!”
I gasped. He loved me? And I wanted to smile, but he looked so broken. So destroyed that more than anything, I wanted to hold him. Touch him.
“Look at me, Aphrodite.” He growled, dragging his hand down his front. “Look at the deformity that is me, and tell me that you really cared. That you really ever loved me! You teased me mercilessly. No matter how many times I begged you to stop. Because I could not bear to hope. Could not bear the idea that you, beautiful, beautiful Aphrodite, could be so fucking cruel!”
He trembled, and that steely and legendary control of his was slipping away, and it was glorious to behold.
I dropped to my knees before him. Heart aching. And trembling with a desire so potent, so fierce that I felt drowned by it. “You think I lied to you?”
He flinched as though I’d physically struck him.
But I wouldn’t stop now, because it was too late. I was so past the point of no return. “I never lied. Because friends don’t do that.”
“And friends don’t abandon one another, either,” he snapped, and the fires of his forge began to blaze, and outside, the world was a chaotic mess of rain and lightning. “Friends don’t leave without a word of goodbye or a fare-thee-well. Friends don’t fucking do that.”
“I left him, Hephy,” I breathed. “And not because I don’t love him. But because I don’t love him enough.”
His nostrils flared, and his lower jaw trembled, and my arms ached so desperately, so very desperately to pull him into me. I needed to hold him once more. I needed to feel him, to know that he was real. That this was really real and that I was finally being open and honest with him. Pouring out my whole heart and soul to him.
I nodded. “I miss my friend.”
His eyes closed. “Friend,” he said scornfully. “Just friends. That is all I’m ever fit to be, is it not, little ass?”
I flinched, hating the way my pet name sounded on his tongue right now. Because it wasn’t said with affection or love, but scorn. Maybe even hate, and I would die if that were so. I’d told myself earlier that I would leave, but that had been a lie, too, because I needed him.
I needed my Hephaestus back, and I needed him to need me too.
I crawled toward him, and when my fire licked at his twisted foot, he froze. His eyes opened, and he looked at me like a man staring down death. But he did not turn back.
“Are we just friends?” I whispered.
He laughed, but the sound wasn’t pleasant. It was pain filled. “You’re my only friend, Aphrodite. So I beg of you now, please don’t do this. Don’t make me lose my only friend.”
I reached for his face, pausing midway, expecting him to move. But he didn’t. And when I touched him, I felt the breath scissor out of his body. And now it was my turn to tremble.
“I am incapable of staying faithful to just one,” I whispered. “I never have, and I know I never could. I’m just not built that way, but I cannot just be friends anymore, beast. I simply can’t.”
He shook, grasping tight to my wrist. So tight that it was both incredible pain and incredible pleasure. I leaned into him dizzily.
Years of dreaming, yearning in agonized silence had brought me here. The fantasy so huge that I knew he could not live up to it. And yet with one touch I felt undone.
I could not remain faithful, and yet I could never think of a time when I’d wanted anyone as I wanted my Hephaestus now. Not even Ares. Ares had never felt like home.
“Friend,” I murmured and leaned up on my knees, waiting. Hoping, dreaming, yearning… all those things and so much more.
Halfway knowing he would banish me as he always had before.
But with a hungry groan of desperation, Hephy’s lips found mine, and I was lost. Consumed by his fire.
We burned golden, the two of us, as we finally gave in to years of built-up passion and tension. And I’d been right… he hadn’t lived up to my fantasy. His touch had exceeded it. Blown my expectations to smithereens.
It was so much more than I could ever have imagined. The first press of his lips was manna, and the first swipe of his tongue was heaven.
I sank my fingers into the thick ropes of his hair and savaged him. Attacking him with a ferocity of unspent lust he’d incited in me for so very long. Desperate for everything. All of him.
I’d never been so out of control before. So lost to the passions.
But I burned brighter and brighter, and he moaned as I shoved his loincloth aside and grasped hold of his firm, sleek, steely rod in my fist.
This wasn’t going to be a slow, exploratory feast of the senses. No, it was going to be an explosion that would lay waste to us both. But I’d waited too long. Too damn long.
“I hate you,” he moaned even as he sank to his knees before me and gently pressed me back.
“No,” I whispered, “you don’t.”
His breath caught as I guided his cock toward the entrance of my very wet sheath. “And godsdamn you for it,” he grunted as he pushed in, and I screamed, coming instantly.
My fires raged out of control. Burning through his forge, destroying my beloved throne and causing his own fires to rage within.
We were a nova of heat. Of flame. And fire.
“So good,” I sobbed as I wrapped my arms around his neck, “so, so good.”
He bit my bottom lip, pulling it between his teeth before sucking on it. I raked my nails over his back, scoring grooves into his tight flesh, bleeding him. My passions were his, and his were mine.
His touch consumed me. Obliterated me completely, and I sobbed as I came. I’d never cried before, but I’d never had such incredible sex. And it wasn’t as though he were doing anything other than what so many others before him had done. But I’d finally recognized something that I’d never known before.
Sex was everything when you actually deeply, madly, and wildly loved your partner. Ares had been fantastic, one of the best I’d ever had. But Hephy, for all his lack of finesse and polish, had brought me
to new heights of ecstasy.
“I love you, beast. I love you,” I cried into his chest when it was over, and he held me like a fragile little doll.
Crooning in my ear. “And I you, my dove. I you. And I always will.”
I looked at him, no fires curled around me. It was just me, just plain Aphrodite, but he looked at me as though I were his sun. My heart quivered because I knew that even if I wasn’t the most beautiful woman in all the worlds, to him, I always would be. “I cannot change who I am, Hephy. Not even my great love for you could do it. Mostly because it has never changed me, and I know myself well enough to know this, but I will always love you.”
He shook his head and laid a finger over my mouth. “I love all parts of you, little ass. Even the parts that can never fully be mine.”
I smiled, so happy that it was almost pain because a part of me still wasn’t sure that this was real at all.
“But I can promise you one thing. I bind my heart to yours completely. Fully. And my body too. And though I might on occasion do as I do, I will not return to your brother.”
He shook his head. “I would never ask that of you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” I placed my tiny hand over the spot over his heart and felt that steady and beloved thump beneath my palm. “But I know of the bond between you two. And I would never wish to make you believe that I in anyway still wanted him. I would never want that for you. Not ever.”
“He will hate me. I have never taken anything away from my brother.”
“But you did not take me, beast. I came willingly. I choose you.”
His breathing stuttered, and he pulled me in tight, and I felt the great tension roll through his big body. And then in that broken, husky tenor of his, he whispered, “No one has ever chosen me before.”
Warmed down to my toes with overwhelming adoration for the male beneath me, I kissed his chest. And already I could feel the desire coursing through my body, making me soft and needy all over again. And Hephaestus was just as ready as I was. I could feel him growing thick beneath me. I purred.
“Then let me show you just how very much I want you again. And again. And again. But first, my beast, you must bathe. The madness has run its course, and you stink!”
He gasped, and then he laughed, and all the pain and fury and tension of before were gone, and in their place were us. Just us.
He hugged me tight and whispered heatedly, “Only if you wash me.”
“Deal,” I said with a kiss.
12
Hephaestus
When it was over, she stood up and did as she’d done the night prior. She left without a goodbye. Without a final look. Head held high.
But my world had been shaken to its very core.
No one whispered between themselves. But they all looked at me.
She had loved me.
Me.
The beast.
Her beast.
I grabbed my chest and squeezed it tight, moaning in distress as I looked all around me for Themis. I would beg. Plead if I had to. I would shame myself completely if I must. But I had to speak with Aphrodite. I had to know. Had to know how she still felt.
She’d loved me. Fiercely. Passionately. It hadn’t been an act at all. Because I’d seen Aphrodite when she’d lied, and she’d never been any good at it.
The thought was so astonishing that all strength suddenly left my body, and I collapsed in a not so graceful heap to the cold, hard marble ground beneath me.
Strong hands suddenly rested on my shoulders. And when I looked up, it was my brother who looked down on me with his dark and serious eyes.
He knelt before me. Studying me. I felt boneless. Empty. Like I wanted to cry, though I never could. But that same powerful emptiness that accompanied tears was upon me. I’d lost her.
Forever.
He shook his head. “She is not the same, brother. And I fear we have made a grave mistake.”
I croaked, wishing I could speak back. Wishing I could tell him that I agreed. That he must stop this. End this. Find some way out of this for her. She was too pure, too brave to endure this ridiculous sham of a trial any further.
And then I remembered that in her body were his children. And it was like a fist to my gut all over again. That same sense of loss, of betrayal washed over me. And I didn’t know what to think or how to feel, because I knew without a doubt it wasn’t the same woman anymore, and yet the very real consequence of actions taken would soon be upon us.
Those were not my children. But she would always be the woman of my heart.
He sighed. “We have not spoken, you and I, in far too long. And there are few in this life that I give a damn about. But I vow to you that when the time is right, I will mend this. I will make this right again. For both of you.”
And with that solemn oath, he was up and striding off. An enigma and a man that, deep down, I’d never stopped caring for. Even after all he’d done to me.
But then who could blame him. Aphrodite was a temptation impossible to resist for anyone.
Aphrodite
* * *
I sat at the entrance of the Elysian Fields, watching the lovers reunite, tears coursing down my cheeks.
I was a wolf.
A wolf, yeah, right.
A wolf who could not stop sobbing. I wrapped my arms tight around my middle. It was easy to be haughty and proud when I was surrounded by the vultures but so much harder in the quiet of night when it was just me and my thoughts and nothing but the memories to keep me company.
Reliving those memories, seeing them in such exacting detail, brought it all back. The highs and the lows of our very long and complicated relationship. And then there were the gifts.
Those beautifully thoughtful gifts made by hands that should never be able to craft anything so delicate.
I watched as my bird flew, wishing I could be that bird. Wishing I could fly away to a place where no one knew me and there wasn’t any more pain. Just joy. Just happiness.
I felt her presence before she even spoke.
“Dites,” Caly said softly.
I glanced over my shoulder. She stood as a human-looking woman, bare of feet and wrapped in turquoise silks. She had a lovely body and had every right to feel proud of it.
In a lot of ways, Caly reminded me of me, and in other ways, she was far stronger than I would ever be.
Caly hadn’t broken when she’d lost Hades. She’d simply reformed herself. Became a fighter. A monster. She’d become bigger and badder than she’d been. She’d have survived.
Me, all I could do was cry.
Swiping angrily at my cheeks, I shuddered and turned back around. It was the damned hormones. I’d always heard pregnancy turned women crazy. Of course, apparently, this body had been pregnant before, which should have given me a leg up on all of this weird moodiness, and yet I was clueless at to how I should feel or what I should even do.
“You are lost, my pretty friend. But Caly is here to perk you up.” She grinned.
I snorted and rolled my eyes.
“Oh no, it’s absolutely true. I have just the remedy for these blues.”
I thinned my lips.
She shrugged. “C’mon, did you honestly think your best friend forever didn’t come prepared?” And then she whipped her hand inside of her chest and tugged, pulling out a bottle of Zeus’s personal ambrosia. The good stuff. The stuff that would make you as high as a kite in next to no time and have you doing things you’d rue the next day, but gods, it was a magnificent tumble from grace.
I giggled, covering my hand with my mouth.
“Now, I’m sure you’re wondering how I did this. Well, let me just say”—she reached back inside of her chest, which was a little on the disturbing side, but one never said so to Caly—“Dionysus and I are well on our way toward having a glorious friendship. That bastard has stickier fingers than me, if you can imagine.”
I snorted, because oh boy, did I know that. Dionysus and I had gotten into lots
of trouble in our time, lots and lots. Like the one time he’d dressed in drag, flown us to Vegas, and gotten a group of partying geriatrics to streak down the strip. Needless to say we’d all been busted and had been forced to spend the night in county lockup, but it had been so worth it.
Hephy had come and posted my bail the next day. The eyes of the cops when they’d seen him coming for me, it made me giggle all over again, and I hadn’t even taken a sip of the loco juice yet.
She handed me my cup, shoulder bumping me. We tapped cups, and I drank deeply.
Yes, I was pregnant. But I was also a goddess. There wasn’t a damned thing passing through my steel womb. My children were perfectly safe, and I so needed a break from all the noise in my head.
We sat back, enjoying the breeze and the happiness of reuniting families down below us.
After a while, she sighed and refilled both our cups. “It’s going well, you know. I think at this point everyone knows you’re definitely not the same she-bitch. And holy hell, woman, you were heinous.”
I snorted and scratched at the back of my head.
“Making Hector watch while you went down on another woman. That’s like next-level savage. Nim taught me that phrase. Apparently, it means like wicked low or something. Like worse than anything I’ve ever done, anyway.” She shrugged.
The mug hovered at my lips, and I cocked an eyebrow, mouth thinned with displeasure.
She held up a hand. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Just stating facts. Anyway, that bitch wasn’t you, Dites. You know that, right?”
I shrugged.
“Gotta watch more of that shit show tomorrow. Sorry, babe. Silver lining, though, I never knew Horatio was quite so hung.”
She neighed, and I gasped and slapped her on the shoulder.
She giggled. And that loco juice, oh, it worked its magic. By the end, we were laughing at the dancing mushrooms with dongs the size of an excited ass all around us.
And Caly made the most amazing sounds with her mouth that had me in stitches, and I laughed and laughed all night.
It was a good night. But the morning, that was another thing entirely.
The Forge King (The Dark Kings Book 6) Page 16