by Sam Cheever
“Well?”
She scratched the matted gray mess on the top of her head and then examined her fingernails like a monkey in a zoo. I prayed she wouldn’t stick the finger into her mouth. For a moment it looked like she was considering it. Her mouth opened slightly.
I grimaced. “Clotho?”
She turned back to me, apparently forgetting about the contents of her fingernail for the moment. “You’ve been interfered with. That’s obvious. I just don’t know who, how, why or when.”
I shivered. “Interfered with?” That didn’t sound good at all.
Clotho rubbed her fingertips on her burlap skirt and focused sharp eyes on me. As I watched she let the mask slip and a red flame filled the center of each gray eye. “Here’s the crux of the problem, Daphne. I didn’t create that knot. If I had created it I would remember what it represented and I don’t. Since it won’t open under my command I am even more certain that it isn’t one of my weavings.”
My mouth fell open. “But that’s impossible. I’ve never heard of that happening. I thought you had complete control of the weaving of all life threads.”
“I do.”
I blew out a breath of frustration bordering on real terror. “Well then how is this possible? Who else could have woven it?”
Clotho shook her head. “There’s no question about it, this is interference from the gods.”
My eyes widened in surprise. “They can do that?”
She shrugged. “Of course. They aren’t supposed to of course but very rarely they convince themselves that the ends justify the means and they interfere in my work without telling me. I went all ethnic on their asses once about a thousand years ago and destroyed a third of Olympus over one particularly revolting interference. I’ve only caught them at it one other time since then, aside from your knot that is. And that’s what makes this fascinating.” She frowned thoughtfully and tapped her frosting-coated lips with a bent finger.
I opened my mouth and then closed it. I opened it again and cocked my head, lifting a finger toward the hag. Then I closed it and cleared my throat. Where the hell did I start?
Finally, I just dived in. “First of all, I need to hear about all of that at some point but not right now. Right now I need to know about the last time you caught them interfering. Was it recently and who was it? And why did they do it?”
She looked me straight in the eye and said, “That’s just it, it was mere months ago and you know him. Why they did it I still haven’t figured out. But I’m closing in on it. And when I do, I’m gonna give them such an ass kickin’.”
My heart rate sped up and all the blood drained from my head. My knees buckled under me and I sat down hard in the nearest chair. Suddenly I knew.
I knew who the other person was.
“It was Bion, wasn’t it?”
Clotho peered at me for a long moment and then said, “I gotta go.” And she was…just…gone.
*
The dream felt so real.
I was sitting in the Garden of Life listening to the trees whisper secrets to me about the gods, something that rarely happened when I lived on Olympus but was lots of fun when it did.
The trees always told such deliciously outrageous secrets.
I was leaning against a cherry blossom tree, listening to a tale about Aphrodite and her latest lover when I heard a footfall behind me. My head jerked around and I saw him standing there.
“Hello.”
I frowned. “What are you doing in my dream?”
He shrugged. “I guess seeing the thread brought me back into your consciousness.”
It was the boy from the steps, the one who’d bumped into me. Only he looked several years older. At least I thought he looked older. He was blurred a bit around the edges and his face didn’t quite focus.
I squinted to try to see him better but wasn’t overly concerned. I mean it was just a dream. I got the impression of dark, curly hair and dark eyes. But those were fairly common features in a Greek. His tall, well-muscled body certainly wasn’t blurry. He wore tight jeans and a silk shirt in a vibrant blue color that shimmered under the soft Olympus sun. I gazed down the long length of him and fought to keep from licking my lips.
Feigning indifference, I slumped back against the tree. “Well, go away. I’m busy.”
He stood there for a moment and then shrugged. I heard the slide of silk over smooth muscle and suddenly he was next to me on the ground, one leanly muscled shoulder touching mine.
I turned and scowled at him. “Do you need remedial lessons on the meaning of Go Away?”
He grinned. “Look, it’s a dream. I’m here, you’re here, we might as well have some fun.”
I shook my head, still scowling. “Just like a man. I’m not interested in having fun with you. I’m in the middle of a great story here. I just want you to leave.”
He turned to face me. “I can tell you how the story ended.”
I picked up a fallen blossom from the ground beside my legs and held it to my nose. The scent of it filled me with intense pleasure. Every flower on Olympus smelled of the finest perfume, larger than life and impossible to resist.
In fact everything on Olympus was larger than life. I smiled at this thought and glanced toward the man beside me.
He grinned at me as if reading my thoughts.
Despite the flower’s intense fragrance, his scent overpowered it. He smelled male and sexual and completely intoxicating.
I nearly snorted the small blossom into my nostril in my efforts to pretend indifference as his lips moved to my ear and he began to whisper the story he’d promised.
I surreptitiously reached up and plucked a flower petal from my nostril and fought against the urge to turn my head and meet his lips. Then I remembered it was just a dream and thought, “Why the hell not?”
As he whispered the finale to the now totally uninteresting story, his lips touched my ear, his tongue rimming the sensitive ridge at the top.
I gasped as the sensation of warmth trailed along the top edge of my ear and he sucked my lobe into his mouth, gently nibbling it until I moaned. His hand found my knee and he rubbed it in a gentle motion that made the muscles go slack and my legs drop open on the ground. The hand moved to the hem of my flimsy sundress and beneath, heading north toward hallowed ground.
I knew I should stop him but the tongue had found its way to a part of my neck that was incredibly sensitive and I was buried in incapacitating sensations.
Then the soft invasion of his lips stopped and I turned my head, finding myself face to face with Bion.
I was startled at first but then his lips met mine and all thoughts of reality and real-life drama fled under the onslaught of that kiss.
Strong arms pulled me into a familiar embrace.
Strong hands lifted me onto his lap.
Strong emotions made me putty in his very capable hands.
I sat facing him, legs sprawled to either side of his body, throbbing for his touch.
Bion’s hands flew over my back and arms as if he were memorizing me, devouring the feel of my skin under his fingers. His lips captured my breath and made it his own.
My heart was beating so fast I thought I might pass out.
It was as if we’d never parted from each other. Like he’d never walked away.
I choked out a cry of pain and tried to pull away, suddenly afraid that my heart would be ripped from my chest again, that it would all go away, leaving me devastated and alone.
Bion wouldn’t let me go. His hand lifted to the back of my neck and held me there as he deepened the kiss to the point where it felt almost frantic in its hunger.
I realized suddenly that I was naked.
He was naked.
And I still straddled him.
Bion placed his hands at my waist and lifted until I could feel the fat tip of his cock at my throbbing entrance. He slowly lowered me and slid inside. I threw my head back and screamed my pleasure as he gradually filled me.
Above us the Tree of Life vibrated, showering us with flower petals that smelled of love and sex and pleasure.
We sat unmoving for a moment, forehead to forehead, panting softly, with Bion deeply embedded in my body and me throbbing in anticipation around him. And then Bion wrapped an arm around my waist and stood up, pulling me up with him. He lay me down on the fragrant petals, still embedded inside me.
The petals made the softest bed I’d ever experienced and encompassed us in a magic scent that seemed to lift the real world away from us until we were lost only in the emotions and the sensations of our moments together.
His lips touched mine and drifted away like a feather. He softly kissed first one eyelid and then the other and moved on to float a kiss to each temple, inhaling my scent as the pulse there beat a lustful rhythm against his lips.
His feathery kisses trailed down my hairline, to my chin and down my throat. The soft kisses were interspersed with delicate nips that made me shiver and caused me to arch hopefully toward him.
I wanted him to move inside me. My body nearly begged him to do it. But he held perfectly still and lowered his head to my breast, pulling a rigid nipple into the soft heat of his mouth and sucking gently as my body arched against his in frantic need. I cried out as the gentle sucking pulled fire through my body that brought me teetering on the edge of climax, breathless for his next touch.
Bion’s soft, heated lips moved to the other nipple and pulled it in, holding it in motionless heat as his body held mine, leaving me throbbing for release. As tears of pure frustration fell from my eyes to mix with the fragrant petals on the ground around us, Bion finally gave one strong pull on my breast and lifted his hips slowly, making me gasp in anticipation. Then he drove into me, hard, just once and I exploded into climax, my body racked by wave after wave of uncontrollable pleasure. Bion kept his hips still and rode it out. His eyes were closed and his head thrown back. A bulging vein in his neck was the only indication of how hard he was fighting to retain control as my body pulsed around his, threatening to pull him over with me.
But Bion held on and as the aftershocks of my orgasm died down to a soft clenching of my womb, he started to move.
His hips dragged the thick length of him slowly, oh-so slowly out of my grasping body, scraping a thousand engorged nerve endings as he went, and then slid just as slowly back in, stopping only when our bodies touched and he was buried as deeply as he could go.
As he tortured me with slow, gentle lovemaking, he held himself above me on his forearms, his lips resting softly on mine and his chest pressed against the soft mounds of my breasts. He breathed heavily, bathing my face with warm, musky heat and then pulling my breath back with his like a drowning man. His dark gaze was taut with passion and his heart beat against my breast, telling me much better than words that he was teetering on the edge, fighting the need to jump.
“Enough!” I gasped.
I grabbed his hard buttocks with both hands and urged him to drive deeper, faster, harder into me. He happily complied.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and used them to force him into the rhythm we both craved.
Bion threw back his head and cried out as our passion turned feral. I braced myself with my hands on both sides of my hips and pulled him into my body hard, fast, deep with the strength of my thighs, dragging him toward that precipice with me, wildly, thoughtlessly, breathlessly toward that peak.
He built the fire with me until it roared through us, burning us with the heat of our lust. He rode the rampaging heat until he found its apex and he stopped, hanging suspended on the edge, unmoving within me, as the passion pulled at him, radiating from my body and into his, until he couldn’t breathe from the pressure of his need and he let himself fall, screaming my name to the gods.
I fell with him, clinging hard to his hips with my legs and whispered his name as I felt Olympus and my wonderful dream falling away from me.
I woke to a body flushed and tingling with a sexual aftermath that was too real to have been a dream. But it had been a dream. An incredible dream but a dream nonetheless. Not real. Not true. Not really mine.
Reality, like acid, burned through me.
I was still alone. Still unloved. And still living in a world without Bion.
Chapter Eleven
Valentine’s Bash
I stood in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom and smoothed my hands down the gorgeous, shimmering material of the dress. Tears swam in my eyes and flowed down my cheeks. I quickly dabbed at them with the tissue I held clutched in my hand before they could stain the beautiful dress.
The beautiful dress that Bion had picked out for me.
The beautiful dress that was supposed to be for him.
The beautiful dress that he would now never even notice.
I sighed and forced my mind away from Bion.
No easy task.
Grabbing the small, white clutch purse with my quiver and arrows in it, I headed for the door with determined steps.
I would get this over with and come home.
Then I would try to start rebuilding my life.
*
Orchestra Hall, the huge, elegant building where the Valentine’s Ball was being held, was packed with people who had stars in their eyes and a flush in their cheeks from excitement.
The ballroom was football stadium sized. The ceilings soared over well-coiffed heads in wide arcs that were etched with elegant frescos from another, more elegant, era.
Roses of every color adorned the balconies and lined the walls in fragrant garlands. Candles burned and danced in softly scented drifts from authentic wall sconces around the large room. Classical music, played by the city’s symphony orchestra, floated through the room and formed a soft background score for the conversations of the thousands of people who packed the huge space.
To me, the crowd was both a chore and a balm. I figured it would be easy to hide from Bion in the mess of people. I pulled the photos Christian had given me out of the clutch and studied them one last time, until I had my victims’ faces firmly etched in my mind.
Then I stuffed the pictures back in my purse and snapped it shut. I plastered a blank expression on my face and started weaving my way through the mass of sparkling people, my eyes scanning all the happy faces for either one of my two couples.
I found half of the first couple standing outside the women’s restroom, glaring at his watch.
Before approaching him I reached into the little clutch purse and slipped the sling over my wrist. A little magic made the sling look like a diamond ring that went well with the diamond heart on my necklace.
I took a deep breath and headed for the impatient-looking man waiting outside the ladies room.
He glanced up at me as I approached, his deep-set hazel eyes barely acknowledging me before he looked back down at his watch. He had dark blond hair that curled just the tiniest bit at the ends and a square jaw that was clean shaven but gave the impression of having a shadow on it.
He was quite good-looking. If you could discount the frown on his handsome face.
I stopped in front of him and smiled. “You look like a man who’s lost something.”
He shook his head and frowned a little more. “My date went in there fifteen minutes ago. She’s been complaining about not feeling well. I’m starting to get worried about her.”
“Would you like me to check up on her for you?”
The frown dropped away as the hazel eyes widened. “You’d do that for me? Thanks! I’d really appreciate it.”
I smiled at him, thinking of the contractor-preschool teacher fiasco. It would be easier for me if they were together. “It’s no problem at all. I was going in anyway.”
I started into the ladies restroom but he grabbed my arm. I turned in surprise. “Don’t you want to know what she looks like?”
I gave him an impish smile. I was feeling just a little mean around all the lovebirds I guessed. “I already know.”
His ha
ndsome face folded into a frown again, the hazel eyes sliding to the door as if he was having second thoughts about sending me in after her.
I relented with a smile. “I saw the two of you standing here a few minutes ago, before she went in. I was thinking what a handsome pair you made.”
The worry fell out of his eyes and he chuckled. “Oh. Okay, you startled me there.”
I gave him an unconcerned laugh and pushed the door to the ladies open.
The sound of retching met me as I pushed into the plush, brightly lit room.
There was only one stall that was occupied. I guessed everyone had made a hasty retreat when they heard all the commotion in that one unfortunate stall.
I stood there for a minute, listening to the very unladylike sound of throwing up and wondering what I should do. It would be impossible to perform the arrow ceremony if the female was in the stall puking her guts up and the male was standing outside worrying alone.
Sighing, I scrubbed a hand over my eyes and thought quickly. Nothing was ever easy.
The stall door opened while I was standing there and a small, pretty woman with curly dark hair and a very pale face emerged. She jumped a little when she saw me and a slight flush ran up the long, pale column of her slender neck and into her cheeks.
She pushed the back of her small hand against her mouth and looked for a moment as if she was going to turn back into the stall and commence throwing up again.
I had to act quickly. I moved toward her, plastering a look of concern on my face. If I could just touch her.
I must have startled her because she darted away, toward the sinks.
I dropped the hand I’d been reaching toward her and bit my lip. I appeared to be lacking my usual tact that evening. “Are you okay? You sound like you’re really sick.”
She leaned over the sink and took a couple of deep breaths, then reached to turn on the cold water. “I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
I took a step toward her. “I’m a doctor. Do you mind if I take your pulse?”