He stepped in closer, his toes nearly touching her shoes, and released the clip at the top of Layla’s head. The tight knot of hair unfurled and tumbled over her shoulders. “So soft,” he whispered, hypnotizing both of them as his fingers gently swept through her hair.
The pencil fell away and clattered to the pavement, shaking Layla out of her stupor. “I’m not sure what’s come over me. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Neither have I.” He smiled at her; she nodded back.
Cupid’s fingertips brushed the delicate skin behind her ear. Layla shuddered and sighed as her eyelids fluttered closed.
Touch; response. How very gratifying.
Dipping his face to the hollow of her neck, Cupid left a first, gentle kiss. Her supple skin trapped his voice, turning it into a soft murmur. “Mmm, so warm.”
She sucked in a quick breath; so did he.
The back alley reeked of garbage from the nearby waste bin, but Layla smelled of jasmine and heavily applied creams and powders. Cupid wanted to sample her mouth—hard, sloppy kisses had always seemed so exciting—but he couldn’t bear the thought of tasting the thick paste on her lips and instead skated his kisses downward. Wise choice, he concluded as his mouth met the plump pillows of her cleavage, a location that lived up to a long lifetime of unfulfilled dreams. The flesh tasted all the sweeter for having been off limits until just now.
With sudden urgency, Layla gripped Cupid’s head, grasping handfuls of wavy hair and clutching his face to her chest. He reached around her back and tugged her forward, grunting when their hips collided. Impatient for more, he explored the enticing curve of her bottom and slipped his hands under the hem of her uniform.
Cupid’s head snapped up as his palms met bare flesh. “You’re not wearing underwear.” Oh, was Pan going to get a piece of his mind.
Layla’s cheeks brightened. “I was while I was working. I swear.”
Realizing his mistake, Cupid gave her fleshy bottom a squeeze. “No, I like it.”
Cupid guided her backward into the brick wall and wedged his knee between her thighs. She opened for him like the palace gates. His fingers penetrated her entrance with delicate caresses. Layla let out a surprised squeak, which melted into a low, needy moan.
“Holy hell, what are you doing to me?” Swooning off-balance, she locked her arms around Cupid’s neck and tucked her face just above his collar. “Don’t stop.”
“Gods, you are dripping with desire,” said Cupid. Her answering whimper thrilled him.
Cupid wanted more than his fingers inside her though. This new manhood of his demanded its turn. He fumbled at his exasperating buttons, but one hand was not enough to manage the job.
Layla was quick to help, and he happily relocated his hand to a more satisfying location—inside the top of Layla’s dress—while she worked open his pants and tugged them over his hips. “Did you bring protection?” she whispered in a heated frenzy.
Just before his pants cleared his knees, Cupid retrieved the condom Pan had forced on him. Layla tore open the packet while Cupid took a half step back to push down his undershorts. Uncaged at last, his heavy erection sprang from the elastic and slapped impressively against the bottom of his T-shirt.
“Wow!” Cupid exclaimed, gripping himself with a tight fist. He’d doubled in length and girth since before meeting Layla.
Layla licked her lips. “Are you planning to share that, or would you two prefer to be alone?”
Being alone happened to be one thing the God of Erotic Love definitely did not need more of. “No, thank you.”
Layla’s eyes opened wide as she reached for him. With one final tug, Cupid surrendered his shiny new toy. His reward was immediate—the snug embrace of Layla’s palm, radiating ripples of pleasure outward from the bullseye of his groin. A hiss escaped him as he rocked back onto his heels. Before this moment, Cupid might have fooled himself into believing another’s hand was no different than his own—but never again.
“Shame to cover this up,” Layla said as she rolled a cool, slippery sheath down the length of his erection with a fluid flick of her wrist. Though he bristled at first, Cupid set aside his objections when Layla clenched his torso within her powerful thighs, clambered onto his hips, and pulled him inside her, centimeter by blessed centimeter.
Her ankles locked behind his back, drawing him deeper. Her walls gripped him everywhere at once. Consumed with the novelty, the friction, and, admittedly, the pride afforded by his Earthly member, his head swirled with pleasure. Cupid dropped his forehead to her chest while they thrust together vigorously into nearly synchronized, mutual oblivion.
It all made sense now: the treacherous, all-consuming pursuit of this exhilarating release, the Bacchanalia, the chasing of nymphs through wooded forests, marriage and extramarital affairs. As Cupid caught his breath, he lamented all his wasted, sexless days.
Layla released a contented sigh, scratching her long fingernails along his scalp. He lifted his face from her cleavage and returned her dreamy smile. He didn’t need to ask if she’d enjoyed herself, and that made his happiness complete.
“My break’s over,” she said with a wistful lilt. “Back to reality.”
He took the hint and gingerly lifted her out of his lap and returned her feet to the ground. While Layla straightened her uniform, Cupid shoved the condom toward the end of his spent, yet still impressive penis. A pocket of sticky fluid spilled onto his fingertips. Cupid thrust the messy sock into the nearby dumpster with a muffled curse, pulled up the dreaded underwear, and refastened his pants.
“Here.” Layla pulled a small scrap of paper from her apron and slipped it into Cupid’s front pocket.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Whatever spell you just cast over me, I wouldn’t mind falling under it—and you—again sometime. Call me. Anytime.”
Cupid knew enough to pretend he understood. He smiled and nodded. “Thank you.”
Layla drank in every detail of Cupid’s body with one last, long ogle that made him glow with self-satisfaction. She shook her head and chuckled softly as if accepting she could not solve this puzzle, then started toward the door.
When her hand met the latch, Layla halted and craned her neck around. “What’s your name anyway?”
Well, this was a first. Where he came from, everyone knew everyone.
“Cupid.”
Layla grinned broadly, and he heard her giggle as she stepped inside. “Yeah, right. And I’m Cleopatra.”
7
Debrief
A freshly fucked Cupid climbed into the passenger seat, wearing the biggest, dumbest grin Pan had ever seen. Chuckling, Pan rolled down the windows lest they both choke on the stench. “Well, well, well. Looks like Layla eased your worried mind.”
Cupid side-eyed him. “Huh?”
“It’s an Eric Clapton song. You need to catch up on pop culture if you’re going to fit in down here.”
“Oh. Speaking of fitting in, I barely did.”
“How nice for the two of you.” Pan really didn’t need reminding of his friend’s endowment after sitting alone in his truck doing little more than picturing Cupid burying his bone in that waitress.
“It was. You know how people say size doesn’t matter?”
Pan snorted. “Nobody’s ever said that to me, but I get your drift.”
Waggling his eyebrows, Cupid leaned in to share his big secret. “They were lying.”
“You’re an idiot, Q. That stuff’s not about you; it’s about pleasing the girl.”
“Huh.” Cupid stared ahead, deep in thought. “Oh. Layla gave me something at the end.”
“What, like a kiss?”
“Gods no. I couldn’t.” Cupid’s mouth twisted in disgust. “She was nice and all, but she had so much lip paint . . . I had to keep ducking.”
Pan brus
hed his fingers across his mouth to hide his amusement. “What did she give you?”
Cupid reached into his pocket, pulled out the torn-off piece of a check, and studied the writing on one side. “Some numbers. She said I should call her.”
Whatever Layla was, Pan would have bet his last nickel she wasn’t Cupid’s endgame, which meant that little tryst was nothing but the upward click-click-click of the roller coaster. By now, Pan had a pretty solid understanding of what happens to things that go up.
“That girl has no idea who she’s dealing with,” said Pan.
“But she does. I told her.”
Fantastic. That’s what he got for letting Cupid get jiggy with the natives before they’d worked out his cover story.
“And what did she say?” asked Pan, forcing his words out in a straight, steady line.
“She joked about being Cleopatra.”
Pan released a heavy breath as he turned the key in the ignition. The pickup roared to life. “Fasten your seat belt.”
“Yes, Mother.” Cupid pulled a face as the buckle clicked in. “Straps and girdles and cocks wearing sleeves . . .” He twisted under his belt to round on Pan. “Re! Layla was not wearing underwear.”
Pan had to do a double take, but yes, Cupid was definitely glaring at him. “Sorry, why are we unhappy about that?”
“Not that she wasn’t. That I am.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Pan answered. Soon enough, buddy, you’ll wish your boxers were your biggest problem.
Easing the truck onto the two-lane highway, Pan kept one eye on Cupid, whose head swiveled from his side window to the windshield and back again as the downtown streets rolled under their wheels. How foreign the trappings of modern America always struck the newly fallen, and no god was more insulated from the realities of life on earth—or anywhere, really—than the untouchable prince of Aphrodite’s palace. Cupid could meddle in twice as many lives in a day as his quiver could hold arrows and be welcomed home each night with a clear conscience and his favorite dishes waiting at his place at the table.
Pan’s own descent wasn’t nearly the shock to his system. Earth life in the year 15 was not so different from life on the Mount. The mortals had yet to solve the myriad challenges of so-called “civilization”—communication, transportation, waste disposal, commerce. Pan had plodded through these “advances” along with his fellow earthlings in painful, slow-moving centuries, in sharp contrast to the recent, warp-speed explosion of technologies both helpful and toxic, with the distinction between the ends of the spectrum growing blurrier by the day.
“Driving looks like fun. Can I try?”
Pan’s gaze shifted toward the request, and Cupid sat up taller in his seat, as if being measured for a new suit. “We’ll see,” Pan answered warily. “These earth roads require more skill than just avoiding the occasional chariot in the sky.” He proved his point by signaling a lane change, pulling past three cars, and cutting back into the right lane, making it all look very treacherous.
“This is the United States of America, right?” Cupid asked.
“Yep, the good old American heartland.”
“Have you been here the whole time?”
Pan slanted his head at Cupid, but to be fair, it wasn’t easy keeping track of the years when your own history never changes. “This wasn’t here when I, uh”—died—“left, remember? I kicked around the Roman Empire for a few centuries and went from kingdom to kingdom in South Asia after that.”
Cupid folded his arms over his chest, intent now on getting answers. “Why didn’t I ever see you?”
“There are quite a few people down here, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Pan said, a nervous laugh escaping him.
“I would have found you in a sea of billions, Pan, and you know it.”
Pan let out a heavy sigh. “Hephaestus fixed the gaiascope on your bow to block me from your view.”
“Just you?”
“No. I travel among a system of thirty-three divine penal colonies across the globe, and your scope won’t find any of them.” A stark reminder, not that Pan needed it, of his very own brand of prison.
“Penal colonies?” Cupid blinked hard. Yep, it was starting to sink in now.
“That’s right. This one happens to be in the state of Indiana, but I move from one Tarra to another about every ten years.” Failing to age made Pan stick out like a giant ginger-bearded sore thumb after a while, which necessitated frequent moves even in the absence of any cosmic disturbances. As a creature of the woods, Pan appreciated the variety—new people, new flora and fauna. It certainly wasn’t any attachment to this particular Tarra that had kept him here for the last twelve years, more like inertia.
Cupid’s eyes flew open with an emotion approaching the appropriate amount of horror. “Tarra? As in, Tartarus?”
“Exactly. Earth is a convenient way station between Mount O and Tartarus, a perfect spot for the Divine Council to exert control over their prisoners while keeping a close watch from above.”
“Why don’t I feel like I’m in prison?” Cupid squinted out the window as if the dungeon of torment and suffering were waiting to reveal itself—and it absolutely would, on the gods’ schedule, but not the way Cupid imagined.
Don’t get too comfortable, friend. Click-click-click.
“Trust me, pal,” Pan said. “You’re not here to play Tiddly Winks.”
Cupid swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bouncing like a basketball. “What about all these mortals? Are they being punished too?”
“You mean like that poor girl who had to have sex with you?”
“Very funny. She quite enjoyed herself.”
Pan guffawed. “I should certainly hope so, God of Erotic Love. And no, these are basically random humans just trying to grind out a living and find someone to cuddle when the mood strikes.”
Poor sons of bitches caught in the crossfire is what they were. The gods didn’t hesitate to use mortals as pawns. Collateral damage was always a concern, but Pan’s marching orders rarely placed humans at the top of his priority list.
“What do the mortals know about the gods living among them?”
“Not a thing,” replied Pan. “The gods of Olympus have long been forgotten—if the mortals ever believed we were anything more than fanciful tales recorded by lost civilizations.”
“It’s all because of the Romans, inventing new names for all of us and jumbling up our stories and confusing everyone,” groused Cupid with a familiar refrain.
Zeus had tried to take back the narrative after the fall of Rome, but by then, it was too late to win back the mortals. His so-called “Great Syncretism,” the Greco-Roman mash-up resulting in one unified canon, did score big points with the other gods, though, when He allowed everyone to choose which name to keep. For Pan, the decision was a no-brainer; he was all too happy to expunge Faunus—aka “Phallus”—from the records, and good riddance to that one.
“The Romans didn’t help matters,” said Pan, fully aware there was more than confusion to blame, “but the days of awe and respect from the mortals are long gone.”
“If Zeus wants awe and respect, why not just throw down a bunch of thunderbolts? That always kept the ancients in line.”
“Believe me,” Pan said, “the Big Guy makes all kinds of messes down here—Poseidon, too. The issue is, most moderns tend to put their faith in people called ‘scientists,’ who explain things like thunder and tsunamis and rainbows and time, and those explanations don’t include us.”
Watching Cupid process the information gave Pan the sense of a Freaky Friday reboot, where Cupid’s childhood brain had migrated, at long last, into his adult body. “Huh,” Cupid said. “How do they explain love?”
“Oh, love’s still a big, fat mystery,” answered Pan with a chuckle. “Thing is, the gods aren’t in it for awe and respect anymore. I don’t need
to tell you it’s boring as fuck up there on that little mountain, seeing the same faces day after year after century. Humans, on the other hand, provide an endless, rotating cast of extras for the gods’ entertainment. Think about it; the gods can pull whatever strings they want up there, and someone down here gets blamed for it. All the fun and none of the consequences.”
“So Zeus doesn’t want the mortals to know we’re up there?”
“Right, which is why you can’t use a name that screams ‘God of Love.’” Pan lifted both hands off the wheel to illustrate.
“Then what name will I use?”
“How about ‘Q’?” Pan suggested. The simpler the better.
“But that’s just a letter.”
“If anyone pushes, tell ‘em it’s short for Quentin. That’s a very trendy name right now.”
“Quentin. Quentin.” Cupid practiced rolling the name off his tongue, varying his tone each time until the next question occurred. “Is it really necessary to use a condom?” Of course Cupid would be stuck on his new favorite topic—that bright, shiny toy between his legs. Truth be told, Pan’s thoughts hadn’t traveled as far as they should have from the very same spot.
“Earthlings carry diseases . . . and babies. Trust me, you don’t want either,” said Pan. “I’d say the love glove is a small price to pay for that new cock you’re so proud of. You don’t get to take that with you when you leave, you know.”
Cupid’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t?”
“Nope. Learned that lesson the hard way. Remember the first time I was sent?”
“Of course. You chased down the wrong nymph that day.”
“Hey, was it my fault Syrinx wouldn’t give me a roll in the moss?” Funny how a visit from home could bring back the sting of rejection as if it were yesterday. Surely, Pan’s sexual prowess in the intervening millennia as an earth dweller had more than made up for the centuries of rejection on Olympus.
“You did have a nasty habit of sneaking up on unsuspecting nymphs in the woods.”
First Quiver Page 3