He obeyed her, squeezing her soft flesh, letting his fingers trace lightly over her nipples until they peaked, then he drew them into his mouth. All the while, she ground against his length, careful and slow. Each thrust made his head rush, and when he lifted his mouth to hers, he timed the thrust of his tongue with her body’s movement.
“You are glorious,” he said, tearing away from her mouth. “Up.”
He was so used to her arguing that he expected resistance, but in this, she obeyed, and as she rose, his face was level with her center. Her curls were dark and he could smell her sex. It made his mouth water.
He let his hands slide down over her ass and met her gaze as he kissed along one thigh and then the other before guiding her to brace one of her feet on the log where he still sat. He rubbed his fingers along her opening, her skin like silk, hot and warm, and when he buried his head between her thighs and gathered her moisture against his tongue, she tasted just like the fucking fig—honeyed and sweet.
She breathed in tandem with his strokes, her fingers tightening in his hair as he directed most of his attention to a single point inside her while Ariadne rubbed her clit. He pulled his head back to watch her expression as they both worked together, moving at an equal pace to chase her release.
She clenched around his fingers hard and her hands clamped down on his shoulders as her whole body shuddered. Dionysus released her and rose to his feet, capturing her mouth against his, pulling her hard against him, ready to feel her heat on his cock. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the wall, unwilling to take her on the hard ground of the cave.
It wasn’t how he’d ever imagined this, but he would never miss the chance to know her in this way.
He pressed her back into the smoothest part of the wall as he kissed her, and when he pulled back, her eyes smoldered like embers. He could feel the impact of her gaze like a blow to the chest. He wanted her to look at him like this every fucking day.
“Undress,” she said, pulling at his shirt.
He let her slide down his body and obeyed, and as he removed his shirt, she went for the button of his pants, kneeling before him as she pushed them down his legs. She didn’t wait for him to step out of them before her hand closed over his cock and her mouth was on him.
He took a breath and then groaned, bracing one hand against the wall, twining the other in her hair.
She concentrated on the tip of his cock while she fisted his length, gently squeezing until he thought he would explode. He pulled her to her feet, slamming his mouth against hers as he took her into his arms again. He shifted her so that her shoulder blades met the wall. His cock was between her thighs, nestled against her heat. It made the bottom of his stomach knot with anticipation.
“Where do you want me to come?”
It wasn’t the most romantic question, but it was important all the same, and he’d rather know now before he was too lost in her to think.
Her lips hovered near his as she answered, “Inside me.”
The only way to describe how he felt was giddy, like he’d never fucking done this before, but he hadn’t, not with her, and this mattered in ways he couldn’t explain. He managed to lift her enough to settle the head of his arousal against her opening, and then he gripped her ass, spreading her as she slid down his length. They both groaned, and Ariadne’s head rolled back against the wall as he moved her and his hips.
“Gods, you are perfect,” he said, leaning forward to press a kiss to her mouth, then her jaw, then her chest. She felt so good and her muscles clenched around him like a hand jerking him off. He could not ask for more. He could not ask for better.
She was all there was, the center of his universe, and the more she responded to his body, the more powerful he felt.
“Fuck,” Ariadne moaned, her voice vibrating with his thrusts. “You feel so good.”
“Is it what you imagined?” he asked.
“Yes,” she breathed, one of her hands moving to her breasts, and he marveled at how she touched herself. “Gods, yes, yes, yes.”
Her voice went higher and her body tightened around him, and then she released all at once, suddenly heavier in his hands. But he did not care as he held her, driving his hips forward toward his own release, and when he came, he let his head fall into the crook of her neck, his legs shaking.
He couldn’t move for a long moment, fearful he might fall and take her with him, and when he finally set her on her feet, he felt cold, the heat they’d shared suddenly gone. As he stared down at her, he realized he didn’t know what to do now that they were finished.
Did he kiss her?
“Are you okay?” he asked instead.
“Yes,” she said, her voice quiet.
He hesitated.
Fuck, why was this so hard?
“Let me get your clothes,” he mumbled and shuffled away to retrieve her shirt and her pants.
“Thank you,” she whispered as he handed them to her.
They dressed in silence and then sat beside each other in front of the fire just as they had before they’d fucked. He could still feel her on his skin, smell her sex in the air. He was hyperaware of how she felt beside him, both close but also so distant.
“Do you regret it?” he asked suddenly.
Her eyes widened and she met his gaze. “No. Do you?”
“No,” he said. “I never will.”
Dionysus woke with one arm hooked around Ariadne’s stomach. The other was under her head and numb. After they’d had sex, they sat in a strained and awkward quiet. He had meant it when he’d told her he would never regret what happened between them, and while she’d said no in the aftermath, today was a new day, and it was possible she might see everything that had transpired between them in a different light.
Even with these doubts, he marveled at her beauty, hardly able to comprehend that he had woken up to her.
When she stirred, dread crept into his chest, roiling in his stomach as he tried to prepare himself for her rejection, but when she opened her eyes, she didn’t roll from his grasp but turned to face him. He found he was just as confused as he was last night after they’d had sex. He no longer knew what to do with his hands, though he was highly aware of where they lay, splayed across her lower stomach.
“Good morning,” he said.
She smirked, her eyes dropping to his lips. “Good morning.”
He felt like that was enough of an invitation and kissed her, his lips brushing hers softly. He had every intention of letting that be enough, but he had not accounted for her enthusiasm, which was like a hot claw curling into his stomach.
Her mouth widened and he took her deeper, tongues clashing. She pulled on his shirt, luring him on top of her, and he gladly obliged, his hips settling against hers, and as they descended further into this mad passion, his thoughts went wild—they were going to fuck again.
This was more than he’d ever imagined.
A sudden, sharp bleating tore them apart.
Dionysus wasn’t sure what it was about the sound, but it had sent his heart into a complete panic, and when he looked up from Ariadne, he saw a sheep at the entrance of the cave, its narrow pupils unnervingly focused on them.
Ariadne giggled.
“Go away,” Dionysus said, throwing a small pebble in its direction. The sheep offered another wavering cry.
“Don’t hurt him!” Ariadne said, pushing against Dionysus’s chest as she sat up.
He wanted to groan, knowing there was no reclaiming what might have been now that they had been interrupted.
“He’s lucky it’s just a pebble,” Dionysus said. That was twice now he had been cockblocked by a fucking sheep.
He hated this island.
He fell onto his back and stared up at the cavernous ceiling while Ariadne inched closer to the animal. It was lucky Ariadne was nice, because if Dionysus had gotten near it first, he would have tossed it across the island like the cyclops had done yesterday.
As he worked through his frustration, the cave, which was full of morning light, darkened. He turned his head in time to see a large eye block the opening, and then a giant hand shoved its way into the mountain’s side.
“Ariadne!” Dionysus shouted as she screamed, enveloped by the cyclops’s fingers. As the monster tore her away, parts of the cave came with it, and the ground shook beneath his feet. Dionysus summoned his thyrsus and dodged falling rock, racing toward the edge of the cave, catapulting through the air to rescue Ariadne, but the cyclops’s other hand closed around him. Trapped beneath his fingers, Dionysus thrust the sharp end of his thyrsus into the cyclops’s palm. The monster screamed and then slung him away.
He flew through the air and hit the earth, moving through each layer as if it wasn’t a solid thing beneath his body. When he finally came to a stop and managed to climb out of the hole his body had made, Ariadne and the cyclops were gone.
CHAPTER XXXII
HADES
Okeanos sat in a chair opposite a mirror.
He was still and restrained, head leaning back, chest gaping from where Aphrodite had stolen his heart. From what Hades knew, she still had it in her possession, though he had not seen her or Hephaestus since that night at Club Aphrodisia.
“What’s the mirror for?” Hermes asked.
Hades met Hermes’s gaze in the reflection. “So Okeanos can watch his torture.”
“Kinky,” Hermes said and then turned to look at the demigod. “I hope you tear him to pieces.”
Hades glanced at the god and raised a brow. “And you said I was a psychopath.”
“He ripped Tyche’s horns from her head,” Hermes said.
Hades narrowed his eyes.
“Wake,” he commanded, and the man took a gasping breath, though his chest rattled where his heart should be. He looked around, confused, until his eyes settled on his reflection in the mirror, as Hades expected it would. Then his gaze moved to Hermes, then to Hades.
“Release me!” Okeanos demanded.
Hermes chuckled. “Listen to him. He thinks he can command you.”
“How dare you,” Okeanos seethed. “I am the son of Zeus!”
“So am I,” said Hermes. “It’s nothing to brag about, trust me.”
“You wish to overthrow my brother, and yet you use his name as if that will protect you,” Hades said. “The hypocrisy.”
“You are one to speak, God of Death,” Okeanos seethed.
Hades dealt a blow to the demigod’s pristine face, the bones giving way beneath the punch. His head snapped back, and blood poured from his ruined nose.
“That,” Hades said, shaking the blood off his hand, “is not my title. You would do well to remember, given that you are in my realm.”
Okeanos smiled despite the blood, despite his ruined face. “Is that all you’ve got?” he asked. “A measly punch to the face?”
Hermes cast Hades an annoyed look. Hades knew what he was thinking—I told you to tear him limb from limb.
Hades was not so certain he wouldn’t by the end of this.
“Go ahead,” said the demigod. “Do your worst.”
“The audacity,” said Hermes.
“I believe the word you are looking for is hubris,” said Okeanos. “Isn’t that what you Olympians like to punish? The so-called fatal flaw of humanity?”
Gods rarely needed to punish hubris. The consequences came about on their own, as they clearly had with Okeanos, yet he seemed oblivious to that fact.
“Why Tyche?” Hades asked.
Okeanos shrugged. “It seemed like the thing to do.”
“You ritualized the death of a goddess who caused you no harm,” Hades said, his voice shaking.
“There are always casualties in war, Hades.”
“As you well know,” Hades said pointedly.
For all his arrogance, Okeanos seemed to forget that he too was dead.
“Well, perhaps neither of us would have been here had you not fucked the wrong woman.”
Hades punched Okeanos again. This time, his teeth bite into Hades’s skin. The cuts healed as quickly as they were formed.
“He’s fucking with you, Hades,” Hermes said.
“You don’t even know how much you are to blame.” The demigod laughed, though it sounded more like a wheeze.
Hades lifted his fist again, but before he could strike Okeanos, Hermes caught his arm and met his gaze.
“Allow me,” he said and turned toward the demigod. “It seems you’ve forgotten our strength. Let me remind you.”
Okeanos smirked.
“Give me your best, trickster.”
“I’ll do more than that…brother,” said Hermes, and with a wave of his hand, the chair disappeared from beneath Okeanos, and before he could fall to the floor, Hermes caught his arm and twisted it behind his back until the bone cracked, sending him to his knees.
The demigod screamed, huffing through his teeth, but still he managed to speak. “You may have strength,” he said. “But we have weapons.”
“So we have heard,” Hades replied. “Why don’t you tell us more?”
Okeanos shook his head, breathing raggedly.
“Oh, don’t stop talking now,” Hermes said, jerking his broken arm back farther. “You were just getting to the good part.”
Okeanos’s roar of pain echoed throughout the room, making Hades’s ears ring. It was a while before it dissolved into sobs.
“Nothing to say?” Hermes asked, and just as he was about to wrench the demigod’s arm again, he spoke.
“No! No! Wait!” Okeanos shouted into the floor. “Please. Please. Please.”
“Since you said please,” Hermes said.
“There’s a warehouse in the Lake District. The weapons are made there. The attacks…they were tests to see if they would work.”
“Are you saying they were…practice?”
Hermes spoke deliberately, his anger barely restrained.
“The goal was always to lure an Olympian,” Okeanos admitted.
“Which Olympian?”
“At first…Aphrodite,” Okeanos choked out.
Hermes and Hades exchanged a glance. “Why?”
“Because Demeter ordered it. It was her price in exchange for the use of her magic.”
Hades had suspected Demeter was helping supply weapons to Triad, but he had not expected her to have ordered the attacks on Adonis and Harmonia. Now that he considered it, though, it was not all that surprising. Aphrodite was the only reason Hades had approached Persephone that evening at Nevernight. Her challenge—make someone fall in love with you—was why he’d drawn the Goddess of Spring into a bargain that saw her visiting the Underworld nearly every day.
Hades frowned. What Okeanos said was true—he really was to blame.
“Then why Tyche?” Hermes asked, holding his arm tighter.
“I don’t know,” Okeanos moaned. “But Demeter’s war is with the Fates.”
“Well, that was easy,” said Hermes.
Then he jerked on Okeanos’s arm, tearing it from his body as if it were nothing but paper. While the demigod writhed, Hermes tossed the limb aside, and it landed with a wet thud on the floor in front of Hades.
He met Hermes’s gaze, whose face was spattered with blood, and spoke over the demigod’s guttural cries. “Do what you wish with him,” Hades said. “But I want that warehouse destroyed, and while you’re at it…burn that club to the ground.”
“You got it,” said Hermes as he took Okeanos’s other arm in hand, but before he could tear it from his body, Hades left.
Hades disrobed and climbed into bed beside Persephone. He lay on his side, watching her sleep, thinking about what Okeanos had said. The news that Demeter had been behind the attacks on Adonis, Harmonia, and Tyche would likely devastate Persephone.
It was one thing to suspect her mother’s involvement, another to have it confirmed.
There were times when Hades wondered how someone could possess this kind of hatred for anyone, but Demeter continued to maintain it for him, and all because the Fates had woven his destiny with Persephone’s. Something he considered a gift was Demeter’s greatest curse.
Persephone stirred, and Hades’s heart raced as she faced him. He recognized how often he had taken this for granted, and he never would again. There was a part of him that was angry he could not simply live in the knowledge that she would be beside him forever.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice quiet.
She smiled, as if she were amused. “Yes. Have you slept?”
“I have been awake for a while,” he said, though he had not slept at all. He reached between them and brushed her lips with the tips of his fingers. “It is a blessing to watch you sleep.”
She shifted closer, and he wrapped his arms around her as she laid her head on his chest.
“Did Tyche make it across the river?” she asked.
“Yes, Hecate was there to greet her. They are very good friends.”
They were silent for a moment, resting in each other’s warmth. He would have liked to stay like this forever, buried beneath Persephone’s weight, but he knew they were running out of time. The attacks on the Divine were escalating, and Persephone was still not able to control her power. He thought of what Hecate had said in the aftermath of the club. She would have been fine had she channeled it correctly.
“I would like to train with you today,” he said.
“I would like that.”
Hades frowned, doubtful. “I don’t think you will.”
He had no intention of making this fun. When she faced him, it would be as if they were enemies on the battlefield.
She would not even know him.
Persephone pulled away to look at him.
“Why do you say that?”
He studied her for a moment, then his eyes fell to her lips.
“Just remember that I love you.”
She shifted on top of him, sliding down his length until she had consumed him. There were no words as they moved together, nothing spoken beyond their quickening breaths. He lost himself in her, knowing that when he surfaced, things might not be the same again.