by Melody Rose
Suddenly, he grabbed my wrists and pushed me flat against the bed, bracing himself atop me. I felt his hardness press into my stomach and rubbed against him, the soft skin making me shudder.
“Do you want me, Cheyenne?” Ansel asked, his eyes boring into mine.
The way he said my name, low and full of desire, made my knees buckle and my groin tighten. I leaned up and pressed a kiss on him, my tongue pushing through his lips to circle his once.
“Very much,” I said after I pulled away.
Ansel responded by lowering his own lips onto my body. He traveled down my neck with delightful nips until he approached my sternum. His hands moved along my arms, freeing my wrists so I could run my fingers through his hair as he kissed me. I pulled and tugged, giving him hints at when my most delicate spots were. When he wrapped his lips around my nipple, I dug my nails into his shoulders. I felt his smile against my skin, pleased by my reaction.
His skinful fingers undid my pants, and I shimmied out of them. However, his speed was too fast, and they got stuck around my ankles. Laughter poured from me as he tried to yank them off me. I leaned up to help so I could be fully unclothed. I peeled off my underwear, leaving myself fully exposed.
Ansel sucked in a sharp breath upon seeing me. He ran a finger through the tuft of hair and stroked my opening, already wide and wet for him. Instead of closing my legs from the tightness, I finally opened them to welcome him to me.
“Cheyenne,” Ansel muttered in awe. He played with my folds and teased with the tips of his fingers, never sliding all the way in.
“Ansel,” I groaned back, begging for him.
As if my cry was a shot from a gun at the races, Ansel lowered his head, and I fell into bliss. My hands curled into the sheets, gripping them for dear life as I bucked against his licks. The building tension from being naked in the kitchens to the kiss on the dance floor to the teasing behind the tree led up to this moment. I rode the high with him as he treated me well, following my natural rhythm until he coiled me so tight, there was nothing more to do but explode.
I arched my back as the waves crashed around me. He pulled away, letting me experience the pleasure as it zinged through my limbs. When the sensations faded, leaving me breathless and panting, I met Ansel’s eyes. My message was clear.
I wanted more.
He pushed himself off the end of the bed and removed his boxers. At the sight of his impressive length, my groin snapped to attention. His mouth had been wonderful, a delightful treat. But I wanted the full experience of being with him.
The son of Apollo might have heated me up, but I wanted to burn.
Ansel stretched over the side of the bed and reached into the drawer of the nightstand. He pulled out a condom and rolled over on his back, still next to me, in order to put it on.
Following my impulses, I swung my leg around his torso and sat atop him. The surprise in his eyes delighted me, encouraged me. I took him in my hand, stroking him lightly up and down. I caught his eye and cocked my head to the side.
“May I?” I asked, wanting to be sure that he wanted this as much as I did at that moment.
All it took was a single nod before I lifted up on my knees and positioned myself directly at him. Then I slid him into me.
We stood still for a moment, simply taking each other in. I relished in the fullness of him and the connection building between us. I arched my neck back and began to move.
With each thrust, I stoked the fire that burned in my belly. Ansel’s continuous stroking of my arms mirrored my rhythm. He shifted tactics and held onto my breasts, his thumbs elongating my tender nipples. The action spurred me on as I rode him.
Once again, I felt on the verge of an explosion. As if Ansel could sense it, he reached down to touch me, giving that extra prick of encouragement. It took a single stroke from the pad of his thumb to shatter me. I cried out and tightened just as Ansel gave me a final thrust. We fell into one another, into a shared pleasure that sucked all the air out of the room.
I sprawled across him, chest to chest. The sweat sucked our skin together, and I was afraid to peel away. However, I didn’t want to part from him. My body draped like a blanket over him, and he held on to me, both arms wrapped around my middle. He shifted one hand to the back of my head and stroked my hair. He guided my head up so we could see one another.
The giddiest smile broke out on his face. “Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi,” I chuckled back.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” Ansel said as he put my hair behind my ear.
“Me neither,” I agreed.
“Do you think…” Ansel swallowed his words, uneasy.
“What?” I prompted.
“Do you think we could do it again?” he asked, his voice tentative.
I didn’t even have to think about my answer. I kissed him quickly and pulled myself off him. I hopped off the bed, though my legs still felt like jelly. Feeling like a sailor just coming off a boat, I headed for the bathroom door.
“So, is that no?” Ansel wondered, his face falling.
“No,” I replied. “That’s a yes, just this time, in the shower.” I flipped the bathroom light on and let my naked body be back-lit by the fluorescent light. Then I walked into the bathroom, giving my hips an extra sway, knowing that Ansel wasn’t far behind me.
28
The next morning, Eros greeted me in the forge, holding two to-go coffee cups. He stood outside in the glow of the early sun, or it might have just been his own godliness that glowed. I slumped my way over to the front of the forge, not bothering to hide my dismay and tiredness.
“Good morning!” Eros said cheerily, his voice ringing the air more annoying than the alarm clock that woke me up. “Coffee?”
“Please.” It wasn’t a please, so much as a demand. I held out my hands and waved my fingers, like a child asking for a bottle.
Eros obliged, thank the gods, and handed me the cup. I sipped it gratefully. The heat ran down my throat and zipped through my veins. When I swallowed, I gasped with a distinctive ah.
“Rough night?” Eros asked suggestively.
“It was a great night actually,” I snapped back, “just a rough morning.”
“Did you have to help clean up campus?” Eros wondered. “After the dance?”
“The nymphs ended up doing that,” I said as I took another sip of my coffee.
“Lucky you,” Eros chided. He pushed open the door and indicated with his hand that I should walk through first. I nodded my thanks and stepped into the forge.
To my surprise, the smithy was already up and running. The electricity from the lights buzzed while a single forge blazed near the center. Ruby sat on a stool at the workbench with her arms crossed, a grim and impatient expression on her face.
“Good morning, Ruby,” Eros said with the same amount of enthusiasm as when he greeted me. He extended the other coffee cup towards her. Ruby eyed it suspiciously but accepted the drink with a grunt. “Thank you for coming to set everything up early.”
“Uh-huh,” Ruby said, cradling her cup in two hands.
“You summoned Ruby here too?” I asked, blinking in confusion. “I have keys to the forge. I could have opened it.”
“When a god demands your presence, you come.” Ruby shot Eros a glare. “Even when it's at four in the morning.”
“I thought her expertise might be useful, being a daughter of Poseidon,” Eros offered. He skipped over to the workbench, and instead of taking a stool next to my mentor, he hopped up onto the top of the workbench himself. He swung his legs like a kid sticking his feet in the pool.
The god of lust seemed more at ease the morning, as though he had a spring in his step that wasn’t there the night before. The harshness in his eyes had faded. It was as though the worry was gone, replaced by an obnoxious level of enthusiasm and excitement.
“I’m a ferrier,” Ruby grunted, “I graduated from Fotia branch, out of all my father’s children, I am the least like him.
How can being Poseidon’s daughter help with this?”
“Your father has a very important weapon,” Eros said, like a teacher testing his students.
“The trident, I know,” Ruby said as she rolled her eyes. “So what?”
“What’s his trident made out of?” Eros tapped the table expectantly.
“Gold,” Ruby said, not bothering to hide her irritation at the god. “But it’s not as though I made the thing. The Cyclops did that.”
“Yes, but I thought you being here could… I don’t know,” Eros looked up to the high ceiling as if to find the right words. “Provide some inspiration for our young blacksmith here. Or should I say goldsmith?” Eros winked at me, which was probably supposed to be encouraging, but it only managed to creep me out.
Ruby stuffed her hands into her apron pockets and shrugged. “You’re the god, Eros. Whatever you say. It’s your bow and arrow.”
“That’s right!” Eros said brightly. He hopped off the counter and rubbed his hands together. “So I’m going to be here every step of the way. Where do we start?”
Ruby and I shared an apprehensive glance. My gut warned me about having a god looking over my shoulder the whole time I worked. It wasn’t the first time I had an audience when making weapons. I did demonstrations all the time when I worked at the museum. I also had to do presentations for students during Ruby’s blacksmithing classes. But this was like having a client who commissioned a piece in the room while I made it.
It didn’t help that Eros seemed like a very opinionated god.
“It’s going to take a little while,” I stalled. “I mean, we’re obviously going to work as fast as we can, but you don’t have to stick around for every part of it.”
“Yeah,” Ruby said, picking up on where I was going with this. “I’m sure you have plenty of important things to do.”
“I have been without my bow and arrow for weeks now,” Eros explained. “Now, I have the chance to get it back. Nothing else is more important.”
I grimaced and tried to hide my dismay.
“Plus, I’m the only one who knows what it looks like, so I need to make sure you get it right, down to each and every detail,” Eros said.
“I saw it,” I jumped in, hoping this was the excuse I needed. “In your vision of the past, remember? I think I can do it from that.”
Eros’s eyes snapped to me with a fierce intensity, the same from last night when I clapped back at him on the dance floor.
“That weapon is like another limb for me,” he said, his voice low. “I know it’s every curve and precise weight. You will not make this weapon without me, understood?”
I struggled to find words for a moment as I sifted through what I should do. The process stalled in my brain, and I suddenly forgot what the first step of forging was.
Ruby sensed my delay and jumped in to save me. “We need gold. Did you have some we could use, or were we expected to provide that for you too?”
“No,” Eros said with the tone of a petulant child. “Chrysus was kind enough to provide me with some.”
The god of lust held out a closed fist. After a moment, he opened it, and two nuggets of gold sat pristine in the center of his palm. They were perfect spheres, shiny and smooth, and the size of a ping-pong ball. Eros reached forward and grabbed my hand. He slapped the hand with the gold atop my open palm.
The weight of the gold surprised me. Upon seeing the gold ball, I wasn’t sure if it was enough to make a full bow and arrow, no matter how small it might have been. However, as I held the gold, I thought I might actually have enough to mold something out of these pieces.
Something else grasped my attention. I couldn’t sense the metal. While gold was similar to iron and steel in many ways, one of the biggest differences was that I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t realize until I began melting down the gold how much of an advantage I had. While I had trained and worked as a blacksmith for many years, I never realized the level at which I connected with the metal. The gold, on the other hand, never spoke to me. I didn’t have an innate sense of how it moved or how it was supposed to be manipulated. It was like playing with the clay all over again. I was going in blind.
That thought frightened me, but I did my best to soothe my fear. I pushed onward, determined to make this bow and arrow for Eros. As I set the gold balls into the forge, I thought of Benji, and of Janet. Even Ansel fluttered into my mind’s eye.
Despite how wonderful last night was, I knew that everything with him was about to change. I wanted him to regain control of himself and his emotions, to choose me without the nudge or the hint of Love Struck in his veins. He, along with my friends and fellow soldiers, deserved that much.
However, my lack of training with gold quickly showed. I burnt the first batch, making them completely unusable. Eros was able to summon another set of gold balls for me to use. The second pair I thinned out too much to the point where it broke the minute I tried to curve it into the bow’s unique heart shape.
On and on it went like that. Failure after failure while I tried to learn on the fly how to manipulate and sculpt the gold. Ruby was encouraging, putting in her two cents every so often, but she refused to jump in and help.
“There’s a reason we don’t put gold on horse’s hooves,” she said, with a soft frown and a shake of her head. “I’m not touching the stuff.”
The sun reached its peak and shone violently through the windows at the top of the smithy. Their harsh beams added to the already sweltering heat of the forge. While it didn’t bother me any, I could see the sweat trickle down Ruby’s temple. Even Eros looked irritated, but that probably was because I kept messing up the goldsmithing rather than from the heat.
Finally, a little after noon, Ruby got to her feet and slapped her thighs. “I can’t sit around here anymore.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” Eros demanded, offended that Ruby would appear to have something better to do than be here with us.
“I need something to eat,” Ruby clapped back. “Unlike you, us mere mortals have to have something to sustain our energy.” The older woman turned to me and rested her hands in the front of her overalls. “Cheyenne? You want to come with me to the mess hall.”
I shook my head, my eyes focused on the color of the gold as it heated up in the forge. “I think I’ve finally figured out the best temperature for this stuff.”
“Can I at least bring something back for you?” Ruby offered. “You can’t go forging this long without something in your stomach.”
“Bring me back whatever Violet makes,” I said, dismissively waving my hand towards Ruby. “She knows what I like and won’t give you any apples.”
“Right,” Ruby said with a stiff nod. “Now, if you two will excuse me.”
The daughter of Poseidon slipped out of the smithy without a second glance at Eros and me. The god of lust now sat atop the workbench, but with both legs crossed like a kindergartener. He clutched his shins and rocked a little back and forth.
“What do you have against apples?” the god wondered, his head cocked to the side, clearly interested.
“I’m allergic,” I answered as I pulled the heated gold out of the forge and settled it on the anvil.
“That’s unfortunate,” Eros commented. “Apples are delicious.”
“So I’ve been told,” I replied noncommittally. I swung down on the gold, making the first dent of many as I thinned out the material to a foldable thickness.
“How did you find out that you’re allergic?” Eros asked, his voice rising slightly out of pure curiosity. It was as if he couldn’t fathom the idea of being allergic to anything.
“I don’t really remember it,” I said as I dug back into my memory. “I think I was at school, preschool, maybe? I was really little, and one of the kids gave apples and caramel to the class. I instantly went into anaphylactic shock, and luckily, the teacher had an EpiPen, so I was okay, but I haven’t had an apple since.”
“You said a lot of words ju
st then,” Eros said as he waved a nonchalant finger around at me. “Most of them, I didn’t understand.”
I looked up at the god and raised an eyebrow. “What? Like the medical terms?”
“Is that what they are?” Eros stuck out his bottom lip, a contemplative expression coming over his face. “I had no idea.”
“Are all gods so stuck in the past?” I wondered as I continued to pound on the gold. “Like, do you know what computers are? Cars? Electricity?”
“I’m not so daft like some of my brethren,” Eros defended, offended by my generalization. He held a proud hand to his chest. “I had an influence over all of those dating apps mortals use nowadays, obviously.”
“I didn’t need to know that,” I said. As if warding off the god, I hunched my body over the anvil, lowering my face closer to the gold.
“Well, is there anything you would like to know?” Eros spread his arms out wide. “I’m an open book. Well, kind of. I can’t give away all of my godly secrets, you understand.”
A scoff escaped my lips. “I think I’m good.”
“Oh, come on,” Eros said. He almost sounded truly disappointed. “You have the unique opportunity to ask a god anything. Anything at all, and you can’t think of a single question? I find that very hard to believe.”
“Even if I ask a question,” I said as I paused and put my fist on my hip, the hammer hanging out to the side. “Who says your answer is going to be true?”
“Valid point,” Eros said. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his fingers curling around the edge of the workbench. “I’ll be honest when I can, does that satisfy you?”
“Still sounds like an uneven bargain,” I said, getting right back to work.
“I’m curious,” Eros prompted. “What would you ask me if I could swear to tell the truth? It would tell me a lot about you as a mortal.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I got the distinct impression that Eros would not stop talking to me unless I talked back. Without Ruby there for him to talk to, I was the only person left. Unless I wanted him bugging me nonsensically, I should probably respond. Plus, this way, I could navigate the conversation as best I could.
