“Vanished with you. Yes, that’s true. But Nick and your mages resolidified the borders. Then Nick left and returned with therillium so the entire kingdom would be invisible to the outside eye from any viewpoint.”
Therillium. Hades’s invisibility ore. Ehrendia’s borders weren’t just camouflaged anymore. The entire kingdom was invisible.
“Nick returns every few months with a new supply,” Lachesis went on. “He also makes sure Talisa has everything she needs to keep your people safe.”
His people. The maenads. Talisa…
He looked toward Nick again, his skin itching with the need to thank him, to say something to show his gratitude. But… How do you thank the one person who has reason to hate you most in the world and come off as sincere when you’ve done terrible things no one should ever be forgiven for?
“Ah, Ziggy.” Lachesis sighed. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t hate you anymore. He never truly did. If it weren’t for you, he never would have found his mate. And they wouldn’t have their son.”
Zagreus glanced her way. “Cynna had the baby?”
She nodded and smiled. “A very powerful baby. Alexios.”
“Defender,” he muttered to himself, looking back at Nick, knowing the name fit if the kid was anything like his father.
Almost as if he heard Zagreus’s whirring thoughts, Nick looked his way then slowly nodded. There was no vengeance in Nick’s eyes. No hatred, either. All Zagreus saw when his uncle’s gaze met his own was acceptance.
Nick glanced away, pointed something out to the Argonauts down the hill in the village, then headed that way with them.
And stunned speechless by what had just happened—what he’d learned—all Zagreus could do was watch as Talisa’s father moved in the opposite direction, headed right toward him.
There were a million things he wanted to say to Theron, but all of them sounded lame in his head. And none would ever be enough to prove to the leader of the Argonauts that he deserved his daughter.
Zagreus’s heart raced as Theron stopped feet away.
The Argonaut’s unreadable gaze skipped over Zagreus for several moments, making him sweat even though they both knew he was the stronger being.
Finally, Theron scowled and nodded at the Fate. “She told me who you really are. And I have to say, from a father’s perspective, I’m not so sure the god of alcoholics and orgies is an improvement over a psychopathic devil.”
Lachesis burst out laughing. Around them, Zagreus was aware of whispers growing, that nymphs and silens had taken notice of his presence. But he didn’t care.
“No orgies,” he promised. “None that include me, anyway. There’s only one female who has power over me.”
“Hm.” Theron’s gaze narrowed. “Let’s hope that’s true. We’re taking a big gamble on you.”
His skin tingled with excitement, but before Zagreus could reassure him, Theron frowned. “I supposed I have to call you Dionysus now, huh?”
Talisa called him Dios—of the light. The special nickname made sense now. And he wanted it to remain special only to her. “I’m fine with Zagreus.”
Theron slowly nodded. “She wasn’t feeling up for a party tonight. She went for a hike.”
Fire flared in Zagreus’s blood. Without even having to search, he knew where to find her. “Thank you.”
He stepped around Theron, anxious to get to Talisa. At his back, the leader of the Argonauts said, “Don’t think this means I won’t be watching you, prince.”
Zagreus smirked and looked back. “I’d expect nothing less, hero.”
Lying on her back in the middle of the floor, Talisa stared up at the lookout’s high arched windows and watched the water cascade from the cliff above to the lake far below. A hypnotic rush of droplets that passed through her line of sight faster than her heartbeat.
She sighed, wishing that heart wouldn’t ache so much with each damn beat, but after six months it still wasn’t anywhere close to normal. She doubted it ever would be.
She’d been coming up here more often. Whenever she needed time to herself. Settling in Ehrendia permanently had definitely been the right decision for her. It had given her a purpose—was a distraction from the pain. She loved the land and the people and her duties, even if the duties of protecting and running an entire kingdom were a lot more involved than Zagreus had let on. But sometimes she needed to get away from the nymphs and silens and yes, even the Argonauts, and just be.
Sometimes, she just needed to sit and remember so she could remind herself why she was here in the first place.
Her chest tightened, and hot tears burned the backs of her eyes. Tossing an arm over her face, she drew in a shaky breath and blew it out, determined not to give in and cry. It hadn’t helped once over the last few months, and she hadn’t come up here to let loose her own waterfall. She’d come up here to pull herself together.
“Pathetic,” she muttered as her nose itched and that burn grew hotter. “Just pathetic.”
“What’s pathetic?”
She froze when she heard the voice above her. The familiar voice. Close.
Heart thundering, she slowly lowered her arm and looked up.
At his sparkling onyx eyes gazing down at her as he sat beside her on the plush, white round carpet she’d added to the other furnishings in the room. At his handsome face and the dark stubble on his square jaw, illuminated by dozens of candles around the room. Candles she’d never brought up here and ones that hadn’t been lit moments before.
Wide-eyed, she pushed up on her hands and stared at him. “I’m dreaming again. This isn’t real. You’re not real.”
One side of his luscious lips curled, and he reached for her hand. “Are you sure about that?”
Warmth seeped into her fingers—warmth that shouldn’t be in a dream—and she watched, mesmerized, as he drew her hand forward, then placed her palm right over his heart.
The strong, steady, thump, thump, thump beneath her hand shot her eyes even wider. Her gaze darted from where she touched him to his face. “I-I can feel your heart.”
“It only beats because of you, mono mia.”
All the pain, all the misery, all the heartache rushed away from her on a wave. Because he wasn’t a dream. Wasn’t a hallucination. He was real. He was here. He was home.
She scrambled onto his lap, grabbed his face with hands she knew were way too rough, and pressed her mouth to his.
He groaned. Tangled one hand in her hair to hold close. Tugged her tighter against his lap with an arm around her waist. Then he opened to her kiss. And when his tongue swept over hers and the warm wetness of his mouth hit her senses, all the suffering over the last six months was replaced with a groundswell of heat and life and love she’d thought she’d lost forever.
Breathless, she drew back from his lips, just a touch, but she didn’t let him move away. Couldn’t.
“I…” She looked down at the tender skin she’d just kissed, loving that he wasn’t letting her go, either. “I don’t understand. It’s been so long. I thought…” She kissed him softly once again, then lifted her gaze to his eyes. “Where the hell have you been?”
He trailed his silky fingers down her spine, the gentle touch leaving a tingle behind, one she ached to feel on her bare skin. “Fighting my way back to you. I would have come sooner if I could. There’s no sense of time in the Underworld.”
Fear curled around her heart like a fist, and she drew back another inch so she could see his eyes better. “The”—she swallowed hard—“Underworld?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t look away from her, but his eyes were clear, not haunted or tinged with shadows of his torment as she feared. “And I’m fine. As long as I knew you were safe, nothing he did could break me.”
Oh gods… Her nightmares had been true. He’d been tortured in the Underworld for six months because of her.
“I’m fine,” he said again, this time squeezing her tighter, warming all the places inside that had just gone cold. “I’m b
etter than fine. I’m home. Right here with you. And I’m not leaving again. I promise. So long as you still want me.”
Her heart was so full it felt as if it might explode.
“So long as I still want you?” Pushing him to his back on the floor, she kissed him hard.
He groaned and opened, sliding his tongue around and over hers, fisting his hands in her hair as she crawled up his body and tore at the buttons on his shirt with frantic hands.
“I want you, Zagreus. I always want you. Skata, I want you now.”
He growled as she ripped his shirt open, sat up so she could pull it off, then took charge of the kiss, tasting her so deeply and completely she forgot whose air she was breathing. Breaking away, he said, “Arms up,” then yanked her shirt off and tossed it behind him next to his.
Her heart pounded in time to the throbbing between her legs as he flipped her to her back on the carpet. Bracing her arms against the white rug, she pushed up and watched his muscles quiver and a vein pulse in his neck as he scooted back and ripped her pants open, then yanked them straight down her legs.
He was power and strength and oozed virility. Even after everything that had been done to him. And her sex wept with anticipation as he shucked the rest of his clothes, knelt between her legs, grasped her at the thighs, then dragged her across the floor to him.
He leaned down and kissed her, bracing one big hand near her shoulder on the floor. “Say it again.”
She threaded her hands into his hair and lifted her hips, desperate for that first thrust. Against his ear, she whispered, “I want you. Don’t make me wait. Take me already, dammit.”
He chuckled against her throat and reached down between them.
“Oh gods…” The blunt head of his cock slid through her wetness and teased her clit, making her groan, making her squirm beneath him because it wasn’t enough. She dropped her head back and lifted her hips.
“Just me,” he said in a strained voice, shifting closer. “Just one god. Mm, you are so wet, mono mia…” He kissed her deeply. “I won’t be able to last long.”
A thrill rushed through her, knowing she had such power over a god. But it was quickly forgotten when he flexed his hips, holding her gaze trapped in his as he pressed deep inside her.
She gasped at the delicious stretch she never thought she’d feel again. And her heart contracted because their coupling this time was familiar yet new. Not just rooted in lust or passion but filled with trust and honesty and love. The kind of love she’d once thought she didn’t need.
“Tell me again,” he groaned as he kissed her. “Tell me you want me.”
“I do want you.” She lifted her hands to his face, wrapped her legs around his hips, and kissed his trembling lips. “I always want you. Take me, dios. Make me your princess.”
He groaned into her mouth, drew his hips back, and thrust in hard with his magnificent cock.
His skin grew damp. Hers tingled everywhere they touched. He kissed her like he was starved, his tongue streaking over and around hers, claiming her mouth with the same urgent frenzy he was claiming her body. Between her legs, her flesh burned, growing slicker with every stroke of his pulsing shaft.
Electricity gathered in her center. His muscles contracted. Her body jostled against the floor. And when that energy sparked like fire in her blood, she knew a blinding climax was about to claim every part of her.
“Look at me,” he grunted. “I want to see it. I want to see everything. Come all around me, mono mia. Come, and take me with you.”
Somehow, she managed to peel her eyes open. And the instant her gaze met his, when she saw the brutal passion in his for her, only for her, the orgasm tore through her with the force of a hurricane, sucking up everything around her—all the light, all the sound, and all the pain she’d lived with since the day she’d lost him.
Every muscle in his body contracted, then he jerked and let out a guttural groan that instinctively made her sex clench around his gorgeous cock, milking him of every drop of pleasure. He twitched above her—inside her—then groaned again, telling her he was as lost as her.
He exhaled long and hard, then his big, damp, muscular body collapsed against hers.
Feeling as if she were floating, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, sifted her fingers into his hair, and pressed a shaky kiss to his temple, loving the way his hot breath ran down her neck, loving the way he felt against her, around her, inside her.
Her heart. Her soul. Her one and only prince.
He rolled them to their sides long before she was ready to let his weight go, shifted the arm underneath him to the back of his head so he could lean against it, then ran his fingers over the sensitive skin of her arm.
Gazing at her with sated, loving, tender eyes she would never tire of, he said, “I told you I wouldn’t last.”
She chuckled and skimmed her fingertips over the sexy scruff on his jaw. “I’m not complaining.”
Muted music echoed from the castle courtyard far below, along with voices and laughter. She could tell the party was already under way. The nymphs were always ready for a party, and they’d been planning this feast for several days, since before they’d even known Zagreus was coming back. She had no desire to take him down there and share him with them, though. She wanted him all to herself.
“So…” She slid her hand over his shoulder and down his arm, tracing the serpent tattoo on his skin. “Are you going to tell me what happened in the Underworld and how you escaped? Or are you going to make me lie here and guess.”
“I didn’t escape. I was let go.”
“Hades let you go?”
“No. My mother.”
She sat up. “Persephone?”
“Yeah.” He rolled onto his back, his arm still behind his head, and looked up at her. “Shocked the hell out of me. One minute I was in Tartarus, being tortured, then the next… I was in the Fields of Asphodel. With my mother.”
Her eyes widened as he relayed the story, and when he was done, all she could do was blink.
He stared at her for several seconds then slowly sat up. “You don’t seem totally shocked to learn Hades isn’t really my father.”
“I’m not. I mean, I am, but... I think some part of me already knew.”
“How?”
“Nysa. When you first brought me to Ehrendia, she hinted you weren’t Hades’s son. That you were something more. I didn’t believe her then, but... It makes sense. That’s why the nymphs just stepped aside when you arrived here and let you lead them.”
He shot her a sexy smirk. “And here I thought it was because of my wicked reputation.”
“Well...” She smiled and skimmed her fingers over his muscular shoulder, unable to keep her hands to herself when he was so close. “They all did want to fuck you. Still do, probably. But...” She tipped her face up to his. “You were clearly waiting for me.”
His eyes shifted from sexy to downright smolder. “I was waiting for you, mono mia. I’ve spent my life waiting for you.”
When he leaned down to kiss her, she sighed, all those nerve endings inside firing with the need to be claimed by him again.
“Speaking of the nymphs,” he said, easing back a breath. “I must have been imagining things earlier when I walked through the courtyard before coming up here, because it almost seemed like several of them were...”
“Pregnant?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly as if just realizing that was what they’d look like.
She smiled. “It wasn’t your imagination. They are pregnant. Almost all of them.”
“Seriously?” His brow lifted. “All of them?” When she nodded, he looked around then said, “Wild. Their orgies finally worked, I guess.”
“It wasn’t the orgies. It was you.”
His gaze snapped back to hers. “Me?”
She laughed. “Don’t worry. I don’t mean like that. I mean, what happened at those orgies is how they got pregnant, but you were the reason those orgies finally worked.�
�
His brows knit together to form three little lines between his confused eyes. And the look was so cute, it was all she could do not to kiss it away, then feast on every inch of his body.
She laughed again. “Actually, it was us. When I showed up here, that changed things for you.” Her fingers grazed his chest then fell to his lap, where they skimmed his semi-hard erection. Leaning in close, she kissed him gently and said, “My being here made you wake up.”
He sucked in a breath. “You don’t mean...”
“I do, actually. Dionysus is the god of wine and ecstasy and fertility, remember? Your libido is linked to the nymphs’ survival as a race.”
“Whoa.” He glanced around the lookout, letting his gaze skip over the candles he’d obviously conjured with his magick and the couch and chairs and tables she’d moved up here on her own. “Okay, that’s fucking wicked.”
She smiled and brushed her nose and lips against his jaw. “Would this be the wrong time to tell you that I’ve always wanted children? Not right away, of course. I want you all to myself for a while. But down the line, I’m thinking, two, three, maybe even four. Definitely more than one, though. I’m an only child, and I want our kids to be able to torment each other. It’s not real parenting until you have to referee wrestling siblings.”
He turned his head and looked at her, but his eyes weren’t filled with fear or shock. They radiated absolute love. The kind that runs soul deep. “Kids, huh?”
“Mm-hm.” She nodded. “What could go wrong? I mean, Zeus has a bunch of kids and look how well that turned out.”
He laughed and pulled her onto his lap. “Would this be the right time to tell you that I love you? Endlessly? Because I do. More than all the stars in the heavens and all the sands through time.”
“You can tell me that any time, in any way,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I’ll never tire of hearing those words. Because I love you just the same, dios.”
His arms closed around her, and he kissed her softly, gently, so completely she knew anywhere with him was where she was always meant to be.
Wicked Page 37
