Receiver of Many
Page 18
“No, sweet one. You brought us home.”
“What is that, then?”
He followed her gaze and saw rough bark on a slender tree trunk. When he looked up through the canopy of branches, he saw vibrant green leaves unlike any he’d ever seen, the boughs winding through the branches of another similar tree. Aidoneus and Persephone turned in a circle to see that they were surrounded by six such trees that stood twice their height, each one spread out to touch the one next to it.
“My dreams,” they whispered in near unison and looked at each other in shock.
“You’ve seen these too?!” Persephone said.
“I hardly sleep as it is, and I see them every time I shut my eyes,” he said, stunned. “They started when I brought you here. What about you?”
“Same,” she broke away from him and walked over to the tree, smoothing her hand over the rough bark. “Every night. Last night, when I woke up and you held me… I saw these trees; then fire.”
He walked over to a different tree and reached up to run his hand along one of the waxy leaves. “This is impossible…” he said under his breath. “Persephone! Touch the leaves; they’re warm. Like the sun has been shining on them all day. Do you have any idea what they are? I’ve never seen anything like them in my realm.”
“Pomegranate, I think? …Hard to tell when they’re so young.” She walked around one tree and stared up through its branches at the mists above. “It’s getting dark; I’ll be able to see them better tomorrow.”
They circled the small grove, touching the leaves and branches as they went, and met on the opposite side under one of the trees. Distracted by the winding branches, Persephone almost ran into the wall of his chest. The same astonishment she felt was written across his features. Aidon drew her close again and cupped her face in his hands. “In all the aeons I waited for you, I never dreamed—”
She cut him off with a kiss, interrupting him before he said something she wasn’t ready to hear. Persephone kissed him hard on the lips, and felt Aidon surge against her. A familiar coil tightened in her stomach. His hands wandered down her waist and over her hips as her tongue played against his. She brought her hands around him, her fingernails raking over his clothed back. They broke away and watched the fading light of dusk frame the silhouette of the trees.
“Aidon, we have to tell Hecate.”
“Yes,” he said, “Though I have a feeling she already knows. If these are tied to our dreams I should also speak with Morpheus…”
She looked up at him for a long moment and swallowed. “In Nysa, when I created the ring of fire, I… I never thought I could do anything like that. Not ever. Thank you for showing me,” she said, running a hand along his cheek. He turned his head and kissed her palm.
“You were magnificent.”
“Then, you’re not… upset that I can create a gateway like that? That I have more control over the ether than I thought I did— than you thought I did, and possibly more than you, even?”
“What?” he said in amused bewilderment.
“I’m just worried,” she said looking at the ground and fidgeting, “that you don’t want me, as your consort, to be able to just create something like that my first time out. That what I did would somehow make you feel… emasculated… and that you wouldn’t want me afterward.”
His lips curled into a half smile as he tilted her chin up to look into her eyes again. He grabbed her wrist and stepped toward her, pressing her hand over the hardness quickening under his clothes. He smirked when her eyes grew wide, then circled his arm around her waist and pulled her even closer. His heat arched into her hand, and he sucked in air through his teeth as her fingers closed around him through the fabric. Her lips parted and she shuddered, warmth flooding into her and echoing his arousal.
“Tell me again, Persephone, how you think I could feel emasculated by you,” he crooned in the deepest register of his voice.
Her voice cracked, “I—”
He stole a kiss from her then, drawing her figure into his arms and tipping her back as she clung to him. Aidon mated his tongue with hers, the depth of their kiss a portent for all he wanted to do to her that night. His voice was low and dangerous, his words whispered against her neck when he broke away from her lips. “On the contrary, sweet one, I’ve never desired you the way I desire you now.”
She kissed him just in front of his ear, feeling light headed, her stomach fluttering at his words and the sway he held over her body. “Aidon…”
“Please Persephone,” he said grinding into her once more, “do not deny me anything tonight. I need you…”
He felt her tense.
He let out a long breath before continuing. “I would never dream of taking you unwillingly,” he said, “but if this is what you want—”
Persephone kissed him hard, her body quaking. She felt her thighs twitch and moaned into his mouth as his hand came up to her breast, roughly cupping and molding her clothed flesh in his palm. She pulled back and whispered hoarsely to him, “Take me inside.”
That was all he needed to hear. Aidon grabbed her hand and marched them out of the garden. He took them through the portico toward the entrance to the palace, pushing her against one of the heavy doors and kissing her hard as he wrenched the other open. She darted out of his grasp with a nervous titter as the door swung wide and ran along the hallways ahead of him, bidding him to chase her, stopping suddenly at the column base of the stairs and biting her lower lip. He stalked toward her and crushed her body between the stone column and his own, his lips moving over her neck, earlobe and jaw line before capturing hers.
She took his hand as they walked up the steps, pausing for a long kiss at each landing. When they neared her room she laughed and ran down the hall ahead of him, looking back to see him give chase once more as she disappeared into the amethyst room. He found Persephone again near her door and pulled her against him. He moved her backward, clasping her hands within his at their sides as they walked through the ebony doors of her bedroom.
Persephone broke away and sat on the bed, scooting back toward the pillows. Aidon slammed the doors shut while she untied and kicked off her sandals. She looked up at the lights in the room and back at him, expecting them to be extinguished. They were not. Her breath hitched as he strode toward the bed.
“Not tonight,” he said, following her gaze to the lamps above. “I’m through hiding in the dark from you.” Her eyes lit up hearing him say it, he sat next to her, quickly removing his sandals.
“Then don’t leave before the light comes,” she said.
He stroked her face. “I won’t.”
She kissed him, feeling him tug at the edges of her clothes, exposing her collarbone. He kissed her jaw line and across the hollow of her neck before sliding the fabric over one shoulder. “Why do you always go?”
He looked up at her, then back to the pins holding the fabric to her. “Rulership over this realm comes with many responsibilities,” he said, avoiding her question. I leave so that I don’t have to look into your eyes and see that you do not yet love me, he thought. He swallowed and continued. “Besides, I only ever sleep a few hours at a time. Holding the Key means constantly hearing the voices and prayers of everyone in this kingdom. It’s why I remove my rings when I’m with you.”
“Aren’t you worried someone will take them?” she said as he pulled them off his fingers, their gold bands clicking together as he set them on the stand.
“If someone tried, they’d just return to my hand. They’re bound to me alone.”
The chiton clung to the curve of her breasts as he expertly pulled at the ribbon girdle, quickly unwrapping its length from her waist. He’d had enough practice removing it in the dark. Persephone grabbed for the pin holding up his himation and pulled it free of its housing, watching the heavy fabric fall around him. He pushed it away behind him, casting it to the floor, and lay back on the bed to watch her rise to her knees above him and remove one of the pins in her chiton.
Persephone pulled apart the last clasp of her chiton and heard Aidon groan in appreciation as the fabric fell from her naked body and pooled around her knees. She brushed it over the side of the bed and tousled her dark hair once more, the curled ends falling over her breasts.
Aidon leaned forward and pulled her body to him, his mouth latching onto her areola. Persephone thrilled and gasped as his tongue laved the tender flesh, the tip twining around her hardened nipple. He gripped her waist and swung her smoothly to his side, pressing her back into the rumpled sheets and kneeling over her. Persephone pushed firmly against his chest until he was upright again and propped herself up with an elbow. She reached to his shoulders and pulled the pins from his tunic, the fabric falling to his waist. He breathed heavily through his nose and focused on her movements while she tugged at his knotted leather belt. She paused, distracted by that irresistible line that traveled from his hip straight into his groin and lightly traced its indent on his skin, watching his stomach jump.
“Persephone…” he ground out through clenched teeth, the scent of her arousal driving him mad.
“Hmm?” she said innocently. She fumbled with the belt once more, her wrists grazing his hardness as she struggled to free him.
“If you keep doing that, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop myself…”
Persephone looked up into his eyes as the knot came loose. The released fabric fell and caught on his flesh before she tossed it aside. She met his eyes with a smirk and threw his belt to the floor, then quickly untied his strained loincloth, not breaking eye contact with Aidoneus. She leaned away from him. “What makes you think I want you to hold back?”
He inhaled sharply and pushed at her shoulders, lunging forward between her legs and pinning her underneath him. With all his might, Aidoneus thrust into her to the hilt.
They shuddered together and cried out in pleasure as he cleaved to her. He paused only to let Persephone wrap her splayed limbs around him, anchoring him inside her body, before thrusting in again. Her fingernails scratched rows of pink lines down his back.
Aidon gripped the sheets and laid his head beside hers as he formed their rhythm, his breath coming out in hard pants against her neck with each sharp thrust. She answered with punctuated cries, which changed to a long low moan as he took her faster, gliding through her.
Shifting his weight to one elbow, Aidon reached between her legs with his free hand and searched the top of her mound with the tips of his fingers. He smiled, feeling her keening against him when they found the source of her pleasure. Aidon coaxed the tender bud from under its hood and stroked it in time with each thrust, her body writhing under his. When her body started to tremble, he lightly pinched and rolled it between two fingers.
“Aidoneus!” She screamed, clinging to him.
She used his true name— the name she once feared, the name that declared him the Lord of the Underworld and master of all the souls within it. He startled, the realization jarring him. Then her sheath squeezed around him in waves and erased all thought in a blinding flash of pleasure. He cried out and strained forward, emptying himself inside of her.
12.
Aidoneus collapsed and Persephone held him close, listening to his ragged breathing. He slid out of her with a sigh, but stayed locked between her legs. She finally opened her eyes to the marble reliefs above them. The images seemed animated by the soft play of shadows from the flickering light of the hundreds of tiny oil lamps. Persephone tilted her head forward and ran her hand along the smooth muscles of Aidon’s shoulder and back.
When her hand moved over a ridge on his skin, she felt Aidon tense and hold his breath. The line of a raised white scar stretched underneath her fingers. It thickened and pitted slightly, cutting a widened swath down his shoulder blade and traveling in a jagged line across the center of his back before disappearing under his right arm.
He stayed still, vulnerable, as she examined it. Persephone moved to sit up and Aidoneus slowly rose with her, his legs folded under him. She crawled behind him on her knees to view the scar in full. Closing his eyes, he willed himself to let her look. Just when he thought she would be repulsed and recoil from him, her palm gingerly touched his skin again and caressed his shoulders.
“What made this?”
“Kronos,” he said quietly.
Persephone cringed. She knew the story well— how Father Kronos had devoured his children one by one as they were born to stop an ancient prophecy. How Zeus, her father, had escaped that fate and later freed the other five Olympians, her mother among them.
“I was the first. He saw himself, his likeness in me when I lay in Rhea’s arms. He’d never done it, or thought to do it, before he saw me, and I was not devoured… cleanly.”
He tried to stop himself from shivering as buried memories of twisting pain and half his life spent in claustrophobic darkness rushed back to him. He remembered screaming and crying as a child, wondering what he had done wrong. More children arrived, and he swallowed all emotion to stay strong for the others. Hestia came soon after him, and later Hera. Then Poseidon, and lastly, squalling and terrified, the infant Demeter. As they grew up in oblivion, they feared him— when they saw him in the dark, they saw their father’s face. He’d earned his epithet, Receiver of Many, far before drawing the lot to rule the Underworld.
She felt his body shudder. His chin tipped forward to hide his face behind the curls of black hair that had come loose in the throes of passion. Persephone wrapped her arms around him, pressing her breasts against his back, and against the scar. She stroked her finger along what was still visible on his shoulder and gently kissed the top of his head.
“You shouldn’t look at it so closely, Persephone,” Aidoneus murmured, trying to pull away. “It’s not a sight for someone like you.”
“No,” she said softly, her fingers tracing the scar once more as his shoulders tensed underneath it. “It’s part of you, Aidoneus. It’s part of what made you who you are now.”
He sat stiffly and felt her body draw back from his. Just as he was about to turn, he felt her lips meet his shoulder and press a kiss to the scarred flesh. Aidon’s breath caught in his throat and he stayed perfectly still while she slowly planted a trail of kisses down its length to the side of his arm.
She moved to face him. His lips were parted in shock, his eyes watering and staring deep into hers. Aidon rose up on his knees to meet her, and ran his fingers up her spine to tangle in her hair as he kissed her. “My love…” he whispered against her lips.
The words Persephone wanted to say to him burned in the back of her throat. In this moment, she wanted so badly to give in completely; to surrender to him and be his wife, to tell him how much she loved him. Instead, she kissed him again, feeling his arms come up her back, his hands caressing her neck. Persephone realized that after tonight this man, this king, this god, would never let her go— and she was certain now that she didn’t want him to. But if Aidoneus knew that he’d won her…
She shuddered and drew back, looking at his face. Her gaze trailed across his body, taking in his wide shoulders and strong legs built with lean muscle. She reached out and smoothed her hands across his skin, learning him. Aidon sat still and let his wife’s eyes, then her soft hands explore him. She moved in a circle around him, her knees pressing into the mattress. Persephone took one of his hands, drawing his long fingers out and tracing each knuckle, then h
is wrist.
“Did this place change you as well?”
“What do you mean?”
“Today I spoke with Hecate, and she told me that this place is changing me into the goddess I was born to be,” she said, thinking about Kottos’s words, and trying to picture her husband after he’d been freed from Kronos.
“This place calmed me considerably,” Aidon said. “I was young and fresh from the war when I arrived; this lot was not what I’d fought for, and at first, I seethed. The Underworld tempered that anger, and turned me from a warrior into a king.” He looked at the rounded curves of her breasts and hips, her darker hair, and understood what she really meant. Persephone was trying to picture him in earlier days. “Physically, I haven’t changed much.”
“What did change?”
“Well, I didn’t trim my beard as often back then. And I got more sunlight on my skin. I kept my hair a bit shorter, but still wore it pulled back from my face for battle.”
“The few gods I’ve seen keep their hair shorter than that, even…”
“I suppose that’s the style, now. What— you want me to cut my hair?” he said with a coy grin.
“Oh no! I like it long,” she said. “It suits you. And if you cut it short, what would I hold on to when—”
He watched her eyes widen and her lips part in shock at what she had just implied. Her face and breasts flushed a deep red as she looked away. Aidon grinned at her, and tipped her chin back up to look Persephone in the eye. “If that’s how you really feel, wife,” he said, planting a chaste kiss on her lips, “I’ll never cut it.”
Persephone gave him another shy smile and undid the gold clasp that bound his curls back. She ran her fingertips in circles over his scalp, massaging them through his hair as he sighed and relaxed. Her hands moved over his shoulder and along the length of his other arm until she saw a razor thin white scar cutting upward along the side of his bicep. “Did Kronos do that too?”
Aidon glanced down to where she was tracing her finger and wrinkled his forehead in thought, almost forgetting where he got it. “No; that was from the war.”