by Lena Loneson
The artwork was flawless, with no blurring between the different shades.
“Who did these? I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“I’ve had them for years.” He didn’t answer her question.
“But they’re not faded at all. It’s like they’ve been freshly inked—like when I first add oils to my palette, before they’ve even touched the canvas. It’s almost as if they’re alive.”
“You’re an artist?” He asked it as a question, but like he expected no other answer than “Yes.”
“Not anymore,” she said, sorry to disappoint him. “I gave that up after university.”
“But you loved it? I can hear it in your voice.”
“Yes.”
“Then why? I mean—” His voice cut off as she leaned forward, pressing her breasts to his chest and capturing his mouth with her own. Dionysus wasn’t the only one eager to change the subject. She kissed him deeply with nothing tentative about it, pressing her tongue between his lips. He opened them, welcoming her, and she drank in the taste of him.
It didn’t surprise her that he tasted like wine, but the vividness of it did. She felt heady, tipsy, wanting more. Jaime had never been a wine connoisseur to the extent her friend Liv was. She enjoyed a good glass or three here and there, but this was the first time she really understood the intricacies of wine tasting. His mouth held a strong raspberry overtone, smooth and sweet. When she kissed him lightly, it was all berry. When she sucked his tongue into her mouth, new flavors caught her attention—a buried hint of licorice-like aniseed, a touch of sweet caramel.
The taste of him filled her. Slowly she let her senses expand beyond the immediacy of his mouth. He was moaning softly; her own moans were louder, almost grunting in her search for more taste, more pleasure, more everything. She’d have been embarrassed, except it seemed to turn him on—with each sound, his fingers buried themselves deeper in her hair, pulling her head to his. She could feel him erect under his pants, pressing between her legs. She didn’t know where the heat of the bath ended and the hot wetness of her own juices began. Everything was slick, her bare thighs sliding against his pants, his chest moist against the silk of her robe and the bits of skin sneaking through.
She pulled back from the kiss. “I want to touch you again.”
“Be. My guest. Please.” He was panting heavily between words. Jaime loved it. The feel of his erection pressing into her, the heaviness of his breathing—to know a man was this turned on by her was absolutely intoxicating. It made her feel bold. Strong and alive.
She ran her hands through his hair, fingers catching on tangles in the dark locks. He reached his own hands toward her chest but she grabbed him at the wrists, holding him back. “It’s my turn. You’ll get yours later.” Her heart thudded in her chest. Go for it, James. All he can do is say no. It won’t hurt you to hear a no. Will it?
“Of course,” Dionysus said, pulling his wrists from her hands. “I won’t touch you.” He moved his hands to his sides, skimming them across the top of the water. His warm sienna eyes bored into hers. Her breath caught in her throat. Every time he looked at her, it was as if something hot burned its way inside her, from her cunt down to the tips of her toes, and back up again. She felt as if she was losing control, but had never been more in control in her life.
She touched him everywhere she pleased in a flurry of sensation. Jaime traced the vines on his arms again, following their twists like navigating a maze made of skin. Her thumbs swirled in the hollows of his collarbones. She ran the baby finger of her left hand lightly across his dark eyelashes, taking pleasure in his sigh, then down the strong aquiline nose to his wine-dark full lips, feeling powerful as he sighed when she touched them. Her palms pressed against his chest and down the ripples of his abdomen, tracing a trail of dark hair, reaching the top of his pants.
She slipped her thumbs beneath the waistband. The lightly curling hair on his stomach continued beneath them, and she wanted to see it all. With deft fingers she undid the button on his cords. When was the last time she had been so aware of her hands? Not since painting, she supposed, using her fingers to mix blues and purples on her palette when the brushes just couldn’t give her the accuracy she needed. When she wanted to bury her hands in color and paint her body with it.
Paint a body? Hmm. Store that thought for later, James.
Beneath the water, she grasped at the zipper of his pants, fingers sliding in the wetness. She pulled it down, slowly, taking pleasure in watching his eyes roll upward, then the lids close, lashes brushing his face. She leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on the lids, one and two. She swore she could hear his heartbeat rushing, faster than she’d have thought possible?
Did gods have heartbeats?
His flesh certainly seemed human. Maybe the rest of him was, down to the internal organs. And the external ones.
She lowered his zipper the rest of the way, surprised to see he had nothing on beneath the pants. His cock sprung free, piercing the surface of the bathwater. It was tan like the rest of him, hooded with skin—she’d never seen an uncircumcised penis before and was even a little scared of them, but it looked utterly right on him. What would it feel like inside her? Would it fill her completely in a way she hadn’t experienced before?
She traced the flesh of his cock gently with a finger and a small, clear bead of liquid appeared at the tip. His breath had gotten louder, faster, more insistent. She touched the droplet with her finger and raised it to her mouth, her tongue darting out to taste it. It reminded her of a chardonnay, perhaps, fresh and light with a hint of salty apricot. She could see more dark curls around the base of him. The fact that they were still wearing clothes, of a sort, seemed suddenly ridiculous.
“Lift your legs,” she said. “Let me get these off you.”
“As you command,” he replied, flexing muscles and lifting her with him. She slid hands beneath them, skimming along his firm ass, pulling the cords down his thighs, past his knees. He kicked them off into the water and lowered them again against the cool fiberglass bottom of the tub.
Jaime let her own purple robe fall free of her shoulders and down her arms, floating in the water behind her. With the dim light provided by the waning candles, she didn’t feel shy, but bold. Her resolve was strengthened as he watched her, tongue touching his top lip.
“May I touch you now?” he asked. She nodded. Though she might’ve felt bold, she didn’t trust her voice. She lost herself to sensation as his thumbs pressed against her breasts, running down her stomach, and his mouth closed around her left nipple. He sucked it, hard, making her cry out with desire. His cock pressed between her legs and she thought, It would be so easy to slip you inside me right now. All in good time.
Suddenly he grasped her around the waist, spinning them both so she was pressed under him against the bottom of the tub, her entire body submerged up to her shoulders. Bubbles tickled at her neck and the scent of plum filled her nostrils. She breathed it in. She spread her legs, waiting for him to penetrate her.
“Not yet,” he said. Then he leaned forward and kissed her again. She responded, holding him close, his cock sliding in the folds between her legs, hot and hard, its length reaching to her ass, then pulling back again. The friction made her crazy.
“Please,” she gasped. “Fuck me. I want you now.”
He kissed her mouth again, roughly, then up along her cheek, reaching her earlobe, tonguing it, tasting the small hole left by her piercing, though her lobe was naked at the moment. She wasn’t sure if he whispered the words into her ear or if she heard them in her mind: “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
He dipped his tongue into her ear, then traced it higher along the folds, licking and blowing softly. Her stomach and the muscles of her cunt clenched in response. “Jaime, there’s something I haven’t told you that might affect your decision.”
“What is it?” she asked. Some distant part of her mind was frightened. What could it be
? Was he a dream after all? The rest of her didn’t care.
“I’m not human.”
That was it? “I know.”
“I’m not sure you realize the implications.” He blew on her ear again. Who knew the ear could be such an erotic part of the body? “As a god, I don’t have the same limitations humans do. To be specific…I can breathe underwater.”
With that, Jaime’s vision blurred red and her mind went some very intriguing places. Her body was a miasma of sensation—his hands on her ass, his mouth moving down her neck, nipping at her shoulders, licking from her collarbone down, slowly down her breastbone, stopping to lap at a nipple.
When his head disappeared beneath the bubbles of the bath, she opened her legs. His black curls drifted at the surface of the water, tickling her stomach and the underside of her breasts.
And then his tongue found the folds of her cunt. She lost all sense of time as he licked at her clit, the rough buds on his tongue rubbing her to new states of pleasure. She lay back against the tub, the coolness of it on her skin a stark contrast to the warmth of all the water around her, and that water seemed frigid in comparison to the heat of his mouth. The scruff on his cheeks and chin rubbed against her. He traced each crease of her the way he had the pinna of her ear, exploring the most private part of her body. She could feel his shoulders shaking between her thighs as if this were as exciting to him as it was to her. She wrapped her legs tight around him and buried her hands in his dark curls, pulling his head closer. He flicked his tongue over her clit, again and again, and she thought of all the ridiculous tricks she had urged Keith to try over the years—drawing pictures, tracing the alphabet, nothing that had worked. What a difference to have a man, a god who could sense exactly where she wanted him.
And she wanted him.
When he thrust his tongue deep inside her, firm and hot and slippery and rough, she cried out his name, “Dionysus!” as if she’d known him forever, and perhaps she had—in her most secret dreams.
When she came, the sensations moved like waves down her legs to the tips of her toes, up her torso, out to numb her fingers. Jaime let her body float and lost herself to it, the pulsing of her pleasure synched with her heartbeat. She could drown like this, she knew, but she wasn’t afraid anymore. His tongue rode her through the aftershock, and when he surfaced, she was still breathing heavily.
They watched each other for a moment, and Jaime’s heart was racing. She could feel her flushed face and her hair slick with sweat, sticking to her back. The god mere inches from her was just as disheveled with bubble bath in his hair and rivulets of water running down his face.
It was Jaime who spoke first. “That was—” But she had no words. “Thank you.”
He nodded, almost shyly at first but then with that smile twitching at his mouth again. She watched his mouth, seeing it glisten in the candlelight, wondering whether it was the bathwater or the juice from between her legs that made it look so.
“You’re welcome,” was all Dionysus said. Jaime laughed. How had her life become so strange, to the point that she was sitting naked, post-orgasm, exchanging courtesies in a tub with a creature out of myth?
Exchanging courtesies. The thought stuck in her mind. Pleasuring Keith had always been a bit of a chore. Nothing she could ever do had been right—too fast, too slow, too hard, not hard enough, her body never slender or smooth enough to please him. It had gotten to the point where she’d been terrified to try.
There was no fear in her heart now.
She pushed the god back against the tub, into the curved corner of it beside the silvery faucet and taps, letting him settle in to a comfortable position.
Jaime couldn’t breathe underwater. Hell, one time she’d nearly drowned trying to beat her cousin George in his pool somersault record, and wound up coughing stinging chlorine everywhere. But she could certainly touch.
She ran a firm hand down his chest, across his stomach, tracing the pleasure trail of black curls southward past his navel, to his cock. It was as firm as it had been earlier. She wrapped the fingers of her right hand, her strong painting hand, around the base. She watched his face and used it as her guide, milking him with her fingers, pulling tighter when he leaned forward, and loosening when he bit his lip. Her other hand teased at the curls around his cock. She couldn’t see them beneath the bubbles of the bath, but she could feel. Everything was moist and hot, the bath not having cooled yet. She explored the folds of his foreskin with her fingers, touching every part of him, not bothering to be gentle—she didn’t think he liked gentle.
When his breathing grew deeper and faster, she leaned forward, planting a kiss on his mouth as her hands pulled frantically at his cock. When he moaned she could feel him come, his warm seed pouring out over her fingers, into the water. She pumped until he was dry and panting, leaning back against the tub wall, and then she let his cock go free, moving herself to the other end of the tub, wrapping her arms around her legs to watch him.
His face was full of shadow—the candle wicks were in their dying moments now. But she saw him smile and she returned it with a grin of her own. Jaime’s heart felt full and her body was exhausted. She liked it.
“Wow,” he exhaled. “I—I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“This isn’t how these visits normally go.”
“What do you mean?” Jaime had thought he seemed happy, but had she done something wrong?
“Normally the women I pleasure don’t bother to return the favor.” He raised his hands to his hair and rung it out, water trickling down his shoulders. “That was incredible.”
Jaime flushed. She tried to think of something to say in return. No man had called her that—incredible—before. She was thrilled, but embarrassed, and sought something else on which to focus. The silver of the tub faucet caught her attention.
And then she saw it.
The silver faucet held the reflection of a man’s face.
It was indigo, gaunt, furious and twisted, the image distorted in the curve of the faucet. Flames flickered orange and gold around its face, and smoke rose from its hair. The eyes were green and piercing, the hair black as night, the skin mottled and bruised. The expression was something from the nightmares she’d had as a child, or a time thousands of years before her birth, when the night held an unknown presence that sent mere humans running to their beds, barring the doors of their houses, praying out loud for a divine savior.
The candles went out, plummeting the room into darkness.
Jaime screamed.
Chapter Two
An hour after Dionysus had pulled her from the tub and wrapped her in blankets, Jaime was still shaking. Still cold.
He’d been the perfect comforter, drying her straw-blonde hair with a towel, making her a pot of hot Earl Grey, asking her nothing.
After she saw the face in the faucet, Dionysus had turned on the bathroom lights. She’d begged him to check the house and he had, starting with the bathroom. There was no one there. No one in the closets or under the bed, no one in the attic or basement of her small bungalow.
She was almost sure it had been a figment of her imagination. Her mind was certain—clearly there had been no one in the bathroom with them.
But there had been no one with her before Dionysus appeared, either. The laws of physics had been broken once today already.
Perhaps she could have dismissed it as a silly, post-sex hallucination brought on by too much wine (though she’d never taken a swig from the bottle of rosé, had she?) and a body-shaking orgasm. She could have written it off, except for the tension in Dionysus’ face.
What could drive a god to fear?
Jaime didn’t want to ask.
They curled up in bed together, swathed in a cocoon of knit blankets. Dionysus wore a pair of Keith’s old pajamas, plaid flannel several sizes too big. Jaime was in her favorite navy sweats—comfort wear. She pressed against his body, absorbing his warmth as
he stroked her hair. Normally, she hated feeling vulnerable. Tonight she didn’t care. They hadn’t spoken in a while. He’d simply consoled her, and she’d fallen into his embrace and let him.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “Jaime, I’m sorry to ask you this.”
“Go ahead.” Her tone was formal, strange to her ears.
“Can you tell me what you saw? In detail?”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“I’m sorry. But this is important.”
Great. Couldn’t it wait until morning, when the sun had risen and the world didn’t seem full of shadows and spirits? She realized it couldn’t, or he wouldn’t have asked. She’d known him only for a few hours, but she knew that much about him—he wouldn’t hurt her like this unless it was absolutely necessary.
“Hold my hand?” Any other time, it would have made Jaime feel ridiculously weak.
“Of course.” He took her hand in his, clasping tight. She drew in a deep breath, remembering.
“It was horrible. I was watching you and then my eyes drifted to the front of the bath, to the faucet. There was someone—something—reflected in it like a mirror. It was a man. But I’ve never seen a man like that before. His face was covered in bruises, or patches of something dark and black, like oil. Slick like oil. His hair crawled with it, worms slithering through black oil.” She felt foolish. Men didn’t have blue skin or worms for hair. Did they?
What else was out there in the world that she’d never dreamed of before?
“Go on.” The warmth in his voice was palpable. She clung to it as if it were a lifeline.
“He laughed at me. I know that sounds ridiculous. But I could hear it. His teeth flashed white with specks of gold and he wouldn’t stop laughing—the candles blew out, I couldn’t see him anymore, but I could still hear it. Or, I don’t know, not hear really, but feel. It wasn’t in my ears, it was—” It had been inside her. Deep inside, where Dionysus had placed his tongue only minutes before. The monster’s voice had sullied her, destroyed that moment of joy.
