The Heart of War

by Lisa Beth Darling

  4

  Dashing through the entrance to the cave, Alena ran straight to her room and locked the door. She stood there with her heart racing and tears rolling down her stinging cheek as she struggled to get her breathing under control. Feeling as though she were going to be sick, she put her hand over her mouth just as she heard his heavy footfalls coming down the dirt corridor. Sharp shallow breath caught in her chest as she closed her stormy eyes, wishing he would just pass by. For a moment it seemed she would get that lucky and his footsteps walked by the door but then luck changed as he turned around. The doorknob turned, she heard him snort in disgust just before he materialized inside the room.

  “You didn’t really think that was going to work, did you?” Ares looked over his shoulder to sneer at the locked door.

  “Well, I had hoped…” Her voice trailed off as she stared at him. His eyes were as cold and distant as they were burning fire. For a second she wondered if he even saw her or knew where he was. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to upset you all right? I’m sorry.”

  “Not yet you’re not.”

  “Wh—?”

  “Come here.”

  That didn’t sound like the smartest thing to do but neither did going against him. “What’s wrong with you?” Alena whispered as tears choked her voice. “What have I done? What is this?”

  “I told you I have a headache. Now come over here and relieve it.”

  He had a headache all right, two of them from the looks of that bulge in his leather pants. With her hand pressed to her quivering mouth and feeling sicker than ever, she shook her head slightly and barely whispered, “Please, you’re scaring me.”

  Ares inhaled deeply through his nose as he closed his eyes, savoring the scent and letting it linger. The corners of his mouth turned upward, “I know,” he whispered coldly. When those eyes opened they gazed upon her with lustful icy stare. “The odor wafts from you like the scent of a bitch in heat. That’s not all I smell, is it?” That thousand-yard stare dropped below her waist as he licked his bottom lip.

  “There are other women here, you don’t need me for this.”

  Ares let out a long breath as he shook his raven head and then sucked in air over his teeth. “I see you want to do this the hard way.” He shrugged his brawny shoulders and gave a fake smile. “Ok.” Dropping the axe, swooping her up with one arm Ares flung her onto the bed like a ragdoll. Alena let out a cry of indignant surprise as she hit the mattress. “Get rid of the dress.” When she didn’t hop to obey him, but instead just stayed in place staring up at him with disbelieving eyes he spoke again. “Do you want me to do it for you?”

  “No.” She could not win this fight. Even if he wasn’t a God, even if he couldn’t command fire, he still outweighed her by two hundred and fifty pounds—mostly muscle. He could rip her to pieces with his bare hands and not think twice about it. She could put up a good fight but in the end, he’d win.

  “That’s right, I will, so don’t defy me.”

  “You can read my mind?”

  “No,” Ares chimed darkly as his hand reached out gingerly tracing the outline of cheek. “All I need to know about you I can read right here, in your eyes. Be a good girl and do what I tell you.”

  The last time she took her clothes off for him, he’d made her feel beautiful, and there had been music, dancing, and much love between them. They made love until the sun came up giving each other the most exquisite pleasure time and again. It was a night she would cherish forever. Now he made her feel ugly and dirty. She was fearful and ashamed as the chemise slipped over her head. She could argue, she could fight, in the process be beaten to a bloody pulp and possibly lose the baby. Alena would do anything to keep the baby safe. If she could keep his temper down and just do what he wanted then maybe everything would be all right. “What can I do for you, my Lord?” Long fingertips reached out to skip through the hair on his chest hoping after this, when the sun rose again, Ares would be himself. Still ornery and cool as a cucumber but the passionate, tender Warrior she fell in love with.

  “That’s better,” Ares complimented as he ran his thumb over her quivering bottom lip. “Much better. Good girl.” With his free hand, he stripped the leather pants from his sweaty body and stood naked before her. “Now let’s see your best. Show me all the things Adrian and the others have taught you.” Ares grabbed Alena by the back of the head and brought her forward to his throbbing cock.

  “Whatever you want my Lord.”

  “That’s right, whatever I want,” Ares whispered. “So contrite now, little Fey, what happened to your fire?”

  No kisses. No cuddles. No warm embrace. Alena knelt on the mattress while Ares stood in front of her and her lips over his swollen member. Alena’s warm wet tongue lapped along the shaft, around the head and down to the base, and back again. She tried not to cry while Ares’ hands entwined in her hair, bringing her closer to him, forcing her take more of him inside and down her slender throat. The more of the hard pulsing cock that he pushed down her throat, the more she gagged and tried to swallow, tried to draw shallow breaths through her nose and not let her retching stomach have its way.

  She tried not to think of what she was doing and the desolate way it made her feel or the way it made her heart ache and her stomach heave. Two nights ago she welcomed this very act with lustful gusto, but now she’d do anything to run and be far away in some soft safe place. As she’d once done with Adrian, Jaakim, and others, Alena focused not on the hot pulsing cock in her mouth but on the green hills of her homeland. She tried to think of the way the sun came up over the moors making the mist rise. The fresh smell of the green pines as the light morning breeze blew across her face. Soon her mind was detached and completely numb to her precarious situation even as her mouth suckled the hard shaft her tongue danced around.

  Before she knew it, the burgeoning cock in her mouth started pulsing as the hands in her hair gripped the sides of her head, but at the last second Ares pulled her away from her, denying himself the orgasm. He hauled her upwards by her elbows and stared straight into her eyes without saying a word before he threw her backward onto the bed just as he slithered over her and grinned. That smile made her blood run cold; she wondered again if he even really saw her or knew what he was doing or if he was really in there somewhere. Those deep dark eyes of his were completely empty like a sleepwalker in the night. “Ares?” Self-preservation kicked in as she grabbed his forearms and began to push him away. Just as she thought, it was like trying to move a solid brick wall.

  Ares grabbed up her hands and pinned her arms down at the sides of her head. His large mitts crushing against her upper arms, Alena felt her fingers go numb within seconds. “Be still, woman,” the God of War hissed as he increased the pressure in his grasp, pushing down on her with almost of all of his weight to pin her below him. “Don’t move.” He entered her in one swift thrust, making her cringe and let out a loud whimper.

  Between the force of his weight on her hips and that on her arms, Alena couldn’t move if the cave were on fire. Trying to think of those never-ending green fields of home, Alena closed her eyes so she didn’t have to look at the indifference she saw staring back at her. She tried not to cry out as he worked that massive tool in and out of her in the rapid jabbing thrusts of a rabid wolf. Hoping to make him cum faster, she tried to move her hips in time with his, but that was a mistake. Suddenly the hands on her arms clamped down on her hips and pressed them against the bed.

  Using the leverage under his palms, Ares pushed himself up on his hands and hovered over her. “I said don’t move, didn’t I?” Her eyes were closed. “Look at me!”

  Alena forced her gray eyes open but tried to keep the image of the moors in her mind instead of the sight of his angry face. “Yes,” she whimpered. “Please. Don’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? You’re always sorry,” Ares seethed, caught by surprise as he stared at the fear in her eyes. She was afraid, terrified actually, but behind the fear there was love st
aring back at him. “It’s pathetic. Weak. Like you.” Rising to a sitting position on his knees, Ares reached down and turned Alena on her side. “Just stay still, that’s not too much to ask, is it?”

  “No.”

  When he turned her over, Alena’s silver hair covered her face, and he brushed it away so that he could see her. Eyes closed and lips drawn downward in a fearful frown, she curled up in a little ball beneath him. For a long moment Ares perched between her legs, soaking inside of her, sliding his hands along her smooth trembling body. Ares grabbed up her wrists in one hand and took hold of the round hump of her ass with the other. Pinning her hands high up behind her head, he leaned down over her. “Do you love me?”

  Although her voice was small and cracked, Alena didn’t hesitate to answer. “Yes, with all my heart.”

  “Do anything I say?”

  Alena flinched as a little groan escaped her lips she tried to hold it back at the last second so he wouldn’t know how afraid he was making her. Just a few nights ago she would have said yes to that question with a great deal of zeal and delight. Tonight the question was dark, foreboding. Yet the answer was the same. “Yes.”

  “Good.” Ares pulled out of her tight hole, picked her up by the waist and put her on her knees with her pear-shaped ass high in the air before he entered her again. “Grab the headboard.” When she didn’t jump to his command, Ares grabbed her hand and tried to put it on the top of the headboard but she pulled it back at the last second. “Do it or I will.”

  “Why?”

  Whether she was asking why he wanted her to grab the headboard or why he was doing this to her, Ares didn’t know and he didn’t care. “I’ll show you.” One strong hand on her hip keeping her in place, the other landed on the top of the headboard. He pulled himself forward with all of the strength in his arm as he thrust into her with such force it propelled her off her knees and she tipped forward, her head smashing into the hardwood at the top of the bed.

  “Oh God!” Alena shrieked as the pain ripped through her. She became sure that Ares’ swollen throbbing cock was going to pierce its way all the way up through to her stomach.

  “Yes?” Ares answered with a sneer. “You rang?”

  “I’ll do it,” she gasped, “please don’t. I’ll do it.” She reached with one shaking hand to clutch the wooden headboard.

  “You can be taught, interesting. You have so much to learn about me.” Now was as good a time as any. If she were going to spend the next one or two hundred years in his bed then Alena might as well start getting used to a few facts.

  The same tool he used to bring her to the heights of pleasure now brought her to the deepest depths of despair as he thrust in and out of her with increasing force, each stroke longer, deeper than the one before. She tried not to move but it was difficult to remain still, to just perch there and take it rather than squirming away. Not that she had anywhere to go now that she was pinned between the headboard and the God of War. Inside her, Ares just kept growing harder and longer, pummeling her like a jackhammer against a hard pit of road. Much to her agony and dismay, it wasn’t long before Ares became dissatisfied with the position and rose from his knees to his haunches for better purchase. Behind her, he let out a grunt that she hoped meant he was coming to climax but then one of the hands on her ass gave it harsh squeeze before it dealt out a heavy slap, making her jump below him and those wet muscles constrict tightly around his throbbing cock. Ares reached around with the other hand and roughly groped her trembling breast before giving her ass another loud smack.

  Alena began to sob and then to beg. “Please? Ares? Please? Stop. You’re hurting me.”

  Alena would like to believe that he simply didn’t hear her whispered pleas, but with those ears of his that was hard to believe. He just didn’t care and his hips just kept moving as he started putting his back into his work, sweat began to drip onto her back. The large hand so roughly twisting her right breast let go only to grab her by the throat. Air cut off from her lungs. Alena tried to pull away from him. Using the hands on the headboard she pulled forward, even though it made his grip tighter. She wriggled and squirmed until one hand came off the headboard and, in desperation, yanked on his forearm to pry it away even just the tiniest bit.

  The hand that planted on her hip pushing her forward and pulling her back when it wasn’t slapping her ass now twisted in the gray hair at the back of her head. With a mighty pull, Ares yanked her jerked neck to the side. A little more force and she was sure he would have broken it. The hand at the back of her head pushed her upper body down to the mattress while the one choking off air from her lungs let go and returned her hand to the headboard before planting itself on her hip.

  Alena gasped for air as the pain between her legs grew into a twinge in her abdomen and she began to fear for the baby she was carrying. He just kept thrusting away, harder, deeper, faster, until Alena could hold on to the headboard no longer, all the strength fled from her terrified body, mercifully taking her frightened mind with it. She slid down the headboard, her arms pulled in, and she curled up into a quivering little ball below him with her red stinging ass in the air.

  When it was over, Ares left her there, frightened, alone, shaking on the bed. He didn’t even look back.

  5

  In almost a drunken haze, Ares stumbled down to the lower level naked as the day he was born, his cock still dripping spew and tinged with blood. Caught in this strange sense of euphoria he lay down on the bench and began pressing weights. He buried himself deep in Alena and gave her what-for most of the day, by now it was far too late to go outside and chop wood. Hands on the metal bar, he pushed the stack of 350 lbs. up and brought it down. Pushed it up. Brought it down. Ares repeated the pattern until all the strength in his arms fled and he could lift it no longer. His brawny body covered in a heavy sheen of sweat, the heart in his chest running at full speed and the massive lungs next to it drawing in quick deep breaths, he rolled off the beach and made his way to the steaming pool.

  Sitting in the hot water, his mind finally slowing down he kept telling himself he was dreaming. This was a hallucination. He hadn’t hit Alena. He hadn’t threatened her with the axe. He most certainly did not just put the full girth of his cock to her like a two-dollar whore. No, he hadn’t done any of those things.

  No matter what he told himself he couldn’t stop hearing her whimper, couldn’t stop seeing those frightened gray eyes looking up at him still laden with trust and misplaced hope. Worse than that, Ares couldn’t stop hearing the laughter of a foreign voice in his head. It laughed, it laughed, and it laughed at her pain and his misery like a rotten child. It egged him on both on the beach and in the bedroom. Whispered directly in his ear telling him how Alena was fooling him, she was using him; she was going to fly away with Eros the first chance she got and take Ares’ child with her. He had no choice but to listen and then to obey although he’d tried to fight his most base instincts, tried to restrain himself in the bedroom. The voice just kept telling him that Alena was nothing more than a lying Celtic whore. She would never love him. She had Eros waiting for her. Surely Alena would leave him for his Son just as soon as her memory returned if it hadn’t already. For her lies, her deceit and her treachery, the little Fey deserved everything Ares dished out to her and more.

  She didn’t deserve such things. It was wrong. Sitting in the warm water surrounded by the steam and solitude Ares’ stomach began to heave as he thought about what he’d done. When he pulled his hands out of the water bringing them up to his face all he could envision was how they’d hit her and the terrible sound it made. He wanted to grab the nearest blade and cut them off so they could never do it again.

  That nasty voice tried to soothe him. It tried to tell him that there were things Alena needed to learn about him and even if she did stay—which was altogether unlikely—then their lovemaking would not always be so soft and tender. He had needs and desires beyond those of schoolgirls.

  True enough, but Ares w
as looking forward to slowly breaking Alena in and introducing her to the more rigorous aspects of sex.

  “You’re an animal,” he muttered to his perplexed reflection in the water. Even when she surrendered completely, her body fell to the mattress and she let go of any fight, he just kept on going. All the while, in the back of his mind telling himself it would be over soon, the climax was near. He stroked harder, faster, but it eluded him. He tried to stop but he was so far beyond excitement that Ares was lost to himself and the entire world around him. Stopping wasn’t an option as a dark force he could neither see nor touch propelled him onward, but he could hear it clear as crystal and it made his heart grow cold.

  She’s a whore.

  That’s what it said over and over and over again in the bedroom. Alena was a whore, a CELTIC WHORE. “No, she isn’t.” No matter what the wretched voice said or how it tried to twist things, it couldn’t change the fact that Alena came to him a virgin, therefore she was no whore. The things she had done before he came along she had been forced to do or gone along with for survival—

  (Just like she did today)

  —not because she was in love. “She loves me, or she did.”

  No woman will ever love you.

  “That’s not true.”

  That taunting voice, the one that seemed to be whispering straight into his ear as if it sat on his shoulder, wouldn’t let up. Eros on the other hand is young, handsome, passionate but tender, strong but gentle…even-tempered… everything a woman could want and then some.

  “I’m stronger than he is.” Ares told the voice. To prove his point he pulled his arms out of the steaming water, pumped up his 24-inch biceps to full capacity and gave each a kiss. “Stronger by far.”

  Don’t fool yourself; you’re far past your prime, Old Boy. You are death and destruction incarnate. You can’t help but destroy everything you touch. She’s crying up there right now, isn’t she?

  Ares turned his tired eyes away from his reflection and up to the ceiling, thinking of how he’d left her there. Alena was weeping and terrified. “What is wrong with me?”