His smile returned. “I can see why it might be hard for you to believe this. It’s true. I’m named for him, though he saw me only once to bestow his favour upon me. Father forbids him to enter the Underworld.”
She could understand why. It wouldn’t do to have someone as strong as the real Ares, god of war, hitting on your wife, even if you were Hades.
This was a lot to take in.
“I really thought you were Hellspawn.” Although she still wasn’t sure what the heck they were either.
He laughed. “No... just a regular god.”
She rounded the coffee table and flopped down on the end of the couch nearest to him before her legs gave out, and stared at her paper cup on the ebony surface near his feet. The thought that he was a god swirled around her mind but wouldn’t sink in.
She blinked and shifted her gaze to him, stared at him to convince herself that this was real.
He was a god.
A real life god.
A son of Hades, the ruler of the Underworld.
It still refused to sink in. If he was a god, surely she would have read about him. Someone would have documented that there were two gods named Ares. They definitely would have documented that Hades and Persephone had managed to make seven strapping boys.
“How come you and your brothers aren’t in the history books?”
He tunnelled his fingers through his overlong tawny hair, preening it back out of his face. “They stopped writing them.”
Simple as that. She raked her gaze over him, lingering longest on his face. He still didn’t look a day over thirty-eight.
“You and your brothers all look different ages. The one with the long blond hair is much younger, Calistos, is it? And the one with the black hair, Keras? He looks like he’s maybe a couple of years older or the same age as you.”
“Keras, the same age as me?” Both of his eyebrows shot up and his dark eyes sparkled with amusement. “It might look like that to mortal eyes, but it certainly isn’t the case.”
She had feared as much. People painted pictures of the gods all the time and they didn’t look centuries old.
She peered closer. “How old are you?”
A smile tugged at one corner of his sensual mouth. “Younger than the history books.”
That wasn’t very giving. The edge of discomfort in his eyes made her feel that he didn’t want to tell her, or was it the fact that they had missed the history books?
She eyed him, trying to think of him as the son of a god rather than a man. He was strong. Did strength come with age?
“Two hundred.” It sounded like a reasonable age for him.
He snorted contemptuously. “Insulting me now? I’ve been stuck in the mortal world for longer than that.”
He had?
He had spent over two centuries unable to touch anyone? It was a miracle the man was sane.
The thought of going without touching someone for a few decades had left her feeling cold inside, but living like it for centuries?
She wanted to get up, sit on his lap, wrap her arms around him and hold him. He wouldn’t like it though. There was something she had learned about Ares from her time with him. He hated anything that made him feel weak and her pitying him would do just that.
Every muscle in his body rippled as he stood and straightened to his full height, and she focused on their conversation again. Okay, so he was older than two hundred. She stared up at him, calculating and considering. He walked between the couch and the coffee table, heading for the kitchen.
She frowned.
The horrible red lines from last night were gone from his back but the silvery scars she had seen when she had healed the burns on his back the night they had met were still there. The haphazard array of thin streaks littered his skin, cutting over muscles in unfaltering lines.
He strolled into the kitchen, grabbed a glass and filled it with water.
When it came down to it, she couldn’t for the life of her figure out how old he was by looking at him. He just looked in his late thirties to her. All she could do was guess and hope she hit near to the mark.
“Seven hundred.”
He sighed and raised his left hand above his head as he walked back to her. The muscles of his torso shifted delightfully, distracting her.
“Nine hundred?” Her voice sounded weak even to her own ears.
He smiled. “Close enough.”
“Under or over?” It seemed insane to be asking such a question.
“Over.”
She stared at him, trying to convince herself that he really did look that old. No matter what she did, he still appeared as though he was closing in on forty rather than one thousand.
“And Keras is older?” She hoped it wasn’t by much. Just thinking about his brothers and how old they might be had her head aching.
Calistos looked as though he was barely pushing thirty. How old was he really?
“By around fifty years.” Ares eased back down into the armchair and set his glass of water down on the coffee table.
Megan supposed that his father was still alive, judging by the earlier earthquake, and that Hades must be thousands of years old. If Hades was real, and Persephone too, then all those other gods had to be real too. Zeus. Poseidon. Apollo. And a lot of others who she could no longer remember.
Ares sipped his water and rifled through the brown paper bag. He plucked a pain au chocolat from the pastries and bit into it.
She had absolutely zero reason to believe he was telling her the truth. She had zero reason to believe he was lying too. He and his brothers had more than one power each, and Ares had incredible strength. He was a warrior to his core, just as she had imagined the Greek gods to be when learning about them in her youth.
“You look as though you’re having a hard time with this.” He leaned back into the red armchair, his shoulders as wide as the padded back of the seat. “It’s really quite simple. Gods exist. Think of Hellspawn as distant relatives of the gods if you need some sort of connection to make it easier for you to believe me. They tend to have a single power, or sometimes no power at all. Because they have blood of gods of the Underworld many thousands of years back in their family tree, my father deems them worthy of entering his domain.”
“What about Carriers?” She wanted to know where she stood in this hierarchy.
“Hellspawn came from the breeding of gods with mortals. Demigods were the product of those relationships and those demigods bred with mortals again, producing the species that we affectionately call Hellspawn… though they don’t exactly appreciate the name.”
“Why not call them demigods?”
He frowned. “Because the original demigod in every Hellspawn breed out there is so far back in history that they have no right to call themselves gods. The power of the original demigod that flows in their veins is probably barely one hundredth of what that original demigod wielded.”
Wow. If a Hellspawn’s power was such a tiny fragment of their ancestor’s, then how tiny was her share? And if the Hellspawn were so much weaker than the demigod who gave rise to them many millennia ago, how strong were real gods?
She stared at Ares.
Just how powerful was he?
“Carriers cannot enter the Underworld. My father doesn’t grant them that right because they are a product of a mating with a mortal. Only Hellspawn are allowed to enter because they are born from a mating between pure Hellspawn parents that can trace their families back to their ancestor and prove it. The power in your blood is likely less than one thousandth of your demigod ancestor and you have no way of knowing what bloodline you’re from. In turn, that demigod’s power was probably barely one thousandth of that of the god or goddess who created them.” He smiled when she frowned. “Getting the picture now?”
She was. In the grand scheme of things, she was barely above human to this man and his father, and as powerful as a gnat.
“Do Hellspawn live forever too?”
He laughe
d. “Gods don’t live forever. We can be killed easily enough. We age differently to them. Hellspawn have longer life-spans than Carriers and mortals, but I have never heard of one making it past three centuries.”
And he was almost a thousand years old.
“You must have seen a lot of things change.” She picked at her croissant and sipped her cold coffee, still struggling to get everything to sink in. She knew a little more about Hellspawn and Carriers now, but she still had a million questions.
For every one he answered, two more sprang up.
He shook his head. “Only in the past two hundred years. Nothing changes in the Underworld.”
He had spent the first seven hundred plus years of his life in the Underworld with his family. She looked down at the oak floorboards.
What was it like down there?
She glanced at Ares, tempted to ask him but held her tongue. He looked tired of her questions, and he certainly didn’t look like the sort of man you pushed for answers, so she took to using her imagination.
She pictured the Underworld as a dark, bleak place full of black rocks and dead souls, with the occasional river of lava or bubbling pit. She shuddered at the thought of living in such a place for centuries and pushed the images out of her head.
“How’s your back?” Hopefully, a change of topic would give her time to comprehend everything that he had told her and she honestly wanted to know if he was feeling better now, and why he had so many scars.
“It’s fine. You don’t have to worry about it. I can heal most wounds in barely a few hours.”
He could? No wonder he had told her that he didn’t need her to heal him. She could have saved herself some energy and not scared herself half to death if he had explained that to her earlier.
She also wouldn’t have fallen asleep in his bed and awoken in his arms.
Heat curled through her with that delicious memory. Waking close to him, his strong arms pinning her to his bare chest, had felt dangerously good. So good that she wanted to do it again.
“You have scars though.” She nodded towards his shoulders and he looked over them and then casually lifted them.
“Every time I pay penitence, one remains to remind me of what I did,” he said, voice gruff and deep, and her eyebrows slowly knitted into a frown.
There were countless scars on his back. How many times had he allowed someone to inflict such terrible punishment on him as she had witnessed last night?
Marek had said that Ares had never learned to hold his black tongue. He had spoken that language twice in her presence in the short time that she had known him. Did he curse often and invoke the wrath of the gods? Why didn’t he just curse in a language that wouldn’t end in punishment?
“What about the scar on your chin, was that penitence too?” She blushed when he frowned at her.
She probably shouldn’t have mentioned it.
It was barely visible through the short layer of dark stubble coating his jaw and the surprise in his expression silently asked how she had noticed it.
There was no way she was going to confess that she had been staring at his lips, wondering how good they would feel pressed against hers, when she had spotted it hiding in his stubble.
He touched his chin and a smile tugged at those sensual lips, dragging her eyes to them and sparking images in her mind, a fantasy about kissing him and feeling the dominant force of his mouth claiming hers.
“My father made this one remain to remind me and Daimon that we were troublemakers. Daimon has the same scar.” He grazed his hand along his jaw and around the back of his head, and scratched his neck. She had never seen him look awkward before. He looked cute and boyish, but with a dash of wicked. “We were brawling in the Underworld when we were young and caused a little mess.”
He used his finger and thumb to illustrate how small it had been, bringing them together until their pads were barely a millimetre apart.
“What did you do?” Having witnessed Daimon and Ares yesterday during their meeting, she could imagine that they had fought often as kids and still fought now.
They seemed to contrast each other perfectly. She smiled to herself. It did make sense in a way. Ares was fire and Daimon was ice. Their parents must have known they were going to be trouble from the start.
He lowered his hand into his lap and sighed, his striking eyes lighting up with amusement, as though he was recalling that day and the trouble they had caused. If he was, it looked as though it had been fun while it had lasted.
“We just wiped out part of our mother’s garden...” he said and that didn’t seem so bad to her, unless Persephone was very particular about her garden. “And the buildings near it... and a little bit of the mountains behind it. Just a slice... and they looked much better for it. Very forbidding and fitting as a backdrop for the fortress.”
Megan gasped. “That’s your concept of a little mess?”
“You should have seen the other times we fought, the times my father doesn’t know was us.” He grinned at her, charming and handsome, his eyes full of fire that brought out her own smile. Her grandmother had thought she was trouble. Megan had nothing on him. His concept of trouble was destroying mountains. “We were young and we learned our lesson.”
She didn’t think they had but she held her smile. Ares was so different around her today. Did he like having her around?
She liked being with him, and deep in her heart she knew it wasn’t because she could be herself around him.
He was warm and funny, and caring, and six-six of sexy. He wreaked havoc on her with just a smile and she flushed all over whenever they touched, even when it was the most innocent of brushes.
Did she affect him as badly as he affected her?
She hoped that she did, because she wanted him to feel that whatever connection they shared, it wasn’t because he could touch again.
She wanted him to feel something for her.
Because she was beginning to feel something for him.
CHAPTER 11
Ares fell silent and pensive, his eyes locked on his knees where he sat in the red armchair of his living room, prompting Megan to wonder what was on his mind.
She picked at her croissant, popping pieces into her mouth, and waited for him to come out of his thoughts. She leaned back into the couch and looked to her left, beyond his bedroom to the windows and the world outside. It was growing dark. The sun had set and the sky was full of deep pinks and gold that faded into inky blue.
He raised his head and fixed his gaze on her. “I have to go to the gate.”
“What is this gate that you and your brothers kept mentioning?” she said and the warmth evaporated from his dark eyes.
“It’s probably better you don’t know.” He stood and walked into his bedroom.
She rose from the couch and followed him, unwilling to accept that as an answer. She wanted to see the gate for herself. He and his brothers had mentioned it often and it had piqued her curiosity. It sounded important. That wasn’t the only reason she wanted to go with him though. She didn’t want to be left alone in the apartment while he disappeared for God only knew how long.
“Take me with you,” she said and he paused to regard her with a confused gaze.
It cleared and he shook his head.
“No.”
“Then take me home.”
He frowned and his eyes darkened two full shades, filling with shadows and verging on black. “No.”
It was more forceful that time and he raked his dark gaze over her. The flecks of red and gold brightened and his pupils dilated, and the muscle in his jaw ticked beneath his stubble as he turned away.
“I don’t want to stay here alone.” She really hadn’t wanted to admit that and the way he looked over his shoulder at her, rugged features awash with concern, made her look away. He wasn’t the only one who hated admitting to any weakness. “At least call Marek.”
An unholy snarl left him and he was in front of her in a flash, ribbons of
black smoke caressing his muscles in a way that made her jealous. He grabbed her upper arms in a bruising grip and pulled her close to him, until his hard body pressed against hers and she quivered right down to her core, wishing she was in only her camisole so she could feel his bare skin against hers.
She swallowed and tilted her head back, looking up into eyes that glowed as fiercely as the fires of Hell.
“Why do you want me to call my brother?” His voice was a low growl of pure animal aggression and she had the feeling that if she said the wrong thing, the next place he would teleport would be Seville and he would go to war with his own flesh and blood.
She shivered, hot all over from his display of possessiveness.
“I don’t want to be alone, and I felt safe with him here.” She gasped when he pulled her closer, settling one hand in her lower back, and snarled again.
“I will not call my brother. No man other than me will see to your safety. Do you understand?”
Megan swallowed and nodded.
Oh God, but she understood, and she liked it far too much.
He already saw her as his. He already felt that she belonged to him. He wasn’t willing to let another man near her.
Her heart trembled in her chest, shaking as much as the rest of her with the pure hit of pleasure that rocked her.
He loosened his grip on her and then released her and shifted his hand to her face. His palm was hot against her cheek, his fingers teasing the line of her jaw and tickling her neck. He swept the pad of his thumb across her lower lip and her knees weakened as his eyes fell there. Anticipation swirled inside her, making her restless.
She wanted that kiss he kept promising her with his dark eyes. She wanted to belong to him, body and soul.
“You will be safe here, Megan. I swear it,” he whispered, his gaze rooted on her mouth, softening as he continued to brush her lip with his thumb. “I would never allow anything to happen to you. Do you believe me?”
His eyes finally left her mouth and she released the breath she had been holding.
She met his gaze and nodded. She did believe him, with all of her heart and every drop of her blood. He would protect her from anything, even his brothers. He wouldn’t allow anyone to touch her.
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