by Sam Cheever
“First, we need you to go back to the office.”
“Of course.”
“You’ll go about your business as you always do.”
I nodded. “Okay. Then what?”
Damian shrugged. “We’ll take care of the rest.”
“Uh-uh. No way. I’m going to help.”
Damian shook his head. “You can’t. My folder was given to a Cupid called Hermes. It will look strange if you intervene.”
I stood up and moved to the fire, pacing in front of it in my exasperation. “This sounds dangerous, Damian. Does Hermes know what you’re doing?”
“No. And we need to keep it that way. The fewer people who know the gorgons are here the better. They tend to instill panic.”
I stopped and looked at him in disbelief. “You don’t think the Cupids know about the gorgons? They were in the building when the monsters blasted through the wall.”
Damian and Peter shared a look. Damian shook his head. “They were gone when Medusa arrived.”
I frowned. “Gone? What are you talking about? I saw Hermes and Milan.”
Peter shoved Simone off his back and straightened his shirt. “I kind of emptied their memories and shoved them out of the building too, along with the security guard.”
I just stared at them, sliding my gaze from one to the other. “Explain please.”
Damian shrugged. “We were watching the building and saw Medusa go in as Megan Megara. So we entered the building and told everyone there was a summons from Zeus. But those two were already in your office so we grabbed them when they left.”
Peter nodded. “We tried to grab Medusa but she used the two Cupids as shields and got away.”
My knees buckled and I dropped my butt onto the nearest stable surface. It turned out to be the coffee table. “Are Hermes and Milan okay?”
Damian nodded. “They suffered only minor injuries. We sent them to Olympus with the others.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t believe all that had been going on in the building while I was completely oblivious. I realized Damian and Peter were right. The whole thing was so above my head it was ridiculous. I’d be better off letting them handle the snake-head sisters and staying out of the way.
I had a sudden thought. “The Furies?”
Damian laughed. “They got their asses kicked again.”
“Man, were they pissed.” Peter shook his head, chuckling.
I fought a smile. The Furies didn’t get bested very often and when they did, they more than earned their names. “They didn’t cause any damage on Earth, did they?”
A soft, lisping voice from behind Peter said, “Not on Earth.”
Simone was lying full length across the loveseat behind Peter, her lithe form curled around him. All I could see from where I sat were her shapely legs. She lifted one leg as I watched and draped it over Peter’s shoulder suggestively.
Though she certainly appeared to be completely focused on Peter and his body, apparently she had been paying attention.
He shoved her leg off his shoulder. “They chased Medusa and Euryale back to Olympus and lost them in the caverns underneath the mountain. The ground rumbled and the skies flashed for hours from their fury.”
Damian frowned. “They shouldn’t have to deal with them. That’s our job.”
Peter looked at the floor. Obviously they’d had that conversation before.
I stood up and headed into the bedroom to dress. “I’ll be ready to go in a few minutes.”
*
“Oopsies.”
I glared at Simone. Newly christened the Queen of Understatement, by me.
My house was a smoldering mess.
Apparently the gorgons had been there looking for me.
Damian put his arm around my shoulders and turned me back toward the car. “I was going to try to talk you into staying with me anyway. It’ll be much safer.”
I numbly allowed him to walk me to the car and nudge me inside. I even managed to hold back the tears for most of the drive up the mountain to his house.
But when we rounded that last curve and his big, beautiful, gorgon-free home slid into view, I couldn’t hold the wave of despair and tears at bay any longer.
It just wasn’t fair. He lost the stupid gorgons because he wanted to have sex with a succubus. How come it was my beautiful house—and all my wonderful stuff—that had to get obliterated?
Peter and Simone popped off almost as soon as we got safely to the house. Peter was going to take the succubus to Cupid’s Arrow and walk her through the plan. Watching her drape herself all over him as Damian gave Peter final instructions, I didn’t envy Peter trying to explain anything to her that didn’t have to do with sex.
As if reading my thoughts, Damian said. “Don’t underestimate her. They’re very intuitive and cunning creatures. She doesn’t miss a thing.”
I stared at the spot where Peter and Simone had just been. “Why don’t you do that popping around thing like Peter?”
Damian shrugged, turning toward the house. “I do. But I can’t pop around with other creatures. That’s Peter’s special magic. Mine is my special sight. Demons all have certain things they do better than others.”
I nodded, feeling drained and depressed. I let him take my hand and pull me toward the house.
“Are you okay?”
My gaze slid to him and I watched his features soften as he saw my red, wet eyes. He pulled me against his chest. “I’m sorry about your house, Athena.”
I sniffled, fighting to hold on to being mad at him. It wasn’t easy when he felt so damn good wrapped around me. “I know. It wasn’t your fault,” I said with at least a tinge of sincerity.
He pulled me away so he could look into my face, smiling softly. “I know you didn’t mean that and you’re right to blame me. Centuries of strict dedication to duty and it only took one night, just a couple of hours really, to screw it all up.” He shook his head. “I’m an idiot.”
Okay, I wasn’t mad at him anymore. I lifted up onto my tiptoes and planted a soft kiss on his lips. “Well yeah, you’re a guy.”
He looked surprised for a beat and then he smiled, realizing I was teasing him. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and we turned toward the house. “Actually I’m a demon.”
I winced before I could stop myself and felt him stiffen beside me. In an attempt to make light of it I said, “That’s twice as bad.”
He stopped just inside the door and turned me to face him. “Or twice as good.” His dark blue gaze on my face was searching.
I squirmed under the questions in his gaze. Forcing a smile, I said, “You’ll have to convince me.”
He lowered his head, stopping with his lips a breath away from mine. “With pleasure.”
His warm, soft lips feathered across mine.
I closed my eyes and held my breath as liquid heat shimmered through my body in response. His hands slipped beneath the oversized sweatshirt and cupped my breasts, rubbing my nipples between his fingers.
I placed my hands on his forearms, feeling the play of hard muscle under the cloth of his shirt.
His hands slid down my hips, pulling the formless sweatpants down my thighs as he went. I stepped out of them, leaving them in a puddle on the floor at our feet. Damian grabbed my buttocks in both hands and pulled my lower body against his so I could feel the hard ridge of his desire against my skin.
I gasped and lifted one leg, wrapping it around his hips, to bring my aching mound into closer contact with his denim-covered cock. I rubbed against him like a bitch in heat.
With his big, calloused hands still on my buttocks, Damian lifted me, placing my whole pussy over the hard ridge in his jeans. I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck and grabbed his hair in one fist, yanking his head back so I could consume his mouth.
Damian growled as my tongue plundered his mouth, dancing hungrily with his. He reached down and fought with the button and zipper of his jeans, his fingers rubbing against my tender flesh as he w
orked.
I moaned and threw my head back, grinding mindlessly against his fingers.
Damian inserted two fingers into the volcanic heat of my pussy and I gasped. He drove the fingers deep, spreading them to fill me as his thumb worked over my throbbing nub.
I came within seconds, bathing his questing fingers in warm cream.
Are you convinced?
My eyes jerked open. We were still standing by the door, fully dressed. “How’d you do that?”
He grinned and lifted his hands to the side. “Demon.”
I stared at him, my emotions wavering between anger and awe. What he’d done had been an unsanctioned intrusion into my mind. That was bad. But it had felt so damn good. And I had demanded convincing. Finally, remembering how incredible the orgasm had felt, real or not, awe and delight won the day.
I grinned back. “It was good for me. Was it good for you?”
In response, he growled and dragged my sweatpants down my legs. Yanking his jeans open, he pulled himself free and lifted me so that the fat head of his cock rested just inside my still-throbbing channel.
I moaned in delight as he allowed the weight of my body to drive his cock deep.
I used the strength of my thighs to lift me slowly off again, until his shaft came almost completely out of my body and then softened my muscles and slammed down hard over his rigid cock.
Damian gasped and leaned back against the wall, widening his stance on the glossy surface of the hard wood floor of the foyer to keep from going down under my sensual assault.
I rested my forehead against his, pulling the sweet breath he expelled into my lungs and savoring it. I kept up that same rhythm, with the slow ascension, enjoying the wonderful brush of his thick, hard cock against the sensitized skin of my vagina and then dropping back down, hard and deeply, onto his hard shaft, making him groan aloud.
After a few strokes Damian pushed himself off the wall and pulled me tight against his body, walking into the living room with me attached to his waist and riding his wonderful cock.
He lowered me so that I rested against the wide back and arm of the couch and, wrapping his arms around my knees, drove deeply into my body and increased the tempo of his strokes until my head was thrashing from side to side and my whole awareness was wrapped up in a single thought.
Climb that building wave and find my way to the other side, into delightful oblivion.
Hot sweat ran down Damian’s belly and anointed my thighs. His arms around my knees were slick. His hard thighs smacked against the back of my thighs as he drove into me, his tempo rising exponentially with my level of sensual madness.
Finally, I saw the edge of that wave and crested it. I screamed as pleasure bloomed at my sensual core and spread like sunlight through my body, warming and sensitizing every nerve ending in my skin and creating a shattering sensation in my mind.
Stars burst before my eyes.
The room dimmed and fell away, as every fiber in my being zeroed in on the man standing over me, watching him stiffen and cry out. Feeling his cock buck and fill my body with hot liquid. And pulling him more tightly and deeply into my starving body with my heels on his sweat-slicked buttocks.
The aftershocks of his release were enough to take me over again. I lay there, trembling and helpless against another wave of delight, my body going limp from the shock of being wrung so thoroughly free of sexual tension under Damian’s talented ministrations.
My pussy throbbed around his softening cock. My chest heaved. And my mind filled with euphoria.
I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t even think about moving.
My legs were rubber.
My toes were permanently curled.
And my ears were ringing.
Damian pulled away and reached for his jeans, pulling something out of the pocket. “Hello.”
I laughed. So much for the ringing in my ears.
He glanced at me, looking embarrassed. “Yeah, sorry. We got…distracted. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Oh yeah, the gorgons.
I groaned. How was I gonna help Damian and Peter recapture Medusa and her sister when I wasn’t even sure my legs would work?
Damian hung up and reached for my hand, pulling me gently off the couch. “Let’s find you some clothes. You need to go to work.” He inserted one of my fingers into his mouth and bit it gently, causing a flood of warm cream to run down my thigh as my pussy clenched in reaction.
Oh yeah. Work was what I needed.
Not!
*
The Cupid’s Arrow building looked as if nothing had ever happened to it. I greeted our receptionist, Becky, with a smile and she responded as she always had. I watched her face carefully for any signs that she was in on our little escapade but she was either an excellent actress or she had no idea anything was “afoot”.
I walked on down the hallway, toward my office. On impulse I stopped and knocked on Hermes’ door.
“Come!”
I opened the door and stuck my head inside. He was sitting behind his desk, a pile of paper in front of him. He looked a bit frazzled and maybe frustrated but nothing out of the ordinary.
“Hello, Hermes.”
He lifted his dark head and gave me a smile. My stomach did a little tumble, despite the fact that there was nothing at all romantic between us. Hermes was the least romantically interested of all the Cupids, having gone through a particularly nasty episode with a human woman that left permanent scars on his heart. But that took nothing away from his ligament-melting gorgeousness or his obvious sensuality.
“Hello, Athena.”
I stepped inside. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Ms. Megara is a very scary woman.”
He cocked his head at me, his dark brown, nearly black eyes narrowing slightly. “Ms. Megara?” He shook his head, obviously uncomprehending.
“The woman you escorted from my office a few days ago.”
Hermes stared at me for a long moment and then grinned. “You’re punking me, right? Where’s the camera?”
A cold sweat broke over me. He really didn’t remember.
“Did Milan put you up to this? He’s been trying to prove that I’m losing my mind for months.” Despite the words, his grin didn’t waver. Obviously the two men had some mutual, fun-loving torture thing going on.
Must be a guy thing.
I laughed, hoping it sounded more natural to Hermes than it did to me. “I am, yes. I’m teasing you. I understand we’re having lunch together today.”
He looked at the folders on his desk and nodded. “Yes, the Simone Succi/Damian Leandar match? I just got Ms. Succi’s file yesterday. I made a reservation at Gnocci’s.”
I cringed inwardly. “That’s perfect.” Gnocci’s was an elegant Italian restaurant that was located just a few blocks from the agency. We often had client meetings there and it was one of my favorites. But this time, the restaurant’s gilded elegance and pristine white tablecloth aura seemed wrong somehow, for a meeting that could conceivably erupt into violence if Medusa decided not to wait around for a more private “audience” with her prey.
Maybe a biker bar would have been a better choice.
I agreed that Damian and I would meet Hermes and Simone at Gnocci’s at noon and left his office. I hoped I’d been successful in hiding my misgivings with the whole thing but wasn’t sure I’d succeeded. I could feel his dark, speculative gaze on my back as I left.
I was half afraid to open my office door. The last time I’d seen it the outside wall had just been blown out and the space was a battleground for three Furies and two gorgons.
I wasn’t sure there was enough magic in all of Olympus to recover from that.
Clasping the knob, I bit my lip and closed my eyes. I pushed the door open and opened my eyes. The room looked completely normal. The window and wall were whole again. The furniture was intact. And my files were neatly stacked in the center of my large mahogany desk just as I’d left them.
I grinned and walked inside, closing the door quietly behind me. I fought the urge to walk on my tippytoes, expecting it all to fall apart around me if I so much as made too large a noise.
As I walked toward my desk something sparked in front of my eyes and I sneezed. Magic dust still hung on the air. The only proof that my office had recently undergone mystical interference.
Sitting down at my desk I looked at my files, for the first time in my long career as a Cupid, I wasn’t sure what to do next.
What did one do when one awaited the end of the world?
Just going back to work as if nothing had happened didn’t seem right. While I’d always felt that what the agency did was important, somehow it now paled against the fight I knew was coming.
My phone rang, saving me from my dilemma. “Hello?”
“Are we on track?” It was Damian.
“I just spoke with Hermes. He said we’re to meet at noon.”
“I’m in the building.”
I sat up straighter. “What? Why?”
“Look outside.”
I stood up and walked over to my window. Though it had been clear and sunny when I entered Cupid’s Arrow, the sky outside had darkened and now roiled with fat, black clouds, shot through with bolts of deadly-looking lightning. “Damian, please tell me that’s just a normal summer storm.”
“’Fraid not. Medusa and Euryale are nearby. After what happened last time, I doubt they’ll attack you at the agency again but I’m not going to stand out there and wait for that to happen. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for the next couple of hours.”
Not an altogether unpleasant thought…if we were anywhere but Cupid’s Arrow…and didn’t have two very pissed-off gorgons gunning for us.
I grinned. “Sounds awful. I’ll try to deal.”
“I’ll try to make it painless for you.” His voice had a smile in it. “I’m going to spend some time with Hermes, to make sure his…mind…is set right for our lunch. But if anything happens just scream and I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”
After I hung up I decided to call Lila James. I still hadn’t had an opportunity to complete their arrow ceremony and I felt bad about that. They’d both looked so long and so hard for the perfect match and I didn’t want anything to go wrong before I could get them well and truly matched.
