Unlovable

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  “Because,” Liam answered, “if I don’t take you to Stefano and prove that you’re not the Matilda Schmidt he’s looking for, he’ll just send someone else after you. Someone not as nice.”

  “Nice,” I snorted. If I had to cobble together a description of the man in the driver’s seat, nice wouldn’t figure in. Plenty of other four letter words suggested themselves.

  “I didn’t handcuff you this time,” he pointed out, pulling a Twizzler from the open pack sitting between us.

  I was going to need a fourteen-day cleanse after this.

  “A gentleman, truly.” I selected a Twizzler of my own. “But what about the pictures? How is it possible that someone with my name, and who looks exactly like me, just happened to run up a million dollar debt to Stefano the Fathead?”

  He cleared his throat. “I lied. There were no pictures. I had a basic physical description. That’s all.”

  “What?” I stared at his profile, resisting the urge to whip what was left of my licorice across his wrist.

  “When I saw you were a psychologist, I thought if I had some sort of damning physical evidence that could threaten your practice, you’d be more likely to cooperate.”

  “That’s…that’s manipulation!”

  “Which is completely different from employing your expertise to uncover the traumatic history of total strangers and using the information to elicit emotional pain.”

  “I would never—” But then I remembered the shower. The things I’d said to him. A pang of guilt pierced my chest. “Forgive me if being abducted brings out my less desirable qualities.”

  “I’m not saying I didn’t deserve it. Just that you are more than capable of manipulation when it serves your purposes.”

  “Are we there yet?” Cupid’s rumpled, curly head peeked up from the back seat.

  “Almost,” I said.

  “Fucking longest drive ever,” he yawned.

  “You do realize you are free to leave at any time,” Liam said. “I made this abundantly clear at the motel.”

  “And miss the final showdown?” Cupid laughed. “Hell with that! This is the most excitement I’ve had in centuries!”

  “You don’t find helping people fall in love exciting?” I asked.

  “It’s work,” he shrugged.

  “And did you enjoy your work before Psyche?” I probed.

  “Forget it, Doctor,” Cupid said. “We’re not doing this.”

  Liam took another Twizzler. “Who the hell is Psyche?”

  “The most beautiful woman in the world,” Cupid sighed.

  “Only that didn’t go over well with the goddess Aphrodite,” I said. “Who happens to be—”

  “Cupid’s mom,” Liam interrupted. “Even I had to learn some mythology in high school.”

  I found it hard to imagine Liam as a high school kid, going to classes, eating lunch in the cafeteria. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. How exactly did you get into this…business?”

  Liam’s jaw hardened as he stared straight at the road ahead. “I guess you could say the business got into me. Hereditary, so to speak.”

  “Your mother?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I started running errands for some of her dealer friends while I was in high school. Then some of her friends’ friends. I worked my way up from there. The money was good enough to feed my brothers and sisters, so I kept after it.”

  “How many?” Cupid asked. “Brothers and sisters.”

  “Five,” Liam answered. “We all had different dads. It was pretty messed up.”

  “My mom sent me to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest man in the world,” Cupid snorted. “How’s that for messed up?”

  “No one in this car is in a position to judge when it comes to moms,” I said, wanting to prevent the conversation from becoming a contest.

  “So what happened after that?” Liam asked, glancing over his shoulder at Cupid.

  “Well,” I continued, “Cupid goes to give the love dart business to Psyche when he ends up wounding himself with his own arrow.”

  “It was her tits,” Cupid insisted. “There I was, ready to let one fly, when she looks up and flashes me her tits. Before I know it, the arrow’s in my thigh, and I’m in Psyche’s bed and she’s telling me she always had a thing for me and…” he trailed off.

  “I been there, man,” Liam said, glancing over at me. “Amazing what a nice pair of tits will make a guy do.”

  I indulged in a secret smile.

  “Anyway, mom was furious when she found out. Not only was Psyche beautiful, but when I… when we…did what we did, she sort of became immortal too.”

  “Must be some powerful juice you got there,” Liam said.

  “You know it.” Cupid winked.

  “So what happened to her?” I asked.

  “My mom must have gotten to her. One day, Psyche told me we could never be together, rode away on Pegasus, and never came back.”

  I turned in my seat to look at him and was surprised to see the wet trails down his rosy cheeks. “You never looked for her?”

  “When?” He laughed bitterly. “Every day, all these years, it’s ‘help humans find love’ or the world ends. But that shit is over. I’m done. And I don’t care if Zeus does replace me. Fuck him.”

  “No,” Liam said. “Fuck her. Fuck your mother for making you take care of her when she should have been taking care of you. Fuck her for being so wrapped in her own needs that she didn’t give a shit about yours. She’s the fucking goddess of love and beauty, isn’t she? Couldn’t she get off her pampered ass and fill in for you once in a while? Couldn’t she give a fucking thought to your happiness? She shouldn’t have leaned on you. Shouldn’t have used you. Shouldn’t have left you alone to deal with the mess she made. Fuck. Her!”

  His voice tightened over this last word, and the tears I’d been trying to blink away spilled down my cheeks. I reached over and laid a hand on Liam’s knee.

  When he continued, it was on firmer ground. “Just because you are your mother’s son doesn’t mean you can’t be your own man. Psyche’s out there somewhere. And if you want her, it’s up to you to go get her.”

  “You just have to start somewhere,” I added.

  “There!” he shouted. He had lunged at the window, his face pressed against the glass.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s really specific. I admire your—”

  “No,” he insisted. “That’s her. There!”

  I leaned across Liam’s lap and gasped. There, on a billboard surrounded by parade of flashing lights, was the image of a nude woman astride a winged unicorn. Swaths of rainbow sequins rode over her full, shapely breasts, covering only enough to satisfy the censors. “See Psyche and Her Naughty Unicorn,” undulated across the top of the billboard in similarly glittering letters. “Midnight Review at the Black Rock Casino,” was pasted across the bottom.

  “Wow,” Liam whispered, ducking to get a better view through the windshield. “I can see what you mean about the tits.”

  “I know, right?” Cupid agreed.

  “Eyes on the road!” I slapped the back of Liam’s head, and he corrected his car back into the lane.

  Cupid reached around the headrest and grabbed the collar of Liam’s shirt. “We have to go there. Right now!”

  “We can’t go there right this second. I have to bring Matilda to Stefano the Fathead. We’re expected.”

  His word sent a shiver of dread through me. Could Liam really bring me through this unharmed?

  “But it’s almost midnight. What if we miss her?”

  Liam took the exit for the strip and pulled up to the first stoplight. “Look, kid. I came here to do a job, and—”

  The locks clicked a split second before the driver’s door opened, and Liam was ripped out of the car. He grunted as his body hit the pavement and rolled.

  “Liam!” I screamed.

  “I’m afraid not.” A huge, muscled body slid into the driver seat, shut the door, and screeched off.
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  It took a few seconds for the memories and present moment to align. The voice. The face. “Crixus!”

  “At your service.”

  I started hitting him. Hands sailing blind, not caring where they made contact. A high, shrill sound filled the car, and I realized I was screaming obscenities.

  “What the fuck is your problem?” Crixus shouted. “I’m saving your life!”

  “Saving my life? Where the hell were you when I was abducted at gunpoint, drugged, and dragged all the way across the country? Huh?” I didn’t give him time to answer.

  “That’s right! You were fucking. My. Assistant.” Each of these words, I punctuated with a blow to his massive shoulder. “And what took you so long to catch up with us? Where the hell have you been?”

  “I’ve been trying to find you since the second I knew you were gone. It’s not like you left a trail of breadcrumbs or anything.”

  “I swear to God,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Do you demigods actually have any powers? Are you just really old and mostly useless?”

  “Oh, I have powers, Doctor. I—”

  My fist slammed into his jaw with enough force to send pain ringing through my knuckles. “Say ‘doctor’ like that one more time, and I might have to shove your head through the window.”

  Crixus blinked at me in surprise, then threw back his head and laughed. “Someone got laid!” His booming chuckle filled the car like light. When he finally regained his composure, he gave me a slanted smile. “The delivery boy? That’s the guy you finally give it up for?”

  I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears. “Like you’re in a position to judge? And he’s not a delivery boy. He’s a hit man.”

  “Who’s judging? I’m just a little shocked. I thought it would take a hell of a lot more than some Vegas meat head with a big gun to pry those panties off your tight little ass.”

  “At least he wasn’t off fucking my assistant while his quarry got nabbed,” I retorted.

  “No, his quarry was you.”

  “Which reminds me,” I said squaring my shoulders to his profile, “how is it you can hear my thoughts when I’m alone and scared in my apartment, but not when I’m being kidnapped at gunpoint?”

  “Certain…activities…compromise my abilities. So does distance. Which is part of why it took me so long to find you.”

  “And when you finally do find me, you pull the only man who can convince Stefano the Fathead that I don’t owe him a million dollars out of the car and leave him in the street. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused me?”

  “No, but I know how much trouble I’d like to cause you.” He turned and winked at me.

  A fresh wave of anger swept over me, and I launched myself across the seat at Crixus, hands reaching for his throat.

  The car caught air as we jumped a curb and narrowly missed making drag queen pâté out of the spandex and sequin-clad bodies leaping out of our way. Dust and bricks scattered onto our hood as we slammed into a cinderblock wall, half in and half out of a motel parking lot.

  “We are so screwed,” I informed Crixus. “The police will be here any second. How are we going to explain this?”

  “We’re not,” he said, grabbing my hand. “Let’s get out of here. Come on Cu—fuck! Where’s Cupid?”

  I peered into the back seat to find only a handful of feathers. “Looks like you lost him. Again.”

  “I can see that,” Crixus said. “Any ideas where he might have gone?”

  “Black Rock Casino would be my guess, as Psyche is performing there.”

  Crixus glanced at the growing crowd with alarm. “Then we need to get there. Now.” He grabbed me by the arm, but I shrugged him off.

  “Cupid is your responsibility, not mine. I’m going back for Liam.”

  “Trust me, whatever the delivery boy did for you, I can do,” he said, closing the distance between us. “Many times over.”

  “I’m not interested in—” but then I was crushed between Crixus and the car, unsure of which body was harder. His lips came down on mine as his hands tangled in my hair. Whether by some ancient magic, or a trick of biology I’d yet to learn, every cell of my body exploded with pleasure, then collapsed.

  The world disappeared.

  *****

  Materializing wasn’t such a bad way to travel.

  Once you got past the feeling of shattering into billions of little bits only to be squeezed back together through the universe’s crushing fist.

  The full-body orgasm helped.

  We popped into the Black Rock casino’s slot machine area, barely a blip on the radar of all the bodies moving through the smoke-choked, ringing hell.

  “What…the hell…was that?” I huffed, weak-kneed and wobbly.

  “Materializing.” A familiar wicked grin found his sculpted lips. “The only way for a mortal to come with me is to come with me.”

  I stared up into his fathomless blue eyes. “You can do that with just a kiss?”

  “No,” he said. “The kiss is optional. But I’ve been wondering how you’d taste since I heard the whisky in your voice over the phone. Which way to the theatre?”

  “What?” My head was as light as my stomach was heavy.

  “The theatre,” Crixus repeated. “Isn’t that where Cupid would be?”

  “Right. Yes.” I scanned the mirrored ceilings. “This way.”

  Crixus plowed a path through the crowd, dragging me behind him. We pulled up short when we reached the gilded theatre doors, noting the men in suits scanning tickets beyond velvet ropes. Crixus peered past them into the auditorium and pulled me into the side hall by the restrooms.

  Looking both ways to make sure we were alone, he wrapped me in the wall of his body for a second time, and I felt the pressure beginning to build in my stomach.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Not a—” Pop!

  We were backstage, at the center of a long cement hallway flanked by doors on either side. I collapsed to my knees, unable to control the violent spasms ricocheting through my body. A moan escaped my lips as my back arched.

  “Five minutes!” someone called. Bodies dressed in black scrambled in every direction. Clipped footsteps paused beside me. “Is she okay?”

  Crixus bent down and pulled me up by the shoulders. “Very,” he said. I let him steady me against the hard planes of his body. “Can you stand?” he whispered against my ear.

  Goosebumps raced down my neck. “Do that again, and I might be able to fly,” I sighed.

  “Don’t tempt me.” His voice had lost all traces of its typical arrogant jocularity, and I understood it for the warning it was.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not thinking clearly.”

  He spun me to face him. “Don’t kid yourself, Doctor. After this is over, I intend to make you come until you lose your fucking mind.”

  “But,” I stammered, “I need my mind.”

  Crixus ran a rough thumb over my lower lip. “Not after office hours. There!”

  I followed the direction of his gaze and saw the tip of a wing poking out behind the blood-red velvet curtain at the end of the hall.

  We pushed our way through a maze of half-naked dancers dressed like fairies, nymphs, and fauns.

  The wing fluttered a little as we drew closer and Crixus held up an arm and brought his fingers to his lips.

  Then he pounced. “Gotcha!”

  But the wing did not belong to Cupid. It belonged to a horse.

  It belonged to Pegasus.

  “Son of a bitch,” Pegasus swore. “Let the fuck go!” He flapped his wing and Crixus lost his grip.

  “It can talk,” I marveled.

  “It can do a lot more than talk,” the velvet muzzle reported, looking me over from head to toe.

  “Pegasus,” warned a silky, female voice. “She’s not like us.”

  The billboard did her no justice. In person, Psyche had me wondering if I might not have resisted men for so long because I was waiting for her.

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nbsp; Wide green eyes flecked with fire gold were set into creamy skin more flawless than marble. Her lips retained a perfection only nature could sculpt, a marked contrast to the silicone-inflated tubes attached to the women making their way toward the stage.

  Dark, silky hair fell in tumbling waves to her tiny waist, the tendrils framing the most perfect pair of breasts I had ever seen.

  I felt a momentary pang of regret for slapping Liam when he looked at the billboard. Liam. Was he okay?

  “Nice to see you again, Crixus.“ Psyche smiled. “It’s been a while.”

  And Crixus, the assistant-boffing manwhore, actually blushed and looked at his combat boots. “Lo,” he mumbled.

  “You’ll have to excuse them.” Psyche’s smile shamed the summer sun. “Males are males, immortal or no. Psyche,” she said, holding out a delicate hand.

  “Tits,” I said, taking it. “Er…Tilda. Matilda. Schmidt.”

  “And how do you two know each other?” she asked, looking from me to Crixus.

  “Because of me.” Out of the shadows stepped a golden-haired god. And god was the only description that approached the absolute perfection of the young man before me. Smooth bronze skin covered musculature found only on Greek statuary. Sapphire bright blue eyes winked above his high cheekbones. His strong jaw ended in a classically cleft chin.

  Psyche’s hand flew to her mouth. “Eros?” she whispered.

  “Cupid?” Somewhere in my absolute shock, I lost the ability to monitor the volume of my own voice.

  All eyes turned to me, and in a dimpled grin, I saw the boy who had first tumbled into my office.

  “You didn’t think I always looked like that, did you?” he asked.

  “Me? No. Of course not.”

  Cupid’s washboard abdominals rippled with laughter. “Sometimes it’s convenient to be travel-sized,” he said. “And the wings. Only have those when I’m small.” He turned to show me a wingless back. The leather quiver filled with golden arrows remained.

  “Hey,” I said, looking at fabric draping his hips. “It really is a loincloth.”