I’d come to find out why the dork had let bodies pile up in my demesne, but now I found myself with an entirely different reason to stay.
When had Hades gotten to be so hawt?
That was the way Nim had said it once. That Sircco was hawwwt. She’d fanned herself while saying it, which had led me to believe that was an entirely different level of handsome. It was something beyond mere aesthetics, more like…“You are both handsome, and I wish to slather you in oils and sex you up.”
Or at least that’s how I’d understood it.
I very much wanted to slather Hades’ body in oil and have my wicked, wicked way with him.
I would start with his thighs maybe. Dig my claws into them, make him moan and writhe and beg and then hop on his stiffy and bounce my way up and down to satisfaction. I’d seen a sailor and his bride doing that through a porthole once, and it’d looked erotically glorious.
But my daydreams were being continuously interrupted by the shouting going on around me.
There was more blathering going on. Hephaestus—the little midget of a man with a wicked mustache and a shocking flame of orange hair—was shaking his fist at Apollo.
Beautiful Apollo with his golden smile and equally radiant head of hair was smirking down at the little man with the pompous arrogance of a prick. It was rumored Apollo preferred men to women. A shame, too; I might have enjoyed riding him.
Then again, there was a dark attraction to the broody, mesmerizing Hades that beckoned me in a way Apollo’s sunny glories could not.
Talk of bloodstained earth, Cerberus being gone…blah blah blah. I found myself annoyed by the lot of them all over again.
The blowhards were so bloody self-absorbed that they’d probably never notice if I just up and left now.
The gates were open now, the bodies polluting my waters no more. Technically I could leave and none would care.
I looked back at Hades and realized that somehow I’d taken two steps closer to his side. I sniffed as his scent seemed to draw around me—patchouli and wood smoke.
It was oddly…interesting.
I sniffed again.
From the corner of my eye, I caught Dite staring at me thoughtfully. I glanced up.
“What?” I asked.
She approached me, her big, beautiful eyes blinking back at me. “You smell of lust, Sea. I find that rather intriguing. Are you not a virgin goddess?”
I snorted. “If I smell of lust, can you blame me? Your stench washes through this place.”
A long red fingernail tapped upon her slightly pointy chin. “No, that’s not it. I recognize my own scent. This is different. And may I say, you look different, too. Last time I saw you, you were far more cool and reserved.”
There’d been a time in my not-too-distant past when I’d remained private and aloof, keeping no company other than Linx’s. I’d been content to take care of the children of Seren and wonder about nothing more.
But Nimue was a breath of fresh air, one I’d never even realized I’d needed.
I shrugged. “Times change.”
Straight white teeth gleamed. “You speak differently, too. Far more modern.”
I crossed my arms. “What is your point, wench?”
The tinkling sound of Dite’s laughter broke me out in a wash of goose flesh. No one around us seemed to notice or care that we carried on a conversation all our own.
“My point is, I rather like it.” She waggled her brows. “I’ve grown tired of this lot, but being around you, my love, is like drinking the sweet dew of ambrosia. I think we should be friends.”
I frowned. “I think I should drown you.”
“See!” Aphrodite snuffled with laughter. The sound was entirely unladylike, and yet with her being the Goddess of Love and all, the sound was positively charming. “You are wonderful. I do not need to worry about you smiling in my face and shoving a dagger in my back.”
The thought did not compute. “If I was going to shove a dagger into you, I’d do it while you looked on.”
I was confused that she’d believe otherwise; stabbing one in the back was bad form. Bad form indeed.
Wrapping an arm around my shoulders, she squeezed me gently. “How have I gone my whole life without knowing you, dear one?”
“Because I find you all to be beastly bores.”
Amusement continued to sparkle through her lovely eyes. She confused me.
“I agree. Truth be told,” she leaned in to whisper hotly in my ear, “I only came here today because Hephy made me.”
By some quirk of fate, the enchanting creature before me had fallen madly in love with the deformed little imp Hephaestus. Theirs was an odd match, but it was rumored to be a healthy one.
So far as Olympian matches went, that was.
“What are they doing to Hades?” When I said his name, I looked back at him and again experienced a wonderfully delicious sensation of heat whipping like lava through my veins.
He had a face that would make a master sculptor weep. Classically handsome, with dark, swarthy features. Deep, impenetrable eyes. Yes, I wanted him as my first sex partner.
“Whew,” Dite lifted her hand off me and shook her fingers. “You’re positively brimming with raw lust. So you want to have Count Dracula’s babies, do you?”
“Count Dracula? No, I do not know of whom you speak. Nor do I wish more children. I have plenty. I just want to screw Hades’ liver out.”
Dite blinked. “I believe the expression is ‘screw his brains out.’”
“Whatever.” I shrugged. Nimue often laughed at my inability to form proper phrases. “I want him.”
“What would you be willing to do to get him?”
“Make him my sex slave?” The thought had honestly never occurred to me. But now that it did, there was some merit to it. I could already imagine that big, brawny body strapped to my bed, naked and pleading for mercy.
I grinned.
“Not a slave, dear. You cannot enslave any of us.”
“Oh, I could enslave him. Without my permission to breathe below, he’d drown. He would be required to do my bidding in all things.”
“Such a deviant mind, Sea. I love it!” Dite clapped her hands prettily.
Everything about her was pretty. I might have been nauseated were it not for the fact that she currently amused me.
Themis held up her scales of justice.
Aphrodite leaned in. “They are about to pass judgment, and once it is passed, his fate is sealed. Which means you have less than a minute to decide if sexing up Hades is worth it.”
“What can I do?”
“All here believe Hades has orchestrated a plot to have Persephone removed from his Underworld. Offer to take him as your prisoner instead.”
Anyone who knew the two of them wouldn’t have a hard time believing that to be true. Persephone was the apple of her mother’s eye and a giant douche bag. She was spoiled, rotten, and self-centered.
Hades was also vile, loathsome, and fiercely dangerous.
My heart sped.
I stepped forward just as Themis opened her mouth.
“Excuse me, ladies and gents,” I curtsied quickly, flashing my most winsome and innocent smile. “I think we got off on the wrong fin here.”
“Calypso,” Zeus said through gritted teeth, “step aside before I make you step aside.”
My smile vanished. But it was the quick shake of Dite’s head that held my tongue. Swallowing my anger, I pinched out another smile, this one not quite as believable as the last one.
“What I’m trying to say here is, I want him.” I pointed at Hades, who now had his head bowed and seemed to be glaring furiously at the ground.
“Want him?” Poseidon snapped. “You are mine.”
“Oh, piss off, fish fart.”
Zeus held up his hand. “Olympus save me,” he groaned. “Calypso, the evidence is clear. Hades has either killed Persephone or knows the fate that has befallen her. Either way, he must be made to pay. And
unless you have new evidence to present—”
I smiled sweetly. “Well actually, thunder butt, I do.”
He gnashed his teeth, and Aphrodite looked like she was about to come unglued from suppressed laughter.
Themis’s scales tipped sharply downward. “She speaks truth.”
Hera rubbed the bridge of her nose furiously. As Queen of the Pantheon, she had equal rights to demand answers in this trial. “Then tell us, Calypso, for all our sakes.”
Walking over to Hades, I once again was cocooned in the warmth of his scent. Placing a hand on his shoulder until he looked into my eyes, I asked him, “Oh, God of Darkness, tell me, when was the last time you left this hellhole?”
“I’ve not left in thirty-seven years and fifty-six days.”
The scales leveled out.
“Truth,” Themis decreed.
Turning to the crowd, I held out my arms, striking a dramatic pose. If there was anything in this world more dramatic than the waters of the deep, I did not know it.
“So you see, it was not him.”
“That literally tells us nothing.” Zeus shook his head.
I rolled my eyes. “Poseidon, you ignorant fool, tell them what you smelled back in the blood-soaked field.”
His eyes widened, and as I’d suspected, I knew he’d withheld one very important, key bit of evidence from the bloodthirsty mob.
Zeus twirled on his brother, his white beard beginning to darken and fluff up like a thundercloud. “What did you smell, brother?”
Behind me, I sensed rather than saw Hades’ head snap up.
“Just because I smelled it doesn’t mean that Hades wasn’t involved in some way. We all know the history of loathing that exists between the two.”
“What the hell did you smell!” Zeus roared. A flash of lightning struck at Poseidon’s heel, making him jerk away.
“If you weren’t all so quick to make snap judgments—” I said and then was rudely interrupted.
“You’re one to talk,” a deep male voice said. My coral was on Apollo.
I smiled; he’d be getting a nasty surprise when he got home later to discover his once-immaculate mansion now dripping with seawater and kelp.
Pressing on, I ignored his little jab. For now. “—then you’d know that the air reeked of Seren cone snail. A nasty little creature with a most venomous touch. That, oh,” I tapped a finger to my chin, “lives in the deepest parts of my waters and cannot survive more than fifteen minutes in the Above before dying. Poor dear. To be frank, there are so few of us here who could possibly get our hands on one that I’d be more apt to lay the blame on fish breath first.”
“You devilish hag!” Poseidon roared, and rain fell in thick sheets around us all.
But I remained toasty and dry, tossing up a deflective shield over not only myself but also Dite (since I rather liked her after all) and Hades because he was hawt and I wished to bang the liver out of him.
Everyone began yelling then, snarling at Poseidon to turn off the waterworks. I merely stuck out my tongue at him.
Themis’s scales leveled out. “All true. Judgment must now be delayed until I can study the new evidence that has come to light.”
Demeter lifted a hand. “Until Persephone is discovered, I cannot allow Hades to remain here. If her body is buried here, he’ll try to—”
“You have no right!” Hades finally spoke up for himself. “I’ve told you often enough what your daughter has done. Her wildness has led her here. This is not on me!”
“And yet her soul screams out to me!” Demeter snapped, her eyes brimming over with tears.
I did feel a small thread of sympathy; after all, I was a mother myself. Should any of my precious babies be lost to me thus, I’d lose my poop. Or was that shit?
Probably shit.
Poop sounded so silly.
I sighed. “I want him. I’ll take him. Considering he cannot leave my waters unless I grant it, he will be perfectly tortured until you can discover where Persephone has gone.”
“Tortured?” Dite frowned, obviously thinking I’d misspoken again, but this time I hadn’t.
I did mean to torture him. In every conceivable way. I’d make him scream my name to the very heavens. My thighs tingled at the thought.
“Calypso,” Poseidon drawled, no doubt ready to go all caveman on me again and claim me as his own.
We hated each other, and yet he hated to lose what was “his” more.
“Oh, shut your trap and go mate another porpoise.”
Themis shook her head. “I will now pass judgment.”
She had to mostly scream to be heard above the hullaballoo. “Calypso, Goddess of the Sea, your request has been granted. You shall keep Hades within your Kingdom for the next fortnight. He cannot be allowed into the Above for any reason while we follow the evidentiary trail toward the true culprit. Should he escape, he will be lashed a thousand times by Athena’s whip, chained to a rock, and have his eyes picked on by vultures for the next thousand years.”
“Oh, is that all?” Hades growled.
My lips twitched. He was funny.
“Hades, should all signs still point to you, however, you will suffer the fate laid out after the two weeks are up. I hope these terms are sufficient for all.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway.
“Not really.”
“Good,” Zeus boomed. “Then take him and go.”
Chapter 3
Calypso
Hades wasn’t particularly keen on my method of transportation. I’d already had to knock a watery fist into his thick skull a time or twenty to get him to stop screaming at me as we sank beneath the waves.
“If you stop screaming, you’ll stop swallowing so much damned water,” I said sweetly, plastering on a tight smile.
He could breathe. Sort of.
I hadn’t given him the kiss of life yet, but it was kind of fun to have him completely at my mercy and clinging to my body like a man drowning.
He pinned me with a cold, obsidian glare, clamping his full, kissable lips shut and snarling hate at me. Seriously. I saw the hate just bubbling off his shoulders like pools of heated lava.
“You can breathe, you know.”
He shoved his face to within an inch of my own, his nostrils flaring like Linx’s sometimes would when she was really angry. Aw, he was so cute.
“Only when I’m clamped onto your side like a foul leech. Kiss me and allow me to retain at least a small measure of dignity here, Calypso.”
My heart beat faster than a hoodoo priestess banging on her drums.
“You only needed to ask, Dead Boy.”
The waters around us were a black so deep it seemed bottomless, but my body glowed like a raft of mating kreels. I glimmered every shade of blue and knew I looked beautiful.
Hades might dislike me right now, but he was enraptured by me. I could see it in his eyes. Many a man had lost his heart to the Sea. He’d not be the first. But the Sea had never lost her heart to any man.
Still, when I dug my nails into the curve of his ass and yanked him to me, it was I who trembled.
I’d seen sex. Too many times to count. Seen the courtship before and after. I knew what I was doing. But I’d never technically done it before.
Still, how hard could it be? Insert tab into slot, grunt, writhe, moan, boom…sex. Easy.
I bet it didn’t even feel all that great.
Opening my mouth, I called to the life inside me, the sweet nectar of air that I would gift upon him with one press of my lips to his.
I warned all creatures away from me. I wanted nothing and no one to hinder my first-ever, honest-to-Kingdom kiss.
“Open your mouth,” I commanded him.
Smart man that he was, he didn’t argue.
He opened, and then the tip of his tongue swiped along his upper lip, and I couldn’t stop myself anymore. With a groan, I slammed my mouth to his. Just this touch was sufficient to let him breathe. I felt his chest infl
ate as my air became his. I knew he could move unhindered now, but he was mine. At least for the next two weeks.
So I altered the kiss just slightly. And then I stopped thinking about altered kisses when his tongue swiped along the inside seam of my lips. Greedy, I sucked him in, twining my tongue through his.
He tasted of power, divine, magnificent, colossal power. Every inch of my body felt electrified by his deadly touch.
Hades was the keeper of the dead. Be you a mortal, to touch him would mean to seal your doom. To taste of his flesh would feel like bathing in the pits of Tartarus for an eternity.
But for me…ye gods.
The Seren seas churned. Waves rocked upon the shores. My children crawled from out of their caves, their homes, aware of the primal magick just released upon them.
I moved my hands from his ass to the rock-hard planes of his back and up to the nape of his neck. Nimue said that if you clawed at a man’s head just lightly, with a tiny little scrape, they’d come undone.
I scraped, and Hades shuddered.
His hard fingers dug into my shoulders, the grip firm and punishing. And it was glorious.
I purred into the back of my throat when I finally pulled away, licking my lips like a very contented kittycat.
Hades looked supremely pleased with himself. His dark hair was a mussed mess around his broad forehead.
“I could leave you now, Sea. Disappear through these waters and never return,” he mocked.
I cocked my head, the glow of my body even brighter in intensity than before. There wasn’t an inch of me that didn’t tingle. I laughed.
“Why, because I’ve kissed life into your lungs? Do you truly believe me fool enough to give you all of me? There is none that can tame the Sea. Remember that, my precious Reaper.”
He took a deep breath. “I am a god, Calypso. You cannot own me.”
“Who said I wanted to own you? I just want your body. Your…” I glanced down at his very obviously bulging package. “…prick. The kiss I granted you may not consider much of a gift in time, soon-to-be lover.”
Narrowing his eyes, he shook his head. “What have you done to me?”
I shrugged, trailing a finger down the razor-sharp plane of his left cheek. “I’ve only made you dizzy with dependency for me. For the next two weeks, you are my slave. So suck it up, Bubble Butt.”
The Greek Gods of Romance Collection Page 3
