She shuddered, hugging me so tight to her warm, rose-scented body. “So good, Hephaestus. You were always so good.”
I rumbled my approval of her words through my big barrel chest. Taking my time with her. Running my fingers along the soft contours of her precious, precious body. Molding her as I would my clay. My strokes strong and sure. And she arched beneath me, so pretty. So perfect. A net of her glittering pink power enveloped us both, and I felt her lust, her love, and her bottomless desire for me and me alone.
I pumped into her. Slow and steady. Easing in and then out, in no hurry, prolonging the perfection of our joining.
She gasped when I hit a certain spot in her cervix.
“Oh dear, primordial gods,” she whispered, “it’s so much better. So much better than I remembered.”
A part of me wanted to think it was because I was better than what she’d ever had. But there would be no more comparisons. Comparisons were a poison that could infect us both, and the ghosts of our past lovers had to be gone. Forever. That was the only way we could move on and forge our new destiny.
I kissed her mouth. Her neck. I kneaded her breasts, and with my free hand I encircled her bright-pink pearl with just the tip of my pinky finger.
Her pants grew, increased in strength and frequency. Then she was gleaming, fire was crawling from out of her pores. Encircling me. She screamed as she dug her claw-like nails into my back.
“Hephaestus, my Hephaestus!” she cried, and I grunted as I came in a mighty surge, filling her again with my seed.
She was mine. And I was hers. All hers.
We made love throughout the long night, and she whispered of her fealty, her devotion and love to me. And bit by bit, I knew this was real. Not a dream. Not a fantasy.
And just as the twilight of sky began to give way to the rising of the morning sun, I leaned up on my elbow and looked down at her. I’d lost count of how many times we’d made love. All I knew was I could spend an eternity loving this woman and it would never be enough.
She wore a shy smile, but her eyes radiated her love for me. Her fingers played in the now short strands of my hair. I would need to let it grow out some again. She’d actually seemed to like it long, and I would do anything, be anything for this woman.
It was time to make the last and ultimate sacrifice. I girded myself and tamped down the fear that saying these three simple words made me feel.
“I love you,” I whispered brokenly. “I love you so damn much, Aphrodite. I cannot be without you. Live without you.”
She grinned, and joy pinched her lovely eyes. “Then never leave me again. Vow it, god of the forge. Be mine only. Forever.”
“Always,” I whispered, tracing heart-shaped lines over the mark she’d been given. Already, it healed, and soon, it would be no more, but I would never forget what she’d done for me.
“I love you.” I repeated it and knew I would keep repeating it all the days of my life.
She sighed as she ran her soft, velvety foot along my hairy, withered calf. I continued to stroke her flesh, painting lines upon her beautiful body and smirking as I felt the children kick again. They’d been kicking for the past hour. “They are strong. But I guess they should be. They do have their father’s blood coursing through their veins. What an extraordinary set of circumstances we’ve found ourselves in, little ass.”
She giggled and then snorted, and gods, it felt like heaven to my ears. Burying my face in the hollow of her rose-scented throat, I kissed her softly. She moaned and wrapped her arms around my neck.
“And you’re really okay with this?” she asked. “Truthfully, Hephy, I’m not sure I could have been had our situations been reversed.”
I snorted. “Aphrodite, I am the luckiest man in all of the cosmos. And I love children. It would be good to have help at the forge.”
She laughed. “Well, from what I’ve heard, Ares and I tend to make some rather unusual children.”
I shrugged. “First time for everything. Though you do tend to make a type, that’s certain. Either hate or love with you two.”
“Ah.” She rolled her eyes. “How will anyone ever believe that I’ve stayed faithful to you when I’m about to birth a litter of his children? I do not understand the Fates sometimes.”
I grabbed her waving hand and brought her palm to my mouth. Planting a hard kiss on its center before gently biting it.
She moaned, running her foot along the inside of my thigh and breaking me out in a wash of desire all over again.
“We will be an unusual family, to be sure, but at least we’re not brother and sister.”
She giggled. “Considering half the pantheon is just that, I’d say we definitely have a leg up on the competition.”
I snorted. “Indeed. No bull-headed children for us. But, Dite…” I leaned upon my elbow, framing her stomach in my large hand and waiting to speak again until I was sure I had her undivided attention. “I need you to know that it wouldn’t matter to me if they were considered monsters to the rest of the world or not. Or if you and I never bear our own. I want to build a life with you, whatever that means for us. I’m here for it all.”
She smiled. “You promise?”
“With all my heart,” I said without hesitation.
She nodded, but suddenly, she looked sad and worried, and I frowned.
“Little ass?”
A small smile twisted her lips. “It’s not you, Hephy. It’s only that I have four other children, and I’ve apparently, been very awful with them, and a part of me wishes to meet them, but another part is worried that they will hate me for an eternity.”
I kissed her, and she sighed. “I will take you to meet them when you are ready. I know them well. They do not despise me as much as some of the others on Olympus do.”
“Hephaestus, you befriended her children, didn’t you?”
I pursed my lips, saying nothing.
“And that right there is why I love you. You are quite impossible not to. You do know that, right?”
I snorted and shook my head. I’d felt sorry for the children who’d had no say in the family they’d been born to, and if I’d started to maybe care for them over time, well… I was their uncle, after all. But I did not wish to speak of other children right now. I was a greedy god and wished my goddess’s attention alone.
“You know…” I continued to trace intricate patterns upon her perfect skin.
She sighed and nodded at me to continue.
“That trial did help me to see one thing.”
She lifted her brows. “Oh, and what might that be, great god of the forge?”
I smiled, but my words were very serious. “Never to take you for granted again, little ass.”
She stopped laughing and grew suddenly serious, and I frowned, because I didn’t want that, either. I loved to see Aphrodite sparkle, and she did that when she was happy. So I tickled her ribs, and she grinned back at me just as I knew she would.
“If you wish to take me to silly balls, my goddess, then I say yes. Whatever you wish, whatever you want, I’m here for you. Through thick and thin. Your partner in every way. So thank you.”
She frowned. “For what?”
I brushed my knuckle down her cheek, luxuriating in the silky feel of her softness upon my unyielding hardness. “For never being ashamed of me. For never asking me to change. For always being there. Fighting for me. Protecting me. For feeding me that silly cake that made all of this happen in the first place. You are everything to me, Aphrodite. Absolutely everything.”
Giggling, she turned her head, but I tipped it back with my finger and nodded.
“I fed the other you with that cake,” she said.
“Yes, maybe then, you did. But I still have trouble picking up those ridiculous, stupid cakes that mother orders, and you will feed me again.”
“Oh, is that so? I did not know I’d signed up for a lifetime of cake-feeding servitude. Maybe I ought to rethink this whole commitment thing.”
&nb
sp; “Like hell you will, woman,” I growled, wrapping my withered leg around her bottom and pinning her fast to my side.
She laughed breathlessly, joyfully, and my heart felt as if it would burst.
“Yield to me, witch,” I murmured heatedly.
She was still giggling as she said, “Witch?”
“Yes, for you have bewitched me completely. And only a witch could have done so. I am a besotted fool for you, woman.”
She sighed. “I like the sound of that.”
I kissed the tip of her nose. “You know, I know who you are. What you are. You never have to fear being exactly that with me.”
She stopped laughing but looked at me with such warmth that I felt hot and tingly all over. She touched my cheek, and I moaned as I rubbed myself upon her hand like a bloody stupid, rutting beast.
“If you are implying that I can seek company outside of your own, you should know that I have absolutely zero desire to do that. You’ve quite killed that in me, Hephaestus, and I should hate you terribly for it. But I find that unless I rut a shaggy, dark-haired beast, I lose all enjoyment for the act entirely.”
I grunted, feeling a lot like a caveman staking my claim. “How did I get to be so lucky, Aphrodite?”
She shook her head, staring up at me with her blue, blue eyes. “I am the lucky one, Hephaestus, to have found a lover like you.”
“Will you marry me? Again?” I grinned.
She smirked. “As long as we do it here, with no one for witnesses save those who actually love us, then yes, I will be yours for an eternity.”
My heart warmed, but I gave her a look of incredulity. “Who love us? You do know your best friend twisted my body into a pretzel. I do not feel even an ounce of love from that female.”
She laughed, the sound like morning church bells on a gentle summer breeze. My heart was full. So damn full I knew I could never be this happy again.
“You just have to get to know her.” She patted my chest. “Believe me, if she didn’t like you, you’d know it.”
“She tried to poison me today, Dite. I think you’ve disillusioned yourself concerning that woman.”
She laughed even harder, and honestly, I was a little worried for my lover. Was she truly so hard-pressed for friendship that she couldn’t see she’d made her bed with a shark?
“Give her a few hundred years, and then you’ll love her just as I do.”
“Oh, only a few hundred. Good lord, maybe it is I who haven’t quite thought this through.”
She did not pin me with force, but she leaned up and kissed my mouth oh so tenderly. And I felt her love glittering through me.
I breathed out plumes of pink power.
She batted those long, lovely lashes of hers back at me. “Still thinking, Hephy?”
I shook my head. “Yeah, nope. You’re mine, woman. All mine.”
I tackled her, making her laugh, but then I started kissing her, and I did not stop kissing her and making her scream my name for the next three days and nights.
We got married. Hades officiated, and Calyssa threatened to rip my balls off if I ever hurt her BFF again. And oh, I was so very wrong. So very, very wrong. Because I was happier each and every day even more than the day before that one.
And I loved those children, and Aphrodite gave me all of herself. Her heart. Her soul. Her gentleness. And her love.
And that love, it made me the very best me I could never have imagined I’d someday become.
She was my queen and I her king, and together we built an eternity of laughs, smiles, and so much love that we drowned in it. And that was okay because neither of us needed to breathe much, anyway.
(TURN THE PAGE FOR THE NEXT BOOK)
The Stone Queen
Medusa. We all know the myth. A man-hating gorgon with snakes for hair and one nasty attitude. But is that really true?
* * *
Did you know that once she was a beautiful maiden with wings of white and gold? That once she knew how to laugh, how to smile, that once she even knew the love of a man. A god the world knew as War, but that she simply knew as hers.
* * *
But forces of darkness have set things into motion that will change her life forever. Can love save a monster like her? Only time will tell...
Foreword
One of the great thirteen, storyteller extraordinaire
Sometimes a tale comes along no man wishes to pen, a story so tragic, so full of woe that all you can do is ache and hurt and wish that you could lie. That you could pen a tale full of light, hope, and happiness. But that is not the case of the one now known as the Stone Queen. Her story is one of heartache, betrayal, and tragedy. Would that I could never tell it. Would that I could imagine it away. Sadly, I cannot. And so now I do what I must. I pen the tale of the woman all loathe, revile, and detest for sins that did not start as her own. And though my sisters tell me I can change nothing of the future, I know this is one time that I will defy my vows and who I am at my very core to right a most grievous wrong. Somehow, some way, I will fix the mess crafted by fickle gods and give a new lease on life to a woman all shunned. But none can learn of my involvement, and none can know of the lengths to which I will go to change the course of fate and destiny. This story is long and cannot simply be told in one tome, but take heart, dear reader, for I vow a happily ever after, no matter the cost to me. And now, I will speak with The Creator, for what needs doing must be done.
* * *
~Anon, one of the great thirteen
Prologue
Ares
Before the Boom
* * *
“One comes who will change the course of your destiny. A maiden of stone and venom, with a heart of gold and a soul poisoned by darkness. She will be yours truly. Forever and ever, brother War, but the road will be long, painful, and more of a curse than a blessing. But if you stay strong, if you hang in there, your future will shine brighter than Midas’s own gold. So it is spoken, so shall it be…”
I’d come to the oracle for a reading about a war. Not about love, not about my future. I stood before the woman more beautiful than my own mother, Hera, and could only shake my head.
“You lie, witch.” I did not recognize the broken voice as my own. I was cold, and my blood was like rivers of ice coursing through my veins.
White eyes that would never see again stared blankly back at me. The face that’d shone with such life and vigor was now naught but a silent mask. The woman listed side to side as she inhaled the vapors of the gods. She was gone, sucked into the ether of dark magick and prophecy.
I shook my head. “Damn you, sister oracle. Damn you to the lakes of the Underworld. You’ve cursed me, and this is a sin I can never forgive. I will never love. Never want. Never need. No woman of stone can ever have me. I am a god, and I will not allow it!”
After picking up my helmet of war, I slammed it down upon my head, took up my blade of blood and bone, and turned on my heel. Men would die tonight, and they would die by my hand alone.
Chapter 47
Medusa
100 years later
* * *
I was born. And I remembered this birth, for it was so lovely. I went from darkness into the light, and I was surrounded by faces that I knew loved me. My sisters. My mother. I would have a good life. I just knew it.
I grew up in a tiny village surrounded by people who always commented on my and my sisters’ looks. We were different than the rest of them; we descended from the gods. My sisters had serpents for hair—and they envied me my dark, luscious curls—but our faces were lovely. Even in our youth, we were often told by everyone just how beautiful we were. And I grew up knowing that I must be beautiful, but my looks did not matter to me much.
In truth, I far preferred my snow-white wings to my face. I was the only one of the three who had them, yet another reason my sisters should despise me, but they did not. I thought they sometimes felt sadness about me, as I was the only one of us three who was mortal. They
were not. It was that way sometimes when one was the child of a god. Not all of us would get to live forever, but that did not sadden me. One well-lived life was worth thousands.
Because of my “affliction,” my sisters were actually much kinder to me than they might otherwise have been. They merely asked for rides, and I was happy to give them. My favorite part of my day was sailing above the waters of my homeland.
I loved the water, and I had been called a fool for it, but the water loved me back. For every time I sailed above it, the waves seemed to sparkle a little brighter, and the surface became almost like glass, showing my reflection.
I had high cheekbones, a cupid’s pout, a slightly pointed chin, and corkscrew curls in a shade of deep amber that sometimes glinted reddish-gold in the sunlight, and Mother had always said I was very pretty, which made me smile. I was not vain, but I did think it was far better to be pretty as to not. People were kinder to you when you were. It was a truth I noted when I saw the one they called crone in my village as she walked to the market in the mornings. They were vile to her, cruel, and they did not try to hide their jeering from her either. It made me sad, because she was a kind woman, even if she wasn’t all that pleasing to the eye.
My days were idyllic and easy.
But then I turned twelve, and I was lonesome for company. The girls of my village did not like my sisters and me anymore. They called us names. Ugly names. Vile names. Mother said it was jealousy that made them so cruel to us. Where once we’d been loved by both women and men, we had become despised by our own sex, and I could not understand why.
The Greek Gods of Romance Collection Page 59
