And—goddamn it—her tactics were working. The strong scent of incense had now filled the room with lazy tendrils of shifting smoke, giving life to the haunting melody, and the silk curtains seemed to ripple and sway in time to the beat, bringing all my senses into sync. My hands were balled into fists, gripping the silk sheets like a lifeline.
Aphrodite came to a halt about two millimeters before my crotch. She leaned forward, her hair spilling forward like privacy curtains. She eyed my dirty tee and smirked at the caption. Let me see your O-face, with a happy donut. “What an appropriate shirt,” she murmured, winking at me. She set one finger at the hem of the tee and slowly drew it up towards my throat, neatly slicing the fabric in half like she was using the world’s sharpest scalpel.
The wild monkey-sex queen peeled me like a banana.
I panted as the warm air struck my naked chest and abdomen, twitching when her knuckles brushed my skin in a feather stroke of murder. She reached the collar and the shirt fell to either side. She calmly gripped both ends and flung her arms wide.
The goddess of sex knelt between my upper thighs, her sweat-kissed breasts bared, and she bit her lower lip with a devilish grin. Distantly, I wondered why she was trying to seduce me if she wanted to reaffirm my love for another woman. Wouldn’t that hurt her power source, like she’d earlier claimed?
I watched her prepare her meal, and I was having a very difficult time recalling what we had been talking about moments ago. At some point in my distraction, she had entirely removed my pants, leaving me only in my boxer briefs. I hadn’t felt a thing. I was so transfixed by the raw power of her presence, that I wasn’t even embarrassed about a certain part of my body openly giving her efforts a glowing five-star-rating.
Our bodies glistened with sweat, and we were both panting desperately. My skin felt alive and electric to the touch.
And…I hadn’t tried to stop her even once. I hadn’t shifted from beneath her entrapment. I hadn’t spoken. I hadn’t denied her actions in the slightest. In summation, I might as well have been handcuffed for all the struggle I physically put up.
My only solace was my mind, and even that was crumbling—not from lust, but from self-doubt. Because her arguments had filleted me much as her fingernails had shredded my shirt. Did I really love Callie Penrose? If Zeus hadn’t been lying about the Titan Thorns—which he very likely could have been—why hadn’t they opened when I thought of Callie?
Was I denying Aphrodite due to my assumed love for Callie or because Nate Temple denied anything that was forced onto him?
I’d already questioned my feelings for Callie—internally—but that had been more related to a consequence of our new roles as Horsemen. Freya had warned me that being the direct superior of a lover was beyond difficult and not recommended. And I knew she was right.
But that wasn’t the only issue.
Something had changed between Callie and me. Perhaps that was simply because we hadn’t given each other a true shot. We had avoided privacy at almost every turn.
“Later is reserved for death, not love, Catalyst,” Aphrodite whispered, and I realized that the ninja nymphomaniac was now straddling me. The thin strip of silk covering her sex was as hot as fire, and I knew I was about to have the biggest fight of my life.
Not against the sweet nirvana beneath Aphrodite’s purple panties.
Against my own mind, body, and soul.
Because I could no longer discern whether Aphrodite was friend or foe.
This situation was its own kind of torture—not wholly unlike what Apollo and Ares had heaped upon me. And the only way to truly win was to make myself actually participate in this battle. Standing stiff on the sidelines—lying beneath her like a blind, deaf, and dumb fish—would not constitute a win. That would just prove my stubborn denial—my refusal to honestly stand up to, and address, her arguments. Much as I’d stood tall against physical torture, I needed to stand against this mental, seemingly self-imposed, torture.
Especially if Callie Penrose was the love of my life. I needed to prove, or disprove, it to myself. This was a crucible. I needed to toe the line—to get as close to the fire as I could manage without getting burned. I needed to tempt fate like Icarus and his wings had tempted the sun—not flying too high and burning my wings, and not flying too low and dampening them.
I lifted my hands, ignoring their violent tremors, and gripped Aphrodite’s hips. She trembled and whimpered, and I looked into the seductress’ eyes. “Bring it on,” I growled.
She licked her lips and leaned towards my throat. “I swear on my power that this is not trickery,” she whispered, her breath tickling my sweat-slicked skin. I nodded in relief, feeling reassured that I could at least disregard that worry—that this was all some sort of trap to trick me into thinking I didn’t love Callie Penrose. Aphrodite had sworn so on her power.
I knew there were ways around that particular oath, but something about her tone and intense eye contact told me it was the most honest thing she’d ever said out loud.
Ever.
And it backed up our earlier debate. I nodded. “Thank you.”
“Think of the woman you love,” she whispered.
I nodded, defiantly focusing on Callie Penrose.
Aphrodite’s tongue touched the hollow of my throat and my heart almost exploded as she licked my sweat. She stayed there for an eternal moment, tasting me, and my toes curled hard enough to crack. I gasped, alarmingly dizzy as she whispered, her hot breath caressing my skin like a feather.
“If you truly believed Callie Penrose was destined for you, your sweat would have scalded my tongue. My own power would have turned against me. If, deep down in your heart, you knew she was the one, my tongue would practically be incinerated right now.”
She lifted her face to hover over mine as she stared into my eyes with a sad, but satisfied smile. She showed me her perfect tongue.
My mental fortress fractured and cracked as if hit by a cannonball. If not Callie, then who did I love? “Maybe I don’t love anyone,” I whispered, more to myself than anything.
Aphrodite shook her head. “No. There is someone in there,” she whispered, tapping a finger against my chest. “I can feel the eagle waiting, watching, hoping—ready to swoop in for the kill,” Aphrodite breathed, so softly that I thought I had imagined it. “If this was not the case, we would have already started to make love.”
I shuddered, my entire body tensing at the brief visual. I didn’t tense far, since every inch of her own steaming flesh pressed against me, pinning me to the pillows. “No,” I croaked, trying to get my head into the game. “I need to understand this. Understand myself. Teach me,” I begged, committing myself to withstanding her advances, but only if she gave it her all.
Aphrodite moaned savagely, her eyes shutting as my words almost set her off. Her entire body clenched atop me. “This woman better be worth it, Nate, or I will never forgive this cruel foreplay,” she snarled.
I laughed harshly. “I’m betting my night will be far worse.”
She chuckled her agreement. “You poor thing,” she said with a resigned smile. “Since we are both gluttons for punishment, I agree to teach you. There are more names to test. More eagles to hunt.”
Callie Penrose was not my true love. I felt numb even thinking it. But…numb in multiple ways. Numb with guilt, but also…with a surprising sense of relief. As if my shoulders suddenly felt lighter.
Even knowing that Aphrodite had the ability to lie, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was speaking the unadulterated truth. The look in her eyes had convinced me, because I saw that she wasn’t pleased to prove this point to me. She was not pleased that the revelation hurt me.
But she was pleased that she had helped teach me a vital truth—much in the same way that seeing your child stick a penny in an electrical socket taught them the dangers of electricity.
I had been lying to myself about Callie Penrose. I’d stuck my shiny penny into Aphrodite’s socket—figurati
vely, of course—and gotten zapped.
Frustration soon reared its ugly head. I didn’t have time for this kind of crap right now. I was Zeus’ hostage and I couldn’t trust any of these Olympians. Unless it got me out of these damned manacles. But to earn my freedom from the Titan Thorns, I needed to conquer my own mind—to conquer my own heart. Only then could I stand up to Zeus as an equal.
As his better.
Aphrodite surprised the hell out of me by slowly sliding her sweat-slicked skin across my chest and collapsing beside me with a frustrated shudder—her own bodily desire fighting against her mind. She maintained physical contact by keeping one of her long legs wrapped over mine and resting her hand atop my chest as she cuddled against me. I stared up at the lazily shifting curtains of silk above, wanting nothing more than to get out of my own head.
I could feel her studying me empathetically. She trailed the backs of her fingers from my neck down to my lower ribs in a soothing, affectionate gesture. “I know it hurts, Temple, and I know you must hate me for pulling back the curtain to show you this side of yourself,” she admitted, her voice cracking faintly.
I grunted, not meeting her eyes. “What do I have to complain about? I’m cuddling with the world’s most beautiful woman,” I muttered, full of scorn. “An amazing woman,” I added, using her own words from earlier.
She sensed my sarcasm, but she didn’t point it out or take offense. “True. Yet you are unhappy. This revelation alone should tell you much.”
I frowned, glancing over at her. “Such as?”
She leaned down to rest her cheek in the crook of my shoulder. “That there truly is someone else closer to your heart, even if you do not openly acknowledge them. Otherwise, we would be doing a lot more than cuddling right now. I can assure you that my pheromones quite literally scramble the minds of men—unless another has already claimed his heart. I cannot recall ever being let down in my own bed. It is…somewhat refreshing.”
“Um. You’re welcome?”
She laughed lightly. I realized I was brushing my fingers through her hair in a fond gesture. As frustrated as I was—physically and mentally—I was definitely not mentally overtaken by Aphrodite’s charm. I was now utterly certain that the Aphrodite I’d seen at the pavilion had been playing games in order to get closer to me. All so she could have this private moment with the Catalyst. She wasn’t working for her family, she was working to find a way out.
The question was…why?
I let out a sigh. “Well, what’s the next gauntlet of fire I have to survive?” I asked tiredly.
She laughed lightly. “Garter, not gauntlet,” she teased. “You aren’t ready for the tantric gauntlets.”
Even hearing that she had a name for such a thing made me shiver with fearful curiosity. “Right. We should probably get on with the next lesson. Someone will notice I’m no longer in my cell, especially since we’re being watched.”
“Your jailers will think I am doing as I was commanded,” she said, sounding amused. “And I am, in my own way. You do feel broken, yes?”
I nodded. “Way worse than the physical torture,” I admitted.
“Then this has been a success.”
14
She sighed, and lifted her head, sitting up in the process. She rested a possessive palm on my chest, studying my face. “You need rest before we continue. Otherwise your mind will be barren and infertile. You are too upset about the first revelation, so will numbly accept or deny my next lesson. You need to replenish your stamina before our upcoming twilight escapade. To process what you have learned about yourself.”
I narrowed my eyes. “This is not a couples retreat, Aphrodite. Zeus wants me to lick his boots and become his thug on a leash. Whatever he intends to steal and whomever he intends to kill is only going to make matters worse. As pissed off as I am right now, I want to understand what the hell this is all about between you and me. Callie and me. Mystery woman and me. So that I can choose whether to believe it or not. Just because I apparently have very strong internal doubts about Callie does not concretely prove that Callie and I have no future together. It just means we need to freaking talk rather than avoiding each other.”
Aphrodite looked crestfallen by my argument, as if I’d taken two steps back for our one step forward. “I knew you were stubborn, but I didn’t anticipate the depth of your denial. I presumed that it would not be nearly so bad when you learned your opponent was your own heart.”
I squinted at her. “Whenever someone tells me I can’t do something, I always get combative. And I usually wind up destroying the person when I learn that they had an ulterior motive.” The double meaning was clear—did Aphrodite have an ulterior motive?
She studied me, calm and unafraid. “You do know that you could kill me with your bare hands right now, yes? That I knew this before and that I decided to take the risk anyway? To bare my breast to you, knowing that you held a naked dagger to my heart and that your carnage had possibly made you unstable enough to stab first and ask questions later.”
I frowned. “My powers are blocked.” The fact that she kept telling me I was angry and irrational when I wasn’t only served to make me feel more irrational and angrier.
She scoffed, leaning back on the pillows beside me and raising her arms above her head. “I have calmed the carnage for now, my lamb.” I blinked at her choice of pillow-name for me. An erotic dubstep version of Mary had a little lamb played in my mind as Aphrodite continued. “Your power is in your blood. There is no blocking a godkiller. All Zeus could do was trap the numerous other powers at your disposal, and hope to trap the flesh containing the blood. He could hide it in plain sight with a bit of illusion. Or Hermes, perhaps.”
I stared down at her, stunned by her words, but also to find that I was now kneeling at her side, looming over her. “What?” I rasped. Her big, serene eyes stared up at me, submitting to my physical dominance in such a way that I somehow knew that she was actually the dominant between us. That her submission was so complete that it unquestionably established her dominance.
Showing me that Aphrodite, more than anyone I had ever met, knew exactly what the fuck she wanted, and that she was more than willing to risk her life to get it. I leaned closer, gently gripping her delicate chin between my thumb and knuckled forefinger. “I can still use my godkiller powers?” I asked her, not knowing exactly what my godkiller powers even were.
An illusion, she had said, which made perfect sense. Since my imprisonment, I hadn’t once seen my veins glow beneath my skin—a typical warning sign whenever I was around gods. Aphrodite lifted a hand and calmly brushed her soft fingertips down my taut forearm from elbow to wrist. In the wake of her caress, veins of golden light bloomed beneath my ravaged skin, serving to illuminate her in a warm, golden glow.
She stared into my eyes and bit her lip in what looked like awe, letting me know that they must be glowing brightly.
She’d revealed—or unmasked—my godkiller powers. I felt no different, but now the telltale signs were back. This was huge. I could break free! Right? But my elation rapidly faded as I realized that I couldn’t feel anything powerful enough to break my manacles. Just the light had turned on. I empathized with an un-stocked vending machine—the light might be on, but I was empty inside.
“Zeus had it covered up so that you wouldn’t get any…bright ideas. With all of us around, you would have been permanently glowing. Unless you already know how to dim it?” I nodded, focusing on my veins so that they no longer glowed, casting us back into our dim, romantic light. Her eyes widened marginally, impressed. I was too busy realizing how big her pupils really were. How I could lose myself in them if I wasn’t careful. “It will do nothing to break your manacles, unfortunately. As long as he stays out of your immediate physical reach, he is safe and you are still his prisoner.”
I continued to stare down at her, my silence speaking volumes. Because Aphrodite was wholly within my immediate physical reach. Not safe, according to her words. Trapped
beneath me. Yet she’d intentionally placed herself there—all of her own volition.
She wasn’t just the dominant between us. Her mind was dominant of her every emotion and physical choice she had ever made. Quite literally, this goddess of emotion and lust seemed to be the most rational and calculating person I had ever encountered. And she wasn’t ignoring her emotions to do so. She was embracing them to such an extent that her entire purpose seemed to be to show me the truth of my own emotions, no matter the consequences.
She locked eyes with me, unblinking, as she gently but firmly gripped my right wrist. Then she slowly guided my hand towards the left side of her chest. She pressed my palm over her feverish flesh so that I cupped her upper breast, and I knew that there was nothing erotic in the gesture. Instead, it was us disrobing our souls so that she could show me something vital. Whatever she was doing was of the utmost importance, far more meaningful than letting me cop a feel of the world’s top-rated breasts. She slid her hand down to my thumb and carefully spread my fingers so that my thumb and pointer finger formed a crescent shape over her flesh.
She waited, staring into my mind through my glowing eyes—which had winked back on so that I could get a better look at…the ritual, of course. Her entire body was bathed in the brilliant golden light of my eyes and veins, now, despite the dim room.
She then took hold of my other wrist so that my palm hovered over her face between us. She released her grip and made a pinching gesture with her finger and thumb, and touched them to my palm. Then she began to draw something out of it, and I gasped, my other hand gripping tighter on her breast by pure reflex, as pain bit into my palm.
Not lethal pain, but melted candle wax pain. I stared, transfixed, as she pulled a golden dagger out from my palm. Within seconds, a nine-inch dagger of molten gold—my ichor—extended from my flesh.
Still, she did not break eye contact with me. She wrapped my fingers around the blade and then guided the dagger towards her left breast. She calmly, bravely, set the tip of the ichor blade against her flesh, right in the center of the crescent shape formed by my other hand’s fingers.
Carnage: Nate Temple Series Book 14 Page 10
