by Simon Archer
“Amen to that,” she said before she devoured me. Her strong lips parted mine and her tongue slithered along my own. The shock to my nerves exploded along my spine, tripping down each vertebra like a row of falling dominoes. I played along, finding the sensitive spot in her mouth on her left side which always made her moan.
She detached her mouth from mine to let the full volume of her pleasure echo about.
“Which bedroom would you like to start with?” I said with a suggestive glare.
“Whichever has the largest bed,” she whispered into my ear before giving it a quick, seductive bite. I chuckled at her teasing and my chuckles turned into full on laughter when she pulled my hands out of her pants and jumped up into my arms. She hooked her legs around my waist and kissed me fiercely. I hauled her up the stairs and into my brand new bedroom.
The dogs tried to follow us up the stairs, but I had to shoo them away. They whimpered at me once. I put Hailey down briefly so I could reassure the mythical guard dogs. With a pat on their heads, I whispered, “I’m going to need you two to get scarce tonight.”
The dobermans looked at one another, sharing a language I didn’t understand. Then, in a blink of an eye, they popped out of existence. I knew they would be back, but hopefully not until morning.
I turned to Hailey and wrapped myself back in her arms. “Now, where were we?”
“I think you were going to choose a bedroom?” Hailey said with a smirk.
“Honestly, I don’t give a damn,” I answered before placing my mouth on her again.
We made our way into some doorway. I never bothered to learn which bedroom it was. Instead, I lost myself in the green fields of her eyes and spent the whole night there.
6
I pushed the hair back from her face and curved it around the back of her ear. She leaned her head into my palm, nuzzling me affectionately. She turned her face so she could kiss my palm. Slowly, she took my arm into her hand and kissed my wrist, making her way up my arm. My toes curled at the delicate sensations that rickshayed across my body.
Her green eyes flicked up through long lashes to check on me and to tease me. I watched her lips press against my skin. It was torture, watching her go this slow.
“Hailey,” I moaned and I raised my hand to pull her closer to me, so I could devour her.
But the daughter of Apollo caught my hand in hers, intertwining our fingers. “I’m going to make every moment count,” she whispered.
Hailey then released me so she could slip her hands beneath my shirt. Her fingertips tapped lightly against my abs and I rolled my neck, relishing the sweetness of her touch. She wrapped her hands around my waist and proceeded to hike up my shirt. I raised my arms and let her derobe me.
Patience was never my strong suit and watching her take such time and care pushed me to my limits. It didn’t help that my penis hardened against my pants, making it almost painful to wait this long.
“Hailey,” I said again, this time my voice dropping in a growl.
“Yes?” she said as she worked her way to my belt, slapping the leather to unbuckle it.
“I can’t--” I started but then she slipped her hand down my pants and boxers, cupping my bulge with her magic fingers.
“You were saying?” she said with a smirk.
I swallowed hard as she worked my balls, pleasure singing through my veins. I took the matter into my own hands and kicked off the rest of my pants so that I stood completely naked in front of my girlfriend. While she was still fully closed.
“Now, this just isn’t fair,” I said with closed eyes as she started stroking my length, using the soft side of her wrist to massage me.
“How so?” Hailey said in a falsely innocent voice.
“How come I’m the only naked one here?” I didn’t give her a chance to respond. Instead, I wrapped my arms around her and tossed her gently onto the king sized bed. She giggled jovially as she bounced slightly on the mattress, messing up the made bed.
I joined her but leaping towards her, bracing myself above her. Hailey’s giggles continued and I could have listened to that sound for days. There was only one sound that I preferred and that was the moans of when she came.
I went work disrobing her and she allowed me to strip her of her shirt and pants until she was in nothing but her black bra and panties. I let my eyes roam over her and my cock hardened at the gorgeous woman laying before, ready to be taken.
“Are you wet enough for me, babe?” I said as I slipped a finger between her thighs, pushing back the fabric.
The second I stroked her, Hailey’s head bent back and she opened her mouth, letting a small moan of pleasure escape.
“Oh, you can do better than that,” I encouraged her as I slammed two fingers into her hot, wet sex.
The daughter of Apollo bit her lip to keep back her sounds of pleasure, as if she knew that’s exactly what I wanted. I eyed her with a narrow gaze, accepting the challenge.
“Don’t hold out on me now,” I threatened playfully.
“You have to earn it, demigod,” Hailey said as she licked her lips.
As difficult as it was, I pulled my hand away from her. I needed both hands for what I planned to do next. Without warning, I wrapped my arms around her and flipped the soldier on her stomach. I forced her knees to bend so that her ass was up in the air, where I could see her perfectly sculpted butt and her dripping sex. I leaned forward, cupping my hands around her breasts, already swollen from the foreplay.
“I’m going to make you scream,” I whispered into her ear before I slammed into her. I pinched her nipples as I did so, forcing her to squeeze around my cock. Gods, she was slick, warm, and so large. She took all of me in as I thrust as deep as I could go.
Hailey’s head bent forward, her blond hair falling over her face. I released one of her breasts so I could pull her hair back, seeing her face as she came.
Still she didn’t cry out for me.
“You’re holding back on me Hailey,” I said as I massaged her breast, rolling the tip of her nipple with my thumb. Already fully sheathed, I wrapped my arm around her waist so I could press her farther into me.
Then, I slid my fingers through the blond curls near her sex and found the numb at the center of her pleasure. All it took was one flick for the soldier to release a mighty moan. Her body tensed as she came. I took advantage of her pleasure, sliding myself in and out at a rapid pace until I felt myself on the edge of climax.
“Cameron!” Hailey roared as I slammed into her one final time but I pulled out and came all over her ass. I shook from the pleasure until I collapsed over the end of the bed. She did the same so that we were inverted from one another, breathing heavily.
“Dear gods,” she hissed, speaking into the sheets since she was still on her stomach. “I’m going to need a minute before we go again.”
“Again?” I said, looking up at my girlfriend. I couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. “You greedy girl.”
“We have one night, remember?” Hailey said lifting her face so her voice wasn’t muffled. “I don’t waste a single minute.”
And we didn’t. We made love until our limbs felt like noodles. It was more intense and better than any workouts we pushed ourselves to our limits. We had no choice but to fall into one another’s arms and rest.
The next morning, I woke to Hailey’s soft lips on my own.
“Hmm,” I cooed, squirming a little under the momme silk sheets. The bed was ridiculously comfortable. Even after the heavy activities of the previous night, I expected my body to be sore, but the bed caught me and coddled me like a cloud.
I stretched out my arms, trying to find her hips and pull her closer to me. “Did you wake me up for round two?”
When I finally opened my eyes and my vision cleared, I realized that my girlfriend wasn’t in bed. She was perched over me, standing next to it, fully dressed in her black uniform and orange sash. I could smell the minty freshness of her breath. My fingers noticed that her ha
ir, which she let grow long over the winter break, was pulled back into a tight ponytail.
The moments before our sexual exploits came back to me in a rush. Instead of addressing the reality of the situation, I let myself exist in an ignorant bubble. It protected me from the anticipation of the next morning. However, that moment had arrived, and the bubble popped as fiercely as a balloon, sounding like fireworks in my ear.
“I don’t know why, but I really hoped you were lying to me last night,” I said, my sweetness completely gone from my voice.
“I wish I was too,” Hailey said, her voice shockingly strong compared to my own.
I coughed back an unexpected wave of emotion. “When am I going to see you again?”
“Find your father,” Hailey instructed. “Make the Ultimate Weapon, and we’ll have a fighting chance.”
She pressed her forehead to my own. We closed our eyes and just sat in the silence. There were no goodbye kisses or last minute quickies. We simply existed in the same space with one another.
“You better stay alive,” I said with a chuckle.
“Same goes for you,” Hailey said through a hiccup as she swiped at her eye. Then she cleared her throat and looked me in the eye. “I love you, Cameron. Please tell the others that I love them too.”
“I will, I promise. I love you too,” I said, wishing my voice wasn’t so weak.
There was nothing else we needed to say. I did hop out of bed and walk hand in hand with her down the stairs to the front door. Khryseos and Argyreos followed behind us like the dutiful dogs they were. Hailey even gave each dog their own goodbye which made my heart ache more.
It had snowed the night before, so there was a blanket of untouched white snow laid out at her feet. It was like nature’s version of a red carpet.
Hailey offered me one last kiss. It was soft and chaste but all I needed in that moment. Anything more would have hurt too much. Even though the sharp January air snuck into my house when she exited, the cold I felt came from her absence.
I pressed my face up to the door like a puppy waiting for their kiddo to get home from school. I watched her walk down the line of houses, back towards the quad where she and a series of remaining soldiers would take an army of pegasus out to their undisclosed location.
When I couldn’t see her any longer, I stared at her footprints for a while. I thought about the woman I loved going off to war and the air caught in my throat. With a series of scolding thoughts, I told myself to knock it off. I’d seen Hailey in combat, fought alongside her. She would survive. Not only that, she would thrive being the warrior she was.
And if I wanted to see her again, I had my own mission to accomplish.
My eyes flitted up to the Eternal Flame in the lantern above my door. I coaxed it down, out of its cage. It gleefully hovered over my palm. I took the element inside and let it fly into my fireplace, where the Flame knew exactly what to do. It consumed the wood in a single giant gulp and glowed the bright baby blue that was oh so familiar to me.
Seeming to know that I needed space, Khryseos and Argyreos stepped back out of the room and scampered out to the backyard. I eyed them wearily.
“Thanks for the support, guys,” I grumbled before I turned back to the fireplace.
I wasn’t quite sure how to talk to the Moirai, so I acted like the Eternal Flame was my operator and asked it to connect me with the goddesses. Suddenly, their voices spoke out of the flame, which turned a shimmering gold color.
“I knew you would accept,” Clotho said first, not bothering with a typical greeting.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m calling,” I replied as I smacked my lips together.
“Why don’t you come back to the Cave so we can have a proper consultation of what we want?” Clotho said with a false sweetness that I could sense even without seeing her face.
“Actually, I don’t have a lot of time,” I said, jerking my thumb behind me as if I had to catch a cab. “I have to get to another meeting with the--”
“You get one chance at this, Cameron,” the older goddess warned. “You wouldn’t want to displease us, would you?”
I held back a groan. “Of course not.”
“Then by all means,” Clotho said, resuming that sickly sweet tone. “Come on over.”
After figuring out that I had to crawl into the Flame in my fireplace, I popped out on the other side back in the Cave of Eileithyia. I sat down with each of the three Moirai, one by one. Clotho, of course, had to go first.
“I need it to be golden,” she demanded. “I refuse to have any other color aside from gold.”
“Please don’t ask me to make it out of straw,” I joked.
“Straw is the wrong color, too pale,” Clotho said as she waved her hand dismissively. “Maybe silver, if I really felt like a change. But it better be just as beautiful as gold.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes as she missed my fairy tale joke about Rumplestilskin, but I should have known better than to try and reference European folklore with a goddess. So I smiled politely and promised the older sister her gold string.
Lachesis was much more particular and opinionated than her older sister. “It needs to be perfect,” she emphasized. “I don’t want a single bump or knot in the rod. It needs to be smooth and fit right in my hand.”
I asked to see her hand and did my best to measure out the right size without any tools to assist me. Lachesis also demanded that it be an exact eleven and three quarters of an inch.
“No more, no less,” she warned, holding up a single finger. “I will know if it’s wrong.”
“Got it,” I gulped. While I wanted to ask why such a random length, I wanted to be done with the conversation way more.
Atropos, surprisingly, was the most casual of the three. With her violent temperament I witnessed the day before, I thought for sure that she would have the most specifications.
“It’s just a pair of scissors,” the goddess said with a shrug. She examined her nails which were painted the same ebony color as her eyes. “Make sure they’re sharp, and I’m good to go.”
“So I could make them bright purple and you won’t care?” I double-checked.
“Oh no, I’ll care,” Atropos said sternly, without looking at me. “And I’ll reject them if I don’t like them.”
“But you’re not doing to tell me what you want?” I wondered, trying to ask the question gently.
“You should just know,” the goddess answered as if this was the most obvious answer in the world.
So much for casual.
After I talked to each of the women individually, I asked a final question of all three. “So, do you have some kind of deadline for these? Like, when do you want them by?”
“We have all the time in the world,” Clotho said with a small shrug.
“But you don’t,” Lachesis said while her eyes flashed in warning. Even though there was no discernible difference between her irises and pupils, I swore I could see the shimmer of crazy that lay beyond those black orbs.
With a gulp, I looked away from the middle goddess and tried to plaster a brave smile on my face. “Right, I get that so if you don’t have a preference, then I will just get them to you as soon as possible.”
“You’re the one who is going to have a preference on time,” Atropos said ominously. She stretched out on the floor, kicking off her high heels and letting her feet warm up by the fire.
“Oh am I?” I asked, sensing that the three of them were being purposefully obtuse. Due to my emotional morning, I wasn’t really in the mood to play games. But I tried to restrain some of my frustration, reminding myself of the power these immortal women held.
“Do any of you care to share what that preference might be with me?” I wondered, trying too hard to keep my voice casual that it ended up cracking on the final word. I coughed and corrected myself. “I mean, this is supposed to be mutually beneficial, isn’t it?”
Clotho clicked her tongue. “Chaos is brewing, son of Hephaestu
s. But you knew that already.”
“I had an inkling,” I said stonily.
“Chaos is impatient,” Lachesis added, finishing where her sister left off. “It can start small and build or come crashing down all at once. Boom!” The middle goddess threw her hands into the air, her voice rocketing off the walls. Dust exploded from the nearby curtains and the flames in the campfire trembled.
I couldn’t help myself. I jumped back from the sudden exclamation and took several large steps away from Lachesis, who looked like a lion ready to devour me.
“Why can’t the gods just give it to me straight?” I said exasperatedly. “I mean, I get that it’s your job to be cryptic and all but between you, Hades, Aphrodite, the riddles, and prophecies, I’m wishing I took more logic classes in high school.”
Atropos burst out laughing. It sounded like multiple sets of china falling from a cabinet and crashing. I jerked from that noise too, realizing that maybe they all were insane, not just Lachesis. To their credit, who wouldn’t be batshit crazy after spending millennia in a cave with only their sisters for company?
“I like this demigod,” the younger sister said as she jerked her thumb towards me, speaking directly to the other immortals. “He’s got balls.”
“More than Odysseus had,” Clotho scoffed.
“How do you know about Odysseus’s balls?” Lachesis hissed.
She said it, not me, I comforted myself because I would have been lying if I said I wasn’t thinking the same thing.
“None of your business,” Clotho snapped at her younger sister. Lachesis responded by spitting like a wet cat. The two of them proceeded to shout insults at one another.
I sidestepped out of the line of fire and looked to Atropos for help. “So as soon as possible, then?”
“If you want to have enough time to find your father, make the Ultimate Weapon, and save your loves, then you’re going to need to make our tools before the snow melts,” Atropos said as she tapped her pointed nails on the floor.
