Touch (Dark Gods: Selfish Myths #1)
1
Love’s arrow strikes the man first. It punctures his heart, cracking the outer layer like porcelain, as if a protective covering has shattered. At the impact, he curses and stumbles into a wall. Triumphantly, the arrow slices into that vulnerable organ and then disappears.
The woman is next, the jolt of Love’s weapon shoving her toward the man’s bed. The lovers’ gazes collide. Their mouths slacken, their eyes glaze over, and their hearts shift from admiration to adoration. The female opens her arms, inviting the man in, and he leaps toward her with such fervor they topple fully onto the mattress.
Love stands in the corner and smirks, watching the pair consummate like rabbits. Hands pull on locks of hair. Nails scratch, teeth bite, and moans inundate the room. Their hands fumble as they slam their bodies against each other and tear off layers of clothing.
So avid. So predictable.
While the couple rips through buttons and zippers, Love counts her arrows to make sure the two ejected weapons have reappeared in her quiver, then she leaves the couple to their pleasure. The precarious part is sneaking through the first-floor window without the noise alarming them. It was open before, but the man had closed it earlier to block out the alleged chill. It’s tempting to thrust up the sash without a care and snigger at the lovers’ bafflement. A window cannot open by itself, they will think.
Love is in the mood to play. Nonetheless, she forces herself to behave for once. After the work it took to manipulate this tedious couple into a bedroom, she’s not about to ruin the moment.
Bracing her hand on the window, Love eases the sash upward, and the hinges squeak. She halts and glances over her shoulder, yet her latest toys are naked and busy, the woman’s legs hooking around the man’s pumping ass, both of them groaning under the sheets. The brunt of their fucking produces a rhythmic thud, the headboard slamming into the facade.
Marvelous. She ducks and slips outside, then closes the window and wiggles her fingers in a mock-farewell to her targets.
Strapping the longbow to her back, Love sucks in a breath. It’s winter. The sky is a gradient of white and gray, with a teasing sliver of blue. Ice covers every frostbitten porch along the residential lane while thickets of snow, potholed with footprints, conceal the sidewalks.
The woodland village of Evershire is shaped like a celestial. The five-pointed star of streets meets in the center, where a gazebo stands. Traveling down one of the lanes, Love impulsively twirls through a mortal, her invisible body slipping through theirs like a gust of air. The poor thing gasps in confusion and drops their packages.
Further along, Love passes familiar faces. Husbands and wives, humans with crushes and grudges, and mortals with amorous hopes. Seducers. Sinners. Saints. Matches she’s created in the past three months since The Fate Court assigned her here.
Multitudes of emotions brim from the townsfolk, imbuing her sensory powers. Like an assortment of flavors on her palate, Love tastes their sadness, delight, bitterness, fear, and desire. She cocks her head, fascinated by how wholly and completely they all feel . True, this renders them malleable targets, easy for her arrows to manipulate. And indeed, anonymous dominion over the weaker species is gratifying.
Yet it also leaves her restless, occasionally hollow, and rarely satiated. To that end, the effects are rather taxing.
Love grunts, dismissing the offensive sensations before they take hold. Nearby, the bitterness of a quarrel echoes. Outside the library, a couple is bickering like a pair of infants.
“Can I talk?” the man growls.
“Can I finish?” the woman shrieks.
Such a pity. Without Love’s intervention, the fight will escalate. Resentment will build, and things won’t end well, resulting in a flawed match.
Yet even when lovers argue like this, life seems less… vacant. In between moments of discord, there’s still room for mirth, affection, and a bonding touch. That must be pleasant.
Love sneers. Pleasant? It’s all she can do not to berate herself for the asinine thought. Thank the almighty Stars, she hasn’t done something futile like get attached to one of her mortal playthings.
She departs the scene. There’s no point in fixing the dispute. The mismatched humans shall either resolve things temporarily or inevitably end their relationship.
On the village border, her evergreen forest awaits. The woodland is seasonably calm, dormant and at rest. She bounds over a mountain of snow, the hem of her black dress scarcely covering her bare ass.
Under her shoulder blades, two impacted wings flutter, straining to be set free. In some respects, the human myth about Eros is correct, including the existence of these stubborn appendages.
Love stiffens her joints, refusing to let the plumes spring from her back. Instead, she locates the first suitable trunk and scales its height with her hands and feet. Vaulting from branch to branch, she races into the snowy wilderness, outpacing the wind.
Her loyal tree appears. Love vaults, extends her arms overhead, and catches one of its higher branches, lifting herself onto its surface. Keeping a lone arrow on hand, she stashes her bow and quiver inside a gap within the trunk, then reclines across the branch. The bark’s rough texture abrades her spine, her legs hang off the sides, and her feet swing like a pair of bells.
Carefully, she extends one arm vertically and windmills the arrow between her fingers, envisioning the chaos that would ensue if she accidentally struck herself with her own weapon. It takes a mere slip of one’s aim to render the wrong targets lovestruck or an impulsive reflex to make their hearts bleed out.
She evicts the heinous possibility from her mind and focuses elsewhere. Sweeping her fingers over her lips, she imagines what it feels like to kiss and fuck, indulging as the human couple is presently doing in the man’s bedroom. To brush her mouth over a smooth, husky, waiting one. To share a touch of affection. Such an intimate thing.
Involuntary longing pricks her chest. For all that Love can sense human emotions—taste, smell, and hear them—she cannot identify with their tactile experiences. Thus, she wonders what it’s like to embrace, and to be embraced, like that.
Love hisses. Incessant fixations and scandalous pipe dreams. Existing among mortals often does this to her, spiriting away Love’s reason and making her yearn for impossible things. In The Dark Fates, she is ridiculed for this obsession. Envy, Sorrow, and Anger are the harshest regarding the subject, whereas Wonder is the only one who’s gracious toward Love, though the female has her reasons for that.
In any event, deities embrace out of camaraderie, respect, or lust. It’s not natural for a goddess to have urges beyond those.
The sun sinks behind the treetops. She stores the arrow in her quiver and settles back down, closing her eyes to rest.
A draft caresses her ears and brings with it the sounds of snow crunching beneath a set of boots. Her eyelids flip open, her gaze focusing on the powdered branches above. A distinct scent filters through the forest.
It’s masculine. It’s close.
Love veers upright, crouches, and waits.
A man.
A tall man.
A tall man is stalking through the woods.
Love’s mouth slides into a nefarious grin. Well. What have we here?
As the human treks ahead, the tousled layers of his white hair materialize. The unearthly color is striking on him, and it makes Love reach for her black locks. She pictures how the two of them would look side by side, lightness clashing with darkness.
She detects another scent coming from the mortal—woodsy, robust, crisp. Cedarwood and eucalyptus. What’s more, the emotions audibly stirring in his blood like a blizzard hint at a certain temperament. Determination. Persistence.
The mortal approaches a tree, a shadowed bulk rattling against his back. Too late, Love tenses in realization. The item resting against his spine is a quiver loaded with arrows, and the slender object hooked to his shoulder is a longbow. From this vantage point, the imperfect construction and rustic aesthetic confirms the archery is human. And while his movements are masterful as he nocks the bow, it does not measure up to the skill of a deity.
Love raises a haughty eyebrow and swings her gaze toward his objective—a monstrous pinecone thirty feet away. So he’s not hunting fauna, which makes sense considering few creatures roam in this climate. This spares him from a violent reaction from Love, for she despises mortals who prey on animals for sport.
Despite the weather, the man appears to be training. She leans farther over the branch, but the angle is insufficient for her liking, and his target poses such a meager challenge—rudimentary for a goddess—that Love grows impatient. And impulsive.
It’s a grave offense in The Dark Fates, to thwart a peer’s training and tamper with their archery. But Love favors games, and this inferior deserves a shock, a cruel form of punishment for interrupting her rest. Something to throw off his grip on the bow, fucking up his aim.
Anyway, she’s been toying with humans all day. Why stop now?
Her wings shudder, demanding to break from her flesh. She resists the urge, then snatches her archery and leaps off the branch, dropping thirty feet and landing behind him with a thud that shakes the earth. She’s eager to watch this lowly creature stumble in surprise, his arrow flying off the mark and vanishing in the woods. However, the ambush fails. Because by the time she hits the forest floor, the tip of his arrow is pointing at her heart.