Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
All light vanished from the room, and a cloak of darkness descended over me. There wasn’t even a faint glow from where the windows should have been. If we were even still in the room, it was too difficult to tell. The shadows consumed all vestiges of natural and artificial illumination.
In this state of blindness, all my senses became heightened. Tilting my chin up, my nostrils flared slightly as I inhaled deeply. The air carried a heavy note of how the night sky smells when it’s split by thunder. It was sweetened by the scent of citron, a day away from peak ripeness.
I strained to hear beyond my own pulse. Yet there was a stillness around me that screamed volumes.
If one listened carefully enough, silence could whisper its most guarded secrets.
In this case, it spoke in riddles. Danger at odds with enthrallment.
Captivity without chains. Heaviness of a storm that touched your skin like winter’s first snowflakes.
Hesitation tugged at my movements as I raised both my hands out before me, fingers spread wide in search of anything real. Spreading my arms, it was like swimming through a dream.
One step forward, solid ground. Another step, solid but with a soft buffer.
Blanket, perhaps?
Something slid across the skin of my forearm. A cool, silk serpent. Instinct took over as I jerked my arm away from the sensation, and a small noise of protest escaped me.
An amused chuckle echoed against my back, the pitch black felt suffocating with his proximity.
Spinning around, I lashed out in an uncoordinated swing of limbs. Yet none of the strikes landed on anything but air.
“Oh, so close, Heartspite,” Eryx’s irritatingly deep voice came from somewhere off to my left now.
I growled in frustration with whatever game he was playing. “Coward!”
That smooth drag of something oddly familiar against my skin once more, but this time it made contact with my ear. I tucked my chin as I pulled away from the taunting strokes.
“Coward, am I?” There was a sharp edge of offense in his voice. One that managed to seep into every pore in my body, leaving me breathless.
Another snap of his fingers and light reappeared. It only seemed to exist inside this cage, leaving anything beyond the bars in the dark. Standing before me was Eryx, a hunger in his eyes for something too close to revenge for my liking.
“Let me tell you something, Charlee. You know nothing of my life, of what I have persevered through. All these years, you have flitted through on nothing but the childish notion that love conquers all.” He crowded me until I was pressed back against the unforgiving bars of this massive cage.
“You’re right, I don’t know what you have been through,” I conceded. “But I do know that even the most bruised and battered hearts still are worthy of someplace warm to call home.”
For a split second, I thought that maybe my words were enough to sway him. But with unyielding force, he grabbed my wrist, and with his other hand, he bound our mirrored wrists together. His left hand and my right pressed together, our radial pulses dancing against one another.
His choice of binding? Golden silk that ebbed with ancient powers. Once it was secured around both our wrists, the warmth of its true purpose flooded my body.
Oh gods, this couldn’t possibly be…
I didn’t even finish my thought before Eryx seemed to read me like an open book.
“Aphrodite’s coveted sash,” he murmured in grim confirmation.
His fingers laced with mine in a tight hold, and a devious smirk highlighted dimples in his cheeks. When he spoke, the words came out with false thoughtfulness.
“It’s said to be one of the few items that can control the gods themselves. Originally crafted to inspire attraction, rumor has it that it also bears the ability of compulsion.”
Something in his voice told me that he believed the old lore of our people to be true. The way my skin prickled with the heat of a thousand volcanic eruptions? How it felt like a lover’s tongue licking up the base of my spine? Damning.
Instead of pulling my hand away from his in vain, I clutched onto his as I locked eyes with him. Let him feel the strength of my resolve in my grip, let him see it in the turbulent emotions beneath the windows of my soul.
“I am the goddess of desire. The deity responsible for controlling matters of the heart for lovers everywhere. Sash or not, my heart belongs to me.” My voice came out steadier than I felt, conveying a false sense of confidence when my insides teetered on a knife’s edge.
Ducking his head down, Eryx’s forehead pressed to mine. A rogue strand of his nearly black hair fell out of place, tickling the bridge of my nose.
His whispered words came out like both a promise and a threat. “Guess we’ll have to test that theory. Won’t we, Heartspite?”
Eryx’s free arm wrapped around my waist, tugging me up against the unforgiving strength of his body.
“I suppose we shall,” I responded while in a state of breathlessness, my words as steady as a feather atop a house of cards.
Tilting my head back to maintain eye contact, there was something beyond the coldhearted calculation of his actions. Before I could interpret it, the look disappeared behind a veil of chaos draped over broken glass.
An unnatural gust of wind cut through the cage, whipping my pink-tinted burgundy hair around my face. Squeezing my eyes shut to shield them, the world tilted precariously around us.
The rush of air roared in my ears, making it difficult to concentrate on the shifting surroundings. Even after the wind quieted, my body remained tense, and my heart continued to beat rapidly against my ribs.
With great hesitation, I eased my eyes open.
Still in the cage, but the view had changed.
Drastically.
Eryx remained before me. Instead of the dress shirt and slacks he had been wearing moments ago, he had on far less. The view was startling. No longer did I see a polished and tailored man of privilege, but a man with aggressive edges and dangerous stories etched in ink across his body.
The full display of tattoos canvased his upper body, stories that bled into one another in tales of violence and heartbreak.
Battles, both physical and metaphorical, were drawn with intensity and the steady hand of a talented artist. There wasn’t any part of his exposed torso left untouched by the ink.
Following the blend of colors and lines, they disappeared into a pair of black silk pants that hung unfairly low on his hips. The drawstring looked suspiciously loose, as though one languid stretch might be enough for them to expose him fully.
“Mm, now that we’re both more comfortable,” he spoke with a smoothness that rivaled warm honey.
I pinched my brows together in a moment of brief confusion before awareness washed over me. Looking down at the length of my own body, Eryx hadn’t been the only one to undergo a wardrobe change.
Instant heat flooded my cheeks as I discovered myself wrapped in a black silk bodysuit. The teddy’s neckline plunged deep between the swells of my breasts, while sheer mesh panels traced my sides down to the high-cut hips.
My first reaction was to pull away from him, but our wrists remained tied together by that damn sash, leaving us both stuck in each other’s orbit.
Eryx’s fingers came beneath my chin, tilting my head so I looked up at him. His thumb possessively swiped across my lower lip, catching a smudge of pink lipstick that I hadn’t recalled applying.
A choked noise escaped me, bordering between a whimper and a protest.
“What’s wrong, Heartspite? Don’t like it when someone else plays games of desire and lust?” he asked mockingly.
The struggle within me was caught between wanting to thrash against this swath of cloth tying us together or use it to draw us closer.
“That’s not how it works, Eryx,” I argued, the words weak in their delivery.
He chuckled, leaning in close enough to brush his nose against mine. The feeling of a butterfly caught in my chest threatened to overwhelm all rational thinking.
“Then, I think we should put Aphrodite’s sash to the test. Don’t you agree?” The brush of his lips against mine was so faint and brief that I wondered if it had been true contact or just the loaded promise of his words hanging in the air.
I realized just then that my hand was squeezing his with enough force that my fingers burned from the intensity. With more effort than it should have taken, I uncurled my fingers one stiff movement at a time.
Straightening, he granted me precious space. Not enough and simultaneously too much for my dizzied thoughts and conflicted feelings.
“Kneel.”
A demand. One charged with authority. A single word that wrapped around parts of myself that I wasn’t sure had ever existed before that very moment.
Before I could evaluate it further, I was already lowering myself before him. When my knees met the ground, I found those butterflies in my chest growing more frantic against my ribs.
Uncertainty filled my face as I stared up at him, silently questioning if I had done this of my own accord or if the sash was influencing me?
He picked up on my existential crisis. “Poor little Charlee, you look confused. You know what I think? Deep down, you want this. You’re tired of aligning hearts. I think you realize the damage you inflict and want to pay your penance.”
Is that what he was chalking this up to? Guilt over perceived shortcomings?
“I make people happy.”
A bitter smirk crossed his lips. “Do you?” A heavy beat passed with the unspoken truth that I hadn’t made him happy.
Every question he posed speared me with doubt’s ugly persistence.
“Here’s your chance, Heartspite. Prove me wrong. Show me that you aren’t above acknowledging that even you can’t fix your failures.”
Eryx rotated our hands, dragging the back of my knuckles over the bulging outline at the front of his pants. The thin material did little to buffer the thick and hard length of him.
He may be the god of discord, but his cock may as well have been blessed by Priapus. The god of fertility—or more specifically, penises everywhere—was well known for his oversized dick. Though some suggested that he wasn’t very adept at wielding it in the bedroom.
Gods help me, a part of me wanted to know if Eryx was more capable.
I felt myself leaning forward, drawn to wanting to show him he could feel things. That I could make him feel things, that I wasn’t a failure at my craft, that I wasn’t a failure at heart.
“Tell me what you want, theos.”