41. Smilax – Meaning Loveliness Lovely Mythology
41
SMILAX
(BAMBOO brIAR, SARSAPARILLA)
MEANING: LOVELINESS; LOVELY; MYTHOLOGY
OCEAN
________
M y legs bounced in the car, excitement pinging around inside me like a pinball going too fast. We were here. We were here, and we were going to see the ancient ruins I’d dreamed about since I was little.
None of it seemed real. Except there was an Alpha next to me, holding my hand on his thigh and rubbing his thumb over the back of my mine and he was very real. Which meant I was actually here.
Olive trees line the hills, leaves fluttering in the breeze off the sea. The pale bottoms of their leaves make all that fluttering look like glitter. I opened the car window, and the mild temperature seeped through the air, the fresh scent swirling and melding with Everett’s pistachio and almond.
Everett lifted my hand to his lips, kissing the back of it. When I looked at him, those blue eyes searched mine, and he smiled softly. So much more softly than he did with anyone else other than Cam and Micah.
My stomach did a flip.
“I want you to look like this all the time.”
“Should I buy stock in sundresses?”
He smiled and shook his head. “I love your dress, but that’s not what I mean. You look happy. You feel happy.”
A shiver of nerves ran along my skin as I bit my lip and took a risk. “I am happy.”
Not caring that this wasn’t a car with a separation from the driver, Rett pulled me and turned my body so I was draped across his lap and we were chest to chest. “What can we do to keep you this happy, even after we go home?” He cradled me with one arm, using the other to drift his knuckles over my cheek. “Anything.”
Keep me .
The words were on the tip of my tongue, and I held them back. We were in a different place now, but the bone-deep terror of it all falling apart still clung to me. I would talk to them, but together, and not today when everything was so beautiful.
“What’s going on in there, little nymph?”
“I’m not little,” I whispered, just like I had the first time he called me that.
His eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. “And I love exactly what you are. But I’m going to keep saying it anyway. Unless you hate it.”
I shook my head, breath short in my chest. I didn’t hate it. Definitely didn’t hate it. And he’d just said he loved me. He didn’t mean it that way, but I still grabbed onto that little memory and tucked it into the corner of my heart for later.
“Are you going to tell me what will make you happy?”
“I’ll think about it.”
Everett raised an eyebrow like he didn’t believe I needed time. He was right. I didn’t. But he smiled. “I will ask again.” It was a promise.
The car stopped, and Everett helped me out. There was a crowd of people in front of wrought-iron gates. Which wasn’t surprising, considering the ruins were the most popular tourist destination in the city. But we weren’t close yet, and no one was being let in past the gates. “Are the ruins closed?”
“Not for us.”
Our driver helped us maneuver through the crowd, and Everett showed his phone to the guard at the gate, who let us through. A couple of other people tried to follow, but they were kept back.
Stone paths wound up the hill through all the olive trees, and we were the only people walking those same paths. “Everett, what is going on? Shouldn’t this place be packed with people?”
He grinned. “Not today.”
“Why?”
Weaving our fingers together, he guided us to the larger of the paths in front of us. “Because we wanted you to experience this in the best way possible. Any pictures you wanted. As much time as you wanted. Wherever.” He glanced at his phone again. “Looks like there’s seven different ruins here. Do you know where you want to start?”
I stared at him before turning back to look at the gate and the crowd behind us. “Did you buy us an hour by ourselves?” The tickets I’d seen were based on time so people could flow in and out of the ruins without them getting overcrowded.
“We bought the whole day.”
For a solid second I swore the world went quiet, including my heart. “The whole day?”
“The whole day, little nymph. It’s just us.”
My jaw dropped, making him laugh. “They let you do that? You wanted to do that?”
One arm came around my hips as we kept going up the hill. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Ocean.” Then, quieter, “You’re our Omega.”
My mind still doesn’t want to accept the fact that this was entirely for us. Not us, for me . This was a fucking national landmark. Scratch that, it was one of the most famous places in the entire world, and they bought out the day so I could see it the way no one else will really get to.
Tears pricked my eyes, and that same sense of happiness flooded my veins. It wasn’t about the fact that they’d spent their money. That was incredible, and I wasn’t foolish enough to think it didn’t matter. It was a fucking privilege to be married to a pack so wealthy. But it wasn’t about that, it was that they’d thought about it. They thought about what I’d want and what would make it special, and made a plan.
It wasn’t just throwing money at me or substituting that for a connection or an experience. He was here with me. Invested with me.
“I thought maybe we’d go over there first.” Everett showed me the map on his phone of the far side of the complex with a big, pillared temple. A monument to an old god of fire. “Work our way back here to the main event.”
The main hill that rose to our right held the most famous temples and the ruins scattered around the bottom.
“Yes.”
He pointed to a small cart resting by the abandoned ticket stand, like it was waiting just for us. “Let’s go.”
I felt like I was on top of the fucking world. We’d seen almost everything, and now I was on top of a rock near the base of the main attraction, looking at a view of the city that went on for miles. The sea sparkled in the distance, the sun burning down with gorgeous clarity.
I’d had to reapply sunscreen twice, with my husband’s very enthusiastic help, but it was that or get burned. I had no plans to spend the rest of my honeymoon nursing a sunburn, so I made sure of it.
Every moment here felt soaked in history, and there was a kind of peace in knowing I was walking the paths so many had walked before. Especially since we were alone. It was so much easier to imagine it as it once was. With the olive trees in full bloom and people journeying to the temples with the flowers they needed to offer, among other things.
History was what brought on my love of flowers in the first place. They were in all the stories, and unlike everything else, I could see them and imagine. Pomegranate flowers and anemone. Apple blossoms and crocuses. Daffodils, also known as Narcissus. And as soon as I realized all the flowers had hidden meanings, I was a goner.
When I turned from the view, Everett was waiting near the stairs, watching me. I swore he’d been watching me more than everything around us, and I didn’t hate it.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
More than ready. Excitement tingled at my fingertips. Because this was the best part. Everything was great, but this is what you really came to see.
We walked past the theatres where worshippers had celebrated and spilled wine while watching the gods come to save them at the last second, and up the sun-soaked stairs into the pillars that made me feel small.
The top of the mountain spread out in front of us, the biggest temple right there. Right there .
“It’s incredible.”
“It really is,” Everett said.
Statues of beautiful women lined one of the smaller temples. Or the same woman. The goddess this entire place was dedicated to. More than one temple for more than one aspect of who she was.
All I could do was look around me and feel a sense of fucking awe. It was gorgeous and overwhelming, and there was a nameless swell of emotion in my chest. The crux of being in a place that was once the center of everything and somehow felt like it was still the center of everything. Like my life was narrowed to this moment, and it all spiraled outward from here.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” I whispered.
“Any time, little nymph.”
I smiled as we walked toward the entrance of the largest temple. “I think the nymphs probably stayed closer to the water.”
Everett nodded. “You’re right. While you’re here I should call you my goddess.”
A laugh burst out of me, but he didn’t look like he was remotely joking. “Everett.”
“Ocean.”
I shook my head, rolling my eyes with a smile, and he didn’t move. Suddenly, he swept his arms beneath my legs and scooped me off the ground. “What are you doing?” My voice was a desperate gasp as he climbed the steps to the temple and inside it .
Where we were very much not allowed to be.
“ Everett .” I hissed his name. “We’re not supposed to be in here.”
He smirked. “Too bad there’s no one here to tell us that.”
“But—”
“We’ll be careful, goddess,” he whispered, lips brushing my temple.
I was too shocked to protest about him carrying me. It didn’t feel like he was struggling, though he had to be. I swallowed, wiggling a little to see if he’d let me down.
“Afraid I’ll drop you?”
“No. Just don’t want you to throw your back out or something.”
My husband scoffed. “I’m not that old. And contrary to what you believe about yourself, the world doesn’t end if I carry you for a little while.”
“Everett.”
He set me down on an ancient stone that I realized was the altar. I was sitting on the goddess’s altar in the middle of the temple. Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Literally holy, some would say.
If my mind hadn’t been going in a hundred directions, I might have laughed.
“I will tell you this until you believe it, Omega.” He tilted my face up to his. The way he was silhouetted by the afternoon sun made him look like a god, and in this moment, I was his willing sacrifice.
“I do not give a damn what you weigh. I don’t care that you’re not thin. I don’t care that you’re not light as a feather. And maybe when I’m old and gray, there will be a time when I can’t carry you. If that time comes, then we’ll figure it out. But in the meantime, I can, and will, whenever I damn well please. Who cares if you’re not as small as others? That’s never what I wanted nor what I asked for.”
“Rett—”
He sank to his knees in front of me, hands dragging down my legs along with his movement. “I know, baby. I know that the world and your family have made you believe the shape of your body makes you less worthy, but it isn’t fucking true. Just because they’re assholes who don’t appreciate your curves doesn’t mean your husbands don’t.” Hands ran up beneath my skirt and the inside of my thighs. Everett ran his nose along my bare knee and inhaled like I’d been made just for him.
Those same hands gripped my thighs, fingers digging into them deliciously and hauling them apart so he knelt between them. There was no way to speak.
“I love how soft you are. I like seeing my fingers press into your skin like your body wants to mold to my will. I love the motion of everything. The ripples in your body while I fuck you.”
My breath went short. He hadn’t fucked me in long days. Nearly since that first night we all shared.
“Because every ripple means I’m the one causing them. And eventually they’ll mean pleasure for both of us.” A sly smile crossed his lips. “Should I keep going and tell you how much I fantasize about watching your tits bounce and swing while one of the others takes you from behind and I watch? Or taste them?”
“Everett.” This time his name was more a moan than anything else.
“Today this is your temple, Ocean Caldwell, and we’re not leaving until you’ve been worshipped like the goddess you are.”
My Alpha surged off his knees, capturing my lips with his and taking them without mercy and without restraint. He had me up and turned around before I could draw a full breath, pulling my dress off my shoulders and letting it pool at my feet like I truly was a sacrifice.
An offering.
He shoved the underwear off my hips and let my bra fall. “I’ve never been more tempted to burn clothing as this underwear, little nymph. Purely so I know you’re naked underneath this dress.”
But the words were nearly forgotten as he touched me. Every single part of me. Wrapped his body around mine and caressed. Squeezed. Held my breasts in his hands and weighed them with a groan. Kissed my neck, leaving my skin burned with the scruff of his beard behind.
Everett placed his hand in the center of my back and pressed until I bent at the waist, my breasts scraping the stone altar once more.
Then he fell to his knees and worshipped.