Chapter 39
Achilles’s kiss drowned me, consuming all reason, carrying me with him into a fire I no longer wanted to escape.
When he laid me back against the bed, it wasn’t a taking.
It was worship. And I was his altar.
His mouth met mine again, harder this time, like he couldn’t get close enough. Like he wanted to crawl beneath my skin and live there. He kissed me with his whole body, hands fisting in my hair, his chest pressed to mine, our breath mingling in fractured bursts.
When he dragged his mouth down my throat, I arched, forcing myself to stay still when he brushed the tender places I didn’t want him to know about yet. His tongue traced the line of my pulse, his lips scraping over the delicate skin like he was debating whether to devour me whole.
“Tell me what you need,” he rasped in a shaking voice. “I’ll give you anything. Everything.”
“You,” I breathed. “I just want you. Make me forget he ever touches me. Make me forget he calls me his.”
Something shattered in him. His restraint. His silence. He groaned like it was pulled from the marrow of his bones, and rolled over me, pressing me into the bed, his body a crucible of heat and need.
His mouth returned to my breasts, sucking, tasting, his hands sliding down my sides, palms mapping me like he could learn eternity that way. His teeth grazed my nipple, and his tongue followed, soothing the sting. My back arched, and my thighs fell open in invitation.
Achilles groaned again and slipped lower, dragging his tongue down my stomach, dipping into the hollow beneath my navel.
He sat back just enough to strip the last of the cloth from his body, the tunic falling forgotten to the floor.
I had seen him shirtless before, in training, and even in the battle tonight. But this—this was different.
This was not the body of a warrior shown to the world.
This was Achilles, stripped bare for me.
Bronzed muscle shifted beneath his skin with each breath he dragged in. A line of dark hair cut down his abdomen, drawing my gaze … Gods.
He was hard. His length was thick and heavy, jutting toward me, the flushed crown swollen and furious, the veins along the shaft pulsing as though straining for release. The sight alone sent a rush of heat through me, fire spilling from a cracked vessel, pooling insistent.
And yet, he was beautiful. A weapon and a wonder both, sculpted by gods to destroy and to worship.
Not just in the sheer size of him, though that alone made my pulse stumble, but in the way his gaze held mine as I took him in. Unflinching. Daring. As though he already knew the storm he had woken in my chest and was demanding I let it break, that I let him take it—take me.
An aching awareness gathered low in my belly, and I couldn’t look away.
Mouth to skin, hand to hip, he mapped me like I was the story he’d been waiting his whole life to read. I let him unravel me. Bit by bit, breath by breath, until I was shaking beneath him, gasping his name like it might save me.
“You’re mine.”
His words were a vow, etched deeper than his hands ever could. He leaned lower, hot breath over my breast, and whispered again. “I’ll worship you. Break for you. Burn the world before I let it take you.”
He gripped behind my knees and shoved them wider, spreading me open like I belonged to him, like the hunger in his eyes had finally broken its leash.
Achilles buried his face between my thighs like a man starving.
No preamble, just greedy hunger. A cry ripped from my throat as his tongue parted my slick folds, dragging up through my cunt until he closed his mouth around my clit and sucked.
Menelaus had never—never—done this. He’d taken what he wanted, never lowering himself to worship between my legs. This was … this was everything.
I twisted beneath Achilles’s touch, aching for more, but he pinned me mercilessly, holding me captive as he took his time with the slow torment of his mouth.
He licked everywhere … messy and unashamed. His tongue stroked over my entrance, plunging deep, then sliding back up to circle and lash at my clit until I was gasping, shaking, the world narrowing to the wet heat of his mouth and the relentless sounds of him feasting on me.
I tugged at his hair, frantic, but he groaned into me, the vibration rumbling through my swollen flesh until my vision blurred.
He pulled back just far enough to drag his tongue up the length of me, tasting every drop, before he pressed a kiss to my throbbing clit.
His lips brushed there as he rasped, voice wrecked, hungry.
“You were made for this. For me. The gods carved this cunt to ruin me.”
A shiver snapped through me, not entirely from his hands.
Menelaus had used that word tonight too—loudly, gleefully, flinging it across the hall for the Sidonians to hear. A weapon meant to shame me. A spectacle. A way to drag me down while raising his cup.
Hearing it now in Achilles’s voice, reverent instead of mocking, made the memory twist. It was wrong that the same sound could feel so different. Wrong that it echoed at all.
“Achilles—” I breathed, unsettled and unsure which part of me was trembling.
He growled, and his tongue slid back into me, relentless, deeper, lapping, fucking me with his mouth while his thumb pressed hard on my clit.
Something gathered inside me, unfamiliar and rising, my body moving toward a place it had never been.
I tried to brace for it, to understand it, but there was nothing to compare it to.
I broke apart against him, pleasure ripping through me so violently I sobbed, my body convulsing, but he didn’t stop. He licked and sucked and swallowed, taking everything until I was certain he would consume me whole.
I was breathless and shaking, stunned by the sheer fact that my body had responded to him like that when Menelaus had never come close.
When Achilles rose, red-glittered paint smeared his mouth and chin, a shining wound he wore like triumph. My chaos. My undoing. He looked like a fallen god crowned in my devotion, marked in the colors of me.
The air between us crackled with things unspoken as his mouth left a trail of heat up my body, tasting the curve of my hip, the dip of my waist, the rapid pulse at my collarbone. My skin felt fevered, lit from within.
Achilles braced himself above me, eyes locked on mine. His chest heaved with restraint, golden skin slick with sweat and paint.
“Are you sure?” he rasped in a voice barely above a whisper.
My eyes fluttered shut, a tremor rippling through me, exquisite pain, raw as an open wound and just as honest. Because Menelaus had never asked me that before. He had only taken.
Claimed.
Bruised.
The ghosts of the king’s hands tried to rise, but I shoved them back into the dark where they belonged. Even if I bore his marks, he had no place here. Not in this bed. Not with Achilles.
I opened my eyes, met the fire in his, and breathed, “Yes.” I reached for him and wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him into me with a desperation I hadn’t known I possessed.
He groaned as his body met mine. The head of his cock pressed against my entrance, hot and thick and pulsing with need. My breath caught, anticipation slicing through me as he pushed forward, slow and steady.
The stretch burned, but I welcomed it. Welcomed him.
My hands fisted the sheets, my back arching, mouth parting on a gasp as he sank into me inch by inch. He held himself rigid, his jaw clenched and his muscles trembling from the effort it took not to lose control.
“You feel,” he choked out, forehead pressing to mine, “like you were made for me.”
I couldn’t speak. My throat was tight with emotion, my body too overwhelmed by the fullness of him, the exquisite friction of him sliding deeper, deeper, until he was seated fully within me.
We stilled.
He was so far in me I could barely breathe. The air was heavy between us, trembling with the weight of this moment. Of everything we were risking.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered.
I didn’t realize they’d fallen shut. When I looked at him, I saw everything.
His face hovered just above mine, and he cradled my cheek like I was fragile and fierce in the same breath.
Achilles withdrew almost entirely, teasing my desperation, before plunging back inside me. My body arched to meet him, clinging, greedy, aching, straining to take all of him—his size, his heat, his weight—until I was trembling beneath the force of him.
Each movement was adoring. Purposeful. Like he wasn’t just taking me … he was learning me.
I gasped and raked my nails down his back, the burn of pleasure blooming wide and wild inside me. He moved again, deeper this time, harder, and I cried out, a helpless sound that split the quiet like a cracked chalice.
“Again,” I breathed. “Don’t stop. Please, Achilles, don’t stop.”
His response was a low growl in my ear, and then his hips snapped forward. The bed creaked, the headboard slamming softly against the stone wall, a rhythm forming that felt like poetry and delirium all at once.
He kissed me again, rougher this time, his tongue tangling with mine as our bodies met in frantic unity. His hand slid beneath my thigh, lifting it higher, angling me to take him deeper. I felt him everywhere, burning through me, remaking me from the inside out.
Every thrust sent lightning cracking through my veins, pleasure coiling tighter and tighter until I thought I might shatter from it.
I moaned into his mouth, my body straining for more, for everything.
The red paint on my skin smeared across us both, streaks of war and desire marking the places we collided.
“You’re shaking,” he breathed against my lips.
“You’re ruining me,” I choked, tears springing to my eyes, not from pain, but from the unbearable beauty of this, of us.