Chapter Ninety-Six
The pale blue morning light glinted off Ares’s armor, which was so tightly molded to his frame it was near impossible to tell where the metal ended and his skin began.
He did not move to meet me, and perhaps I should have quickened my pace. I could have called Erebus and ridden so that I did not keep my future husband waiting. But I did not. My dead were only just buried. I would not offer them the disrespect of hurrying to his side.
“My god.” Only when I was standing within an arm’s length of the immortal did I dip my head in a bow. “You heard my prayer.”
“I did.”
He seemed larger now, his divinity more visible even in the muted light.
“I will confess I did not expect your presence so soon.”
He held my gaze with not a hint of empathy on his face. Instead, his eyes glimmered only with pride. “You served me well in taking vengeance for your women, but the Phrygians will hold a grudge against you for decades to come.”
“Our response was no less than they deserved, and the only grudge they can rightly bear is one born of jealousy,” I replied. “It will do our reputation no harm for them to spread stories of the women who killed their men. And I dare say ours will be a reputation that long outlives theirs.”
I could tell from the way a slight smile twitched at the corner of his lips that my answer pleased him.
“Your reputation will outlive all the heroes and monsters of these lands.”
“The Amazons’ reputation,” I corrected. I was not doing this for personal glory or for my daughters alone. I was doing it for protection. For strength. For them.
“Yes, you are right. The name of the Amazons will live on.” Ares stepped toward me.
planting his foot between my own so that his body was but a hair’s breadth away from me when he spoke again.
“But so will yours as their queen. This union will be one of greatness, the likes of which you could never have dreamed. Our daughters will spark fear over all the world.”
“They will,” I said, knowing he spoke the truth.
I did not take his hand nor press my body against his to make my intentions clear. There was no need. We came to the moment willingly.
Without another word, I headed between the buildings to my chamber. Not once did I turn to check that he was following. He had come for one reason alone.
Animal skins covered the ground, while tallow candles, odorous and half-melted, were scattered on the floor and set upon the window ledges.
Taking an oil lamp, I set them burning before I turned to face the god.
I had not considered the sparseness of my chambers until this point, nor the decadence that his previous lover must have provided him with.
“It is not the luxury you are used to, my god,” I said.
My heart pounded against my ribs, and an apology teetered on my tongue, yet I would not allow myself to speak it.
What would I be apologizing for? Choosing a life of freedom over the shackles of marriage?
Building a sanctuary for my women from the ground up?
“I have not come here for fine furniture or frescoes,” Ares said quietly. “I have come here for you.”
He placed his hand around my waist, a firm grip, almost familiar in its touch, yet it caused my body to tighten by reflex.
Only one man had the freedom to place his hands on my skin, and even then, only by my consent.
But I had consented, I reminded myself. I had consented to this marriage.
To birthing Ares’s children. And for that, we needed to spend this—and perhaps other nights beyond this—together.
“I did not lie to you when I said I would never take a woman against her will,” he said.
I swallowed back the fears that were shaking my knees and locked my gaze on his. “I know,” I said. “And I am here willingly.”
Ares nodded before running his fingertip up my arm and along my collarbone. “I have seen the way the mortal touches you. I have seen the manner in which he makes your back arch and your body quake. Is that what you want from me? To pleasure you as he pleasures you? To make you moan as he does?”
“You wish to pleasure me?” The question caught me by surprise. I did not even believe Morsimus ever knew pleasures were available to a woman during intimacy. I myself had not known until my first night with Cleon.
My thoughts drifted back to my former lover and the last time we had been together.
Wild dogs had howled through the night, and the sounds of dancing and laughter had come from the fire, but we had paid them no mind.
We knew it was to be the last time we would ever touch each other’s skin, feel the mounds and dips in each other’s bodies, trace the lines of each other’s scars.
We would dance and sing a thousand more times in our lives, but that was the last moment we had together.
We had taken each other together on the soft moss that grew on the thick trunk of a gnarled tree.
My feet had hooked tight around his waist while his thrusts beat to the steady rolling of my hips.
I had thought at the time how I could live that moment for all eternity and never tire of it, how I wished I could live it a hundred times more before I had to say goodbye.
And there was Ares, offering it to me again.
Offering to take me just as Cleon had done.
“No,” I said. I placed my hand on Ares’s chest and looked up at him so that he could not deny the truth in my words. “I want you to take me as a god would take his queen.”
At my command, Ares’s eyes flashed with hunger for my body, and I had given him permission to take it all. There were no words, the way there had been with Cleon, no laughter or suggestions of how to move together for the greatest pleasure. Ares did not need suggestions.
He pulled and twisted me every which way he chose, yet I made no protest, for what was there to protest when a mortal body is brought to ecstasy time and time again by a god?
At first, he lay down on the couch and had me sit astride him, my thighs clenched around his.
When he tired of that, he bent me over, taking me instead from behind.
At times, I was the one who held all the control, or at least that was what it felt like.
I was the one who had a god between my legs and the power to make him moan and writhe with pleasure or tease and delay as long as I chose.
Other times, I succumbed entirely to his will, clenching my jaw as he released himself into me.
I squeezed my eyes shut so tightly that not a sliver of light could hope to creep in, not out of pain or dissatisfaction but out of fear that in such moments of pure pleasure, Ares could easily have slipped into his true godly form.
I had thought the action would be brief, perfunctory, there to serve the purpose of impregnation and nothing else. I was wrong.
I did not learn his body the way I did with Cleon, for I could not.
It was ever-changing. The tautness of his muscles, the size and strokes with which he filled me, all evolved constantly to meet my needs.
No sooner had I yearned for something than he met that craving with his hands, his fingers, whichever part of him he could.
And with every hour that passed with our bodies joined as one, I felt the shift.
New energy coursed through my veins, not only in me but in Themiscyra.
There was magic in our presence. A god, molding us.
Making us greater. Making me a true queen.
I did not know how long we remained in that chamber, only that I lost count of the times I heard Ares growl and groan with a primal fury so intense it resonated with all the strength of the Titans.
My back and knees were rubbed raw from the coarseness of the hide beneath us, yet within the passion, there were moments of tenderness that I could never have dreamed possible from any god, let alone the god of war.
Moments when he kissed my body as if he were the one worshipping me, when his movements were so subtle it felt as if a single breath could push me over the edge.
When Ares stood without beckoning me to him, we had been in my chamber for so long that the smell of sweat overpowered the stench of the tallow candles, which had long since burned their wicks.
He did not take a robe or garment to conserve his modesty but his zoster, his prized possession in which he sheathed his weapons.
“We are done?” My voice sounded foolish, yet he did not respond judgmentally.
“You wish to continue?” he said. A glint of mischief burned in his eyes. “If that is the case, then by all means.”
Unexpected laughter broke from me, though it was quickly joined by another sound: a loud growl from my stomach. I was now ravenous, famished. It felt as though the funeral feast had been days ago, and I suspected it had been.
“We should eat,” I said, unsure how I could continue our exertions without sustenance. “We should eat. And then we will fight.”