CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN #3
‘Maybe,’ he snaps, clearly irked that I’m not seeing whatever it is he sees, and I wish I could.
I wish this would make some semblance of sense because I do not understand in the slightest. ‘Maybe I could have gone to Olympus and visited you all as regularly as I liked. Or maybe I’d have gone and while I was away someone would have taken you again – and maybe they wouldn’t have hesitated in killing you this time.
Maybe I’d go and Perseus would decide the easiest way to destroy my worship would be to raze my temples and my followers both.
Maybe I’d go and I’d lose everything. So no, darling, I don’t think I’ll take that risk. ’
This time he does manage to catch my hand, and he entwines our fingers together. ‘If I am to take any risk at all, it will be with you by my side. Together.’
‘We can’t be together,’ I protest. ‘Not for … not for as long as you deserve.’
‘Well,’ he says simply, ‘we’re going to have to figure that out. Because I love you, and I refuse to do any part of this without you.’
His gaze does not waver once. It is solid and assured and it’s the only fixed thing as everything else falls apart around me.
The wind and the rock and the ocean and the skies themselves and every single star.
It fades like it was never real to begin with, each facet of our world and every myth that brought it forth nothing to the origin of him and I, like we are where it all starts – and where it all ends.
‘You love me,’ I repeat.
‘I do,’ he says, green eyes sparkling and … oh. Maybe it was never some godly radiance I was seeing there. Maybe it was some other warmth, flickering to life as he looks at me.
‘Loving me is a foolish reason to turn down a place on Olympus.’ My throat is tight, and my other words falter. If I truly cared for him, wouldn’t I lie now? Wouldn’t I tell him it’s not reciprocated and he should take the sanctuary he’s been offered, that he should run to it?
But our entwined hands fall against our hips, and his other trails down my face, just like it has so many times, and I can’t envision a world without that touch.
Without the man leaning closer, the fan of dark lashes lowering, his gaze dropping to my lips and that one lingering breath he takes like he must cling to air while he has it.
‘I’m a fool in every other regard. Not this. You might be the only time I am perfectly serious.’
It feels, suddenly, like if I don’t kiss him the world might never resume its turning.
So I lean into that hand, tilt my face to his and our lips brush in one desperate, greedy inhale. My eyes fall shut and there is only him, not eternal or inevitable but fleeting and hesitant and now – a moment to grasp, to hold close, to cling to even as it slips.
His other hand glides to the small of my back, and he pulls me in even closer.
I run my palms over his chest, feeling his heart thrashing beneath. I curl my fingers into the fabric of his chiton, so tight it might rip, but needing to grasp him close.
My teeth catch at his lip and he groans into my open mouth, that hand on my back dipping lower, drawing more of me closer. He parts his lips to moan once more, tilting his head back, and I take advantage, kissing along his jaw, down his throat, right where that pulse jumps.
‘Ariadne,’ he breathes, a half-strangled sound. ‘If you tell me we need to go back to that party right now …’
‘No, I don’t think I’m welcome there.’
‘Excellent.’
He twists, his arm catching beneath my legs, and before I am aware quite what is happening, I am in his arms, my own flung about his neck, half screaming and half laughing from the shock of it all as he begins hurtling down the mountainside.
‘If you trip and kill us both,’ I start.
‘Then I’ll really regret not taking my father up on his offer.’
‘That’s not funny.’
I bury my head into his shoulder as he chuckles beneath me – but then I’m breathing in the soft earthy scent of him: ivy and pine and the sweet, heady hint of wine.
I want to strip him of it all, the leaves twisted in a crown atop his head and the pine-teeth jewellery and everything else, and I want to breathe in deep and know what is him, beneath it all.
When we cross the threshold of our tent, he pushes me on to the table, his hands on my waist, at once tender and urgent, his lips on mine, my legs about him, drawing him closer.
‘Will you take your clothes off,’ I ask, voice a breathy whine. ‘Please?’
‘We don’t have to,’ he says, his hands running from my waist, along my hips and down to the outer edges of my thighs, like without touching the shape of me he might never know it.
‘I’d like to,’ I say, reaching for the clasp of my own belt. ‘If you do. If you want to.’
He groans, the sound lodging in the back of his throat, almost guttural and so desperately needy. ‘I want to. I very much want to.’
‘Oh, thank the Fates,’ I sigh, reaching for the ties of his own chiton.
He leans over to kiss me. Sitting like this, I have to arch up into him, pressing back on to my elbows. His kiss is dizzying, warm and desperate, and I have never wanted anything as much as him.
Need curls, hungry and voracious, and there is not an ounce of regret or fear or shame, nothing weighing me down, not any more.
Not with him.