Chapter Six
Hecate
It would be weakness to forgive Hermes.
I have heard far too many goddesses lament the wrongs the gods they’ve chosen to love—whether for a night or forever—have done to them. It’s one of the many reasons I never wanted to find myself in this position, with a god making promises I’m not sure he can keep.
But it’s hard to deny the earnestness in his face, or the way the sight of him on his knees has heat spreading out from my belly in a tight coil. My toes curl, digging into the soft sandy earth.
Is this the only choice? Abstain entirely or allow yourself to be betrayed over and over again? I can’t countenance it. Either way is losing, and I don’t want to lose.
Not this game, not him. Especially not him.
“If you ever…”
“I swear on my mother I will not.” He takes the one hand of mine he still has and brings it to his lips, kissing the back, the palm. Little shivers dance their way up my arm from every point of contact. “It’s you, Hecate. You are the brightness, the darkness, everything all wrapped up at once.”
I shake my head. His words are too much. “Don’t.” I curl my fingers, cupping his face in both hands now as his reach for my hips, the heat of them searing me through my wet dress. “I can’t take it.”
“Then let me show you,” he insists, his grey eyes flinty with determination. His fists clench, handfuls of my skirt caught between his fingers. “Unhook your dress, love. I’ll show you exactly what you mean to me.”
My breath catches. It’s a moment I can’t take back. If I deny him, step back, he’l let me go, he’ll respect my wishes, but I’ll never have the nerve to let him try again. I’ll lose him.
And if I unhook the pins at my shoulders, I’ll never get this back either. No longer will I be untouched. The others make it sound like a line of demarcation, as though I’m losing something irrevocable.
But losing Hermes is far more painful than some status I never truly sought.
Slowly, I undo the dress pins, first one, then the other until my dress in a heap at my feet.
Hermes draws in a slow breath, his eyes widening in surprise before going dark as he drags them over my exposed skin.
“You’re perfect,” he murmurs, a breathless declaration more for himself than for me.
Before I can respond, he drags his hands from my calves to my hips, pulling me into him. He presses kisses against my belly slow, gentle, devotional.
I run my fingers through his hair, savoring the silken feel of his honeyed curls. “Hermes,” I gasp, pleading for something, anything.
He chuckles, his breath tickling my skin. “Don’t worry, Hecate. I’ll give you everything you need.”
How can he when I don’t even know what I need?
But he shows me, as his hands travel higher, cupping my breasts, thumbs brushing over nipples already pebbled and taut. They strain themselves into his hands as I arch my back.
So this is what desire feels like, warm, pulsing, inexorable. My entire body hums with it, the anticipation building like the waxing of the moon, and we’ve barely begun.
“Beautiful,” He says as he kisses his way down. He leaves trails of fire as his touch and kiss go lower and lower. He kisses my hip, my thigh, nuzzling there while I shake like a willow branch in the wind.
Then the heat of his mouth presses to my sex, still chilled by the water, and I let out a cry. The heat is so intense, so good, the thrill of it as shocking as one of Zeus’ thunderbolts. He licks along my seam, parting my with his tongue before circling my clit.
So this is what pleasure is. I’d thought I’d known the concept.
The simple joys of existence, of the wind in my hair, and the cool water on my skin, but never this.
Never the touch of another, so intimate and needful.
He’s gentle at first, learning how I respond, and every time his eyes dart up to my face to check in with me, I soar just a little higher.
But the more I respond, the more ardent he becomes, until I’m nothing more than putty in his hands, formless and desperate.
He grips my hips, drawing me tighter against his mouth, and I brace my hands on his shoulders, trying to keep upright. My legs have turned to jelly, and without him to hold me up, I’d have surely fallen.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs against my skin. “So perfect.” He kisses my hip. “So mine.”
I gasp for air as he slides his hand between my thighs, fingers trailing over my sex. My hips buck, begging for more contact.
“Do you want this?” he asks, his voice a low tease. “My fingers inside you? My cock?”
“Yes!” As though I could find any other answer. I’m so close, to what I’m not sure, but I crave it like the sweetest ambrosia. I need it.
He doesn’t make me wait, parting me on his finger. There’s no pain, only the pressure of being stretched, filled, both foreign and enticing. I make an unintelligible sound as he adds a second finger, and the feeling only increases, the pressure building until I’m squirming, seeking friction.
His chuckle vibrates against my skin, but then his mouth is against my clit once more, and I forget everything but sensation as it consumes me, stealing my breath, my sight, reducing my hearing to a dull roar.
And I come apart with a shattering cry. A thousand pieces flying apart and coming back together I ride out my climax. It’s as though the world had been in black and white and Hermes has thrown color all around me.
I’m not sure how I end up straddling his lap.
He’s still on his knees in the sand, and my still fluttering sex is pressed against the hard throb of his arousal.
The only barrier between us is the skirt of his chiton, and I’ve never longed to destroy a piece of fabric more.
I gasp for air as he slides his hands down my back, murmuring something soothing in my ear.
“I have you, love. I’ll always have you.”
And he does. He has me completely. I reach for the ties of his chiton at his shoulders, mindless now, and he growls in response.
“We don’t have to,” he says, even as he helps me shove the fabric down, so I can run my hands over his bare chest.
“I want to,” I insist kissing along his throat as I find his cock under the rumpled fabric still between us. He lets out a low groan as I stroke him, his hands gripping my hips. “I need you.”
He catches my mouth in a harsh kiss, all teeth and tongue, and the taste of myself. I moan into it as I learn the feel of him in my hand, the heat, the weight. His hips buck, encouraging me, but he grabs my hand, stilling me with another low growl.
“Get me inside you, Hecate. Or I’ll fuck you into the ground.”
A full body shiver works its way through me as I consider his offer, but the sand isn’t what I want to feel, not this first time. Perhaps not ever. I lever myself up on my knees, and he tears the chiton, rending the fabric to tatters as he removes the last barrier between us.
Like the fabric, this is something that cannot be undone, but as I notch him against me and sink down, taking him in that first perfect inch, I feel completed rather than torn asunder.
I’ve gained rather than lost.
Slowly, I work myself down over his cock, the stretch stealing my breath. Hemes holds himself still, his hands on my hips, neither hurrying nor slowing me as I take him. It feels impossible, and I whine as I wiggle my hips. He hushes me, encouraging.
Chaos, he feels too good, too perfect.
Somehow, I sink down until my hips are flush to his, until there is no more space between us. He throbs inside me, a full twitch, and I gasp, tilting my head back.
“Are you all right?” he asks, his mouth trailing over my shoulders.
“I’m perfect.” And I am, but I also am near to bursting with the same sort of pressure I had been when his mouth had been on me. I scratch down his chest, needing to loosen the need inside me somehow. “Please. I need—”
“I know what you need.” His grip on my hips tightens as he bucks his hips beneath me. The moments where I controlled everything is over, and he urges me to rock my hips, meeting me every time I bring my hips back down.
His kisses his way down my chest, sucking my taut nipple between his lips, scraping it with his teeth until I shout, feeling every pulse deep inside me, clenching down around him.
“So perfect,” he murmurs, the words strung together in gasps between his assaults on my skin. “You take me so well.” Another nip at the side of my breast, and I scratch his back. “Yes, that’s is, strangle my cock with your pretty cunt. Make me yours, Hecate.”
Yes, mine. He’s mine, just as surely as I’m his.
We lose ourselves to the rhythm. To the sharp slap of skin on skin as he bucks harder beneath me.
To the pressure building sharper and faster, until I can’t breathe.
I’ve already felt the pleasure of climax once, but it only makes me chase it more.
I want to feel it again. What’s more, I want to feel it with him.
To be with him in a moment of pure ecstatic connection.
“Come with me,” I gasp out as I seek his mouth. He meets my hungry kiss, one hand leaving my hip to tangle in my hair.
“You never have to ask for that. I’m always with you. I’m hanging on by threads.” He murmurs against my lips. “Fall, love. I’ll catch you.”
And I do. With him holding me, I fall into ecstasy, my entire body tensing around him, shuddering. He groans against my skin, and jerks his hips as he follows me after, murmuring my name while I whisper his in return.
Somehow, I don’t know how, he lays me out on the blanket I’d dropped, settling between my thighs. He kisses me lazily and brushes my hair back from my face as I cling to him, still shivering in the aftermath.
We don’t speak for long moments. The world is slow to invade the perfection of the two of us together, and I am content to keep it at bay for as long as possible.
But when it does, I am less filled with worries than I had been before. I’ve made a choice, and I don’t regret it.
“I am sorry,” he says. “I will not choose my father over you again. Not anyone over you.”
I stare into his eyes, bright and earnest, and I know it’s the truth. Hermes, this trickster, this god of liars would never give me anything less than the truth.
“I forgive you.”
He kisses me again, and I hum, running my fingers through his curls.
“Marry me,” he says when we break apart. “I love you. I want to keep you. I want you to keep me.”
My heart skips beats. The enormity of his words breaks the bubble between us. Marriage? I imagine what would happen if I say yes. What it would be like as his wife, but I cannot. It’s too tight, too much tether.
“Hermes…” I trace his jaw with my fingers. “I will do many, many things with you. Be yours, but I cannot be your wife. I cannot be anyone’s wife.”
To his credit, he shakes off my denial quickly, a playful grin pulling at his lips. “I will have you in any way I can, Hecate.” He promises me, rocking his hips against me until I gasp.
The virility of a god cannot be understated.
“If not my wife,” he says as his cock hardens against me, and I arch. “Then my consort? Choose me, Hecate. I will not let you regret it.”
“I do choose you. I choose you before all others.”
He smiles and kisses me. I wrap my arms around him, my heart so bright in my chest, it feels as though it could glow through my skin.
“Then that’s a yes?” He sinks inside me once more as I let out a whine.
I nod, wrapping my legs around his waist to bring him deeper inside me.
“Yes.”
I am his, just as he is mine, and as we move together once more by the lake shore, I don’t want it any other way.
In this enemies to lovers romance, Apollo kept Eris chained in darkness for 700 years, until he frees her with a wave of his hand. He needs her help to save the gods, but Strife would rather have revenge, especially against him.