This Immortal Heart: A Novel of Aphrodite(37)

“Isn’t it?” he says.

I hesitate. What he’s saying horrifies me. His gift is death—not just death but the most terrifying and monstrous kind, the kind that leaves devastation in its wake, the kind that breeds and multiplies, surging with brutality and rage and destroying everything in its wake. That he can compare it with what I do—when I bring bodies together in love, not hatred, when I celebrate the joy of abandon and pleasure—feels so wrong.

My feet seem to move without my thinking. I’m drawn irresistibly closer, step by step.

I know what I felt when I saw him in Cyprus. I felt it in Thrace, and when I saw him by the fountain. I felt it even when he infuriated me at council, talking about his wars. I can’t deny it any longer—the connection between us that shouldn’t exist, that should be impossible.

“Sometimes I wonder,” I say slowly, “if Zeus will make you so angry one day that you’ll leave and never come back.”

“And if I did?” His gaze is so intense, and we’re so close now, that I could reach out and touch him. “Olympus wouldn’t miss me.”

I can’t seem to get enough air into my lungs. “I would.”

My words hang between us, a fatal moment of honesty I can’t take back. I don’t know what he’s going to do, and then in an instant his lips are crushed against mine. I reach up and lift the helmet from his head, letting it fall to the stone floor with a crash, and then my hands are in his hair, his arms wrapped around me. I slide my hands down over the cold metal of his armor and I pause, confounded for a moment. The bronze is hammered into the shape of a muscled chest, pleasing to look at, but I want to feel his skin against mine. This might be a mistake in more ways that I can even think to count, but, despite all the power at my disposal, there is nothing I can do to stop myself.

He hoists me onto the table and reaches for the buckles down the side of his armor. He’s kissing me again, greedy and eager, and I scrabble to unfasten them too. As the last one gives way, the chest piece swings forward and he pulls it off, letting it clatter to the floor like his helmet.

I break away from the kiss, pressing my palms against him. I take it all in—the amber glow of the torches glinting in his dark eyes, his chest heaving under his leather tunic, his body finely honed by battle, sculpted as if it were a statue made for worship.

He pulls me down from the table, leading me through the gloomy hall and past another set of doors. My heart is pounding, blood rushing through my body, and I can hear it like the frenzied, ecstatic drums at a sacrifice, like I’m one of his followers lost in helpless yearning—except I’m not a fragile mortal; I’m the Goddess of Love and this is what I was made for. Another door, and we’re in his chamber: dark stone and a low-burning fire that conjures writhing shadows across the floor. He yanks his tunic over his head and my fingers scramble at my knotted belt, pulling it open, letting it fall to the ground. I pause, taking him in, and my lips curve in a smile. He’s as glorious as I thought he would be. I run my fingers down the fine, dark hair on his chest and he lets out a low moan, almost a growl. He can’t tear his eyes away from me; I can feel his need, his hunger to see more. I’m aching to feel his hands on me and his skin against mine. It’s torture, sweet and delicious torture, but I force myself to slow down, lifting my dress over my body. It’s worth it to see his eyes widen and hear him gasp before he seizes me. Everywhere he touches me, heat trails across my body, igniting a sweep of flames through to my very core.

He’s urgent and intent; all his reserve stripped away with his armor, all his simmering anger and volatility transformed into raw passion and naked desire. He works his way down my body, and I sink onto the soft bed beneath him, losing myself to the surges of pleasure. Then I’m astride him and he’s as lost as I am, like an ocean wave exploding against rocks, crashing to the shore, gasping for breath.





11


I wake in his bed to the dim light of morning creeping through the silhouetted pillars. The fire has burned to ash in the hearth, and the room is swathed in the soft gray and lavender haze of a misty dawn.

Ares sleeps at my side. I trace the high outline of his cheekbone and the strong line of his jaw, my mouth pleasantly tender from the rough press of his beard. He looks so unguarded in repose, untroubled and young, the centuries of conflict having left no trace. I could pretend he’s a god of anything else while he sleeps, or even a mortal man of unearthly beauty. Until he opens his eyes and I look back into their hollow darkness, I can tell myself anything I want to believe.

I swing my legs out from under the warm furs, the chill of the air making my skin tingle as I slide away from the heat of his body. The stone floor is cold under my bare feet. One side of his chamber is open to the elements, onyx pillars holding the roof above us in place of the thick stone walls that make up the other three sides of the room. I slip between two of them, touching the midnight-hued surface, smooth as glass, as I pass, and step outside.

I’m immediately enveloped in mist, damp droplets clinging to my skin: a cloud, wreathing my naked body like a fairy-cloak. I’m on a little veranda, open to the wide skies with nothing below but a sheer drop down the rocky mountainside. By me, a gnarled and leafless tree stretches up, rooted in a thin scattering of soil, precarious and stunted. I reach out and touch a bare branch, my fingers trailing across its dry surface. In their wake, tiny buds swell and unfurl, little leaves lifting toward me from the dead bark, green and fresh and living. My heart lifts with them. This place is bleak and barren, but here is a hope that it can be something more. That I could change it.