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Moira wants the soufflé. She’s practically salivating over it. And yet, she resisted when I offered to make it for her. Resisted although I was trying to get her to drop her defenses.
Like Irine has been invulnerable to Sei’s mind-control since they first met, Moira isn’t affected by my powers. That can only mean this abandon with which she’s returning my kiss is solely borne of desire. She has free will, and she’s exercising it by sucking on my tongue and tugging on my jeans.
My elation that this is possible—that it’s actually happening—is overshadowed only by my hunger for her.
Fuck. I want her now. Here.
She deserves better. Deserves a king-size bed with silken sheets, to say the least. And she can have it later, when I take her to the Glyfada Olympian Suites. For the moment, the closest horizontal surface will have to suffice, because I need to taste her like I need to breathe. More than I need to breathe—oxygen deprivation causes me no permanent harm.
I lift her to me and carry her the three strides to the nearest table, mouths still locked together. She tastes like toothpaste, fresh and minty, and I take my time licking and nibbling on her bottom lip, before thrusting my tongue in her mouth again.
I help her sit on the table, and my heart skitters when she withdraws from our kiss. Expression bordering on somber, she says, “Does this mean you accept my resignation?”
Never. I’m never letting her go.
Fuck, I’ll need to. Our link isn’t fully formed, and yet moments of my past with Ariadne seeped into Moira’s dreams. If we bond, she’ll know what I did. She’ll resent me forever.
No bonding then. But she and I can have a relationship. Be together. I’ll happily turn monogamous for her. Hell, if Hermes could do it...
I have enough presence of mind to not say any of that aloud. “No. You’d better be on time tomorrow, or I’ll have to punish you,” I tell Moira.
She moans as if I’m already spanking her, and the sound goes straight to my hard dick. Trapping it in place by buttoning up seemed smart while we were just talking, but the denim digging into it now is pure torture. I want to free my erection, but won’t until I’ve made her come with my mouth.
But can I take her, make love to her, without causing the bond to form? Double fuck. Bonding is supposed to take consciously pledging my love to her while we mate, but I can’t risk it. No sex until I talk to C about how we can do it without completing the bond.
Triple fuck. Or zero fuck, to be more precise.
Moira’s holding the towel in place and watching my face intently. She looks so vulnerable. If only she knew what power she holds over me...
Maybe she does. The smile curving her lips as she unwraps the towel and lets the edges fall to the side says she has some inkling. “Oops. I dropped it.”
“Remind me to punish you for that too.” It takes effort to form words—Chaos, to form thoughts—as I take in the golden softness of her belly and the supple breasts with the dusky nipples. Her every curve is made to fit my palms, and I let my gaze caress each line until it falls to the bare triangle between her legs. She’s so wet, I see her slickness covering her nether lips and inner thighs. All this for me, and I haven’t touched her yet.
She laughs and tugs at my fly again, but I trap her wrists in one of mine, stopping her. “No. Not yet.” I sound like a freaking virgin on her first date—and Hermes would probably deem me sexist for even thinking that line.
Oh great. Now I’m thinking of Hermes while I’m about to eat pussy.
I lock my gaze on Moira’s. Silver swirls in her irises. It suits her. Pity I can’t see her eyes anymore once I lower my head to one perfect, puckered nipple. I flatten my tongue over it and suck more of her breast inside my mouth. This is what ambrosia must taste like. I palm her other breast and squeeze gently. Trap her nipple between two fingers and tug. Her gasp makes me do it again. I feel the tip pebbling further, as my dick hardens painfully. I straighten so I don’t sprain it, and watch her face as I cup my hands a hairbreadth from the perfect mounds. Gooseflesh rises in the wake of my not-a-touch, as if her skin itself rises to my caress. Her eyes are closed, her breath coming in short bursts.
I claim her lips again and try the one thing I never expected to want to work—I think at her. “I want to taste you as you come. Feel your thighs squeezing my head.”
She snaps her head back. Her eyes are open wide, the pupils blown. “How did you do that?”
I can tell her the truth. Let her know who—what—I really am and how our fates are intertwined. I can do what neither of my bonded bros did, and ask what she wants before we go any further than kissing and groping. But the reason they didn’t talk things through with their mates was this imperative need to become one with them.
Sei and Hermes described the feeling, but until this very moment, I couldn’t grasp its magnitude.
With a last peck on Moira’s lips, I take a step back and shrug. “I never learned not to talk with a full mouth.” Chicken.
She tilts her head, and one corner of her lips twitches. “Sounds like a talent I need to see more of.”
As she sways her legs back and forth, I clasp the left one and lift. Her ass slides closer to the edge of the table, and she leans back with a startled giggle. “Hold on, you caveman.”
Her giggle shuts off abruptly when I drop her leg. “Stay there,” I bark. If we don’t do anything more than this, I must make it memorable. I grab a bottle of chilled champagne from the fridge, the cold against my palm helping me focus on something other than how much I want to fuck her.
I return to find Moira exactly where I left her, only looking around with a frown that melts when she takes me in.
“Thought you left,” she says. In my head. Does she know she’s doing this?
I hold up the bottle for her to see, before tilting it and twisting off the muselet. I can do this without the loud pop, but sometimes you need the extra oomph, and a little messiness is good. Gives me the chance to show her how long my tongue is, as I lick the bubbles cascading down the neck of the bottle.
Moira jumps a little as the cork releases. Closes her legs. Worries her bottom lip with her teeth.
I part her knees with one hand and step between them. “I want to drink this off you.”
She hisses when the first drops of pale gold liquid land on her belly, but holds still until it forms a small pool around her navel. I lean in and use her body as a chalice, while I pour more champagne. I trail my tongue along one hipbone, then the other, worrying the flesh with my teeth while I drink my fill of her and the champagne. Moira sighs and moans and tilts her hips toward me. I could draw this out more, but if I don’t taste her now, I may go crazy.
I drop to my knees and raise her left leg over my shoulder. Face centimeters from her glistening pussy, I inhale her scent. Earthy, with a hint of pine. She used my shower gel. Why does that get me even harder?
I’ll end up with a busted cock if I don’t adjust—
Fuck. My cock was just adjusted by an invisible hand. My invisible hand. I thought I should do it, and it was done. Let’s see if I can replicate that. I think of spreading Moira’s nether lips, and before my eyes, they part to reveal her swollen pearl. Her moan when I run an imaginary finger down her cleft says she feels my mental touch. And if I concentrate hard as I slide my nonexistent digit inside her, I feel her wet heat engulfing it.
This offers a lovely array of possibilities to be explored, but for the moment... I take a swig straight from the bottle and carefully keeping it from spilling, wrap my lips around her clit. She bucks as I suck her and the liquid in. I dip my tongue—my real, actual tongue—between her labia, flick her clit, and pour another rivulet down her slit. Her hips come up, and I place my forearm across them to keep her in place as I lick her again, gathering the champagne and her juices and allowing her tangy, salty flavor to erupt on my taste buds along with the bubbles. She tastes like sunrise, and I’m ravenous.
“Mmm...” I hum against her pussy and resume lapping at her, gliding my tongue from her opening to her clit. I flatten it and tap the tender button. Trap it with my teeth and rub it with the tip of my tongue. Push my tongue inside her pussy and feel her walls constrict. When I return my mouth to her clit, to suck on it, I slip my thumb inside her. Not to toot my own horn, but I have thick, long fingers, and I know how to use them.
Moira’s moans and thrashing are proof of that.
“Fuck.” She folds her other leg over my shoulder too, digs her heels in my shoulder blades and angles her hips. Rides my face. Humps my thumb. Tries to pull me closer.
“More,” she gasps. Or is it in my head? “More. I want you inside me.” She tangles her fingers in my hair and pulls until I raise my head from my feast.
“Not tonight.” The words scratch my throat on their way out. They’re a lie, and I don’t lie. What I should be saying is not ever. Not while I have nightmares of destroying another woman’s sanity. Not when I don’t want to ascend—don’t deserve any sort of forever.
Disappointment flits across her face, but then my fingers are in her tight cunt again, and she drops her head back on the table, rolling her hips while I finger-fuck her. She thrashes and moans, and in my mind, her voice chants, “More... Need more... Need you...”
When she comes, what’s left in the champagne bottle erupts in a bubbly volcano, all over my thigh.
I want to shower with her, press her against the glass and fuck her raw, but I don’t. I let her clean up first, and then get under the water jet and fist my cock hard and fast, until I come so intensely, I see double. And yet, I have an erection when she invites me to share the cot in the backroom with her. And I go—me, who’s never shared a bed with a woman for sleep. And I hold her tight against my body as her breathing slows and she drifts off.
Thank Chaos I’ve avoided the bonding, huh?
Ariadne is pulling at her hair, gouging at her cheeks, wailing at the skies. I want to wrap my arms around her, keep her from harming herself, but my touch is what caused this to begin with. Until I tangled my fingers in her long wavy hair and slanted my lips over hers, she had no memory of the deaths she caused under Theseus’ control. Had no memory of arming Theseus and telling him where to strike, to end her poor brother’s life—her brother Asterion, known only as the beast Minotaur, who spent his existence deemed a monster, for their mother’s sins. Did not recall poisoning her father’s evening brew, to facilitate Theseus’ escape. Had forgotten she was abandoned here by the man who used potions and spells to make her love him.
I bind my hands with cotton strips torn from my chiton, so I don’t make contact with her skin again, and force her arms from her face. She’s determined to break free. To blind herself. Throw herself off a cliff. She shrieks her intentions at me, as I whisper soothing, empty words. It’s not her fault. None of this is her fault. Theseus will pay for how he’s wronged her, I swear he will, as long as she promises not to punish herself for deeds that weren’t her own.
“You’re kind,” she mumbles. Her eyelids are drooping, exhaustion finally filling in for the hysteria. “I should have loved someone like you.”
I hold her as she sleeps. In the morning, she presses her lips to mine. “Thank you,” she says.
And maybe once I’ve fulfilled my promise to her, she will love me.