Lia took a long shower and put on her pink cotton nightie and got into bed. By the time her head hit the pillow she had convinced herself the whole thing with Aphrodite had simply been a temporary break with reality caused by overwhelming stress, the lingering effects of whatever hallucinogenic substance coated the Rose Kylix or a combination of both. Lia certainly would never break her great-grandfather’s Aphrodite statue. Proof—there it was, sitting on her mantel like always, in perfect condition.
As for David? Well, you had to pay tax. Odd that the arresting officer had come to Wingthorn to haul in David, though. How had he known David was here? At least it seemed August’s mother had kept her end of their devil’s bargain and called in the necessary favors to get David out of Lia’s hair. He’d probably get deported by Monday morning. Or August’s mother would offer him a deal—she’d make his legal troubles go away if he promised to keep his mouth shut. Either way, it was done. Lia knew in her heart her troubles with David Bell were over for good.
So why couldn’t she be happy?
Because August was gone, that was why. He was gone and she would never see him again.
Lia patted the bed so Gogo would join her, but for some reason he didn’t want to leave his dog bed. Ah, fine. Be that way, stubborn puppy. She’d sleep alone. She’d done it for most of her life. Wasn’t so bad. Wasn’t so bad at all.
She turned the light off and pulled the covers to her chin—the covers that still smelled like August, like cypress trees and his skin. Lia ignored the tears that streamed from her eyes and onto her pillow as she willed herself to sleep. She’d be doing a lot of sleeping the next week while she was a prisoner in her own bedroom.
Like poor Danaë, the daughter of a king who locked her up to prevent her from falling in love and getting pregnant with the son who was prophesied to kill him. Locking his daughter up didn’t work, of course. Never did. Lock up a girl in a tower or a dungeon and it was like catnip to the gods, Lia knew. Might as well hang a sign over the house that said Get It Here, Gods!
That thought made Lia smile. Or maybe it was exhaustion making her loopy.
But something was definitely wrong with her.
Why was she hearing...bird noises?
Was that it? Bird noises? Not birdsong or crows cawing, but she knew she’d heard the fluttering of wings. Wings?
Lia rolled up and turned on her lamp.
August stood by the foot of her bed.
“August!” She stared at him in gobsmacked wonder, her lips parted and her eyes wide as the sky. “You’re here. And...naked.”
“Did you miss me?”
“Yes,” she said. “But you can’t be here. Or naked. You’re getting married. Go away. Put clothes on, too. Not in that order.”
He laughed and climbed on the bed. He crawled to her and loomed over her on his hands and knees.
“What are you doing here?” she rasped. “I’m under house arrest. You’re going to get me murdered. And you...you’re supposed to be in Greece getting married to a cloud or something.”
“I’m free,” he said. “My mother let me go.”
“She did? Oh...” Lia was so happy she could do nothing but reach for him to hold him and never let him go.
But he stopped her. He took her wrists in his hands and pressed them down into the pillow at either side of her head.
This she did not mind.
“Do me a favor, Lia,” he said. She lay under him, pinned down and basking in her joy. “Don’t scream.”
“Scream?”
Two massive white wings sprouted from August’s back and filled the room wall to wall.
Lia started to scream. August slapped a hand over her mouth.
“You are very bad at following instructions.”
He took his hand off her mouth.
She stared up at him, at his strange changeable gray eyes and his dark waving hair falling over his forehead and his smile nearly as wicked as he was, and she knew him, she knew who he was. August Bowman. Her love and her lover.
“You have wings.”
“You like them?”
“Where did you get them?”
“Born with them. Weird, aren’t they? You just never know what’ll happen when two gods make a new god.”
“You cannot be a god,” she said, gazing at his wings. They certainly looked real enough, though they could just be clever props.
“You still don’t believe me?” he asked.
“I’m struggling,” she said. “Though trying to maintain an open mind.”
“Don’t care if your mind is open,” he said as he put his very human knees between her thighs and pushed them apart. “As long as your legs are.”
“No, stop. We have to discuss this,” she said. “The wings for starters. Start with those.”
He kissed her. All was forgotten. The kiss set her heart to throbbing and her heart set her lips to kissing. She wrapped her arms around his strong neck and he wrapped his arms around her back, raising her from the bed and against him to kiss her even more, to kiss her until her skin flushed pink as a rose in spring.
August released her from the kiss and she lay breathless beneath him.
“Okay, so what about the wings?” she asked.
“I am done with your doubting Thomas ways,” he said. “I’m going to prove to you once and for all who and what I am. And you’re going to like it, young lady.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said. Or she’d planned to say that. The words were on the tip of her tongue when August simply disappeared in a flutter of feathers.
The room seemed empty, terribly empty, and Lia sat up and glanced around, looking for any trace of him. She found nothing but one white feather on her bed. And even that was no definitive proof. She slept on feather pillows.
Except the feather was softer than silk and smelled like the purest water from the highest mountain stream.
“August?” she called out softly. She wanted him back so badly she’d believe anything he said. She’d believe he was a king or the pope or the prime minister of Canada if that was what it took to get him back and keep him back.
“August?” she called out again, a little louder this time.
Then she saw something sliding in through her window and snaking up the ceiling. Lia narrowed her eyes at it and saw it seemed to be...gold. Liquid gold. It oozed across the ceiling, shimmering in the lamplight.
“August?” she whispered. She held out her hand and one drop of pure liquid gold landed in her palm.
No...he wouldn’t...would he?
But she already knew he would.
Another drop fell from the ceiling. Then another and another. They landed on the bed all around Lia. Drop. Drop. Drop. Like pennies from heaven. The drops kept coming and coming, and as they fell, they found each other and formed puddles of gold, shining gold, glimmering gold...
One puddle slid across the sheets toward Lia. Her chest heaved in fascinated horror as it approached. She held out her hand to it and touched it as gently as she’d ever touched a soap bubble blown in summer on the lawn. The liquid gold puddle was warm but not hot, and satiny to the touch. She plunged her fingers into it and laughed as it formed a ball in her hand before dropping back down to the sheets.
More drops fell from the ceiling onto the bed and created more shimmering, glimmering golden puddles. One oozed its shining way to her thigh and Lia let it crawl—if that was the verb—onto her leg. It felt heavy, solid, but it didn’t hurt. And she wasn’t afraid. Either this was August doing something wonderful and bizarre to her and for her or she had simply gone mad. Either was acceptable to her after the day she’d had.
The puddle on her thigh slid up her body, up her hip and over her stomach...and it was heavy enough that Lia had to lie down on her bed. It slid through the valley between her breasts, and one golden tendril extended like a long finger to stroke her cheek and brush her lips, as if in a kiss. Lia murmured a soft sound of pleasure. It felt so solid on her, so heavy and so strange but sensuous, too. Her skin tingled everywhere the gold touched.
She had her little pink nightie on, but the magical golden puddle didn’t seem to mind. It slipped under the bodice of her gown and covered her breast with a thin layer of gold. Lia closed her eyes as gentle heat seeped deep into her skin. Her nipples hardened, and she could swear it felt like heavy hands held her breasts, squeezing the nipples, pulling and pinching them.
Her hands grasped at the sheets as two more of the gold slicks slid across the bed and onto her legs. Now it felt like six large hands on her body—two on her breasts, two on her thighs, one on her belly, one on her chest. The golden hands explored her skin, every inch of it. They eased up and down her legs, over her feet and even between her toes and up again to ring her ankles. They glided over her throat and around her neck, up and around her ears and across her lips, then down her shoulders, down her arms, down to her hands where they tickled all ten of her fingers.
More golden drops fell from the ceiling and the golden hands on her grew more solid, larger, heavier and even more intent on exploring every part of her body. Lia went limp, overcome with the pleasure that was beyond words and reason. The golden hands lifted her, pushing her gown off her body and her underwear down her legs. There were ten golden hands now on her body, twelve. Too many to count. They turned her onto her stomach and flowed all over her from her neck to her back, over her bottom and thighs and calves, and kissed the very bottoms of her feet. Lia gasped and panted, panted and gasped, as those sinuous golden hands poured over her body like water.
Lia luxuriated in the touch of the hands on her body. She yielded completely to their explorations. The gilded hands pushed her onto her back again and she let them cover her from knee to throat. Every nerve in her body tingled and every muscle in her body sang as the hands stroked and caressed her. When the hands crept up her inner thighs, Lia lay there, legs spread wide, in a stupor of purest sensual pleasure.
One golden hand cupped her between her thighs. She inhaled hard as a tendril of gold found her clitoris and encircled it. Pressure, gentle pressure. Kneading. Her clitoris throbbed as fingers of gold pushed under the hood of flesh that covered it and pushed back. A tongue of gold, a thousand times more precise and careful than any human tongue could be, ran over the exposed organ, teasing it until Lia’s lower back came off the bed in her ecstasy.
Another one of the gold slicks pushed through her swollen labia and poured into her vagina. Lia flinched as she was slowly but incessantly filled and filled. The liquid gold inside her grew in volume as more of it entered her. It kneaded at the inner folds, pushing through them, pushing them apart, until it felt to Lia like she had the largest supplest dildo in the world inside her.
But that wasn’t enough for August.
Lia gasped, stopped breathing, when she felt the thinnest slightest tendril of liquid gold pass through her cervix, going deeper inside her than any man ever could. It should have hurt, but didn’t, feeling instead like the most tender intimate penetration...
But that wasn’t enough, either. Another hand of gold slid over her hips and over her vulva and down to the other, tighter, entrance of her body and began to work its inexorable way inside her. And yet another hand of gold danced up her chest and to her mouth where it entered her even there, like a blunt thick finger on her tongue, and Lia couldn’t help but suck on it like a cock in her mouth.
Two hands of gold covered her breasts and squeezed them, tugging and twisting her nipples until they were hard as diamonds, diamonds and gold. Her vagina was filled to bursting, her womb infiltrated, her arse, her mouth. No woman in history—except for perhaps Danaë herself—had ever been so penetrated. Every part of her was conquered, every hole filled. She could take no more. The golden finger on her clitoris never ceased to knead and mold that swollen knot of tissue while the golden organ inside her vagina pulsed and throbbed. Immobilized by the impossible weight upon her, Lia could do nothing but lie there and let the golden hands work her entire body, inside and out, into a frenzy. She was squeezed and rubbed, pressed and pleasured, invaded and lifted, and filled and filled and filled.
When she came, it seemed her entire body rose off the bed, and perhaps it did, with hands of gold under her. Her hips pumped, and sensation burst from her clitoris and along every nerve, up her spine and into her back and thighs and womb. And when the obliterating orgasm struck her, all she could do was gasp August’s name once.
She might have passed out. She thought she had. When she came to again, she lay naked on the bed. The golden droplets were all gone. Instead August lay on his side next to her, head propped on his hand.
He smiled wantonly at her.
“Now do you believe me?”