The King of Hearts - Jovee Winters Page 0,21

of Psyche’s greatly diminished beauty. He has already done as you’ve bid.”

“So why can’t we locate him?”

“You know none of us can see him when he hides in his shadows. I have no doubt that he is spying on her, staying in close, he will surely have much to report to you when he returns.”

“That damned Dionysus!” I spat and began furiously pacing again. “This is all his fault. He knows I can’t resist a bloody bet.”

Ares smirked. “He did play you like a fiddle, my priestess.”

My nostrils flared and my fists suddenly burned with red fire.

Ares had the nerve to laugh. But he held up his hands in a nonconfrontational way, which eased my anger. Just a bit.

“Dionysus loves his games. We all know this. But your faith must remain on your boy. Eros will do right by you. He always has.”

With a growl, I twirled on my heel. Staring out the massive windows before me. I’d never told Ares what I’d learned from the fates several millennia ago. About Eros. About his future.

Suddenly I felt warmth at my back, and then powerful hands were dragging me back by my shoulders. He fitted me snug into his body, rocking us slowly. I stiffened, finding myself irritated by his embrace. But I didn’t move either. I wanted both to be left alone and also fucked like an animal. Wild. Uninhibited. So hard and furiously that I forgot all my worries.

My nostrils flared as I scored my nails down his forearms, smirking as I spotted the beads of golden blood well up.

He hissed, but didn’t move. Ares was slave to his need of me. Everyone was. So why did I always feel like shite?

“You are still uneasy, Aphrodite. What is it?”

I hadn’t meant to tell him. In fact, I’d meant to banish him from my bed for annoying me. But instead the damned words spilled off my tongue.

“I went to see the Fates while I was pregnant with him Ares. Many lifetimes ago.”

He didn’t say a word, but I sensed his confusion.

I shook my head. “They told me he would betray me someday. For love of a woman.”

He instantly turned me around. His dark eyes peered through me, into my soul. Ares could read hearts nearly as well as I could. It was how he knew the darkness of men so well, and why he would incite wars with but a few simple, choice words. Because men, he said, were a cancer that needed to be kept in check lest their darkness ravage all the lands. On that he and I were in total agreement.

I flinched and looked away, not wanting him to see one of my worst humiliations in life. Shame.

A gentle press of his thumb brought my face back to his. “Aphrodite, tell me the truth now. I often wondered why you threw that boy into the arms of any and every eligible male on Olympus. When it was exceedingly obvious, even to me, that he was not an admirer of male flesh? Did you really sabotage our son’s ability to know a woman’s touch because of some damned prophecy uttered two thousand years ago?”

Furious at his high handedness, I tossed his arms off me and pointed at his chest. “Oh, now he’s our son! Since when have you ever taken an active interest in getting to know him!”

“You never let him off your teat long enough for anyone to get to know him! And well you know it, you damned hypocrite!”

We were both breathing like a bellows, staring angrily at one another. My blood resonated with the tang of fury and the fire of hate. His eyes burned like fiery cinder.

Then he smirked and I braced for what would come next. Same thing that always came next.

He pounced and I went wild.

I clawed at his face. His neck. His powerful chest and arms. I even bit the vein at the side of his neck, hard enough to break skin.

He growled, and his entire body quivered beneath me. There was hate in his touch, but there was desire too. And it coiled like a greedy serpent around me.

Anyone else, and I’d have killed them. But to my ever loving humiliation, I felt that same sort of need for him too.

Our sex was furious.

Wild.

He pulled my hair, so hard I felt strands being plucked free. I slapped his face. Delighting in the red blooms that suffused his dark cheeks.

We fucked like there was no tomorrow. We never kissed when we