strength. I couldn’t escape.
I gazed up at him in fury. His unmatchable masculine beauty and pleasant cologne didn’t lessen the rage beating in my blood.
But I was at a disadvantage, so I cautioned myself not to go against him while I was alone without backup. Even if my magic well was brimming with fullness, I couldn’t take him down single-handedly, and I needed to refrain from using my fires. The last thing I wanted was for him to figure out who I was.
The elemental had warned me that if the Olympian gods knew I was a child of the supposed Titan king and a demon queen, they’d hunt me to the ends of the universe.
Even my demigods might turn on me if they knew I had demon blood.
“Are you comfortable, Marigold?” Ares asked in a cultured voice that had a hint of a French accent. He’d stayed in Paris for too long.
“Like you care,” I said. “Return me to the Academy.”
“You dare give orders to a god?” He sounded almost amused.
“You’re a kidnapper, dude.”
If I’d thought Paxton was bad, this brute of a god was ten times worse.
I conjured up my power and commanded. Teleport.
I’d teleported myself twice. I imagined landing on the south side of the pond, where I’d been taken from the demigods.
A wave rippled, but then it vanished just as quickly. Light and heat bound me in their cocoon.
“It won’t work,” Ares said. “No one can sift you out from my teleportation, not even Zeus. Now brace for a bumpy landing, a lesson for your insolence.”
He wasn’t joking. The impact from hitting the hard, rocky ground shot pain through my legs. But I was no damsel in distress. Though weaponless, I’d stolen a dagger from the sheath strapped to his thigh.
Before I was steady, before I even registered where I was, I drove the dagger toward his chest, faster than a flash.
He raised his wrist and the dagger’s tip bounced off his arm guard. Next, he gripped my wrist and twisted it backward until pain radiated through my entire arm.
I let go of the dagger. It dropped to the ground with a clanging sound.
“That’s more like it, Marigold,” Ares said. “You and I are going to have fun, the kind of fun I haven’t had in millennia.”
“You bet,” I said as I gazed up at him through my lush lashes, stretching my torso against his hard-muscled body.
Surprise flitted through his golden eyes, but he didn’t push me away. He didn’t stop my advance. Instead, he relaxed as if he’d decided to play along and enjoy the ride.
A lot of women might throw themselves at a hot, cruel god, but I wasn’t one of them. The God of War, however, expected me to be one of his groupies. He probably thought I’d betray my demigods for him at the first fat chance, now that he’d gotten me alone with him.
He regarded himself above everyone. He’d told the demigods that he was their better.
I’d give their “better” a nice taste for him to remember me by.
While I smiled up at him sweetly to keep his guard down, I drove my knee up toward his nuts. I’d failed in this sort of act with Paxton. I didn’t plan to fail this time, even with a war god.
In the back of my mind, I silently prayed that a god’s cock wasn’t as hard as a rock. I could tell he wasn’t aroused. While his manhood was limp inside his pants, I should be able to hurt him.
My knee rammed into his crotch. Pain bloomed from my knee and spread to my ankle and hip.
“What the fuck?” I cried and glanced down.
There was a bulge at the front of his pant armor that hadn’t been there before. Fuck, he’d become aroused as I’d resorted to violence on him. I hadn’t exactly hit his dick. I’d smacked into the shield he’d put up.
“There’s a reason it’s called the gods’ armor.” Ares gloated. “It was made by Hephaestus—my former lover’s talented husband.”
I’d learned enough of Olympian history to know what he was talking about. Hephaestus was the God of Blacksmiths, and Ares’s former lover was Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty.
“Even if your knees or fist hit my cock, it won’t hurt me,” he offered casually. “I’m a god. But you seem to have an attitude issue. Though it’s fun to see you spice things up between us, I want you to lose some of it when I tell you to.”
“Screw you.”
Ares pulled back