Circe cups my face, her touch agonizingly gentle, her eyes shining in the low light of the room. “I’vemissedyou. So desperately.” She brushes her thumbs over my cheekbones. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to touch you again.”
“I shouldn’t let you,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t want to touch you.” No matter what evil she’s done, it doesn’t change the fact that she once wasmine. I close my eyes. “I’ve missed you, too.”
Over a decade’s worth of emotions well up inside me, bursting from my chest as she sinks down to the floor, her knees bumpingmine. The first time we kissed, we were in nearly an identical position, kneeling facing each other as she did my makeup. She cupped my chin just like this, staring at my mouth with a desperation mirrored in the racing of my heart.
I kiss her now, just like I kissed her then. The past and present lay uneasily over each other as she grabs my hips and jerks us closer together, my arms going around her neck so I can dig my fingers into her hair. Shorter now but still so familiar.
Circe tugs my clothes off with impatient hands, and then the cool marble floor meets my back as she rolls us to settle between my thighs. She kisses down my throat, the edge of her teeth catching my skin in her frenzy.
I pull her back to my mouth. I don’t want to think of anything in this moment. I just want to feel. I shouldn’t be doing this. I know that even as I lift my hips to meet her questing hand.
She slips her fingers between my thighs to cup my pussy. We exchange a shaky exhale at the contact. I press my forehead to hers. “This changes nothing.” I’m not sure I believe my own words.
“I know.”
“Don’t stop.”
She smiles against my mouth. “I won’t, love. Not until you’re coming.”
The years fall away as she parts me and delves two fingers inside, a slow, exploratory fuck as if reacquainting herself with every detail of me. I’ve never felt more possessed than I do in this moment, a body attached to the thrumming pulse between my thighs, to the pleasure she teases forth with little curls of her fingers. Circe drags her fingers out of me and up over my clit, and then reverses course,sliding them deeper.
My back bows and I kiss her harder. I’ve had dozens of lovers over the years, some I’ve cared about very deeply and some who were just fun for a short time. With each of them, I took the lead, taking and giving pleasure but never letting my heart bleed for them.
My heart’s not just bleeding right now. It’s sitting outside my shattered rib cage, broken and throbbing for the one woman who can never be mine. Not truly. Not again.
Even understanding that, I knowher. I know to pull her close even as she drives my pleasure higher. How to clutch her hips and urge her to grind against my thigh, angled just the way she likes it. She’s wet and slippery and hot enough to scald. I want the taste of her need on my tongue, but there’s no time with the frenzy upon us.
We are a tangle of bodies and limbs andneed. She carefully winds my braids around her free hand and buries her face in my throat. “Come for me, Hecate. I want to feel you.”
“You…first.”
Her chuckle sends me over the edge. I moan and shudder, ripping apart at the seams. She doesn’t stop finger fucking me, though; she just shifts her touch a little to give me a moment to recover, to focus on her own pleasure. It’s too much. To have her this close and not… “I need to taste you.”
“Please.”
A distant part of me is horrified that we’re fucking on the floor when there are plenty of perfectly adequate pieces of furniture around. Or, gods forbid, a bed. There’s no space for that kind ofpause, to slow down long enough to move positions. Tothink.
Her mouth finds my pussy just as I lick her clit. If kissing her tasted like home, she tastes like home here, too, albeit in a different way. She’s close to orgasming. It’s the most natural thing in the world to rub the flat of my tongue against her needy clit. She gasps against me, losing her focus.
I may not be able to win our larger confrontation, but I know how to make Circe come. Hers was the second body—after mine—I learned to bring pleasure to. The first love Iwantedto make feel just as good as she makes me feel. First with awkward fumbling and low laughter, and then with moans and whimpers as we figured out what the fuck we were doing.
I clutch Circe to me even as I drive her closer and closer to orgasm. I need to feel her come undone, need to be the one to cause it. Her tongue is slick against my clit, clever and wicked. No matter how good I make her feel, she’s in control enough to drag me alongside her into oblivion. She’s always been too damned good at that. Pleasure builds inside me, a bomb waiting to detonate, even as I drink down her taste.
Don’t stop. Just a little longer. We can pretend just a few seconds more. Please.
I’ve always been too damned good at pretending. Sometimes I fool even myself. Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing from the moment I took the Hermes title.
When she comes, I’m seconds behind her, my orgasm exploding through me and leaving nothing but rubble in its wake. I rest my head on her thigh, panting. “Circe—”
“Not yet.” She presses a gentle kiss to my aching pussy. For a beat, I think she means to continue, to nudge us over the edge and back into the frenzy, to hold off reality for a few hours at least. Instead, she sits up slowly, careful not to dislodge me. She traces her fingers over my forehead and down the side of my face. “The rest of the world will still be here in the morning.”
But I won’t be.
I’ve already been away from Atalanta too long. I never should have come here, drawn by a presence I was half-sure existed only in my imagination. Except then I heard familiar footsteps in this house I built for us, and I was lost.
I sit up and kiss Circe, tasting both of us in the process. Once upon a time, it felt like a promise of the future we dreamed of together. Now, it just hurts. “Let’s move this to the bedroom.”
It’s a testament of how thoroughly she just orgasmed that she doesn’t question the statement. She simply rises, tugging me up with her. We walk hand in hand down the hallway and into the primary bedroom. Every step is a dagger in my heart. The sensation only gets worse when I force myself to smile at her. “I’m going to freshen up. Wait for me?”
