Bronzed muscle shifted beneath his skin with each breath he dragged in. A line of dark hair cut down his abdomen, drawing my gaze … Gods.
He was hard. His length was thick and heavy, jutting toward me, the flushed crown swollen and furious, the veins along the shaft pulsing as though straining for release. The sight alone sent a rush of heat through me, fire spilling from a cracked vessel, pooling insistent.
And yet, he was beautiful. A weapon and a wonder both, sculpted by gods to destroy and to worship.
Not just in the sheer size of him, though that alone made my pulse stumble, but in the way his gaze held mine as I took him in. Unflinching. Daring. As though he already knew the storm he had woken in my chest and was demanding I let it break, that I let him take it—takeme.
An aching awareness gathered low in my belly, and I couldn’t look away.
Mouth to skin, hand to hip, he mapped me like I was the story he’d been waiting his whole life to read. I let him unravel me. Bit by bit, breath by breath, until I was shaking beneath him, gasping his name like it might save me.
“You’re mine.”
His words were a vow, etched deeper than his hands ever could. He leaned lower, hot breath over my breast, and whispered again. “I’ll worship you. Break for you. Burn the world before I let it take you.”
He gripped behind my knees and shoved them wider, spreading me open like I belonged to him, like the hunger in his eyes had finally broken its leash. Achilles buried his face between my thighs like a man starving. No preamble, just greedy hunger. A cry ripped from my throat as his tongue parted my slick folds, dragging up through my cunt until he closed his mouth around my clit and sucked. Menelaus had never—never—done this. He’d taken what he wanted, never lowering himself to worship between my legs. This was … this was everything.
I twisted beneath Achilles’s touch, aching for more, but he pinned me mercilessly, holding me captive as he took his time with the slow torment of his mouth.
He licked everywhere … messy and unashamed. His tongue stroked over my entrance, plunging deep, then sliding back up to circle and lash at my clit until I was gasping, shaking, the world narrowing to the wet heat of his mouth and the relentless sounds of him feasting on me.
I tugged at his hair, frantic, but he groaned into me, the vibration rumbling through my swollen flesh until my vision blurred. He pulled back just far enough to drag his tongue up the length of me, tasting every drop, before he pressed a kiss to my throbbing clit. His lips brushed there as he rasped, voice wrecked, hungry.
“You were made for this. For me. The gods carved this cunt to ruin me.”
A shiver snapped through me, not entirely from his hands.
Menelaus had used that word tonight too—loudly, gleefully, flinging it across the hall for the Sidonians to hear. A weapon meant to shame me. A spectacle. A way to drag me down while raising his cup.
Hearing it now in Achilles’s voice, reverent instead of mocking, made the memory twist. It was wrong that the same sound could feel so different. Wrong that it echoed at all.
“Achilles—” I breathed, unsettled and unsure which part of me was trembling.
He growled, and his tongue slid back into me, relentless, deeper, lapping, fucking me with his mouth while his thumb pressed hard on my clit. Something gathered inside me, unfamiliar and rising, my body moving toward a place it had never been. I tried to brace for it, to understand it, but there was nothing to compare it to.
I broke apart against him, pleasure ripping through me so violently I sobbed, my body convulsing, but he didn’t stop. He licked and sucked and swallowed, taking everything until I was certain he would consume me whole.
I was breathless and shaking, stunned by the sheer fact that my body had responded to him like that when Menelaus had never come close.
When Achilles rose, red-glittered paint smeared his mouth and chin, a shining wound he wore like triumph. My chaos. My undoing. He looked like a fallen god crowned in my devotion, marked in the colors of me.
The air between us crackled with things unspoken as his mouth left a trail of heat up my body, tasting the curve of my hip, the dip of my waist, the rapid pulse at my collarbone. My skin felt fevered, lit from within.
Achilles braced himself above me, eyes locked on mine. His chest heaved with restraint, golden skin slick with sweat and paint.
“Are you sure?” he rasped in a voice barely above a whisper.
My eyes fluttered shut, a tremor rippling through me, exquisite pain, raw as an open wound and just as honest. Because Menelaus had never asked me that before. He had only taken.
Claimed.
Bruised.
The ghosts of the king’s hands tried to rise, but I shoved them back into the dark where they belonged. Even if I bore his marks, he had no place here. Not in this bed. Not with Achilles.
I opened my eyes, met the fire in his, and breathed, “Yes.” I reached for him and wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him into me with a desperation I hadn’t known I possessed.
He groaned as his body met mine. The head of his cock pressed against my entrance, hot and thick and pulsing with need. My breath caught, anticipation slicing through me as he pushed forward, slow and steady.
